Wish with the Candles. Betty Neels

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ although it seemed to her that Mrs Hastings dwelt with unnecessary length on Mijnheer Teylingen. The fact that she herself had almost nothing to say on the subject did nothing to alter the fact that long after her mother was asleep, her thoughts were still busy with him.

      They left the next morning and began their journey home, making a leisurely trip southwards to Zeebrugge, and then because Emma lost the way, having to race the last few miles, to join the end of the car queue with only minutes to spare. They slept on board in a cabin to themselves because Emma wanted to push on to Dorset the moment they landed and there was no hope of getting any rest on the boat otherwise; it was crowded with young and boisterous students and a large party of elderly people who sang ‘Knees up, Mother Brown’, with a good deal of vigour and without showing any signs of settling down for the night.

      They were last off the boat, of course, but still succeeded in getting away before a good many other cars owing, declared Mrs Hastings virtuously, to their honest faces. ‘The Customs men could always tell,’ she added smugly as they started on the long trip home.

      CHAPTER TWO

      EMMA was in the theatre getting ready for the morning’s list, while Sister Cox, the Theatre Superintendent, stood in the middle of the large tiled apartment, watching her. Emma had been back two days and despite the fact that her nice little face still bore the light tan she had acquired on her creamy skin and the dusting of freckles she despised upon her ordinary nose, her holiday in Holland already seemed like a pleasant dream. She had had a day at home getting her mother settled in once more, organizing her own clothes, fetching Flossie the spaniel from the kennels and getting Kitty’s room ready for her return from medical school before getting the little car out once more and driving herself back to Southampton to plunge immediately into the strict routine of theatre work. And for once she had welcomed it, for what was to have been a perfectly ordinary holiday had been in fact turned into a dream—by Mijnheer Teylingen, who, to her great annoyance, she was having the greatest difficulty in dismissing from her thoughts. Which she had told herself repeatedly and soberly was ridiculous; she was no callow schoolgirl to lose her heart to the first handsome man she met, despite her lack of looks. She was neither dull nor dowdy and possessed a charm which did more for her than all the good looks in the world; she had never lacked for boyfriends even though their attitude towards her had been of a brotherly nature, and she had twice refused offers of marriage, so it wasn’t a question of being swept off her feet. It was just, she admitted to herself, that he had seemed different.

      She sighed as she laid up her trolleys, and Sister Cox, watching her, sighed too, but for a different reason. She was a cosy-looking woman, with black eyes which appeared to have no expression in them, but her disposition was by no means cosy. The regular theatre staff did their work and kept out of her way; the student nurses, sent to do their three months’ stint in theatre, trembled and shook for the whole of that period, counting the days until they could get away from her despotic rule. Emma, however, despite her quiet manner, had a disposition every bit as tough as Sister Cox. She had worked with her for two years now and was completely unworried by that lady, bearing with equanimity her bad temper without apparent ill-effects and taking care not to pass any of it on to the junior nurses. It was possibly because of this that the Theatre Superintendent occasionally showed her human side, something she was doing now. ‘Two months,’ she was saying in a voice which boded ill for someone, as Emma, having arranged her trolleys to an exact nicety, proceeded to lay them up with the instruments in the wire baskets brought from the autoclave. ‘He’ll eat you alive in a week.’

      ‘More fool he,’ said Emma with calm, and laid two rib raspatories neatly side by side, ‘for then he’ll have no one in theatre at all, will he? Don’t worry, Sister, I’ll not be gobbled up by some bad-tempered surgeon—though only rumour says he’s bad-tempered, doesn’t it? Anyway, the longer you leave your toes, the worse they’re going to get.’

      Sister Cox looked down at her feet in their hideously wide shoes needed to accommodate her hammer toes. ‘You’re right,’ she said, her voice sounding cross as well as resigned. ‘I’ll take the first case, you take the second; Staff can lay up for the third while we’re having coffee, and for heaven’s sake keep that great fool Jessop from under my feet. What possessed Matron to send her here…’ She started for the theatre doors, still talking to herself, and Emma, standing back to survey the first of her completed trolleys with all the satisfaction of a hostess decking her dinner table, asked idly, ‘What’s this horror’s name, anyway—the one who’s going to eat me?’

      Sister Cox rotated her chubby form slowly to face Emma. ‘He’s a foreigner—brilliant at chest surgery, so I’m told, but I’ll have to see it first.’ She snorted disdainfully. ‘He’s got some technique or other—name’s Teylingen.’ She turned back to the door, saying as she went, ‘Red hair, so I hear, so you’d better look out, you know what they say about red hair and bad temper.’

      Emma stood quite still, looking astonished. It couldn’t be the same man; on the other hand, why shouldn’t it be? And if it was, what would he say when he saw her again? She shook out the sterile towel for her second trolley and holding it by its corners with the Cheatles forceps flipped it open with the ease of long practice, allowing it to fall precisely on the trolley before beginning the task of arranging yet another set of instruments upon it. This done to her satisfaction, she covered her handiwork with another sterile cloth, took one all-seeing look around the theatre and left it, casting off her gown as she went along to the tiny kitchen. Here the rest of the staff were gathered, drinking as much coffee as they had time for and wolfing down biscuits with an air of not knowing where their next meal would come from. They got to their feet as Emma went in and she said at once, ‘No, don’t get up—you’ll need your feet this morning. Staff, will you scrub in time to lay up for the third case?—It’s the oesophagectomy—I’ll be taking it.’

      Staff Nurse Collins, a small dark girl with large brown eyes in a pretty face, said simply, ‘Thank God for that, Sister. Mad Minnie seems determined to hate this professor type before he’s even got his nose round the door. She’s as cross as two sticks already, she’ll be really ratty by the time the morning’s half over.’

      ‘Sister Cox is preoccupied with her feet,’ said Emma quietly, not wanting to snub Staff, whom she liked, but mindful that she really mustn’t allow the nurses to call the Theatre Superintendent Mad Minnie—not in her hearing at any rate. She turned her attention to the other two nurses. ‘Jessop, count swabs for the first case, please’—that would keep the poor girl out of Sister Cox’s way—’ and, Cully, you see to lotions and take the bits when they’re ready.’ She turned back to Jessop, a large girl, naturally clumsy and rendered more so by Mad Minnie’s vendetta against her, but who, in Emma’s opinion, had the makings of a good nurse if only she could stop herself from dropping things and falling over anything within a mile of her awkward feet. Emma smiled at her now and said encouragingly, ‘The third case will be a long one, Nurse Jessop. I shall want you to keep me supplied, and be ready to fetch anything I may need. You’d better count swabs for the second case too, and be very careful, won’t you, because I often get the total wrong.’

      Which was a great piece of nonsense but served to inflate Jessop’s sadly flattened ego. She left them with a little nod and another smile and went unhurriedly down the passage to the office where she and Sister Cox wrestled with the off-duty, the stores, the supplies of theatre equipment and the laundry and from where the Theatre Superintendent blasted, by telephone, the various ward sisters who hadn’t conformed to her wishes concerning the arrival and departure of the various cases which had been sent up for operation. Occasionally one of the sisters, fuming over some new rule Mad Minnie had imposed would come tearing in, to spend a tempestuous ten minutes in the office before Emma, if she was on duty, calmed the two ladies down with tea.

      The office was small; it was also crowded. Sister Cox was sitting at the desk, looking more orbicular than ever, and most of the remaining space was СКАЧАТЬ