Cassandra by Chance

by Betty Neels

  She wasn’t sure about that, but she would have to make a start some time and it might as well be now. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured him, ‘I’ll be at your house in the morning, and thank you for bringing me.’

  They wished each other good night and Cassandra went up to her room, unpacked, wrote a brief letter to Rachel and went to bed. But not to sleep; the party would still be in full swing at Benedict’s house; that girl Paula would have him all to herself. Cassandra wondered about her; if they were such close friends why hadn’t she been to see him sooner, and why hadn’t he mentioned her?—although, she told herself severely, there was absolutely no reason why he should have done. He had taken her out, been charming to her, but then, she supposed, any man would have done the same. Kissing, she told herself uneasily, meant nothing at all, and where would he be at Christmas? In Canada with Paula? She was beginning to get a headache; she forced her thoughts into other channels—presents to take home, the clothes she would buy when she got back to England, the job she would get, and always at the back of her mind there was the thought of Benedict to make nonsense of her efforts.

  She was punctual for her breakfast, and as soon as she had finished she crossed the street to the doctor’s house where she found Lulu waiting for her.

  Lulu was middle-sized and plump, with a cheerful, pretty face and bright blue eyes. Moreover, she spoke English of a sort.

  The work was a good deal easier than she had anticipated. Unlike hospital, there was no rush and hurry; she had time enough to puzzle over the names, file away the used cards and get out new ones as they were wanted. She even managed the telephone. Mijnheer van Tromp had put his head round the door to wish her good luck and them both a good morning, and by lunch time she felt fairly confident that given a few days at this pace, she would be able to cope quite nicely, and after all, it wasn’t for long. She had chaperoned one or two of the patients too, in the well-equipped alcove in the consulting room, and that had been easy too; the instruments were the same, the method of examination was the same, and anything she needed to know, either Lulu or Mijnheer van Tromp told her. When she and Lulu said good-bye she felt almost at home, and reasonably sure of herself.

  It was almost half past three when Mijnheer van Tromp called her on the intercom and asked her to go to his consulting room. There was no patient there, and none due for the next twenty minutes. Cassandra crossed the waiting room, tapped on his door and went in. He was standing at the window, Benedict beside him, and on the desk was a tea-tray.

  Both men turned to look at her as she went in and the elder said:

  ‘My dear, will you pour the tea? I usually contrive to have a cup about this time and here is Benedict to share it with us. There is one more patient, I believe? Then I have some visits; if you would stay here until my return, to take any calls and clear up and so forth. I will leave the addresses of the patients I shall be visiting.’

  She said, ‘Very well, sir,’ wished Benedict a brief good afternoon and went to the tea-tray to pour out. There were three cups, and she was still pouring the second when he said, ‘Of course you will have a cup with us, Cassandra.’

  She thanked him, handed them their cups and sat down composedly to drink her own tea. The two men would probably talk shop and it never entered her head to encourage them to do otherwise, but apparently they had other ideas, for her employer came to sit behind his desk and Benedict sat on the corner of the desk itself, looking so suave and elegant and unlike himself that she felt she didn’t know him.

  ‘A slice of your cake would be very nice now,’ he told her, and then when she didn’t speak, ‘We all miss you very much, Cassandra.’

  She smiled then and he added: ‘Did Lulu make everything clear?’

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you. She’s a dear.’ She looked at Mijnheer van Tromp. ‘You’ll miss her dreadfully, won’t you?’

  ‘My loss is also my gain, my dear.’ He gave her a gallant little bow. ‘I can’t think of anyone I would rather have in her place.’

  She smiled widely, showing an unexpected dimple. ‘How nicely you put it—I hope I can live up to that.’

  Benedict came over to the desk, carrying his cup which she filled, milked and sugared in a stern, no-nonsense fashion, inquiring: ‘Sweet enough?’

  He stood looking down at her, smiling a little. ‘Just right,’ he told her affably. ‘You must know by now that I don’t like too much sweetness, and that applies to people too.’

