Wish with the Candles

by Betty Neels

  Emma blushed and was glad that the light was poor enough for it to go unnoticed. She began. ‘I—I—that is, I didn’t mean…’ She came to a halt, flustered.

  ‘Don’t apologize. Tell me, do you go home with your mother or return to your hospital?’

  She wondered how it was that he was familiar with her profession and then remembered that he had looked at her passport. Feeling she owed him something, she replied, ‘I shall take my mother home first and then go back to Southampton, where I work.’

  ‘You enjoy your work?’

  She supposed that he was making conversation. ‘Very much,’ she said, and wished she could have thought of something interesting to say; normally she was by no means so tongue-tied; she felt like a young girl, uncertain and shy, and wondered why he should have such an effect on her. Fortunately there was no need to strain her conversational powers any more, for his aunt joined them, to embark on a short conversation upon the evening’s performance before wishing Emma goodbye. Saskia wished her goodbye too, casually but staring at her thoughtfully as she did so.

  Mijnheer Teylingen made his farewells with a charm rather spoilt by its brevity, and marshalling his two companions before him, disappeared in the opposite direction to the one in which Emma and her mother were to go, without so much as a backward glance.

  Emma, with her arm tucked into her mother’s, walked back to the hotel listening to her parent’s remarks about the evening and adding very little of her own. Nor did she have much to say later as they prepared for bed in the large old-fashioned bedroom, although it seemed to her that Mrs Hastings dwelt with unnecessary length on Mijnheer Teylingen. The fact that she herself had almost nothing to say on the subject did nothing to alter the fact that long after her mother was asleep, her thoughts were still busy with him.

  They left the next morning and began their journey home, making a leisurely trip southwards to Zeebrugge, and then because Emma lost the way, having to race the last few miles, to join the end of the car queue with only minutes to spare. They slept on board in a cabin to themselves because Emma wanted to push on to Dorset the moment they landed and there was no hope of getting any rest on the boat otherwise; it was crowded with young and boisterous students and a large party of elderly people who sang ‘Knees up, Mother Brown’, with a good deal of vigour and without showing any signs of settling down for the night.

  They were last off the boat, of course, but still succeeded in getting away before a good many other cars owing, declared Mrs Hastings virtuously, to their honest faces. ‘The Customs men could always tell,’ she added smugly as they started on the long trip home.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EMMA was in the theatre getting ready for the morning’s list, while Sister Cox, the Theatre Superintendent, stood in the middle of the large tiled apartment, watching her. Emma had been back two days and despite the fact that her nice little face still bore the light tan she had acquired on her creamy skin and the dusting of freckles she despised upon her ordinary nose, her holiday in Holland already seemed like a pleasant dream. She had had a day at home getting her mother settled in once more, organizing her own clothes, fetching Flossie the spaniel from the kennels and getting Kitty’s room ready for her return from medical school before getting the little car out once more and driving herself back to Southampton to plunge immediately into the strict routine of theatre work. And for once she had welcomed it, for what was to have been a perfectly ordinary holiday had been in fact turned into a dream—by Mijnheer Teylingen, who, to her great annoyance, she was having the greatest difficulty in dismissing from her thoughts. Which she had told herself repeatedly and soberly was ridiculous; she was no callow schoolgirl to lose her heart to the first handsome man she met, despite her lack of looks. She was neither dull nor dowdy and possessed a charm which did more for her than all the good looks in the world; she had never lacked for boyfriends even though their attitude towards her had been of a brotherly nature, and she had twice refused offers of marriage, so it wasn’t a question of being swept off her feet. It was just, she admitted to herself, that he had seemed different.

  She sighed as she laid up her trolleys, and Sister Cox, watching her, sighed too, but for a different reason. She was a cosy-looking woman, with black eyes which appeared to have no expression in them, but her disposition was by no means cosy. The regular theatre staff did their work and kept out of her way; the student nurses, sent to do their three months’ stint in theatre, trembled and shook for the whole of that period, counting the days until they could get away from her despotic rule. Emma, however, despite her quiet manner, had a disposition every bit as tough as Sister Cox. She had worked with her for two years now and was completely unworried by that lady, bearing with equanimity her bad temper without apparent ill-effects and taking care not to pass any of it on to the junior nurses. It was possibly because of this that the Theatre Superintendent occasionally showed her human side, something she was doing now. ‘Two months,’ she was saying in a voice which boded ill for someone, as Emma, having arranged her trolleys to an exact nicety, proceeded to lay them up with the instruments in the wire baskets brought from the autoclave. ‘He’ll eat you alive in a week.’

