Philomena's Miracle (Betty Neels Collection)

by Betty Neels

  Hubert, who was interested in oil wells, lingered for some time and it was well past four o’clock when he turned the car’s nose towards Ommen once more. They had tea in the hotel on the river bank, watching the gently flowing life of the little town on the opposite bank while the talk, naturally enough, turned to hospital life and Hubert’s ambitions for his future. They whiled away a pleasant hour in this way until Philomena reminded him that he had said that he had to be back by early evening to stand in for one of the other house doctors.

  They parted outside Mevrouw de Winter’s house ten minutes later and Philomena found herself half promising to spend another day with him as soon as he could arrange it. She thanked him for her day, her green eyes smiling at him in a friendly fashion; he was a nice boy and a pleasant companion, if a little pompous at times, but probably, she admitted honestly, she was a dead bore herself sometimes. She stood watching the Saab turn the corner and go round the square, then went indoors, to spend the rest of the evening talking to her landlady in her halting Dutch, before eating her supper and presently going to bed.

  Before she slept she wondered sleepily what sort of a day she would have had if she had accepted Walle’s invitation. ‘At least we wouldn’t have talked about oil wells,’ she told herself, and registered a vow to get up a little earlier so that she would have the time to apply her make-up to its best possible advantage. Hubert had said that she looked nice; there was no reason why Walle van der Tacx shouldn’t think the same…

  She had been asleep for just over two hours when the walkie-talkie which stood by her bed roused her. She had been surprised to see it when she had arrived and it had been explained to her that in an emergency it would save time—precious time in a rural practice—as the telephone was in Mevrouw de Winter’s sitting room and since she slept lightly and would invariably answer it, there might be a vital lapse of time.

  Philomena rolled over in bed and listened to Walle’s calm voice. She was to get dressed at once; she would be fetched in ten minutes. There was an emergency—a severe haemorrhage. The woman lived alone in a remote cottage and her small son had got on his bicycle and arrived not five minutes since. She pressed the button as she had been instructed, said ‘I’ll be ready,’ and when there was no reply, got herself out of bed and into sweater and slacks, plaited her hair into a thick golden rope and crept downstairs, her sensible shoes in her hand. She was outside the front door putting them on when the Khamsin drew up almost soundlessly a few yards away.

  Walle swung the door open and she got in without speaking. It was the doctor who broke the silence with a cheerful: ‘Sorry about this, Philomena, but I shall need help.’ He was already racing through the quiet little town and on to the Dalfsen road and then through Vilsteren, to turn off presently down what was little more than a cart track. ‘I left the child at home,’ the doctor observed. ‘He’s only nine and terrified—his mother, from his garbled description, is aborting. His father is away, God knows where. She must be five months; we’ll get to work on her and then get her to Zwolle.’ He was thinking out loud now. ‘Let me see, I saw her almost three months ago and she was well, but rather anaemic—not young any more either.’

  He had slowed the car, easing it over the potholes and ridges of dried clay, and turned to look at her in the pale dark of the night. He was in slacks and a sweater too, she noticed, and looked as calm and unruffled as he normally did. His half seen smile warmed her. ‘We’re almost there. We’ll have to walk the last few yards. There’s a torch in the pocket beside you—we’ll need it. There are only oil lamps and candles.’

  She followed him up the narrow neglected path to a stout little door set in the side of a small, dilapidated cottage. There was a faint glimmer of light showing from the window, but no sound. The doctor opened the door, warned Philomena to keep close behind him, and went in. The light came from the open door of a room leading out of the living room they were standing in and he crossed the room, his bag in his hand. The patient lay in bed, pale and unconscious, her face full of grey shadows. The doctor turned back the bedclothes and gave a little grunt. ‘Right, let’s get a drip up—it’s all there in my bag’—he had his stethoscope out and was bending over the woman—’ and hand me the…’ He didn’t need to finish; Philomena had the sphygmomanometer out and was holding it ready. ‘It’s incomplete,’ he went on, ‘she’ll need surgery.’ He read the blood pressure, tossed the case on to the bed and began to clean up the woman’s arm so that he could insert a cannula. ‘Find something we can hang the bag on to,’ he asked Philomena, ‘and a couple more candles…’

  She found an old-fashioned hat-stand and trundled it in and set it by the bed, then went back for the equally old-fashioned table lamp in the living room. There were matches beside it and she lighted it and carried it through to the bedroom, and that done, quietly did as she was told like the good nurse she was.

