Last April Fair

“You haven’t been around much, have you?” His voice was as gentle as his fingers.

She knew what he meant. “No, I suppose not, there’s not a lot of time for a social life—one comes off duty tired and only longing to kick off one’s shoes and make a pot of tea. I used to go out more often before I met Philip.”

“You didn’t go out with him?” Pieter sounded surprised.

“Well, yes, of course—I meant we didn’t go dancing or to shows or anything like that….”

There was no expression on her companion’s face. She gave another tug at her hand beneath his.

“No, leave it where it is. You’re a pretty girl, Phyllida. You should have your chance to play the field, meet people, and by that I mean men of your own age. Who knows? If you go into the wide world and fall in and out of love a few times, you may go back to your Philip after all.”

She didn’t fancy the idea somehow. Philip seemed far away, belonging to another world. The thought crossed her mind that it might be fun to fall in love with Pieter. Just a little, of course….

Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of Betty Neels in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality. She was a wonderful writer, and she will be greatly missed. Her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.

Last April Fair

Betty Neels

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

MRS GREGSON’S elderly voice, raised in its never-ending vendetta against the nurses making her bed, penetrated throughout the entire ward; it even penetrated Sister’s office, so that its occupant rose from her work at her desk with a sigh, opened the swing doors and made her way down the long ward to where her troublesome patient lay. She was a very pretty girl, tall and slim and nicely curved in her navy uniform. She had corn-coloured hair, cut short and swinging around her neck, with a fringe over her blue eyes and a nose which tilted very slightly above a softly curved mouth so that despite her twenty-six years she reminded anyone meeting her for the first time of a small eager girl wanting to be friendly with everyone.

She reached the bed just as its occupant, sitting in a heap in the middle of it clutching a blanket round her frail person, drew breath to begin on a fresh round of abuse. ‘Yer ter leave them blankets,’ she shrilled, ‘me bed’s fine—it don’t need making.’

‘And what is our Doctor Thorpe going to say when he comes presently and finds you in that untidy heap?’ Phyllida Cresswell’s voice was quiet and quite unworried by Mrs Gregson’s tantrums.

“E won’t saynothin’, ’e’ll be too busy looking at yer pretty face.’

Phyllida wasn’t in the least put out. ‘There you go again, making up stories. You just wait until I tell his wife!’

Mrs Gregson cackled happily. ‘Just me little joke, Sister dear, though you mark my words, some feller’ll come along one day and run orf with yer.’

‘It sounds exciting,’ agreed Phyllida. ‘And now how about this bed?’

‘Well, if yer say so…’

Phyllida smiled at the old lady, smiled too at the two student nurses and started off down the ward again. It was a good thing that Philip Mount was the Surgical Registrar and rarely came on to her ward; Mrs Gregson’s sharp eyes would have spotted that they were rather more than colleagues within minutes. Phyllida frowned slightly. Philip was getting a little too possessive just lately. It wasn’t as though they were engaged. Her frown deepened; perhaps it would have been better for them both if they had been, although she couldn’t remember that he had ever suggested it, merely taken it for granted that one day they would marry. And he was a good man; there weren’t many like him, she knew that; not particularly good-looking, but well built and pleasant-faced and rarely bad-tempered, ready to make allowances for everyone—she wasn’t good enough for him and she had told him so on several occasions. But he had only laughed at her, refusing to take her seriously.

She went back into her office and sat down at her desk again and picked up the telephone. There was the laundry to warn about the extra sheets she would need, the dispensary to argue with over the non-arrival of a drug she had ordered, the office to plead with for the loan of a nurse because one of her student nurses had gone off sick—she sighed and lifted the receiver.

The day went badly, with no nurse to replace the one who had gone off sick, two emergencies, Doctor Thorpe’s round and him in a nasty temper and not nearly enough clean linen returned from the laundry. Phyllida, a sunny-tempered girl, was decidedly prickly by the time she went to her midday dinner, a state of mind not improved by her friends wanting to know why she was so ratty, and made even worse by one of her friends demanding to know if she had had words with Philip.

