The Magic of Living

by Betty Neels

  Arabella let this pass and waited for her to enquire about the children, or for that matter, about herself, but when the older woman remained silent she said: ‘Well, if you don’t mind, Sister, I’m going to the ward to see how the children are.’

  Her companion shot her a baleful look. ‘I can see that this dreadful experience has hardly touched you,’ she commented sourly. ‘I suppose you found it all very exciting.’

  ‘No,’ said Arabella patiently, ‘I didn’t find it at all exciting when Mr Burns died, nor when the children were hurt and frightened. Do you want anything before I go, Sister?’

  ‘No,’ her superior sounded pettish, ‘you’ll have to see to everything. I’m in no fit state to cope with anything—my head.’

  Arabella bit back some naughty remarks about her companion’s head and went out, closing the door smartly behind her.

  She received a quite different welcome from the children. True, they had bruises and cuts and one or two black eyes, but they were smiling again, trying to express themselves as they had their breakfast. Arabella went to feed Sally and Billy, lying side by side in their beds and inclined to be grizzly and saw with surprise that Doctor van der Vorst was already doing a ward round, going from child to child with a couple of young doctors and the Ward Sister. When he reached Arabella he stopped, wished her good morning and wanted to know how she felt.

  ‘F-fine, thank you, Doctor,’ said Arabella, annoyed about the stammer.

  ‘Good. Will you come to the office at eleven o’clock, Nurse Birch? I—er—gather that Sister Brewster is still confined to her bed.’

  ‘Her head aches,’ said Arabella flatly.

  He nodded again. ‘In that case, we must endeavour to make all the necessary arrangements without bothering her unduly, must we not?’ he asked smoothly as he bent to examine the two children. ‘These fractures are in good alignment; they should do well.’ He smiled at Billy and Sally, ruffled their hair, made a little joke so that they smiled at last, and passed on to the next bed.

  He wasn’t sitting at his desk when she entered the office later on, but standing at the window, looking out, but he turned to her with a smile and came forward to pull out a chair for her.

  ‘How I do take up your time,’ he remarked pleasantly, ‘but I feel we must get these children back home as soon as possible, don’t you agree? The camp to which you were going is quite unsuitable for them, I’m afraid, for most of them are still shocked, not to mention bruises and cuts; to go back to their own familiar surroundings and people they know and trust is essential. I’ve been on the telephone this morning and we have arranged to fly them back the day after tomorrow—I’ll engage to have ambulances to take them to Schiphol, and the staff there have promised their fullest co-operation The children will be met at London Airport—Wickham’s will send nurses and ambulances and give them another check-up before they go to their homes.’ He paused. ‘I have just been visiting Sister Brewster, who feels that she is well enough to accompany them,’ his voice was dry. ‘There remains the question of Sally and Billy; it is out of the question that they should leave the hospital for the moment. I suggest that you should remain here with them, Arabella.’

  She saw her holiday with Doreen fading to a regretful oblivion. Doreen couldn’t be expected to change her holidays yet again—besides, by the time she got back to England it would be October and she couldn’t expect her friend to miss the last of the autumn weather. A wild idea that Hilary might come out in her place crossed her mind, to be instantly dismissed. Mr Thisby-Barnes, for the moment at any rate, was far too important a factor in her cousin’s life. She said slowly:

  ‘If you s-say so, D-Doctor, and if Wickham’s d-doesn’t mind.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Apparently not. It was suggested to the Matron—by your cousin, I believe—is she not a Ward Sister at Wickham’s?’

  ‘Yes. Who is to tell Sally and Billy?’

  ‘You, Arabella; they trust you, don’t they, and you’ll know just what to say. They have homes? They aren’t orphans?’

  She racked her brains for the information she had primed herself with before she had started on the ill-fated trip. ‘No, they come from good homes, I believe, but poor, though. I’m sure their mothers and fathers came to see them off.’

