Stars Through the Mist

CHAPTER TWO

SHE WAS so amazed that she couldn’t speak. Just for one blissful moment she savoured the delightful idea that he had fallen in love with her, and then common sense took over. Men in love, however awkward about the business, weren’t likely to employ such a cool manner as his. He had sounded for all the world as though he wanted her to fit in an extra case on his next list or something equally prosaic. She found her voice at last and was surprised at its steadiness. ‘Why do you ask me?’ she wanted to know.

She watched his nod of approval. The light over the desk showed up the grey hair at his temples and served to highlight the extreme fairness of the rest. His voice was unhurried as he said pleasantly:

‘What a sensible girl you are—most women would have been demanding to know if I were joking. I have noticed your calm manner when we have worked together, and I am delighted to see that it isn’t only in the operating theatre that you are unflurried.’

He was silent for so long that Deborah, desperate for something, anything to do, sat down again and began to stack the various notebooks and papers neatly together. That there was no need to do this, and indeed it would merely give her more work in the morning sorting them all out again, escaped her notice. He might think her sensible and calm; inside, happily concealed by her dark blue uniform, she was bubbling like a cauldron on the boil.

Presently, in the same pleasant voice, he went on: ‘I will explain. I am returning to Holland to live very shortly; my father died recently and it is necessary for me to live there—there are various obligations—’ he dismissed them with a wave of his hand and she wondered what they might be. ‘I shall continue with my work, naturally, but we are a large family and I have a great many friends, so there will be entertaining and social occasions, you understand. I have neither the time nor the inclination to arrange such things, neither do I have the slightest idea how to run a household. I need a wife, someone who will do these things and welcome my friends.’

He paused, but she wasn’t looking at him. There were some retractors on the desk, put there for repair; she had picked them up and was polishing their handles vigorously with the cloth in which they were wrapped. He leaned across the desk and took them from her without a word and went on: ‘I should tell you that I have been married. My wife died eight years ago and I have had no wish to become deeply involved with any woman since; I do not want to become deeply involved with you, but I see very little likelihood of this; we have worked together now for two years and I believe that I understand you very well. I would wish for your companionship and friendship and nothing more. I am aware that women set great store by marrying for love and that they are frequently unhappy as a consequence. Perhaps you do not consider what I am offering enough, and yet it seems to me that we are ideally suited, for you have plenty of common sense, a delightful manner and, I think, similar tastes to my own. I can promise you that your life will be pleasant enough.’ His blue eyes stared down at her from under half-closed lids. ‘You’re twenty-seven,’ he told her, ‘and pretty enough to have had several chances of marrying and settling down with a husband and children, but you have not wanted this—am I right?’

She nodded wordlessly, squashing a fleeting, nonsensical dream of little flaxen-haired van Doornincks as soon as it had been born. Because she simply had to know, she asked: ‘Have you any children?’

‘No,’ his voice was so remote that she wished she hadn’t spoken, ‘I have two brothers and a sister, all married—there are children enough in the family.’

Deborah waited for him to ask her if she liked children, but he didn’t, so after a minute or two’s silence she said in a quiet little voice:

‘May I have some time to think about it? You see, I’ve always imagined that I would marry someone I…’ She stopped because she wasn’t sure of her voice any more.

‘Loved?’ he finished for her in a depressingly matter-of-fact tone. ‘I imagine most girls do, but I think that is not always the best way. A liking for each other, consideration for one’s partner, shared interests—these things make a good marriage.’

She stared at him, her lovely eyes round. She hadn’t supposed him to be a cold man, although he was talking like one now. Either he had been unhappy in his first marriage or he had loved his wife so dearly that the idea of loving any other woman was unthinkable to him. She found either possibility unsatisfactory. With a tremendous effort she made herself be as businesslike as he was. ‘So you don’t want children—or—or a wife?’

He smiled. ‘Shall we discuss that later? Perhaps I haven’t made myself quite plain; I admire and like you, but I’m not in love with you and I believe that we can be happy together. We are sensible, mature people and you are not, I believe, a romantic girl…’

She longed to tell him how wrong he was. Instead: ‘You don’t believe in falling in love, then?’