  ‘More fool he,’ said Emma with calm, and laid two rib raspatories neatly side by side, ‘for then he’ll have no one in theatre at all, will he? Don’t worry, Sister, I’ll not be gobbled up by some bad-tempered surgeon—though only rumour says he’s bad-tempered, doesn’t it? Anyway, the longer you leave your toes, the worse they’re going to get.’

  Sister Cox looked down at her feet in their hideously wide shoes needed to accommodate her hammer toes. ‘You’re right,’ she said, her voice sounding cross as well as resigned. ‘I’ll take the first case, you take the second; Staff can lay up for the third while we’re having coffee, and for heaven’s sake keep that great fool Jessop from under my feet. What possessed Matron to send her here…’ She started for the theatre doors, still talking to herself, and Emma, standing back to survey the first of her completed trolleys with all the satisfaction of a hostess decking her dinner table, asked idly, ‘What’s this horror’s name, anyway—the one who’s going to eat me?’

  Sister Cox rotated her chubby form slowly to face Emma. ‘He’s a foreigner—brilliant at chest surgery, so I’m told, but I’ll have to see it first.’ She snorted disdainfully. ‘He’s got some technique or other—name’s Teylingen.’ She turned back to the door, saying as she went, ‘Red hair, so I hear, so you’d better look out, you know what they say about red hair and bad temper.’

  Emma stood quite still, looking astonished. It couldn’t be the same man; on the other hand, why shouldn’t it be? And if it was, what would he say when he saw her again? She shook out the sterile towel for her second trolley and holding it by its corners with the Cheatles forceps flipped it open with the ease of long practice, allowing it to fall precisely on the trolley before beginning the task of arranging yet another set of instruments upon it. This done to her satisfaction, she covered her handiwork with another sterile cloth, took one all-seeing look around the theatre and left it, casting off her gown as she went along to the tiny kitchen. Here the rest of the staff were gathered, drinking as much coffee as they had time for and wolfing down biscuits with an air of not knowing where their next meal would come from. They got to their feet as Emma went in and she said at once, ‘No, don’t get up—you’ll need your feet this morning. Staff, will you scrub in time to lay up for the third case?—It’s the oesophagectomy—I’ll be taking it.’

  Staff Nurse Collins, a small dark girl with large brown eyes in a pretty face, said simply, ‘Thank God for that, Sister. Mad Minnie seems determined to hate this professor type before he’s even got his nose round the door. She’s as cross as two sticks already, she’ll be really ratty by the time the morning’s half over.’

  ‘Sister Cox is preoccupied with her feet,’ said Emma quietly, not wanting to snub Staff, whom she liked, but mindful that she really mustn’t allow the nurses to ca
ll the Theatre Superintendent Mad Minnie—not in her hearing at any rate. She turned her attention to the other two nurses. ‘Jessop, count swabs for the first case, please’—that would keep the poor girl out of Sister Cox’s way—’ and, Cully, you see to lotions and take the bits when they’re ready.’ She turned back to Jessop, a large girl, naturally clumsy and rendered more so by Mad Minnie’s vendetta against her, but who, in Emma’s opinion, had the makings of a good nurse if only she could stop herself from dropping things and falling over anything within a mile of her awkward feet. Emma smiled at her now and said encouragingly, ‘The third case will be a long one, Nurse Jessop. I shall want you to keep me supplied, and be ready to fetch anything I may need. You’d better count swabs for the second case too, and be very careful, won’t you, because I often get the total wrong.’

