The Course of True Love

‘’E deserves it. ’E must be sick ter death of other people’s bones.’ Mrs Snow cringed away from Claribel’s gentle fingers. ‘Ow, that ’urts. Is ’e nice, the new man?’

‘I’m sure he will be very good at his job,’ said Claribel sedately. ‘Now, Mrs Snow, let me see you lift that arm.’

The day wore on with its unending stream of patients. By five o’clock Claribel was bone-weary. Not that she minded; she liked her work and it was satisfying to see arms and legs returned to normal. Of course there was a hard core of elderlies with arthritis who were more or less permanently on the books, but they still benefited, even if they made little progress.

There was a general rush to go home once the last patient had gone, and a good deal of cheerful chatter since it was Friday and the department closed down until Monday morning. They left in a cheerful bunch, pausing to say goodbye to Miss Flute as she got into her Mini and then streaming across the hospital forecourt, intent on getting their various buses. Claribel, intent on getting home for the weekend, raced away to the nearest bus-stop, her mind already dwelling happily on the peace and quiet of her parents’ home in Wiltshire, so that she failed to see Mr van Borsele’s Rolls at the entrance, waiting to join the rush of traffic in the street. She had in fact forgotten all about him.

She went home once a month, an undertaking which called for a strict routine the moment she got into her flat. Shower and change, feed the cats, stow them in their travelling basket, snatch up her already packed weekend bag and get a taxi, not always easy, especially in her unfashionable corner of London. Waterloo station wasn’t all that distance away, but too far to walk with the cats and her bag, and this evening she was later than usual.

She reached the end of Meadow Road and not a taxi in sight, although there was more chance of one in Stamford Street. She paused on the corner by the few rather tatty shops and looked hopefully in either direction. Traffic streamed past but every taxi was occupied; she would have to try for a bus if one came along, although the nearest stop to the station was several minutes away from the station itself.

She didn’t see the Rolls, going the other way, slow, do a U-turn and slide to a halt beside her.

‘Get in quickly,’ begged Mr van Borsele, ‘I’m breaking any number of regulations.’ He had nipped out smartly, taken the basket from her and put it on the back seat, and hurried her round the car into the seat beside his. ‘Where to?’

Claribel caught her breath. ‘Waterloo Station. My goodness, you do pop up in unexpected places, don’t you?’ She added quickly, like a small girl who had forgotten her manners, ‘Thank you very much. I haven’t much time to catch my train.’

Mr van Borsele grunted and joined the steady stream of traffic, weaving in and out of slower vehicles in a rather unnerving fashion.

‘You’re going very fast,’ Claribel pointed out severely.

He said irritably, ‘I was under the impression that you wished to catch a train, or was that just an excuse to get a lift?’

Claribel drew such a deep breath she almost exploded.

‘Well, of all the nerve…’ She remembered suddenly to whom she was speaking; one showed a proper respect towards consultant surgeons. ‘You stopped the car and told me to get in.’

‘Indeed I did. I don’t remember inviting you to criticise my driving.’

She gave his unfriendly profile an almost motherly look. He was touchy; had a tiff with his girlfriend, perhaps. With a brother only a few years younger than herself she was familiar with the sudden snappish reply.

She said reasonably, ‘I’m not criticising you at all, Mr van Borsele—I’m very grateful to you.’

He grunted again. Hardly a sparkling conversationalist, she reflected, and prepared to get out as he pulled in at the station’s main entrance. She still had almost ten minutes but there would be a queue for tickets. She had a hand on the door handle when he said, ‘Wait,’ and got out and opened the door, retrieving the cats and her bag from the back of the car and strode into the station. Outside the vast ticket office he asked, ‘Where to?’

‘Oh, Tisbury.’ She put out a hand for the basket and her bag and found she was holding them both and watching his vast back disappearing into the queue. Her protesting, ‘Mr van Borsele,’ fell on deaf ears.

He was back within five minutes, which left three minutes to get on to the train. He took the cats and her bag from her, bustled her past the platform gate, found her an empty seat opposite two respectable matrons, put the cats on the floor beside her with her bag on the rack, wished her a coldly polite goodbye and had gone while she was on the point of thanking him yet again. She remembered then that he had paid for her ticket and she had forgotten to repay him. What must he think of her? She went pink at the thought and the matrons eyed her with interest, no doubt scenting romance.

She would have to pay him when she got back on Monday; better still, she could put the money in the consultant’s letter rack with a polite note. Not that he deserved any politeness. Not a man to do things by halves, she mused as the train gathered speed between the rows of smoke-grimed houses; she had been handled as efficiently as an express parcel. And with about as much interest.

She occupied the train journey composing cool observations to Mr van Borsele when next they met, calculated to take him down a peg.

Less than two hours later she was on the platform at Tisbury station being hugged by her father and then hurried to the family car, an elderly estate car in constant use, for he was a solicitor of no mean repute and much in demand around the outlying farms and small estates. Enoch and Toots were settled in the back with Rover, the family labrador, and Mr Brown, without loss of time, drove home.