  Presently the doctor straightened his long back. ‘Right—I’m going to take her at once. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay and clear up in case the child comes back early in the morning. Take the torch and light the way, will you? We’ll have her in front and prop her up with pillows and blankets.’

  He scooped the still unconscious woman up and Philomena nipped ahead, opened doors, shining the torch’s beam behind her, a snatched-up pillow under one arm. It was amazing how quick one could be in an emergency, she thought, fastening the seat belt round a cocoon of blankets. She nodded briskly at the doctor’s: ‘I shan’t be long,’ and stood watching the car’s tail lights disappearing down the track. Ommen, she reflected, was eighteen miles from Zwolle and they had come five miles or so of that distance—an hour should see him back again. She went up the little path, telling herself that an hour was no time at all, and there was a fearsome amount of clearing up to do.

  It was very quiet now and the night, what was left of it, had clouded over. She felt the first drops of rain on her face as she went into the cottage and shut the door. She was only dimly aware of the noise of the downpour as she worked; there was a great deal to do, and before she could begin she had to hunt round for cloths and brushes and buckets as well as bed linen. There was no hot water, and she quickly decided that to wait for a kettle to boil on the paraffin stove standing on the kitchen table would take too long. She cleaned and scrubbed and tidied until she was satisfied that everything was as near its original state as possible, washed her hands at the sink, and went to sit down, the lamp on the table beside her for company.

  The rain had become torrential, its noise drowning any sound as it poured off the roof where the gutters had broken. Philomena listened to it, wishing that Walle would come back. She hadn’t bothered with the time, but now she got up and went into the tiny lean-to kitchen and peered at the battered alarm clock on a shelf, her lamp held high. It was turned three o’clock. It would be growing light soon, she told herself sensibly; the rain couldn’t go on for ever and at this time of the year the nights were short. And as if in answer to her thought, the rain stopped with uncanny suddenness, leaving a stillness which made her look around uneasily.

  She went back to her chair and sat down, making herself study the little room calmly. Her slow gaze took in the shabby furniture, the worn rug, the splintered floor boards, the torn wallpaper on the farther wall…her eyes widened as a dark shape, squeaking nastily, slid along the wainscoting.

  Philomena screamed, not loudly, but still a scream, and she screamed again when the doctor spoke from the door.

  ‘My darling girl, what is the matter?’

  She rounded on him, her rather sharp little nose quivering with her fright. ‘A rat,’ she managed, ‘there was a rat…’

  He was beside her now, a large comforting arm around her shoulders. She went on fiercely: ‘You frightened me, creeping in like that!’

  ‘I didn’t creep,’ he pointed out mildly. ‘I expect you didn’t hear the car because of the rain. Where’s this rat?’

  ‘How should I know?’ she told him crossly. ‘I
expect there are dozens!’ Her usually serene voice was shrill with overwrought feelings.

  ‘I should have taken you with me—we could have come back here and cleared up together.’

  Philomena sniffed and straightened a little within the circle of his arm. ‘That wouldn’t have done at all—look at the time we would have wasted, and I’d have been useless at the hospital. I’m sorry I’ve been silly—it was the rat and all that rain, and then it stopped so suddenly…it was so quiet and then it squeaked…’ She stopped because she was getting a little muddled, and anyway Walle didn’t want to waste what time there was listening to her moaning about rats. ‘Is the woman going to be all right?’

