Buch lesen: «The Final Touch»

CHAPTER ONE

THE vast entrance hall of one of Amsterdam’s oldest and largest hospitals was very nearly empty. At eight o’clock in the evening, visitors had gone home and the chilly dark of a November evening had kept those of the hospital staff who were free indoors. There were, however, four people there: the porter in his kiosk, a telephonist manning a switchboard tucked away at the back of the hall and two men standing near the entrance, deep in talk—an elderly man with white hair and a flowing moustache and beard, not much above middle height and pretty portly, and his companion, strongly built and towering above him, his handsome head bent as he listened, the dim light above them turning his grizzled head to dull silver. The older man spoke at some length, pausing only when someone came in through the big swing doors. A girl, neatly dressed in a raincoat which had seen better days, a headscarf and sensible shoes. She took off the scarf as she crossed the hall, uncovering light brown hair pinned into a bun, and then ducked her head into the kiosk.

The two men watched her and the elder said softly, ‘The English nurse—you have not yet met her? She is good: capable and quick and does not fuss. She has no Dutch to speak of but she is learning fast.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘A rather plain girl and I think not happy.’

‘Homesick?’ The question was casually kind.

‘No, no. I believe she has no home. Young van Kamp met her when he was doing that course in London, took her here, there and everywhere and persuaded her to try for a job with us. Well, we all know van Kamp, don’t we? A great one for the girls, and that’s all right as long as they don’t take him seriously. Only it seems that she has taken him seriously. He has taken her out once or twice but I hear that he has his eye on that new young woman on Men’s Medical.’

They watched the girl leave the kiosk and disappear down one of the corridors leading from the hall.

‘You are very well informed,’ remarked the younger man.

‘Huib—’ Huib was his registrar ‘—hears all this from the junior housemen. He thinks it is a great shame; he wants to warn her, but, although she is well liked, there is no one close enough.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But there, she is a young woman of twenty-three and presumably doesn’t walk around with her head in a sack. Now, as to this patient…’

The girl, in the meanwhile, had made her way to the nurses’ home and gone to her room. Her head was by no means in a sack but for some months it had been in the clouds, kept there by daydreams of a happy future, but now, sitting on the side of her bed, still in her raincoat, she had to admit that the sooner she got her feet back on solid earth, the better. She had been a fool, but never again, she told herself fiercely. Sitting there, she went over the events of the last month or so and, being a girl of good sense, admitted that she had been blind and naïve; Cor van Kamp had swept her off her feet just at a time when she had been fighting discontent with her life. She was happy as a nurse and she had done well but her home-life was non-existent. Her mother had died when she was still at school and her father had remarried after a few years; a widow with a daughter a little older than she—company for each other, her father had declared happily, only it hadn’t worked out like that. Her stepsister Eunice had grown into a pretty girl, found herself a job as a fashion model and left home, and shortly after that her father had died and her stepmother had sold their home and gone to live in the South of France. Within a year she had lost all contact with her and she saw Eunice only in the pages of glossy magazines. The tentative advances she had made to meet, even to find a small flat and share it, had been rebuffed.

She had known at the time that it had been silly to suggest it; she had almost nothing in common with her stepsister and she was aware that her ordinary features, old-fashioned ideas and lack of clever conversation would have been a hindrance to Eunice. Besides, she wore all the wrong clothes… Cor van Kamp had changed all that for her; he had singled her out, talked to her, taken her to romantic little restaurants for dinner, walked with her in the parks of London, borrowed a car and taken her to Brighton for the day, to the theatre, to films… She had been infatuated, believing every word he told her—that she was the only girl for him and hinting at a marvellous future—unaware that he had been amusing himself. He had not wanted to go to London in the first place and he was bored, and then he had seen her and set himself the task of getting her to fall in love with him just for a joke. He had suggested that she might get a job at his own hospital in Amsterdam even though he hadn’t meant a word of it; indeed, he was getting bored with her too. She was a nice little thing, but he was clever enough to realise that she was a girl with decided ideas about brief love-affairs, and she was tiresomely serious about marriage. All the same, he had found it all a bit of a joke when she had left her job at the hospital and applied for and got the post of staff nurse on Women’s Surgical in Amsterdam.

