Dearest Eulalia

‘Shall we have tea here? Would you like to stay for supper?’ She didn’t sound at all eager and he hid a smile.

‘Thank you but I mustn’t stay. I’ve an appointment this evening. Tea would be fine.’

He drank his tea, waved aside her thanks for her day out, bade her a brisk goodbye and drove himself away. Eulalia shut the door as the Bentley slipped away, feeling hurt and a little peevish. He could at least have waved; it was almost as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.

She poured herself another cup of tea. Of course he might be late for his appointment—with a girl? She allowed her imagination to run riot and then told herself sternly to stop being a fool. He was almost a stranger; she had only met him a couple of times; she knew nothing about him… So why was it that she felt so at ease with him, as though she had known him all her life?

If she had hoped to see him at the hospital the next day, she was disappointed. Her journeys into the hospital proper were limited to her visits to the supply department, the general office for requisitioning something for the canteen or taking money from the canteen at the end of the day to one of the clerical staff to lock away, but those trips took her nowhere near the wards and, since she had no idea as to what he actually did, even if she had the opportunity she had no idea where to look for him.

Filling rolls with cheese as the first of the day’s patients began to surge in, she told herself to forget him.

Since it was the haematology outpatients clinic the benches were filling up fast. She recognised several of the patients as she poured tea and offered rolls. Anaemia in its many guises took a long time to cure, and if not to cure at least to check for as long as possible…

The clinic was due to start at any moment. She glanced towards the end of the waiting room to the row of consulting rooms and almost dropped the teapot she was filling. Mr van der Leurs, enormous in a white coat, was going into the first room, flanked by two young doctors and a nurse.

‘But he’s a mister,’ said Eulalia to the teapot. ‘A surgeon, so why is he at this clinic?’ She had picked up quite a bit of knowledge since she had been working at St Chad’s, not all of it accurate but she was sure that haematology was a medical field. He had disappeared, of course, and he wouldn’t have seen her.

In this she was mistaken.

When the clinic was finally over she was at the back of the canteen getting ready for the afternoon’s work and didn’t see him leave.

It was six o’clock by the time she had closed the canteen, checked the takings and locked up. She got into her coat, picked up the bag of money and went through to the hospital. The clerk on night duty would lock it away and she would be free to go home. It was a pity that she had seen Mr van der Leurs again, she reflected. It had unsettled her.

She handed over the money and made for the main door. With any luck she wouldn’t have to wait too long for a bus and the rush hour was over.

She pushed open the swing doors and walked full tilt into Mr van der Leurs.

He said easily, ‘Ah, Eulalia, I was on my way to look for you. I have a book for your grandfather and I wondered if you would like a lift?’

She said slowly, ‘I saw you in Outpatients this morning. I thought you were a surgeon—Mr, you know?’

He had taken her arm and was leading her to where the Bentley was parked.

‘I am a surgeon, but I do a good deal of bone marrow transplanting and I had been asked to take a look at several patients who might benefit from that.’

He popped her into the car, got in beside her and drove away.

Eulalia said, ‘Oh, I see,’ which wasn’t very adequate as a reply but it was all she could think of, and she answered his casual enquiry as to her day just as briefly; she hadn’t expected to see him again and it had taken her by surprise.

He went straight up to the Colonel’s room when they reached the house and when he came down again after ten minutes or so she was in the hall. There wasn’t a fire in the drawing room. If he accepted her offer of coffee he would have to drink it in the kitchen; the drawing room would be icy…

He refused her offer. ‘I’m leaving for Holland in the morning,’ he told her, then he smiled down at her, shook her hand, and was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

JANE came to the kitchen door. ‘Gone, has he? Well, it was shepherd’s pie for supper; I doubt if he would have fancied that. I’ll get a tin of salmon in the house; if he comes again, unexpected, like, I can make fishcakes.’

Eulalia said quietly, ‘No need, Jane; he’s going back to Holland in the morning.’

‘You’ll miss him…’

‘I don’t really know him, but yes, I shall miss him.’

Which was exactly what Mr van der Leurs had hoped for.

She was pouring tea for the thirsty queue towards the end of Thursday’s afternoon clinic when she looked up and saw him. She put the teapot down with a thump and hoped that she didn’t look as pleased as she felt; he had, after all, bidden her goodbye without a backward glance…

The queue parted for him to watch and listen with interest.

‘I’ll be outside the entrance,’ he told her, smiled impartially at the queue and went on his way.

“E was ‘ere last week,’ said a voice. ‘Looking at my Jimmy—ever so nice ‘e was, too.’

‘A friend of yours, miss?’ asked another voice.

‘An acquaintance,’ said Eulalia in a voice which forbade confidences of any sort, her colour somewhat heightened. The queue dissolved, the last few patients were called, she began to clear up, and presently, the hall empty, Sue and Polly gone, she closed down for the day.

The clerk kept her talking when she took the money to the office. He was an elderly man and night duty was a lonely job and she was too kind and polite to show impatience while he talked. Perhaps Mr van der Leurs would think that she didn’t intend to meet him. She hadn’t said that she would, had she? And if it had been a casual offer made on the spur of the moment, he might not wait.

He was there, leaning against the Bentley’s bonnet, oblivious of the chilly evening. He opened the door for her as she reached him and got in beside her.

‘Could we go somewhere for a cup of coffee? I haven’t much time…’

‘You can have coffee at home—’ began Eulalia, and was cut short by his curt,

‘There’s a café in the Fulham Road; that is the quickest way.’

She said tartly, ‘If you are so pressed for time you had no need to give me a lift.’

He didn’t answer but drove through the city. The café he ushered her into was small and half empty. He sat her down at a table away from the other customers, ordered coffee and observed in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘This isn’t quite what I intended but it will have to do. I got held up.’

The coffee came and Eulalia took a sip. ‘I thought you were in Holland.’

‘I was; I came over on the fast ferry this afternoon. I must go back on the ferry from Dover in a couple of hours’ time.’

‘You mean you’re only here for an hour or two? Whatever for?’

‘I wanted to see you and as I’m going to be away for a few days…’

‘But you could have seen me at home or at the hospital.’

‘Don’t interrupt, Eulalia; there isn’t time. It is enough to say that I wanted to see you alone.’

He smiled then and sat back, quite at his ease. ‘Will you marry me, Eulalia?’

She opened her pretty mouth and closed it again and stared at him, sitting there asking her to marry him in a manner one would use to ask for the sugar.

‘No,’ said Eulalia.