Never the Time and the Place

Josephine had to admit that Mr van Tacx handled Mrs Prosser with a masterly touch; he examined her with a thoroughness which impressed even that lady, then treated her to a brief lecture, delivered in his deep faintly accented voice, ending it with a flattering observation on her fortitude and ability to cope with any future difficulties.

Josephine, who had decided that she didn’t like him, was forced to allow admiration for his handling of the difficult old lady. Leaving Mrs Prosser smirking amongst her pillows, she led the way to her office where Mr Bull waved away his retinue. He was in a good mood; coffee would take twice as long as usual, thought Josephine, which meant that she would be all behind with the paperwork. She was a calm tempered girl, and patient; she poured coffee for the three of them and sat down to drink hers at the desk while the two gentlemen disposed themselves—Mr Bull in a canvas chair in one corner of the small room, the Dutchman leaning against a radiator. There was no question of social conversation, of course. They plunged immediately into several knotty problems which had revealed themselves during the round, turning to her from time to time to verify some sticky point. It was when they got up to go at last that Mr van Tacx paused as they were going through the door.

‘I shall be seeing you presently, Sister Dowling, there are one or two points we might discuss. I hope we shall enjoy a pleasant relationship.’

Josephine gave him a thoughtful look. ‘I hope so, too, sir.’ She hadn’t much liked his silken tones. Rather childishly, she made a face at the closed door, said, ‘Pooh to you,’ and then drew a pile of reports towards her, only to be interrupted a moment later by the door being thrust open again to admit Mr van Tacx’s handsome head.

‘Shall we let bygones be bygones?’ he wanted to know, and smiled at her with such charm that just for the moment she liked him very much. Before she could answer him, he had gone again, leaving her with her feelings nicely muddled.

As she might have known, he was thoroughly discussed at midday dinner. Caroline and Mercy both pronounced him dreamy. ‘Such a lovely dark brown voice!’ enthused the latter. ‘And so good looking. Caroline, you’re a lucky devil, you’ll see him four times a week, besides the times he might stroll in for the odd cup of coffee.’

Caroline, a pretty girl with curly blonde hair and big baby blue eyes, smirked. ‘I know. What a bit of luck Jo’s out of the running—I wouldn’t stand a chance, nor would you.’

‘Speak for yourself.’ Mercy turned a gamin little face to Jo. ‘What do you say, Jo?’

‘Why, that he’s a man who knows his job—he’d have to or Mr Bull wouldn’t let him near his patients in the first place.’

‘You don’t like him?’

‘I don’t know him, so how can I tell?’ asked Jo reasonably. ‘Does anyone know anything about him?’

‘Not a thing. He’s Dutch, qualified here as well as in Holland, lives near Leiden, had a flourishing practice and likes lots of sugar in his coffee…’

Josephine turned thoughtful eyes on to her friend’s face. ‘Not bad, considering you only met him for the first time this morning.’

‘You wait a week, Jo. I must find out if he’s married or got a girl. Married, I should think—he’s not all that young, is he? Probably got a pack of children and a wife…’

‘Then why isn’t she with him? I mean, he’s in a service flat, one of those posh ones just behind Harrods, I heard old Chubb’—Chubb was the Senior Porter—‘telling one of the porters to take some luggage there.’

Several pairs of eyes were turned upon Mercy, who had volunteered this interesting information, and she smiled round the table. ‘What’s more, I heard him say that Mr van Tacx has friends in Wiltshire—Tisbury…’ She stopped short. ‘Jo, you live near there…’

Josephine took a mouthful of wholesome steamed pudding before she replied. ‘I’ve met him—when I was home, you know. He passed me in his car, going towards Tisbury, but he could have been making for several villages…’

‘How do you know it was him?’

‘He stopped.’ Jo treated the table to a calm stare. ‘It was very wet,’ she volunteered as though that was sufficient explanation.

‘Lord, what a chance—and it had to be you, Jo, safely settled with your Malcolm.’

