She gave him a severe look. ‘Did you now, sir? Miss Smythe said that I could think it over.’
‘That was before you knew all these details I’ve gone to so much trouble to discover for you,’ he wheedled. ‘Come on now—it’ll make a nice change.’
She gave him a sudden smile. ‘All right, though I shall have to miss the hospital ball.’
He had picked up the receiver again. ‘Pooh, you can go dancing any night of the week; there isn’t a man in the hospital who hasn’t asked you out, one way and another.’ He turned away before she could reply and spoke to the patient soul at the other end of the line. ‘OK, she’ll come. Details later.’ And when she started to protest at his high-handed methods: ‘Well, why not, girl? You said you would go—you can fix the details with Miss Smythe.’ He bustled her to the door. ‘And now I’m late for my round, and it’s your fault.’
He trod on his way, leaving her speechless with indignation.
Mary Price had tea ready, the ward under control and five minutes to spare when Eliza got back to Men’s Medical. They sipped the dark, sweet brew in the peace and quiet of the office while Eliza explained briefly about the strange offer she had been made.
‘Oh, take it, Sister,’ begged her faithful colleague. ‘We shall miss you dreadfully, but it’ll only be for a week or two, and think of the fun you’ll have.’ Her brown eyes sparkled at the thought. ‘You could go up by car.’
‘Um,’ said Eliza, ‘so I could. Miss Smythe said that I’d been chosen from quite a long list of likely nurses. Why me, I wonder?’
‘Sir Harry, of course—you said yourself that he knew all about it.’ She refilled their cups. ‘What are you supposed to do once you’re there?’
‘I’m not quite sure. It’s an experiment—cardiac asthma as well as the intrinsic and extrinsic kinds—they want to prove something or other about climate and the effect of complete freedom from stress or strain.’
‘Sounds interesting. When do you have to leave?’
‘I have to report for duty on the fifteenth,’ she peered at the calendar, ‘eight days’ time. We’ll have to do something about the off duty, if you have a weekend before I go…’
They became immersed in the complicated jigsaw of days off, and presently, having got everything arranged to their mutual satisfaction, they left the office; Staff to supervise the return of the convalescent patients to their beds and Sister Proudfoot to cast her professional eye over the ward in general.
So that Mary might get her weekend off before she herself went away, Eliza took her own days off a couple of days later. She left the hospital after a long day’s work, driving her Fiat 500, a vehicle she had acquired some five years previously and saw little hope of replacing for the next few years at least. But even though it was by now a little shabby, and the engine made strange noises from time to time, it still served her well. She turned its small nose towards the west now, and after what seemed an age of slow driving through London, reached its outskirts and at length the M3. Here at least she could travel as fast as the Fiat would allow, and even when the motorway gave way to the Winchester bypass, she maintained a steady fifty miles an hour, only once past Winchester and on the Romsey road, she slowed down a little. It was very dark, and she had wasted a long time getting out of London; she wouldn’t reach Charmouth until midnight. The thought of the pleasant house where her parents lived spurred her on; they would wait up for her, they always did, and there would be hot soup and sausage rolls, warm and featherlight from the oven. Eliza, who hadn’t stopped for supper, put her small foot down on the accelerator.
The road was dark and lonely once she had passed Cadnam Corner. She left the New Forest behind, skirted Ringwood and threaded her way through Wimborne, silent under the blanket of winter clouds. Dorchester was silent too—she was getting near home now, there were only the hills between her and Bridport and then down and up through Chideock and then home. Here eager thoughts ran ahead of her, so that it seemed nearer than it actually was.
The lights of the house were still on as she brought the little car to a halt at the top of the hill at the further end of the little town, it lay back from the road, flanked by neighbours, all three of them little Regency houses, bowfronted, with verandahs and roomy front gardens. She was out of the car, her case in her hand, and running up the garden path almost as soon as she had switched off the engine; the cold bit into her as she turned the old-fashioned brass knob of the door and went inside. Her mother and father were still up, as she knew they would be, sitting one each side of the open fire, dozing a little, to wake as she went into the room. She embraced them with affection; her mother, as small a woman as she was, her father, tall and thin and scholarly. ‘Darlings,’ she declared, ‘how lovely to see you! It seems ages since I was home and I’ve heaps to tell you. I’ll just run the car across the road.’
She flew outside again; the car park belonged to the hotel opposite but the manager never minded her using it. She tucked the Fiat away in a corner and went back indoors, to find the soup and the sausage rolls, just as she had anticipated, waiting for her. She gobbled delicately and between mouthfuls began to tell her parents about the unexpected job she had been asked to take. ‘There was a list,’ she explained. ‘Heaven knows how they made it in the first place or why they picked on me—with a pin, most likely. I almost decided not to accept it, but Sir Harry Bliss thought it would be a good idea—and it’s only for a few weeks.’
Her mother offered her another sausage roll. ‘Yes, darling, I see. But isn’t this place miles away from everywhere?’
‘Yes. But I’m to have my own cottage to live in and I daresay I’ll be too busy to want to do much when I’m not on duty.’
‘There will be another nurse there?’ asked her father.
She shook her head. ‘No—I’m the only one and it sounds as though I shan’t have much to do. A handful of volunteer patients—all men, a few technicians and the two professors; William Wyllie—he’s an asthma case himself and I may have to look after him; he’s quite old—well, not very old, touching seventy.’
‘And the other doctor?’ It was her mother this time.
‘Oh, a friend of his. I daresay he’ll have asthma too, he’ll certainly be elderly.’ She brushed the crumbs from her pretty mouth and sat back with a sigh of content. ‘Now tell me all the news, my dears. Have you heard from Henry? and has Pat got over the measles?’
Henry was a younger brother, working in Brussels for the Common Market, and Pat was her small niece, her younger sister Polly’s daughter, who had married several years earlier. Her mother embarked on family news, wondering as she did so why it was that this pretty little creature sitting beside her hadn’t married herself, years ago. Of course she didn’t look anything like her age, but thirty wasn’t far off; Mrs Proudfoot belonged to the generation which considered thirty to be getting a little long in the tooth, and she worried about Eliza. The dear girl had had her chances—was still having them; she knew for a fact that at least two eligible young men had proposed to her during the last six months. And now she was off to this godforsaken spot in the Highlands where, as far as she could make out, there wasn’t going to be a man under sixty.
The two days passed quickly; there was so much to do, so many friends to visit, as well as helping her mother in the nice old house and going for walks with her father, who, now that he had retired from the Civil Service, found time to indulge in his hobby of fossil gathering. Eliza, who knew nothing about fossils, obligingly accompanied him to the beach and collected what she hoped were fine specimens, and which were almost always just pebbles. All the same, they enjoyed each other’s company and the fresh air gave her a glow which made her prettier