  His grip tightened. ‘I believe so—very largely due to you, Philly. She was in theatre when I left. I’ll telephone when I get back home.’ He let her go gently. ‘You’ve done a splendid job here. Do you want me to do anything before we go?’

  ‘Well…’ she hesitated, ‘I’ve put everything in to soak, but there’s a lot of washing to do.’

  ‘I’ll send someone over later on.’ His glance swept round the poor little room. ‘We must find another home for the poor soul.’

  ‘The boy?’ asked Philomena.

  ‘I’ll make arrangements for him to lodge in the village until his mother’s better.’ He took her arm and ushered her out of the cottage, closed the door and led the way down the muddy path to the car, and Philomena, trailing behind him, noticed that the clouds were clearing from a sky already pale with dawn. She got into the car, stifling a yawn, and as the doctor leaned over to fasten her seat belt, he observed: ‘Bed for you, my girl; there are still a few hours left.’

  She agreed sleepily. ‘What a pity that you have to drive me back to Ommen. Now if there was a bike, I could…’

  He interrupted her with a chuckle. ‘You would go to sleep in the saddle and fall off. Besides, you’re not going to Ommen; you’re coming home with me.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  PHILOMENA WAS aware of a variety of feelings; delight at the prospect of bed so close at hand, pleasure at discovering just where Walle lived and vexation that she had no toothbrush or comb, jumbled nicely with instant worry as to how she was to get to the clinic in Ommen by eight o’clock and how simply frightful she was going to look without any make-up. She began: ‘Yes, but…’ to be hushed by her companion with a: ‘Don’t fuss, Philly, we’re both too tired.’

  So she lapsed into silence while he negotiated the lane and then tore along the road, going, she noticed, towards Dalfsen. But not for long. The moon, free of clouds, lighted the road ahead of them and as they took a curve, shone on the castle she had stopped to admire when she had gone to Dalfsen. She admired it now and then caught her breath as the doctor slowed the car, slid between the great open iron gates and started up the drive.

  ‘Do you live here?’ asked Philomena hollowly.

  ‘Yes. We’ll go straight to the garage if you don’t mind and go in through the back—my mother and cousin sleep in the front of the house.’

  He swept the car gently round the lovely old building under an archway and into a wide courtyard encircled by outbuildings. The garage took up the whole of one side with three wide doors, one of which slid back as they approached it. There were other cars there, but Philomena was allowed no time to look around her as they got out. A firm hand guided her across the courtyard to a small very solid door set in the wall which the doctor unlocked. It gave on to a narrow passage, lighted dimly, which led to a wide corridor, close-carpeted in crimson and which led in turn to an arched doorway. The doctor threw this door open and ushered Philomena into a vast square hall, with a handsome staircase leading to a gallery above and a magnificent marble floor. Struck dumb by this grandeur, she allowed him to take her hand and lead her across to the staircase, which he proceeded to mount, giving her no time at all in which to examine her surroundings.

  The gallery spread away on either side of the staircase, a number of handsome doors on its inner wall, but these were ignored; Walle turned down a narrow corridor leading away from the gallery, to stop halfway down it and open a door.

  ‘There’s a bathroom through that door,’ he indicated it as he switched on the lights. ‘I’m afraid there’s no—er—nightwear, but you’ll find toothbrushes and combs and so on in the wall cupboard.’

  He pushed Philomena gently into the centre of the room. ‘You’ll be called later. Goodnight.’

  He had gone, closing the door gently behind him, leaving her with a dozen questions on her tongue and not one of them uttered.

  She was tired, but before she undressed she explored the room; a charming apartment, panelled in dark oak and furnished with a small four-poster bed, a tallboy, a handsome pier table with a mirror above it, and a pair of small easy chairs covered in needlework. The floor was carpeted in a dusky pink and the same colour was repeated in the curtains and bedspread, and the whole of one wall was a fitted cupboard. Philomena, much impressed, tried the door next to the bed and found the bathroom and, what was more important, a comb and toothbrush, soap, towels and bath salts. Within minutes she was lying up to her chin in the warm water; there was so little time left for sleep that ten minutes or so couldn’t make much difference, and at least she would be clean, with combed hair. She climbed into bed presently and went to sleep immediately.