It was a pity, mused Josephine on her way back to the ward, that for some reason which she couldn’t explain, she felt neither safe nor settled. It was a very good thing that Malcolm was calling for her that evening; he was a junior partner in a large practice on the fringe of Hampstead and it was his free evening. She hadn’t seen him for more than a week, which was perhaps why she had this strange feeling of uncertainty about the future. Perhaps she had got into a rut, staying on at St Michael’s after she had trained, thoroughly entrenched in her job and unlike some of her friends who had to help with family finances, quite comfortably off. Indeed, Malcolm had laughingly told her that she wouldn’t be able to indulge her taste for expensive clothes once they were married. ‘There’ll be plenty of money,’ he explained, ‘but I don’t believe in wasting it on fripperies—Mother makes a lot of her dresses, I’m sure she’ll give you a hand.’

Josephine shuddered at the thought; his mother’s clothes, clothing an extra outsize for a start, were as remote from fashion as the moon was from cheese. She was still frowning about it when she reached her office. Joan would be there with a tray of tea which they would share while they planned the rest of the day’s work and discussed the ill patients. Visitors were already waiting impatiently outside the swing doors and during the next hour there was very little to do other than check on the post-op cases. Young Student Nurses had all been given some chores to keep them busy until the bell was rung and they could do teas. Joan would have cast an eye where necessary. She sighed for no reason at all, and opened her office door.

CHAPTER TWO

MR VAN TACX was standing with his back to the door, looking out of the window at the view; the windowless wall bounding the theatre wing, separated from the gyny ward by a strip of grass supporting a plane tree. He turned round as Josephine went in so that his massive person shut out most of the daylight, and leaned against the window frame.

‘Do you ever look out of the window?’ he asked.

‘Only if I have to. Is there something you want, sir?’

‘I should like to go over the notes of the post operation cases…’

He paused as the door opened and Joan came in with the tea tray. She stopped short and said, ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you were here, sir.’

She glanced at Josephine. ‘Shall I get another cup, Sister?’

Josephine ignored his slow smile. ‘Why, yes, Staff, and stay will you? Mr van Tacx wants some notes—Mrs Shaw, Mrs Butterworth, Miss Price and Mrs King.’ She sat down at her desk and picked up some forms lying on it. ‘Mrs Butterworth’s Path Lab report’s back.’ She lifted her eyes to Mr van Tacx’s impassive face. ‘I daresay you took a look at it, sir.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he said to surprise her. ‘I should dislike it very much if you were to poke around my desk, and I rather fancy you would feel the same way.’ He smiled his charming smile again and she found herself smiling back.

‘Oh, that’s better,’ he said quietly as Joan came back with the tea cup. Josephine, who seldom blushed, found herself doing just that, too. But she poured the tea in her usual calm manner, laid the notes on the desk and offered her chair. He waved that aside, however, and went to sit on the radiator and sip his tea and read through the notes. Presently he held out his hand for the Path Lab report and studied that, too.

‘Radiotherapy, I think, don’t you, Sister? Let us get her on her feet first though, so that she feels she is making good progress. You keep your patients in for that?’

‘Usually, it depends on the patient…’

‘Yes, of course. And these other ladies…’ He passed his cup for more tea and began on the other notes. Josephine drank her own tea and watched him. She had to admit that he was very good looking but she wasn’t sure if she liked his faint air of arrogance. Accustomed to getting his own way, she decided, and probably quite nasty if he didn’t.

He looked up suddenly and returned her look with a long cool one of his own. He said quietly, ‘I think that we must get to know each other, Sister Dowling.’ And then he got up to go.

