The Doubtful Marriage

When she got back she saw to the waiting-room and the surgery, made sure that the room was ready for her uncle’s guest and went down to the kitchen to help with lunch.

It was after morning surgery on the following day that the phone rang. It was Mr Jenkins, sounding agitated.

‘It’s the missus, started the baby and getting a bit worked up.’

It was Mrs Jenkins’s fourth; Uncle Thomas wouldn’t be back for half an hour at least and the Jenkins’s farm was outside the village. Moreover, it seemed to Tilly that Mr Jenkins sounded as worked up as his wife.

‘The doctor’s out,’ she said soothingly. ‘I’ll jump on my bike and come and have a look, shall I? I’ll leave a message for Uncle; he shouldn’t be long.’ She heard Mr Jenkins’s heavy sigh of relief as she hung up.

She warned Emma to let her uncle know as soon as he came in, fetched her midwifery bag, put on the elderly coat once more and cycled through the village to the farm.

A far cry from the clinically clean delivery rooms of the hospital, she thought, going into the cluttered warm kitchen. Mr Jenkins was hovering over a boiling kettle on the stove, under the impression that, since this was the common practice on the films in similar circumstances, it was the correct thing to do.

‘Hello,’ said Tilly cheerfully. ‘Upstairs in bed, is she?’

He nodded. ‘Carrying on, too. Good thing the kids have gone over to Granny’s.’

‘I’ll go up, shall I?’ Tilly went up the wooden staircase at the end of the passage and knocked on the half-open door at the top. Mrs Jenkins was sitting on the bed, looking apprehensive.

She looked more cheerful when she saw Tilly, who put her bag down and sat down beside her, put a comforting arm round her and asked pertinent questions in a calm voice.

Presently she said, ‘Well, I don’t suppose it’ll be long—shall I have a look? And how about getting into bed?’

The bouncing baby boy bawling his head off with satisfying vigour arrived with commendable speed. The doctor, arriving some ten minutes later, pronounced him to be in splendid health, declared his satisfaction as to Mrs Jenkins’s well-being, observed that he might leave Tilly to make her patient comfortable, and left again to see the last of his patients.

It was almost one o’clock by the time Tilly had seen to Mrs Jenkins, bathed the baby, shared a pot of tea with the proud parents and got back on her bike. Mrs Jenkins’s sister would be arriving very shortly and she would be in good hands.

‘See you this evening,’ called Tilly, and shot off down the lane.

She was a bit dishevelled by the time she reached home; there was a fierce wind blowing, and a fine, cold rain falling, and she had had to cycle into it. She propped the bike against the wall outside the kitchen door and hurried into the house, kicking off her shoes as she went and unbuttoning her coat. There was no one in the kitchen; she went through to the hall and opened her uncle’s study door, still struggling with the coat. Her uncle was standing by his desk, and sitting in the big leather chair by the fire was a man. He got to his feet as she went in, an extremely tall man, broad-shouldered and heavily built. Somewhere in the thirties, she guessed fleetingly, and handsome, with lint fair hair and heavy-lidded blue eyes. Surely not their visitor?

But he was.

‘Ah, Matilda, there you are.’ Her uncle beamed at her, oblivious of her untidy person. ‘Here is our guest, as you see, Rauwerd van Kempler.’

She said, ‘How do you do,’ in her quiet voice and had her hand engulfed in his large firm grasp. He greeted her pleasantly and she thought peevishly that he might have come at a more convenient time.

The peevishness sparked into temper at his bland, ‘I’m afraid I have arrived at an awkward time.’ His glance took in her shoeless feet and her damp face and her hair all over the place.

‘Not at all,’ said Tilly coolly. ‘I got tied up with the Jenkins’s baby.’ She looked at her uncle. ‘I hope you haven’t been waiting for me to have lunch?’

‘Well, dear, we had a good deal to talk about, you know, over a drink.’ Her uncle studied her carefully. ‘I expect you’d like to tidy yourself—I’ll pour you a glass of sherry while you’re doing it.’

Tilly, aware that the Dutchman was studying her as carefully as Uncle Thomas, took herself out of the room.

Very deliberately she did her hair and her face and changed into a skirt and sweater. On the way to the study she went to the kitchen to see if Emma needed any help. She didn’t, so Tilly joined the two men, accepted the sherry and made polite conversation about the weather. Her uncle looked at her once or twice, puzzled by her aloofness; she was puzzled by it herself.

Dr van Kempler had an easy way which made conversation simple, and he had good manners; it was obvious that he and her uncle had a lot in common and plenty to talk about, but he was careful to keep the talk general and when Uncle Thomas began to reminisce, headed him off with unobtrusive ease.

