Never the Time and the Place. Betty Neels
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a rag rug spread before it on the brick floor, occupied by a tabby cat who hardly moved as Cuthbert flung himself down with a contented sigh. There were a number of doors leading from the room, one of which was partly open.
‘Josephine?’ asked a muffled voice from behind it, ‘is that you, dear? Where did I put the blackcurrant jam—I thought it was on the top shelf…’
The pantry door was pushed open and Mrs Dowling came into the kitchen. They were very alike, mother and daughter, the one still showing signs of the beauty of the other, both with grey eyes and gentle mouths, although Mrs Dowling’s hair was heavily streaked with silver.
‘Nice walk?’ she asked, forgetting the jam.
‘Lovely. I can’t think why I work in London, Mother, when I could spend my days here…’
‘Well, you won’t be there much longer, darling. In another month or two you’ll be married to Malcolm and I daresay the Yorkshire Moors are just as beautiful as our bit of the country.’
Josephine cut a slice off the loaf on the table and began to eat it. She said thoughtfully, ‘Well, yes, they’re beautiful, but they’re a long way away.’
‘You’ll have Malcolm’s mother and father,’ her mother pointed out.
‘So I shall,’ Josephine agreed slowly. She had fought a long hard battle with herself over her future mother-in-law; they didn’t like each other and never would. Josephine, voicing her doubts to Malcolm, had come up against an easy-going amusement which refused to recognise her difficulties. They would settle down nicely, he had assured her, half laughing, it was because they didn’t know each other very well, all that would be changed when they saw each other daily. A prospect which made Josephine shudder; Malcolm was going into his father’s practice and was perfectly content to live within a stone’s throw of his parents’ house; it was one of the things which worried her, especially if she were to wake in the night and think about it, although in the morning her worries seemed rather silly.
She said, ‘The jam—it’s on the bottom shelf, right at the back. I’ll get it.’ She emerged presently from the cupboard and put the pot on the table. ‘I met a man while I was out. In a Bentley—I’ve never seen him before—is there someone staying up at the Manor?’
Mrs Dowling was cutting bread and butter. ‘Not that I know of, but the Vicar’s wife mentioned someone saying they were staying over at Branton House. She didn’t know anything about him, though she’d heard that he was a foreigner.’
‘Never an Arab going to buy the place?’
‘Heaven forbid—the Forsyths have been there for hundreds of years. I daresay your father will know.’
But presently, sitting round the fire in the comfortable, shabby drawing room, she forgot about him. Her father, the local GP, had been at Salisbury Hospital, visiting a patient and an old friend after lunching with colleagues, and the talk was of them and their doings. Presently he got up to take evening surgery. Josephine cleared away the tea things and washed the delicate old china and rubbed up the silver spoons which her mother had always used each day, and then started to prepare the supper. Tomorrow evening, she thought with a sigh, she would be back in London, sitting in her office writing the report; it would be a busy day—theatre day—the gyny ward was always full but the turnover was brisk and for the most part the patients were very cheerful. She loved her work and she was going to miss it when she married Malcolm. It was only recently that she had had niggling doubts; things that hadn’t seemed to matter too much now mattered a great deal; Yorkshire was a far cry from Ridge Giffard and she was essentially a home loving girl. She had always been content, living in the old house, coming home from boarding school and then leaving it to train as a nurse, but even then she had come home on her free days, and now, a Ward Sister and the possessor of a second-hand Mini, she found it easy enough to drive to and fro when she had her free weekends. She would miss Mike and Natalie, she didn’t see much of them these days for they were both away from home for a good part of the year, Natalie at school taking her O levels and Mike in his first year at medical school. And the house she and Malcolm were to have—it was small and modern and had what she considered to be a pokey little garden. It worried her that she minded that so much. Surely, if she loved Malcolm, it shouldn’t matter?
She fed Cuthbert his supper and Mrs Whisker, the tabby, and fetched the lamb cutlets from the fridge. She liked cooking. Now she set to work cooking cucumber gently in a big pan, egg and breadcrumbing the cutlets and adding them to the cucumber and while they were simmering gently, she put on the potatoes and peeped at the celery braising in the oven. Her father would be hungry; the waiting room had been full and the phone had been ringing often enough; by the time he had done his evening rounds it would be eight o’clock or half past. Apple crumble and cream would make a nice afters; she set to work happily.
Putting her pie in the oven presently, she wondered idly about the man in the Bentley; he would be hundreds of miles away by now and would have forgotten her entirely. It surprised her that she felt vague regret about this.
He wasn’t hundreds of miles away; he was a bare half dozen, having a drink before dinner with his host and hostess at Branton House, exchanging polite conversation about the weather. During a comfortable pause—for they were old friends and didn’t need to keep up an unceasing chat—he remarked idly, ‘I met a girl as I was coming here. A strapping creature with a lovely face and enormous grey eyes. She had a Labrador with her and they both appeared to be enjoying the weather. She gave me a sound telling off for not sounding my horn. I might add that she and the dog were standing in the centre of the road and seemed to consider it to be theirs.’
His hostess laughed. ‘Josephine Dowling—she’s a darling, the eldest of our doctor’s three children. She’s a Ward Sister at St Michael’s—I daresay you’ll meet her.’
The man’s eyes were half closed. ‘I look forward to that. But perhaps she won’t recognise me…’
‘Don’t be silly, Julius.’ His hostess smiled widely. He was a tall man powerfully built and dressed with a quiet elegance; moreover, he had a face which a woman wouldn’t forget easily. She had no doubt that when Josephine saw him she would know him at once. A pity she was to be married—she might have taken Julius’s mind off his recently broken engagement…
Twenty-four hours later, Josephine was sitting exactly as she knew she would be, in her office at the end of the landing outside the ward, with the door open so that she could keep an eye on the comings and goings of the visitors. It had been a very busy day; there had been four cases for theatre and Mr Bull, the surgeon, had been in a fiendish temper for all of them so that the Student Nurses who had accompanied the patients had come back with eyes like saucers and a greatly increased knowledge of rude words. After the last case he had come on to the ward looking like a thunder cloud, dragging behind him a posse of reluctant lesser fry, trying to avoid his eye and terrified that he might shoot questions at them as he went from bed to bed. Josephine, quite used to him, gave him a soothing good afternoon and watched him blow out his moustache, a sure sign that he was put out.
‘Fools,’ he uttered strongly, ‘I have nothing but fools to work for me.’ Josephine drew herself up to her splendid height and met his choleric eye. ‘Not you, Jo—depend on you, don’t I? And why you have to go and marry some young fool of a GP. I don’t know… How’s that last patient? I knew I’d find CA, but I think she’ll do.’
Josephine led him across the ward to where the operation cases were sleeping peacefully behind their screens. ‘She’s doing nicely, sir. She came back from the Recovery Room an hour ago. I’m glad she’s okay—her husband phoned—he’ll be in presently—not to see her, he just wants to know what’s happened.’
Mr Bull might have a nasty temper but he was a kind man as well. ‘I’ll be in the hospital for another hour, if he comes before then let me know. I’ll have a word with him.’
Josephine beamed at him. ‘How nice of you, he’ll be so relieved.’ She went to the bed while Mr Bull took a look at his patient and then went in turn to the other three.
‘Might