At the End of the Day

‘Shouldn’t think so, but what a waste, all those good looks and lolly and he has just got himself a new Rolls Royce.’

Someone giggled. ‘Perhaps that’s why he is so irritable—I mean, they cost a good deal, don’t they?’

Julia got up. ‘Well, whatever it is, he’d better cheer up before he comes this afternoon.’

The professor hadn’t exactly done that when he came on to the ward an hour or so later; he was, however, scrupulously polite, listening with grave attention to what Julia had to report and at the end of a lengthy examination of Mrs Collins, politely refusing her offer of tea, watching her from under heavy lids, and then thanking her just as politely so that she looked at him with surprised face. He returned the look with a bland stare of his own before, surrounded by the lesser fry of his profession, he left the ward.

‘Well,’ observed Julia to the pile of notes on her desk, ‘what’s come over him, in heaven’s name?’

She was off duty after tea and half an hour later was back at her flat. Nigel was off duty too and she had planned supper for them both; they would be able to talk at their ease. She thrust a macaroni cheese into her tiny oven and frowned as she did so. Nigel would want to talk about getting married and she felt a curious reluctance to listen to him. He had the future so tidily arranged that somehow the magic was missing. Not that she had the least idea of what magic she expected. They had been more or less engaged for a year or more; he was entirely suitable for a husband too, he would be kind and patient and considerate and they would have enough to live on… Her mother and father liked him and with reservations she got on well enough with his parents; perhaps she wanted too much. Certainly she had been put out when he had told her that he was going to Bristol and hadn’t suggested that she should go with him, they saw little enough of each other.

She mixed a salad, did her hair again and sat down to wait.

She heard his deliberate step on the stairs presently and went to open the door, suddenly anxious that the evening should be a success. He kissed her too quickly and said: ‘Sorry I’m a bit late—I got caught up on Children’s. God, I’ll be glad to get away from St Anne’s. Keep your fingers crossed for me, Julia, and pray that I’ll get that job at Bristol.’

She made a soothing rejoinder, poured him a beer and sat down opposite him. ‘Bad day?’ she asked.

‘Lord yes, you can say that again. Professor van der Wagema may be a brilliant physician but he’s a cold fish. Good with the patients, mind you and funnily enough, the children like him, but talk about a loner…’

‘Perhaps he is overworked,’ offered Julia idly.

‘Not him, he works for two and it makes no difference at all. Wonder what he is like away from St Anne’s. No one’s ever seen him. Crusty old devil.’ He grinned at her. ‘Something smells good?’

‘It’s ready, I’ll dish up.’

They spent a pleasant enough evening discussing rather vaguely, their future. ‘We ought to start looking for somewhere to live, if I get this job,’ said Nigel, ‘Somewhere close to the hospital of course, but we can go home for weekends when I’m free.’ He frowned thoughtfully, ‘A flat, I suppose, at least to start with, probably the hospital will have something for us.’

‘It would be nicer to live away from your work,’ said Julia.

She was a country girl, born and brought up in a small village a few miles from Salisbury and she had never taken to London or the city, and Bristol as far as she could make out, was going to be another London on a smaller scale.

‘We shouldn’t have much rent to pay. I’ll get settled in and you can give up this job here; the place will be furnished so we won’t have that bother.’

Julia stifled a sigh; furnishing her own home didn’t seem to her to be a bother, but perhaps it would only be for a few months, while they looked round for something better. A house with a garden… She allowed her thoughts to wander; the garden at home would be looking gorgeous, full of dahlias and chrysanths and the virginia creeper just turning—she would go home on her next weekend; Nigel would be working anyway.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Nigel.

‘A garden—the garden at home. It’ll be nice to see it.’

‘Oh, can’t you change your weekend to fit in with me?’

‘No—I’d already promised Pat Down. We’ll have to try to get things sorted out later on.’

He didn’t seem to mind overmuch; Julia found that provoking.

She took care to climb the stairs soberly the next morning but there was no professor to sneer at her, he came not half an hour later, though. She had taken the report, given the student nurses the gist of it and was sitting at her desk, looking without much pleasure at the view of chimney pots and tired looking trees, all she could see by sitting sideways and craning her neck. She was remembering Nigel’s sedate plans for their future and his even more sedate kiss when he left soon after supper.