  She went a little red, for it seemed to her that he was making one of his nasty remarks which she could never answer; instead she asked:

  ‘Are you enjoying your first day back to work?’

  ‘Very much. Will you come and have dinner with us tomorrow evening?’

  She refused to be ruffled by the sudden thumping of her heart. ‘That would be nice—is it to be another party?’

  ‘No—it may astonish you to know that I seldom give parties. You’ll come?’

  ‘Well—yes, thank you. About seven o’clock?’

  ‘Earlier if you can manage to get away from this old despot.’ He grinned at his partner, who chuckled and said: ‘Now, now—I am mildness itself, am I not, Cassandra?’

  She agreed with him nicely, rose to her feet, and murmuring something suitable about work to do, got herself out of the room.

  She was kept busy for the rest of the afternoon, for even when there were no patients, there was the filing to see to and the cards to get ready for the morning as well as the consulting room to put to rights. She was to be free the following day after one o’clock, too; Mijnheer van Tromp went to a nursing home in the afternoon and there were no patients at his house; she would have to think of something to do; go to Utrecht or Arnhem perhaps, and look at the shops, and a nice long walk on Sunday.

  It was colder than ever the next morning and during the night it had snowed quite hard so that everything was white, excepting the sky, which was a dull and uniform grey. During breakfast Mevrouw Schat managed to make her understand that there was ice on the river and that the weather would probably get worse, but Cassandra, thinking of the evening ahead, couldn’t have cared less. She draped herself in the cape, crossed the street and became at once immersed in her work.

  There weren’t many patients that morning, and excepting for a little confusion on the telephone because the secretary hadn’t come, she was managing very well. The first patient had been in for some few minutes when Mijnheer van Tromp threw open his door and crossed the waiting room with a haste which brought her to her feet and half way to meet him.

  He wasted no words. ‘Get your cloak and go down to the street. Benedict will be there with the car. Go with him—there has been an accident.’

  She nodded, snatched at her cloak and flew outside. It had begun to snow again, but she had no time to draw more than one icy breath before the Aston Martin slid to a halt before her and the door was opened. ‘Good girl!’ said Benedict. ‘Get in.’

  The snow was quite deep. Cassandra squelched the yard or so, the cloak dragging wetly about her, and got in. He hardly gave her time to shut the door, but was off again, driving fast down the narrow street towards the river.

  ‘A dredger and a barge,’ he told her with a calm she envied. ‘Some of the dredger’s machinery broke away and caught the barge as it was passing—they’re drifting in mid-river, locked together. I gather that there are several injured—the fire people and the police are already on the way.’ He shot round a corner and gave her a sideways glance. ‘Get that Wagnerian garment off, dear girl, or you’ll be overboard and sunk without trace before we get there—and that fetching cap. There’s an old sweater of mine in the back—put it on.’

  She did as she had been bidden, noticing for the first time that he was wearing a thick sweater himself. She had managed to get the cloak off, her cap as well, and was pulling on the sweater when he came to a skidding
halt by a small jetty, surrounded by small houses, packed together, tumbling almost to the water’s edge. There were several people there. Cassandra thrust her head through the sweater’s neck with disastrous results to her hair, pushed the sleeves up her arms, and jumped out of the car.

  There was a small boat with a man at the tiller waiting for them. She eyed it with some apprehension; possibly, if she had been given time, she might have voiced her doubts about it, but Benedict’s hand was firm under her elbow, she was sitting in it before she had had the time to so much as open her mouth. He draped an extremely smelly oilskin round her shoulders, said cheerfully, ‘We shan’t be long now,’ and sat down beside her with no concern whatever for the alarming rocking of the boat.

  He had his bag with him, held firm between his feet, and turned his head to say, ‘I didn’t have much time to think, I added a few things I thought we might need—there’s a man with a lacerated throat, that I do know, but what else...’ He shrugged his shoulders and put a quiet hand over hers. ‘Nice having you,’ he said, and then, ‘Here, I’ll plait that hair—whatever happened to it?’

  ‘I had to put on your sweater,’ she reminded him, ‘in a confined space and without a mirror.’

