The Quiet Professor

by Betty Neels

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  She went to her room and presently, in bed, went over the evening. It hadn’t been a huge success but she supposed that with time she and Oscar’s mother might get to like each other. He should, she thought, sleepily, have fallen in love with a shy, quiet girl, content to take second place to his work and be suitably meek with his mother. She fell asleep trying to think of a way to turn herself into such a girl.

  She discarded the idea the next morning. It was no good being meek and shy in her job; meekness would get her nowhere with the laundry superintendent who always argued about the excessive bedlinen Megan needed for her ward, nor would it help with the pharmacy, presided over by a bad-tempered man who queried every request and then said that he hadn’t got it. She fought her way through a busy morning and went to her midday dinner with a sigh of relief, but as she swallowed the first mouthful of shepherd’s pie she was recalled to the ward. Two street accidents; Eva Chambers, the senior casualty sister, gave her the details. ‘You’ll have your work cut out. I hope you have plenty of staff on duty.’

  Head injuries, both of them, and so restless that Megan had to deplete her staff to special the two women. Mr Bright, one of the consultant surgeons, gave it his opinion that they needed to go to Theatre at once. ‘Get them cross-matched, Sister,’ he ordered, ‘and checked for AIDS. Tell the path. lab. to send someone capable of dealing with them if they get too restless; they’re both well-built women and there’s a great deal of cerebral irritation.’

  The path. lab. responded smartly. Megan, sailing down the ward to give a helping hand in answer to urgent sounds coming from behind the curtains, was overtaken by a soft-footed Professor van Belfeld. He said mildly, ‘I understand that there is a certain amount of cerebral irritation—I thought it might be best if I came myself.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Megan. ‘They’re both a bit of a handful—we’ve got cot sides up, of course, but they will climb over…’

  The professor had certainly been the right person to deal with the situation; he was gentle but he was also possessed of a strength which made child’s play of restraining the unconscious women. Megan, left to wrestle with arms and legs flying in all directions, watched him go and wished that he could have stayed.

  Both women went to ICU after Theatre and the ward settled down to its normal routine; all the same it had been a busy day and she was glad to go off duty at last. Supper, a pot of tea, a hot bath and bed, she thought contentedly, going through the hospital; several long corridors, two staircases and the entrance hall to cross to reach the canteen in the basement. She had reached the hall when she saw the professor ahead of her. He was walking unhurriedly towards the doors. Going home, she supposed, and fell to wondering where home was. Why was he so late? Surely he didn’t need to put in a twelve-hour day?

  He turned round and saw her as she drew level with the entrance. ‘A busy day, Sister Rodner,’ he observed. ‘Goodnight.’

  She wished him goodnight too and as he went through the doors paused to watch him cross the forecourt and get into his car—a grey Rolls-Royce—and drive away. Just for a moment she found herself wishing that she could go with him and see where he lived…

  Take-in went from Wednesday until Tuesday midnight and was as busy as one might expect. Regent’s was north of the river, its mid-Victorian bulk spread in the middle of streets packed with small houses, derelict buildings and small factories. There was always something, observed Eva Chambers wearily, at the end of a particularly busy day; if someone didn’t damage themselves with factory machinery, they got run over by a car or stabbed by a member of a rival gang of youths. The weekend was always the worst; Megan, gloomily surveying her bulging ward, thanked heaven that Wednesday was in sight.

  She had seen Oscar only once or twice and then only for a brief hour snatched in a grubby little café across the street from the hospital, but she went out in her off duty however tired she was. There was nowhere much to go, but a brisk walk made a nice change and the weather was kind; it was mild for the end of March and here and there was a gallant little tree or privet hedge in a rare front garden, and there were green shoots. Next week, she thought happily, she and Oscar would go home together, and the week after that she would have her own small flat; Theatre Sister was getting married and no longer needed the semi-basement she had lived in for some years, and Megan had jumped at the chance of getting it. Oscar hadn’t liked the idea but, as she pointed out, it would be marvellous to have somewhere to go; she could cook supper and they could talk, something for which they seldom had time.

  The ward settled back into its usual routine—admissions for operations, discharges for those who had recovered, dressings, treatment, serving meals, arranging the off-duty rota to please the nurses, continuing her running fight with the laundry; after four years she had become adept at running a ward.

  Oscar wasn’t free until Sunday and although she grudged missing a day at home it gave her the chance to go along to the flat and make her final arrangements for moving in. She had already met the landlord, an elderly bewhiskered cockney who occupied the ground-floor flat himself and let the top flat to a severe lady whose staid manner and ladylike ways added, he considered, to the tone of his house, something he was anxious to maintain in the rather shabby street.

  Shabby or not, it was handy for the hospital, and Megan was looking forward to having a place of her own even if it was a down-at-heel semi-basement. She spent most of her Saturday going through its contents with Theatre Sister, who was packing up ready to leave, and she agreed to take over most of the simple furniture which was there and adopt the stray cat that went with the flat. It would be nice to have company in the evenings and he seemed an amiable beast. She went back to the hospital in the early evening, eager to make her move, noting with satisfaction that it took her exactly five minutes to get there. Her head full of pleasant plans about new curtains, a coat of paint on the depressing little front door, she failed to see Professor van Belfeld driving out of the forecourt as she went in.