  Which was a great piece of nonsense but served to inflate Jessop’s sadly flattened ego. She left them with a little nod and another smile and went unhurriedly down the passage to the office where she and Sister Cox wrestled with the off-duty, the stores, the supplies of theatre equipment and the laundry and from where the Theatre Superintendent blasted, by telephone, the various ward sisters who hadn’t conformed to her wishes concerning the arrival and departure of the various cases which had been sent up for operation. Occasionally one of the sisters, fuming over some new rule Mad Minnie had imposed would come tearing in, to spend a tempestuous ten minutes in the office before Emma, if she was on duty, calmed the two ladies down with tea.

  The office was small; it was also crowded. Sister Cox was sitting at the desk, looking more orbicular than ever, and most of the remaining space was taken up by the four men with her. Mr Soames, the senior consultant surgeon of the unit, was leaning against the desk, apparently unaware of Sister Cox’s cross looks at the pile of papers he had disarranged in doing so. With him were his senior Registrar, William Lunn, six foot two inches tall and naturally enough known throughout the hospital as Little Willy, and the senior anaesthetist, Mr Cyril Bone, middle-aged, a natty dresser and known to chat up the nurses whenever he had the opportunity to do so—he was also very good at his job and popular with everyone, even Sister Cox, whom he could butter up in the most extravagant fashion. The fourth man was the owner of the Rolls-Royce, who dominated the scene by reason of his height and size and autocratic nose, not to mention the brilliance of his hair and the elegance of his dress and this despite the fact that he managed to convey the impression that he was of a retiring disposition. Emma, standing just inside the door, was aware of all this without having actually looked at him, she was also aware of an alarming pulse rate. It was Mr Soames, who liked her, who saved her from making any possible foolish and impulsive remark by saying at once, ‘Ah, Emma, meet Professor Teylingen from Utrecht. He’s here for a couple of months to show us some new techniques which I think we shall all find interesting.’

  Emma advanced two cautious steps and held out her small capable hand. ‘How do you do?’ she asked politely, and added ‘Professor,’ hastily.

  He took her hand briefly. ‘How delightful to meet you again, Sister,’ he remarked in such a mild voice that she gave him a faintly startled look, to find the green eyes staring into hers with a most decided twinkle. ‘I have been looking forward to this,’ he went on, ‘ever since we met in Holland,’ and explained to the room at large, ‘You see, we are already acquainted,’ which remark was met with a chorus of ‘Oh, really?’ and ‘How extraordinary!’ a chorus to which Emma didn’t add her voice, being far too occupied in restoring her calm. It was only when she realized that five pairs of eyes were watching her that she managed weakly:

  ‘Yes, it’s a small world, isn’t it?’ and followed this profound remark with a more businesslike one to the effect that the theatre was ready.

  Professor Teylingen said at once, ‘Splendid. I look forward to a most interesting morning.’ He smiled at Sister Cox as he spoke and to Emma’s surprise that formidable lady smiled back and got out of her chair with a show of willingness quite unusual to her. Probably the old battleaxe was holding her fire until they got into the theatre, where the professor would only have to ask for something she either hadn’t got or didn’t want, for her to flatten him. Emma took the opportunity to look at him as he stood talking to Little Willy—no, he wouldn’t be easily flattened; it would remain to be seen who would come off best. She slid away from the office, put on her theatre cap and mask and went to send the nurses into theatre. She found them bunched together in the anaesthetic room and said urgently, ‘For heaven’s sake—he’s about to scrub up!’

  ‘Not before he’s met the rest of the theatre staff,’ interposed the professor’s voice from the door, and she wheeled round to encounter a smile which threw her quite off balance.

  ‘Oh well—yes,’ she began inadequately, and then becoming very professional indeed, ‘Professor Teylingen, may I introduce Staff Nurse Collins, Nurse Jessop and Nurse Cully—we have a nursing auxiliary too, but she’s not on duty until this afternoon, and two technicians and the porters.’

  He said with a little smile. ‘Yes, I met them yesterday evening when I came round with Mr Soames. I feel sure we shall enjoy working together.’

