To the doctor’s suggestion that he should spend the rest of the day at an hotel, have a good night’s sleep and continue his journey on the following day, he agreed without enthusiasm, although when the doctor went away to make arrangements to have the car moved and a taxi fetched he raised no objection. His colour was normal again, indeed, he seemed perfectly well again—it must have been the heat, thought Charity, and wondered uneasily about the squint, because the man wasn’t squinting any more.
“I’m grateful to you, little lady,” he said gallantly, and Charity, a nicely curved five feet ten inches in her stockings, suppressed a giggle. “My name is Arthur C. Boekerchek, from Pennsylvania, USA, I’m at The Hague, attached to the Trades Mission.” He gave her a hard stare. “And what’s your name, ma’am?”
“Charity Dawson, from England, and if you’re sure you’re quite all right, I’ll be getting back to our car.” She put out a hand. “I hope you’ll be quite fit after a rest, Mr Boek—Boekerchek. Goodbye.”
He shook her hand. “You a nurse?” he wanted to know, and when she nodded: “Which hospital?” She told him, said goodbye for a second time and turned on her heel.
Charity couldn’t see the doctor anywhere as she went through the crush of cars and transports. She admitted to herself that she would have liked to have seen him again, if only to tell him that his manners were bad. She wondered which country he came from; his English was faultless, but he wasn’t an Englishman. She had almost reached her father’s car when she caught sight of him, strolling ahead of her to the back of the queue. Six feet and several inches besides, she guessed, and with the shoulders of an ox. Not so very young either, with that grizzled hair, but very good-looking. His laconic manner had irritated her, and she frowned, remembering it, as her father said: “Well, what on earth was it all about, Cherry?”
She got into the car and explained why she had been so long, making rather less of the doctor than she need have done, so that her mother asked: “Wasn’t he a nice man, dear?” and Lucy wanted to know: “And what was he like?”
Charity bit her lip. “I only said about two words to him, Mother, so I couldn’t possibly know if he’s nice—and I didn’t notice what he was like.” Which wasn’t true.
She saw him again—when they drove off the ferry at last, on the south side of the river and started up the road towards Sluis and Belgium. He passed them, driving a white Lamborghini Espada. He was travelling fast too. Charity pondered the fact that such a placid man as he had appeared to be and not young any more either should own such a powerful car and drive it, moreover, with all the nerve of someone half his age. She kept her surprised thoughts to herself, however, even when her father made some derogatory remark concerning the youth of today driving flash cars they probably couldn’t afford.
“They’re very expensive,” pointed out the Colonel. “Probably some pop singer,” he added disgustedly, and Charity, her head bent over the map, wondered what the doctor would have said to that. It was a great pity that she would never know.
She still had a few days of her holiday left; driving down to Budleigh Salterton beside a calmed and rested parent, she was thankful for them. She hadn’t really wanted to go to Bremen; she would have preferred to have stayed at home, pottering in the garden and taking the dogs for long walks on the common, but somehow she had found herself agreeing to accompany her parents and sister, mainly because she knew that her calm common sense could cool her father’s little rages when her mother or Lucy aggravated them.
He was getting elderly, she thought lovingly, glancing sideways at him as they drove westwards; small things annoyed him, and Lucy, younger by five years than herself, had a gentle nature whose acceptance of his contrariness merely irritated him still further. Her mother, of course, was perfectly able to manage him, but she was recovering from a bout of ill-health and hadn’t yet regained her usual fire and spirit. He was a devoted husband and a kind and indulgent father; his irascible nature had never bothered her—it didn’t bother her brother George, either, although now that he was away from home, he seldom encountered it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her father’s enquiry as to where they should stop for lunch and her mother’s “Somewhere quiet, dear,” and Lucy’s “We’ve just passed such a nice hotel,” were neither of them much use. She said peaceably before he could speak: “How about that place in Petersfield? It’s right on the square and easy to park the car.” Even as she made this sensible suggestion she was wondering with one tiny corner of her mind where the doctor was now. She moved restlessly in her seat; it was strange how he had remained in her thoughts. She told herself with her usual sense that it was probably because he had annoyed her and had been so very good-looking.
They arrived home in the early evening and the next few hours were taken up with fetching Nell and Bliss, the two English setters, from the kennels, unpacking and helping her mother to get a meal. It was nice to be home again, back in the unpretentious Edwardian house perched up on the hill behind the little town, with its large garden and only a glimpse between the trees of the neighbouring houses. Charity had been born there and been brought up—with suitable intervals at boarding school—in its peace and comfort. She knew, now that she was older, that there wasn’t a great deal of money, but looking back, she couldn’t remember feeling anything but secure and well cared for, and although the house was a little bit shabby now, it still provided the same comfort.
She went up to her room, and instead of unpacking, hung out of the window which overlooked the side of the house where her father grew his roses; they were in full bloom now and their scent filled the evening air. For some reason which she couldn’t guess at, she sighed, unpacked and went downstairs again to undertake the task of setting the supper table so that Lucy, who was more or less engaged to the doctor’s son down the lane, could pay him a quick visit.
The remaining days of Charity’s holiday went far too quickly, taken up as they were with the pleasurable occupation of discussing Lucy’s still distant wedding, taking her mother to Exeter to shop, exercising the dogs and helping her father sort through the mass of papers he had spent years in collecting, with an eye to writing a book on military strategy during the last war. She thought, privately, that the book might never be written, but her father so much enjoyed his hours of research that she took care not to voice her doubts; besides, it gave him something to do when the weather interfered with his gardening.
She left early in the morning, in the MG which had been a present from her godmother on her twenty-first birthday and her most treasured possession, for it was a means of getting home for a weekend at least once a month as well as for her holidays. She was a good driver and a fast one, so once over the winding road which crossed Woodbury Common she joined the main road and put her foot down. She was on duty the next morning, and she wanted an hour or two to settle in once more before she went on the ward. Her brain was already busy with the work ahead of her; there would be two new student nurses to absorb into the staff of the Men’s Surgical ward she had been running for two years now; her staff nurse would need—and deserve—a long weekend off; there was that little tussle with Matron before her, concerning the new ward curtains—and there was Clive Barton, the Surgical Registrar, who had shown signs of becoming serious about her, and for some reason she couldn’t quite understand, she didn’t want to encourage him. Which was silly really, for she liked him very much, perhaps she was a little fond of him even and might get fonder, but she hesitated to commit herself.
She whizzed past a couple of slow-moving transports, wondering why it was that Lucy, quiet and retiring and shy, who had little or no opportunity of meeting any men, should have known the moment she had set eyes upon David that she wanted to marry him.
Charity’s dark winged eyebrows drew together in a frown. Perhaps she was never going to meet a man who would make her feel like that—willing to hand over her whole life without question. She slowed down to go through Axminster, to get caught up in the early morning traffic filtering its way through the narrow, curling main street. She glanced at her watch; she was