to join the queue at the nearest bus stop, thinking about the professor. A handsome man, she conceded; fair hair going grey, a splendid nose, heavy-lidded eyes and a firm mouth—which was a bit thin, perhaps. Even sitting at his desk it was easy to see that he was a very large man. Still quite young, too. The hospital grapevine knew very little about him, though.
She glanced back over her shoulder; there were still lighted windows on the top floor of the hospital; one of them would be his. She sighed. He hadn’t liked her and, of course, that was to be understood. She had been ticked off on several occasions for not being respectful enough with those senior to her—and they were many—but that hadn’t cured her from wanting to be friends with everyone.
Born and brought up in a rural part of Somerset, where everyone knew everyone else, she had never quite got used to the Londoners’ disregard for those around them. Oblivious of the impatient prod from the woman behind her, she thought of the professor sitting up there, so far from anyone… And he was a foreigner, too.
Professor ter Mennolt, unaware of her concern, adjusted his spectacles on his nose and addressed himself to the pile of work on his desk, perfectly content with his lot, careless of the fact that he was alone and a foreigner. He had quite forgotten Ermentrude.
The bus, by the time Ermentrude got onto it, was packed, and, since it was raining, the smell of wet raincoats was overpowering. She twitched her small nose and wondered what was for supper, and, after a ten-minute ride squashed between two stout women, got off with relief.
Five minutes’ walk brought her to her home, midway down a terrace of small, neat houses in a vaguely shabby street, their front doors opening onto the pavement. She unlocked the door, calling, ‘It’s me,’ as she did so, and opened a door in the narrow hallway. Her mother was there, sitting at a small table, knitting. Still knitting, she looked up and smiled.
‘Emmy—hello, love. Supper’s in the oven, but would you like a cup of tea first?’
‘I’ll make it, Mother. Was there a letter from Father?’
‘Yes, dear, it’s on the mantelpiece. Have you had a busy day?’
‘So-so. I’ll get the tea.’
Emmy took off her raincoat and scarf, hung them on a peg in the hall and went into the kitchen, a small, old-fashioned place with cheerful, cheap curtains and some rather nice china on the dresser shelves. About all there was left of her old home, thought Emmy, gathering cups and saucers and opening the cake tin.
Her father had taught at a large school in Somerset, and they had lived in a nearby village in a nice old house with a large garden and heavenly views. But he had been made redundant and been unable to find another post! Since an elderly aunt had recently died and left him this small house, and a colleague had told him of a post in London, they had come here to live. The post wasn’t as well paid, and Mrs Foster found that living in London was quite a different matter from living in a small village with a garden which supplied her with vegetables all the year round and hens who laid fresh eggs each day.
Emmy, watching her mother coping with household bills, had given up her hopes of doing something artistic. She drew and painted and embroidered exquisitely, and had set her sights on attending a school of needlework and then starting up on her own—she wasn’t sure as what. There had been an advertisement in the paper for a switchboard operator at St Luke’s, and she had gone along and got the job.
She had no experience of course, but she had a pleasant voice, a nice manner and she’d been keen to have work. She’d been given a week’s training, a month’s trial and then had been taken on permanently. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but the money was a great help, and one day her father would find a better post. Indeed, he was already well thought of and there was a chance of promotion.
She made the tea, offered a saucer of milk to Snoodles the cat, handed a biscuit to George the elderly dachshund, and carried the tray into the sitting room.
Over tea she read her father’s letter. He had been standing in for a school inspector, and had been away from home for a week. He would be coming home for the weekend, he wrote, but he had been asked to continue covering for his colleague for the next month or so. If he accepted, then it would be possible for Mrs Foster to be with him when it was necessary for him to go further afield.
‘Mother, that’s wonderful—Father hates being away from home, but if you’re with him he won’t mind as much, and if they’re pleased with him he’ll get a better job.’
‘I can’t leave you here on your own.’
‘Of course you can, Mother. I’ve Snoodles and George for company, and we know the neighbours well enough if I should need anything. I can come home for my lunch hour and take George for a quick walk. I’m sure Father will agree to that. Besides, Father gets moved from one school to the other, doesn’t he? When he is nearer home you can be here.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know, love. The idea of you being on your own…’
Emmy refilled their cups. ‘If I had a job in another town, I’d be on my own in some bedsitter, wouldn’t I? But I’m at home. And I’m twenty-three…’
‘Well, I know your father would like me to be with him. We’ll talk about it at the weekend.’
By breakfast time the next morning Mrs Foster was ready to concede that there was really no reason why she shouldn’t join her husband, at least for short periods. ‘For you’re home by six o’clock most evenings, when it’s still quite light, and I dare say we’ll be home most weekends.’
Emmy agreed cheerfully. She was due to go on night duty in a week’s time, but there was no need to remind her mother of that. She went off to catch a bus to the hospital, glad that the rain had ceased and it was a nice autumn day.
The switchboard was busy; it always was on Fridays. Last-minute plans for the weekend, she supposed, on the part of the hospital medical staff—people phoning home, making appointments to play golf, arranging to meet to discuss some case or other—and all these over and above the outside calls, anxious family wanting news of a patient, doctors’ wives with urgent messages, other hospitals wanting to contact one or other of the consulting staff. It was almost time for her midday dinner when a woman’s voice, speaking English with a strong accent, asked to speak to Professor ter Mennolt.
‘Hold the line while I get him for you,’ said Emmy. His wife, she supposed, and decided that she didn’t much like the voice—very haughty. The voice became a person in her mind’s eye, tall and slim and beautiful—because the professor wouldn’t look at anything less—and well used to having her own way.
He wasn’t in his room, and he wasn’t on any of the wards she rang. She paused in her search to reassure the voice that she was still trying, and was rewarded by being told to be quick. He wasn’t in Theatre, but he was in the Pathology Lab.
‘There you are,’ said Emmy, quite forgetting to add ‘sir’. ‘I’ve a call for you; will you take it there?’
‘Only if it’s urgent; I’m occupied at the moment.’
‘It’s a lady,’ Emmy told him. ‘She told me to hurry. She speaks English with an accent.’
‘Put the call through here.’ He sounded impatient.
It wouldn’t hurt him to say thank you, reflected Emmy as she assured his caller that
