Tempestuous April

Tempestuous April

Betty Neels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

MEN’S SURGICAL was quiet—there had been two emergency admissions before midnight; a case in theatre—a rather nasty appendix—at one o’clock, and a cardiac arrest at half past two; these happenings interspersed by old Mr Gadd’s frequent and successful attempts to climb over his cot sides and amble down the ward in search of refreshment. But none of these happenings appeared to have upset Miss Harriet Slocombe, sitting, as neat as a new pin, at Sister’s desk, writing the bare bones of her report. She appeared to be as fresh as the proverbial daisy and would have been genuinely surprised if anyone had suggested to her that she had had a busy night. She sucked the top of her ballpoint and frowned at the clatter of plates from the kitchen where her junior nurse was cutting bread and butter for the patients’ breakfasts. It was four o’clock, almost time for her, in company with Nurse Potter, to consume the tea and toast with which they fortified themselves before beginning their early morning work. Miss Slocombe removed the pen from her mouth and got up in order to do a round of her patients. She went from bed to bed, making no sound, due very largely to the fact that she had removed her shoes from her feet some time previously, and was in her stockings. The shoes stood side by side under Sister’s desk, waiting to be donned again after her tea break. She reached the end of the ward and paused by the windows opening on to the balcony, to look out into the chill gloom of the early morning. March could be dreary; especially just before dawn. She stood watching the fine drizzle and thought with pleasure of the three-week holiday she was to have in a fortnight’s time … and at the end of it she would be coming back to St Nick’s as Ward Sister of Men’s Surgical. A rosy future, she told herself robustly, and sighed. She was twenty-four years old and pretty, with wide blue eyes, a retroussé nose and a gently curving mouth; she wore her bright blonde hair—the envy of her friends—in a complicated knot on top of her head, and her person was small, so that she looked extremely fragile. She was in fact, as strong as an ox. She had a faint air of reserve and a nasty temper when roused, which was seldom. She was liked by everyone in the hospital with the possible exception of one or two of the housemen, who had expected her to be as fragile as her appearance and were still smarting from her astringent tongue. They called her Haughty Harry amongst themselves, and when she had heard about it, she had laughed with everybody else, but a little wistfully, because she knew that with the right man she wouldn’t be in the least haughty … She sighed again, and went to tuck up Mr Gadd who had, as usual, fallen sound asleep at the wrong end of the night. In the next bed to him, the theatre case opened hazy eyes and said in a woolly drugged voice,

‘Cor, dang me, you’m as pretty as a picture,’ and went immediately to sleep again.

Harriet smiled, a warm, motherly smile, wholly without conceit; she was aware that she was a pretty girl, but two elder sisters and three brothers younger than herself had taught her at an early age to put things in their proper perspective. She had long since outgrown her youthful dreams of captivating some young, handsome and wealthy man with her good looks; but outgrown though they might be, they had so far made it impossible for her to settle for anything less. She moved soundlessly down the ward, adjusted two drips, took a blood pressure and carefully and gently examined the two emergencies; they were sleeping soundly. She supposed that they would go to Theatre during the day. She reached the last bed and stood a moment facing the quiet ward, listening. She ignored the snores, the sighs and Mr Bolt’s tracheostomy tube’s faint whistle, she ignored the background sissing of the hot water pipes and the soft rhythm of the electric pump beneath young Butcher’s bed—all these sounds were familiar; she knew who and what made them. It was other sounds she was listening for—a change in breathing, an unexpectedly sudden restlessness and more sinister—the quiet from a bed where there should be the small sounds of a sleeping man. Her trained ear detected nothing untoward, however, and she nodded, well satisfied, and turned to Sister’s table, just as Nurse Potter, plump and beaming, edged herself round the ward door with a tray. She put it down carefully and whispered breathily,

‘I made Bovril toast, Staff,’ and indicated the generous pile before them. Harriet was already pouring out the tea.

‘Good. I love it and I’m famished. I only hope we’ll get the chance to eat it all.’

They began to munch, and presently, when their hunger was a little blunted, Harriet started to plan the morning’s work.