  She and Oscar left early the next morning. Her home in Buckinghamshire was in a small village north of the country town of Thame. Her father was senior partner in a firm of solicitors and had lived most of his life at Little Swanley, driving to and from his offices in Thame and Aylesbury. She had been born there, as had her younger sister and much younger brother, and although she enjoyed her job she was essentially a country girl. She had a small car and spent her free weekends and holidays at home, and she had hoped—indeed, half expected—that Oscar would get a partnership in a country practice; his determination to stay in London had shaken her a little. Sitting beside him as he drove out of London, she hoped that a day spent at her home would cause him to change his mind.

  Little Swanley was a little over sixty miles’ drive from Regent’s and once they were out of the suburbs Oscar took the A41, and, when they reached Aylesbury, turned on to the Thame road before taking the narrow road leading to Little Swanley.

  ‘It would have been quicker if we had taken the M40,’ he pointed out as he slowed to let a farm cart pass.

  ‘Yes, I know, but this is so much prettier—I don’t like motorways, but we’ll go back that way if you like.’

  She felt a twinge of disappointment in his lack of interest in the countryside; after the drab streets round the hospital, the fields and hedges were green, there were primroses by the side of the road and the trees were showing their new leaves. Spring had come early.
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  Another even narrower road led downhill into the village. Megan, seeing the church tower beyond it, the gables of the manor house and the red tiles of the little cluster of houses around the market cross, felt a thrill of happiness. ‘Go through the village,’ she told Oscar. ‘Ours is the first house on the left—there’s a white gate…’

  The gate was seldom closed. Oscar drove up the short drive and stopped before the open door of her home, white-walled and timber-framed with shutters at its windows, a roomy seventeenth-century house surrounded by trees with a lawn before it and flowerbeds packed with daffodils.

  She turned a beaming face to Oscar. ‘Home!’ she cried. ‘Come on in, Mother will be waiting.’

  Her mother was already at the door, a still pretty woman almost as tall as her daughter. ‘Darling, here you are at last, and you’ve brought Oscar with you.’ She embraced Megan and shook hands with him. ‘We’ve heard so much about you that we feel as though we know you already.’ She opened the door wider. ‘Come and meet my husband.’

  Mr Rodner came into the hall then, the Sunday papers under one arm, spectacles on his nose, a good deal older than his wife, with a thick head of grey hair and a pleasant scholarly face. Megan hugged him before introducing Oscar. ‘At last we’ve managed to get here together. Are the others home?’

  ‘Church,’ said her mother. ‘They’ll be here in half an hour or so; there’s just time for us to have a cup of coffee and a chat before they get back.’

  Melanie and Colin came in presently. Melanie was quite unlike her mother and sister; she was small and slim with golden hair and big blue eyes and Oscar couldn’t take his eyes off her. Megan beamed on them both, delighted that they were instant friends, for Melanie was shy and gentle and tended to shelter behind her sister’s Junoesque proportions. She left them talking happily and went into the garden to look at Colin’s rabbits, lending a sympathetic ear to his schoolboy grumbles, then she went to help her mother put lunch on the table.

  Oscar, she saw with happy relief, had made himself at home, and her parents liked him. She had thought they might have taken a walk after lunch and discussed their future but he was so obviously happy in their company that she gave up the idea and left him with her father, Colin and Melanie and she went into the kitchen to gossip with her mother while they cleared away the dishes and put things ready for tea.

  ‘I like your young man,’ said her mother, polishing her best glasses. ‘He seems very sensible and steady. He’ll make a good husband, darling.’

  ‘Yes.’ Megan hesitated. ‘Only I don’t see much chance of us marrying for a while—for a long while. He’s rather keen on settling in London and I would have liked him to have found a country practice. I like my work, Mother, but I don’t like London, at least not the part where we work.’

  ‘Perhaps you can change his mind for him,’ suggested Mrs Rodner comfortably. ‘He doesn’t want to specialise, does he?’

  ‘No, but he’s keen to get as many qualifications as he can and that means hospital posts for some time.’

  ‘Did you like his parents, darling?’

  Megan put down the last of the knives. ‘Well, his father is quite nice—not a bit like Father, though. I tried hard to like his mother but she doesn’t like me; she says she has no patience with career-minded girls.’

  ‘You won’t work once you are married, will you?’

  ‘No. Oscar wouldn’t like that. He thought it would be a good idea if he were to get a senior registrar’s post at one of the big teaching hospitals and I were to live with his parents…’

  ‘That won’t work,’ said Mrs Rodner with some heat. ‘What would you do all day? And it wouldn’t be a home of your own. Besides, after running a ward for a year or two you won’t settle down easily to playing second fiddle to Oscar’s mother, especially if you don’t like her.’

