Winter Wedding. Betty Neels

it nice?’

      ‘Professor Jurres-Romeijn was talking to me—I didn’t get down to the canteen.’ And when Mrs Wright protested: ‘I’ll go later.’

      It was a little after ten o’clock when the Professor came again. He didn’t speak to her although he gave her a close look as he came into the room. He altered the drugs, checked that his patient was in good shape for the night, said something quietly to him and went away, leaving Emily to give the report to Mrs Crewe, wish her patient goodnight and gather up her cloak and bag. She was very hungry, but it was really too late to go out to one of the small cafés which ringed the hospital. Besides, it was dark and cold and the streets weren’t quiet; the pubs would be shutting. She would have to go to bed hungry…

      The Professor was standing on the landing, staring in front of him, doing nothing, but at her quiet step he turned round. ‘I had no idea that I made you miss your supper,’ he observed without preamble. ‘You should have told me.’

      ‘Why?’ asked Emily baldly.

      He ignored that. ‘Allow me to take you out for a meal.’

      ‘No, thank you.’ It was annoying that as she spoke her insides gave a terrific rumble.

      The Professor’s mouth twitched. ‘You’re hungry.’

      Emily’s mouth watered at the thought of food—any food. ‘Not in the least,’ she told him haughtily. She wished him goodnight just as haughtily and left him standing there.

      Half an hour later, coming from the bathroom on the top floor of the Nurses’ Home, where she had a temporary room on the night nurses’ corridor, she was met by the night cook. ‘There you are, Staff,’ said that lady comfortably. ‘I’ve put the tray in your room, Night Sister said you was ter ‘ave it pronto; special orders from Professor Jurres-Romeijn.’

      Emily, her hair hanging damply down her back, her face red and shiny from too hot a bath, goggled at her. ‘Me? A tray?’ she asked.

      ‘That’s right, love. And be a dear and bring it down to the canteen at breakfast, will you?’

      ‘Yes—yes, of course—thanks a lot, Maggie.’ She sped down the passage and into her room where there indeed was a tray laden with a teapot, milk, sugar and a mug, soup in a covered bowl and a wedge of meat pie flanked by peas and chips. Emily put the tray on the bed and got in beside it and wolfed the lot. It was over her third cup of tea that she took time to think about the Professor. It had been generous of him to see that she had some supper, or perhaps it was gratitude because he hadn’t had to take her out? All her friends would think her out of her mind to have refused him anyway. But he must have taken the trouble to telephone Night Sister and speak to her about it, and considering he didn’t like her, that had been good-natured of him, to say the least. She would have to thank him in the morning.

      But when she did just that after his visit to Doctor Wright, all he said was: ‘But my dear girl, you’re wasting your gratitude; I can’t afford to have you going off sick. I want you here for another four days.’

      A remark which effectively nipped in the bud any warmer feelings she might have begun to cherish towards him.

      The four days seemed unending. She went home every afternoon, just for an hour or so, and because it was obvious that Louisa was becoming more and more impatient and irritable, she spent the hours there catching up on the chores which her sister declared she had neither the time nor the inclination to do. And the twins looked peaky too. She suspected that Louisa wasn’t taking them out enough, but hesitated to say so, and she would be home for four days. Louisa could be free to do what she liked while she set her little house in order and took long walks with the babies. It would make a nice change too.

      Doctor Wright was leaving the hospital the day before she herself was due for her days off; he was going home with Mrs Crewe in attendance and it wasn’t until he was writing his last note to Emily that she discovered that he had asked for her to go with him. When she had given him a questioning look he had taken the pad and scrawled: ‘Jurres-Romeijn wouldn’t allow it; said you were in need of a rest— made him promise that if anything went wrong you’d come and nurse me.’

      ‘Yes, of course,’ said Emily instantly, thrusting the question of what to do with the twins on one side. ‘I’ll come like a shot, but you’re going to be fine. Do press on with the oesophageal speech, won’t you?’

      ‘You’re as bad as Renier, badgering me back to living again.’ But he smiled at her as he wrote, and his goodbye had been warm with gratitude. So had Mrs Wright’s, accompanied by a large box wrapped in gay paper and tied with ribbon. Before Emily set about clearing the room of its complicated equipment and readying it for whoever was to occupy it next, she opened it. Elizabeth Arden, and lashings of it; lotions and powder and perfume, soap and several jars of face creams and a large bottle of bath essence. Emily drew in an excited breath; surely her mediocre looks would improve with such a galaxy of beauty aids? She wrapped everything up again and when she had finally finished her work bore it carefully home.

      Louisa, looking it over that evening, agreed that it was a lovely present. ‘Though personally I don’t go for her,’ she observed. ‘I mean, everyone, just everyone, uses Fifth Avenue.’

      But Emily refused to be put out. ‘I shall use the lot,’ she declared. ‘It’s bound to do something for me.’

      Her young sister looked at her with affection tinged with irritation. Emily was a dear and she had always been able to twist her round her little finger, but she was a bit wet; it would take more than Elizabeth Arden to change her ordinary features into anything glamorous. ‘It’s worth a try,’ she agreed. ‘I say, now you’re back for a day or two, I can go up to London, can’t I? I simply must have some undies…’

      There was really no need to go up to town. The shops were adequate enough for Louisa’s modest wants; Emily recognised it as an excuse and agreed without demur. Louisa had earned some fun. It didn’t occur to her that she had earned some fun too, but she was happy enough in the ugly little house, cleaning and washing and taking the twins out for the long walks she had promised. The weather had cheered up a little too, so she took them down the road and then pushed the pram along the bridle path, rutted and muddy, but the woods and fields on either side, although not quite country, were pleasant. She marched along briskly, thinking about Doctor Wright and the Professor. She had heard from various friends at the hospital that he wouldn’t be there much longer and she felt a strange regret, which considering she didn’t like him, seemed strange.

      Louisa, happy now that she had no need to be tied to the house all day, was disposed to be generous on Emily’s last day. ‘I’ll take the twins,’ she offered, ‘so you can go to the shops if you want to.’

      There were one or two things Emily wanted, she accepted at once and then at the last minute had to alter her plans because William, cutting a tooth, became fretful and feverish. ‘He’ll have to stay indoors,’ she said, hiding disappointment. ‘If you don’t mind staying with him, I’ll take Claire out this afternoon.’

      ‘What about your shopping?’

      ‘I’ll do that on the way home tomorrow.’

      It was a cold day and grey as was to be expected in November, but there was no wind and Emily, pushing Claire briskly in her pram, was quickly glowing. She had taken the bridle path again, away from the streets of small prim houses because although she never said so, she hated them. One day if she was lucky, she would have a small cottage in the country with a garden. There was plenty of time, she was only twenty-three and if she got a Sister’s post soon she would start to save money. It didn’t need to be full of mod cons, she could improve it over the years, and sometimes one could buy up a small place fairly cheaply if it hadn’t been modernised.

      There was no point in dwelling on the fact that she would probably not marry. She only met the young doctors she worked with in hospital and none of them had shown any interest in her to date. It would be nice if she did, of course…her mind wandered off into a vague dream so that she didn’t at first hear