Wedding Bells for Beatrice

‘Certainly not,’ agreed the professor. ‘This—Tom—? seems to be a singularly thick-skinned man.’ His voice was as avuncular as his manner. ‘Do you see much of him during your working hours?’

‘Hardly ever. I’m here all day and he works on the medical wards, but he telephones and I have to answer in case it’s one of the profs, wanting hot milk or sandwiches.’

‘Hot milk?’ The professor looked taken aback.

‘Well, some of them are getting on a bit and they forget to go to meals or go home when they’re supposed to. I suppose professors are all the same, a bit absentminded …’

She gave him a startled look. ‘You’re a professor, you must be if you’re coming to the seminar tomorrow.’

‘Well, yes, I am, but I must assure you at once that I am unlikely to need hot milk. Which reminds me, we still have to have supper.’

‘I don’t want …’ began Beatrice, saw the quizzical lift of his eyebrows and added quickly, ‘Thank you, that would be nice—if it could be somewhere quiet? I’m not dressed for anywhere smart. Do you know London?’

‘I find my way around,’ admitted the professor modestly. ‘Get your coat and let us see what we can find.’

When she came back ready to leave he had turned off the fire, left one lamp burning and had the door open. As they went down to the entrance the building was very quiet and, despite the heating, chilly. It was even colder outside and he took her arm and hurried her round to the corner of the forecourt where he had parked his car.

‘You drove over?’ asked Beatrice, silently admiring the understated luxury of the big Bentley as she was ushered into it.

He got in beside her and drove out of the forecourt with the minimum of fuss. ‘I have several other hospitals to visit while I’m here. It saves time if I have the car.’

She sat quietly, realising almost at once that he knew London well, not hesitating at all until he stopped in Camden Passage, got out and opened her door, locked it, put money in the parking meter and led her across the pavement to the restaurant. She had heard of it—Frederick’s—but she had never been there and she hung back a little, wondering if she was wearing the right clothes.

‘Now don’t start fussing,’ begged the professor, just as though she had voiced her doubts. ‘You’re perfectly adequately dressed,’ he added as a concession to her uncertainty. ‘You look very nice.’

A remark her brother George might have made, and one hardly adequate; she dressed well, knowing what suited her and that she could afford to buy it—the tweed coat and woolly cap were suitable for a quick drink on a cold winter’s night but not what she would have chosen for a late dinner in a restaurant.

She was propelled with gentle remorselessness through the entrance. ‘You can leave your coat there,’ said the professor, and bade the doorman good evening.

When she joined him, reassured by her reflection in the cloakroom’s mirrors, he was talking to the maître d’ who, as she reached them, led them to a table by a window, paused to recommend the pheasant, which he said was excellent, wished them an enjoyable meal and gave way to a waiter.

‘You like pheasant?’ asked the professor. ‘Or perhaps you would prefer something else.’

She studied the menu and suddenly felt famished. ‘I’d like the pheasant, please …’

‘The lobster mousse is delicious—shall we start with that?’

She would have started with a hunk of bread, lunch having been a sketchy affair of soup and a roll and her solitary beef sandwich already long forgotten.

She ate the mousse with pleasure. It was amazing what good food did to restore one’s good spirits; by the time they had disposed of the pheasant and she was deciding on a sweet she had quite recovered and was once more the level-headed supervisor, making polite conversation over the dinner-table. All the same during a pause in the talk she caught her companion’s eye resting thoughtfully upon her face and said impulsively, ‘I’m sorry I made a fool of myself this evening. So very stupid of me.’

The professor smiled. The smile held mockery. ‘Dear, oh, dear! Here we go again back to square one, about to discuss the weather, unless I am much mistaken, and I was beginning to think that we had at least cracked the ice.’

‘I don’t know what you mean …’

‘Such a useful remark and quite without truth. Never mind, though, tell me about tomorrow—do you check us in as we arrive? Presumably we are expected to go to the hospital main entrance …’

She would have liked to have argued with him but he hadn’t given her the chance. Besides, she mustn’t forget that he was a visiting specialist, to be treated with respect. ‘No need for that,’ she told him. ‘You can use the door we came through this evening. I’ll be at the desk in the reception area, ticking off names.’

‘Then what do you do?’

‘Go to the kitchen and make sure that coffee and biscuits are ready, there’s a buffet lunch at one o’clock, I’ll have to see to that, and then the clearing-up afterwards and there’s tea at four o’clock.’

