vexation had given way to a rather doubtful hope. ‘Oh, more than anything in the world,’ she assured him fervently. Her green eyes were full of dreams, although her voice was prosaic enough. ‘A great many surgeons have seen it, you know, but just lately I’ve refused to let anyone see it.’
He pushed his large, well-kept hands into his pockets and studied his shoes. ‘Tell me as briefly as you can just how it happened and what treatment you have had.’
He didn’t look at her at all, which made it easier. ‘I was three. I fell off my pony and he trod on my foot—nothing else was injured, just that foot; he crushed the metatarsals, pulped them into a squashy mess. The surgeon who saw it said he could do nothing then, that perhaps when I was older the bones would separate again and he could operate; only they didn’t, they set themselves exactly as they were—they fused into a lump of bone. My mother took me to any number of specialists when I was a little girl, but none of them could do anything—they said that something should have been done when the accident happened. I’ve been to several other specialists since I started nursing, and they all thought that it had been left too late; that I would have to learn to live with it—that the limp didn’t notice very much…’
‘I noticed it,’ said Mr Bamstra with a detached candour which didn’t hurt at all. ‘Shall I have a go?’
Her hands were clasped on her aproned lap, the fingers entwined so tightly that the knuckles showed white. There were no reasons to suppose that this man was any different from the others who had wanted to help her, and yet she felt no hesitation in saying yes: ‘Only it might be a bit difficult. I mean, I’d have to get leave and all that—would it take long?’
‘A couple of months, perhaps. Of course you would be in a walking plaster in no time, so you would be able to get about.’ He stopped looking at his shoes and looked at her. ‘Will you let me see what I can arrange? You would have to come to my hospital, you know.’
‘Oh—where’s that?’
‘Holland—either Utrecht or Leiden, whichever has a bed for you.’ He got off the desk. ‘Think it over,’ he advised her. ‘I shall be here until tomorrow evening.’ He nodded with casual friendliness and left her sitting at the desk, her head in a whirl.
But a look at the clock warned her that sitting and thinking about her own affairs was inadvisable; she couldn’t hope to get finished before Sister Richards came back on duty, but at least she could get as much done as possible. She rushed through the rest of the requests and went down the corridor to check the clean linen, working with such a will that she was all but finished when Sister arrived. She went off duty herself an hour later, her head no longer full of Mr Bamstra’s visit but of the evening ahead of her.
This was her first date for quite some time. Of course she went out often enough with the other nurses, frequently a bunch of them, together with housemen or students, made up a party, but although she was popular in a quiet way, no one had singled her out for an evening à deux, not that that surprised her in the least. If she were a young man, she wouldn’t have bothered with a girl who couldn’t dance, who couldn’t even run for a bus without looking grotesque; she had no brothers of her own but she was aware that young men didn’t like to be made conspicuous. Her mother and old Nanny Toms, who still lived at her home and did the house-keeping, had both assured her over and over again that when Mr Right came along her foot wouldn’t matter to him at all, but here she was, all of twenty-six, and no one, let alone Mr Right, had even taken a second glance at her—not until now. Leslie Chapman’s sudden attentions had taken her by surprise at first, but now, finally won over by his apparent desire for her company and his disregard for her limp, she was allowing herself to respond to him, and because her warm nature had been frustrated, hidden behind the matter-of-fact manner she had learned to assume against pity, it was threatening to take over from her hard-learned common sense.
She made her way to her room, refused the offer of a cup of tea with a handful of off-duty friends, and opened her wardrobe door. Unlike many of the girls she worked with, she had plenty of clothes, pretty and quite often expensive, for again unlike them, there was no need for her to help at home. Her mother had been left comfortably off in the small manor house in the New Forest, and she herself had, over and above her salary, a generous allowance from the substantial capital her father had left for her. Only if she should marry before she was thirty would she come into full possession of her sizeable fortune, and in the meantime the fact that she was by way of being a minor heiress hadn’t altered her independent nature in the slightest; she recognised that it was pleasant to have sufficient money to buy the things she wanted, but she had no highflown ideas about her inheritance and it said much for her nice nature that her friends, even if they were at times envious of her, never cast it in her teeth. And she, for her part, never mentioned it to them, nor, for that matter, did she mention the countless small acts of generosity she performed; the small sums she had lent and never wanted back, the countless times she had stood treat without anyone quite realizing it…she would have been horrified if anyone had found out.
She stood now, debating the merits of a pinafore dress in a soft pink with a white muslin blouse to go with it, or a green-patterned voile dress with a tucked bodice and short sleeves. She had no idea where they were going. Leslie had mentioned, rather vaguely, going out to eat; she had been a fool not to have asked him where. She chose the dress finally, if she wore her thin wool coat over it it would pass muster almost anywhere, and she hardly expected to go to Claridges or Quaglino’s. She bathed and changed rapidly, slid her feet into pale shoes, wincing at the ugly built-up sole on one of them, matched them with a handbag and took a final look at herself in the looking glass. She supposed she looked as nice as she could; her mousey hair shone with brushing and she had coiled it smoothly on top of her head, although one or two tiny curls had broken free at the back of her neck. Her face was nicely made up, the dress was in excellent taste even if it was a little on the plain side, and she forced herself to take a matter-of-fact look at her feet. Standing very still with her crushed foot tucked behind the sound one, it hardly showed, but that was cheating. She brought it into full view and contemplated it in all its clumsiness.
She would have this operation Mr Bamstra had suggested, even if she had to go to the other side of the world and stay for months; Leslie liked her now, perhaps more than liked…surely if she had two good feet he might actually fall in love with her? She turned away from her image, rather defiantly sprayed Dioressence upon her person, and went down to the Nurses’ Home entrance.
Leslie was waiting for her in his Lotus Elan, a showy, rather elderly model with far too much chrome-work on it, and painted an aggressive yellow. Esmeralda didn’t much care for it; her father had always driven a sober dark blue Rover, and her mother, since his death, had merely changed one model for another. She herself had a Mini which she drove rather well despite the drawback of her damaged foot, and that was a sober blue too, but this evening, with Leslie sitting behind the wheel smiling at her, she told herself that she was becoming stuffy in her tastes, even slightly priggish. She hurried towards him, quite forgetting her hideous limp.
He opened the car door for her, his eyes on her face, not on her foot, and at any other time Esmeralda might have asked herself with her usual common sense what there was about her ordinary features which should cause him to look so enrapt, but she had no common sense for the moment. She was spending the evening with one of the best looking young men in the hospital, and these emotions were going to her head like champagne, giving a glow and sparkle to her usual calm.
She got in beside him, scraping her lame foot over the door, and he winced, although when she looked at him he was smiling. ‘You look charming,’ he told her warmly. ‘I thought we’d go to that Greek restaurant in Charlotte Street, if you would like that?’
Esmeralda said with all the eagerness of a happy child: ‘Oh, yes, very much,’ and then sat back while he drove through the hospital gates and joined the evening traffic. He was a showy driver, full of impatience and blaming everyone else except himself, but she wouldn’t admit that, staying quiet until he pulled up with a squeal of brakes outside the restaurant.
It was a small pleasant place with candlelit tables and an intimate atmosphere. They decided on kebabs and Leslie made rather a