Romantic Encounter. Betty Neels

      ‘Yes, thanks.’

      His, ‘Very well, goodbye, Miss Napier,’ was abrupt, even if uttered politely.

      * * *

      THE REVEREND NAPIER, his sermon written and nothing but choir practice to occupy him, drove Florence into Sherborne to catch the morning train. Gussage Tollard was a mere four miles to that town as the crow flew, but, taking into account the elderly Austin and the winding lanes, turning and twisting every hundred yards or so, the distance by car was considerably more.

      ‘Be sure and have a good lunch,’ advised her father. ‘One can always get a good meal at Lyons.’

      Florence said that she would; her father went to London so rarely that he lived comfortably in the past as regarded cafés, bus queues and the like, and she had no intention of disillusioning him.

      She bade him goodbye at the station, assured him that she would be on the afternoon train from Waterloo, and was borne away to London.

      She had a cup of coffee and a sandwich at Waterloo Station and queued for a bus, got off at Oxford Circus, and, since she had a little time to spare, looked at a few shops along Oxford Street before turning off towards Wimpole Street. The houses were dignified Regency, gleaming with pristine paintwork and shining brass plates. Number eighty-seven would be halfway down, she decided, and wondered where the lodgings were that she might take over. It was comparatively quiet here and the sun was shining; after the bustle and the noise of Oxford Street it was peaceful—as peaceful as one could be in London, she amended, thinking of Gussage Tollard, which hadn’t caught up with the modern world yet, and a good thing too.

      Mr Fitzgibbon, standing at the window of his consulting-room, his hands in his pockets, watched her coming along the pavement below. With a view to the sobriety of the occasion, she had shrouded a good deal of her brilliant hair under a velvet cap which matched the subdued tones of her French navy jacket and skirt. She was wearing her good shoes too; they pinched a little, but that was in a good cause…

      She glanced up as she reached the address she had been given, to see Mr Fitzgibbon staring down at her, unsmiling. He looked out of temper, and she stared back before mounting the few steps to the front door and ringing the bell. The salary he had offered was good, she reflected, but she had a nasty feeling that he would be a hard master.

      The door was opened by an elderly porter, who told her civilly that Mr Fitzgibbon’s consulting-rooms were on the first floor and would she go up? Once on the landing above there was another door with its highly polished bell, this time opened by a cosily plump middle-aged lady who said in a friendly voice, ‘Ah, here you are. I’m Mr Fitzgibbon’s receptionist—Mrs Keane. You’re to go straight in…’

      ‘I was to see Sister Brice,’ began Florence.

      ‘Yes, dear, and so you shall. But Mr Fitzgibbon wants to see you now.’ She added in an almost reverent voice, ‘He should be going to his lunch, but he decided to see you first.’

      Florence thought of several answers to this but uttered none of them; she needed the job too badly.

      Mr Fitzgibbon had left the window and was sitting behind his desk. He got up as Mrs Keane showed her in and wished her a cool, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Napier,’ and begged her to take a seat. Once she was sitting he was in no haste to speak.

      Finally he said, ‘Sister Brice is at lunch; she will show you exactly what your duties will be. I suggest that you come on a month’s trial, and after that period I would ask you to give three months’ notice should you wish to leave. I dislike changing my staff.’

      ‘You may not wish me to stay after a month,’ Florence pointed out in a matter-of-fact voice.

      ‘There is that possibility. That can be discussed at the end of the month. You are agreeable to your working conditions? I must warn you that this is not a nine-to-five job; your personal life is of no interest to me, but on no account must it infringe upon your work here. I depend upon the loyalty of my staff.’

      She was tempted to observe that at the salary she was being offered she was unlikely to be disloyal. She said forthrightly, ‘I’m free to do what I like and work where I wish; I like to go to my home whenever I can, but otherwise I have no other interests.’

      ‘No prospects of marriage?’

      She opened her beautiful eyes wide. ‘Since you ask, no.’

      ‘I’m surprised. I should like you to start—let me see; Sister Brice leaves at the end of next week, a Saturday. Perhaps you will get settled in on the Sunday and start work here on the Monday morning.’

      ‘That will suit me very well.’ She did hide a smile at his surprised look; he was probably used to having things his own way. ‘Will it be possible for me to see the rooms I am to have?’

      He said impatiently, ‘Yes, yes, why not? Sister Brice can take you there. Are you spending the night in town?’

      ‘No, I intend to go back on the five o’clock train from Waterloo.’

      There was a knock on the door and he called ‘come in’, and Sister Brice put her head round the door and said cheerfully, ‘Shall I take over, sir?’ She came into the room and shook Florence’s hand.

      The phone rang and Mr Fitzgibbon lifted the receiver. ‘Yes, please. There’s no one until three o’clock, is there? I shall want you here then.’

      He glanced at Florence. ‘Goodbye, Miss Napier; I expect to see you a week on Monday morning.’

      Sister Brice closed the door gently behind them. ‘He’s marvellous to work for; you mustn’t take any notice of his abruptness.’

      ‘I shan’t,’ said Florence. ‘Where do we start?’

      The consulting-rooms took up the whole of the first floor. Besides Mr Fitzgibbon’s room and the waiting-room, there was a very small, well-equipped dressing-room, an examination-room leading from the consulting-room, a cloakroom and a tiny kitchen. ‘He likes his coffee around ten o’clock, but if he has a lot of patients he’ll not stop. We get ours when we can. I get here about eight o’clock—the first patient doesn’t get here before half-past nine, but everything has to be quite ready. Mr Fitzgibbon quite often goes to the hospital first and takes a look at new patients there; he goes back there around noon or one o’clock and we have our lunch and tidy up and so on, he comes back here about four o’clock unless he’s operating, and he sees patients until half-past five. You do Theatre, don’t you? He always has the same theatre sister at Colbert’s, but if he’s operating at another hospital, doesn’t matter where, he’ll take you with him to scrub.’

      ‘Another hospital in London?’

      ‘Could be; more often than not it’s Birmingham or Edinburgh or Bristol—I’ve been to Brussels several times, the Middle East, and a couple of times to Berlin.’

      ‘I can’t speak German…’

      Sister Brice laughed. ‘You don’t need to—he does all the talking; you just carry on as though you were at Colbert’s. He did mention that occasionally you have to miss a weekend? It’s made up to you, though.’ She opened a cupboard with a key from her pocket. ‘I’ve been very happy here and I shall miss the work, but it’s a full-time job and there’s not much time over from it, certainly not if one is married.’ She was pulling out drawers. ‘There’s everything he needs for operating—he likes his own instruments and it’s your job to see that they’re all there and ready. They get put in this bag.’

      She glanced at her watch. ‘There’s time to go over to my room; you can meet Mrs Twist and see if it’ll suit you. She gets your breakfast and cooks high tea about half-past six. There’s a washing-machine and a telephone you may use. She doesn’t encourage what she calls gentlemen friends…’

      ‘I haven’t got any…’

      ‘You’re pretty enough to have half a dozen, if you don’t mind my saying