got into the lift at the back of the hall and stepped out on the top floor, went through a door with ‘Private’ on it and started down another corridor lined with doors.
‘Here we are,’ said Nurse Symes. ‘Quite a nice room, and the bathrooms are at the end. There’s a little kitchen too, if you want to make tea.’
The room was small, with a bed, a small easy chair, a bedside table and a clothes cupboard. It was very clean and there was a view of chimneypots from its window. There was a washbasin on one corner, and a small mirror over the wide shelf which served as a dressing table. A few cushions and photos and a vase of flowers, thought Claudia with resolute cheerfulness, and it would be quite pretty.
‘We’ll go to the linen room and get you some dresses. You’ll get three, but of course you’ll wear a plastic apron when you’re on duty.’
The dresses—a useful mud-brown—duly chosen and taken to her room, they began a tour of the hospital. It was surprisingly large, with old-fashioned wards with beds on either side and tables with pot plants down the centre. The wards were full, and most of the patients were sitting in chairs by their beds, watching television if they were near enough to the two sets at either end of the wards.
Most of them appeared to be asleep; one or two had visitors. Claudia could see only one or two nurses, but there were several young women shrouded in plastic pinnys, carrying trays, mops and buckets and helping those patients who chose to trundle around with their walking aids.
It wasn’t quite what she had expected, but it was too early to have an opinion, and first impressions weren’t always the right ones.
It was Cork who folded the Telegraph at the appropriate page and silently pointed out the notice of the forthcoming marriage between George Willis and Doreen Ramsay to Professor Tait-Bullen as he ate his breakfast.
He read it in an absent-minded fashion, and then read it again.
‘Interesting,’ he observed, and then, ‘I wonder what will happen to the daughter? Staying on at the Colonel’s house, I suppose.’
He thought no more about it until that evening when, urged by some niggling doubt at the back of his mind, he phoned Dr Willis. His congratulations were sincere. ‘You will be marrying shortly?’
‘In four days’ time. Mrs Ramsay is here with me, so are Mrs Pratt and Tombs. Jennie, their maid, went to the Manor to a new job this morning.’ George added drily, ‘They were turned out by the new owner.’
The professor asked sharply, ‘And the daughter— Claudia?’
‘Fortunately she found a job at Southampton, in a hospital there—geriatrics. Didn’t like the look of the place, but they wanted someone at once.’
‘You mean to tell me that this man turned them all out? Is he no relation?’
‘A cousin of sorts.’
‘Extraordinary.’ The professor had a fleeting memory of a lovely girl with red hair and decided that he wanted to know more. ‘I’m going to Bristol in a couple of days. May I call in and wish you both well?’
‘We’d be delighted. And if you can come to the wedding we should very much like that.’
Mr Tait-Bullen put down the receiver and sat back in his chair. With a little careful planning there was no reason why he shouldn’t go to the wedding.
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