Night nurses’ breakfast was always a noisy meal—everyone talked and laughed with a false energy inspired by the knowledge that the night was over once more. The paralysis of tiredness which had crept over them in the early hours of the morning had been forgotten. Later, it would return, so that those who weren’t already in bed were liable to sleep in the bath or drop off over a late morning cup of cocoa—in the meantime they were all bursting with vigour. The staff nurses sat at a table on their own; there were perhaps a dozen of them, of whom Harriet was the last to arrive that morning. Late though she was, she looked unruffled and incredibly neat and not in the least tired.

‘We stayed to help,’ she volunteered as she sat down. ‘There’s been an accident at the brickworks.’

There was an understanding murmur—the brickworks was notorious for the fact that it could always be relied upon to fill any vacant bed in Men’s Surgical at all times.

She was left to make a substantial breakfast at her leisure, and not until she had poured her third cup of tea did someone ask,

‘Has anyone seen the new RMO? I ought to have done—after all, I am on Medical, but all I got last night was our Mr Rugg.’ Mr Rugg was young and uncertain and definitely not a lady’s man. The speaker looked around the table until her eye lighted upon Harriet, who had gone a delicious pink.

‘I might have known … Harry, where did you meet him?’

Harry put down her cup. ‘He came on to the ward last night,’ she said serenely. ‘We had that cardiac arrest, remember?’ She looked inside the empty teapot and put it down again resignedly. ‘He’s nice—good-looking and one of those gravelly voices and polished manners—’ She was interrupted by a chorus of knowing groans; when they had subsided she added gently, ‘He’s engaged.’

A disappointed voice asked, ‘How do you know? He couldn’t have had time to tell you that!’

‘He talked while he was making up the chart. I expect he felt lonely and wanted to talk about her. Perhaps I’ve got a sympathetic face,’ she observed hopefully, and was greeted by a shriek of friendly laughter; her friends and acquaintances holding the opinion that anyone as pretty as Harry Slocombe needed to be nothing else. After a moment she laughed with them, privately wondering why everyone other than her own family attached such importance to looks.

A couple of hours later she was sitting up in bed reading sleepily when there was a knock on the door and a tall well-built girl came in.

Harriet put her book down. ‘Sieske, you’re never on at eleven again?’

The girl nodded gloomily and came to sit on the end of the bed. She was nice-looking, with a pleasant, placid face framed in pale hair which she wore in an unfashionable and highly becoming bun in the nape of her neck.

‘Aunt Agnes must loathe me,’ she remarked. Aunt Agnes was the Sister on Men’s Medical, she had been there for unnumbered years and made a habit of loathing everyone. ‘It is because I am not English, you think?’

Harriet shook her head. ‘She never likes anyone. I shouldn’t worry anyway, it’s only another two weeks, isn’t it? I shall miss you, Sieske.’

‘Me you too,’ said Sieske with obscure sincerity. She patted her bun with a large capable and very beautiful hand and turned solemn blue eyes on Harriet.

‘Harry, will you not come with me when I go? You have three weeks’ holiday; you could see much of Holland in that time—we should all be so glad; my family think of you as a friend, you know. I tell them many times of my visits to your home—we shall be highly pleased to have you as guest. It is a quiet place where we live, but we have many friends, and the country is pretty too.’ She paused and went on shyly, ‘I should like you to meet Wierd.’ Wierd was her fiancé; after several months of friendship with Sieske, Harriet looked upon him as an old friend, just as the Dutch girl’s family—her mother and father, younger sisters and the older brother who had just qualified as a doctor at Leiden—seemed like old friends too. The Dutch girl had told her so much about them that she felt that she already knew them. It would be delightful to go and stay with Sieske and meet them all—there was a partner too, she remembered; mentioned casually from time to time. Harriet searched her sleep-clogged brain for his name. Friso Eijsinck. She didn’t know much more about him than his name, though. Sieske had mentioned too that he wasn’t married. Harriet felt faintly sympathetic towards him, picturing him as a middle-aged bachelor with a soup-stained waistcoat. She dismissed his vague image from her mind.

‘I’d love to come,’ she said warmly. ‘But are you sure it will be all right with your family?’

Sieske smiled. ‘But of course I am sure. Already they have written with an invitation, which I extend to you. I am most happy, as they will be. We will make plans together for the journey.’ She got up. ‘Now you will sleep and I will write to Moeder.’