‘No, I have not,’ she declared crossly, and thought suddenly that a good row with him would be better than his even-tempered tolerance when she was feeling illhumoured. She added rather lamely: ‘I’ve had a foul morning and Doctor Thorpe was in one of his tetchy moods; the round took for ever.’

The talk became general after that and presently, back on the ward, she regained her usual good nature so that Mrs Gregson stopped her as she was going down the ward to say: ‘That’s better, Sister dear. Black as a thundercloud yer’ve been all morning.’She grinned, displaying impossibly even false teeth. ‘We ain’t such a bad lot, are we?’

Phyllida had stopped to lean over the end of her patient’s bed. ‘You’re the nicest lot of ladies I’ve ever met,’ she assured her.

Mrs Gregson nodded, satisfied. ‘Going out this evening?’ she wanted to know.

Phyllida said that yes, she was and she still had a lot of work to do as she went on her way. She and Philip were going to have dinner with his elder brother and his wife. They lived in Hampstead in a pleasant house; privately she found them a dull couple with two dull children, but they seemed content enough and she had, upon occasion, detected a gleam of envy in Philip’s eye at the sight of their comfortable home with its neatly kept garden, well-behaved dog, gleaming furniture and shining windows. She frowned a little as she bent to take her newest patient’s blood pressure. It wasn’t that she didn’t like cleanliness and order and furniture polish, but somehow there was too much of it. She thought with sudden longing of her own home, an old rambling house in a village near Shaftesbury, standing on high ground so that it creaked and groaned in the winter gales and captured all the summer sun there was on its grey stone walls. Her father was the village doctor with a practice scattered miles in every direction and her mother ran the house with the help of old Mrs Drew who was really past it, as well as coping with the large untidy garden, two dogs, a variety of cats, an old pony and some chickens and over and above these such of her four children who might happen to be at home, and they usually brought friends with them.

It was late March, thought Phyllida, neatly charting her findings; the daffodils would be out and the catkins, and in the wilder corners of the garden there would be violets and primroses for the picking. She had a week’s holiday due to her, only a few days away now. The thought cheered her enormously and she felt guilty at the relief of getting away from Philip for a little while—perhaps while she was at home she would be able to make up her mind about him. And really, she chided herself as she went from bed to bed, with a nod and a word for the occupants, there should be no need of that. He was a splendid man, generous and honest and thoughtful—he would make a perfect husband. He would be dull too. She wiped the thought from her mind as unworthy and concentrated on his good points so that by the evening when she went off duty she was almost eager to see him.

She took extra pains with her face and hair as she changed out of her uniform and then poked around in her wardrobe. She had clothes enough, for unlike many of her friends she had no need to help out at home, but now she dragged out one dress after the other, dissatisfied with them all, until, pressed for time, she got into a grey wool dress with its matching long coat, tied a bright scarf round her neck, caught up gloves and handbag and skipped down the austere staircase of the Nurses’ Home. Philip was waiting in the hospital yard. That was another nice thing about him; he never kept her waiting and he never grumbled if she were late. She smiled widely at him as she got into the elderly Rover he cherished with such care.

‘I’ve had a foul day, Doctor Thorpe was as sour as vinegar and they sent up two chest cases. What about you?’ she asked.

‘Oh, quite a good list, one or two tacked on, of course, but Sir Hereward was in a good mood.’ He turned to smile at her. ‘Shall we go to Poon’s?’

Phyllida didn’t really like Chinese food, but she agreed at once. Poon’s was well away from the hospital and not expensive, and although Philip wasn’t mean, he hadn’t anything other than his salary. They drove through the City, cut into Long Acre and into Cranbourne Street and turned into the Charing Cross Road. There was a good deal of traffic as they turned into Lisle Street and found a parking meter, and the restaurant was crowded too. Phyllida sat down at the corner table found for them and let out a long contented sigh.