  The smile became brilliant as he went away, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Jessop spoke first. ‘Golly, Sister, he’s smashing—he doesn’t look bad-tempered either—they said he was.’ Her tone of voice suggested that if anyone thought otherwise they would have to settle with her first. And Cully, who was a little older and a little wiser, observed, ‘He’s quite old, isn’t he, but it doesn’t notice—it makes the medicos look like schoolboys.’ And Staff, who was engaged to be married and should have known better, asked, ‘Is he married?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Emma calmly, ‘and since he’s only here for a couple of months and doesn’t live in England, there isn’t much point in getting turned on, is there?’ She added in a quietly severe voice, ‘Now into theatre all of you, please—Sister will want us all to give a good impression.’ She paused as she went. ‘And Nurse Jessop, do try not to drop anything.’

  The first case was a lengthy one and Mr Soames did it with the professor assisting and Little Willy making himself useful. It was the repair of a hiatus hernia which involved a partial gastrectomy and some excision of the oesophagus. Mr Soames was good at it; he did a great many week after week, and being familiar with his work was completely relaxed—as was the professor. The two of them talked as they worked, frequently including Little Willy and Mr Bone in their conversation, and even Sister Cox, who didn’t agree with talking in theatre unless it was strictly business, so that her answers were short and a little snappy.

  ‘You don’t like conversation in theatre, Sister?’ asked the professor at his mildest. She shot him a darkling glance over her mask.

  ‘No, sir, I can’t say I do,’ she said huffily. ‘We’re here to work.’

  She snapped her Cheatles angrily above her head and Emma, interpreting their clatter, nodded to Cully standing ready with her receiver to take what Mr Soames held dangling from his forceps. He flung it lightly, forceps and all, in her general direction and she caught it with a dexterity which would have done justice to a first-class cricketer in a Test Match, and disappeared in the direction of the sluice, acknowledging Mr Bone’s thumbs-up sign with a soundless giggle. The professor, without looking up from the little bit of sewing he was engaged upon, remarked:

  ‘I must compliment you upon your dexterous staff, Sister Cox,’ and when she gave an impatient grunt, went on, ‘I hope I shall not put you out too much while I am here. I find I work much better if there is a certain amount of talk. It is relaxing, you know—so vital to our work, do you not agree?’

  Emma could see by the look on Mad Minnie’s face that she had no wish to agree but felt it expedient to do so. After all, the wretched man was important, though why they had to bring foreigners into the country to teach them something they could do better she did not know. Emma read her superi
or’s mind like an open book and suppressed a smile as Sister Cox’s eyes widened as the professor went on, ‘I daresay you find it most vexing to have to put up with a foreigner for even a short time. I’m sorry to hear about your—er—feet. I take it the operation is to be quite soon?’

  She looked as though she would explode. ‘In two days’ time,’ she handed him a grooved director which he accepted politely and didn’t use. ‘You’ll have to manage with Sister Hastings—by the time I’m back you’ll be gone.’ Her tone implied ‘and a good riddance too’.

  ‘Regrettably,’ said Professor Teylingen gently, ‘but I am sure your operation will improve you in every way, Sister Cox.’

  Mr Soames made a muffled sound behind his mask and Mr Bone and Little Willy dealt with sudden coughs and the nurses, who had the rest of the day with Sister Cox to face, saved their giggles until they could get down to the dining-room, where they would recount the conversation word for word, together with a thorough description of the handsome Mr Teylingen.

  The professor accepted another needle and gut into his needleholder and began to stitch with the finicky concentration of a lady of leisure working at her petit point, while Emma nodded to Staff to go and start scrubbing, ready to retire to one corner of the theatre and lay up for the next case. The professor, she noted, was a meticulous worker but a fast one, something which he chose to disguise under a deliberate manner which could be deceiving. He had also, to confound rumour, remained perfectly good-tempered throughout the lengthy operation, though there had been nothing to arouse his ire—no dropped dressings, no lotion splashed on the floor by Jessop’s too quick hand; nothing in fact to spoil the calm of the theatre’s atmosphere, only Mad Minnie’s tartness, of course. Emma had got so used to her that she had rather overlooked the fact that a stranger coming into their circle for the first time might find her a shade dictatorial. She picked up the dressing lying ready under the trolley and arranged it correctly around and over the drains and tubes which the two surgeons had stitched into the patient with all the care of a dressmaker stitching in a zip, aware as she did so of the close proximity of the professor to her.