‘We’ll arrange it all on my nights off,’ said Harriet sleepily. ‘Get a day off and come home with me—tell Aunt Agnes you have to go to your grandmother’s funeral.’

‘A joke?’ queried Sieske. She had a hand on the door but paused to look back doubtfully at Harriet. But Harriet was already asleep.

Harriet’s family lived in a small west country village some forty miles from the city where she worked. Her father had had a practice there for twenty-five years or more and lived in a roomy rather ramshackle house that had sheltered his large family with ease, and now housed a growing band of grandchildren during school holidays. His eldest son had just qualified in his turn and had already taken his place in the wide-flung practice. It was he who fetched the two girls from hospital a few days later. He owned an elderly Sprite, which was always overloaded with passengers, but both girls were used to travelling in this cramped fashion and packed themselves in without demur. The country looked fresh and green after the rain, the moors rolled away into the distance—Harriet tied a scarf tightly round her hair and drew a deep breath; she was always happiest where the horizon was wide. The village looked cosy, with its thatched and cob walled cottages; the daffodils were out in the doctor’s garden as they shot up the drive and stopped with a tooth-jolting jerk at the front door. The girls scrambled out and ran inside to the comfort of the shabby hall and thence to the big sitting-room at the back of the house, where Mrs Slocombe was waiting with tea and the warm welcome she offered to anyone who set foot inside her home. She listened to the girls’ plans as they ate their way through home-made scones with a great deal of butter and jam, and the large fruit cake Mrs Slocombe had thoughtfully baked against their coming. She refilled their cups and said calmly, ‘How lovely for you, Harry darling. You’ll need a passport and a photo—better go into town tomorrow and get them settled. How will you go?’

Sieske answered, ‘From Harwich. We can go by train from the Hoek and my father will meet us at Leeuwarden.’

Mrs Slocombe replenished the teapot. ‘Travel broadens the mind,’ she observed, and looked at Harriet, immersed in a map. Such a dear child, and so unlike her brothers and sisters with her delicate prettiness and femininity and so gently pliant until one encountered the sturdy core of proud independence and plain common sense beneath it. Mrs Slocombe sighed. It would be nice to see Harriet happily married as her two sisters were. Heaven knew it wasn’t for lack of opportunity, the dear girl was surrounded by men as though they were bees round a honeypot; and she treated all of them as though they were brothers. Perhaps she would meet some nice man in Holland. Mrs Slocombe smiled happily at the thought and gave her mind to the serious business of the right clothes to take.

They spent the rest of that evening making their plans, helped and sometimes hindered by the advice and suggestions proffered by members of the family and their friends as they drifted in and out of the sitting-room. Her brother William, coming in from evening surgery, remarked with all the experience of someone who had been to the Continent of Europe on several occasions, ‘Still at it? Good lord, Harry, anyone would think you were going to the other side of the world instead of the other side of the North Sea.’

His sister remained unmoved by his observations, and merely picked up a small cushion and threw it at his head with the unerring aim of much practice. ‘Beast,’ she said affectionately. ‘But it is the other side of the world to me, isn’t it? I’ve never been outside Britain before, so any part of the world is foreign—just as foreign as the other side of the world—and everyone I meet will be a foreigner.’

This ingenuous remark caused a great deal of merriment. ‘I hope,’ said William, half seriously, ‘that you’ll remember that you are going to be the foreigner.’

‘Harriet will not feel foreign with us,’ said Sieske stoutly. ‘We all speak English—that is, Father and Aede and Friso speak it very well, and Maggina and Taeike are learning it at school—only my mother does not speak it though she does at times understand.’

‘And then there’s you,’ pointed out Harriet. ‘You speak marvellous English.’

Sieske glowed with pleasure. ‘Yes, I think I do, but then you helped me very much; it is not an easy language to learn.’

‘Nor, I gather, is Dutch,’ remarked Dr Slocombe dryly, ‘although it doesn’t sound as though Harry will need to know one word of it.’

‘No, of course she won’t,’ agreed Mrs Slocombe comfortably. She looked across the room at her daughter and thought with maternal satisfaction what a very pretty girl she was. A great deal could happen in three weeks, whatever part of the world one happened to be in.