‘This is nice. I love my work, but it’s good to get away from it. I’ve got a week’s holiday in a few days, too.’

‘Going home?’ Philip was studying the menu.

She chose sweet and sour pork before she replied. ‘Yes.’ She gave him a questioning look.

‘I’ve a couple of days owing to me…’ His nice face beamed at her across the table.

‘Then come down for them. I’m going on Sunday evening—when can you manage to get free?’

‘Wednesday—until Friday midnight. Your mother won’t mind?’

Phyllida laughed. ‘You know Mother, she loves a house full—besides, she knows you well enough to hand you a spade and tell you to dig the garden—a nice change from whipping out appendices!’

They spent a pleasant evening together, although thinking about it afterwards, Phyllida had a feeling that they had both been trying too hard; trying in a self-conscious way to turn their rather vague relationship into something more tangible. She couldn’t think why, not for herself at any rate. She was fond of Philip but she was almost sure that she didn’t want to marry him, and yet her sensible brain told her that he was so right for a husband.

She lay awake for a long time thinking about it and then overslept so that her breakfast was a scrappy affair of tea and toast, and for all the good her sleepless night had done her, she might just as well not have given Philip a thought, and indeed she had no time to think about him at all during the morning. She still had no student nurse to replace the one who had gone off sick and one of the three remaining nurses had gone on holiday. She took the report with outward calm, had a few succinct words with Linda Jenkins, her staff nurse, picked up the pile of post for her patients and started off on her morning round, casting a practised eye over the ward as she went. They might be short-staffed, but the girls were managing very nicely; the beds were being made with all speed and those ladies well enough to get up were being settled into the armchairs arranged at intervals down the long ward, a scheme intended to encourage the convalescent ladies to get together and enjoy a nice chat among themselves. Phyllida had discovered long ago that they became so interested in swapping their illnesses that they forgot to grumble at their own aches and pains, the awful food, the tepid tea, the unfeeling nurses… None of which was true, but she quite understood that they had to have something to gossip about. She paused now by a group and listened to Miss Thompson, a pernicious anaemia who ruled the new patients with a rod of iron since she had been in and out of the ward for years now, describing the operation her sister-in-law had just had. Miss Thompson had the bloodcurdling and quite inaccurate details of it so pat that Phyllida’s lovely eyes almost popped out of her head. When Miss Thompson paused for breath she asked drily: ‘Did she recover, Miss Thompson?’

She knew that she shouldn’t have asked the question; now she would have to listen to a long-drawn-out blow-by-blow account of the unfortunate lady’s return to health and strength. She passed around her letters and began a mental assay of the off duty for next week while she stood patiently. When Miss Thompson had at last finished, Phyllida, mindful of hurt feelings, merely remarked that some people had remarkable experiences, admonished the ladies to drink their mid-morning coffee when it arrived and went on her way. She recounted it all to Linda over their own coffee later and chuckled her way into a good humour again, so that when she thought of Philip during a rare few minutes of leisure later that day it was with mild pleasure at the idea of him spending a couple of days at her home.

She only saw him once before she started her leave, and for so short a time that they could only exchange a brief remark as to when he would arrive. She still felt pleased about him coming, but her pleasure was a little dimmed by his matter-of-fact manner, and his ‘See you, then’ was uttered with the briskness of a brother. True, they had encountered one another in the middle of one of the busiest corridors in the hospital, with nurses, porters and housemen milling up and down, but, thought Phyllida, suddenly annoyed, ‘if he loved her as much as he said he did, he could surely have looked at her with rather more feeling?’ She left the hospital the following evening, glad that she hadn’t seen him again.

She drove down to her home in the neat little Vauxhall Astra, a present from her parents on her twenty-first birthday, five years ago, and although she could have afforded to exchange it she had never felt the need; it went well and she understood it as well as she would ever understand any car. She fastened her seat belt, gave a last glance at the rather grim hospital behind her and drove out into the busy street to meet the London traffic.