When they were alone, Joan said, ‘He’s nice, isn’t he? I don’t mean good looking and all that, he’s got every nurse in the place on her toes. I’m not sure what it is but if I were in a tight corner I’d shout for him…’

Josephine gave her Staff Nurse a surprised look. Joan Makepeace was one of the most level headed girls she had ever met, popular with nurses and the students and house-men alike, not particularly pretty but kind and hard working and while not lacking dates, she had made it plain that she had no intention of taking anyone seriously until she had achieved what she had set out to do; have a ward of her own. She admired Josephine. Indeed, her ambition was to be exactly like her, calm and serene and able to cope with any emergency which might arise. She knew that she had a chance of getting Josephine’s job when she left to marry, but genuinely regretted her going. She said carefully, ‘I haven’t thought about him, Joan…’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you would—I mean you’ve got Malcolm.’

Josephine, who hadn’t given Malcolm a thought for the best part of the day, agreed.

The period of quiet was over, there was still ten minutes to go before visiting time was over; Josephine went into the ward, cast a quick eye over the four operation cases, agreed to talk to their visitors presently and made her way slowly round the ward, to be stopped every few yards by relatives and friends. Some of their questions she couldn’t answer, they were better dealt with by one of the surgeons; she would have to get Mr Bull’s registrar, Matt Cummings to come up to the ward. But all the other questions she answered patiently and helpfully, knowing that to the people concerned they were important. Back in her office she phoned Matt and then, one by one, invited the anxious mothers and sisters and daughters to come and talk. There were never any husbands in the afternoon, they came in the evening, clutching flowers and things in paper bags and sometimes they rather shyly offered her a gift. Chocolates mostly, sometimes a bag of oranges or a melon and as Christmas approached, nuts. She accepted them with gratitude because it was nice that in the middle of what was to most men a domestic upheaval, they remembered the nurses.

Malcolm was waiting for her; she had got off duty rather later than usual and had hurried to change and make her way to the front entrance. He was standing by the entrance, reading an evening paper, and she paused, unseen as yet, to look at him. Not over tall, stoutly built, nice looking in a smug kind of way. It struck her forcibly that she couldn’t possibly marry him. In ten years time he would be satisfied with his life, following in his father’s footsteps, content to take over from him and probably when his father died, having his mother to live with them… He had never been keen on an evening out, she suspected. No, she knew now that once they were married, she would be expected to stay at home or at best visit his family. The enormity of it all shook her; she felt guilty and mean, but surely it was better to cry off now rather than go through with an unhappy marriage? And why, she asked herself miserably, should she suddenly be aware of these things? True she had had doubts from time to time but she had supposed that was natural enough in an engaged woman, but now it wasn’t doubts, it was dreadful certainty.

She walked on again and he looked up and saw her. His, ‘Hullo old girl,’ did nothing to reassure her, nor did the perfunctory kiss he dropped on her cheek, but she struggled to respond to it, feeling guiltier than ever so that she responded rather more warmly than usual and he drew back with a ‘Hey—what’s got into you, Jo?’ And when she just shook her head, ‘Had a busy day, no doubt—well, we’ll go to a cafe and have a meal. That’ll set you on your feet again.’

She longed to tell him that a cafe wouldn’t help in the least; champagne and an exotic dinner at some fashionable restaurant might have helped, but she doubted that even. She said urgently, ‘Malcolm, could we go somewhere quiet where we can talk?’

‘Quiet? Why do we want to be quiet?’ He was ushering her into his car as he spoke. He added rather irritably, ‘I’m not made of money, you know…’

A rather unfair remark, she decided, sitting silent beside him.

The restaurant was fairly full and noisy. They found a table for two and he said as they sat down, ‘Steak for you?’ And when she said that no she would have a poached egg on toast, he observed shortly, ‘Whatever is the matter with you, Jo? I always order a steak for you…’

She said lamely, ‘I’m not hungry, Malcolm,’ and then trying hard to recapture something she knew was lost for ever, ‘Have you had a busy day?’

‘Oh, God, yes. I’ll be glad to be shot of the Hampstead practice, there’ll be just enough to keep me busy with Father, there’s nothing like a country practice—one knows everyone in the district, a settled routine…’

‘Is that what you want, Malcolm? Don’t you want to—to stretch your wings? Use your knowledge?’