Lavinia let this pass. It was partly true in any case, though it need not have been mentioned in such unkind terms. Everyone knew quite well why she had stayed at home when she had left school; her mother was alone and Peta was still a small girl, and over and above that, her mother hadn’t been strong. She said now, schooling her voice to politeness: ‘I don’t know about that, Aunt, but the change will be nice and the pay’s good.’
‘As long as you don’t squander it,’ replied Aunt Gwyneth tartly. ‘But it is a good opportunity for you to see something of the world, I suppose; the time will come when I shall need a companion, as you well know. Peta will be far too young and lively for me, and I shall expect you, Lavinia, to give up your nursing and look after me. It is the least you can do for me after the sacrifices I have made for you both.’
Lavinia forbore from commenting that she had had nothing done for her at all; even holidays and days off had been denied her, and though she was a fair-minded girl, the worthy stockings, edifying books and writing paper she had received so regularly at Christmas and birthdays could hardly be classed as sacrifices. And her aunt could quite well afford to pay for a companion; someone she could bully if she wanted to and who would be able to answer back without the chain of family ties to hold her back. She sighed with deep contentment, thinking of her new job, and her aunt mistaking her reason for sighing, remarked that she was, and always had been, an ungrateful girl.
Lavinia wasn’t going to see Peta again before she left England, although she had arranged to telephone her at a friend’s house before she went. She spent the week in making final arrangements, aided, and hindered too, by her many friends. They had a party for her on her last night, with one bottle of sherry between a dozen or more of them, a great many pots of tea and a miscellany of food. There was a great deal of laughing and talking too, and when someone suggested that Lavinia should find herself a husband while she was in Holland, a chorus of voices elaborated the idea. ‘Someone rich—good-looking—both—with an enormous house so that they could all come and stay…’ The party broke up in peals of laughter. Lavinia was very popular, but no one really believed that she was likely to find herself such a delightful future, and she believed it least of all.
She left the next morning, after a guarded telephone talk with Peta and a noisy send-off from her friends at Jerrold’s. She was to go by plane, and the novelty of that was sufficient to keep her interested until the flat coast of Holland appeared beneath them and drove home the fact that she had finally left her safe, rather dull life behind, and for one she didn’t know much about. They began to circle Schiphol airport, and she sat rigid. Supposing that after all no one spoke English? Dutch, someone had told her, was a fearful language until you got the hang of it. Supposing that there had been some mistake and when she arrived no one expected her? Supposing the theatre technique was different, even though they had said it wasn’t…? She followed the other passengers from the plane, went through Customs and boarded the bus waiting to take her to Amsterdam.
The drive was just long enough to give her time to pull herself together and even laugh a little at her silly ideas. It was a bit late to get cold feet now, anyway, and she had the sudden hopeful feeling that she was going to like her new job very much. She looked about her eagerly as the bus churned its way through the morning traffic in the narrow streets and at the terminal she did as she had been instructed: showed the hospital’s address to a hovering taxi-driver, and when he had loaded her luggage into his cab, got in beside it. The new life had begun.
CHAPTER TWO
THE HOSPITAL WAS on the fringe of the city’s centre; a large, old-fashioned building, patched here and there with modern additions which its three-hundred-year-old core had easily absorbed. It was tucked away behind the busy main streets, with narrow alleys, lined with tiny, slightly shabby houses, round three sides of it. On the fourth side there was a great covered gateway, left over from a bygone age, which was still wide enough to accommodate the comings and goings of ambulances and other motor traffic.
Lavinia paused to look about her as she got out of the taxi. The driver got out too and set her luggage on the pavement, said something she couldn’t understand, and then humped it up the steps of the hospital and left it in the vast porch. Only when he had done this did he tell her how much she needed to pay him. As she painstakingly sorted out the guldens he asked: ‘You are nurse?’ and when she nodded, refused the tip she offered him. London taxi drivers seldom took tips from a nurse either, sometimes they wouldn’t even accept a fare—perhaps it was a worldwide custom. She thanked him when he wished her good luck and waited until his broad friendly back had disappeared inside his cab before going through the big glass doors, feeling as though she had lost a friend.
But she need not have felt nervous; no sooner had she peered cautiously through the porter’s lodge window than he was there, asking her what she wanted, and when he discovered that she was the expected English nurse, he summoned another porter, gave him incomprehensible instructions, said, just as the taxi driver had said: ‘Good luck,’ and waved her into line behind her guide. She turned back at the last moment, remembering her luggage, and was reassured by his cheerful: ‘Baggage is OK.’
The porter was tall and thin and walked fast; Lavinia, almost trotting to keep up with him, had scant time in which to look around her. She had an impression of dark walls, a tiled floor and endless doors on either side of the passages they were traversing so rapidly. Presently they merged into a wider one which in its turn ended at a splendid arch-way opening on to a vestibule, full of doors. The porter knocked on one of these, opened it and stood on one side of it for her to enter.
The room was small, and seemed smaller because of the woman standing by the window, for she was very large—in her forties, perhaps, with a straight back, a billowing bosom and a long, strong-featured face. Her eyes were pale blue and her hair, drawn back severely from her face, was iron grey. When she smiled, Lavinia thought she was one of the nicest persons she had ever seen.
‘Miss Hawkins?’ Her voice was as nice as her smile. ‘We are glad to welcome you to St Jorus and we hope that you will be happy here.’ She nodded towards a small hard chair. ‘Will you sit, please?’
Lavinia sat, listening carefully while the Directrice outlined her duties, mentioned off-duty, touched lightly on uniforms, salary and the advisability of taking Dutch lessons and went on: ‘You will find that the medical staff speak English and also some of the nurses too—the domestic staff, they will not, but there will be someone to help you for a little while. You will soon pick up a few necessary words, I feel sure.’
She smiled confidently at Lavinia, who smiled back, not feeling confident at all. Certainly she would make a point of starting lessons as soon as possible; she hadn’t heard more than a few sentences of Dutch so far, but they had sounded like gibberish.
‘You wish to live out, I understand,’ went on the Directrice, ‘and that will be possible within a week or so, but first you must be quite certain that you want to remain with us, although we should not stand in your way if before then you should decide to return to England.’
‘I was thinking of staying for a year,’ ventured Lavinia, ‘but I’d rather not decide until I’ve been here a few days, but I do want to make a home for my young sister.’
Her companion looked curious but forbore from pressing for further information, instead she rang the bell on her desk and when a young woman in nurse’s uniform but without a cap answered it, she said kindly:
‘This is Juffrouw Fiske, my secretary. She will take you over to the Nurses’ Home and show you your room. You would like to unpack, and perhaps it would be as well if you went on duty directly after the midday meal. Theatre B, major surgery. There is a short list this afternoon and you will have a chance to find your feet.’
Lavinia thanked her and set off with Juffrouw Fiske through more passages and across a couple of small courtyards, enclosed by high grey walls until they finally came to a door set in one of the—the back door, she was told, to the Home. It gave directly on to a short passage with a door at its end opening on to a wide hall in which was a flight of stairs which they climbed.
‘There