by Betty Neels
Stacking mugs and wiping down trays, Daisy became aware of a distant rumble. It wasn’t thunder; it sounded like a vast crowd all talking at once but a long way off.
‘Kids on the rampage,’ said the maid crossly when Daisy mentioned it. And presently when the noise got nearer Staff Nurse made the same remark.
‘A protest march or a rally, I dare say, marching through the town. Daisy, will you go down to the dispensary and get that Dettol Sister ordered? It didn’t come up this morning and Night Nurse might need some during the night.’ She picked up her pen to start the report. ‘I’ve only got Nurse Stevens on and she’s still feeding baby Price.’
Daisy made her way down two flights of stairs and along several corridors; most of the wards were at the back of the hospital and it was suppertime, early on Sundays. There was a pleasant smell of cooking as she nipped along, and her small nose twitched. As usual she had cut short her midday meal in order to have more time to spend with Maisie and now she was empty.
The dispenser on duty was on the point of going home and grumbled a good deal as he handed over the bottle. ‘I don’t know what this place is coming to,’ he observed to no one in particular so that Daisy felt it unnecessary to answer him. She bade him goodnight and started on her way back.
It would be quicker if she used the main staircase from the entrance hall—strictly forbidden but there was no one around and it would save quite a few corridors. She reached the entrance hall, aware that the noise of a lot of people was growing louder by the minute; they sounded rather out of hand too. It was to be hoped that they would go past the hospital quickly.
She had her foot on the bottom stair when she realised that they weren’t going past; the shouts and yells were very close now—they must be in the forecourt. Even as she thought it the double doors were flung open and a dozen or more youths came through them. They were laughing and shouting and ripe for mischief and she looked towards the porter’s lodge. There was always someone on duty there; they could telephone for help—get the police…
It was apparent to her after a moment that there wasn’t anyone there. The corridors on either side of her were empty, the rooms which led out of them would be empty too—the consultant’s room, Matron’s office, the hospital secretary’s, and on the other side the committee room which took up almost all of one side of the corridor.
The youths had hesitated at the sight of her but now they were dribbling in, two and three at a time. Some of them had what looked to her like clubs and one of them, bolder than the others, was chipping the bust of a long-dead consultant of the hospital; he was the first in a row and Daisy felt sick at the idea of the damage he could cause. He had a knife; she shook with fright—she was terrified of knives. Her mouth had gone dry too and she clasped her hands in front of her to stop them trembling; all the same she stayed where she was.
‘Go away at once,’ she called in a voice which wobbled alarmingly; ‘this is a hospital…’
The hooligans hooted with raucous laughter. ‘An’ you’re the matron?’ yelled someone. ‘Try and stop us…’ Those behind surged forward and the leaders came nearer, taking a swipe at a second bust, this time of the hospital’s founder, as they did so.
Daisy had put the Dettol bottle down when she had turned to see what the commotion was; now she picked it up and held it clasped in both hands in front of her. It wasn’t exactly a weapon but if she threw it… First she tried again; rage had swallowed at least part of her fear. ‘Get out,’ she bawled, ‘you louts. The police will be here any moment now.’
This was greeted by jeers and bad language, a good deal of which she didn’t understand, which was a good thing, although she had an idea that it was unprintable.
The lout who had been swiping at the marble busts edged nearer and her shaking hands tightened on the bottle…
A great arm encircled her waist and lifted her gently, to push her with equal gentleness behind Dr Seymour’s vast back.
‘Just in time,’ said the doctor placidly. ‘I do believe you were going to waste a bottle of Dettol.’
Daisy got her breath back. ‘Valentine,’ she muttered before she had stopped to think, and heaven alone knew what she might have said next if he hadn’t said in a quite ordinary voice,
‘Get help, my darling, and ring the police, just in case they don’t already know…’
‘They’ll kill you,’ said Daisy into the fine cloth of his jacket. ‘I’m not going to leave you…’
‘Do as I say, Daisy, run along.’
There was no gainsaying that voice; she turned and flew up the staircase and tore along the corridor until she reached the men’s medical ward.
The charge nurse at the other end of the long ward looked up as she raced down its length.
‘Mr Soames—there’s a mob of hooligans in the hall; Dr Seymour’s there, he needs help, and I’m to ring the police.’
Mr Soames was already walking up the ward, beckoning two male nurses to follow as he went. ‘Ring the police then the porter’s room and the housemen’s flat. The numbers are by the phone on my desk.’ He paused for a moment by a student nurse. ‘You’re in charge until we get back.’