  ‘What shall I do?’ asked Megan. ‘It’s a problem, isn’t it?’

  ‘Wait and see, darling. Very hard to do, I know, but it’s the only way.’

  Oscar drove her back to Regent’s after supper, waiting patiently while she hugged and kissed her family in turn, cuddled the elderly Labrador, Janus, made a last inspection of the family cat, Candy, and her various kittens, and picked a bunch of daffodils to cheer up her room. He was seldom put out, she thought contentedly as she got into the car at last.

  ‘Well,’ she asked him as they drove away, ‘did you like my family?’

  ‘Very much. Your brother is pretty sharp, isn’t he? Does well at school, I dare say.’

  ‘Yes, and a good thing, for Father wants him to go into the firm later on.’

  ‘Your sister is—she’s charming, like a shy angel—you’re not a bit alike,’ and when Megan laughed at that he said, ‘That sounds all wrong but you know what I mean. Has she got a job?’

  ‘No, she helps Mother at home, but she’s a marvellous needlewoman and she paints and draws and makes her own gloves—that kind of thing. She’s a good cook, too.’

  ‘Those scones at tea were delicious,’ said Oscar warmly. ‘I like to think of her in the kitchen…’

  Megan, faintly puzzled by this remark, refrained from telling him that she had knocked up a batch of scones while he had been talking to Melanie in the drawing-room. It was natural enough, she supposed, that he would think that being a ward sister precluded a knowledge of the art of cooking.

  At the hospital they parted in the entrance hall.

  ‘It was a delightful day,’ said Oscar warmly. ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for a long time.’

  A remark which caused Megan to feel vaguely put out. All the same she said in her matter-of-fact way, ‘Good, we must do it again. Don’t forget I’m moving into my flat this week. If you’re free on Thursday evening, you can come for supper.’

  He kissed her cheek, since there was no one there to see. ‘That’s a date. What will it be? Baked beans on toast and instant coffee?’

  She smiled. ‘Very likely. You’d better bring a bottle of beer to help it out. Goodnight, Oscar.’

  Before she went to sleep she had planned a supper menu which would put all thoughts of baked beans out of his head.

  Theatre Sister left on Monday and on Tuesday evening Megan went round to the flat. She had already met the landlord and someone had been in to give the flat a good clean; it only remained for her to set the place to rights and since she had the evening before her she went back to the hospital, packed a case with most of her clothes, filled a plastic bag with books and went off once more. She had gone through the entrance door when the case was taken from her hand.

  ‘Allow me,’ said Professor van Belfeld. ‘The car’s over here…’

  Megan stopped to look at him. ‘Car?’ she asked stupidly. ‘But I’m only going—’

  He interrupted her. ‘To your new flat, no doubt. I’ll drop you off as I go.’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind,’ began Megan, ‘but really there’s no need.’

  He didn’t answer, but put a large hand under her elbow, took the bag of books away from her and steered her to his car. It was extremely comfortable sitting there beside him, only she didn’t have time to enjoy it to the full; the journey took less than a minute.

  Outside the shabby house he got out to open her door, took the key from her and unlocked the door of the flat, switching on the lights and then going back for her case and the books. The place looked bare and unlived-in but it was clean and needed only a few cushions, some flowers and photos and the
small gas fire lighted. She was standing in the tiny lobby thanking the professor when the cat sped past them.

  ‘Yours?’ asked the professor.

  ‘Well, yes. Theatre Sister said that she’d been feeding him. I’ll get some milk, he must be hungry.’

  A small group of children had collected round the car, staring in, and the professor turned round to look at them, picked out the biggest boy and beckoned him over. ‘Go to the shop at the end of the street; I fancy it is still open. Buy two tins of cat food and some milk—any kind of milk.’ He gave the lad some money. ‘Fifty pence if you’re quick about it.’

  ‘Really,’ protested Megan, ‘there was no need…’

  ‘The beast is hungry.’ He stated the fact in his quiet voice, putting an end to further argument. ‘You do not mean to stay here tonight?’

  ‘No. I’m moving in tomorrow. I’ve a day off on Thursday and I’m going to cook a splendid supper. Oscar’s coming.’ She added, ‘Dr Fielding.’

  ‘Yes. I do know him,’ said the Professor drily. He sounded impatient too and she was glad when the boy came racing back with the cat food and the milk. ‘Give them to the lady,’ advised the professor, and put his hand in his pocket again. ‘Get yourself and your friends some chips.’

  The boy took a delighted look at the money. ‘Yer a bit of all right!’ he shouted cheerfully as he and his friends scattered down the street…

  Which gave Megan the chance to thank her companion all over again for his help, wish him goodnight and watch him drive away before going into her new home to feed the cat and unpack her case.

  The cat, nicely full, sat and watched her. He was too thin and uncared for but she thought that with a little pampering he would turn into a splendid animal. ‘You haven’t a name,’ she observed, ‘and since you’re not a stray but belong here you must have a name. I wonder where you come from and how long you have been wandering around Meredith Street?’