‘You have help, of course?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m just there to see that everything is going smoothly.’

She finished the bombe glacé with a small sigh of content and he ordered coffee.

‘Do you see much of young Derek?’

‘Almost nothing, only if we happen to be at home at the same time and that’s seldom. Is he a friend of yours? I mean, aren’t you a bit …?’ She stopped and went pink and he finished smoothly,

‘Old for him. Of course I am; my father was a friend of his father. I’ve known the family on and off for a long time.’

‘I didn’t mean to be rude, I’m sorry.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Two apologies in less than half an hour, Beatrice. Don’t do it again or I might have to alter my opinion of you.’

He passed his cup for more coffee and began to talk about her brother.

It was after eleven o’clock by the time he stopped the car by the passage door. ‘You’re not supposed to park here,’ said Beatrice as he got out.

She might have saved her breath for he took no notice, but opened the door and followed her inside.

‘Thank you for a very pleasant evening,’ said Beatrice politely. ‘It was most kind of you. Goodnight, Professor van der Eekerk.’

He began to walk up the stairs beside her and she said, ‘There’s no need.’

‘Hush, girl, save your breath for the climb.’ So she hushed since there was little point in arguing with him and at her door he took the key from her and stood aside to let her in and then went ahead of her to turn on the lights before wishing her a quiet goodnight and going down the stairs two at a time in what she considered to be a highly dangerous manner.

She stood in the middle of the room reflecting that when she had been taken out for the evening she had always been thanked for her company and been given to understand that her companion had enjoyed it—Professor van der Eekerk, on the other hand, hadn’t said any such thing.

She had a bath and got ready for bed feeling peevish. ‘There will be no need to speak to him tomorrow,’ she told herself, and thumped her pillows into comfort. ‘I dare say he only asked me out because he wanted company at the dinner-table and I happened to be handy.’

She went to sleep, having quite forgotten about Tom.

The learned gentlemen attending the seminar began to arrive soon after half-past eight and Beatrice was kept busy ticking their names off her list, helping the more elderly out of their coats and scarves, finding mislaid notes, spectacles and cough lozenges and ushering them into the conference hall, a gloomy place filled with rows of uncomfortable chairs, its walls painted a particularly repellent green and having a small platform at one end on which was a table, half a dozen chairs and, since Beatrice found the place so bleak, a bowl of hyacinths on the table, flanked by a carafe of water and a glass.

The first speaker was Professor Moore, still suffering from his cold and by no means in the best of tempers. Once he had arrived his colleagues started to file into the hall, stopping to greet friends as they went and taking their time about it. Beatrice looked at her list; there were still half a dozen to come …

They came in a group and one of them was Professor van der Eekerk, towering over his companions. She noticed that he appeared to be on the best of terms with all of them, and, like them, greeted her with a polite good morning before going into the hall. She wasn’t sure what she had expected; all she knew was that she felt disappointed. She watched his massive back disappear through the door and told herself that she had no wish to see him again. A wish she was unable to fulfil, for, the first paper having been duly read and discussed, the distinguished audience surged out of the hall and into one of the smaller lecture-rooms where coffee and biscuits awaited them. Still deep in talk, they received their cups and saucers in an absentminded fashion, and Beatrice, making her way from one group to another with some of the biscuits, was sure that Professor van der Eekerk was unaware of her being there, deep as he was in discussion with several other doctors. She was wrong, of course. His heavy-lidded gaze followed her around the room without apparently doing so and when she was at last back behind the coffee percolators, refilling the cups her helpers fetched, all she could see of him was his back in a superbly tailored suit.

The second paper to be read before lunch started late, which meant that it finished late. Beatrice, pacifying the cook, wished the erudite and wordy gentleman on the platform to Jericho, going on and on about endocrinology. When he at length came to an end she lost no time in urging his audience to repair to the smaller lecture hall once more and ladled soup to be handed round without loss of time while the cook seethed over the lamb cutlets, ruined, she assured Beatrice.

Ruined or not, they were eaten; indeed, the various conversations were so engrossing that she doubted if anyone had noticed what was on their plates. She portioned out castle puddings with a generous hand and went to make sure that the coffee percolators were ready.

The afternoon session was to be taken up by a paper on haematology by Professor van der Eekerk and, contrary to the previous lecturer, she hoped that he would take a long time delivering it; it would give them time to clear the room once more and put out the tea things—sandwiches, buttered buns and fruit cake. Having some considerable experience of similar occasions, she knew what got eaten and what got left.