There must be something wrong with her, she thought a little desperately, not to appreciate a good kind man such as Nigel and of course she loved him…

‘Well, well,’ observed the professor nastily from the half open door. ‘Nothing better to do than sit and stare? The devil finds work for idle hands to do.’

Julia’s splendid bosom swelled with indignation. ‘Well, really…whatever will you say next?’

‘Good morning might be appropriate!’

She glared up at him; his eyes looked black they were so dark and to make matters worse he was amused.

She rose from her chair with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘Good morning, Professor,’ she said coldly. ‘You wish to see Mrs Collins? She is still unconscious, but there are signs…’ She gave him chapter and verse and at his nod, led the way into the ward, asking Pat in a low voice to get Dr Reed and sending the nurse with Mrs Collins away—a very new student nurse, who stared at the professor as though he were Prince Charming and sidled away reluctantly.

‘Is that girl competent?’ rasped the professor.

Julia shot him an affronted look. ‘Nurse has been training for six months, so of course she is by no means competent, but she is sensible and understands exactly what she has to do. She has the makings of a good nurse.’ She drew an annoyed breath, ‘Sir’.

She could have saved her breath for he didn’t appear to be listening.

Dr Reed joined them then and they went through the slow precise tests and examination. The professor was studying the chart and Julia was straightening the bed clothes when she said quietly, ‘Mrs Collins’ eyelids are moving.’

So they began all over again. The woman was still unconscious but this time her pupils reacted to the professor’s torch. He straightened his vast person and stood looking down at her. ‘Now we are getting somewhere. Reed, let’s have a further lot of tests.’ He looked across at Julia and smiled and she blinked at its charm.

He was back again later in the morning to do his biweekly round, once more coldly polite. He didn’t smile once and after the round, in her office, he was bitingly sarcastic about a mislaid page of notes. They weren’t in the least important, for the patient was going home in the morning and they had probably got put in the file in the wrong order. It annoyed Julia but it hardly merited his caustic remarks about carelessness. She accompanied him to the ward doors and went back to her office and found the page almost at once. She put it neatly in to its place and said crossly, ‘Tiresome little man…’

‘Tiresome I may be,’ said the professor from somewhere behind her, ‘but you could hardly call me little.’

She swung round to face him, but before she could say anything, he added mildly, ‘I believe that I left my pen here.’

Julia took a surging breath, clenched her teeth on the heated remark she was about to make and handed him the pen. He took it from her with a brief thank you, advised her coldly not to allow her feelings to get the better of her, and went away again. ‘I swear I’ll throw something at you next time we meet,’ said Julia. Her habitual calm common sense had quite deserted her, it was a good thing that Pat went for her weekend after tea, for it meant that Julia was on duty until the night staff came on duty, and she had no time to indulge in any feelings.

Nigel was going by train to Bristol but because he was getting a lift by car from a friend who lived in Yeovil, he had chosen to take a train from Waterloo in the morning, and Julia had given herself a morning off duty so that she might see him on his way. It was an off duty she loathed for it meant coming back on duty at half-past twelve and a long, long day stretching out before her. All the same she left the ward at ten o’clock, tore into her street clothes and met Nigel outside the hospital. There wasn’t much time, they took a taxi and got to the station with only a few minutes to spare.

The train was full and Nigel, a sensible man, didn’t waste his time on unnecessarily protracted goodbyes; he gave her a quick kiss, with one eye prudently on the empty seats which were left, and then got into the train. There hadn’t been time to say much, thought Julia, smiling the fatuous smile people always smile at railway stations, really it had been a bit silly of her to come… She went close to the window where Nigel had been lucky enough to get a seat and called, ‘Good luck; I’m sure everything will be fine.’ She didn’t go on, for Nigel was frowning a little; he disliked the showing of feelings in public, so she retreated a few paces and stood well back and since she couldn’t glue her eyes to Nigel all the time, looked around her. No more than twenty yards away Professor van der Wagema was standing, a hand on the shoulder of a boy of ten or eleven, standing beside him. As she looked, he gave the boy a gentle shove, said something to him, and watched him get on to the train. The boy was in school uniform and there were other boys too. Julia looked from him to the professor and encountered a bland stare which sent the colour to her cheeks and her eyes back to Nigel. The train began to move and she made rather a thing of waving to Nigel who wasn’t taking any notice.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE WALKED AWAY from the professor as she waved, and stood watching the train out of sight; hopefully he would be gone when she turned round and started back down the platform.