It took her quite some time to get out of London and on to the M3, but she was a good driver and not impatient. Once on the motorway she sent the small car racing along and at its end, took the A30 to Salisbury. It was almost empty of traffic by now and she made good time to the town, working round it to the north and picking up the A30 again on its further side. She was on home ground now and although it was getting on for ten o’clock, she didn’t feel tired. Just short of Shaftesbury she turned off on to the Tisbury road and then turned again, going through pleasantly wooded country and climbing a little on the winding road. Over the brow of the hill she slowed for a minute. The lights of Gifford Ferris twinkled at her almost at its foot, not many lights, for the village was small and off the main road. But it was by no means isolated; there were other villages within a mile or two on all sides; any number of outlying farms and main roads to the north and south. Phyllida put her foot down and sent the car scuttling down the hill and then more slowly into the village’s main street. It had a small market square with a stone cross in its centre, a handful of shops around it besides a comfortable hotel, and at the top of the hill on the other side one or two old stone houses. She stopped before one of these and jumped out, but before she could reach the door it had been flung open.

‘Your mother’s in the kitchen, getting your supper,’ observed her father placidly. ‘Nice to see you, my dear—did you have a good trip?’

She kissed him soundly. ‘Super—almost no traffic once I’d left London. Something smells good—I’m famished! I’ll get my case…’

‘Run along and find your mother, I’ll bring it in. The car will be all right there until the morning.’

Phyllida walked down the long narrow hall and opened the kitchen door at its end, contentedly sniffing the air; furniture polish, the scent from a bowl of hyacinths on a table, and fragrant cooking. They spelled home.

Her mother was at the scrubbed table in the middle of the room, cutting bread. She looked up as Phyllida went in, dropped the knife and came to meet her. ‘Darling—how lovely to see you, and how nice you look in that suit. There’s watercress soup and mushroom omelette and buttered toast and tea, though Father says you’re to have a glass of sherry first. He’ll bring it presently.’ She returned Phyllida’s hug and added: ‘Willy’s here just for a few days—half term, you know.’

The younger of her two brothers appeared as her mother spoke, a boy of fourteen, absurdly like his father, with tousled hair and an air of never having enough to eat. He bore this out with a brotherly: ‘Hi, Sis, heard you come, guessed there’d be food.’

She obligingly sat down at the table and shared her supper while their mother cut bread and wondered aloud how many more meals he would want before he settled to sleep.

‘I’m growing,’ he pointed out cheerfully, ‘and look at Phylly—she finished growing years ago and she’s stuffing herself.’

‘Rude boy,’ observed his sister placidly. ‘How’s school?’

Her father came in then and they sat around, all talking at once until Willy was sent off to bed and Phyllida and her mother tidied the kitchen, washed up and went to the sitting room with a tray of coffee.

It was a pleasant room; long and low-ceilinged and furnished with some nice pieces which had been in the family for generations. There was comfort too; easy chairs drawn up to the open fire, a vast sofa with a padded back and plenty of small reading lamps. Phyllida curled up on the sofa, the firelight warm on her face and dutifully answered the questions with which her mother bombarded her. They were mostly about Philip and cunningly put, and she answered them patiently, wishing illogically that her mother didn’t seem so keen on him all of a sudden. She had been vaguely put out after Philip’s first visit to her home by her mother’s reaction to him. ‘Such a nice young man,’ her parent had declared, ‘and so serious. I’m sure if you marry him he’ll make a model husband.’It hadn’t been the words so much as the tone in which they had been uttered, and ever since Phyllida had been worried by a faint niggling doubt at the back of her pretty head; a model husband sounded so dull. But this evening she could detect no doubt in her mother’s voice—indeed, her parent chattered on at some length about Phyllida’s future, talking about the wedding as though it were already a certainty.

