Cobweb Morning. Betty Neels

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СКАЧАТЬ healthy exercise,’ she declared, too quickly, ‘and he hasn’t got a car yet—not even a Morris 1000,’ she added nastily.

      He ignored this piece of rudeness. ‘A nice little car,’ he observed smoothly, ‘reliable, cheap to run and not too fast.’

      She was diverted enough to exclaim: ‘It doesn’t look your sort of car at all,’ and then remembered to add: ‘Not that I am in the least interested in what you drive.’

      He was staring at her. ‘If I were to ask you out to dinner with me, would you come?’

      ‘No.’ The word had popped out before she had quenched the thought that she would like to, very much.

      ‘I thought perhaps you wouldn’t. Ah, well, I have survived worse disappointments. And now, young woman, if you have finished kneeling at my feet, perhaps I might continue to borrow your office for another ten minutes or so.’

      She closed the drawer deliberately, clutching the papers she had sought; there was a great deal she would have liked to have said, but she thought that, on the whole, it might be better to hold her tongue, so she edged past him again and flounced out in such a bad temper that her staff nurse wanted to know if she felt ill.

      She didn’t see him for the rest of the day, so that by the evening she believed him gone, which was a pity because she still hadn’t discovered just who he was. A good friend of Mr Thrush, that was obvious—perhaps he had a practice in England even though he was a Dutchman; that, combined with the fact that he had been at the scene of the accident, would be enough to make him take an interest in the patient.

      No one had come forward to claim the girl; police inquiries, photos in the newspapers, none of these had had any results. Alexandra, hopeful of her patient’s recovery, wished that she could regain consciousness, so that they could discover her name, but at the end of another two days she was still unconscious, so that Alexandra, with two days off to take, was in two minds not to take them. But common sense prevailed; she needed a break, if only to get away from Anthony, so that she could make up her mind about him. She went off duty that evening and caught the train to Dorchester by the skin of her teeth, and instead of having a quiet think as she had intended, went to sleep, only waking as the train drew in at her destination.

      Jim, her younger brother, was waiting for her, still in his anorak and gumboots because he had come straight from the farm where he was finishing the last few months of his course at the Agricultural College. He greeted her with off-handed affection, caught up her case as though it had been a paper bag and led the way to where the Land Rover he had borrowed was waiting.

      ‘Nice of you to pick me up,’ said Alexandra, disposing her person as comfortably as possible. ‘Is Father busy?’

      ‘Up to his eyes—’flu.’ He started the engine. ‘You’re OK?’

      ‘Yes, thanks. How’s work?’

      She sat listening to him talking about his job as he drove them at a great rate away from the town, through Cerne Abbas and then beyond, turning presently into a country road leading to the village where her father had his vast rural practice. The lights were shining a welcome as he brought the Land Rover to a squealing halt before her home; a rambling, thatched house of no great size but lacking nothing of picturesque architecture.

      She ran inside, glad to be home, to find her mother in the kitchen getting her supper. Mrs Dobbs was like her daughter—indeed, her husband always declared that she had been twice as pretty as her daughter when she had been younger. Even now she was still a comely woman, who hugged her daughter with real delight and advised her to go and see her father in his study while she dished up.

      Doctor Dobbs was catching up on his book work, but he cast this aside as Alexandra went in, declaring that she was a sight for sore eyes, and just in time to add up his accounts for him, something she did quickly before carrying him off to the dining-room while she ate her supper.

      Her parents sat at the table with her, not eating, but plying her with food and questions and answering her own questions in their turn, and presently Jim, finished for the day, joined them and then Jeff, studying to be a vet in Bristol and home for a week’s leave. Only her eldest brother, Edmund, was absent; qualified a year ago, he was now a partner in his father’s practice with a surgery in a neighbouring village where he lived with his wife and baby daughter.

      Alexandra beamed round at them all. ‘It’s super to be home,’ she declared. ‘Every time I come, I swear I’ll give up nursing.’

      There was a general laugh, although Mrs Dobbs looked hopeful. She was too clever to say anything, though, but instead inquired about the girl Alexandra had been looking after. ‘The local papers have had a lot to say about it,’ she told her daughter, ‘how strange it is that no one has come forward. And who is this doctor who saw the accident? There was a lot about him too, but no facts, if you know what I mean.’

      ‘I don’t know much about him, either,’ said Alexandra. ‘He—he just came in with her, you know, and when we went up to St Job’s, he came too.’

      ‘In the ambulance?’

      ‘No—his car. A Morris 1000.’

      Even her father looked up then. ‘He can’t be doing very well,’ he observed. ‘It’s a nice enough car, but more suitable to elderly ladies and retired gents than to a doctor. Is he elderly?’

      She shook her head. ‘No—forty or thereabouts, I suppose. Perhaps younger—it’s hard to tell.’

      ‘Good-looking?’ Her mother had been dying to ask that.

      ‘Well, yes—I really didn’t notice.’

      It was the kind of answer to make Mrs Dobbs dart a sharp glance at her daughter and change the subject. ‘How is Anthony?’ she wanted to know.

      Alexandra’s high forehead creased into a frown. ‘Oh, all right—busy, you know.’ She yawned and her mother said at once: ‘You’re tired, dear—bed for you. Is there anything you want to do tomorrow?’

      Alexandra shook her head. ‘No, Mother dear. I’ll drive Father on his rounds if he’d like me to, it’s a nice way of seeing the country.’

      Two days of home did her a world of good; she hated going back; she always did, but there would be more days off and in the meantime work didn’t seem as bad as it had done. And indeed, it wasn’t; the unit had filled up, and filled up still further that morning, even though temporarily, with a case from theatre which had collapsed in the recovery room. It was late afternoon by the time the man was well enough to send back to his ward, and Alexandra was already late off duty, but before she went she paid one more visit to the girl. She was doing well now; another day and she would be sent down to the Women’s Surgical ward. It was a pity that she hadn’t regained consciousness, though. Alexandra bent over the quiet face and checked a breath as the girl opened her eyes.

      ‘Hullo,’ said Alexandra, and smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, you’re in hospital. You had an accident, but you’re getting better.’

      The blue eyes held intelligence. ‘My head aches.’

      ‘I’m afraid it may do for a little while, but you’ll be given something for it. My dear, what is your name?’

      The girl looked at her for a long moment. СКАЧАТЬ