  ‘I’ll see if we can arrange something.’ He sounded vague. ‘You don’t mind staying?’

  It wouldn’t be much use saying that she did, she concluded ruefully.

  ‘Not at all,’ she spoke with such politeness that he shot her a keen glance before going on to say:

  ‘Good—if you would be kind enough to look after the two of them—day duty, of course, and the usual off-duty hours. I think it might be best if we paid you as though you were a member of our own nursing staff, and any adjustments can be made when you get back. Have you sufficient money for the moment?’

  ‘Yes, thank you—the police gave me my handbag and case.’

  He stood up. ‘I won’t keep you any longer.’ He went to the door to open it for her. ‘I am grateful to you for your help.’

  She paused by him, looking up into his face; he wasn’t only a very handsome man, he was kind too, even though she perceived that he was in the habit of getting his own way. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  A little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘I have a practice in the town,’ he told her, ‘and I am Medical Director of this hospital.’

  ‘How fortunate it was that you should have come along.’

  ‘A happy accident, shall we say, Arabella, if one might use the term without giving offence. You don’t mind if I call you Arabella?’

  The stammer, which had been happily absent, came back with a rush.

  ‘N-no, n-not in the l-least.’ In fact she liked to be called Arabella by him, but it would never do to say so; she liked him very much, but he was still the Medical Director, being kind to a strange nurse who had been forced, willy-nilly through circumstances, to join his staff. To be on the safe side, she added ‘sir.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ARABELLA found that she slipped into the Dutch hospital’s routine easily enough. True, there were difficulties with the language, which she considered quite outlandish and impossible to pronounce, but a great number of the staff spoke a little English; the house doctors spoke it fluently, so, more or less, did the Directrice, a large, bony woman with the face of a good-tempered horse and the disposition of an angel. It was she who explained to Arabella about her off-duty and her days off, and what would be expected of her when she was on duty; mostly the care of the two spastic children who were injured, she discovered, and when they didn’t need her attention, help with the routine ward duties.

  For the first two days she was kept busy, for Sister Brewster, although feeling better, seemed to think that it was beneath her dignity to come on to the wards and help with her little charges. She contented herself with twice-daily consultations with Arabella, during which she uttered a great many statements, each one contradicting the last; never ceased to lament their misfortunes, and shook her head doubtfully over Doctor van der Vorst’s decision to keep Arabella at the hospital to look after Billy and Sally. But she was far too anxious to get home to trouble overmuch about this, beyond warning Arabella to remember that she was still only a student nurse even if she had her Children’s training. Arabella listened meekly, for there was nothing much she could do about it, although she felt ashamed of Sister Brewster with her whining voice, looking on the black side of everything.

  It could have been so much worse; the children could have been seriously injured, even killed. Doctor van der Vorst might never have come along that particular road at that particular time. Arabella considered that they had a great deal to be thankful for, but it would have been useless to say so; she could see that Sister Brewster, now that she was on the point of departure, was about to shed her role of a woman battered by cruel fate and a number of children who could do nothing much for themselves, and assume a quite different part
in their adventure. Arabella guessed that she would have a quite different tale to tell by the time she reached Wickham’s.

  In this she was quite correct, but she was unaware that Doctor van der Vorst had already told the authorities at Wickham’s his version of the whole affair, both by telephone and also in a remarkably concise letter, written in beautiful English. Not that Arabella minded overmuch what Sister Brewster might fabricate when she returned; her own friends wouldn’t believe a word of it, and old Brewster was noted for evading responsibility and laying the blame on other shoulders when anything went wrong.

