van Borsele. And now that we are introduced, I will come in with you and see to that foot.’
She saw then that he held a case in one hand. ‘You’re a doctor?’
‘Yes.’
There seemed no point in arguing with him. ‘Very well, though I’m perfectly able…’
‘Let us waste no more time in polite chat.’
Claribel opened the gate to the basement with rather more force than necessary and led the way down the worn steps to her front door. In the sombre light of the street lamp its paint shone in a vibrant red and there were tubs on either side, holding the hopeful green shoots of daffodils. She got out her key and had it taken from her and the door opened. He switched on the light, too, and then stood aside for her to enter.
There was a tiny lobby and an inner door leading to the living-room, small and perforce dark but very cosy. The furniture was mostly second-hand but had been chosen with care, and there was an out-of-date gas fire under the narrow mantelshelf. The one easy chair was occupied by two cats, one black and white, one ginger, curled up together. They unrolled themselves as Claribel went in, muttered softly at her, and curled up again.
‘Do come in,’ said Claribel unnecessarily, for he was already right behind her.
They stood for a moment and studied each other. Claribel was a pretty girl, almost beautiful with golden hair drawn back rather too severely into a knot, green eyes and a straight nose above a generous mouth. She was tall and magnificently built and looked a good deal younger than her twenty-eight years.
She stared back at her companion, frowning faintly because he was staring even harder. He was well over six feet, she supposed, and big with huge shoulders. He was also good-looking in a formidable way, with dark hair, sprinkled with grey, an aggressive nose, a firm thin mouth and dark eyes. He might be any age between thirty-five and forty, she guessed, and he had a nice taste in dress: conservative but elegant.
‘Be good enough to take off your tights or whatever and let me see that foot.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I can spare five minutes.’
The arrogance of the man! Someone should take him in hand, Claribel thought as he turned to undo his case. She whipped off her tights, sat down on a small upright chair and held her foot out.
There was more mud and blood; he poked and prodded, remarked that she would have a bruised foot but nothing worse and suggested that she should wash it. ‘That’s if you have a bathroom?’
She bit back what she would liked to have said in reply and went through the door at the back of the room and shut it behind her. The bathroom was a pokey little place reached through her bedroom; she cleaned her foot and whisked back to find him standing before the watercolour hanging over the mantelpiece.
‘Your home?’ he wanted to know.
‘Yes.’
‘The west country?’
‘Yes.’ She had sat down and was holding her foot once more. ‘You said you had five minutes…’
He sat on his heels, used penicillin powder, gauze and strapping and then stood up. ‘You don’t like me,’ he observed.
‘I don’t know you. Thank you for your help. You were kind.’
‘I am not a particularly kind man.’ He closed his case and she opened the door and held out a nicely kept hand.
‘Goodbye, Dr van Borsele.’
He shook it briefly. ‘Goodbye. You live alone?’
She was surprised. ‘Yes. Well, there are Enoch and Toots…’
‘I trust that you don’t open your door to strangers or accept lifts from those you don’t know.’
Her pretty mouth dropped open. ‘Well! You insisted on bringing me home and here you are telling me…’ She strove to keep her voice at a reasonable level. ‘I never accept lifts and I certainly don’t open my door. Whatever do you take me for?’
‘The most beautiful girl I have seen for a long time.’ He didn’t smile. ‘Goodnight, Claribel.’
She bolted the door after him and stood listening to him driving away.
‘What an extraordinary man,’ she observed to her cats, ‘and much too sure of himself.’
She went into the kitchenette and began to get her supper, all the while considering ways and means of deflating his arrogance. ‘I dare say he’s quite nice,’ she mused out loud, ‘once one gets beneath that cold manner. Perhaps he is crossed in love. Or unhappily married. And what’s he doing here in London if he’s Dutch?’
She dished up her omelette and sat down at the table in the living-room to eat it. ‘I wonder what he does? Private practice, or just on a visit, or at one of the hospitals?’
She finished her supper, fed the cats and washed up, turned on the gas fire and got out the sweater she was knitting, but somehow she couldn’t settle to it. Presently she bundled it up and took herself off to bed, where, to her annoyance, she lay awake thinking, much against her will, of the man she had met that evening. ‘A good thing we’ll not meet again,’ she observed to the cats curled up on the end of her bed, ‘for he’s too unsettling.’
It was still raining when she got up the next morning, dressed, breakfasted, fed the cats and tidied up her small flat. The physiotherapy department opened at nine o’clock and Miss Flute, who was in charge, had put her down to do a ward round with Mr Shutter, the orthopaedic consultant, at half past that hour. She needed to go through the notes before then.
The bus was jammed with damp passengers, irritable at that hour of the morning. Claribel wedged herself between a staid city gent and a young girl with purple hair arranged in spikes, and reviewed the day before her.
A busy one. Mr Shutter had the energy of two men and expected everyone to feel the same way; she had no doubt that by the end of his round she would have added more patients to the already overfull list Miss Flute brooded over each morning. Besides that, she had several patients of her own to deal with before lunch, and in the afternoon Mr Shutter had his out-patients clinic. It crossed her mind that she had more than her fair share of that gentleman; there were, after all, four other full-time physiotherapists as well as several who came in part-time. There were other consultants, too, milder, slower men that Mr Shutter, but somehow she always had him. Not that she minded; he was a youngish man, an out-of-doors type whose energy was very much in contrast to his broken-limbed patients, but he was kind to them and she had never minded his heartiness. Some of the girls she worked with found him intimidating, but it had never bothered her; she had a peppery man of the law for a father.
Jerome’s Hospital was old; it had been patched up from time to time and there were plans afoot to move it, lock, stock and barrel, to the outskirts of London, but the plans had been mooted so often, and just as often tidied away again, that it seemed likely to stay where it was, surrounded by its dingy streets, its walls grimed from the traffic which never ceased around it, its interior a maze of passages, splendid public rooms and inconvenient wards. Claribel, who had trained there and stayed on afterwards, surveyed its grim exterior as she got off the bus with a mixture of intense dislike and affection. She loved her work, she liked the patients
