what do you say? He hasn’t time to waste hanging around while you think about it—he’ll want to talk to you and make certain that you’ve a good chance of a complete cure if he does operate. He seemed to think that he could do something from what he saw of you this morning.’
Esmeralda drew an indignant breath. ‘So that’s why you came into the ward first and went right to the other end, and then sent me all the way back with a message—so that he could watch me limp…’ She choked with her feelings.
‘That’s it—how else was he to get a sight of you?’ He added kindly: ‘He wasn’t looking at you, only casting a professional eye over your foot.’
‘Well!’ She had no breath left with which to be indignant. ‘And why, may I ask, am I singled out for his attention?’
‘Because you’re a nice girl and you’ve been taking it on the chin for years, and it’s time that stopped or you’ll turn into a frozen spinster.’
Esmeralda gave him an outraged look and he added quickly, ‘No, on second thoughts you wouldn’t, not with those eyes—my daughter has blue eyes, bless her, but I’ve always fancied green, myself.’ And when she gave a chortle of laughter: ‘I’ll ask Mr Bamstra to come in.’
And before she could say another word, he slid through the door.
For a man of such massive proportions, Mr Bamstra was remarkably silent; he had taken Mr Peters’ place while Esmeralda was still staring at the door. He said with a deceptive meekness which she didn’t for one minute believe: ‘Is it all right if I come in?’
She said vexedly: ‘Well, but you are, aren’t you? Sister left me with a great deal to see to, and I’m not even half way through it all.’
His smile was kind, it was also beguiling. ‘You’re put out,’ he observed, his voice kind too, ‘and I’m very much to blame, but it was a little difficult, you know. I could hardly drop in and say: “Oh, hullo, I’ve come to look at that foot of yours,” could I?’ He added more seriously. ‘I didn’t think you would want it mentioned until we had talked about it.’ He sat down on a corner of the desk, looking down at her with intent grey eyes. ‘You do want it put right, don’t you?’
Her vexation had given way to a rather doubtful hope. ‘Oh, more than anything in the world,’ she assured him fervently. Her green eyes were full of dreams, although her voice was prosaic enough. ‘A great many surgeons have seen it, you know, but just lately I’ve refused to let anyone see it.’
He pushed his large, well-kept hands into his pockets and studied his shoes. ‘Tell me as briefly as you can just how it happened and what treatment you have had.’
He didn’t look at her at all, which made it easier. ‘I was three. I fell off my pony and he trod on my foot—nothing else was injured, just that foot; he crushed the metatarsals, pulped them into a squashy mess. The surgeon who saw it said he could do nothing then, that perhaps when I was older the bones would separate again and he could operate; only they didn’t, they set themselves exactly as they were—they fused into a lump of bone. My mother took me to any number of specialists when I was a little girl, but none of them could do anything—they said that something should have been done when the accident happened. I’ve been to several other specialists since I started nursing, and they all thought that it had been left too late; that I would have to learn to live with it—that the limp didn’t notice very much…’
‘I noticed it,’ said Mr Bamstra with a detached candour which didn’t hurt at all. ‘Shall I have a go?’
Her hands were clasped on her aproned lap, the fingers entwined so tightly that the knuckles showed white. There were no reasons to suppose that this man was any different from the others who had wanted to help her, and yet she felt no hesitation in saying yes: ‘Only it might be a bit difficult. I mean, I’d have to get leave and all that—would it take long?’
‘A couple of months, perhaps. Of course you would be in a walking plaster in no time, so you would be able to get about.’ He stopped looking at his shoes and looked at her. ‘Will you let me see what I can arrange? You would have to come to my hospital, you know.’
‘Oh—where’s that?’
‘Holland—either Utrecht or Leiden, whichever has a bed for you.’ He got off the desk. ‘Think it over,’ he advised her. ‘I shall be here until tomorrow evening.’ He nodded with casual friendliness and left her sitting at the desk, her head in a whirl.
But a look at the clock warned her that sitting and thinking about her own affairs was inadvisable; she couldn’t hope to get finished before Sister Richards came back on duty, but at least she could get as much done as possible. She rushed through the rest of the requests and went down the corridor to check the clean linen, working with such a will that she was all but finished when Sister arrived. She went off duty herself an hour later, her head no longer full of Mr Bamstra’s visit but of the evening ahead of her.
This was her first date for quite some time. Of course she went out often enough with the other nurses, frequently a bunch of them, together with housemen or students, made up a party, but although she was popular in a quiet way, no one had singled her out for an evening à deux, not that that surprised her in the least. If she were a young man, she wouldn’t have bothered with a girl who couldn’t dance, who couldn’t even run for a bus without looking grotesque; she had no brothers of her own but she was aware that young men didn’t like to be made conspicuous. Her mother and old Nanny Toms, who still lived at her home and did the house-keeping, had both assured her over and over again that when Mr Right came along her foot wouldn’t matter to him at all, but here she was, all of twenty-six, and no one, let alone Mr Right, had even taken a second glance at her—not until now. Leslie Chapman’s sudden attentions had taken her by surprise at first, but now, finally won over by his apparent desire for her company and his disregard for her limp, she was allowing herself to respond to him, and because her warm nature had been frustrated, hidden behind the matter-of-fact manner she had learned to assume against pity, it was threatening to take over from her hard-learned common sense.
She made her way to her room, refused the offer of a cup of tea with a handful of off-duty friends, and opened her wardrobe door. Unlike many of the girls she worked with, she had plenty of clothes, pretty and quite often expensive, for again unlike them, there was no need for her to help at home. Her mother had been left comfortably off in the small manor house in the New Forest, and she herself had, over and above her salary, a generous allowance from the substantial capital her father had left for her. Only if she should marry before she was thirty would she come into full possession of her sizeable fortune, and in the meantime the fact that she was by way of being a minor heiress hadn’t altered her independent nature in the slightest; she recognised that it was pleasant to have sufficient money to buy the things she wanted, but she had no highflown ideas about her inheritance and it said much for her nice nature that her friends, even if they were at times envious of her, never cast it in her teeth. And she, for her part, never mentioned it to them, nor, for that matter, did she mention the countless small acts of generosity she performed; the small sums she had lent and never wanted back, the countless times she had stood treat without anyone quite realizing it…she would have been horrified if anyone had found out.
She stood now, debating the merits of a pinafore dress in a soft pink with a white muslin blouse to go with it, or a green-patterned voile dress with a tucked bodice and short sleeves. She had no idea where they were going. Leslie had mentioned, rather vaguely, going out to eat; she had been a fool not to have asked him where. She chose the dress finally, if she wore her thin wool coat over it it would pass muster almost anywhere, and she hardly expected to go to Claridges or Quaglino’s. She bathed