  So it was with faintly guilty pleasure that Arabella waved goodbye to the home-going party, setting off in their convoy of ambulances; it would be super not to have Sister Brewster’s disapproving lectures twice a day; super to see something of the town and perhaps, if she were lucky, the surrounding countryside, super too, to accept the invitations extended to her by various members of the hospital staff to go to the local cinema with them, or shopping. She skipped happily up the staircase leading to the ward where Sally and Billy were being nursed. There was a cheerful hubbub of sound coming from behind its closed doors and no one to be seen, Arabella, feeling for some reason she didn’t bother to question, delighted with life and the immediate future, started to whistle the first tune which came into her head: ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind…’ She rendered it happily if inappropriately, and then quite carried away, started to sing: ‘Thou art not so unkind…’ slightly off key and regrettably loud. ‘As man’s ingratitude…’ She reached the top of the staircase and became aware all of a sudden that Doctor van der Vorst was beside her; he must have followed her silently up the stairs and what with the cheerful din from the ward and her noisy singing… She frowned fiercely, went a faint pink and said reprovingly:

  ‘You made m-me jump!’

  He had stopped in the short corridor before the ward doors and put out a long arm so that she was forced to stop too.

  ‘I’m sorry—I was listening to your song—surely a little melancholy? Or do you perhaps feel that—er—man’s ingratitude is indeed cold?’

  She gave him a bright, candid look from hazel eyes, which, while neither large nor brilliant, had a gentle beauty of their own.

  ‘Of course not; everyone’s been marvellous—just think, the whole hospital turned topsy-turvy for us—and nothing but kindness. I was singing because I feel happy.’

  His look told her that he understood what she meant. ‘I’m glad. We should all like you to enjoy your stay here. You must get out a little and see as much as possible. Arnhem is not too far away; there is a great deal to see there and the country around Doesburg is charming.’

  Arabella nodded, happily aware that for some reason, she wasn’t stammering: ‘I should like that. It seems hardly fair, though, that I’m the only one who came on the trip to get any fun out of it.’

  ‘I should hardly consider working a full day on the children’s ward to be fun,’ he remarked mildly.

  ‘I get off-duty, and days off. How long do you think I shall be here, Doctor?’

  ‘A few weeks, shall we say? perhaps less than that. Tell me, do Sally and Billy live at home all the time—do they not go to the Spastic Centre or somewhere similar?’

  Arabella wrinkled her brow, trying to remember. ‘I think they went once or twice a week, but most of the children lived at home, you know—that’s why Lady Marchant arranged this trip, so that they could see something of the world and give their families a short break.’

  He smiled faintly. ‘Very commendable. So the sooner we get them away from hospital the better for them.’ He was leaning against the corridor wall, taking up a great deal of room, so that she couldn’t go into the ward without squeezing past him. ‘We don’t want them to fret.’

  For some reason this speech depressed Arabella, although she was sensible enough to see that they could be nothing but a nuisance while they remained at the hospital—taking up beds, and because of their affliction, requiring a good deal of attention. No wonder he wanted to be rid of them. She observed in a stiff voice: ‘There’s no reason why they shouldn’t go very soon, is there? They’re both in plaster, and it isn’t a very long journey.’

  He answered her gravely, although she had the impression that he was laughing at her. ‘It was not my intention to send them home at the moment. We’ll see.’

  Arabella’s silky brows knitted in another frown. See what? she pondered crossly. How infuriating it was when people said they would see without giving anyone else a clue as to what it was. She shot him a baffled look and found his gaze bent upon her so intently that she supposed a little impatiently that her hair was coming down or something of the sort.

  ‘Don’t let me keep you from your work,’ he begged her in a voice whose formality forced her to murmur meekly. He opened the ward door and she went past him with a muttered thank-you, feeling, after her short bout of high spirits, depressed and irritable.