CHAPTER TWO

THEY TRAVELLED by the night boat from Harwich, and Harriet, whose longest sea trip had been between Penzance and the Scillies, was disagreeably surprised to find the North Sea so spiteful. She lay in her bunk, listening to Sieske’s gentle breathing above her, and wondered if she would be seasick. It was fortunate that she fell asleep while she was still making up her mind about this, and didn’t wake up until the stewardess wakened them with their early morning tea. It was delightful to take turns with Sieske, to peer out of the porthole at the low coast of Holland. It looked as flat as she had always imagined it would be, and lonely as well. An hour later, however, disembarking amidst the cheerful bustle, she reversed her opinion. There seemed to be a great many people, all working very hard and apparently delighted to see the passengers coming off the boat; a larger porter took their luggage and led them to the Customs shed, exchanging pleasantries with Sieske, and thumped down their cases in front of a small rat-faced man who asked them in a surprisingly pleasant voice why they had come and what they had brought with them. Here again Sieske was useful; Harriet found that she did not need to utter a word, although she said ‘Thank you’ politely when she was handed her passport, and was taken aback when the Customs Officer wished her a happy holiday—in quite beautiful English.

The train snaked silently through green meadows where black and white cows, coated against the chilly wind, stood placidly to watch them flash by; there were farms dotted here and there, with steep roofs, and gardens arranged very neatly around them—the villages were dominated by their churches; Harriet had never seen so many soaring steeples in her life, nor, for that matter, had she seen so many factories, each with its small satellite of new houses close by. She didn’t like them very much and turned with relief to the contemplation of a canal, running like a ruler through the neat countryside, and carrying a variety of picturesque traffic. Presently they were served coffee and ham rolls, and the two girls sat back, watching the country flash by under a blue, rather watery sky stretching away to the flat horizon. In no time at all they were at Rotterdam—Harriet watched the early morning crowds racing to work with a faintly smug sympathy. The three weeks of her holiday stretching ahead of her seemed a very long time indeed. She wondered idly what she would feel like on the return journey. Once they had left Rotterdam, the scenery became more rural, the villages lying neatly amongst the flat meadows, like cakes arranged tidily on a plate—Gouda, even from a distance, looked intriguing—Harriet wished that they might have stopped to look around, but the train went remorselessly on to Utrecht and then to Amersfoort, where they had to get out anyway and change trains. They stood on the platform and watched the express rush away towards the frontier, and then because they had half an hour to wait, they went and had a cup of coffee and Sieske spread the incredibly small Dutch money on the table between them and gave Harriet her first lesson. They laughed a great deal and the time passed so quickly that they were surprised when the train for Leeuwarden arrived and they were stowed on board by a kindly porter, who tossed their cases in after them and waved cheerfully as the train pulled out.

They still had a two-hour journey before them, Harriet settled herself by the window once more, listening to Sieske’s unhurried voice and watching the subtle changing of the countryside. It began to look very like the New Forest, with stretches of heath and charming little woods; there were glimpses of houses too, not large, but having an air of luxury, each set in its own immaculate grounds. Presently the woods and heathland gave way in their turn to rolling grassland. The farms looked large and prosperous, even the cows looked plumply outsize and although there were plenty of villages and towns there was a refreshing lack of factories.

Sieske’s father was waiting at Leeuwarden, a large, very tall man with thick grey hair, a neat moustache and an elegant Van Dyke beard. He had a round merry face, but his eyes were shrewd behind the horn-rimmed glasses he wore. He greeted Sieske with a bear-like hug and a flow of incomprehensible words, but as he turned to shake Harriet’s hand, she was relieved to find that his English was almost as good as her own.

‘You are most welcome, Harriet,’ he said warmly. ‘We hope that you will have a pleasant holiday with us—and now we will go home; Mother is waiting—she is most excited, but she would not come with me because everything has to be ready for you when you arrive.’

He led the way over to a BMW, and Harriet looked at it with an appreciative eye as they got in. She gazed around her as they went through Leeuwarden, glimpsing small side streets that would be fun to explore. Dr Van Minnen seemed to read her thoughts, for without taking his eyes off the road, he said, ‘You shall come here, Harriet, and look around one day soon. There is a great deal to see as well as a museum of which we are very proud.’