He opened the ward doors and Daisy heard Dr Seymour’s voice quite clearly. It wasn’t particularly loud but it sounded authoritative and very calm. She went into Mr Soames’s office and dialled 999. The police were already on their way, she was told; she hung up and dialled the porters’ room and then the housemen’s flat and a few minutes later heard feet thundering down the staircase. She still had the bottle of Dettol with her; she picked it up and carried it carefully up another flight of stairs to the children’s ward and gave it to Staff Nurse.
‘There’s a frightful racket going on,’ said that young lady, ‘and you’ve been ages, Daisy.’
‘Some hooligans broke into the hospital, Staff.’ For the life of her she couldn’t say any more, only stared at the other girl from a white face.
‘A cup of tea,’ said Staff. ‘Sit yourself down. Did you get caught up in it?’ When she nodded Staff added, ‘A good thing it’s time for you to go off duty.’ She fetched the tea. ‘Sit there for a bit—it must have been upsetting.’ She eyed Daisy’s ashen face and decided that she would have to wait to find out what was happening. There was a good deal of noise now, loud men’s voices and heavy feet tramping around, luckily not so close as to disturb the children.
Daisy drank her tea. Everything had happened rather fast and she was terribly bewildered, but one thing she remembered with clarity. She had called the doctor Valentine and he had called her his darling. ‘Get help, my darling,’ he had said, but perhaps he had said that just to make her listen…
The phone rang and she supposed she had better answer it.
‘Stay where you are until I come for you,’ said the doctor in her ear. ‘In the children’s ward?’
‘Yes.’ She suddenly wanted to cry.
The phone went dead and she sat down again and presently Staff Nurse came back to write the report.
‘Feeling better?’ she asked kindly. ‘Dr Cowie was in the ward just now; he said they’d cleared those louts away. You were very brave, Daisy, standing there all alone, telling them to go away. Weren’t you scared?’
‘I’ve never been so frightened in my life before; I think I would have run away if Dr Seymour hadn’t come.’
‘He said you were magnificent.’ Staff glanced at Daisy’s face. ‘If it had been me I’d have cut and run.’
‘I was too frightened,’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t suppose I could have moved.’ She smiled at the other girl, who reflected that Sister had been right—Daisy wasn’t the usual sort of orderly; she wondered why she had taken the job…
The door opened and Dr Seymour walked in unhurriedly. ‘Get your coat,’ he told Daisy, ‘I’ll take you home. Feel
all right now?’
Daisy frowned; he had made it sound as though she had had the screaming hysterics. ‘I’m perfectly all right, thank you, Doctor.’
‘Good. I’ll be in the entrance hall in five minutes.’ He held the door open for her and she bade Staff Nurse goodnight and went past him, her chin lifted.
In the car she asked presently, ‘What happened to all those hooligans?’
‘The police carted some of them off, the rest ran away. Very few of them were locals.’
His voice was casual; he couldn’t have been more impersonal. She felt too discouraged to say anything else. As he stopped outside her home she made haste to get out, to be stopped by his hand on the door. ‘Not so fast. I’m coming in.’
‘There’s no need,’ she assured him but that was a waste of breath; he got out, opened her door and urged her through the gate as the door opened.
Before she could say a word her mother said, ‘Oh, my dear—are you all right? What a dreadful thing to have happened—were you very frightened? And how can I ever thank you, Dr Seymour, for rescuing her as you did?’
‘Hardly a rescue, Mrs Pelham.’ He had pushed Daisy gently ahead of him so that they were all standing in the little hall. ‘I happened to be passing—I’m sure Daisy would have coped very well on her own.’
‘Well, of course, she’s a very sensible girl,’ agreed her mother. ‘Nevertheless, I do thank you.’ She hesitated. ‘I dare say you’re a busy man, but if you would like a cup of coffee…?’
‘That would be delightful.’
Daisy hadn’t said a word; he still had a hand on her shoulder, and now he turned her round, unbuttoned her coat and took it off, pulled the gloves from her hands and propelled her briskly into the kitchen where he sat her down in a chair, took a chair himself and fell into cheerful conversation with Pamela. It wasn’t until Mrs Pelham had handed round the coffee and offered cake that Pamela asked, ‘Were you scared, Daisy?’
Daisy put her cup down carefully, burst into tears and darted out of the room. Mrs Pelham looked alarmed, Pamela surprised and the doctor undisturbed.
‘No, Mrs Pelham, leave her alone for a while. She’ll be all right but she had a nasty shock and the reaction has set in. She was remarkably brave—you would have been very proud of her. Tomorrow she’ll be quite herself again; bed is the best place for her now and perhaps a warm drink before she sleeps.’ He added kindly, ‘You mustn’t worry.’
