‘He was a smasher. I couldn’t see him quite clearly from the window. You might have asked him in, Sophy. Why didn’t you?’
Sophy looked surprised. ‘I didn’t think about it,’ she replied honestly, and then took pity on the pretty downcast face of her young sister. ‘He wasn’t very young,’ she ventured.
‘I’m old for my years,’ Penny insisted. ‘Age doesn’t matter where true love exists.’
This profound remark drew forth general laughter in which Penny quite cheerfully joined, and then she said, ‘Well, perhaps he was a bit old for me, but he would have done nicely for you, Sophy. You always said that you wished a tall handsome man would load you with jewels and furs and carry you off to his castle.’
Sophy looked astonished. ‘Did I really say that?’ Half-for-gotten dreams, smothered by the prosaic daily round of her busy life, made her heart stir. She shook her head and said briskly. ‘That must have been years ago.’
She was almost asleep in a sleeping house, when she remembered that he had said goodnight and not goodbye. She told herself sleepily that it meant nothing at all; but it was comforting all the same.
The tide of early morning chores washed away all but the most commonplace of her thoughts. Even on her short walk to the hospital her thoughts were taken up with her elder brother, Luke, who was in his last year of medical school at Edinburgh Royal. He was twenty-two, almost four years younger than she; and clever. What money there was she used ungrudgingly to get him through his studies. Another year, and he would qualify, and the money could be used for Penny, and later, for Benjamin. The darkling thought that by then she would be in her forties dimmed her plans momentarily, but she wasn’t a girl to give way to self-pity, and she was cheerful enough as she went along to the scrubbing room, and then into the theatre. Staff Nurse had already laid up—the theatre was ready.
Sophy began to thread her needles. She could hear the murmur of men’s voices in the scrubbing room. The first case was to be a tricky one—a duodenopancreatectomy—and Mr Giles Radcliffe, the senior consultant surgeon, would be doing it. Probably the RSO would assist, for Mr Radcliffe’s houseman was fresh from his training school, and though painfully anxious to please, still leaned heavily on Sophy’s unobtrusive help, given wordlessly by means of frowns and nods and seeing that the correct instrument was always ready to his hand. She looked up as they came in, and her ‘Good morning’ froze on her lips. There were three men, not two. The third one was the man with the Bentley. Even gowned and masked, it was impossible not to recognise those pale blue eyes. They were staring at her now, with an expression which she was unable to read.
CHAPTER TWO
THE THREE SURGEONS strolled across the theatre with an air of not having much to do. Mr Radcliffe glanced at the patient before he spoke.
‘Sophy, this is Professor Jonkheer Maximillan van Oosterwelde—he will be operating this morning.’
He turned to the tall man with him. ‘Max, this is Miss Sophia Greenslade, Sister in charge of Main Theatre.’
They looked at each other over their masks—Sophy’s lovely hazel eyes, wide with surprise, encountered his cool blue ones. She said something—she had no idea what—in a murmur. Jonkheer van Oosterwelde said ‘How do you do?’ in a voice which really didn’t want to know, and turned to his patient.
Sophy had no time to wonder why her heart was racing and her cheeks were burning. Training and discipline clamped down on her muddled thoughts; she passed Bill Evans the sponges for the final prep, and handed Mr Radcliffe a large sterile sheet, which the surgeons arranged with all the meticulous care of housewives draping the best tablecloth. It shrouded the quiet figure between them in decent obscurity; leaving a surprisingly small area of skin exposed. She followed it with a variety of small towels and towel clips, and waited composedly until the anaesthetist said ‘Ready when you are.’ And when a quiet voice said, ‘Right, Sister,’ she was ready with the knife, and then in quick succession, the tissue and artery forceps and swabs. Mr Radcliffe put out a hand for gut, and she handed the retractors to Bill, then looked quickly round the theatre. She had a good team of nurses; they were all doing their allotted tasks. She nodded at each in turn and raised her eyebrows at Staff, who slid up behind her, whispered ‘Sucker?’ and switched it on. Sophy passed its sterile nozzle to Bill, who was looking worried because he hadn’t got anything to do. He took it gratefully, feeling he was in the picture again. She checked the clamps and the intestinal needles, rinsed the discarded forceps and put them ready to hand again, and watched Jonkheer van Oosterwelde. He was looking ahead of him, probing with gentle fingers; intent on his delicate task. At length he focused his gaze on Mr Radcliffe.
‘It’s worth trying, I think—what would you say?’
Sophy watched while Mr Radcliffe did exactly the same thing in his turn, then nodded. She caught a nurse’s eye and looked silently at the bowls. The nurse changed the saline in them and went away for a fresh supply; the operation would be a long one. The vacoliter would need changing fairly soon; she lifted a gloved finger and the junior nurse slid away to fetch a fresh supply. The men were talking quietly, working in unison. The Dutchman was dissecting with slow delicacy; Sophy put up a warning finger again, and a nurse edged up to the table with a receiver, to receive the result of his painstaking work. He stretched his long back, and bent to his work again, and Mr Radcliffe said,
‘You’re too tall, Max, by at least six inches—a pity you can’t give some of them to Sophy. She has to stand on a box—when you see her on the ground, you’ll see what I mean.’
‘I know perfectly what you mean; I have already seen her on the ground.’ He took an atraumatic needle from Sophy without looking at her.
‘You’ve met already? Where?’
‘In the street, yesterday evening, but we—ah—didn’t introduce ourselves.’
Sophy thought he was laughing behind his mask. She said tartly, ‘Which number gut will you use, sir?’
He had started the long-drawn out business of implanting, and didn’t look up from his work, but answered her in quite a different voice in which she could not detect the smallest thread of a laugh; and though the two men, and even Bill, talked among themselves during the remainder of the operation she was not included in their conversation. It wasn’t until the patient had been borne carefully away and Mr Radcliffe had rather tiredly suggested that they have coffee before the next case, that the other man spoke.
‘Thank you for your help, Sister—you are, if I may say so, very good at your job.’
Mr Radcliffe looked over his shoulder as he went through the door.
‘Yes, of course she is. Sophy, come and have your coffee with us—I want to talk to you.’
There was nothing for it but to do as she was asked. The theatre was already cleared and with whispered instructions to Staff to scrub and lay up as soon as she had had her coffee, Sophy followed the three men into her office. They stood politely while she took the chair behind her desk and then settled themselves: Mr Radcliffe on to the only other chair the room contained, Bill Evans on the edge of the desk, the Dutchman on the low window ledge. They were still wearing their caps and rubber boots and thick, enveloping aprons; the rubber smelled pungently in the small room. Tieless shirts and rolled-up sleeves did nothing to add to the general aspect of their appearance, but Sophy was used to it and indeed hardly noticed it as she poured coffee into the gaily painted mugs the nurses had given her for Christmas. She ladled in generous spoonfuls of sugar, and handed round the heartening beverage, and offered digestive biscuits with an unselfconscious, almost motherly air. The talk was pure shop, and she joined in easily; accepted as someone who knew what was being talked about and could be depended upon to listen with intelligence and give the right answers. Mr Radcliffe barely gave Bill time to drink his coffee before sending him off to the ward on an errand. As the door closed he passed his mug for a second cup and said,
‘I’m