She eased them out carefully, kissed the proffered cheeks and led the way indoors.
Later that morning, the old ladies settled in and the chores done, Beatrice got into the elderly cloak hanging behind the kitchen door and worn by everyone in the family and took herself off to the church to find Mr Perkins. He was putting a plug on the fairy-lights on the Christmas tree and making a bad job of it. Beatrice took it from him, rearranged the wires, screwed them down and handed it back to him. He was a nice old man, everyone in the village liked him, but he needed a great deal of looking after since his wife had died.
He thanked her warmly. ‘I asked you to come and see me but I’m afraid I can’t remember why.’ And before she could suggest anything, he said, ‘What a very nice man that was with young Derek—I wish I had had more time to talk to him. I trust we shall see him again …’
‘Well, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Beatrice. ‘He’s Dutch, you know, and only here on a visit.’
‘A pity. Ah, I’ve remembered what I wished to ask you, my dear. If you could give a hand with the children during the blessing of the crib?’
‘Yes, of course. Six o’clock this evening, isn’t it?’
‘So kind. When do you go back to your work, Beatrice?’
‘Boxing Day, in the evening. It’s lovely to be home for Christmas. I must fly—the aunts and George are staying with us, and Mother needs a hand in the kitchen.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ He smiled gently. ‘Run along … It seems only the other day that you were a little girl. How old are you now, Beatrice?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘You should be married with children.’
‘As soon as I can find a husband I’ll do just that, and you shall marry us.’ She laughed as she spoke, but really, she reflected as she sped home, it was no laughing matter. She hadn’t lacked for prospective husbands but somehow none of them had touched her heart. ‘I dare say I shall make a splendid aunt,’ she said to Horace, the elderly cat who had invited himself to live with them some years ago and had been there ever since.
Horace jumped down off the wall and followed her into the house. He had long ago realised that when she was at home he could be sure of getting his meals on time. Her romantic future was of no concern to him.
She hadn’t been home for Christmas for three years and she enjoyed every moment of it, especially the blessing of the crib with the children milling around, some of them dressed in curtains and their mothers’ dressing-gowns and gold paper crowns, enacting their own little play round the crib. Beatrice, nipping smartly to and fro, shushing the noisiest of them and rearranging the curtains which had come adrift, thoroughly enjoyed herself. She went home to supper when it was all over and listened to her aunts’ gentle reminiscences of their youth and presently slipped out of the room to join George and listen to his account of his life at the hospital. She gathered that it wasn’t bad—he was clever and when he chose worked hard and didn’t mind the long hours of study. He had friends too, and his social life, as far as she could gather, was a lively one.
‘What about you?’ he wanted to know. ‘Isn’t it about time you got married?’ He added, ‘What about Tom?’
She took this in good part. ‘It’s a funny thing, George, I’ve done my best to fall in love with him, but it’s no good. You see, I don’t think it’s me he wants, it’s a quick way to the top, and Daddy could help him …’
‘Toss him out, my dear. Isn’t there anyone else?’ She said no in a doubtful voice while Gijs van der Eekerk’s handsome features floated around in her head. She shook it vigorously and said ‘no’ again quite violently. Why should she think of him when she so disliked him?
George gave her a curious look and said nothing. So there was someone, even if she didn’t know it herself. The thought pleased him; he had never liked Tom, who patronised him.
Christmas Day, its traditions never varying from year to year, came and went with its presents, church in the morning, turkey and Christmas pudding, crackers and cake, and then Boxing Day, pleasantly easygoing after the hustle and bustle, followed it all too swiftly. Beatrice loaded her bag into her own Mini, added a box of food which her mother considered necessary to augment what she considered to be the hospital stodge, hugged everyone and promised to be home again as soon as she could get a couple of days off, and drove away, down the lane past Lady Dowley’s imposing house and through the village. A pity Derek had a week’s leave, she reflected; she saw very little of him at the hospital but from time to time they saw each other going their various ways and very occasionally they had gone out to supper when they were both free.
She took a side-road to Aylesbury and presently joined the A41 which took her to the outskirts of London. She was a good driver and there was very little traffic. She went across the city, a lengthy business, weaving in and out of streets becoming more and more shabby as she went east. Presently she could see the bulk of St Justin’s ahead of her, towering over the rows of grimy little houses and shops, and turned in through its open gateway to park her car at the back of the hospital and go in through a side-door. It opened on to a passage going left and right and she took the one going away from the hospital to the newer block which housed the path. lab and the various departments appertaining to it. Her flatlet was on the top floor, a large room, nicely furnished, with its own little shower-room and tiny kitchenette. The view from its windows was depressing enough—chimney-pots and boarded-up shops and warehouses—but she kept an array of pot plants on the sills which screened the worst of them and had added over the years bright cushions, and pretty lamps so that the place was welcoming. She was a lucky young woman, she told herself as she unpacked her bag. She had a good job, reasonably well paid, and she liked her work. On the ground floor she had her office where she dealt with the cleaners, the part-time cook who came in from time to time to provide the laboratory staff with meals if they weren’t able to go to the hospital canteen, and, as well as this, she paid the bills, and worked her way through a great deal of paperwork which the hospital administration demanded of her. She kept a motherly eye on everyone too, reporting sickness or injuries, and she dealt with the mundane running of the place—the plumber, painters, maintenance men—and, over and above that, dealt with the foibles of the varied learned gentlemen who worked there with their assistants. She was known rather grandly as the administrator but she thought of herself as the housekeeper.
She was opening a can of soup when the telephone rang. ‘You’re back,’ said Tom. ‘I thought of you living in the lap of luxury while the rest of us worked ourselves into the ground. I suppose you went to several marvellous parties …’
‘One,’ said Beatrice and wondered why she felt no sympathy for him.
‘Lucky girl. How about telling me all about it tomorrow evening? I shall be free for a few hours—we might go and have a meal somewhere. Seven o’clock suit you?’
She frowned, faintly annoyed that he was so sure of her accepting. ‘I shall be busy tomorrow—everyone will be working late; there’s the seminar on the following day …’
For heaven’s sake!’ He sounded as peevish as a spoilt child. ‘Why must you fuss over those old back-room boys?’
‘I’m not fussing, just doing my job.’ She spoke sharply and he was quick to hear it.
‘Sorry, Beatrice—I’m tired, I suppose. Let’s meet around eight o’clock and have a cup of coffee—tell you what, I’ll