That had been almost two months ago and during that time they had been out together only three times, brief meetings in cafés when he had talked easily and amusingly about the hospital and his work and never about their future together. He had kissed her carelessly and told her how much he missed her but that he had almost no free time. She had believed him, holding desperately on to the excuse that he worked even harder than she did, and on their last meeting she had tried hard not to notice that he was preoccupied, even impatient with her. All the same, she had told him that she would have a half-day at the weekend and could they meet, and everything had been all right again when he had said at once that there was nothing he’d rather do than be with her and told her to wait for him in the Rijksmuseum. ‘Sit in front of the Nachtwacht,’ he had told her. ‘I may get held up, but I’ll come.’

It had rained, but she hadn’t minded that. She had hurried off duty, eaten a hasty lunch and changed out of her uniform, boarded a tram and filed into the museum with a sprinkling of tourists and locals anxious to get out of the chilly November rain. The row of chairs before the famous painting was empty; she chose a seat in the centre and composed herself to wait. From time to time someone would come and sit down near her, the better to study the magnificent painting, but time wore on and Cor didn’t come. However, he had said wait, so she waited while the afternoon edged itself into dusk and one of the attendants came to tell her that the museum would be closing very shortly.

So she went back into the damp streets, uncertain what to do. She had no idea where he might be. The best thing to do would be to go back to the hospital and ask at the porter’s lodge; Cor might have left a message… The thought cheered her and she went into a coffee shop and had coffee and a spiced bun before getting on a tram once more. The tram was full of people in damp coats and she had to stand, her small slender person jammed between two stout matrons with laden shopping bags. The tram stopped close to the hospital but on the other side of the busy street and she had to wait for a gap in the traffic. Visitors were streaming out of the hospital forecourt and she glanced at her watch. It was just after half-past six, and if Cor was free there was still time for them to go out to dinner or to a film.

He was free—she saw him a moment later—but not for her. He had strolled on to the opposite pavement, his arm tucked into that of a girl—one of the staff nurses in Theatre whom she knew slightly. As she looked he bent his head and kissed her and they laughed together and went walking off, still laughing.

She watched them go and all the small doubts she had tried so hard to ignore during the last few weeks came crowding back, presenting her with a clear picture quite unlike her dreams. She turned on her heel and walked back towards the shopping streets, their windows still lighted, and went from shop to shop, gazing unseeingly at their displays, but it kept her from thinking. It was striking eight o’clock when she went through the doors into the entrance hall and asked in her quiet voice if there had been a message for her, knowing already that there hadn’t.

Now she sat on her bed, doing her best to think sensibly. She couldn’t pack her bags and go; she had a contract for six months and, besides, she had nowhere to go, and she had to see Cor; there might be some good reason…

She got up and studied her face in the looking-glass. It looked exactly the same as usual, a little pale perhaps, but her nice unremarkable face showed no sign of her troubled thoughts. She tidied her hair, used powder and lipstick, and went down to the canteen for her supper.

When her companions asked her if she had had a pleasant half-day, she replied serenely that she had enjoyed herself immensely. Only Zuster Smit, another of the staff nurses in Theatre, gave her a faintly surprised and thoughtful look; she went out occasionally with one of the house surgeons and had been told something of the reason why the English girl had come to the hospital. Charity Pearson was a nice girl and deserved better; besides, she was in a strange country. Zuster Smit finished her supper, wondering uneasily if she should do something about it. Warn Charity that van Kamp wasn’t serious and seemed unlikely to be in the foreseeable future? Mention casually that he was free for two or three evenings each week? And that he dated a different nurse each time?

She found herself unable to do any of these things. She could mention it to the houseman she was friendly with, and ask him to talk to van Kamp. That wouldn’t do either. She leaned across the table and invited Charity to have a mug of coffee in her room with half a dozen other nurses; she hadn’t eaten her supper and she was pale and quieter than ever.

It was Theatre day on Women’s Surgical the next morning, something Charity welcomed for she was kept too busy to think about anything but her work. The routine was familiar by now and very similar to that of the London hospital where she had trained, and she had acquired a basic Dutch so that she could answer the patients’ needs; she went to and fro with the cases for Theatre, saw to drips, inspected dressings and, under the Hoofdzuster’s sharp eye, gave necessary injections. She was off duty at five o’clock but it was nearer six by the time she left the ward and began the lengthy walk through the hospital to the nurses’ home. The surgical wing was new, built on to the original main hospital, and the women’s ward was on the third floor. She went slowly down the wide staircase to the floor below—the floor where Cor worked, although on the other side of the main building, where the medical wards were housed. Tired though she was, she allowed her feet to carry her along the wide corridor at the back of the old hospital—there was just the chance that she might meet Cor. She had never gone to that wing deliberately before but now it seemed to her urgent to see him. She was halfway along it when he came out of the swing doors of the children’s ward, saw her, hesitated, and then came towards her.

