Cruise to a Wedding. Betty Neels

she asked Loveday as they left the theatre together. Loveday shut the doors carefully behind her and paused at her office. ‘Not for me, thanks—you go on. I’m going to do the books and make a pot of tea when I get over to the Home.’ She yawned widely, added a good night, and sat down at her desk. The night sister who took theatre would be along presently; she would hand the keys over to her, in the meantime she could get the operation list finished.

      She reached her room finally, tossed off her cap, crammed her feet into her slippers and prepared to go along to the pantry and make tea. Most of her friends were out, and for once she was glad to be on her own; bath and bed seemed very attractive.

      She was half way to the door when it was flung open and a girl came in. She was a tall young woman, as tall as Loveday, but whereas Loveday was vividly dark, this girl was fair, with ash-blonde hair and bright blue eyes and generous curves. She stopped in the doorway and cried dramatically and with faint pettishness, ‘Loveday—I thought you would never come! I have waited and waited. I am in the greatest trouble.’

      Loveday saw that the tea kettle would have to wait. She started to take off her uniform instead; Rimada was her greatest friend and she liked her enormously, even while she was sometimes impatient of her inability to accept life as it came. Possibly this was because the Dutch girl was an only child, hopelessly spoilt by a doting mother and used to having her own way. When Loveday had first become friendly with her, she had asked why she had ever taken up nursing—and in a country other than her own, too—to be told that it had all been the doing of her guardian, a cousin older than herself, a man, Rimada had declared furiously, who delighted in making her do things she had no wish to do.

      ‘Didn’t you want to be a nurse, then?’ Loveday had asked.

      ‘Of course,’ Rimada had insisted vehemently, ‘but when I wished it, not he. There was a young man, you understand—he wanted to marry me and I thought it might be rather fun, but Adam would not allow it, so I told him that I would retire from the world and be a nurse, and he arranged it all so quickly that I had no time to change my mind.’ She had turned indignant blue eyes upon Loveday, who had said roundly: ‘Oh, Rimmy, what rubbish—no one can make people do things they don’t want to do, not these days.’

      ‘Adam can,’ Rimada had said simply, ‘until I am twenty-five.’

      Now Loveday eyed Rimada’s stormy countenance as she got into her dressing gown. ‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me that Big Bertha has been at you again?’

      Big Bertha was the Senior Nursing Officer on the Surgical Block where Rimada was in charge of a women’s surgical ward.

      ‘Far worse,’ breathed Rimada, ‘it is Adam.’

      Loveday took the pins out of her hair and allowed it to fall in a thick curtain down her back. ‘Look,’ she began, ‘I’ve had a simply foul time since two o’clock—do you mind if we talk about it over a cup of tea?’

      Rimada was instantly contrite. ‘I am a selfish girl,’ she declared in the tones of one who doesn’t really believe what she is saying. ‘We will make tea and I will myself go to the warden’s office and request sandwiches.’

      Loveday was making for the pantry. ‘You do that,’ she advised. ‘You’re the only one of us who can wheedle anything out of Old Mossy.’ Which was indeed true; perhaps because Rimada had, for the whole of her life, expected—and had—her wishes fulfilled as soon as she uttered them, and Old Mossy had recognized the fact that to say no would have been a useless waste of time. Rimada, Loveday reflected as she spooned tea into the pot, had an arrogance of manner when she wanted her own way—not arrogance, she corrected herself, merely a certainty that no one would gainsay her.

      She bore the tea-tray back to her room and found Rimada already there, the promised sandwiches on a plate and a packet of crisps besides.

      ‘Wherever did you get those?’ she demanded.

      ‘I asked Old Mossy for them,’ Rimada smiled in triumph. ‘I can get anything I want,’ she stated without conceit. Her face clouded. ‘Excepting when the horrible Adam does not wish it.’

      Loveday drank tea and bit into a sandwich. There were a nice lot of them, all cheese, and the teapot was a large one. She relaxed, tucked her feet under her on the bed, added more sugar to her tea and said briefly: ‘Tell.’

      ‘I am in love with Terry,’ began Rimada, a statement which drew forth no surprise on Loveday’s part; Rimada fell in and out of love with almost monotonous frequency.

      ‘That new houseman on Surgical? He’s a head shorter than you are!’

      Rimada frowned. ‘That has nothing to do with it—I do not care in the least. He thinks of me as a Rhine Maiden.’ She looked rapt.

      Loveday looked astonished. ‘A what? But you’re Dutch—they were Germans, weren’t they, with enormous bosoms and dreadfully warlike.’ She studied her friend. ‘He’s got it all wrong,’ she finished in a kindly way, and took another bite of her sandwich.

      Rimada looked put out. ‘It is a compliment.’

      ‘What happened to Arthur?’ asked Loveday. Arthur had been in evidence for some weeks; he worked in the Path Lab, and while a young man of unassuming manner, had been more or less harmless.

      ‘He wears glasses.’

      Loveday nodded. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’ She didn’t much care for glasses herself, although several of the young gentlemen who had engaged her fancy from time to time had worn them. She poured more tea for them both. ‘Well, even if this Terry’s shorter than you are, I don’t suppose it matters. You said something about your guardian—do they know each other or something?’

      Rimada’s eyes glinted with rage. ‘No—how could they? But Terry wants to marry me, and this evening I telephoned Adam and told him that I wished it also. He laughed…’ her voice shook with temper. ‘He said that Terry sounded like a young idiot who was after my money and I could count on him never giving his consent.’

      ‘You’ll be twenty-five in a year’s time,’ Loveday reminded her. ‘That’s not long to wait, he can’t stop you then.’

      ‘I do not wish to wait,’ stated Rimada heatedly. ‘I wish to marry now, and so also does Terry.’

      ‘But he doesn’t earn enough to keep you,’ Loveday pointed out.

      ‘I know that, but we can live on my money. I have a great deal of it, you know.’

      ‘But your guardian won’t let you have it; you’ve just said so.’ Loveday frowned. ‘And I can’t say that I altogether blame him, however dreary he is about it. You don’t know much about Terry, do you? I mean, he’s only been here about three weeks. I know you’ve been out with him, but that’s not very…’

      ‘Do not be an old maid,’ begged her friend tartly. ‘At twenty-seven you are perhaps getting…’ She paused, at a loss for a word.

      ‘Stuffy,’ supplied Loveday cheerfully. ‘I daresay I am.’

      Rimada was instantly penitent. ‘Oh, Loveday, I did not mean that! You are so pretty, and all the men like you and really you do not look as old as you are.’ She smiled engagingly. ‘But you do not love easily, do you? I do not know why—it is so easy a thing to do.’

      ‘Oh, well, I daresay I’ll meet a man I want to marry one day.’

      ‘And if you do not?’

      ‘I’ll not marry. Now, let’s get back to Terry. What’s he got to say about all this?’

      ‘He is most unhappy; he wished to marry me as soon as he could get a licence.’

      ‘Then why doesn’t he? You’re twenty-four, you know.’

      ‘But if I marry before I am twenty-five without Adam’s consent, I do not have any money.’

      Loveday