Phyllida finished her coffee, observed rather tartly that no one had asked her to get married yet and when her mother remarked that she had understood that Philip was coming to stay for a couple of days, pointed out very quickly that it was only a friendly visit—it made a nice restful change after his work at the hospital. Mrs Cresswell agreed placidly, her still pretty head bent over some embroidery, and presently Phyllida went to bed.

Being home was delightful—pottering in the garden, helping her mother round the house, going for long bike rides with Willy, helping in her father’s surgery. Phyllida relaxed, colour came back into her London-pale cheeks, her hair seemed more golden, her eyes bluer. Her mother, looking at her as she made pastry at the kitchen table, felt certain that Philip would ask her to marry him when he came.

She was right; he did, but not at once. He wasn’t a man to rush his fences, and it wasn’t until the morning of his second day there that he suggested that they might go into Shaftesbury for her mother and do some shopping, and Phyllida, called in from fetching the eggs from the hen-house at the end of the garden, readily agreed. She had been glad to see Philip when he had arrived, but not, she confessed to herself, thrilled, but they had quickly slipped into their pleasant, easygoing camaraderie and he was an undemanding companion. She put a jacket on over her slacks, combed her fringe, added a little more lipstick and pronounced herself ready.

Shaftesbury was full of people and cars; it always was, probably because it was a small town and built originally on top of a hill and its shops were concentrated in two main streets. They had done their shopping, chosen a variety of cakes from the fragrant bakery hidden away in an alley where the two streets met, and sat themselves down in the buttery of one of the few hotels for a cup of coffee before Philip made any but the most impersonal remarks.

‘Wouldn’t you like to leave hospital and have a home of your own?’ he wanted to know.

Phyllida chose a bun, not paying as much attention as she should have done. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said casually, ‘I’d love it. Have a bun?’

‘Then why don’t you?’

She looked up then, suddenly realizing what he was going to say. ‘Don’t, Philip—please…’

He took a bun too. ‘Why not? You must know that I want to marry you?’

‘Yes—well, yes, I suppose I did, but not—not urgently.’

He was a very honest young man. ‘If you mean I’m beside myself with impatience to get married, you’re right. But I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought lately and I’m sure you’re the wife for me; we know each other very well by now and I’m more than half in love with you.’ He smiled at her across the table. ‘How about it, Phylly?’

She knew that she was going to say no. Perhaps, she thought desperately, she had never intended to say anything else, but it was going to be hard to say it. For one thing, she was strongly tempted to accept Philip’s matter-of-fact proposal. They would live together happily enough, she would take an interest in his work and he would be a kind and considerate husband, of that she was sure. She would have a pleasant enough life with enough to live on, a nice home, friends of her own sort and children. She would like several children; only she had the lowering feeling that Philip would want a neat little family of a boy and a girl. He would be a splendid father too and the children would be good, obedient and reasonably clever. In fact, life wouldn’t be what she had dreamed—a vague dream of a man who would sweep her off her feet, treasure her and love her and never on any account allow her to wear the trousers, and more than that, would fill his house with a brood of healthy, naughty children.

She sighed and said gently: ‘It wouldn’t work, Philip.’

He showed no rancour. ‘Why not? You must have reasons.’

She frowned. ‘I like you very, very much—I think for a while I was a little in love with you, but I’m sure that it’s not enough.’ She looked at him with unhappy blue eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Philip—and I don’t think I shall change my mind.’

He said calmly: ‘You’re in love with someone else?’

‘No. Oh, no, no one at all, that’s why it’s difficult…you see, you’re so right for me. I respect you and admire your work and the way you live, and I like being with you, only I don’t want to marry you.’ She added miserably: ‘It would be such a mistake, and the awful thing is I don’t know what I want.’

Philip finished his coffee with the air of a man who wasn’t in the least defeated. ‘I’m not taking no for an answer,’ he told her quietly. ‘I won’t bother you, but I’ll wait.’