‘Darling…’ he was smiling at her ‘…I’ve been trying to see you all day—but I’m up to my eyes and still hard at it. I’m so sorry about yesterday—an emergency—didn’t have time to leave a message for you; actually I was in Theatre until after midnight, giving anaesthetics.’

Charity looked at him without smiling, willing him to tell the truth and beg her to forgive him, but he stood there, smiling still.

After a silence which went on far too long she said in her quiet voice, ‘No, you weren’t, Cor. I saw you yesterday evening with that pretty staff nurse from Theatre. You were on the pavement outside the hospital.’ She went on steadily, ‘Oh, it’s quite all right—it’s me that’s been silly—I thought… Well, never mind what I thought, but you didn’t need to lie.’

He blustered a bit then. ‘I don’t know what you mean—there’s no harm in a man’s taking a girl out.’

‘None at all, only you weren’t very fair, were you? I sat in the Rijksmuseum for hours. Did you forget?’

‘No, no, of course not; I thought you’d have the sense not to wait for more than half an hour or so.’ He smiled again—he smiled too easily, she thought. ‘Anyway, no harm done. We had fun together while it lasted, darling, and you’ve got a good job here.’

‘Yes, I have.’ Her voice was suddenly sharp. ‘And don’t ever call me darling again.’

His smile became a sneer. ‘Oh, be your age, for heaven’s sake—good lord, you would think I had intended marrying you.’

When she stayed silent he said, ‘My God, you did… You must have been out of your mind.’

She said, her voice quite quiet once more, ‘Yes, I think I was, but I’m sane now.’ And, suddenly impatient, she added, ‘Oh, go away, do.’

He turned on his heel and went without a backward glance, leaving her standing there, watched with calm interest by the man who had come from the children’s ward. Only when he saw her take out a handkerchief and blow her small nose with unwonted vigour did he put out a hand behind him, push the door soundlessly open and then allow it to swing back with some force so that she was aware of someone there. She didn’t turn round. He hadn’t expected her to; he walked past her rigid back without haste on his way to the medical wing and he was very nearly at the end of the corridor when he heard her muffled sobs.

He walked back to where she was standing. ‘Staff Nurse Pearson, is it not?’ He had only the faintest of accents and his voice was quiet. ‘Perhaps I can help?’

She hadn’t turned round and her sniffs were prodigious but she answered him at once. ‘Thank you—but not really, please don’t bother.’

He said easily, ‘You haven’t been here long, have you? I expect you are feeling homesick, are you not? I was just going out for a breath of air and a cup of coffee. Why not come with me? And do turn round; there is nothing to be ashamed of in tears, you know.’

He had a compelling voice, she turned round obediently and lifted her face, rendered plain by tears and a pink nose, to his. She hadn’t seen him before; she was sure that she would have remembered him if she had. He was quite overpoweringly tall and massively built and good-looking into the bargain. ‘Are you a visitor?’ she asked.

‘Er—no, I work here.’

‘A doctor?’

‘A surgeon.’ He smiled down at her very kindly. ‘Van der Brons.’ He put out a large firm hand and engulfed one of hers. ‘Go and put on a coat; I’ll be in the entrance hall in ten minutes.’

He saw her hesitate and added gently, ‘And wear something on your head—it’s a chilly evening.’

His prosaic remark was somehow reassuring.

He was in the entrance hall when she got there ten minutes later, looking larger than ever in a thick jacket, his silvery head uncovered. The jacket looked expensive and she wondered uneasily just who he was but his friendly, ‘Ah, there you are,’ dispelled any vague doubts and they went out into the courtyard together and thence into the busy street. It was a chilly damp evening and the streets around the hospital were narrow with ancient houses brooding over them. He took her arm and led her through the narrow alley which brought them out into a better-lit street.

‘Coffee first?’ he asked, and didn’t wait for an answer but steered her into a half-empty café and sat her down at a small table. It was very warm there, and he took her raincoat and tossed his jacket over the back of his chair, revealing a beautifully tailored suit, immaculate linen and gold cufflinks. Her uneasy thoughts returned but were swept away by his easy, ‘Toasted sandwiches? And uitsmijter? Soup?’

She chose sandwiches, he gave the order and they drank their coffee while they waited. However upset she felt, she was given no chance to brood, for he kept up a steady flow of small talk about nothing in particular.

The sandwiches were delicious and the coffee hot and comforting; Charity’s pale face resumed its normal healthy colour and, led on in a gentle way by her companion, she began to talk, not noticing that his casual questions were encouraging her to tell him something of herself.

