A Gem of a Girl. Betty Neels

gave him an unaffected smile. ‘Would you like some coffee? If you wouldn’t mind waiting while I load this machine again…?’

      His thank you was grave and his offer to hang out the clothes ready for the line was unexpected; she accepted it without arguing and he went into the large untidy garden with the basket while she switched on once more and went back into the kitchen to fetch another mug.

      The coffee was freshly ground and carefully made; she and Cousin Maud cooked and baked between them and they both turned out what her older relation called good wholesome food; the coffee she poured now smelled delicious and tasted as good as it smelled. Her unexpected guest, sitting comfortably in an old Windsor chair, remarked upon the fact before asking gently: ‘And you, Miss Prentice?’

      ‘Me what?’ asked Gemma, all niceties of grammar lost; if the boys had disappeared—and heaven knew they always did when there was a chore to be done—she would have to leave the washing and fetch the sausages herself, which meant she wouldn’t get her work done before dinner. She frowned, and the professor persisted placidly, ‘The sausages bother you, perhaps?’

      She gave him a surprised look. ‘How did you know?’ She refilled their mugs. ‘Well, actually, yes…’ She explained briefly, adding obscurely: ‘I expect you’re a psychiatrist—they always know things.’

      Her companion turned a chuckle into a cough. ‘Er—I suppose they do, but you did mention sausages…I’m an endocrinologist, myself.’

      He got to his feet, his head coming dangerously near the low ceiling. ‘I should be delighted to fetch these sausages for you while you finish your washing.’

      He had gone before she could thank him, and was back again in a very short time, to put his parcel on the kitchen table and observe: ‘There is someone repairing the window.’

      ‘Oh, good—that’ll be Mr Bates. I asked him to come round as soon as he could—it’s so much nicer for Doctor Gibbons if he doesn’t see the damage.’

      The professor’s lids drooped over amused eyes, but his voice, as he agreed with this praiseworthy sentiment, was as placid as ever.

      ‘I daresay you find it difficult to understand,’ she went on chattily, ‘but it’s impossible not to break a window now and then when there are three boys about the place.’

      Her companion made himself comfortable on the edge of the kitchen table. ‘I don’t find it in the least difficult,’ he protested, ‘I’m the eldest of six, myself.’

      Gemma flung the last of the washing into the basket. Somehow it was hard to imagine this not so very young man in his elegant casual clothes being the eldest of a large family—and they would surely all be grown-up.

      Just as though she had spoken her thoughts out loud, her companion went on smoothly: ‘I’m thirty-seven, my youngest sister is not quite eighteen.’

      ‘Phil’s as old as that…the twins are thirteen and George is ten. Mandy’s twenty.’

      ‘And you are twenty-five,’ he finished for her. ‘Doctor Gibbons told me.’

      ‘Oh, did he? Would you like some more coffee?’

      ‘Thanks. I’ll hang this lot up while you get it, shall I?’

      ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Gemma doubtfully. ‘You’re a professor and all that; I dare say you don’t hang out the washing at home so I don’t see why you should here.’

      His blue eyes twinkled. ‘No, I can’t say I make a habit of it, but then I’m working for most of my day when I’m home.’

      It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him about his home and if he was married, but moving very fast for such a sleepy-eyed person, he was already going down the garden path.

      She didn’t see him for the rest of that day and she left the house at half past seven the next morning, cycling through the quiet country lanes to get to the hospital a couple of miles away.

      Mandy and Phil had got back from their weekend late the previous evening; Gemma had called them before she left the house and they would get the boys down for breakfast and off to school and then get themselves away; Phil to her coaching classes before school started—she was in her last term and working for her A levels—and Mandy to the library in Salisbury where she was training to become a librarian. Gemma, pedalling down the road at great speed, was aware that it was a glorious May morning—a morning to be free in which to do exactly what one wished; she cast the thought aside and bent her mind to the more mundane subject of what to cook for supper that evening, the chances of getting the ironing done, whether the twins could go another week before she need buy the new shoes they wore out with terrifying frequency, and behind all these thoughts even though she kept nudging it aside, the wish to see more of the professor. He had been kind and easy to talk to, and Gemma, the plain one of the family and always conscious of that fact, had been aware that he hadn’t looked at her with the faintly amused surprise with which those who had already met the rest of the family—all of them possessing good looks—were wont to show.

      She rounded the entrance to the hospital and slowed down to go up the neglected, grass-grown drive, casting, as she always did, an admiring glance at the building coming into view as she did so.

      The hospital wasn’t really a hospital at all; many years ago it had been a rather grand country house with a fine Tudor front, which had been added to by succeeding generations, so that there was a Queen Anne wing to the left, a charming Regency wing to the right, and round the back, out of sight, and a good thing too, was a mid-Victorian extension, red brick, elaborate and very inconvenient. But with the death of the heir during World War Two and crippling death duties, the house had been sold to the local council and had been used as a geriatric hospital ever since. It was, of course, most unsuitable; the rooms were either too lofty and huge and full of draughts, or so small and awkwardly shaped that the getting of elderly ladies in and out of them, not to mention the making of their beds, was a constant nightmare for the nurses.

      Gemma propped her bike against a convenient wall and went in through an open side door, into a narrow, dark passage and up a back staircase. There were two Day Sisters looking after the fifty-six patients; herself with twenty-eight old ladies in her care, and Sister Bell, who was housed with the remainder of them in the opposite wing.

      Gemma went up the stairs two at a time, changed into uniform in five minutes flat, standing in a cupboard-like room on the landing, and then, very neat and tidy in her blue uniform and starched apron, an equally well-starched cap perched on her bun of brown hair, walked sedately across the landing into another cupboardlike apartment, which Authority allowed her to use as an office. Both the day and night nurses were there waiting for her to take the report, and she greeted them in her quiet voice, bidding them to sit down as she squeezed herself behind the table which served her as desk. The report hardly varied from day to day; Mrs Pegg and Miss Crisp fell out of their beds with monotonous regularity despite the nurses’ efforts to keep them safely in—they had both done so again during the night; there weren’t enough nurses for a start and old ladies could be very determined. Lovable too.

      When Gemma had given up her post as Medical Ward Sister in a big London teaching hospital, she had done so with many private misgivings; it had been expediency, not choice, which had caused her to apply for the post at Millbury House. Cousin Maud, who had looked after all of them for some years by then, was beginning to show signs of wear and tear—and who wouldn’t? Gemma had spent all her holidays and days off at home so that she might help her, but it hadn’t been enough; once Mandy and Phil were off their hands, things would be easier, but until then, it had become a matter of urgency that someone should help. That was six months ago and although she missed the rush and bustle of the big hospital, Gemma had to admit that she didn’t dislike her work; besides, it had made it possible for Cousin Maud to go to New Zealand for the long-dreamed-of holiday with her brother. Gemma, heartily sick of doing two jobs at once, couldn’t wait for her to get back.

      The night nurse safely on her way, Gemma and Sally Black, the day staff nurse, separated to start