He smiled so charmingly that her outraged heart cracked a little.

‘And nor, I think, do you, Deborah, otherwise you would have been married long ago—you must be single from choice.’

So that was what he thought; that she cared nothing for marriage and children and a home of her own. She kept her angry eyes on the desk and said nothing at all.

Presently he said, ‘I have offended you. I’m sorry, but I find myself quite unable to be anything but honest with you.’

She looked up at that and encountered his blue stare. ‘I’ve had chances to marry,’ she told him, at the same time wondering what would happen if she told him just why she had given up those same chances. ‘Did you love your wife?’ The question had popped out before she had been able to stop it and she watched the bleak look on his face as it slowly chilled her.

He said with a bitter little sneer which hurt her, ‘All women are curious…’

‘Well, I’m not all women,’ she assured him sharply, ‘and I’m not in the least curious’—another lie—‘but it’s something I should have to know—you said you wanted to be honest.’

He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You’re quite right. One day we will talk about her. Will it suffice for the moment if I tell you that our marriage was a mistake?’ He became his usual slightly reserved self again. ‘Now that I have told you so much about myself, I do not see that you can do anything else but marry me.’

She answered his smile and was tempted to say yes at once, but common sense still had a firm place inside her lovely head; she would have to think about it. She told him so and he agreed unconcernedly. ‘I shall see you on Thursday,’ he observed as he went to the door. ‘I’ll leave you to finish your writing. Good night, Deborah.’

She achieved a calm ‘Good night, Mr van Doorninck,’ and he paused on the way out to say: ‘My name is Gerard, by the way, but perhaps I shouldn’t have told you that until Thursday.’

Deborah did no more writing; she waited until she heard the swing doors close after him and then shovelled the books and papers into a drawer, pell-mell. They could wait until tomorrow—she had far too much on her mind to be bothered with stupid matters like off-duty and laundry and instruments which needed repairing. She pinned on her cap anyhow, found her shoes at last, locked the theatre, hung the keys on the hook above the door, and went down to supper. Several of her friends were as late as she was; they greeted her with tired good nature and broke into a babble of talk to which she didn’t listen until the Accident Room Sister startled her by saying, ‘Deb, whatever is the matter? I’ve asked you at least three times what van Doorninck did with those three cases we sent up, and you just sit there in a world of your own.’

‘Sorry,’ said Deborah, ‘I was thinking,’ a remark which called forth a little ripple of weary laughter from everyone at the table. She smiled round at them all and plunged obligingly into the complexities of the three patients’ operations.

‘No off-duty?’ someone asked when she had finished.

Deborah shook her head. ‘No—I’ll make it up some time.’

‘He works you too hard,’ said a pretty dark girl from the other side of the table. ‘Cunning wretch, I suppose he turned on the charm and you fell for it.’

The Accident Room Sister said half-jokingly, ‘And what wouldn’t you give to have the chance of doing just that, my girl? The handsome Mr van Doorninck is a confirmed bachelor, to the sorrow of us all, and the only reason Deb has lasted so long in theatre is because she never shows the least interest in him, so he feels safe with her. Isn’t that right, Deb?’

Deborah blushed seldom; by a great effort of will she prevented herself from doing so now. She agreed airily, her fingers crossed on her lap, and started on the nourishing rice pudding which had been set before her. She wouldn’t have rice pudding, she promised herself. Perhaps the Dutch…she pulled her thoughts up sharply; she hadn’t decided yet, had she? It would be ridiculous to accept his offer, for it wouldn’t be the kind of marriage she would want in the first place, on the other hand there was the awful certainty that if she refused him she would never see him again, which meant that she would either remain single all her days or marry someone else without loving him. So wasn’t it better to marry Mr van Doorninck even if he didn’t love her? At least she would be with him for the rest of her life and he need never find out that she loved him; he hadn’t discovered it so far, so why should he later on?