Nothing of the kind; he was coming towards her and since she was at the end of the platform by now there was nowhere else to go, she had to walk back.

His ‘Good morning, Julia,’ took her completely by surprise; he had never called her anything other than Sister or Sister Mitchell. She said, ‘Good morning,’ in a rather faint voice and went on walking and he turned and walked with her, for all the world, she thought indignantly, as though he was sure of his welcome.

‘Why didn’t you go with Longman?’ he wanted to know.

She suppressed a strong wish to tell him to mind his own business.

‘He’s got an interview in Bristol for a registrar’s post. Of course, you know that already…’

‘Of course. I asked why you hadn’t gone with him.’

She had the ridiculous urge to tell him that Nigel hadn’t asked her to. ‘Well, I would have been on my own for most of the weekend…’ And that’s a silly thing to say she thought—she could expect some cutting remark about interviews only taking a couple of hours. But he didn’t say anything like that. ‘I’ve just seen my son off to school, will you have a cup of coffee with me?’

She stopped to look at him. ‘Well, it’s very kind of you—I’m on duty at one o’clock though.’

‘It’s just half-past ten,’ he assured her, grave-faced, ‘I’ve my car here, we can go somewhere quieter for ten minutes or so.’

‘Very well,’ said Julia, feeling her way; any minute he might change back into the coldly polite man she worked for, but he didn’t, he commented upon the splendid weather, the horror of large railway stations, the difficulty of parking and all she had to do was to murmur suitably.

She had seen his car before, of course, but only from her office window or sliding silently past her in the fore-court. This’ll be something to tell the girls, she thought as she got into the dark blue Rolls, only they’ll never believe me.

The professor drove through the streaming traffic with a monumental calm which aroused her admiration. She was an indifferent driver herself, driving the rather elderly Rover through the country lanes around her home, although she much preferred her bike or even her two feet. Ever since the time she had rammed the butcher’s van on a tricky corner, her nerve had suffered. Driving through London must be a nightmare; she said so now.

‘Indeed,’ agreed the professor politely, ‘but one gets used to it—one has to.’ They were driving down Gower Street and she wondered where they were going and wasn’t left long in doubt—the British Museum Coffee Shop. He parked by a vacant meter and ushered her through the book shop and the shop behind that which sold reproductions and into the restaurant itself. The two shops were quite full but the restaurant wasn’t. He pulled out a chair for her at a table for two and went to fetch their coffee. ‘Anything to eat?’ he asked over his shoulder.

She shook her head; she found him difficult to talk to, after years of being on her guard against his testy manner and cold politeness she had seldom been at a loss to answer him then, now she found herself tongue-tied. Common sense came to her aid as he sat down opposite her; she was used to difficult situations on the ward, dealing with awkward patients and visitors, wheedling new housemen to take her advice, listening patiently to the woes of a student nurse whose love life wasn’t working out. Did the professor have a love life, she wondered?

They passed each other the sugar and sipped their coffee. The professor sat at his ease, content to be silent, possibly waiting for her to take her share in the conversation. ‘How old is your son?’ she asked.

‘Eleven. I usually drive him back to school but I have several engagements this weekend. Martha had no time this morning to take him to the station and I could cancel a meeting I was to attend far more easily than she could leave the house.’

Martha, mused Julia, a suitable name for the wife of a man such as he, she would be mouselike with wispy hair and no dress sense and always do exactly what he wanted. Poor soul…probably there were several more children at home. Her imagination, which was vivid, conjured up a pitiful picture of a poor hard working Martha trying to please the professor. A hopeless task. She would have to talk about something else before she got too indignant.