He fetched more coffee from the crowded counter and asked carelessly, ‘Do you intend to stay in Holland for a time or is this just a few months’ visit to see if you like us?’

She didn’t answer at once. She had a sudden wish to spill her bewilderment and misery and loneliness all over this large placid man, but of course that was an idiotic idea; she didn’t even know who he was, only his name and the fact that he was a surgeon at the hospital. She blushed scarlet, remembering that she and Cor had met in a similar fashion. Perhaps this man had picked her up on the spur of the moment, and how willingly she had agreed to go with him!

Mr van der Brons, watching her, guessed unerringly what was in her head. ‘I have a sister about your age,’ he said in a soothing voice. ‘She’s in Edinburgh on a six-month course; she qualified here, now she wants to spread her wings—just as you. She is the youngest—I have two other sisters and two brothers. Have you any brothers and sisters?’

Somehow he had conveyed the impression that he was her elder brother too, so she said readily, ‘No, at least—I have a stepsister. She’s a model and lives in London. She’s very pretty…’

‘Your parents?’ The question was so softly put that she hardly noticed it.

‘My mother died when I was still a small girl, and my father married again—my stepmother was a widow and had a little girl too. He died just after I started my training and my stepmother has gone to live in the South of France.’

Before she could regret her chattiness he began to talk about his own family, vague remarks which in truth told her nothing about him or them but allayed her shyness and doubts.

‘Do you care for a brisk walk? It will have to be up one street and down another but some of the buildings are charming and the canals are always interesting.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Are you on duty in the morning?’ And when she nodded, ‘Then we have time to walk for half an hour before you need to be back.’

They went out into the dark evening and he took her arm to cross the street. ‘Do you find the duty hours easier here?’

‘Well, seven o’clock is earlier then I was used to in London.’ She had to skip a bit to keep up with him and he slowed his steps. ‘On the other hand, it is nice to be off duty earlier; I mean, half-past three is very handy if one wants to go shopping.’

He agreed gravely as they started to walk alongside a canal, along a cobbled street lined with gabled houses, their windows lighted, the curtains undrawn. He pointed out the variety of gables to her, described their interiors, remarking that for the most part their owners took great pride in keeping them in good order.

‘They look delightful from outside,’ said Charity, ‘I hope I get the chance to see inside one before I go back to England.’

‘Well, there’s time enough for that, is there not? Do you have a six-month contract?’

‘Yes.’ His remark reminded her of her talk with Cor and a very sharp wave of unhappiness washed over her so that she was quite unable to say anything more; just for a little while this nice quiet man had pushed away a future she didn’t want to think about but now it was back again. She drew a troubled breath and made a great point of examining the contents of a small antiques shop they were passing, doing her best to regain her usual good sense.

‘You’re unhappy,’ he stated in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘and I find it difficult to believe that you are homesick since you have no home, but I dare say you don’t want to talk about it, not just now.’

He turned her round and began to walk back the way they had come. When they were within sight of the hospital she asked, ‘Why did you ask me to come out with you?’

‘I told you that I have a sister about your age; I would like to think that if she were unhappy and alone in Edinburgh there would be someone to keep her company for an hour or two, since I couldn’t do that myself.’

‘Oh—oh, I see. Well, thank you very much—you’ve been very kind. I feel quite all right again. I’m not usually so silly…’

He pushed open the big door and held it for her to go through. ‘There is nothing silly about admitting one’s feelings.’ He smiled very kindly at her upturned face. ‘Now go to bed and sleep well.’

‘You too, Mr van der Brons.’

He waited near the door until she had disappeared from the hall and then turned and went out again to where a dark grey Rolls-Royce was parked, got in and drove away.

Charity hadn’t expected to sleep, but she did, only to wake very early to face a day she would have to get through somehow. She supposed that in a little while she would feel happy again but on this dark cold morning the future seemed a hopeless blank. In vain she told herself that Cor wasn’t worth another thought, that she was well out of it. She would forget him in time, and when her contract was up she would go back to England and get a good post in one of the teaching hospitals and carve a career for herself. The thought depressed her but at least it was something to think about.

She joined her fellow nurses at breakfast, outwardly her usual quiet self, answering their good-natured remarks in her peculiar Dutch and then hurrying through the hospital to her ward.

