An Apple from Eve

Back on the main landing again, the doctor spoke. ‘Two bathrooms, you said?’

It sounded quite inadequate in a house of that size. ‘There’s a shower in the bathroom at the front of the house,’ offered Euphemia, unaware how anxious her voice sounded.

He agreed smoothly. ‘You have no objection to me having another shower put in—there’s a small dressing room adjoining this room…’ He strode across and opened a door and when she followed meekly: ‘At my expense, of course.’

‘If you want one,’ she conceded. Why a man living alone should need two bathrooms and two showers was beyond her, even if this fiancée of his came visiting, unless she was the kind of girl who brought Mum with her…she very nearly giggled and he threw her an enquiring glance. ‘You are amused?’ he wanted to know.

‘No, no, of course not. Is there anywhere else you would like to go? Then perhaps you would like a cup of tea?’

‘Thank you, that would be welcome. I’ll get in touch with my solicitor tomorrow and you will be hearing from yours shortly. I should like to move in within the next ten days.’

Euphemia’s mind boggled at the amount of packing up to be done in that time. She would have to get Ellen to help her and perhaps Mrs Cross, and as though he had read her thoughts: ‘May I suggest that your—er—personal possessions should be stored in one of the bedrooms—it will give you a great deal less work. I should be obliged if the morning room could be cleared so that my secretary will have a room in which to work.’

‘Yes, of course. Will she live here too?’

His tone withered her. ‘What a singularly stupid question, Miss Blackstock!’

She pinkened. ‘Yes, it was,’ she agreed cheerfully. ‘So sorry, I forgot that you’re engaged.’

‘And that is equally stupid.’

‘Ah, now there you’re wrong,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘If I were going to marry you I’d take grave exception to a secretary living in the house with you.’

‘God forbid!’ He gave her a nasty mocking smile. ‘That you were going to marry me.’

Euphemia’s tawny eyes shone with rage. ‘And I’ll say amen to that,’ she told him sweetly. ‘Shall we go downstairs? If you will go into the drawing-room I’ll bring in the tea.’

She sailed into the kitchen, put the kettle on and warmed the teapot. The tea tray looked very nice—paper-thin china, the silver spoons, silver hot water jug and sugar bowl, the little cakes piled appetisingly on to Sèvres china. Euphemia bounced to the table and took one and bit into it. ‘And I hope they choke him!’ she declared in a loud cross voice.

‘In which case he won’t be able to rent the house, will he?’ enquired the doctor’s gentle voice. He was standing just inside the door, not smiling, although she had the impression that he was deeply amused about something. ‘I came to see if I could carry the tray…’

‘How kind—it’s this one.’ She ladled the tea into he pot without looking at him, and made the tea. When she looked round he had gone again with the tray.

She would have to apologise, she supposed, but in this she was frustrated, for each time she opened her mouth to do so, her companion made some remark which required a proper answer. It wasn’t long before she realised that he was doing it deliberately, keeping the conversation strictly businesslike, asking her about local tradespeople and then getting up to leave once he’d got all the answers. She accompanied him to the door and wished him a polite goodbye.

‘The little cakes were delicious,’ he told her. ‘Far too light to choke upon. Good day to you, Miss Blackstock.’

Euphemia stood in the open doorway, staring after him as he climbed into his Bentley and drove away. Part of her mind registered the fact that he did this with a calm skill and careless ease, just as though he were mounting a bicycle. ‘Oh, blow the man!’ she said under her breath, and went in to clear the tea things.

Later that evening she telephoned Aunt Thea and told her the news, and that lady, a woman of good sense, agreed that it was a splendid solution to rent the house and did Euphemia want Ellen there to help pack up?

‘That’s the doctor who came to see Father,’ said Ellen unnecessarily into the phone presently. ‘Then he must be a nice man.’

‘Why?’ asked Euphemia baldly.

‘Well, to like our house enough to want to live in it.’

A viewpoint Euphemia hadn’t considered. ‘He’s taking it for a year.’ She told her sister, ‘He wants to come in ten days’ time. Aunt Thea suggested that you might come up and help pack up our things, but there’s no need. I’ll get Mrs Cross and we can put everything in one of the bedrooms and lock the door.’

‘Oh, you mustn’t do that!’ Ellen sounded quite horrified. ‘It looks as if you don’t trust him.’

‘Rubbish,’ declared Euphemia, rather struck with the idea all the same. ‘I’m sure it’s the usual thing to do.’

‘Oh, well—’ Ellen sounded uncertain. ‘We wouldn’t want to upset him.’

‘Nothing would upset him,’ said Euphemia snappily, so that Ellen said instantly:

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to help pack up?’

‘No, love—I’ll start tomorrow and finish on my days off next week. Are you happy, Ellen?’

‘Aunt Thea is a dear, it’s funny being here after—after home and Father, but I’m happy, Phemie, really I am. Are you all right?’

‘Yes, love. I’ll telephone in a day or two.’

Euphemia spent the whole of the next day collecting up the small personal possessions of them all and it was only half done by the time she left that evening, even so the house didn’t look the same without the clutter of tennis racquets and cricket bats and Ellen’s collection of paperweights, and the pot plants she had tended so carefully. Euphemia moved them all into the greenhouse because she didn’t think that the doctor would care to have the task of watering them regularly—she must remember to ask Mrs Cross to do something about that.

The ward was busy when she got back to the hospital, too busy for her to indulge in her own private thoughts, and her free time was almost entirely taken up with visits to Mr Fish and the house agents. They were all entirely satisfactory, and she felt almost lighthearted as she drove down to Hampton-cum-Spyway for her days off.