‘You have a Dutch name,’ she observed and was halted by his silky reply.

‘But of course—I am a Dutchman.’ He sat back in his chair, looking at her. ‘And you, Julia, are very very English.’

‘Well, of course I am. What makes you say that?’

‘It would take too long to tell you. Dick Reed seems much happier about Mrs Collins.’

The sudden turn in conversation made her blink. All the same, she managed composedly. ‘Yes, he is! There’s still no news about her family though.’

‘We shall have to have patience.’

She drank the rest of her coffee and began to put on her gloves ‘The coffee was nice,’ she told him sedately, ‘thank you, Professor. You won’t mind if I leave you here.’

‘Yes, I do mind. I’ll drive you back to St Anne’s. I shall be going past the hospital in any case.’

There was no point in arguing, she got into the car again and he drove the short distance to the wide gates and leant across to open the door for her. He hadn’t spoken once since they had left the coffee shop. She thanked him quickly and got out on to the pavement, adding a brief goodbye.

His dark eyes rested on her for a moment. ‘It has passed an aimless hour,’ he said blandly and drove away. Julia, standing and watching the big car thrust its way smoothly through the traffic, very nearly stamped a foot. ‘An aimless hour, indeed,’ she muttered furiously, ‘I just happened to be handy, did I to while away a bit of time before he tools off to wherever he’s going? And why didn’t he go home and drink his coffee with the pitiful Martha?’ She was so busy thinking about it that she quite forgot Nigel. It was over their midday dinner that Fiona wanted to know at what time he was to have his interview; Julia found herself blushing with guilt because she hadn’t given it a thought. ‘Oh—two o’clock, I think,’ she said hastily, and nodded her head when Fiona observed that of course he would be ringing her later on that day. Nigel hadn’t said anything of the sort. But why should he? He had had a lot on his mind and she forgave him for forgetting. Very likely he would ‘phone from his parents’ house. The thought cheered her up as she went on duty.

There was plenty of work, medical wards might not be as dramatic as the surgical ones, but they were just as busy, more so, for there were treatments going on all the time and three medicine rounds a day. She missed Pat although she had a part-time staff nurse until five o’clock and a second staff nurse to come on until the night staff came on duty at eight o’clock. She was tired when she got off duty, but satisfied: Mrs Collins was definitely coming out of her coma and once she was fit to understand and speak a little, they would be able to find out who she was. It was going to be a long job, but well worth it; the nasal feeding, the bed bathing, the constant turning, the gentle physiotherapy. It was a good thing, thought Julia, that there weren’t many really ill patients in the ward, although as fast as one patient went home another took her place, and if she were a heart or chest case, then there would be several days of careful nursing on top of the constant routine.

The day which had been so fine had clouded over by the evening and it had begun to rain. There was a rumble of thunder too as she hurried back to her flat, with luck she would be indoors before she got soaked to the skin. She was going up the shabby steps to the front door when her eye caught a movement in the dusty patch of grass under the front window. She went down the steps again, oblivious of the rain, to see what it was. A kitten—a very small one—bedraggled and far too thin. She picked it up and it mewed soundlessly at her.

‘Lost are you?’ Julia tucked the animal under one arm and went up the stairs to her own small flat. It was no weather to go round knocking on doors asking if anyone had lost a kitten, indeed, she suspected that it had been dumped. She found a saucer, filled it with milk and watched the kitten drink. It was certainly half starved, its fur dirty and dull. She found an old woollen scarf and lined the lid of her work basket with it and put the little beast in it. It went to sleep at once leaving her free to get her supper.

It was while she was eating it that she decided to ‘phone Nigel and presently went down to the call box in the hall. She had to wait for a minute or so before anyone answered and it was his mother’s voice asking who was ringing.

‘Julia—I wondered if Nigel had got to you yet…’

‘Hours ago,’ said Mrs Longman, ‘he’s gone down to the pub with his father.’ She had a light voice which exactly suited her small slender person; when Julia was with her she felt like a carthorse. She said uncertainly: ‘I wondered—that is, did he get the job?’

