A Suitable Match

She had been there for three days when she came face to face with the man who had interviewed her. He stopped in front of her and asked, ‘Well, do you like your work?’

She decided that despite his cross face he wasn’t ill-disposed towards her. ‘I’m glad to have work,’ she told him pleasantly, ‘you have no idea how glad. Not all my work is—well, nice, but of course you know that already.’

He gave a rumble of laughter. ‘No one stays for long,’ he told her. ‘Plenty of applicants when the job falls vacant, but they don’t last…’

‘I have every intention of staying, provided my work is satisfactory.’ She smiled at him and he laughed again.

‘Do you know who I am?’

‘No. I don’t know anyone yet—only to say good morning and so on. I saw Miss Bennett when I came here—she told me what to do and so on—and I’ve really had no time to ask anyone.’

‘I’m in charge of this department, young lady; the name’s Professor Ladbroke. I’ll see that you get a list of those working here.’

He nodded and walked away. Oh, dear, thought Eustacia, I should have called him ‘sir’ and not said all that.

She lived in a state of near panic for the rest of the week, wondering if she would get the sack, but payday came and there was nothing in her envelope but money. She breathed a sigh of relief and vowed to mind her Ps and Qs in future.

No one took much notice of her; she went in and out of rooms peopled by quiet, white-coated forms peering through microscopes or doing mysterious things with tweezers and pipettes. She suspected that they didn’t even see her, and the greater part of her day was concerned with the cleansing of endless bowls and dishes. It was, she discovered, a lonely life, but towards the end of the second week one or two people wished her good morning and an austere man with a beard asked her if she found the work hard.

She told him no, adding cheerfully, ‘A bit off-putting sometimes, though!’ He looked surprised, and she wished that she hadn’t said anything at all.

By the end of the third week she felt as though she had been there for years—she was even liking her work. There actually was a certain pleasure in keeping things clean and being useful, in however humble a capacity, to a department full of silent, dedicated people, all so hard at work with their microscopes and pipettes and little glass dishes.

She was to work that Saturday; she walked home, shopping on her way, buying food which her grandfather could see to on his own, thankful that she didn’t have to look at every penny. In the morning she set out cheerfully for the hospital. There would be a skeleton staff in the path lab until midday, and after that she had been told to pass any urgent messages to whoever was on call that weekend. One of the porters would come on duty at six o’clock that evening and take over the phone when she went.

The department was quiet; she went around, changing linen, opening windows, making sure that there was a supply of tea and sugar and milk in the small kitchen, and then carefully filling the half-empty shelves with towels, soap, stationery and path lab forms and, lastly, making sure that there was enough of everything in the sterilisers. It took her until mid-morning, by which time the staff on duty had arrived and were busy dealing with whatever had been sent from the hospital. She made coffee for them all, had some herself and went to assemble fresh supplies of dishes and bowls on trays ready for sterilising. She was returning from carrying a load from one room to the next when she came face to face with a man.

She was a tall girl, but she had to look up to see his face. A handsome one it was too, with a commanding nose, drooping lids over blue eyes and a thin mouth. His hair was thick and fair and rather untidy, and he was wearing a long white coat—he was also very large.

He stopped in front of her. ‘Ah, splendid, get this checked at once, will you, and let me have the result? I’ll be in the main theatre. It’s urgent.’ He handed her a covered kidney dish. ‘Do I know you?’

‘No,’ said Eustacia. She spoke to his broad, retreating back.

He had said it was urgent; she bore the dish to Mr Brimshaw, who was crouching over something nasty in a tray. He waved her away as she reached him, but she stood her ground.

‘Someone—a large man in a white coat—gave me this and said he would be in the main theatre and that it was urgent.’

‘Then don’t stand there, girl, give it to me.’

As she went away he called after her. ‘Come back in ten minutes, and you can take it back.’

‘Such manners,’ muttered Eustacia as she went back to her dishes.

In exactly ten minutes she went back again to Mr Brimshaw just in time to prevent him from opening his mouth to bellow for her. He gave a grunt instead. ‘And look sharp about it,’ he cautioned her.