  His laugh was enough to rock the boat. ‘Poor Cassandra, but it won’t matter what you look like, you know.’

  She answered soberly. ‘No, I know that.’ Had it ever mattered what she looked like to him? she wondered as she looked round her. They were well away from the shore now, nearing the hopelessly tangled mass swinging slowly to and fro in the water, and Mevrouw Schat had been right, there was ice on the river. She stared at it, wondering why she didn’t feel cold. ‘How many men on board do you expect?’ she asked.

  ‘Not many, thank heaven. It’s a Rhine barge. The owner and his family will be on board, I suppose, there are maybe half a dozen on the dredger. By the time we’ve done first aid and got them ashore the medical team and the ambulances should be here though the snow will slow them down.’

  The little boat danced uneasily round the ruins of the barge, looking for a place where they could get aboard, then someone called from the tangle of ironwork on the dredger and the boatman crept in close and before Cassandra could tell Benedict that nothing on earth would make her climb on to the slippery, heaving deck before her, several hands shot out, and with a useful shove from behind, she found herself aboard.

  Benedict had joined her before she had time to do more than cast a fearful glance around her. The men—firemen, she thought they were—spoke urgently to him and he caught her by the arm, saying ‘This way,’ and helped her through the twisted steel. They had already freed two of the crew; one was conscious with a bruised swelling over one eye, the other had a jagged tear in his throat and was in a poor way. Benedict was already on his knees, opening his case. ‘Tracheotomy,’ he said briefly. ‘The stuff’s in the white linen roll—open it, dear girl, and do your stuff.’

  It went very well, considering they had to work under almost impossible conditions, with the dredger heaving up and down beneath them and nothing really sterile. But there was a great deal of willing help; Cassandra handed Benedict the knife because there wasn’t any time to lose, the tube to be inserted and left for her to tie with its tapes, the swabs, a paper towel upon which to clean his hands... When Benedict was sure that the man was out of immediate danger, she asked, ‘Do you want me to stay with him?’

  He was on his feet again. ‘No—here’s someone who’ll stay.’ He spoke briefly to a burly policeman, said, rather unfairly, ‘Come along, girl, there’s no time for you to moon about,’ and pushed and pulled her over another heap of wreckage.

  The man they found lying on the other side was held fast by a leg, hopelessly caught in a tangle of splintered wood, wire ropes and heavy iron chains. It wasn’t so much the weight of the stuff, she thought, it was the diabolical manner in which the leg had been caught up and twisted and torn until it was no longer a leg. The man was unconscious. Benedict took a look, felt for the man’s pulse, said briefly, ‘Off, I’m afraid. Thank God he’s unconscious. I’ll give him an intravenous—there’s some pentothal—good girl! I’ll have to do a guillotine below thigh—forceps in that plated tin, that’s right—ligatures in the flap, scissors at the bottom somewhere, you’ll have to cut as I tie—we’ll want someone to take—ah, good man!’ He was speaking Dutch now and Cassandra wondered at his coolness. Two firemen with a stretcher had stationed themselves close by. She shut her mind to everything but the job before them to such good effect that when the swift operation was over, the patient on the stretcher borne away towards a waiting boat and the mess cleared up, Benedict said quietly, ‘What a splendid nurse you are, Cassandra. I couldn’t have managed without you.’

  She blushed and said hastily, ‘Thank you—don’t you want me to go with that man?’

  ‘No—come,’ and she stumbled after him, across the dredger’s deck to its side where it was hopelessly entangled with the barge, and when he stepped from one heaving deck to the other and turned to give her a hand, she scrambled over too, her mind boggling at the things she was doing—the most unlikely and awful things, enough to make her stand in the middle of the deck and burst into tears, but it was obvious that Benedict didn’t expect her to do anything so silly; she flung her untidy plait over her shoulder, and, her hand in his, made her way with him to the wheelhouse of the barge. There was someone there—a child. She could see a small arm, warmly clad in a gay anorak, hanging through its broken window.