  When she woke, the sun was streaming through the two narrow windows and a stout elderly woman was standing by the bed, carrying a tray. Her ‘goeden morgen’ was smilingly said and Philomena, airing her Dutch, did the same and asked the time. When the woman told her ten o’clock she shook her head; obviously she hadn’t used the right words, but the woman put down the tray on the bedside table and crossed the room to where a small ormolu clock stood on a wall table and brought it back for Philomena to see. It was indeed that time. ‘Oh, lord,’ said Philomena, ‘I’ve overslept! Whatever shall I do?’ She frowned a little, trying to think of the Dutch for overslept, but as it turned out, it wasn’t necessary, because the woman had produced an envelope and handed it to her.

  ‘Go down to the sitting room when you have had your breakfast,’ the doctor had written. ‘I shall fetch you after the morning surgery.’

  She looked up at the woman and smiled, and received a motherly smile in return, reminding her strongly of Molly.

  ‘May I know your name?’ she asked in her careful Dutch.

  ‘Ellie, Miss Parsons. You will eat your breakfast now? I will fetch you in an hour.’

  Philomena nodded again, understanding her easily enough, and when she had gone, sat up in bed and attacked the coffee and toast and rolls, aware suddenly that she was very hungry.

  It seemed a pity not to make full use of such a lovely bathroom; she had another bath, dressed quickly, plaited her well-combed hair into a pigtail once more, deplored her unmade-up face and went to look out of the window. The gardens below were delightful, full of spring flowers and bright with their colours, and beyond it the park stretched down to the river. ‘And very nice too,’ observed Philomena, and turned to call ‘come in’ to Ellie’s knock.

  The hall in daylight looked even more impressive than it had a few hours earlier, with a huge chandelier hanging from the high ceiling and the dark carved wood of the gallery railing contrasting with the white of the floor. She followed Ellie across the hall towards one of the double doors and when Ellie opened it and stood aside, smiling, went into the room beyond.

  The room was of a fair size and furnished most comfortably with a number of sofas and big chairs. There was a circular table in the centre of the room, laden with magazines and books, a small davenport under one window, and a dear little work table besides. There was someone sitting in an upright chair by the table, a slim, elderly woman with white hair severely dressed and wearing a dress of dark blue silky material which fell in soft folds around her. She got up as Philomena stood hesitating at the door and came to meet her across the richly patterned carpet.

  ‘Miss Parsons—my son has told me a
bout you, and I am delighted to welcome you to his house.’ She shook hands, her placid, nice-looking face breaking into a smile. ‘He tells me that you were of the greatest help to him during the night—that poor woman! One of the maids has just taken the boy to the village—he has no family other than his mother, but Walle found someone who will look after him for the time. Sit down, my dear, and tell me how you like your work. Ellie will bring coffee in a moment, there will be plenty of time for you to drink it before Walle comes for you.’

  ‘I missed the surgery—I feel guilty…’

  ‘No need—you deserved your sleep—Walle appreciated your help, my dear.’

  Perhaps, thought Philomena, suddenly remembering, that was why he had called her his darling girl.

  The doctor came in presently, kissed his parent lightly on a proffered cheek, wished Philomena a cheerful, casual good morning, coupled with the hope that she had slept well, and sat down to drink his coffee, and after ten minutes or so of gentle conversation, suggested that they should be thinking of going. But before Philomena could get to her feet, the door was flung open and Tritia came in—it had to be Tritia; she had the same eye-catching beauty as her stepsisters, only hers was golden, hair like silk, blue eyes and the kind of nose Philomena had always hankered after… She skimmed across the room to Walle, flung her arms round his neck and kissed him with a charming little crow of delight, then looked over her shoulder at Philomena.