got a date fixed yet?’
Bonny, the housekeeper, had appeared to open the drawing room door and tell them that lunch would be half an hour and it looked, if she might be so bold as to say so, as if Miss Amelia needed a few good meals.
Amelia gave her a hug, assured her that she never felt better but would undertake to eat anything she had cooked and went to sit by the wood fire burning in the stone fireplace. When Bonny had gone she said:
‘Tom wants to get a bit more money saved—we thought in about two years’ time, and I’ll go on working.’ She sounded a bit defiant, and her father didn’t say anything for a minute but poured their sherry with care.
‘Well, you’re old enough to know your own minds,’ he said gruffly. ‘Most young people seem to set up house together without a thought of the future, nor for that matter, of getting married—that seems to come later.’
‘Tom isn’t like that.’
Mr Crosbie looked as though he was going to say something, changed his mind and handed her the glass instead. ‘Anyway,’ he said mildly, ‘a week’s holiday can’t interfere with your plans, can it, and I don’t suppose Tom will object to you staying on another couple of weeks with me. He’s a reasonable man.’
Amelia relieved at getting the bit about them not marrying for a bit off her chest, conceded that he wouldn’t mind at all and three weeks would be fun. ‘When were you thinking of going?’ she asked.
‘It’s—let me see—the twentieth today. Could you manage ten days from now?’
She frowned. ‘Yes, I expect so. Mr Thomley Jones is going on holiday, which will cut the lists quite a bit, and Mary Symes, who does the relieving, comes off Women’s Surgical in a week’s time—she could take over. I’ll see what I can do.’
Her father nodded. ‘Good—try and arrange something and fix it with Tom if you can, my dear.’
They lunched together in the rather dark, oakpanelled dining room with Badger, who had been with the family for most of his life, waiting on them in a rather absent-minded fashion. They discussed the coming trip, arguing the advantages of flying to Bergen or taking the car over from Newcastle.
‘We’ll fly,’ decided Mr Crosbie. ‘We can rent a car over there—I’ve the address of someone we can get a boat from and a list of hotels from Jenks.’ He shot Amelia a look. ‘No dressing up, mind you,’ he warned, ‘and take warm clothing. There’s a small place, Stokmarknes, where he says there’s quite a good hotel, and if we want a change there’s Harstad. There’s a road,’ he added laconically.
‘I should hope so—will it be very isolated?’
‘Not where we’re going,’ he reassured her, ‘and we shall be on the Coastal Route, the ships call most days and it’s only an hour or so from one place to the next. If you get bored you can go off for the day, you and Tom.’
It might be a good idea, Amelia thought, to have Tom to herself, miles away from his work and the hospital, and try and get him to change his mind about their future. ‘It sounds super. I’ll talk to him as soon as I get back.’
She spent her two days riding, grooming the two elderly donkeys who kept her own horse and her father’s great skewbald company, pottering about the garden, listening to Job, the old gardener, carrying on about his rheumatism, the apple crop and the incredible size of his pumpkins. And when he told her, with the familiarity of an old and trusted servant, to let him get on with his work, she wandered indoors to the kitchen and sat on the kitchen table while Bonny got the lunch, gobbling up biscuits from the tin Bonny had just filled.
‘You’ll get fat,’ said Bonny.
‘I haven’t gained an ounce in two years,’ Amelia told her happily, ‘I work too hard.’ All the same she got down and crossed to where an old-fashioned mirror hung against a wall and studied what she could see of her person. She wasn’t conceited, but it gave her no misgivings. True, she was a bit too curvy for modern fashion, but she was a big girl and if she had been thinner she would stand in danger of looking like a clothes pole. ‘I won’t eat any more biscuits before lunch,’ she observed, and took an apple from the dish on the kitchen table as she went out.
She saw Tom when she returned to St Ansell’s; he had come into theatre to pass on a report about one of his patients, due for surgery the following day. The list was over and Amelia, in her office dealing with the paper work, looked up smiling as he went in.
He didn’t kiss her, even though there wasn’t anyone around to see; he had pointed out gravely when they had first become engaged that he didn’t mix work with his private life, and they were both on duty, and she had accepted that although she hadn’t agreed with him entirely. He smiled back at her now and asked: ‘Busy?’
‘Not really—just finishing off the bits and pieces. Tom, can you get a week’s leave?’
He was reading up some case notes, but he put them down again to look at her. ‘Yes, I think so—why?’
Amelia explained about the fishing trip and went on: ‘It seemed a good idea—we don’t see all that much of each other: we could have a week’s peace and quiet—we’ll have to see something of father, of course…’
He looked surprised. ‘Well, of course; I don’t know much about fishing, but I’m sure I shall enjoy trying my hand at it, but isn’t it a bit late in the year for that part of the world?’
‘Well, Father doesn’t seem to think so—it’ll be chilly, and dark in the evenings, I suppose, but he says the hotel is quite comfortable. He suggested that we could go off for local trips if we wanted…’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose we’ll want to do that,’ said Tom easily, and didn’t see the little gleam of temper in her eyes. ‘I mean, a week isn’t very long, is it? You can go off sightseeing when you’re on your own.’
She stifled a wish to tell him that she didn’t want to go anywhere on her own, only with him; their times together were nearly always bound by the need to get back on duty and if they went away they would have every day in which to do exactly what they wanted. ‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed quietly.
She went home again on her next days off, this time driving herself in the Mini, to find her father deep in preparations for the trip, his whole interest concentrated on fishing rods, hooks, bait and all the paraphernalia of the dedicated fisherman, so Amelia spent a morning with Badger, packing a case with the right sort of clothes for her father, and then went away to her own room to render herself the same service.
It was a lovely day, clear and blue-skied and sunny, and if it hadn’t been for the leaves all over the lawns and the trees changing their colours she might have supposed it was summer. She went and sat on the window seat and looked out on to the flower beds below, watching Job carefully taking off the dead roses. It was his boast, and no one had disputed it, that he could pick roses until Christmas; he certainly took great care of them. She got up presently and went to her clothes closet and began to look through it; no dressing up, her father had said. She chose two pairs of cord slacks, some thick sweaters and a quilted jacket with a hood and a pair of wellingtons, thick gloves too and a couple of scarves, and then because there might be a tiny chance of wearing something else, she added a pleated skirt and matching bolero and two blouses to go with them and as an afterthought a jersey dress in a warm burgundy. She found a pair of shoes, some tough ankle boots she wore when she went walking,
