Victory for Victoria. Бетти Нилс

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Victoria put down her mug. ‘I must fly, you know what she is—all the beds to be tidy by the time she comes out of the office.’ She made a face. ‘So long, girls.’

      There was no sign of anyone as she went back along the corridor and past Sister’s office, although there was a murmur of voices and a sudden burst of laughter. Sir Keith must have made a joke, for that was the only time Sister Crow laughed about anything. Victoria went into the ward, sent all but one nurse to their coffee and started to straighten the beds and to get out of bed all those patients who had been kept in them for the round. She had reached Mr Bates and had sent Nurse Black to fetch a cool drink for the still queasy old man when the ward door was swung open with a good deal of vigour and a firm footfall trod towards her. She knew who it was, of course, and turned to face him as he fetched up within a few inches of her. He said without preamble: ‘You’re off at five. I’ll be outside at five-thirty—no, five-forty-five, you’ll want to do that hair of yours. I should like to take you out.’

      She stared at him speechlessly, delight and doubt warring with each other in her lovely face, and before she could reply Mr Bates answered for her in his dry old voice.

      ‘That’s right, you go, Staff. Have a bit of fun, yer must feel like it after the whole day here with the likes of us.’

      ‘No,’ said Victoria with a firmness denied by her eyes, ‘thank you.’

      ‘Why not?’

      She glanced at Mr Bates, who said at once, ‘Cor, luv a duck, Staff, I’m stone deaf—can’t ’ear a word.’

      She smiled at him. He’d been in number six bed for so long and he was really an old dear; all the same, she half turned away from him to say in a low voice: ‘You see, I don’t go out—with m-married men.’

      ‘Very laudable,’ commented Doctor van Schuylen approvingly. ‘Shall we make it five-thirty and never mind the hair?’

      She raised enormous tawny eyes fringed with curling dark lashes and met his blue ones. There was a glint in them which made her blink and falter. ‘You are married?’

      ‘No,’ he answered coolly, ‘not yet.’ He said nothing further, only looked amused, and it was so obvious that he was awaiting an explanation that she began to explain. ‘Oh—well, you see you were dining with someone and she had a wedding ring, and the next day you had a little boy with you, and then I saw you with them…’

      It was impossible to know what he was thinking, for his voice was as bland as his face and his eyes were almost covered by suddenly drooping lids.

      ‘Ah, yes—of course. A natural mistake, but a mistake. Shall we say half past five?’

      The ward door was pushed open and allowed to close with a minimum of noise—Sister Crow. Victoria’s eyes met the Dutchman’s and Mr Bates said happily: ‘I ain’t ’eard a word, but ’ave a nice evening of it, the two of yer.’

      ‘Half past five,’ breathed Victoria, and began on Mr Bates all over again while she listened to the doctor, skilfully and with great charm, draw a variety of red herrings across the Old Crow’s path so that by the time she eventually reached Victoria she had quite forgotten why she had come into the ward.

      Sister Crow had wanted an afternoon; Victoria, working through seemingly endless hours, prayed that she would come on duty as punctually as she usually did. She had been foolish, she decided as she prepared the medicine trolley for Sister’s use later on, to say half past five, for she would almost certainly be late, and supposing he didn’t wait? Supposing he were impatient? She contradicted herself; he wasn’t an impatient man, of that she was quite certain, although for the life of her she couldn’t guess how she knew that. She smiled with relief at the thought and Major Cooper, whom she was hauling back into bed after his afternoon exercises, stared at her.

      ‘What the devil have you got to smile about?’ he demanded irascibly. He was an ill-tempered old gentleman; that anybody would be otherwise was something he would not condone. Victoria had no intention of telling him, so instead she asked: ‘What do you think of the Government’s intention…’

      It was a safe and sure red herring; he seized upon it and grumbled happily while she worked him out of his dressing gown and pulled on the woolly bedsocks he insisted upon wearing, and since she had heard it all before, it left her free to devote the greater part of her mind to the important question of what to wear that evening.

      It was twenty minutes to six as she crossed the hospital entrance hall. The Old Crow had been punctual, but she had been chatty too, and it was all of a quarter past five by the time Victoria had got away. It was impossible to go to tea, and dinner, if that was the meal she hoped the doctor was inviting her to, was several hours off. She drank a glass of water from her toothmug and started tearing off her clothes. Luckily the bathrooms were empty and very few of her friends were about, and those who tried to engage her in conversation were told ‘No time’, and swept on one side. She was kneeling before the mirror in her room, because there were no stools before the dressing tables in the Home, putting her hair up very carefully, when the staff nurse on Children’s came in with a cup of tea. ‘Leave it if you haven’t time,’ she advised, ‘but I bet you didn’t get any—who’s the date?’

      Victoria, her mouth pursed over hair-grips, made sounds indicative of not telling, but her friend disregarded them. ‘We think it’s the foreign doctor who went to Kitty’s ward.’

      Victoria, having disposed of the grips, swallowed half a cup of tea.

      ‘Yes—well, we met while I was home—and don’t,’ she went on severely, ‘start any ideas. He’s only asked me out because he happened to meet me again—you know, being polite.’

      She was wriggling into her dress—a very plain cinnamon-coloured wool—and her friend obligingly zipped her up the back before she spoke.

      ‘Why should he have to be polite?’ she asked forth-rightly. ‘I’ve never met a man yet who asked a girl out unless he wanted to.’

      Victoria was head and shoulders inside the wardrobe and her voice was muffled. ‘Maybe he wants someone to listen to him while he talks,’ she suggested, and hoped not. She slid into the matching topcoat and dug her feet into brown patent shoes which had cost her a small fortune and flew to the door, snatching up her handbag as she went. ‘See you,’ she said briefly, and hurried downstairs.

      He was leaning against the little window behind which Smith, the head porter, sat, enjoying a chat, but when he saw her he came to meet her across the linoleumed floor and without giving her a chance to say that she was sorry that she was late, swept her outside and across the forecourt to where a Mercedes-Benz 350SL coupé was standing. It had, Victoria’s sharp eyes noticed, a Dutch number-plate.

      ‘It is yours?’ she wanted to know as he opened the door for her to get in.

      ‘Yes.’ He shut her in with an almost silent snap of the handle and went round to his own seat.

      ‘You didn’t have it in Guernsey.’

      ‘No.’ He was sitting beside her now. ‘What a girl you are, always asking questions!’

      ‘I never—’ she began, and then remembered that she had asked him quite a lot and closed her pretty mouth firmly, thinking better of it.

      ‘Have you had tea?’ His voice was pleasantly friendly.

СКАЧАТЬ