Franeker, Sieske’s home, was only a short distance from Leeuwarden; in less than twenty minutes they were slowing down past a large church and turning into the main street of the charming little town.

The doctor lived in a large house overlooking a tree-lined canal which ran between narrow cobbled streets lined with buildings from another era. No two houses were alike, except in a shared dignity of age and beauty. Harriet got out of the car and stood gaping at the variety of rooftops. She would have liked to have asked about them, but Sieske was already at the great wooden door with its imposing fanlight, and the doctor caught hold of her arm and hurried her inside behind his daughter, to be greeted by his wife. Mevrouw Van Minnen was very like her daughter and still remarkably youthful—there was no hint of grey in her pale blonde hair and her eyes were as bright a blue as Sieske’s; she was a big woman, but there was nothing middle-aged in her brisk movements. The next hour or so was taken up most agreeably, drinking coffee and eating the crisp little biscuits—sprits—that went with it. There was a great deal of conversation which lost none of its zest by reason of Harriet’s lack of Dutch, and Mevrouw Van Minnen’s scant knowledge of English. Presently they all went upstairs to show Harriet her room—it overlooked the street, so that she could see the canal below, which delighted her; and although it was small it was very comfortable. She unpacked happily; it was, she decided, going to be a delightful holiday. She did her hair and her face and went downstairs to join the family for koffietafel, and ate her bread and cold meat and cheese and omelette with a healthy appetite which called forth delighted surprise from Mevrouw Van Minnen, who had thought she had looked too delicate to do more than peck at her food. Sieske translated this to Harriet, giggling a great deal, and then said in Dutch to her mother:

‘Harry isn’t quite what she looks, Moeder. She appears to be a fairy, but she’s not in the least delicate; and of course it notices here, doesn’t it, because we’re all so big.’

‘Such a pretty girl, too,’ her mother murmured. ‘I wonder what Aede and Friso will say when they see her.’

Aede wouldn’t be home until the evening, it seemed, and no one knew what Friso was doing—he had taken the morning surgery so that Dr Van Minnen could go to Leeuwarden—he had presumably gone to his own home. They would see him later, said Mevrouw Van Minnen comfortably, and suggested that the two girls went out for a walk so that Harriet could see something of the town.

An hour later, the two of them were strolling along looking in the shop windows while Sieske carefully explained the prices. They had reached a particularly interesting display of clocks and jewellery when Sieske suddenly exclaimed, ‘I forgot, I have to buy stamps for Father—the post office is in the next street. Wait here, Harry—you can practise your Dutch in this window—I won’t be a minute.’

Harriet looked her fill, and then because Sieske still hadn’t come back, went to the edge of the pavement and looked up and down the street. It was surprisingly busy for a small town, with a constant thin stream of traffic. She was standing on the corner outside the beautiful town hall and she watched idly as the various buses and lorries halted by her; the cars were mostly small, so that when an AC 428 Fastback pulled up it caught her attention immediately. There was a girl sitting in the front by the driver—a girl so dark that it was impossible not to notice her amongst the fair-haired giants around the town, thought Harriet; she was quite beautiful too. She turned her head and stared at Harriet with great black eyes which barely noticed her. She looked cross, and Harriet, with that extraordinary feeling that in someone else’s country you can do things you wouldn’t do in your own, stared back openly before transferring her gaze to the driver. He was looking ahead and she studied his profile at her leisure; it was a handsome one, with a domineering nose and a firm chin; his forehead was high and wide and his very fair hair was brushed smoothly back from it. Looking at him, she had the sudden deep conviction that they had met before; her heart started to race, she wished with all her heart that he would turn and look at her. As though she had shouted her wish out loud at him, he turned his head and she found herself gazing into level grey eyes. It seemed to her that she had known him—a complete stranger—all her life; she smiled with the sudden delight of it, wondering if he felt the same way too. Apparently he did not; there was no expression on his face at all, and she went slowly pink under his cool stare. The traffic ahead of him sorted itself out, and he was gone, leaving her gazing sadly after him; the man who had been in her thoughts for so many years; the reason for her being more than friends with the men she had met. He had been her dream; but dreams didn’t last. A good thing perhaps, as quite obviously she had no part in his; indeed, he had looked at her as though she had been a lamp-post.