  She saw very little of the doctor for the next two or three days, only when he went round the hospital with whichever doctor was on duty, hedged in, just as the senior doctors and surgeons at Wickham’s, by the Ward Sister, the Social Worker, the Path Lab people and someone from Physio. True, he was punctilious in his enquiries as to her comfort, but only after he had required a detailed account of Billy and Sally and the progress they were making. The children were, in fact, doing very well, and now that they had become accustomed to the new faces around them and understood that if Arabella went off duty she would be back again and wasn’t leaving them for good, they were increasingly easy to look after. She had them up now, strapped into wheeled chairs, taking them round the wards and out into the garden at the back of the hospital and spending a great deal of time over their speech therapy. Billy fed himself after a fashion, Sally was still struggling to do so; it needed infinite patience and good humour to care for them, but Arabella, possessing both these attributes, made light of the messy mealtimes and the minutes wasted while one or other of the two children strove to say what an intelligent little brain wished to convey to her, and was largely prevented.

  The party in the care of Sister Brewster had been safely home for several days when Arabella was called to Doctor van der Vorst’s office. When she knocked and went in he got up from his desk and said briskly:

  ‘I should have come in search of you, but I am waiting for a telephone call and as I must refer to a pile of notes, I didn’t dare to go from the room. Sit down, won’t you? Are you quite happy about Sally and Billy?’

  Arabella said that yes, thank you, she was, and sat silent, studying him. He was extremely handsome, she acknowledged, and although he was so large, he wasn’t clumsy with it. She liked the way his hair grew from a high forehead, and his kind mouth and determined chin. The eyebrows were expressive, and presumably if he were in a temper, could be quite terrifying, and even if his nose were a thought too large his eyes were nice… She became aware that she had been staring and looked away quickly as he glanced up from the papers before him.

  ‘I thought you might like to know that I’ve heard from Wickham’s,’ he observed blandly. He glanced at a letter on his desk. ‘A Doctor Forster, who assures me that you are eminently suitable to look after Sally and Billy. He suggests that he leaves it to me to decide when it is possible for them to travel back to England, and asks that you remain with them and escort them when they go. I hope you will agree to do this?’

  She beamed with pleasure and his rather formal manner melted into a smile of great charm.

  ‘Well, of c-course I’ll s-stay. I t-told you the other d-day that I liked b-being here.’ A little tardily, she added, ‘Doctor.’

  ‘I should like, if I may, to try a little experiment,’ he went on smoothly, just as though she hadn’t said a word, ‘with the children—for I believe that they will improve a good deal more quickly if they are not in hospital. I propose to take them to my home and see how they react to more informal surroundings. That would necessitate y
ou coming with them, if you have no objection.’

  She had no objection at all, in fact the idea filled her with a pleasant excitement. It would be interesting to see what sort of a home he had; she felt sure that he was married and probably had children of his own. A vague, half realized thought formed at the back of her head that if ever she were to marry, her husband would have to be just such a man as he. Perhaps he was a little old—at least thirty-five, she judged, but that wouldn’t matter. She collected her wandering wits with something of an effort and asked: ‘When do you want to take them?’

  ‘You have a day off tomorrow, would you come with me to my home? It would seem advisable for you not to be a complete stranger to it when you bring the children. Shall we say half past ten tomorrow morning? We can discuss which day they should come, then?’

  He hadn’t waited to see if she had any plans, had he? she reflected vexedly—now, if she had been Hilary, he wouldn’t have been quite so high-handed; one at least of the doctors in the hospital would have dated her for her days off, probably she wouldn’t have had a spare moment for weeks ahead. She thought soberly that to be a plain girl had no advantages at all, and how mortifying it was that he should be so certain that she had nothing better to do with her free time. Her voice was tart and the stammer was worse than ever. ‘I’m n-not s-sure if half p-past t-ten…’

  He interrupted so smoothly that she scarcely noticed it. ‘Thoughtless of me—you have made a number of friends already, haven’t you? I’ll fix another day when you’re on duty.’ His voice was blandly friendly. ‘It’s hardly fair of me to trespass on your free time.’

  Honesty and a desire to allow him to think that she was being sought after by every member of his staff warred within her. Honesty won.

  ‘I was only going shopping with Zuster Marksma. She’s on duty again at lunchtime, so she said she would show me where I could catch the bus to Arnhem. There’s an open-air museum there.’