Ladies who had been operated on the previous day were feeling, naturally enough, low-spirited and the Hoofdzuster, a rather peevish woman at the best of times, had started a cold so that her peevishness was even worse than usual. Charity, doing her best, was glad that she was off duty at half-past three. If she were quick, there would be time to go to the book shop on the Singel and choose a paperback. Books were expensive in Holland, she had discovered, but they were her only extravagance.

When her father had died the allowance he had given her had been stopped by her stepmother, who had pointed out that now that she was nursing she earned enough to be independent. She had added, ‘I know that in his will your father arranged for me to continue your allowance but of course when he went to make it you were still at school. I don’t believe in young people living on money they haven’t earned. You are not like Eunice, who will probably marry well; you need to work hard and make a career for yourself.’ She had left for France shortly after that, taking every penny with her.

There was nothing to be done about that; Charity, never an extravagant girl, learned to buy the sort of clothes which didn’t date and made them last and, since although she was well liked at the hospital she was seldom asked out, that didn’t matter too much. If sometimes she envied her friends’ new outfits and sighed over the glamorous photos of Eunice in the glossy magazines she never mentioned it.

Now, hurrying towards the shops in the Kalverstraat and Leidsestraat, she decided that the time had come to buy something new and for once fashionable. She had saved for a rainy day and this seemed to be it. She chose a book and then turned her attention to the dress shops. They were all too expensive; C & A and Vroom and Dressman would suit her pocket better. It was a pity that there wasn’t time to buy anything before they closed but she studied their windows so that on her next free day she would have some idea of what she wanted. Her winter coat was good for another year; it had been bought in a sale, a serviceable brown wool bearing a quality label. She had a couple of skirts too and jumpers and sweaters enough even if she was heartily sick of them. A really smart dress, she mused, some pretty shoes and, if there was enough money, a pair of soft leather boots. She walked back to the hospital, keeping her mind on new clothes and off Cor, who most tiresomely lurked at the back of her head however she tried to forget him; it was a pity that she should walk into him as she reached the hospital forecourt. He stopped in front of her and started to speak, but she brushed past him, her chin in the air, and Mr van der Brons, standing at the ward window high above her, nodded his head in approval.

Charity plunged wholeheartedly into her work; it wasn’t too bad on the ward for her head was occupied with the different jobs she was doing and struggling to speak a coherent Dutch which the patients could understand. They were all very good to her, making her repeat a new word until she had it right so that she began to achieve quite a vocabulary, albeit with a marked Amsterdam accent. She got on well with the other nurses too and once or twice went out to the cinema with them or to a café for a cheap meal, but even so there were still times when she was alone and unable to do anything but think of Cor. It should have helped her to forget him when snippets of gossip reached her ears, dropped by kindly nurses who had put two and two together about her and Cor and considered that he had treated her badly, but none of the tales of the light-hearted affairs with first one nurse and then another had eased her feelings. It was the first time she had fallen in love so wholeheartedly and she was incapable of knowing the difference between that and infatuation. However, she was sensible enough to know that she couldn’t sit around and mope. She began to make a systematic round of the city’s museums and botanical gardens; quite a few of them were free and in others the charges were small. She tried Madame Tussaud’s wax models of the Dutch through the ages and balanced that visit, which was expensive, by spending half a day at the Museum Architectuur, which was free, and of course she went again to the Rijksmuseum, for as well as the paintings there, the displays of silver and glass and furniture were enormous; it would probably take her until the end of her stay to see it all.

Once or twice she thought about Mr van der Brons; she had never seen him again and she began to wonder if he had been a visitor, enjoying a joke at her expense, but even if that were the case she thought of him with pleasure and a little wistfully, for he had proved a friend in need without offering tiresome advice or being too sympathetic.

It would have surprised her to know that he was aware of her comings and goings.

He was in Brussels when she was moved to Men’s Medical, which meant that she saw Cor each and every day, not always to speak to, of course, but, all the same, even if he were at the other end of the ward, she was unhappily aware of him and it took all her self-control to attend him while he examined a patient. As for Cor, he found the situation amusing and took every opportunity to speak to her, putting a hand on her shoulder for good measure as he passed her, giving her speaking glances, exchanging knowing looks with the patients. She had to put up with it, for she had no reason other than to get away from him with which to plead to the directrice to have her moved to another ward. The Hoofdzuster had given her a good report after her first week and she enjoyed her work there. It seemed as though she would have to bear with his unwelcome attentions. For they were unwelcome, despite the fact that she still thought of him with longing, for every time he came on to the ward—and that was often enough—the sight of him set her heart beating and brought the pretty colour into her cheeks. Just the same she began to look plain and pale; there were shadows under her eyes and her slim person became thin.