Dearest Eulalia
Betty Neels
CHAPTER ONE
THE two men talking together at the back of the hospital entrance hall paused to watch a young woman cross the vast floor. She was walking briskly, which suggested that she knew just where she was going, but she paused for a moment to speak to one of the porters and they had the chance to study her at their leisure.
She was worth studying: a quantity of dark brown hair framed a beautiful face and the nylon overall she was wearing couldn’t disguise her splendid figure.
‘Eulalia Langley,’ said the elder of the two men, ‘runs the canteen in Outpatients. Good at it, too. Lives with her grandfather, old Colonel Langley—your father knew him, Aderik. No money, lives in a splendid house somewhere behind Cheyne Walk. Some family arrangement makes it impossible for him to sell it—has to pass it on to a nephew. A millstone round his neck; Eulalia lives with him, keeps the home going. She’s been with us for several years now. Ought to have married by now but I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that. It’s a full-time job here and there isn’t much of the day left by the time the canteen shuts down.’
His companion said quietly, ‘She’s very beautiful,’ and then added, ‘You say that my father knew Colonel Langley?’
He watched the girl go on her way and then turned to his companion. He was tall and heavily built, and towered over his informative colleague. A handsome man in his thirties, he had pale hair already streaked with grey, a high-bridged nose above a thin mouth and heavy-lidded blue eyes. His voice held only faint interest.
‘Yes—during the Second World War. They saw a good deal of each other over the years. I don’t think you ever met him? Peppery man, and I gather from what I hear that he is housebound with severe arthritis and is now even more peppery.’
‘Understandably. Shall I see more of you before I go back to Holland?’
‘I hope you’ll find time to come to dinner; Dora will want to see you and ask after your mother. You’re going to Edinburgh this evening?’
‘Yes, but I should be back here tomorrow—I’m operating and there’s an Outpatient clinic I must fit in before I return.’
‘Then I’ll give you a ring.’ The older man smiled. ‘You are making quite a name for yourself, Aderik, just as your father did.’
Eulalia, unaware of this conversation, went on her way through the hospital to the Outpatients department, already filling up for the morning clinic.
It was a vast place, with rows of wooden benches and noisy old-fashioned radiators which did little to dispel the chill of early winter. Although a good deal of St Chad’s had been brought up to date, and that in the teeth of official efforts to close it, there wasn’t enough money to spend on the department so its walls remained that particular green so beloved by authority, its benches scuffed and stained and its linoleum floor, once green like the walls, now faded to no colour at all.
Whatever its shortcomings, they were greatly mitigated by the canteen counter which occupied the vast wall, covered in cheerful plastic and nicely set out with piles of plates, cups and saucers, soup mugs, spoons, knives and paper serviettes.
Eulalia saw with satisfaction that Sue and Polly were filling the tea urn and the sugar bowls. The first of the patients were already coming in although the first clinic wouldn’t open for another hour, but Outpatients, for all its drawbacks, was for many of the patients a sight better than cold bedsitters and loneliness.
Eulalia had seen that from the first moment of starting her job and since then, for four years, she had fought, splendid white tooth and nail, for the small comforts which would turn the unwelcoming place into somewhere in which the hours of waiting could be borne in some degree of comfort.
Since there had been no money to modernise the place, she had concentrated on the canteen, turning it by degrees into a buffet serving cheap, filling food, soup and drinks, served in brightly coloured crockery by cheerful, chatty helpers.
With an eye on the increasing flow of patients, she sent two of the girls to coffee and went to check the soup. The early morning clinic was chests, and that meant any number of elderly people who lived in damp and chilly rooms and never had quite enough to eat. Soup, even so early in the morning, would be welcome, washed down by strong tea…
One clinic succeeded another; frequently two or more ran consecutively, but by six o’clock the place was silent. Eulalia, after doing a last careful check, locked up, handed over the keys to the head porter and went home.
It was a long journey across the city but the first surge of home-goers had left so she had a seat in the bus and she walked for the last ten minutes or so, glad of the exercise, making her way through the quieter streets down towards the river until she reached a terrace of imposing houses in a narrow, tree-lined street.
Going up the steps to a front door, she glanced down at the basement. The curtains were drawn but she could see that there was a light there, for Jane would be getting supper. Eulalia put her key in the door and opened the inner door to the hall, lighted by a lamp on a side table—a handsome marble-topped nineteenth-century piece which, sadly, her grandfather was unable to sell since it was all part and parcel of the family arrangement…
There was a rather grand staircase at the end of the hall and doors on either side, but she passed them and went through the green baize door at the end of the hall and down the small staircase to the basement.
The kitchen was large with a large old-fashioned dresser along one wall, a scrubbed table at its centre and a Rayburn cooker, very much the worse for wear. But it was warm and something smelled delicious.
Eulalia wrinkled her beautiful nose. ‘Toad-in-the-hole? Roasted onions?’
The small round woman peeling apples at the table turned to look at her.
‘There you are, Miss Lally. The kettle’s on the boil; I’ll make you a nice cup of tea in a couple of shakes. The Colonel had his two hours ago.’
‘I’ll take a cup of tea with me, Jane; he’ll be wanting his whisky. Then I’ll come and give you a hand.’
She poured her own tea, and put a mug beside Jane. ‘Has Grandfather had a good day?’
‘He had a letter that upset him, Miss Lally.’ Jane’s nice elderly face looked worried. ‘You know how it is; something bothers him and he gets that upset.’
‘I’ll go and sit with him for a bit.’ Eulalia swallowed the rest of her tea, paused to stroke Dickens, the cat, asleep by the stove, and made her way upstairs.
The Colonel had a room on the first floor of the house at the front. It was a handsome apartment furnished with heavy mahogany pieces of the Victorian period. They had been his grandparents’ and although the other rooms were furnished mostly with Regency pieces he loved the solid bulk of wardrobe, dressing table and vast tallboy.
He was sitting in his chair by the gas fire, reading, when she tapped on the door and went in.
He turned his bony old face with its formidable nose towards her and put his book down. ‘Lally—jut in time to pour my whisky. Come and sit down and tell me about your day.’
She gave him his drink and sat down on a cross-framed stool, its tapestry almost threadbare, and gave him a light-hearted account of it, making much of its lighter moments. But although he chuckled from time to time he was unusually silent, so that presently she asked, ‘Something’s wrong, Grandfather?’
‘Nothing for you to worry your pretty head about, Lally. Stocks and