of stuff worthy of her name, followed him.
‘Do you live near here?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ He gave her a cold look which froze the words hovering on her tongue, and drove away.
She stood in the road and watched him go. ‘I must be mad,’ she cried to the sodden landscape around her. ‘He’s the nastiest man I’ve ever set eyes on!’ She went back to collect her bike and got on to it and rode off towards Hoenderloo. ‘But he took the bird,’ she reminded herself, ‘and he could have wrung its neck.’
She was almost there and the rain had miraculously ceased when he passed her again, going the other way, and a few moments later had turned and slid to a halt beside her so that she felt bound to get off her bicycle.
‘The bird’s wing has been set; it will be cared for until it is fit to fly again.’ He spoke unsmilingly, but she didn’t notice that, she looked at him with delight.
‘Isn’t it incredible?’ she declared. ‘I mean, meeting like this after the sluice at St Jude’s and now you here, almost next door, as it were.’
He looked down his splendid nose. ‘I can see nothing incredible about it,’ he said repressively. ‘It is a coincidence, Britannia, they occur from time to time.’
He could call it that if he liked. She thought secretly of good fairies and kindly Fate and smiled widely. ‘Well, you don’t need to be so cross about it. I’ve never met such a prickly man. Have you been crossed in love or something?’
The ferocious expression which passed over the professor’s handsome features might have daunted anyone of lesser spirit than hers. ‘You abominable girl!’ he ground out savagely. ‘I have never met anyone like you…’
Britannia lifted a hand to tuck back a wet strand of hair. ‘What you need,’ she told him kindly, ‘is a wife and a family.’
His mouth quivered momentarily. ‘Why?’
She answered him seriously. ‘Well, you would have them to look after and care for and love, and they’d love you and bring you your slippers in the evening, and…’
His voice was a well-controlled explosion. ‘For God’s sake, girl,’ he roared, ‘be quiet! Of all the sickly sentimental ideas…!’
Two tears welled up in Britannia’s fine eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks. The professor muttered strongly in his own language, and with the air of a man goaded beyond endurance, got out of his car.
‘Why are you crying? I suppose that you will tell me that it’s my fault.’
Britannia gave a sniff, wiped her eyes on a delicate scrap of white lawn and then blew her nose. ‘No, of course it’s not your fault, because you can’t help it, can you? It’s just very sad that you should think of a wife and children as being nothing more than s-sickly s-sentiment.’ Two more tears spilled over and she wiped them away impatiently as a child would, with the back of her hand.
The professor was standing very close to her. When he spoke it was with surprising gentleness. ‘I didn’t mean that. I was angry.’
She said in a woeful voice, ‘But you’re always losing your temper—every time we meet you rage and roar at me.’
‘I neither rage nor roar, Britannia. Possibly I am a little ill-tempered at times.’ The gentleness had a decidedly chilly edge to it now.
‘Oh, yes, you do,’ she answered him with spirit. ‘You terrify me.’ She peeped at him, to see him frowning.
‘I cannot believe that you are terrified of anyone or anything, certainly not of me. Try that on some other man, my dear girl, I’m not a fool.’
She sighed. ‘Well, no—I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.’
He looked at her with cold interest. ‘And were the tears a try-out too?’
She shook her head slowly; she might have met him again, just as she had dreamed that she might, but it hadn’t done much good. She said quietly: ‘Thank you very much for taking care of the bird,’ and got on to her bike and wobbled off at a great rate, leaving him standing there.
She tried very hard not to think of him during the rest of the day, but lying in bed was a different matter; she went over their meetings, not forgetting a word or a look, and came to the conclusion that he still didn’t like her. She was on the point of sleep when she remembered with real regret that she had hardly looked her best; surely, if she had been wearing the new pink dress, he would have behaved differently? Men, her mother had always said, were susceptible to pink. Britannia sighed and slept.
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