She spooned the last of the despised pudding, and decided to marry him, and if she had regrets in the years to come she would only have herself to blame. It was a relief to have made up her mind, although perhaps it had been already made up from the very moment when he had startled her with his proposal, for hadn’t it been the fulfilment of her wildest dreams?

She retired to her room early on the plea of a hard day and the beginnings of a headache, determined to go to bed and think the whole preposterous idea over rationally. Instead of which she fell sound asleep within a few minutes of putting her head on the pillow, her thoughts an uncontrollable and delicious jumble.

She had time enough to think the next day, though. Wednesday was always a slack day in theatre even though they had to be prepared for emergencies. But there were no lists; Deborah spent the greater part of the day in the office, catching up on the administrative side, only sallying forth from time to time to make sure that the nurses knew what they were about. She went off duty at five o’clock, secretly disappointed that Mr van Doorninck hadn’t put in an appearance—true, he hadn’t said that he would, but surely he would feel some impatience? Upon reflection she decided that probably he wouldn’t, or if he did, he would take care not to let it show. She spent the evening washing her hair and doing her nails, with the vague idea that she needed to look her best when he arrived at ten o’clock the next morning.

Only he didn’t come at ten. She was in theatre, on her knees under the operating table because one of the nurses had reported a small fault in its mechanism. She had her back to the door and didn’t hear him enter; it was the sight of his large well-polished shoes which caused her to start up, knocking her cap crooked as she did so. He put out a hand and helped her to her feet without effort, rather as though she had been some small slip of a girl, and Deborah exclaimed involuntarily, ‘Oh—I’m quite heavy. I’m too tall, you must have noticed.’ Her eyes were on his tie as she babbled on: ‘I’m so big…!’

‘Which should make us a well-suited couple,’ he answered equably. ‘At least, I hope you will agree with me, Deborah.’

She put a hand up to her cap to straighten it, not quite sure what she should answer, and he caught her puzzled look. ‘Not quite romantic enough?’ he quizzed her gently. ‘Have dinner with me tonight and I’ll try and make amends.’

She was standing before him now, her lovely eyes on a level with his chin. ‘I don’t know—that is, I haven’t said…’

His heavy-lidded eyes searched hers. ‘Then say it now,’ he commanded her gently. It seemed absurd to accept a proposal of marriage in an operating theatre, but there seemed no help for it. She drew breath:

‘Yes, I’ll marry you, Mr van Doorninck.’ She uttered the absurd remark in a quiet, sensible voice and he laughed gently.

‘Gerard, don’t you think? Can you manage seven o’clock?’

Her eyes left his chin reluctantly and met his. ‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Good. I’ll fetch you—we’ll go to the Empress if you would like that.’

Somewhere very super, she remembered vaguely. ‘That will be nice.’ An inadequate answer, she knew, but he didn’t appear to find it amiss; he took her two hands lightly in his and said: ‘We’ll have a quiet talk together—it is essential that we should understand each other from the beginning, don’t you agree?’

It sounded very businesslike and cool to her; perhaps she was making a terrible mistake, but was there a worse mistake than letting him go away for ever? She thought not. For want of anything better to say, she repeated, ‘That will be nice,’ and added, ‘I must go and scrub, you have a list as long as your arm.’

It stretched longer than an arm, however, by the time they had finished. The second case held them up; the patient’s unexpected cardiac arrest was a surprise which, while to be coped with, flung a decided spanner in the works. Not that Mr van Doorninck allowed it to impede his activities—he continued unhurriedly about his urgent business and Deborah, after despatching Staff to the other end of the table to help the anaesthetist in any way he wished, concentrated upon supplying her future husband’s wants. The patient rallied, she heard Mr van Doorninck’s satisfied grunt and relaxed herself; for a patient to die on the table was something to be avoided at all costs. The operation was concluded and the patient, still unconscious and happily unaware of his frustrated attempts to die, was borne away and it was decided that a break for coffee would do everyone some good. Deborah, crowding into her office with the three men and sharing the contents of the coffee pot with them, was less lucky with the biscuit tin, for it was emptied with a rapidity she wouldn’t have prevented even if she could have done so; the sight of grown men munching Rich Tea biscuits as though they had eaten nothing for days touched her heart. She poured herself a second cup of coffee and made a mental note to wheedle the stores into letting her have an extra supply.

