‘Down—you always look so severe with it piled up like that, and it’s pretty hair.’
‘I don’t think he’ll notice.’ Philomena was tearing out of her clothes, pausing to gulp tea as she did so. ‘There’d better be a bathroom free, he said half an hour.’
‘Where are you going to meet?’
‘The front hall.’ Philomena had snatched up a towel and was making for the bathroom. ‘He said something about Soho…’ She pattered away, unheeding of her friend’s: ‘But you don’t really know him!’
She was ready with five minutes to spare and as it hadn’t entered her head to keep him waiting, she went down to the front hall. He was waiting for her, leaning up against the Porter’s Lodge again, deep in conversation with Potter. He came to meet her at once with a cheerful: ‘There you are—punctual too, a rare thing in a woman.’
She was too shy to ask how he was so sure of this, and anyway there was no need for her to say anything much, for he swept her out of the main entrance on a steady gentle flow of small talk which saw them safely into the car standing in the forecourt, but on the point of getting in she stopped short. ‘A Maserati—one of the new ones—a Khamsin.’ She had stopped to look at one in a car showroom only a few days previously and had been shocked to see its price—almost eighteen thousand pounds! One could buy a house for that, or live comfortably for four or five years.
Her companion opened the door a little wider. ‘Easy to get around in,’ he told her in a placid matter-of-fact voice which made its price seem quite reasonable after all.
‘Do you travel a great deal?’ she asked him as he got in beside her.
‘Quite frequently—I have a sister living in the south of France.’ He swung the car neatly into the evening traffic. ‘Do you drive?’
She told him about the Mini. ‘I keep it at home, though, I’m not much good in London traffic.’
‘No? But surely it would be useful when you go home?’
Philomena looked out of the window, not really seeing the cars streaming along in the clear April evening. ‘I don’t go very often.’
He didn’t question her further but embarked on the kind of conversation which needed little reply on her part, but which nonetheless put her at her ease. ‘You said Soho,’ she reminded him presently as he turned up into Shaftesbury Avenue. ‘I’ve never been there—not for a meal, I mean.’
‘I thought we might go to Kettner’s.’ He had turned the car into Frith Street and then into Romilly Street and they had stopped before she could say anything. She had heard of the restaurant, of course, but the few evenings out she had enjoyed had ended at more homely places; young doctors tended to choose a steak bar or the Golden Egg, but this was something different; she was heartily glad that she had worn the green dress and taken pains with her face and hair.
They were shown to a table at once—presumably he had booked one while she was changing—and she sat back and looked around her with unconcealed pleasure. ‘What a super place!’ Her wide mouth curved in a lovely smile. ‘You’re very kind to bring me here.’
‘It is you who are kind to keep me company—and may I call you Philomena?’ He lifted a finger to the hovering waiter. ‘I shan’t ask you what you would like to drink—we’ll celebrate with champagne.’
And probably it was the champagne which gave Philomena the pleasant feeling that Doctor van der Tacx was an old friend, and when presently he suggested mildly that she might call him Walle, she agreed readily enough before getting down to the serious business of deciding what they should eat. In the end she took his advice, given in a casual almost unnoticed way, and chose paté maison, a magnificent dish of lobster, fried with herbs and then covered and set alight with cognac, and rounded these delights off with Vacherin.
‘That was sheer heaven,’ she assured her host over coffee, ‘I’ve never had such a gorgeous meal and in such a super place.’ She beamed at him widely. ‘I never thought I’d celebrate like this.’
He smiled back at her. ‘Perhaps you will have your celebrations next time you go home,’ and when she didn’t answer: ‘You live a long way away?’
A hundred and thirteen miles was nothing; three hours at the most and in a car such as his, much less; a loving family or a devoted boy-friend would have made light of it. She said reluctantly: ‘Not so very—my home’s at Wareham, in Dorset.’
His only comment was: ‘Ah, yes—a charming place, I’ve been sailing in those parts,’ and at her questioning look, he added blandly: ‘I was up at Cambridge for some years and I have friends in England—I spent a good deal of time with a fellow student who was mad on sailing.’ He laughed. ‘Lord, it makes one feel old!’
She hadn’t really thought about his age; his hair was fair and thick and silvering at the temples, but he had the kind of good looks which would be very much as they were now in twenty years’ time. ‘You’re not old,’ said Philomena. ‘I’m twenty-three.’
He dropped the heavy lids over his eyes to hide their sudden gleam of amusement. ‘And I am thirty-six.’
‘That’s not in the least old. I expect you’re at the height of your career and very content with your life and everything in the world to look forward to.’
‘Thank you, Philomena. Until now I have been more than content with my life, but now I’m not so sure.’ He gave her a thoughtful look. ‘You know you haven’t asked me if I’m married.’
The champagne had made her decidedly chatty. ‘Well, no, but I don’t think you are…’
‘Do tell why?’
‘Well, you’re not the kind of man who would—would ask the first girl you met to go out to dinner with him if you were married.’
‘You’re right of course, but too flattering. I don’t fancy that you know much about men.’
She poured more coffee. ‘No, I don’t. You see, I don’t go out a great deal with them—there are so many pretty girls in hospital, and of course the housemen go for them first.’ She gave him a rather appalled look; the champagne had certainly made ducks and drakes of her usual quiet matter-of-factness. If he paid her a compliment now about being pretty, she would hate him for it.
He didn’t. He said with calm: ‘Young men always go for the pretty girls, that’s human nature, but young men grow up, you know.’
Probably he was right; he had a very assured way of speaking so that one believed him, and besides that, she felt at ease with him, as though they had been old friends for a very long time. She voiced her thoughts with unconscious forlornness. ‘I suppose you’ll be going back to Holland very soon?’
‘No, I’ve several people to see over here and there’s a seminar I’m going to in Edinburgh. I’ve two partners in the practice so that we can all get away now and again. I’ve promised to do some shopping for my mother and a cousin, perhaps you would help me with that? Tritia wanted to come with me, but she’s only nineteen and what would I do with her while I’m at the hospital? And I certainly didn’t want to take her to Edinburgh—she’s pretty and spoilt, the kind of girl young men look at and then get to know without waste of time.’
Not like me, thought Philomena sadly. I expect he’s in love with her. And to make it worse he added smoothly: ‘She lives at my home for the moment, an aunt of mine whose adopted daughter she is, has gone to Canada to visit her son. I must say Tritia gives life an added zest.’
Philomena could see the girl vividly in her mind’s eye; dazzlingly pretty, loaded with charm, small and dainty so that men rushed to open doors and lift things for her… Why, oh, why couldn’t she have been just a little like that? Certainly she was small, but she was what her stepmother laughingly called verging on the plump, which somehow carried an awful warning of what she would be like