Little Swanley was a little over sixty miles’ drive from Regent’s and once they were out of the suburbs Oscar took the A41, and, when they reached Aylesbury, turned on to the Thame road before taking the narrow road leading to Little Swanley.
‘It would have been quicker if we had taken the M40,’ he pointed out as he slowed to let a farm cart pass.
‘Yes, I know, but this is so much prettier—I don’t like motorways, but we’ll go back that way if you like.’
She felt a twinge of disappointment in his lack of interest in the countryside; after the drab streets round the hospital, the fields and hedges were green, there were primroses by the side of the road and the trees were showing their new leaves. Spring had come early.
Another even narrower road led downhill into the village. Megan, seeing the church tower beyond it, the gables of the manor house and the red tiles of the little cluster of houses around the market cross, felt a thrill of happiness. ‘Go through the village,’ she told Oscar. ‘Ours is the first house on the left—there’s a white gate…’
The gate was seldom closed. Oscar drove up the short drive and stopped before the open door of her home, white-walled and timber-framed with shutters at its windows, a roomy seventeenth-century house surrounded by trees with a lawn before it and flowerbeds packed with daffodils.
She turned a beaming face to Oscar. ‘Home!’ she cried. ‘Come on in, Mother will be waiting.’
Her mother was already at the door, a still pretty woman almost as tall as her daughter. ‘Darling, here you are at last, and you’ve brought Oscar with you.’ She embraced Megan and shook hands with him. ‘We’ve heard so much about you that we feel as though we know you already.’ She opened the door wider. ‘Come and meet my husband.’
Mr Rodner came into the hall then, the Sunday papers under one arm, spectacles on his nose, a good deal older than his wife, with a thick head of grey hair and a pleasant scholarly face. Megan hugged him before introducing Oscar. ‘At last we’ve managed to get here together. Are the others home?’
‘Church,’ said her mother. ‘They’ll be here in half an hour or so; there’s just time for us to have a cup of coffee and a chat before they get back.’
Melanie and Colin came in presently. Melanie was quite unlike her mother and sister; she was small and slim with golden hair and big blue eyes and Oscar couldn’t take his eyes off her. Megan beamed on them both, delighted that they were instant friends, for Melanie was shy and gentle and tended to shelter behind her sister’s Junoesque proportions. She left them talking happily and went into the garden to look at Colin’s rabbits, lending a sympathetic ear to his schoolboy grumbles, then she went to help her mother put lunch on the table.
Oscar, she saw with happy relief, had made himself at home, and her parents liked him. She had thought they might have taken a walk after lunch and discussed their future but he was so obviously happy in their company that she gave up the idea and left him with her father, Colin and Melanie and she went into the kitchen to gossip with her mother while they cleared away the dishes and put things ready for tea.
‘I like your young man,’ said her mother, polishing her best glasses. ‘He seems very sensible and steady. He’ll make a good husband, darling.’
‘Yes.’ Megan hesitated. ‘Only I don’t see much chance of us marrying for a while—for a long while. He’s rather keen on settling in London and I would have liked him to have found a country practice. I like my work, Mother, but I don’t like London, at least not the part where we work.’
‘Perhaps you can change his mind for him,’ suggested Mrs Rodner comfortably. ‘He doesn’t want to specialise, does he?’
‘No, but he’s keen to get as many qualifications as he can and that means hospital posts for some time.’
‘Did you like his parents, darling?’
Megan put down the last of the knives. ‘Well, his father is quite nice—not a bit like Father, though. I tried hard to like his mother but she doesn’t like me; she says she has no patience with career-minded girls.’
‘You won’t work once you are married, will you?’
‘No. Oscar wouldn’t like that. He thought it would be a good idea if he were to get a senior registrar’s post at one of the big teaching hospitals and I were to live with his parents…’
‘That won’t work,’ said Mrs Rodner with some heat. ‘What would you do all day? And it wouldn’t be a home of your own. Besides, after running a ward for a year or two you won’t settle down easily to playing second fiddle to Oscar’s mother, especially if you don’t like her.’
‘What shall I do?’ asked Megan. ‘It’s a problem, isn’t it?’
‘Wait and see, darling. Very hard to do, I know, but it’s the only way.’
Oscar drove her back to Regent’s after supper, waiting patiently while she hugged and kissed her family in turn, cuddled the elderly Labrador, Janus, made a last inspection of the family cat, Candy, and her various kittens, and picked a bunch of daffodils to cheer up her room. He was seldom put out, she thought contentedly as she got into the car at last.
‘Well,’ she asked him as they drove away, ‘did you like my family?’
‘Very much. Your brother is pretty sharp, isn’t he? Does well at school, I dare say.’
‘Yes, and a good thing, for Father wants him to go into the firm later on.’
‘Your sister is—she’s charming, like a shy angel—you’re not a bit alike,’ and when Megan laughed at that he said, ‘That sounds all wrong but you know what I mean. Has she got a job?’
‘No, she helps Mother at home, but she’s a marvellous needlewoman and she paints and draws and makes her own gloves—that kind of thing. She’s a good cook, too.’
‘Those scones at tea were delicious,’ said Oscar warmly. ‘I like to think of her in the kitchen…’
Megan, faintly puzzled by this remark, refrained from telling him that she had knocked up a batch of scones while he had been talking to Melanie in the drawing-room. It was natural enough, she supposed, that he would think that being a ward sister precluded a knowledge of the art of cooking.
At the hospital they parted in the entrance hall.
‘It was a delightful day,’ said Oscar warmly. ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for a long time.’
A remark which caused Megan to feel vaguely put out. All the same she said in her matter-of-fact way, ‘Good, we must do it again. Don’t forget I’m moving into my flat this week. If you’re free on Thursday evening, you can come for supper.’
He kissed her cheek, since there was no one there to see. ‘That’s a date. What will it be? Baked beans on toast and instant coffee?’
She smiled. ‘Very likely. You’d better bring a bottle of beer to help it out. Goodnight, Oscar.’
Before she went to sleep she had planned a supper menu which would put all thoughts of baked beans out of his head.
Theatre Sister left on Monday and on Tuesday evening Megan went round to the flat. She had already met the landlord and someone had been in to give the flat a good clean; it only remained for her to set the place to rights and since she had the evening before her she went back to the hospital, packed a case with most of her clothes, filled a plastic bag with books and went off once more. She had gone through the entrance door when the case was taken from her hand.
‘Allow me,’ said Professor van Belfeld. ‘The car’s over here…’
Megan