where he lived…
Take-in went from Wednesday until Tuesday midnight and was as busy as one might expect. Regent’s was north of the river, its mid-Victorian bulk spread in the middle of streets packed with small houses, derelict buildings and small factories. There was always something, observed Eva Chambers wearily, at the end of a particularly busy day; if someone didn’t damage themselves with factory machinery, they got run over by a car or stabbed by a member of a rival gang of youths. The weekend was always the worst; Megan, gloomily surveying her bulging ward, thanked heaven that Wednesday was in sight.
She had seen Oscar only once or twice and then only for a brief hour snatched in a grubby little café across the street from the hospital, but she went out in her off duty however tired she was. There was nowhere much to go, but a brisk walk made a nice change and the weather was kind; it was mild for the end of March and here and there was a gallant little tree or privet hedge in a rare front garden, and there were green shoots. Next week, she thought happily, she and Oscar would go home together, and the week after that she would have her own small flat; Theatre Sister was getting married and no longer needed the semi-basement she had lived in for some years, and Megan had jumped at the chance of getting it. Oscar hadn’t liked the idea but, as she pointed out, it would be marvellous to have somewhere to go; she could cook supper and they could talk, something for which they seldom had time.
The ward settled back into its usual routine—admissions for operations, discharges for those who had recovered, dressings, treatment, serving meals, arranging the off-duty rota to please the nurses, continuing her running fight with the laundry; after four years she had become adept at running a ward.
Oscar wasn’t free until Sunday and although she grudged missing a day at home it gave her the chance to go along to the flat and make her final arrangements for moving in. She had already met the landlord, an elderly bewhiskered cockney who occupied the ground-floor flat himself and let the top flat to a severe lady whose staid manner and ladylike ways added, he considered, to the tone of his house, something he was anxious to maintain in the rather shabby street.
Shabby or not, it was handy for the hospital, and Megan was looking forward to having a place of her own even if it was a down-at-heel semi-basement. She spent most of her Saturday going through its contents with Theatre Sister, who was packing up ready to leave, and she agreed to take over most of the simple furniture which was there and adopt the stray cat that went with the flat. It would be nice to have company in the evenings and he seemed an amiable beast. She went back to the hospital in the early evening, eager to make her move, noting with satisfaction that it took her exactly five minutes to get there. Her head full of pleasant plans about new curtains, a coat of paint on the depressing little front door, she failed to see Professor van Belfeld driving out of the forecourt as she went in.
She and Oscar left early the next morning. Her home in Buckinghamshire was in a small village north of the country town of Thame. Her father was senior partner in a firm of solicitors and had lived most of his life at Little Swanley, driving to and from his offices in Thame and Aylesbury. She had been born there, as had her younger sister and much younger brother, and although she enjoyed her job she was essentially a country girl. She had a small car and spent her free weekends and holidays at home, and she had hoped—indeed, half expected—that Oscar would get a partnership in a country practice; his determination to stay in London had shaken her a little. Sitting beside him as he drove out of London, she hoped that a day spent at her home would cause him to change his mind.
Little Swanley was a little over sixty miles’ drive from Regent’s and once they were out of the suburbs Oscar took the A41, and, when they reached Aylesbury, turned on to the Thame road before taking the narrow road leading to Little Swanley.
‘It would have been quicker if we had taken the M40,’ he pointed out as he slowed to let a farm cart pass.
‘Yes, I know, but this is so much prettier—I don’t like motorways, but we’ll go back that way if you like.’
She felt a twinge of disappointment in his lack of interest in the countryside; after the drab streets round the hospital, the fields and hedges were green, there were primroses by the side of the road and the trees were showing their new leaves. Spring had come early.
Another even narrower road led downhill into the village. Megan, seeing the church tower beyond it, the gables of the manor house and the red tiles of the little cluster of houses around the market cross, felt a thrill of happiness. ‘Go through the village,’ she told Oscar. ‘Ours is the first house on the left—there’s a white gate…’
The gate was seldom closed. Oscar drove up the short drive and stopped before the open door of her home, white-walled and timber-framed with shutters at its windows, a roomy seventeenth-century house surrounded by trees with a lawn before it and flowerbeds packed with daffodils.
She turned a beaming face to Oscar. ‘Home!’ she cried. ‘Come on in, Mother will be waiting.’
Her mother was already at the door, a still pretty woman almost as tall as her daughter. ‘Darling, here you are at last, and you’ve brought Oscar with you.’ She embraced Megan and shook hands with him. ‘We’ve heard so much about you that we feel as though we know you already.’ She opened the door wider. ‘Come and meet my husband.’
Mr Rodner came into the hall then, the Sunday papers under one arm, spectacles on his nose, a good deal older than his wife, with a thick head of grey hair and a pleasant scholarly face. Megan hugged him before introducing Oscar. ‘At last we’ve managed to get here together. Are the others home?’
‘Church,’ said her mother. ‘They’ll be here in half an hour or so; there’s just time for us to have a cup of coffee and a chat before they get back.’
Melanie and Colin came in presently. Melanie was quite unlike her mother and sister; she was small and slim with golden hair and big blue eyes and Oscar couldn’t take his eyes off her. Megan beamed on them both, delighted that they were instant friends, for Melanie was shy and gentle and tended to shelter behind her sister’s Junoesque proportions. She left them talking happily and went into the garden to look at Colin’s rabbits, lending a sympathetic ear to his schoolboy grumbles, then she went to help her mother put lunch on the table.
Oscar, she saw with happy relief, had made himself at home, and her parents liked him. She had thought they might have taken a walk after lunch and discussed their future but he was so obviously happy in their company that she gave up the idea and left him with her father, Colin and Melanie and she went into the kitchen to gossip with her mother while they cleared away the dishes and put things ready for tea.
‘I like your young man,’ said her mother, polishing her best glasses. ‘He seems very sensible and steady. He’ll make a good husband, darling.’
‘Yes.’ Megan hesitated. ‘Only I don’t see much chance of us marrying for a while—for a long while. He’s rather keen on settling in London and I would have liked him to have found a country practice. I like my work, Mother, but I don’t like London, at least not the part where we work.’
‘Perhaps you can change his mind for him,’ suggested Mrs Rodner comfortably. ‘He doesn’t want to specialise, does he?’
‘No, but he’s keen to get as many qualifications as he can and that means hospital posts for some time.’
‘Did you like his parents, darling?’
Megan put down the last of the knives. ‘Well, his father is quite nice—not a bit like Father, though. I tried hard to like his mother but she doesn’t like me; she says she has no patience with career-minded girls.’
‘You