Mrs Cross had been in her absence; the hall was freshly polished and the windows and paintwork gleamed. It was the same in the sitting-room and the drawing-room, and in the kitchen she found a note written in Mrs Cross’s spidery writing to the effect that she had done downstairs and would be back again to give upstairs the same treatment after Miss Phemie had finished packing up, and there was milk in the fridge.

Euphemia made tea, ate the doughnuts she had bought on her way home, and rolled up her sleeves. In five days the doctor would be taking up residence and there must be no trace of the family Blackstock left in the house. She worked until late, got up early in the morning and went on packing, pausing only for a quick meal at the pub and a brief visit to Mrs Cross who on the strength of her new job and, Euphemia suspected, more money, had brought a bright blue nylon overall and had her hair permed.

‘Every day ’e wants me,’ she explained. ‘Got to get ’is breakfast most mornings and cook ’im a meal at night, but ’e’s almost never ’ome for ’is lunch and I’m ter suit meself ’ow I’m ter work. Me sister Eth, she’ll come in mornings and give an ’and. Paying us ’andsome, ’e is, too.’

‘That’s very nice for you, Mrs Cross,’ said Euphemia cheerfully, and her companion made hasty to add: ‘Not but I wasn’t ’appy with you an’ yer father. I’ll miss yer…’

‘Well, yes, we’ve all had to make changes, haven’t we?’ She kept her voice steady. ‘But it’s nice that we can keep the house this way, and Dr van Diederijk seems to like it.’

‘But ’e won’t be ’ere all the time, ’e goes ’ome ter Holland quite a bit. I gets me pay whether ’e’s here or not.’

‘That’s splendid, Mrs Cross. Now, I must go—I’ve still an awful lot to do. You’ve got the back door key, haven’t you? I’ll keep mine until the doctor actually gets here just in case there’s something I’ve forgotten.’

Euphemia went back to the house and began on the boys’ rooms—the worst of the lot, what with model trains and boats and footballs all over the place. By the end of the second day she was tired out but satisfied. The house looked delightful—shabby, certainly, but the furniture was good and well polished and she had decided that somehow or other she would come down and arrange fresh flowers. Mrs Cross had offered to do it, but she tended to fling a dozen blooms into a vase and leave it at that. The roses in the garden were flowering well; she would pick the choicest. On the thought she went and gathered a bunch for herself to take back to her room; after all, the house wasn’t the doctor’s for another five days.

She managed to give herself a free evening on the day before he was due to move in, and drove herself down through a heavy summer shower to spend an hour or more gathering roses and arranging them around the house. As she made a last tour of inspection the thought struck her forcibly that now the house was no longer home. Until then, polishing and cleaning and turning out cupboards, she hadn’t allowed herself to think of that, but now she would have no right to come any more; she would have to travel down to Middle Wallop or spend her free days window shopping and going to cinemas. She came slowly out of the drawing-room, her eyes full of tears, but not bothering with them, since there was no one to see her crying, and lifted the latch of the front door. It was opened at the same time from outside and she found herself staring up into the doctor’s face.

Without giving any reason as to why he was there, he pushed her gently back into the hall and came in and shut the door. ‘This is still your home. I’ve only borrowed it for a time.’ He smiled so kindly at her that she could only gape at him, astonished that he had hit the nail on the head so unerringly. He went on matter-of-factly: ‘Is everything locked up and put away, or can we have a cup of coffee? I was on my way back from a patient of mine in Guildford and it seemed an idea to come this way. I didn’t expect to find anyone here.’ His eyes had taken in the bowl of roses on the side table. ‘Flowers,’ he observed, ‘and a wonderful smell of polish and lavender bags. Thank you, specially as you had no need to do it.’

Euphemia sniffed. ‘I wasn’t going to hand it over all dusty and—and lonely.’ She got out a hanky and blew her nose vigorously and wiped her eyes. ‘I’ll get some coffee.’

They went into the kitchen together and she made coffee for them both while he carried on a rather one-sided conversation about nothing in particular. They left the house together presently, and he gave her no chance to linger but ushered her through the door with a brisk: ‘Of course, you will be coming back, probably sooner than you think.’

Euphemia had murmured something, intent on being sensible and unsentimental about it all, then got into the Morris and driven away after bidding him goodbye in answer to his own still brisk farewell. He had been kind, she acknowledged, as she started on the drive back to the hospital, but she still didn’t like him. And why had he been there, anyway? He hadn’t told her that. She shrugged the thought aside; it didn’t matter now, in a few hours he would be living there. She wanted to cry again because she was lonely and missed her father, and picking up the threads of life and changing its pattern wouldn’t be easy.

She flung herself into her work with an energy which left her nurses breathless, and even Sir Richard, pausing at the end of his round to bid her a courteous farewell, remarked that her devotion to duty exceeded even his high standards. ‘But I daresay you are glad to be occupied,’ he observed, ‘although it must be a great relief to you to know that Dr van Diederijk is your tenant at Hampton-cum-Spyway and not some stranger.’

Euphemia clenched her teeth on the observation that he was, at any rate to her, a complete stranger. She agreed politely and sped the great man on his way to the Women’s Medical. But it was a relief all the same when the cheque for the handsome sum Dr van Diederijk was paying every month arrived by the next day’s post. She paid it into the bank with instructions that the mortgage was to be paid each month. There was still a little money over: holidays, she decided, clothes for the boys, and perhaps it would pay for some sort of training for Ellen, only she wasn’t sure what. Of course, Ellen might marry. She had had a number of boyfriends, although Euphemia didn’t think that she was serious about any of them; all the same it was a very likely possibility.