Heidelberg Wedding

‘None, sir, and she refused to say a word to anyone about it.’

He grunted deeply to himself, and when they reached the girl’s bed, spent ten minutes there, joined by Harry, who had been warned that his chief was on the ward. Eugenia stood impassively while they examined Barbara, doing everything expected of her with a minimum of fuss. At length Mr Grenfell drew himself up to his great height. ‘I think we’re out of the wood.’ He took Barbara’s hand in his and smiled kindly at her. ‘You’re going to be all right, my dear, although you won’t feel quite yourself for another few days. I’ll see you again in a day or so, and Mr Parker will look after you, together with Sister.’

He turned away with Harry and at the ward door bade Eugenia a polite good morning in a remote manner, leaving her standing there with very mixed feelings. He had behaved in a most high-handed manner, tearing up her diet sheet in that fashion—and what was more vexing, she had had no chance to so much as protest. Truth to tell, he had seemed so different from his usual self that she hadn’t quite known how to take him. Until now she had never taken a lot of notice of him; she had admired him as a surgeon, agreed with everything everyone said about his good looks, even felt a little sorry for him because he seemed, in her eyes, to be marrying the wrong kind of girl, but she had very seldom thought of him as anyone else but a surgeon for whom she worked. Indeed, she could hardly remember an occasion when he had discussed anything else with her but the condition of his patients. She found it vaguely unsettling.

It was a good thing that she didn’t see Humphrey that day, for she hadn’t made up her mind what to say to him; he was going to be put out, even angry, although he was never actually bad-tempered with her. All the same she shied away from having to tell him. And she still had to let him know that she wouldn’t be free on Friday afternoon.

They met the next morning when she was on her way to X-ray and he was coming down from the Medical Wing. He said at once: ‘How’s the diet?’ and smiled in a satisfied way.

‘Well,’ began Eugenia guiltily, ‘I haven’t started it yet, in fact I’m not going to—Mr Grenfell says…’

‘What the hell has Grenfell got to do with it?’ demanded Humphrey so sharply that she stared at him.

‘I’ll explain,’ she said, and did so, making light of the whole thing.

‘He had the nerve to tear my diet sheet up?’ Humphrey usually so pleasant, looked like thunder, and she said smoothly:

‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Such a little thing to fuss over…’

‘I never fuss,’ he reminded her coldly, ‘and it’s not a little thing—’ He looked her magnificent person up and down. ‘If you chose you could be as slim as that lovely girl he was dancing with.’

Eugenia caught her breath. Humphrey had never spoken to her like that before; even if he didn’t mean it, and she was sure that he didn’t, it hurt. At the same time it hardened her resolve to stick to her guns. She said quietly: ‘Don’t be silly, Humphrey. If you don’t love me as I am, you know what to do.’

She turned on her heel and marched off down the corridor.

She was far too busy to give it another thought that day. An elderly woman with multiple chest injuries after a road accident came in before lunch, and needed to be got ready for an emergency operation, and when Mr Grenfell came to examine her, he was wholly concerned with his patient, and so for that matter was Eugenia. And there was a bewildered elderly husband to deal gently with. He drank cup after cup of tea, quite unable to take it all in. ‘She was only popping down the road for the groceries,’ he told Eugenia. ‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’

Eugenia comforted him and offered him a bed for the night, and phoned sons and daughters who ought to be told. ‘If anyone can get her well, it’ll be Mr Grenfell,’ she assured him, and meant it.

The woman came back from theatre just before supper and Eugenia stayed for a while until the night nurses had got the other patients settled. By the time she got off duty it was too late to meet Humphrey; perhaps that was as well, she mused, going soft-footed through the Hospital towards the nurses’ home; they’d be able to laugh together about the whole thing in the morning. She was in bed, half asleep, when she remembered that she had never told him that she wouldn’t be free on the following afternoon.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS dinner time before Eugenia remembered with horror that she hadn’t told Humphrey she wouldn’t be off duty until the evening. She was halfway through her milk pudding when the thought struck her, and she leapt up from the table, to the surprise of her companions.

‘I’ve just remembered,’ she gabbled, and tore off to the porter’s lodge, where she got old Belling to ring the Residents’ flat. Humphrey’s ‘Yes?’ was terse, and then: ‘Oh, it’s you— I’ll be ready in half an hour.’

‘Not me—I won’t, Mr Grenfell’s doing a teaching round and wants me on the ward…’

‘At such short notice? I never…’

‘It’s my fault,’ said Eugenia meekly. ‘I forgot to tell you—he asked me a couple of days ago. You know he always insists on the Ward Sister being there when he’s got students.’

‘You forgot to tell me,’ observed Humphrey nastily. ‘Have I become so unimportant to you? First you ignore my special wishes for you to diet and now you ruin my half day!’ Before she could speak, he added: ‘I shall go home to Mother.’

