Tabitha in Moonlight. Betty Neels

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СКАЧАТЬ engulfed Mr Bow’s gently in it and went on:

      ‘The last time I heard from you was—let me see, five years ago—you were in Newcastle, because I wrote to you there and never had an answer.’

      Mr Bow smiled. ‘And now I’m here, and I hope you will be able to stick me together again.’

      Mr van Beek gave him a long, thoughtful look. ‘Yes, we’ll have a long talk later, but now tell me what happened to you.’

      He listened with patience to Mr Bow’s meticulous and long-winded account of his accident, which included a great deal of superfluous information about Podger and a corollary concerning Tabitha’s thoughtfulness of his pet’s welfare, during the telling of which Mr van Beek said nothing at all, but stared very hard at Tabitha when Mr Bow got to the part about her rescue of Podger. Only when the old man at last fell silent, he remarked kindly:

      ‘Well, don’t worry, we’ll get things sorted out for you—Podger is in good hands and I’m sure Sister will be able to arrange something about your rooms.’ And Tabitha’s heart warmed to him for making it sound as if Mr Bow rented something well-furnished in the best part of the city. The surgeon went on: ‘The important thing is to get this leg of yours seen to as soon as possible, Knotty.’

      He turned to George Steele and they examined the X-rays together, then Tabitha turned back the bedclothes and they looked at the bony old leg under its cage. Finally Mr van Beek said: ‘We’ll do Mr Bow after Mr Raynard, Sister.’ He was writing as he spoke and when he had handed the chart to George Steele he looked directly at her. ‘An open reduction and plaster, I think,’ he glanced briefly at the Registrar and received a nodded agreement, ‘and I should count it as a favour if you would take Mr Bow to theatre, Sister—he’s a very old friend of mine.’

      Tabitha rearranged the bedclothes. ‘Yes, of course,’ she answered matter-of-factly, aware at the same time that she would have to change her off duty with Staff Rogers to do so, but perhaps that was a good thing anyway, because then she could go to Mr Bow’s lodgings on her way home—there would be a better chance of seeing the landlady in the evening.

      Mr van Beek disappeared soon after and Tabitha, caught up in the ward routine, had no time to think about him, but presently, on her way to theatre with a determinedly chatty Mr Raynard, he was brought to her notice by that gentleman remarking on the coincidence of Mr Bow being Marius’s tutor at Cambridge. ‘Lost touch with each other,’ droned Mr Raynard, faintly drowsy. ‘Marius tells me they used to do a lot of sailing together—that would be getting on for twenty years ago.’ He cocked a hazy eye at Tabitha walking beside the trolly. ‘Marius is thirty-eight,’ he offered.

      ‘Indeed?’ Tabitha wedged herself into the lift with the rest of the theatre party and sought for something to say. ‘Quite old,’ she ventured.

      ‘At the height of his not inconsiderable success and a distinguished career,’ snapped Mr Raynard, having a little difficulty with the long words. ‘How old are you, Tabby?’

      She gave him a rather blank look and he added: ‘You can safely tell me, for I’m doped; I shall never remember.’

      ‘I don’t really mind if you do. I’m twenty-five.’

      ‘Just? Or almost twenty-six?’

      Tabitha frowned. How like a man to make her feel older than she was! ‘Twenty-five,’ she repeated. ‘Today.’

      The porters, who had been listening, chorused ‘Happy birthday, Sister’, and she thanked them; Mr Raynard, with a tongue rapidly becoming too large for his mouth, said: ‘Yes, yes, of course. I shouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t been given the best birthday present of your life.’ Which remark Tabitha took little notice of because, as he himself had said, Mr Raynard was doped. In the anaesthetic room a few minutes later, Mr van Beek, looking massive in a rubber apron, came to have a last word with his patient. Mr Raynard opened his eyes, said clearly, ‘Birthday’ and closed them again, and the anaesthetist, pushing a needle into his colleague’s arm, remarked, ‘What a way to spend it!’ Tabitha, gowned and masked, saw no reason to enlighten him as to whose birthday it was. He winked at her over his mask. ‘Coming in to hold his hand, Tabby?’ he wanted to know. ‘Hard luck on Mrs Raynard—she only went to her mother’s yesterday, didn’t she?’

      Tabitha nodded. ‘Yes, and Mr Raynard didn’t want her to know, but I telephoned her just now while he and Mr van Beek were talking on the ward. He’ll kill me when he finds out, but someone had to tell her. She’s on her way back now—with any luck she’ll be here by the time he comes round from the anaesthetic. He’ll be very happy to see her.’

      The anaesthetist nodded; Mr Raynard was a happily married man and made no secret of the fact, although Tabitha had often wondered privately if he growled and grumbled at his wife and children in the same way as he growled and grumbled at her.

      They went into the theatre then and the white-clad figures rearranged themselves in a group around the operating table—rather like cricket, thought Tabby, taking up her prescribed place by the patient’s head and handing necessary odds and ends to the anaesthetist a second before he asked for them. She was very aware of Mr van Beek on the opposite side of the table, although she didn’t look at him. Instead, she concentrated on the operation and could only admire the way the surgeon wired the patella’s two pieces back into one again. Watching him, she found it strange that only an hour previously she had thought him lazy; he worked fast and neatly and without fuss while he carried on a casual conversation which had nothing at all to do with the work in hand. He was just as quick putting on the plaster too and far neater than Mr Raynard would have been, for he invariably became bad-tempered and tended to get plaster on everything and everyone around him, which Mr van Beek didn’t. When finally he had finished he said: ‘OK, Sister, you know what to do. I’ll be down later,’ and walked over to the sink without looking at her.

      They were going to have coffee before the next case, and Theatre Sister, who was one of her closest friends, said: ‘I’ll give you a ring when we’re ready, Tabby—I say, I like the stand-in. Lucky you, seeing him every day. Is he married?’ She was helping Tabitha drape the blanket over the patient and smiled across at her, and Tabitha, looking at her, thought for a second time that morning that it would be nice to be pretty, even half as pretty as Sue, whose blue eyes were laughing at her now.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she answered, ‘but I should think so, wouldn’t you? I mean, he could take his pick, couldn’t he?’

      Sue laughed. ‘I’m going to find out,’ she said as she went back into the operating theatre.

      Tabitha was surprised to have a summons to bring Mr Bow to theatre within five minutes of her returning to the ward with Mr Raynard. She barely had time to see him safely into his bed and station a nurse at his side before she was accompanying Mr Bow in his turn. She had imagined that Sue, with her blue eyes and pretty face, would have been reason enough for Mr van Beek to spend at least ten minutes getting to know her better. Perhaps he was married after all.

      She saw Sue for a few seconds when they reached theatre, and although they were unable to speak Sue frowned and made a face beneath her mask which Tabitha took to mean disappointment of some sort, but she dismissed the subject from her mind as the anaesthetist signaled her to hold Mr Bow’s arm steady. The operation took longer than she had expected, but both bones were broken and badly splintered and there was a lot of cleaning up to do before the wound could be partially closed and plaster applied to the leg. This time Mr van Beek made a little window above the wound so that it could be observed and dressed, and in the course of time, have its stitches out.

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