The rest of the morning went well, although they finished more than an hour late. Mr van Doorninck was meticulously drawing the muscle sheath together, oblivious of time. He lifted an eyebrow at Peter to remove the clamps and swab the wound ready for him to stitch and put out an outsize gloved hand for the needleholder which Deborah was holding ready. He took it without a glance and paused to straighten his back. ‘Anything for this afternoon, Sister?’ he enquired conversationally.

‘Not until three o’clock, sir.’ She glanced at Peter, who would be taking the cases. ‘A baby for a gallows frame and a couple of Colles.’

‘So you will be free for our evening together?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Hadn’t she already said so? she asked herself vexedly, and threaded another needle, aware of the pricked ears and held breaths around her and Peter’s swift, astonished look.

Mr van Doorninck held out his needleholder for her to insert the newly threaded needle. He said deliberately so that everyone could hear, ‘Sister Culpeper and I are engaged to be married, so we are—er—celebrating this evening.’

He put out a hand again and Deborah slapped the stitch scissors into it with a certain amount of force, her fine bosom swelling with annoyance—giving out the news like that without so much as a word to her beforehand! Just wait until we’re alone, she cautioned him silently, her smouldering look quite lost upon his downbent, intent head. And even if she had wanted to speak her mind, it would have been impossible in the little chorus of good wishes and congratulations. She made suitable murmurs in reply and scowled behind her mask.

But if she had hoped to have had a few words with him she was unlucky; the patient was no sooner stitched than he threw down his instruments, ripped off his gloves and made off with the long, leisurely stride which could only have been matched on her part by a frank run. She watched him go, fuming, and turned away to fob off the nurses’ excited questions.

Her temper had improved very little by the time she went off duty. The news had spread, as such news always did; she was telephoned, stopped in the corridors and besieged by the other Sisters when she went down to tea. That they were envious was obvious, but they were pleased too, for she was well liked at Clare’s, and each one of them marvelled at the way she had kept the exciting news such a close secret.

‘He’ll be a honey,’ sighed Women’s Surgical Sister. ‘Just imagine living with him!’ She stared at Deborah. ‘Is he very rich, Deb?’

‘I—I don’t really know.’ Deborah was by now quite peevish and struggling not to show it. It was a relief, on the pretext of dressing up for the evening, when she could escape. All the same, despite her ill-humour, she dressed with care in a pinafore dress of green ribbed silk, worn over a white lawn blouse with ballooning sleeves and a fetching choirboy frill under her chin, and she did her hair carefully too, its smooth wings on her cheeks and the complicated chignon at the back of her neck setting off the dress to its greatest advantage. Luckily it was late August and warm, for she had no suitable coat to cover this finery; she rummaged around in her cupboard and found a gossamer wool scarf which she flung over her arm—and if he didn’t like it, she told her reflection crossly, he could lump it.

Still buoyed up by indignation, she swept down the Home stairs, looking queenly and still slightly peevish, but she stopped in full sail in the hall because Mr van Doorninck was there, standing by the door, watching her. He crossed the polished floor and when he reached her said the wrong thing. ‘I had no idea,’ he commented, ‘that you were such a handsome young woman.’

His words conjured up an outsize, tightly corseted Titanic, when her heart’s wish was to be frail and small and clinging. She lifted pansy eyes to his and said tartly, ‘My theatre gowns are a good disguise…’ and stopped because she could see that he was laughing silently.

‘I beg your pardon, Deborah—you see how necessary it is for me to take a wife? I have become so inept at paying compliments. I like you exactly as you are and I hope that you will believe that. But tell me, why were you looking so put out as you came downstairs?’

She felt mollified and a little ashamed too. ‘I was annoyed because you told everyone in theatre that we were engaged—I didn’t know you were going to.’