Esmeralda

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that there was no need, that she could easily afford to pay him herself; that it had not, in fact, once entered her head, but something stopped her. She didn’t think that he knew about her inheritance, for he had had no way of discovering it, and she wanted him most desperately to like her, for herself and no other reason—and if he did know, she would never be sure if it had been her money… His smile became tender, so that the doubts she had been harbouring melted away. All the same, she decided then and there to allow the Dutch surgeon to examine her foot. If Leslie liked her enough to take her out and not mind her awkward limp, surely if her foot were to be put right…? Esmeralda left the question unanswered.

CHAPTER TWO

ESMERALDA was doing the medicine round the next morning when Sister Richards sailed down the ward to her. ‘It comes to something,’ she complained crossly, ‘when I’m forced to do my staff nurse’s work while she dallies round with the surgeons—a foreigner, too.’ She made it sound as though the visitor had horns and a forked tail. ‘And you’d better not keep him waiting,’ she added unexpectedly, ‘he’s one of those quiet men who explode when you least expect it.’

Esmeralda murmured suitably and hurried away, not caring about the limp for once. She didn’t think that Mr Bamstra would explode, but as she hadn’t had much experience of men, she couldn’t be sure. She hurried on her own account; she had spent a wakeful night interspersed by dreams of a smitten Leslie completely won over, for as in dreams, not only had she two marvellous feet like everyone else, she had become quite beautiful too… She tried to clear her head of these ridiculous ideas as she went. Mr Bamstra wouldn’t want to waste his time, he would expect clear answers to his questions, and somehow she must find the opportunity to ask him about fees.

Mr Bamstra was leaning his enormous bulk against Sister’s desk, studying the off-duty book. He looked up as she went in, said ‘Hullo,’ in a friendly voice and then: ‘What inconvenient off-duty you have!’

It wasn’t at all what she had expected. ‘Well, yes,’ she said because she could think of nothing else on the spur of the moment.

He put the book down and studied her with a detached air. ‘Have you decided to let me have a go?’ he asked her placidly.

‘Well, yes.’

‘Good,’ his voice was casual, ‘I take it you have talked it over with someone or other—your parents?’

‘Well…’

‘Yes?’ He smiled as he spoke and Esmeralda chuckled. ‘I was going to say no,’ she told him forthrightly. ‘You see, Father’s dead, and Mother has spent years trying to get my foot seen to—I thought I’d like to have it all arranged before I told her—she’ll be wild with delight.’ She added: ‘And so shall I.’

‘Ah—there is a young man, perhaps?’

She said seriously: ‘Yes, at least I hope—I think so. He doesn’t seem to mind that I’m a cripple, but it would be so much nicer…only he’s not very keen on you doing it.’

Mr Bamstra studied the nails of his well-kept hands. ‘He doesn’t approve of surgeons?’ His gentle voice would have coaxed words from a stone.

She spoke without thinking. ‘Oh, but he’s a surgeon himself. You met him yesterday—Leslie Chapman.’

Mr Bamstra, finding nothing wrong with his nails, transferred his attention to his well-polished shoes. ‘Ah—I am a foreigner,’ he declared mildly. ‘He thinks I wouldn’t be competent.’

Esmeralda was standing in front of him, her hands clasped in front of her neat waist. ‘He says you’ll charge enormous fees—that you are after my money…’

He threw back his great head and roared with laughter. ‘And is that what you think too, young lady?’

She eyed him impatiently. ‘Of course not! You’re a successful surgeon—I expect your fees are huge, but I don’t suppose you need the money.’ She added reluctantly: ‘Anyway, I can afford to pay them. Leslie doesn’t know that, though.’

Mr Bamstra made a small sound which he turned into a cough. ‘I—er—thought a nominal fee would be in order. After all, the operation is still in its experimental stages—I daresay we might come to some agreement about that; besides, we have a National Health Service in Holland, too.’ He got up from the desk and strolled over to the window. ‘Take off your stockings or tights, or whatever it is you wear, and let me see your foot.’

He examined the poor squashed thing with gentle hands, and when he had finished said, more to himself than to her: ‘The middle metatarsals are flattened and fused, the last two pushed up and out of alignment—they’ll need to be broken down, reset, and those two chisseled back into some sort of shape.’ He set her foot gently on to the floor again. ‘Why on earth didn’t someone do something when it happened?’

‘Well, I was only three, and Mother called in our doctor at once. He had it X-rayed at the local hospital and he felt sure that as the bones were still growing, they would right themselves. I—I was put to bed for a couple of weeks and then encouraged to walk. I had physiotherapy too.’

‘Indeed?’ The surgeon’s face was inscrutable. ‘And it got steadily worse?’

‘Not straight away—it hurt for quite a while, just an ache, you know, and then it stopped hurting and I began to limp. Mother and Father took me to any number of specialists, and they all said that after so many years there was really nothing to be done.’

He nodded his head and took out a notebook and scrawled something in it. ‘I’ll see your matron—no, Principal Nursing Officer now, isn’t it? I feel sure that something can be arranged—would you be prepared for whatever is suggested?’

Esmeralda said eagerly: ‘Of course,’ and felt quite disappointed when he walked to the door.