‘Oh, my dear, yes. He did say something about ‘phoning you but by the time we had had tea, it must have slipped his mind.’

‘Well, that’s splendid news,’ Julia made her voice cheerful, ‘I can’t stay to talk now, have a nice weekend. Bye.’

She went back upstairs and washed her few dishes and since the kitten had woken up, gave him another saucer of warm milk and bread. ‘If no one wants you,’ she promised him, ‘I’ll have you. You’ll have to be alone quite a bit, but that’s better than sitting out in the rain, isn’t it?’

The evening stretched emptily before her, she turned on the TV and watched a programme without seeing any of it, her thoughts busy.

Next weekend she would go home and take the kitten in a basket; old Gyp her father’s labrador and her mother’s two cats would do him no harm and he might be glad of their company. She washed her hair and had a shower and sat down again in her dressing gown, the kitten on her knee. She gave it one of her fingers to nibble and allowed her thoughts to wander and was surprised to discover after a few minutes that she wasn’t thinking about Nigel at all but the professor—home with his wife, she hoped, he might even have taken her out for the evening—dinner somewhere rather grand and dancing afterwards. One didn’t expect someone with a name like Martha to dance well, but probably she was quite super at it. There would be a mother’s help or an au pair to look after the other children, of course, although surely with a Rolls Royce, the professor would be able to afford a Norland Nanny? She frowned; he wasn’t all that young, the boy he had seen off to school that morning could have been the youngest child, the others would be teenagers…

She got up and put the kitten back on the scarf. It was asleep again but she addressed it none the less; it was nice to have something to talk to. ‘I’m getting soft in the head,’ she observed, ‘sitting here doing nothing and thinking a load of nonsense. I shall go to bed.’

Which she did, to be joined presently by the kitten, who climbed laboriously on to the duvet and settled up against her.

She was up earlier than usual the next morning, so that she had time for a more leisurely breakfast before attending to the kitten’s wants and going on duty. The storm had left the streets fresh and revived the dusty shrubs and trees along the street. Being a Sunday, there was no one to be seen, even the main street, usually bustling with traffic by half-past seven, was deserted. Julia made her way up to the ward to be met by the night staff nurse with the news that Professor van der Wagema was on the ward.

‘In that case, I’ll just see what he wants,’ said Julia. Dick Reed had a weekend and perhaps there had been an admission during the night. She hung up her cape and asked the staff nurse.

‘No, Sister—it’s Mrs Collins—Peter Miller ‘phoned the professor and he came in. Peter came to see her about six o’clock because I asked him to. She opened her eyes and grunted.’

‘Good work, Staff. I’ll be back in a minute.’

She went down the ward, wishing her patients good morning as she went, and slipped behind Mrs Collins’ curtains. The professor, in slacks and a sports shirt and not looking in the least like a professor, was sitting on the end of the bed, writing Mrs Collins’ notes. He looked human as he sat there, so that Julia said, ‘Good morning, sir,’ with a good deal more warmth than normal. ‘Is there anything you want?’ she added.

He raised his eyes from his notes and she was struck by their cold darkness. ‘Thank you, no, Sister. Only to be left in peace. If I need anything or anyone, I will say so.’

There was absolutely no answer to that, although she could think of several remarks she longed to make. With a surge of annoyance she went back down the ward. Had he really called her Julia and given her coffee and driven her around in his beautiful Rolls? She must have dreamt the lot.

She took the report and sent the night nurses off duty and went back into the ward to check on the breakfasts. There would be a part time staff nurse on duty at nine o’clock and she had Nurse Wells, who was sensible anyway, as well as two student nurses. Leaving Nurse Wells in the ward she gave a quick report and sent them back to start on the morning’s chores before running through the report once more with Nurse Wells. It being Sunday there was less paperwork; no laundry to argue with, no Path Lab to make appointments with. She tidied her desk and went into the ward to help with the beds and presently, the treatments. It was almost an hour before the professor came down the ward. Julia, in the middle of an argument with an elderly heart patient who could see no good reason for getting out of her bed, was interrupted by his: ‘A word with you, if you please, Sister.’