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A Little Moonlight
Betty Neels
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS mid-September and the day had been grey so that dusk had come early. Almost every window in the Royal Hospital was lighted, making a cheerful splash of colour amid the dingy streets of small houses and corner shops over which it towered. Only on the top floor of the hospital, where the windows were much smaller, were they in darkness—all save one, a corner room, furnished in a businesslike way with filing cabinets, shelves of reference books, a large desk on which was an electric typewriter, a computer and a word-processor, a small hard chair against one wall and another more comfortable one behind the desk.
There was a girl sitting in it, a smallish person with a tidy head of mousy hair pinned severely into a bun, and an ordinary face whose small beaky nose and wide mouth were enlivened by large hazel eyes, fringed with a long set of curling lashes. She was typing with the ease of long practice, frowning over the sheet of handwriting beside her, but presently she stopped. The writing was by no means easy to read and she was used to that, but she had come to a halt. After a minute’s frustrated study she spoke her mind to the empty room.
‘Well, now what? Is it endometrioma or endometriosis? Why must he use such long words, and why wasn’t he taught to write properly?’ She sounded vexed, and for a good reason; it was long after five o’clock, the top floor, used by typists and clerks and administration staff, had become empty and quiet and she was lonely, hungry and getting rapidly more annoyed. ‘It’s all very well for him,’ she went on, talking out loud to keep her spirits up, ‘he’ll be home, with his feet up, while his wife gets his supper …’
‘Actually,’ said a deep slow voice from behind her, ‘he’s here, although the picture you paint of domestic bliss is tempting.’
The girl shot round in her chair, but before she could speak the man standing in the doorway went on, ‘I feel that I should apologise for my writing—it is, I’m afraid, too late to do much about that, and as for the long words, they are inevitable in our profession.’ He advanced into the room and stood looking down at her. ‘Why have I not seen you before now, and where is Miss Payne?’
She looked up at him with a touch of impatience, untroubled by the awe he engendered in the regular hospital staff. ‘Miss Payne is off sick—influenza.’ She cast an eye over the small pile of work still to be done. ‘And probably overwork, from the look of these.’
‘Your name?’ he asked with cold courtesy.
‘Serena Proudfoot.’ Her arched silky eyebrows asked the question she didn’t utter.
‘Dr ter Feulen.’
‘Oh, I’ve heard about you, you’re a Dutch baron as well …’ She smiled at him with the air of one ready to forgive him for that.
He was a handsome man, with grizzled hair and pale blue eyes as cold as a winter sea; moreover, he was a splendid height and broad-shouldered. Serena had only half believed the other girls who worked in administration and dealt with the medical correspondence when they had enthused about Dr ter Feulen, but she could see that they had been right. All the same, he appeared to be both arrogant and sarcastic. He ignored the remark and she stopped smiling.
‘You are from an agency?’ he queried.
‘Yes, just as a temporary until Miss Payne is well again. And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll get on …’
He didn’t move. ‘Why are you working late?’
A silly question, but she answered it patiently. ‘Because there was a backlog of your letters to be done and I was warned that you would expect them ready for your signature before you left the hospital.’
‘And are they ready?’
‘No, but if I can be left in peace to type them you can have them in half an hour.’
He laughed suddenly. ‘Have you been working long as a typist?’
‘Several years.’
‘But never in a hospital, that is obvious.’ He strolled back to the door. ‘Be good enough to bring them to the consultants’ room when you are ready, please. Perhaps no one told you that we don’t watch the clock in hospital. It is to be hoped that Miss Payne is soon back at her desk.’
He had gone before Serena could utter her heartfelt agreement.
She put a fresh sheet of paper into her machine. ‘And why did he have to come here in the first place?’ she demanded of the empty room.
‘Why, to see what had happened to my letters,’ observed Dr ter Feulen. He had returned and was standing in the doorway again. ‘I have come back to warn you that I have an outpatients’ clinic in the morning and you will have a good deal of work to do in consequence. So let us have no more grumbling about late hours; Miss Payne never uttered a word.’
‘More fool her,’ said Serena with spirit. She answered his goodnight with cold asperity.
It was almost an hour later when she covered her machine and turned out the lights. The consultants’ room was on the ground floor. She tapped on the door and, since no one answered, opened it and went in. There was only one small table light on and the large, gloomy room was dim. She laid the papers she had been typing on the ponderous centre table and turned to go again. A faint sound stopped her; Dr ter Feulen, his vast person stretched at ease in a leather armchair, his large feet, shod in the finest shoe leather, resting on a nearby coffee-table, was asleep and, without any loss of dignity, snoring gently. She stood and looked at him. He really was extremely good-looking, although now that she was able to study his face at her leisure, she could see that he was very tired.
She was tired too. She made her way from the room and out of the hospital and joined the queue at the nearest bus-stop.
She got off the bus at East Sheen and walked down a side street leading to a road lined with a terrace of red brick Edwardian villas, all very well kept. Halfway down she took out a key and let herself into the house through its pristine black-painted door, hung her coat in the narrow hall and went into the sitting-room. Her mother was there, sitting before a gas fire reading. She looked up as Serena went in.
‘You’re late.’ She glanced reproachfully at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I just didn’t feel like getting the supper.’ She smiled charmingly at her daughter. ‘Aren’t I a lazy old mother? It’s cottage pie and you make such a good one, and if the oven’s on I thought you might make one of your fruit tarts.’
Serena crossed the rather shabby room and kissed her mother. ‘I’ll go and start the pie,’ was all she said. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve had a bad day.’
‘My nerves,’ said Mrs Proudfoot, ‘and all the worry of managing on the pension … If only your father had known …’
‘We manage quite well,’ replied Serena matter-of-factly. ‘The pension isn’t so bad, Mother, and there’s my money.’
‘Oh, I do know, darling, but you have no idea how unhappy I am when I think of all the things you’re missing … dances and theatres and trips abroad. You might have been married by now—you’re twenty-five …’
Mrs Proudfoot eyed her daughter with a look of resignation; how she had come to have this serious, rather plain girl who made no push to get herself a husband was something she couldn’t understand. She had been considered quite pretty as a girl, and even now in her fifties she was still that, or so she told herself. That a good deal of the pension went on cosmetics and hairdressers and pretty clothes was something she never dwelt on. Serena had an allowance from her salary—not a big one, it was true, but then at her age she didn’t need expensive creams and lotions, and since she worked in some