It was quite unforgivable of Eugenia to giggle; the sound of the phone slammed down in her ear made her realise that. She went back to the ward, feeling guilty, incredibly mean, and at the same time vexed. Humphrey need not have been quite so cross about it—after all, it wasn’t as if they were going to do anything special. Perhaps, she reflected, if they bought something from time to time, it would make their window-shopping more interesting. Her own nest-egg was piling up slowly in the bank, and she had no doubt that his was as well, but there was such a thing as inflation. By the time they actually married, probably they wouldn’t be able to afford the things that he was so anxious that they should have.

Mr Grenfell, with a number of students trailing behind him, arrived, as usual exactly on time, and for the next hour or so she had no thought for anything but her work. Barbara was doing well now, so was Mrs Dunn, and so for that matter was the elderly lady with the chest injuries. He spent a long time with each of them, asking courteous questions of them and waiting, equally courteously, for the students to make observations. There was the usual know-all ready to answer everyone else’s questions as well as his own, the usual slow thinker, who, given enough time, came up with the right answer and would probably in the course of time make an excellent surgeon. There were two women students today; both young and pretty and, Eugenia suspected, more interested in Mr Grenfell than the patients. He was good at getting the best out of them though, disregarding the know-all unless it was his turn, waiting patiently for the slower ones to give their answers, ignoring the two girls fluttering their eyelashes.

Eugenia, at her most professional, with Nurse Sims to back her up, took down dressings, sat patients up and laid them down again, whipped back bedclothes, adjusted drains and handed notes at the exact minute they were required, and doing all these things with a calm friendliness towards the patient so that the alarming sight of half a dozen strange people staring at the bed’s occupant was tolerable after all. Unfortunately it was quite late by the time the round was over. She offered tea, but Mr Grenfell refused politely, dismissing his students with the observation that there were one or two notes he wanted to write. Eugenia led him to the office, handed over the charts he required and beat a retreat. As she reached the door he said quietly: ‘You enjoyed yourself the other evening, Sister?’

She opened the door a little way, having no wish to discuss it with him. ‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

‘But you didn’t stay long?’

‘Well, no. Humphrey had a busy day ahead of him.’ She thought as she said it that Mr Grenfell had had a busy day ahead of him too, but he had been dancing with every sign of enjoyment when they left.

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said Mr Grenfell smoothly. ‘You were celebrating? Your birthday, perhaps?’

‘Not mine—his.’

She spoke sharply because he was looking at her unsmilingly, although she had the uneasy feeling that he was finding something amusing.

‘Two safely engaged people, aren’t we, Sister?’ He sounded thoughtful. ‘There is, of course, many a slip between the cup and the lip.’

‘We’ve been engaged for eighteen months, sir.’ She said it coldly.

‘Indeed?’ Just as though he didn’t know. ‘So you’ll be marrying very soon?’

‘In two years’ time.’

‘A long time to wait?’ He raised his eyebrows.

‘Humphrey—that is we, want everything bought and paid for before we marry.’

Mr Grenfell drew a large cat with handsome whiskers on her blotting pad. ‘You do? Now that’s something I can’t understand.’

‘I don’t suppose you can,’ said Eugenia tartly. ‘I daresay you have everything you could possibly need and are able to get married when you like.’

‘Oh, indeed, yes.’ He was quite unruffled by her crossness. ‘But that doesn’t mean to say that I shall.’ He added a yachting cap and wellington boots to the cat, admired his handiwork and added a cigar. He looked up to smile at her. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your work, Sister.’

Eugenia flounced out of the office, rather pink in the cheeks. Mr Grenfell was excessively tiresome at times!

Somehow she didn’t see Humphrey during the next day or two, she was off duty on the evening before her days off, and before she left the hospital she went along to the porter’s lodge and asked to see him if he was available. It seemed that he wasn’t; so she left a message, picked up her overnight bag and went to catch her bus. It was a pity she couldn’t have seen him; occasionally he sulked, but she had always been able to get round him; she wasn’t unduly worried, she had no doubt that when she got back to St Clare’s everything would be smoothed over.

It was marvellous being home again. She was welcomed boisterously by the twins, invited to cook supper, and gently greeted with affection by her father. ‘It seems a long time since you were home,’ he commented vaguely.

‘About ten days ago, Father. I quite often have to change my free days. And we’ve been busy.’ She kissed the top of his head. ‘Found any more books lately?’

Supper was delayed while he told her about a splendid copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost which he had unearthed in some small, out-of-the-way bookshop.

Eugenia helped the twins with their homework after supper and then sat with her father in the cosy, shabby sitting room, discussing their future and ways and means; they were clever, the pair of them, bound to go to university, and the money would have to be found somehow. Even with grants there would be expenses. Eugenia said thoughtfully: ‘Well, Father, Humphrey doesn’t want to get married for at least two years; there’s no reason why I shouldn’t use some of the money I’ve saved to help out.’

Her father shook his head. ‘My dear, Humphrey depends on those savings, I daresay.’

‘Oh, he does, but we can wait another year—we shall have waited so long by then that I can’t see that it will matter if there is a little delay.’

‘It’ll matter very much. It’s not my business, Eugenia, but I can’t agree with his ideas at all. You’re both young and he has a good job—you could be quite happy in a small flat for a year or two. You could even go on working for a time.’