The two of them went off to the study when they had had their coffee, leaving her to clear the table and help Emma with the washing up. She agreed that their visitor seemed a nice enough man. Nice wasn’t the right word, she mused silently; a milk-and-water word which had no bearing upon his good looks and vast proportions. She would like to get to know him better, a wish instantly suppressed as disloyal to Leslie, who would be home for the weekend and expect her up at the Manor, ready for one of their lengthy walks in which he delighted whenever he was home. He was a rising young barrister, working hard in London, and they didn’t see much of each other. They had known each other for years now and she couldn’t remember when the idea of marrying him first entered her head. She supposed it was his mother who had planted it there—a rather intimidating matron who saw in Tilly a girl who could be moulded into the kind of wife she wanted to have for her son. Not quite the same background, she pointed out to her husband, but Dr Groves had a good solid country practice and a delightful house, set in grounds of an acre or two, most conveniently running alongside one of the boundaries of the Manor grounds. Nothing could be more suitable. She was proud of Leslie’s work as a barrister; at the same time she was terrified that he would meet some quite unsuitable girl in London and marry her out of hand. Tilly, known to her since childhood, was eminently preferable.

Tilly had more or less accepted the situation. She liked Leslie, was fond of him without loving him; if she regretted giving up her hospital career in order to help her uncle she had never said so. She owed him a lot and he hadn’t been well for some time; she was able to take some of his work on to her own shoulders and, although she didn’t think about it very often, she supposed that she would continue to do so until he retired and she married Leslie. She was a fortunate girl, she knew that, but at the same time there was the disturbing thought, buried deep, that something was missing from her life: romance; and being a normal pretty girl, she wanted that. It was something she wouldn’t get from Leslie; he would be a good husband and once they had settled down she would forget the romantic world she dreamed of. She was old enough to know better, she chided herself briskly, and, indeed, she wasn’t quite sure what she wished for.

She went down to the village presently; supper would need to be augmented by a few extras. It was still raining and very windy as she went round the side of the house to the front drive. The doctor’s car was standing there: a Rolls-Royce in a discreet dark blue, and she stopped to admire it. Undoubtedly a successful man, their guest.

The doctor, watching her admire his car from the study window, admired her.

Mrs Binns, in the village shop, already knew as much about Dr Groves’s guest as Tilly. The village was very small but there were scattered farms all around it and, although many of the villagers went into nearby Haddenham to shop, Mrs Binns was still the acknowledged source of local gossip.

‘So ’e’s ’ere, Miss Matilda, and an ’andsome gent from what I hear.’ She sliced bacon briskly. ‘Nice bit of company for the doctor. Speaks English, does ’e?’

‘Very well, Mrs Binns. I’d better have some cheese…’

‘Mr Leslie coming this weekend?’

‘Yes. I hope it will stop raining.’

People were more interesting than the weather from Mrs Binns’s point of view. ‘He’ll be glad to get ’ome, I’ll be bound. Named the day yet, ’ave you, Miss Matilda?’

‘Well, no.’ Matilda sought for something harmless to say which Mrs Binns wouldn’t be able to construe into something quite different. ‘We’re both so busy,’ she said finally.

Which was true enough, but, when all was said and done, no reason for not getting engaged.

She started back up the lane and met Dr van Kempler. He said cheerfully, ‘Hello, I’ve come to carry your basket. Is there a longer way back or do you mind the rain?’

‘Not a bit. We can go down Penny Lane and round Rush Bottom. It’ll be muddy…’ She glanced down at her companion’s highly polished shoes.

‘They’ll clean,’ he assured her laconically. ‘What do you do in your spare time, Matilda?’

‘Walk, garden, play tennis in the summer. Go to Thame or Oxford to shop.’

‘Never to London to go to a play or have an evening out?’ He glanced at her from under heavy lids. ‘Your uncle mentioned your…fiancé, is he?’

‘Not yet. He is a barrister and he’d rather spend his weekends here than in London.’ She got over the stile to Rush Bottom. It was her turn to ask questions. ‘Are you married, Dr van Kempler?’

‘No, though I hope to be within the next months. Life is easier for a doctor if he has a wife.’

She was tempted to ask him if that was his reason for marrying, but she didn’t know him well enough and, although she thought he was friendly, she sensed that he could be quite the reverse if he were annoyed. He didn’t want to talk about himself; he began to talk about her work as practice nurse with her uncle. That lasted until they got back to the house.

She was in his company only briefly after that; there was the evening visit to Mrs Jenkins before she phoned the district nurse in Haddenham who would take over for the weekend. When she got back, Emma, normally so unflappable, was fussing over the supper. ‘Such a nice young man,’ she enthused. ‘I must do me best.’

‘You always do, Emma,’ Tilly assured her, and then, ‘He’s not all that young, you know.’ She paused over the egg custard she was beating gently over the pan of hot water. ‘All of thirty-five—older than that…’

‘In ’is prime,’ declared Emma.

Her uncle had no surgery in the morning. After breakfast he and his guest disappeared into his study, leaving Tilly free to clear the table, make the beds and tidy the house, having done which she got into her newest tweed skirt and quilted jacket, tied a scarf over her dark locks and walked through the village to the Manor.

Leslie always drove himself down late on Friday evening, too late to see her; besides, as he had pointed out so reasonably, he needed a good night’s sleep after his busy week in town. He would be waiting for her and they would decide where they would walk, and afterwards he would go with her to her uncle’s house, spend five minutes talking to him and then go home to his lunch. It was a routine which never varied and she had accepted it, just as she had accepted Sunday’s habitual visit to morning church and then drinks at the Manor afterwards. Sometimes she wished for a day driving with Leslie, just the two of them, but he had pointed out that his mother had come to depend on his weekly visits, so she had said nothing more.