Cobweb Morning. Бетти Нилс

driving a Morris 1000. Oh, and his aunt was with him.’ When the shrieks of laughter had died down, she added demurely: ‘It went like a bomb.’

      ‘Yes, but what about him?’ persisted Ruth. ‘What’s his name—how old is he—did he turn you on?’

      Alexandra considered. ‘His name’s van Dresselhuys, that’s Dutch, isn’t it—though his English was perfect. I’ve no idea how old he would be and I thought him rather rude and bad-tempered, though,’ she added fairly, ‘he was pretty super when the girl had a cardiac arrest.’ She swallowed the last of her tea and got to her feet. ‘I’d better be on my way, I suppose; there’s a long list and if she’s fit enough they’ll want to operate, though heaven knows where they’ll fit her in.’

      Several of her companions got up too and as they walked through the hospital to their various wards, someone asked: ‘This girl—who is she?’

      ‘That’s just it, no one knows yet. She hadn’t any papers or anything with her, the car was hired from a garage in the Midlands—Wolverhampton, I believe, and until the police can trace her family or friends she can’t be identified.’

      ‘It’s to be hoped that she’ll be able to tell us herself before long,’ Ruth spoke soberly. ‘I’ll get her once she’s out of the ICU, I suppose?’

      ‘I should think so—lord, there’s the panic bell, someone’s arresting.’ Alexandra was off down the corridor like a bullet from a gun.

      It was old Mr Dasher, who had been in her unit for five days already, he had been admitted a few hours before Alexandra had gone away, and here he was still, she thought worriedly, looking not one scrap better; she got to work on him and was getting a little response when Anthony Ferris arrived. It wasn’t until the old man was once more breathing and she had spent a careful five minutes with the unconscious girl that she felt able to leave things in the hands of her staff nurse and go along to her office, so that she might go through the various papers and messages on her desk. And of course Anthony went with her, and when she sat down, sat down too, on the only other chair in the room.

      Alexandra, short-tempered from lack of sleep and an unexplained dissatisfaction with life in general, frowned at him. ‘Anthony, I’ve heaps of jobs to catch up on and that girl will probably be going to theatre…’

      He smiled at her with a condescending tolerance which set her splendid teeth on edge and made it worse by saying: ‘Poor little girl—I hear you had to put up with some foreign type, ordering you around. One of those know-alls, I suppose.’

      ‘Then you suppose wrong.’ Alexandra had forgotten the Dutchman’s arrogant manner and couldn’t spring fast enough to his defence. ‘He was extremely civil and he knew exactly what to do— I should never have got the girl here alive if it hadn’t been for him.’

      Anthony was too conceited a man to be worried by her championship of someone he hadn’t even met. ‘My poor sweet,’ he said, ‘how kind of you to stick up for him…’

      ‘If I might echo those words?’ queried Doctor van Dresselhuys from the door.

      She stared at him, her pretty mouth slightly open; she hadn’t expected him, though she had thought of him several times, and here he was, in her office, of all places. She said, inadequately: ‘Oh, hullo, I thought you’d gone.’

      He leaned against the wall, dwarfing Anthony, and looking, despite his well-worn clothes, elegant. Indeed, he made the other man’s rather way-out style of dressing look rather cheap. ‘Er—no. Mr Thrush asked me if I would give the anaesthetic—he intends to do a decompression.’

      His cool eyes flickered over Anthony, and Alexandra made haste to introduce the two men, but they had little to say to each other; after a few minutes Anthony announced, rather importantly, that he had work to do and edged to the door, saying over-loudly as he went: ‘I’ll see you as usual this evening, Alexandra—we might dine and dance somewhere.’ At the door he turned. ‘’Bye, darling.’

      Doctor van Dresselhuys hadn’t moved, he still leant against the door, the picture of idleness, only his eyes gleamed. When Anthony had gone, he asked casually: ‘Going to marry him?’

      ‘No, I’m not!’ declared Alexandra explosively. Anthony had behaved like a bad-tempered child and she had given him no right at all to call her darling; he’d been showing off, of course, hoping to impress this large man, whose very largeness, she suspected, had annoyed him, and who, unless she was very much mistaken, was secretly amused.

      He didn’t say anything else, just went on looking at her with his blue eyes until she felt the soft colour creeping into her cheeks. It deepened when he said softly: ‘You’re a remarkably lovely girl.’

      She disliked him, she told herself seethingly, as much as she disliked Anthony—as much as she disliked men with a capital M. She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin at him, and was outraged when he asked, still casually: ‘Did I come at the wrong moment—was your young man on the point of proposing?’

      ‘No, he was not,’ she snapped, ‘and even if he were,’ she went on crossly, ‘I really don’t see that it’s any business of yours.’ She got up. ‘And you really must excuse me, I have work to do.’

      ‘Ah, yes. I’ve come to see the patient, if you would be so kind?’ He stood aside to let her pass and followed her into the unit, where he became all at once a doctor, asking questions in a calm voice, reading the notes, examining the girl with meticulous care. There was no hidden amusement now; he was absorbed in what he was doing, and Alexandra was no longer a lovely girl; she was a skilled someone in a white gown, who answered his questions with the intelligence expected of her. Finally he nodded, thanked her and went away; she didn’t see him again for quite some time, but when the theatre nurse came to escort the girl to theatre, she was treated to that young lady’s ecstatic opinion of him; he had, it seemed, charmed every female he had encountered. Alexandra was left with the feeling that she must be lacking in something or other.

      The girl came back, holding her own well, and as far as was possible to judge at this stage, the operation had been a success. Alexandra set to work on her, and when Doctor van Dresselhuys came to see the patient in Mr Thrush’s company, she was far too occupied to spare a thought for him.

      Late off duty, because she had been a little anxious about her patient, Alexandra took the lift down to ground level, nipped smartly along a succession of passages and crossed the small ornamental garden which separated the Nurses’ Home from the hospital. It was pitch dark by now and there was no reason why she should encounter anyone at that hour, so that the vague feeling of disappointment she experienced was all the more surprising. In her room, she kicked off her shoes, removed her cap and went along to run a bath; she met Ruth on the way back and delayed to share a pot of tea with her. Anthony had said that he would meet her, but he hadn’t said when or where; his airy remark about meeting her as usual meant nothing; they had gone out fairly frequently together, it was true, but he had implied that they went dining and dancing nightly. Frowningly, she could only remember two occasions in the last three months or so when he had taken her somewhere really decent for dinner, and never to a dance.

      She accepted a second cup; let Anthony wait, better still, let him telephone over to the home and ask if she was ready.

      She had bathed and was in her dressing gown doing her hair when someone shouted up the stairs that she was wanted on the telephone. She went without haste and said a grumpy ‘Well?’ into the receiver.

      ‘Good lord,’ Anthony’s voice sounded irritable. ‘What’s keeping you? You’ve been off duty for an hour or more.’

      ‘So I have, but not knowing where I was to meet you as usual or to which marvellous place you were taking me to dine and dance, there didn’t seem much point in doing anything about it.’

      She heard his embarrassed laugh. ‘Look here, old girl, you must have known I only said that because that nonchalant type was standing there laughing at me. Come on now,’ his voice took on a wheedling note, ‘throw on a coat and