  ‘Hurry!’ she cried to Benedict. ‘Perhaps he’s all right, we must get him out,’ but he had pushed ahead of her and was standing deliberately between her and the child.

  Presently he turned round. ‘There’s no need for us here,’ he said harshly, and when she protested: ‘But are you sure? Shouldn’t we at least try?’ he told her quite roughly, ‘No, Cassandra, it’s useless,’ and pulled her back the way they had come towards a group of men standing round two of the crew.

  One was a head injury and unconscious. Benedict ordered him ashore as quickly as maybe, and turned to the second man.

  The last case had gone at last, and she was standing, wet and filthy and bloodstained, her hair whipped in a tangle by an icy wind, listening to the faraway sound of the ambulance klaxons on the shore, when she became aware that she was feeling sick. When Benedict, his bag closed at last, said, ‘Come along, girl—home,’ she faltered, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t—I feel awful.’

  It was mortifying and doubly so because he laughed at her, but even as he laughed he was doing all the right things. Exhausted and whiter than skimmed milk, she sat on the deck, Benedict’s arm round her shoulders. She felt better now, only so very cold; even the vast thick sweater she was wearing seemed like tissue paper. She shivered and he said at once:

  ‘Home, and a change of clothes and a hot bath. Come along.’

  This time he lifted her from one deck to the other and didn’t put her down again, but passed her to the boatman’s waiting arms before he joined them in the boat. The water was still heaving nastily, but the queasiness had gone, she was even able to wave to the policemen left on board to clear up the mess preparatory to moving the vessels out of the river traffic’s way. She was lifted out of the boat on to dry land too, draped in a filthy blanket and wondering if she looked as dreadful as she smelled, but at least she felt warmer now and Benedict’s arms were strong and comforting and she had no doubt that he looked just as awful. He dumped her in the car, got in beside her, and drove straight to his own house, and when she protested that she should go to Mevrouw Schat’s, he said ‘Rubbish,’ in a reassuring voice, and carried her into the house.

  In the fragrant hot bath ten minutes later, Cassandra was surprised to find herself in tears, she wasn’t sure why—excitement, nerves stretched too far, the memory of the child in the wheelhouse, all the nasty jobs she had been called upon to do. She had the good sense to hav
e a good cry while she was about it, then tidied up her face and feeling much better, went back into the bedroom, to stand still, struck by the thought that she had no clothes. But someone else had thought of that too, for on the bed, side by side, lay a long-sleeved, high-necked nightie, and a quilted dressing gown ruffled at the neck and wrists and of a delicate pink. Cassandra put them on and was nearly downstairs when Benedict, back in his clerical grey, came out of the library.

  ‘In here,’ he invited, and held the door open for her and then shut it behind him and stood against it, inspecting her. ‘Delightful,’ he observed. ‘Now we’ll have lunch, shall we, then Jan shall fetch you some clothes and you can do whatever you had planned to do this afternoon, but remember I’m coming for you this evening—about six.’

  She remembered now that she had planned to buy the new dress and her consternation showed on her face so that he said quite sharply, ‘Something’s not right—what’s the matter?’

  She found herself telling him, because he wasn’t the remote surgeon he had become within the last few days, but her ogre. When she had finished he smiled at her with kindness. ‘Well, that’s soon settled. I’ll take you there after lunch and you can buy the dress, only I’ve a couple of calls to make, so you’ll have to wait in the car. You won’t mind?’

  ‘No—oh no. It’s very kind of you.’

  He laughed at that and pulled her to her feet and instead of letting her go, put his arms around her and she stood quietly, wanting it to last for ever. When he kissed her, she returned his kiss, careless for once of showing her feelings.

  He let her go, staring down into her face, unsmiling so that, suddenly troubled, she said in a little rush, ‘You mustn’t—we—I’d forgotten Paula...’

  He smiled then, his eyes gleaming with amusement. ‘So had I. Were we supposed to remember her for any special reason?’

  She drew back a little and he let her go, and somehow the gesture annoyed her. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘you and Paula...’ She tried again: ‘Oh, well, I mean I know it’s not important to you, but she might not like...’