‘I’ll come with you,’ said Louise. She looked at Victoria, ‘You don’t mind, Vicky? We shall only be a minute or two.’
Victoria nodded and pulled into the side of the street, there wasn’t much traffic about and even fewer pedestrians. She switched off the engine and said: ‘Five minutes, and if you’re not back you can jolly well walk home!’
She watched them cross the road and turn off in the direction of the arcades and the market. Even in slacks and sweaters and at a distance, they looked striking. When they were out of sight she stared idly around her. Across the street was the man who had been so much in her thoughts. His face was grave and unsmiling, which should have stopped her smiling at him but didn’t. He crossed the street slowly, almost as if he were reluctant to speak to her, but when he reached the car he said politely enough: ‘Good morning. I hope you took no hurt from your wetting the other day?’
He still hadn’t smiled and she found herself wishing that he would.
‘No, thank you.’ She felt curiously shy and was furious with herself for being so and presently when he didn’t reply she added inanely: ‘You’re still here, then.’
The thick black brows were raised very slightly and he smiled suddenly and her heart lost its steady rhythm. She was still searching wildly for something interesting to talk about, something which would keep him there just a little longer, when someone whistled from across the street and he straightened up and looked over his shoulder and said: ‘Ah, I see I’m wanted,’ and added, ‘Perhaps we shall meet again.’
His tone had been so formal that she thought it very unlikely; she watched him regain the opposite pavement and disappear, going up the hill, away from the sea-front, to join the little boy she had seen before, and this time the girl she had seen him with was there too. Victoria looked away. Oh, well, she thought, there must be a great many more men in the world like him, and knew it for cold comfort.
She didn’t see him again for several days, not, in fact, until she was getting out of her father’s car on the White Rock Pier, preparatory to boarding the boat back to Weymouth, on her way back to St Judd’s. He was standing so close to the car that it was impossible to avoid him. She said: ‘Oh, hullo,’ and looked quickly away in case he should think that she might want to talk to him. Which she did very much indeed, but there was no fear of that, for by the time the rest of the Parsons family had got out of the car, he had disappeared, and for a little while at least she forgot about him while she said her goodbyes and went on board. It was the night boat, and although the boat was by no means full her father had insisted that she should have a cabin to herself. She felt grateful for this as she settled herself for a short night’s sleep.
She would have breakfast on the train and get to London in time to go to dinner in the hospital if she wanted to. She hated going back; she always did, but she would be coming again in a couple of months. It was silly at her age to feel even faintly homesick. She switched her thoughts to St Judd’s and kept them there despite an alarming tendency to allow the man she had met and would doubtless never meet again to creep into her head. Besides, she reminded herself firmly, he was married, and she was old-fashioned enough to believe that was sufficient reason to forget him. The highminded thought was tinged with sadness as she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
It was almost light when they docked at Weymouth. Victoria got into the waiting train and went along to breakfast and schooled her thoughts so well that by the time her taxi drew up outside the hospital, she had almost succeeded in forgetting him—but not quite.
CHAPTER TWO
THE brisk, instant routine of St Judd’s was something Victoria almost welcomed, so that she could tell herself as frequently as possible that it was her life, the one she had chosen even though her parents had wanted her to stay at home, busying herself with voluntary work of some sort; indulging her talent for sketching while she waited for, and in due course married, some suitable man. She alone of their four daughters had rebelled against this pleasant tameness even while she suffered acute homesickness each time she returned to work. That she was more fortunate than many of her friends in hospital she freely admitted, for she didn’t need to depend upon her salary; her father was generous so that she could make the long journey to Guernsey whenever she could manage her holiday. All the same she prized her independence, although she knew in her heart that while nursing satisfied her need to do something with her life, she would leave it at a moment’s notice if she met a man she could love.
She went on duty the morning after her return, to find a ward whose inmates had changed very little during her week’s absence. Sister Crow welcomed her back with the mixture of fussy grumbling and gossip to which Victoria had become accustomed. The staff nurse who had replaced Victoria had been most unsatisfactory—she had overslept; she had insisted on having a free evening on the very day Sister Crow hadn’t wanted her to; she was, said Sister Crow crossly, far too modern.
Victoria, pouring out their morning coffee in Sister’s office, said gently: ‘Staff Nurse Morgan’s sweet with the patients, Sister, and so kind.’
Sister Crow bridled. ‘That’s as may be, Staff Nurse Parsons, but I for one am unable to understand the half of what she says—she is not good Ward Sister material.’
Victoria suppressed a strong desire to observe that perhaps Morgan didn’t want to be a Ward Sister anyway; she was pretty and gay, and Victoria happened to know that her life was both full and lively, which probably accounted for her kindness and understanding of the patients under her care. But to say that to the Old Crow was merely to annoy her further and would do no one any good at all. She contented herself by saying:
‘The patients liked her, Sister.’
Sister Crow stirred her coffee and remarked snappishly: ‘They like you too, Staff Nurse, and you are a far better nurse. Much as I regret retiring from this ward I am at least satisfied that you, if given the opportunity, will carry on in a way worthy of the training I have given you.’
To which highminded speech Victoria could think of nothing to say, although the thought, completely unbidden, that perhaps she didn’t want to be a Ward Sister after all did cross her mind, to be rejected as there was a knock on the door and Johnny Dawes, the medical houseman, came in followed by a tallish young man, good-looking and fair.
Johnny said politely: ‘Good morning, Sister Crow, here’s Doctor Blake, you met yesterday, didn’t you?’ He looked at Victoria. ‘But I don’t think that Staff and he have met yet?’ He had half turned his back on the Old Crow as he spoke and gave Victoria a wink, for when that lady wasn’t about he was apt to treat her staff nurse like one of his sisters—an attitude which Victoria found quite natural, but now, as Sister Crow was present, she replied formally: ‘Good morning, Doctor Dawes. No, we haven’t met.’
‘The new RMO,’ said Johnny, ‘Doctor Jeremy Blake— Staff Nurse Parsons.’
She offered a hand and said, How do you do? and gave the new member of the staff a frank, friendly look. He seemed at first glance rather nice and very good-looking, although his mouth was a little too full for her taste and his eyes too pale a blue. Probably, she thought goodhumouredly, he was weighing her up too and finding her not quite to his taste either. She got up and fetched two more cups; Sister Crow poured coffee and settled down to a ten-minute lecture on how to run a ward and, what was more important, how the members of the medical staff should behave on it. Victoria and Johnny had heard it all a great many times before, but Doctor Blake hadn’t; he listened with polite attention and drank his coffee and when she paused for breath, suggested that a ward round might be a good idea. He looked at Victoria as he spoke and added: ‘If you’re busy, Sister, I’m sure Staff Nurse…’
‘Staff Nurse has a great deal to do,’ interrupted Sister Crow. ‘I shall go with you myself, and you,’ she finished, addressing Johnny, ‘may come with me.’
That left Victoria to collect the coffee cups on to the tray, ready for Dora the ward maid, and then go along to the treatment