Mrs Pelham said faintly, ‘She’s such a dear girl…’
‘Indeed she is,’ agreed the doctor, and something in his voice made Pamela stare at him.
‘Are you in love with her?’ she asked, and ignored her mother’s shocked indrawn breath.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the doctor blandly and smiled at Pamela. ‘I must go. The coffee was delicious, Mrs Pelham.’ He said his goodbyes and Pamela went to the door with him.
‘I won’t tell,’ she told him. He smiled then and dropped a kiss on her cheek before he went away.
He had been quite right, of course; Daisy slept like a baby all night, ate her breakfast and cycled to work, quite restored to her normal sensible self. She felt ashamed of her outburst in front of the doctor and as soon as she saw him she would apologise. It was a great pity that she had called him Valentine to his face like that, but he would surely realise that she had been upset at the time. She rehearsed a neat little speech as she cycled and presented herself in the ward nicely primed.
It wasn’t until the end of the day that Sister mentioned in Daisy’s hearing that he had gone to Holland. ‘Lectures or something,’ she explained to Staff Nurse. ‘He does get around, doesn’t he? I should have loved to see him telling those louts where they could go…’
Daisy, collecting the sheets and listening with both ears, wondered forlornly if she would see him again.
Sooner than she expected. It was two days later as she was collecting the children’s mugs after their morning milk that one of the nurses told her that she was wanted in Sister’s office. Daisy put down her tray, twitched her pink pinny into neatness and knocked on the office door, and when there was no answer poked her head round it. Her eyes met Dr Seymour’s steady gaze and since she could hardly withdraw without saying something she said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir, I was told to come here but Sister isn’t…’ She tailed off, not sure what to say next, anxious to be gone even though her heart was beating a tattoo at the sight of him.
‘No, she isn’t,’ agreed the doctor calmly. ‘Come in, Daisy.’
He got up from the chair behind the desk, closed the door behind her. ‘Do sit down,’ he said and when she shook her head came to stand so close to her that all she could see was an expanse of dark grey superfine wool waistcoat. She counted the buttons and lifted her gaze sufficiently to study his tie—a very fine one, silk and vaguely striped. Italian, no doubt. Higher than that she refused to look while she strove to remember the speech she had rehearsed so carefully.
‘I had no idea,’ said the doctor at last, ‘that courting a young lady could be fraught with so many difficulties. Why is it, I wonder, that I’m able to diagnose acute anterior poliomyelitis, measles, hydrocephalus, intersusception, inflamed adenoids, the common cold…and yet I find myself unable to find the right words?’
He was smiling down at her and she said with a little gasp, ‘Oh, do be careful what you’re saying; you might regret it—I dare say you’re very tired or something.’ She added urgently, ‘I’m the orderly…’
His laughter rumbled. ‘Oh, no, you’re not, you’re Daisy, my Daisy, the most darling girl in the world and so hard to pin down. I’m in love with you, my darling, have been since the first moment I set eyes on you…’
She looked up into his face then. ‘But you never…’ she began.
‘You’d made up your mind that we didn’t like each other, hadn’t you? You are, my dearest heart, pigheaded at times.’ He made that sound like a compliment. ‘It seemed that I needed to be circumspect.’ He wrapped great arms around her. ‘You called me Valentine,’ he reminded her, ‘and you wanted to stay with me. You looked at me with those lovely grey eyes and I knew then that whatever you said it would make no difference, that you loved me too.’
‘But I’m an…’ began Daisy, and then added, ‘Yes, I do love you.’
She didn’t finish because he kissed her then. Presently he said, ‘You’ll marry me, my little love? And soon.’
She lifted her face from his shoulder. ‘I have to give a week’s notice.’
‘Rubbish. I’ll deal with that at once.’
‘But you can’t…’
‘Oh, yes, I can and I will. You’ll leave this evening.’ He kissed her gently, ‘My love, leave everything to me.’
She smiled mistily. ‘I must go, Valentine—the milk-mugs…’
He kissed her once more and opened the door for her. ‘I can’t believe it’s true,’ she told him. ‘What will everyone say?’
He caught her hand and held it for a moment. ‘We’ll ask them at our wedding. I’ll be waiting outside for you this evening, my darling.’ He smiled. ‘The end of my waiting.’
Daisy nodded, her head full of glimpses of a delightful future. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek and whisked herself away, back to her tray of mugs. But not for long.
* * * * *
ISBN: 9781408983034
A Valentine for Daisy
© Betty Neels 1993
First Published in Great Britain in 1993
Harlequin (UK) Limited
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