The doctor stood where he was, looking at her. Presently he asked: ‘Your name is Prendergast?’ and when she nodded: ‘A peculiar name.’ Which so incensed her that she said snappily: ‘I did say I was sorry.’
‘Oh, yes, indeed. Rest assured that it was not I who insisted on you returning.’
He looked irritable and tired. She said kindly: ‘I expect your pride’s hurt, but it doesn’t need to be; everyone thought you were smashing, and I would have gone to sleep even if you’d been Michael Caine or Kojak.’
A kind of spasm shook the doctor’s patrician features, but he said merely: ‘You are on night duty, Miss—er—Prendergast.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes. The children’s ward—always so busy and just unspeakable last night, and then I had a huge breakfast and it’s fatal to sit down afterwards,’ and when he made no reply added in a motherly way: ‘I expect you’re quite nice at home with your wife and children.’
‘I have not as yet either wife or children.’ He sounded outraged. ‘You speak as though you were a securely married mother of a large family. Are you married, Miss Prendergast?’
‘Me? no—I’d be Mrs if I were, and who’d want to marry me? But I’ve got brothers and sisters, and we had such fun when we were children.’
His voice was icy. ‘You lack respect, young lady, and you are impertinent. You should not be nursing, you should be one of those interfering females who go around telling other people how to lead their lives and assuring them that happiness is just around the corner.’
She tried not to blush, but she couldn’t stop herself; she was engulfed in a red glow, but she looked him in the eye. ‘I don’t blame you for getting your own back,’ she added a sir this time. ‘Now we’re equal, aren’t we?’
She didn’t wait to be dismissed but flew through the door as though she had the devil at her heels, back the way she had come, almost bursting with rage and dislike of him; it took several cups of tea and half an hour in a very hot bath reading the Daily Mirror before she was sufficiently calmed down to go to bed and sleep at last.
Lucy forgot the whole regrettable business in no time at all; she was rushed off her feet on duty and when she was free she slept soundly like the healthy girl she was, and if, just once or twice, she remembered the good-looking lecturer, she pushed him to the back of her mind; she was no daydreamer—besides, he hadn’t liked her.
She had expected a lecture from Sister Tutor, but no word had been said; probably, thought Lucy, she considered that she had been sufficiently rebuked for her behaviour.
She went home for her nights off at the end of the following week, a quite long journey which she could only afford once a month. The small village outside Beaminster, which wasn’t much more than a village itself, was buried in the Dorset hills; it meant going by train to Crewkerne where she was met by her father, Rector of Dedminster and the hamlets of Lodcombe and Twistover, in the shaky old Ford used by every member of the family if they happened to be at home.
Her father met her at the station, an elderly man with mild blue eyes who had passed on his very ordinary features to her; except for the green eyes, of course, and no one in the family knew where they had come from. He led her out to the car, and after a good deal of poking around coaxed it to start, but once they were bowling sedately towards Beaminster, he embarked on a gentle dissertation about the parish, the delightful weather and the various odds and ends of news about her mother and brothers and sisters.
Lucy listened with pleasure; he was so restful after the rush and hurry of hospital life, and he was so kind. She had a fleeting memory of the lecturer, who hadn’t been kind at all, and then shook her head angrily to get rid of his image, with its handsome features and pale hair.
The Rectory was a large rambling place, very inconvenient; all passages and odd stairs and small rooms leading from the enormous kitchen, which in an earlier time must have housed a horde of servants. Lucy darted through the back door and found her mother at the kitchen table, hulling strawberries—a beautiful woman still, even with five grownup children, four of whom had inherited her striking good looks, leaving Lucy to be the plain one in the family, although as her mother pointed out often enough, no one else had emerald green eyes.
Lucy perched on the table and gobbled up strawberries while she answered her mother’s questions; they were usually the same, only couched in carefully disguised ways: had Lucy met any nice young men? had she been out? and if by some small chance she had, the young man had to be described down to the last coat button, even though Lucy pointed out that in most cases he was already engaged or had merely asked her out in order to pave the way to an introduction to one of her friends. She had little to tell this time; she was going to save the lecturer for later.
‘Lovely to be home,’ she observed contentedly. ‘Who’s here?’
‘Kitty and Jerry and Paul, dear. Emma’s got her hands full with the twins—they’ve got the measles.’
Emma was the eldest and married, and both her brothers were engaged, while Kitty was the very new wife of a BOAC pilot, on a visit while he went on a course.
‘Good,’ said Lucy. ‘What’s for dinner?’
Her parent gave her a loving look; Lucy, so small and slim, had the appetite of a large horse and never put on an ounce.
‘Roast beef, darling, and it’s almost ready.’
It was over Mrs Prendergast’s splendidly cooked meal that Lucy told them all about her unfortunate lapse during the lecture.
‘Was he good-looking?’ Kitty wanted to know.
‘Oh, very, and very large too—not just tall but wide as well; he towered, if you know what I mean, and cold blue eyes that looked through me and the sort of hair that could be either very fair or grey.’ She paused to consider. ‘Oh, and he had one of those deep, rather gritty voices.’
Her mother, portioning out trifle, gave her a quick glance. ‘But you didn’t like him, love?’
Lucy, strictly brought up as behoved a parson’s daughter, answered truthfully and without embarrassment.
‘Well, actually, I did—he was smashing. Now if it had been Kitty or Emma…they’d have known what to do, and anyway, he wouldn’t have minded them; they’re both so pretty.’ She sighed. ‘But he didn’t like me, and why should he, for heaven’s sake? Snoring through his rolling periods!’
‘Looks are not everything, Lucilla,’ observed her father mildly, who hadn’t really been listening and had only caught the bit about being pretty. ‘Perhaps a suitable regret for your rudeness in falling asleep, nicely phrased, would have earned his good opinion.’
Lucy said ‘Yes, Father,’ meekly, privately of the opinion that it wouldn’t have made a scrap of difference if she had gone down on her knees to the wretched man. It was her mother who remarked gently: ‘Yes, dear, but you must remember that Lucy has always been an honest child; she spoke her mind and I can’t blame her. She should never have had to attend his lecture in the first place.’
‘Then she wouldn’t have seen this magnificent specimen of manhood,’ said Jerry, reaching for the cheese.
‘Not sweet on him, are you, Sis?’ asked Paul slyly, and Lucy being Lucy took his question seriously.
‘Oh, no—chalk and cheese, you know. I expect he eats his lunch at Claridges when he’s not giving learned advice to someone or other and making pots of money with private patients.’
‘You’re