the way to travel.’
Caroline, spooning the thick Dutch soup, agreed. The memory of Marius van Houben was still vivid; it was also a waste of time. ‘We’ll unpack in the morning,’ she told her aunt. ‘There’ll be time to get the washing and ironing done before I go back.’
She was up early to make tea, load the washing machine and then go into the garden to take a look around her. Another week or so and it would be April; her aunt’s flower-beds were bursting with green shoots and the rhubarb was coming along nicely under its bucket. It was a bit early to go across the street and collect Theobald, Aunt Meg’s cat who had been boarded out while they were abroad, so she contented herself with poking around the seedlings in the tiny greenhouse before going back indoors and setting the table for their breakfast.
The meal over, she filled the washing-line at the end of the garden and went across to Mrs Parkin’s for Theobald. The sun had come out now, and the village, so peaceful and quiet despite its nearness to Basingstoke, looked delightful. She paused to admire the small houses and cottages around her before thumping on Mrs Parkin’s door knocker.
Theobald, an elderly tabby with a torn ear and handsome whiskers, was pleased to see her. ‘Good as gold,’ avowed Mrs Parkin. ‘Got ’is wits about ’im, ’e ’as. ’As you ’ad a nice time in foreign parts?’
‘Lovely, thank you, Mrs Parkin. Aunt Meg will be over to see you presently and she will tell you all about it.’
Caroline bore the cat back to his own home, pegged out the rest of the washing and, with her aunt having a chat over the coffee-cups with Mrs Parkin, took herself off to the village stores. There were several customers there, all of whom she knew, and all of whom wanted to know if the holiday had been a success.
‘Historically a most interesting city,’ observed the vicar’s wife, who prided herself on being cultured. ‘Of course you visited all the museums and art galleries?’
‘Well, as many as we could cram in,’ said Caroline, ‘and we walked around, just looking, you know—some of the houses are very beautiful…’
‘Now, you can’t beat an Italian villa,’ chimed in Miss Coates, who lived alone in a large house at the end of the village and went to Italy each spring, and enlarged upon the subject until she had been served with half a pound of butter, a tin of sardines, and half a dozen stamps from the Post Office end of the shop.
When she had gone Mrs Reece, who owned the shop said, ‘Now she’s gone, do tell us, Caroline, did you meet anyone nice?’
Everyone there knew that she meant a young man. ‘Well, no, the other people on the trip were middle-aged couples, and two schoolteachers…’
‘You must have met a lot of people—in the street, I mean,’ persisted Mrs Reece, who had a fondness for Caroline and would have liked to see her married.
‘I did meet one person—I had to deliver a parcel…’ Caroline related her visit to the magnificent house by the canal and her tumble. ‘I felt a fool,’ she ended, ‘and I ruined a pair of tights.’
‘Was he very handsome?’ asked Mrs Reece.
‘Oh, yes, very—and tall and big.’
‘“Ships that pass in the night”,’ the vicar’s wife quoted, ‘One so often meets a person one would wish to know better if one had the opportunity.’ She handed Mrs Reece a list of groceries, ‘I remember when we were in Vienna…’
Caroline was the last customer. ‘Well, dearie, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself, though it’s a shame that there weren’t any young folk around.’
Never mind the young folk, reflected Caroline, inspecting the cheeses, Mr Marius van Houben would do very nicely.
That day and the next went all too quickly. She took a late afternoon bus to Basingstoke and got on the train, hanging out of the window until the last minute, waving to Aunt Meg. She would be back again in two weeks’ time for her days off but at the moment she derived little comfort from that. She hated going back and yet once she was there, in the hospital, busy on the ward, she was happy.
The nurses’ home, a grim appendage to the hospital, looked bleak from the outside, but inside it was cheerful enough, and although the rooms were decidedly small they were nicely furnished and there were three sitting-rooms, one for the sisters, one for trained staff and one for the student nurses. Caroline poked her nose round the door of the last mentioned and was greeted by several girls lounging around reading and drinking tea.
They begged her to put her case down and tell them all about her holiday while she drank a mug of tea, unpacked the cake her aunt had made for her and handed it round.
‘Meet any nice men?’ asked one of the girls, Janey, a pretty fair-haired girl.
‘No—at least, I did meet one, I’m not sure if he was nice…’
She had everyone’s attention. ‘Do tell…’
She told and when she had finished Janey exclaimed. ‘You could have fainted or burst into tears, you know—captured his attention.’ She sighed. ‘Really, Caro—for a woman of twenty-four you’re hopeless at catching the male eye!’
‘I didn’t feel faint, and you know how hideous I look if I cry.’
There was a protesting chorus telling her that she hadn’t needed to feel faint; just to look pale and helpless would have done very well.
Caroline said meekly that she would know what to do next time, with the secret thought that being pale and helpless would cut no ice with a man like Mr van Houben. His eyes, compellingly blue though they were, were razor-sharp.
She went on duty the next morning, back to Women’s Surgical, chock-a-block since it was take-in week, with beds down the centre of the ward and several disgruntled ladies forced to sleep in Women’s Medical where they had beds empty.
‘It’s a funny state of affairs,’ observed Staff Nurse James, deftly shortening a tube and putting on a fresh dressing while Caroline handed things and made cheerful remarks to the nervous patient. ‘Here’s us bursting at the seams, and two whole wards closed because there’s no money to keep them open. There, that’s done, Mrs Crisp, and I’m sure you’ll feel more comfortable now. Clear away, will you, Nurse, and then go and get your coffee?’
Corinna was in the canteen and as Caroline went in she called her over to the table where she was sitting. ‘Did you find the house?’ she wanted to know. ‘I hope it wasn’t too much of a nuisance for you? I’m very grateful—the book was far too precious to send by post—a first edition. Thanks awfully. Did you have a good time?’
‘Yes, delightful, thank you.’ Corinna, she thought, was very like her cousin; her eyes were bright blue too, although her nose was a delicate beak, which rather added to her good looks. If she had known Corinna better she might have told her that she had met her cousin; as it was, she went and got her coffee and sat down at another table with several of her friends.
She was tired by the time she went off duty at six o’clock; there had been two emergency admissions who had gone to Theatre during the day and one of the student nurses had gone off sick during the afternoon, which meant that two of them were doing the work of three.
Caroline kicked off her shoes, made
