An Unlikely Romance. Betty Neels

cooed Aunt Alice, fortissimo, ‘come here, dear, the colonel wants to see you.’

      There was nothing for it but to abandon her dark corner and make her way across the room to where the old gentleman stood, and of course at that same moment Margaret and the professor had paused to speak to someone and had turned round to watch her. She was unable to avoid his glance, but she gave no sign of recognition, and, to her great feeling of relief, nor did he.

      Well, why should he? He had never actually looked at her on the ward and she was dressed differently. She retired to a sofa with the colonel for the kind of chat her companion enjoyed; he was holding forth about politics, modern youth and modern warfare to a listening audience. Trixie was a very good listener. He got up to go presently. ‘A nice little talk, my dear; I wish we could have stayed longer but we must attend a function, as you may know.’ He looked around him. ‘Where is Krijn? Ah—with Margaret. Such a very pretty girl, even an absent-minded professor may be forgiven if he falls under her spell.’

      He patted Trixie’s shoulder. ‘We must talk again,’ he told her as they said goodbye.

      She slipped away to the other end of the room, reluctant to come face to face with the professor, and presently the guests began to leave. A small party of Margaret’s closest friends were taking her out to dinner and Trixie was kept busy finding coats and wraps.

      ‘Coming with us?’ asked one of the girls.

      There was no need for her to reply. Margaret had overheard and said at once, ‘Oh, Trixie hates going to restaurants, and besides, she’s on duty at that hospital of hers at the crack of dawn.’

      Neither of which was true, but Trixie said nothing. Margaret didn’t mean to be unkind; she was thoughtless and spoilt and ever since they had been children together she had been accustomed to the idea that Trixie was by way of being a poor relation, to be treated as one of the family but at the same time to make herself useful and obliging.

      Trixie had put up with that, for she was grateful for having a home and a family of sorts. All the same, it had been a heaven-sent blessing when the eligible young man had fancied himself in love with her and she had at last embarked on a life of her own. If she had been hurt she had very firmly never allowed anyone to see it. She saw them into their cars and went back into the house to eat her dinner with her aunt and uncle and agree, with sincerity, that Margaret was quite beautiful. ‘If only she would settle down,’ observed Aunt Alice. ‘That was a very distinguished man who came with the colonel—a professor, too. I wonder what he does…’

      Trixie, who could have told her, remained silent.

      She left the house the next morning without having seen Margaret again. She was on duty at ten o’clock for the rest of the day and only her uncle had been at breakfast with her. ‘I’ll say goodbye to your aunt and Margaret for you,’ he told her. ‘They both need a good rest after all the trouble they went to for the party.’ He sounded faintly reproachful. ‘A pity you couldn’t have had a day or two more free to give a hand.’

      Trixie said yes, it was, wasn’t it? and forbore from reminding him that she had been up until one o’clock that morning, helping the maid to get the room straight again. She thanked him for the party, left polite messages for Aunt Alice and Margaret and took herself off, back to the East End where Timothy’s spread its forbidding grey stone, encircled by narrow busy streets and rows of poky houses. The ugly old hospital was her home now and back in her room in the nurses’ home she surveyed it with all the pride of a houseowner. Over the months she had bought cushions, a table-lamp, a pretty bedspread and a picture or two. She admired them now as she got into her uniform and then went along to the tiny kitchen to make a cup of tea. Some of her friends were there and they took their mugs back to her room for the last few minutes before they had to go on duty, full of questions about the party.

      ‘Was there anyone exciting there?’ asked Mary.

      ‘They were almost all people I didn’t know.’ Trixie almost mentioned the professor and decided not to; after all he was hardly exciting, although he had looked remarkably handsome… ‘There was a dinner party for godmothers and godfathers and uncles and aunts,’ she explained. ‘The party was for Margaret’s friends.’

      ‘What were the clothes like?’ someone asked.

      They spent the rest of the time discussing fashion before going off to their various wards.

      Ten o’clock in the morning wasn’t a favourite time at which to go on duty; housemen were checking up on patients, several of whom were being taken to various departments for treatment or tests, and those who were left in their beds wanted things—hot drinks, cold drinks, pillows turned, sheets changed, bedpans, injections, two-hourly feeds… Trixie went to and fro happily enough; Staff Nurse Bennett had days off and the part-time staff nurse doing her job was married with young children, tolerant of the most troublesome patient and kind but firm with the nurses. Trixie went off duty that evening content with her day and slept the moment her head touched the pillow. With Staff Nurse Bennett still away the following day was just as satisfying. Trixie, off duty at five o’clock, joined several of her friends and went to the cinema and then gathered in the kitchen to eat the fish and chips they had bought on the way home. Life might not be very exciting, but at least it offered friendships, security and held few surprises. She slept the sleep of the hardworking and went on duty the next morning to find Staff Nurse Bennett in a bad temper and Sister off duty for the day.

      Everything went wrong, of course; it always did when Staff Nurse Bennett was there: Trixie dropped things, spilt things and, according to her senior, took twice as long as anyone else to do things. Consequently she was late for her dinner and in a thoroughly bad temper as she nipped smartly along the corridors to the canteen, to encounter Professor van der Brink-Schaaksma, ambling along, an untidy pile of papers under one arm, and, as usual, deep in thought. He glanced at her as she passed him, scurrying along with her head down, to come to a sudden halt when he said, ‘Trixie—you are the girl in the brown dress.’

      He had turned back to where she was standing. ‘I thought that I had seen you somewhere. You fell over…’ His sleepy eyes surveyed her. ‘You are a friend of Margaret’s, to whose party I was invited? It seems unlikely.’

      Before she could close her astonished mouth and say a word, he nodded his handsome head, gave her a kindly smile and went on his way.

      ‘Well,’ said Trixie. ‘Well…’ All the clever replies she might have made and hadn’t flooded into her head. He had probably uttered his thoughts out loud but that didn’t make any difference; it was only too apparent that he had compared her with Margaret and found the comparison untenable.

      She flounced off into the canteen in quite a nasty temper, rejected the boiled beef and carrots on the menu, pushed prunes and custard round her plate, drank two cups of very strong tea and marched back to the ward where Staff Nurse Bennett, intent on hauling her over the coals for leaving a bowl on the wrong shelf in the treatment-room, was quite bowled over by the usually well-mannered Trixie’s begging her to stop nagging. ‘You’ll be a most awful wife,’ said Trixie. ‘In fact I doubt if you’ll ever get married, everlastingly picking holes in people.’

      She had swept away to get a bed ready to admit a new patient, leaving Staff Nurse Bennett speechless.

      It was two days later that she overheard Sister Snell telling Staff Nurse Bennett that Professor van der Brink-Schaaksma had gone to Holland. ‘Leiden, I believe—to deliver a series of lectures. A pity he is so wrapped up in his work—such a handsome man, too. I did hear that he had an unhappy love-affair some time ago…’

      It was disappointing that they moved away and Trixie missed the rest of it. Not that she was in the least interested in the man, she told herself as she made up empty beds. Indeed, she was sorry for him, going around with his head in endocrinal clouds and never without a pile of papers or some weighty tome under one arm. He needed a wife to give him something else to think about. He had, she reflected, been taken with Margaret, and he couldn’t be all that old. Late thirties or forty perhaps, and Margaret had fancied him. He was good-looking, with beautiful manners,