‘I’ll arrange for an X-ray,’ he told her in such a vague voice that she felt sure that he was thinking about something else. As he went through the door: ‘I’ll keep in touch.’

Which could mean anything, and so often were words uttered by someone who was opting out… She went back to her medicine trolley wondering when she would see him again. If he was a very important man, and he seemed to be, although he had given no hint of that, it would probably be months before she heard. She thanked Sister Richards, fighting a disappointment that was so strong that the muddled state of her usually spick and span trolley caused her to do no more than sigh perfunctorily.

She had put away her medicines and embarked on the daily dressings when Sister Richards stalked up the ward once more.

‘X-Ray,’ she said in tones of umbrage. ‘You’re to go at once, Staff Nurse.’ And then in quite a different voice, letting Esmeralda see the motherliness which only her little patients knew about: ‘What’s the matter, child? Is that foot of yours being a nuisance?’

‘I was going to tell while we had coffee,’ Esmeralda told her breathlessly, and poured it all out in an excited spate of words.

‘H’m—well, there’s no knowing what that foreign man can do, I suppose—the children like him, so I suppose there’s some good in him.’ She reverted to her usual brisk manner: ‘Go along, Staff Nurse, you’re keeping them waiting.’

It was a pity that when Esmeralda returned to the ward it was to find that Leslie had paid his morning visit and had gone again, now it wasn’t likely that she would see him again that day. He had said nothing about seeing her again; nothing certain—although he had hinted that he hoped that their evening out would be one of many, and though he hadn’t kissed her, he had held her hand for quite a long time. Esmeralda, who was old-fashioned and way behind the times in such matters, thought that that constituted quite a step forward. She spent the rest of the day in a rather dreamlike state, wondering about Leslie’s real feelings towards her. She wondered about her feelings towards him too, for somewhere at the back of her mind was an uncertainty that the whole thing might be moonshine: she wasn’t such a fool that she didn’t realize that his interest in her might be fleeting and casual.

But something happened to change that; she was going off duty, her limp rather more pronounced than usual because she was tired, when Leslie caught up with her as she crossed the inner courtyard.

‘So you’ve been X-rayed,’ he remarked in an interested voice, and when she asked in surprise how he knew that: ‘I was down there an hour ago, looking at Benny’s last lot of X-rays, and I happened to see the report on yours. They’re in a mighty hurry, aren’t they? Getting the report out within a few hours—what’s the haste?’

‘I don’t know, unless Mr Bamstra asked them to be quick with it.’ She glanced at her companion’s face, but it looked unconcerned.

‘You’ll tell everyone, of course?’ he wanted to know. They had reached the Nurses’ Home. ‘Oh, yes—and it’s my weekend, so I can go home.’

He smiled charmingly at her. ‘Would it be an awful nerve if I offered to drive you? It’s my weekend too.’ He added softly: ‘And I’m very anxious to know more about it and that you should do the right thing, Esmeralda.’

She stared up at him, trying to read his face. She asked bluntly: ‘Would you be glad if my foot could be put right?’ She took a deep breath. ‘Why?’

‘My dear girl, do I have to dot the I’s and cross the T’s? Of course I would be glad, although you are quite delightful as you are—still, if you’ve set your heart on it…’ The smile came again. ‘I must admit that a doctor’s wife who can dance and play tennis and generally keep her social end up is a great asset.’

‘Oh,’ said Esmeralda, and then again: ‘Oh—well, it would be very nice if you drove me home. You’d stay the night, wouldn’t you?’

He masked triumph with another delightful smile. ‘I’d like to very much—wouldn’t it be inconvenient for your people, though?’

‘Mother won’t mind, and there’s plenty of room— I’ll telephone her tomorrow.’

He caught her hand briefly and gave it a squeeze, and then because a small party of nurses had almost reached them, said a brief goodbye and strode away. Esmeralda, joining her companions, spent the evening in a dream, from which she was impatiently roused by her friends from time to time. ‘Anyone would think that you were in love,’ declared Pat Sims, the staff nurse on the Medical side and one of her closest friends. Esmeralda longed to say ‘I am’ and dumbfound them all, but she held her tongue.

They drove down to the New Forest on the Friday evening—it had been a hot, sunny day and now the warmth was tempered by a small breeze. Esmeralda, in a cool cotton dress, sat contentedly beside Leslie, hardly noticing his impatient driving, her thoughts already far ahead of her, wondering if her mother and Nanny would like him, and what he would think of her home. Once through the worst of the traffic, however, Leslie relaxed a little and laid himself out to entertain her, and the journey passed quickly enough, although she thought secretly that he drove a good deal too fast, and felt relieved when they turned off the A35 on to the open road which would lead them to Burley. It was still light, but the sky had paled and the road ribboned between rolling heath and patches of forest, fading into twilight ahead.

‘There are ponies,’ she warned him. ‘They roam everywhere.’

‘I know that,’ he began impatiently, and then gave an apologetic laugh. ‘Sorry, I must be getting tired—that was quite a list we had this morning.’

Esmeralda was instantly sympathetic. ‘And Mr Peters goes like the wind, doesn’t he?’

Leslie grunted. ‘That Dutchman was there—scrubbed too…showing off…’

She heard the malice in his voice. ‘You don’t like him.’ She started and realized at that moment that she did.