His family had lived in the same house for some considerable time. It was a typical dwelling of the district: mellowed red brick, an ancient slate roof and plenty of ground round it. A roomy place, with a stable converted to a garage and a couple of rather tumbledown sheds to one side, it stood a mile outside the little town, its garden well tended. It had never had a name but was known locally as Brown’s place.

Its owner shot up the short drive and Claribel jumped out to fling open the door and hurry inside, leaving her father to bring in the animals. Mrs Brown came out of the kitchen as she went in; a smaller version of Claribel, her fair hair thickly silvered but with a still pretty face.

Mother and daughter embraced happily and Claribel said: ‘Oh, it’s marvellous to be home again. What’s for supper?’

‘My potato soup, shepherd’s pie and upside-down pineapple pudding.’ She eyed her daughter. ‘Been working hard, darling? We’ll have a glass of sherry, shall we? Here’s your father.’

Enoch and Toots were used to their weekend trips; they ate the food put ready for them and sat themselves down before the Aga while Rover settled close by and Claribel and her parents sat at the kitchen table drinking their sherry and catching up on the news.

‘Sebastian has a new girlfriend,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘She’s a nurse, not finished her training yet. He brought her down for the weekend—we like her, but of course he’s young yet…’

‘He’s been qualified for a year, Mother.’

‘Yes, dear, I know, but he seems so much younger than you.’

‘Well, he is—three years, almost.’

There was a small silence. Claribel had had her share of young men but she had never been serious with any one of them; her mother, without saying a word, nevertheless allowed her anxiety to show. Her beautiful daughter was twenty-eight years old and it was inconceivable that she wouldn’t marry. Each time Claribel went home, her mother contrived to bring the talk round to the young men she had met and always Claribel disappointed her.

To change the trend of her parent’s obvious thoughts, Claribel said cheerfully, ‘I almost missed the train. Luckily the orthopaedic man who is standing in for Mr Shutter happened to drive past and gave me a lift.’

‘Nice?’ asked her mother hopefully.

‘No. Very terse and rude. He’s Dutch.’

‘What does he… Is he nice-looking?’ asked Mrs Brown.

‘Very. In an arrogant sort of way.’

‘I don’t see that his looks matter as long as he got Claribel to the station. Very civil of him,’ observed her father.

He hadn’t been civil, but Claribel let that pass. She finished her sherry and they went across the stone-flagged hallway to the dining-room, handsomely furnished in a shabby way with massive pieces inherited from her mother’s family. The talk was all of local events while they ate and when they had washed up and had coffee, Claribel took herself off to bed; it had been a long day, rather more tiring than usual.

‘I wonder what that Dutchman’s like?’ mused her mother over her knitting.

Mr Brown had a good book. ‘I don’t see that it matters; Claribel doesn’t like him.’

Mrs Brown did a row in silence. ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘She hadn’t a good word to say for him—a good sign.’

Her husband sighed. ‘Mr dear, how you do run on. Besides, he’s a consultant. Presumably hardly likely to take up with a physiotherapist.’

‘Claribel is beautiful,’ said her mother simply, as though that put an end to the argument.

The weekend went too fast; it always did. Claribel biked into Tisbury in the morning on various errands for her mother and to waste a good deal of time chatting with various friends she met there. In the afternoon she and her father took Rover for a walk along the bridle paths, which were short cuts leading to the villages around the little town. The weather had improved but it was wet underfoot. Claribel, in wellies, an old tweed skirt and an even older quilted jacket, had tied a scarf round her golden hair and borrowed her mother’s woolly gloves. They got back for tea glowing with fresh air.

Sunday morning was taken up with church and leisurely chats after the service. Claribel had a lot of friends, most of them married now, and several with weddings in the offing. She was to be a bridesmaid at two of them and wandered off into the churchyard with the brides-to-be, to sit on a handy tombstone and discuss clothes.

The day wasn’t too long enough. She collected Enoch and Toots, packed her bag and in the early evening was driven to Tisbury once more, very much inclined to agree with her mother’s remark that it was a pity that she couldn’t stay at home. But there was no hospital nearer than Salisbury and no vacancies there. Besides, she had to stand on her own two feet and make her own life. She might not marry; she had had chances enough but none of them had been right for her. She wasn’t sure what kind of man she wanted for a husband but she supposed that she would know when she met him.

Meadow Road looked more dingy than ever as the taxi drove down it, and her little semi-basement seemed unbearably small and dark even with all the lights on. She made tea, fed the cats and turned on the gas fire. She always felt like this when she came back after a weekend at home; in a day or two she would settle down.

She got out paper and envelopes, and wrote a stiff little note to Mr van Borsele, enclosing a cheque for her railway fare. In the morning she would take it to the lodge and ask a porter to put it in the pigeonholes reserved for the consultants and that would be the end of that.