‘Get a senior post—I’d like to stay here but there might not be an opening. Plenty of other hospitals in London, though.’
‘You want to stay here, in London, for always?’
‘Possibly. I’ll have to see what turns up.’
‘What about me?’
‘Well, if I can get a flat with the job I should think the best thing would be that; if not it would be best for you to live with Mother and Father. I could come home for weekends and free days—it’s only a couple of hours in the car.’
‘You don’t mean that, do you?’
‘Mean it? Of course I do. What else is there to do? It would be a waste of money to pay for a flat or even rooms when you can live at home for the price of your keep.’ He laughed and patted her knee. ‘If I thought you…but you’re such a sensible girl…’
She glanced at him; he had a nice face, open and good-natured. In a few years’ time he would be a thoroughly reliable physician with a sound practice. He was fond of her too, although she sometimes thought that his work was his real love and he wasn’t a man to sweep her off her feet. Sometimes she would have liked to have been swept…
He walked with her to the entrance to the nurses’ home when they reached Regent’s and stood for a moment, mulling over their evening.
‘Take-in tomorrow,’ said Megan.
‘Shan’t see much of you, though. When’s your next weekend? I might be able to get Sunday off.’
‘Could you? We could go home—you haven’t met Mother and Father or the family yet. I’m free the weekend after next.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He kissed her without wasting much time over it. ‘Sleep well, Megan. We might manage an hour or two during the week.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
She went to her room and presently, in bed, went over the evening. It hadn’t been a huge success but she supposed that with time she and Oscar’s mother might get to like each other. He should, she thought, sleepily, have fallen in love with a shy, quiet girl, content to take second place to his work and be suitably meek with his mother. She fell asleep trying to think of a way to turn herself into such a girl.
She discarded the idea the next morning. It was no good being meek and shy in her job; meekness would get her nowhere with the laundry superintendent who always argued about the excessive bedlinen Megan needed for her ward, nor would it help with the pharmacy, presided over by a bad-tempered man who queried every request and then said that he hadn’t got it. She fought her way through a busy morning and went to her midday dinner with a sigh of relief, but as she swallowed the first mouthful of shepherd’s pie she was recalled to the ward. Two street accidents; Eva Chambers, the senior casualty sister, gave her the details. ‘You’ll have your work cut out. I hope you have plenty of staff on duty.’
Head injuries, both of them, and so restless that Megan had to deplete her staff to special the two women. Mr Bright, one of the consultant surgeons, gave it his opinion that they needed to go to Theatre at once. ‘Get them cross-matched, Sister,’ he ordered, ‘and checked for AIDS. Tell the path. lab. to send someone capable of dealing with them if they get too restless; they’re both well-built women and there’s a great deal of cerebral irritation.’
The path. lab. responded smartly. Megan, sailing down the ward to give a helping hand in answer to urgent sounds coming from behind the curtains, was overtaken by a soft-footed Professor van Belfeld. He said mildly, ‘I understand that there is a certain amount of cerebral irritation—I thought it might be best if I came myself.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Megan. ‘They’re both a bit of a handful—we’ve got cot sides up, of course, but they will climb over…’
The professor had certainly been the right person to deal with the situation; he was gentle but he was also possessed of a strength which made child’s play of restraining the unconscious women. Megan, left to wrestle with arms and legs flying in all directions, watched him go and wished that he could have stayed.
Both women went to ICU after Theatre and the ward settled down to its normal routine; all the same it had been a busy day and she was glad to go off duty at last. Supper, a pot of tea, a hot bath and bed, she thought contentedly, going through the hospital; several long corridors, two staircases and the entrance hall to cross to reach the canteen in the basement. She had reached the hall when she saw the professor ahead of her. He was walking unhurriedly towards the doors. Going home, she supposed, and fell to wondering where home was. Why was he so late? Surely he didn’t need to put in a twelve-hour day?
He turned round and saw her as she drew level with the entrance. ‘A busy day, Sister Rodner,’ he observed. ‘Goodnight.’
She wished him goodnight too and as he went through the doors paused to watch him cross the forecourt and get into his car—a grey Rolls-Royce—and drive away. Just for a moment she found herself wishing that she could go with him and see where he lived…
Take-in went from Wednesday until Tuesday midnight and was as busy as one might expect. Regent’s was north of the river, its mid-Victorian bulk spread in the middle of streets packed with small houses, derelict buildings and small factories. There was always something, observed Eva Chambers wearily, at the end of a particularly busy day; if someone didn’t damage themselves with factory machinery, they got run over by a car or stabbed by a member of a rival gang of youths. The weekend was always the worst; Megan, gloomily surveying her bulging ward, thanked heaven that Wednesday was in sight.
She had seen Oscar only once or twice and then only for a brief hour snatched in a grubby little café across the street from the hospital, but she went out in her off duty however tired she was. There was nowhere much to go, but a brisk walk made a nice change and the weather was kind; it was mild for the end of March and here and there was a gallant little tree or privet hedge in a rare front garden, and there were green shoots. Next week, she thought happily, she and Oscar would go home together, and the week after that she would have her own small flat; Theatre Sister was getting married and no longer needed the semi-basement she had lived in for some years, and Megan had jumped at the chance of getting it. Oscar hadn’t liked the idea but, as she pointed out, it would be marvellous to have somewhere to go; she could cook supper and they could talk, something for which they seldom had time.
The ward settled back into its usual routine—admissions for operations, discharges for those who had recovered, dressings, treatment, serving meals, arranging the off-duty rota to please the nurses, continuing her running fight with the laundry; after four years she had become adept at running a ward.
Oscar wasn’t free until Sunday and although she grudged missing a day at home it gave her the chance to go along to the flat and make her final arrangements for moving in. She had already met the landlord, an elderly bewhiskered cockney who occupied the ground-floor flat himself and let the top flat to a severe lady whose staid manner and ladylike ways added, he considered, to the tone of his house, something he was anxious to maintain in the rather shabby street.
Shabby or not, it was handy for the hospital, and Megan was looking forward to having a place of her own even if it was a down-at-heel semi-basement. She spent most of her Saturday going through its contents with Theatre Sister, who was packing up ready to leave, and she agreed to take over most of the simple furniture which was there and adopt the stray cat that went with the flat. It would be nice to have company in the evenings and he seemed an amiable beast. She went back to the hospital in the early evening, eager to make her move, noting with satisfaction that it took her exactly five minutes to get there. Her head full of pleasant plans about new curtains, a coat of paint on the depressing little front door, she failed to see Professor van Belfeld driving out of the forecourt as she went in.
She and Oscar left early the next morning. Her home in Buckinghamshire was in a small village north of the country town of Thame. Her father was senior partner in a firm of solicitors and had lived most of his life at Little Swanley, driving