Cobweb Morning. Betty Neels
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was waiting.
‘Nice of you to pick me up,’ said Alexandra, disposing her person as comfortably as possible. ‘Is Father busy?’
‘Up to his eyes—’flu.’ He started the engine. ‘You’re OK?’
‘Yes, thanks. How’s work?’
She sat listening to him talking about his job as he drove them at a great rate away from the town, through Cerne Abbas and then beyond, turning presently into a country road leading to the village where her father had his vast rural practice. The lights were shining a welcome as he brought the Land Rover to a squealing halt before her home; a rambling, thatched house of no great size but lacking nothing of picturesque architecture.
She ran inside, glad to be home, to find her mother in the kitchen getting her supper. Mrs Dobbs was like her daughter—indeed, her husband always declared that she had been twice as pretty as her daughter when she had been younger. Even now she was still a comely woman, who hugged her daughter with real delight and advised her to go and see her father in his study while she dished up.
Doctor Dobbs was catching up on his book work, but he cast this aside as Alexandra went in, declaring that she was a sight for sore eyes, and just in time to add up his accounts for him, something she did quickly before carrying him off to the dining-room while she ate her supper.
Her parents sat at the table with her, not eating, but plying her with food and questions and answering her own questions in their turn, and presently Jim, finished for the day, joined them and then Jeff, studying to be a vet in Bristol and home for a week’s leave. Only her eldest brother, Edmund, was absent; qualified a year ago, he was now a partner in his father’s practice with a surgery in a neighbouring village where he lived with his wife and baby daughter.
Alexandra beamed round at them all. ‘It’s super to be home,’ she declared. ‘Every time I come, I swear I’ll give up nursing.’
There was a general laugh, although Mrs Dobbs looked hopeful. She was too clever to say anything, though, but instead inquired about the girl Alexandra had been looking after. ‘The local papers have had a lot to say about it,’ she told her daughter, ‘how strange it is that no one has come forward. And who is this doctor who saw the accident? There was a lot about him too, but no facts, if you know what I mean.’
‘I don’t know much about him, either,’ said Alexandra. ‘He—he just came in with her, you know, and when we went up to St Job’s, he came too.’
‘In the ambulance?’
‘No—his car. A Morris 1000.’
Even her father looked up then. ‘He can’t be doing very well,’ he observed. ‘It’s a nice enough car, but more suitable to elderly ladies and retired gents than to a doctor. Is he elderly?’
She shook her head. ‘No—forty or thereabouts, I suppose. Perhaps younger—it’s hard to tell.’
‘Good-looking?’ Her mother had been dying to ask that.
‘Well, yes—I really didn’t notice.’
It was the kind of answer to make Mrs Dobbs dart a sharp glance at her daughter and change the subject. ‘How is Anthony?’ she wanted to know.
Alexandra’s high forehead creased into a frown. ‘Oh, all right—busy, you know.’ She yawned and her mother said at once: ‘You’re tired, dear—bed for you. Is there anything you want to do tomorrow?’
Alexandra shook her head. ‘No, Mother dear. I’ll drive Father on his rounds if he’d like me to, it’s a nice way of seeing the country.’
Two days of home did her a world of good; she hated going back; she always did, but there would be more days off and in the meantime work didn’t seem as bad as it had done. And indeed, it wasn’t; the unit had filled up, and filled up still further that morning, even though temporarily, with a case from theatre which had collapsed in the recovery room. It was late afternoon by the time the man was well enough to send back to his ward, and Alexandra was already late off duty, but before she went she paid one more visit to the girl. She was doing well now; another day and she would be sent down to the Women’s Surgical ward. It was a pity that she hadn’t regained consciousness, though. Alexandra bent over the quiet face and checked a breath as the girl opened her eyes.
‘Hullo,’ said Alexandra, and smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, you’re in hospital. You had an accident, but you’re getting better.’
The blue eyes held intelligence. ‘My head aches.’
‘I’m afraid it may do for a little while, but you’ll be given something for it. My dear, what is your name?’
The girl looked at her for a long moment. ‘I can’t remember,’ she spoke in a thin whisper, ‘I can’t remember anything.’
‘Not to worry,’ said Alexandra comfortably, ‘it will all come back presently.’ She pressed the bell beside the bed, and when a nurse came, not quite running, asked her to let the Surgical Registrar know that Mr Thrush’s patient was conscious and would he come as soon as he could.
He came at once, and a few moments later, Mr Thrush with Doctor van Dresselhuys. Alexandra went to meet them and the surgeon said in tones of satisfaction: ‘This is splendid, Sister, and how fortunate that Doctor van Dresselhuys should have been here with me. And now, before we see the patient, give me your observations, Sister.’
Which she did, very concisely, before going with them to the bedside.
The girl had fallen asleep with all the suddenness of a child. Alexandra counted her pulse. ‘Almost normal and much stronger. How pretty she is with all that golden hair.’ She smiled at the two men. ‘Like a bright penny.’
Mr Thrush nodded, but it was the Dutchman who said quietly: ‘She has no name, has she, not until she remembers… What you just said, Sister, about a bright penny. Could we not call her Penny Bright?’
He too was looking down at the girl, and for no reason at all, Alexandra suffered a pang at the expression on his face. It was ridiculous to mind; why, they didn’t even like each other, and having rescued the girl like that must have caused him to feel something towards her. ‘It’s a marvellous idea,’ she agreed at once. ‘It will worry her dreadfully if we don’t call her something, and she might be like this for some time, mightn’t she?’
‘One can never tell with retrograde amnesia,’ said Mr Thrush. ‘A month, perhaps longer, who knows. You’ll do all in your power, I know, Sister.’ He moved to the other side of the bed. ‘I think I’ll just go over her reflexes.’
Alexandra, off duty at last—for even after the men had gone, she had to add everything to her report—went first to the hospital entrance. Anthony had asked her to meet him there at six o’clock, and it was already half past that hour and she was still in uniform. He was there all right, walking up and down and looking impatiently at his watch every few seconds, and when she reached him and began to explain why she was late, he hardly listened, nor did he give her a chance to finish what she was saying.
‘I must say,’ he began furiously, ‘that you have no thought for my convenience at all—here have I been waiting for the last forty minutes—the least you could have done would have been to send a message. And I can’t for the life of me see why you needed to stay; the girl won’t die if you leave her to someone else,’ he pointed out nastily.
Alexandra sighed. She was tired and it would have been nice if she could have told him about the girl regaining consciousness and how pleased everyone was; she repressed the thought that when Anthony had been late on more than one occasion she had been expected to wait for him uncomplainingly and then listen to his weighty explanations afterwards. But he was tired too, she mustn’t forget that, so she said now in a reasonable voice, ‘Oh, I know that, but it helped Mr Thrush if I stayed on for a bit, because I was there when she became conscious and he wanted to know exactly what had happened. You see, she’s got a retrograde amnesia—she can’t remember anything,