The theatre block wasn’t anywhere near the path lab; she nipped smartly in and out of lifts and along corridors and finally, since the lifts were already in use, up a flight of stairs. She hadn’t been to the theatre block before and she wasn’t sure how far inside the swing-doors she was allowed to go, a problem solved for her by the reappearance of the man in the white coat, only now he was in a green tunic and trousers and a green cap to match.

He took the kidney dish from her with a nice smile. ‘Good girl—new, aren’t you?’ He turned to go and then paused. ‘What is your name?’

‘Eustacia Crump.’ She flew back through the swing-doors, not wanting to hear him laugh—everyone laughed when she told them her name. Eustacia and Crump didn’t go well together. He didn’t laugh, only stood for a moment more watching her splendid person, swathed in its ill-fitting overall, disappear.

Mr Brimshaw went home at one o’clock and Jim Walker, one of the more senior pathologists working under him, took over. He was a friendly young man and, since Eustacia had done all that was required of her and there was nothing much for him to do for half an hour, she made him tea and had a cup herself with her sandwiches. She became immersed in a reference book of pathological goings-on—she understood very little of it, but it made interesting reading.

It fell to her to go to theatre again a couple of hours later, this time with a vacoliter of blood.

‘Mind and bring back that form, properly signed,’ warned Mr Walker. ‘And don’t loiter, will you? They’re in a hurry.’

Eustacia went. Who, she asked herself, would wish to loiter in such circumstances? Did Mr Walker think that she would tuck the thing under one arm and stop for a chat with anyone she might meet on her way? She was terrified of dropping it anyway.

She sighed with relief when she reached the theatre block and went cautiously through the swing-doors, only to pause because she wasn’t quite sure where to go. A moot point settled for her by a disapproving voice behind her.

‘There you are,’ said a cross-faced nurse, and took the vacoliter from her.

Eustacia waved the form at her. ‘This has to be signed, please.’

‘Well, of course it does.’ It was taken from her and the nurse plunged through one of the doors on either side, just as the theatre door at the far end swished open and the tall man she had met in the path lab came through.

‘Brought the blood?’ he asked pleasantly, and when she nodded, ‘Miss Crump, isn’t it? We met recently.’ He stood in front of her, apparently in no haste.

‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘why are you not sitting on a bench doing blood counts and looking at cells instead of washing bottles?’

It was a serious question and it deserved a serious answer.

‘Well, that’s what I am—a bottle-washer, although it’s called a path lab assistant, and I’m not sure that I should like to sit at a bench all day—some of the things that are examined are very nasty…’

His eyes crinkled nicely at the corners when he smiled. ‘They are. You don’t look like a bottle-washer.’

‘Oh? Do they look different from anyone else?’

He didn’t answer that but went on. ‘You are far too beautiful,’ he told her, and watched her go a delicate pink.

A door opened and the cross nurse came back with the form in her hand. When she saw them she smoothed the ill humour from her face and smiled.

‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you, sir. If you would sign this form…?’ She cast Eustacia a look of great superiority as she spoke. ‘They’re waiting in theatre for you, sir,’ she added in what Eustacia considered to be an oily voice.

The man took the pen she offered and scrawled on the paper and handed it to Eustacia. ‘Many thanks, Miss Crump,’ he said with grave politeness. He didn’t look at the nurse once but went back through the theatre door without a backward glance.

The nurse tossed her head at Eustacia. ‘Well, hadn’t you better get back to the path lab?’ she wanted to know. ‘You’ve wasted enough of our time already.’

Eustacia was almost a head taller, and it gave her a nice feeling of superiority. ‘Rubbish,’ she said crisply, ‘and shouldn’t you be doing whatever you ought instead of standing there?’

She didn’t stay to hear what the other girl had to say; she hoped that she wouldn’t be reported for rudeness. It had been silly of her to annoy the nurse; she couldn’t afford to jeopardise her job.

‘OK?’ asked Mr Walker when she gave him back the signed form. He glanced at it. ‘Ah, signed by the great man himself…’

‘Oh, a big man in his theatre kit? I don’t know anyone here.’

Mr Walker said rather unkindly, ‘Well, you don’t need to, do you? He’s Sir Colin Crichton. An honorary consultant here—goes all over the place—he’s specialising in cancer treatment—gets good results too.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Make me some tea, will you? There’s a good girl.’