Loe raamatut: «Henrietta's Own Castle»

CHAPTER ONE

SISTER HENRIETTA BRODIE yawned as she climbed the last few treads of the staircase leading to Women’s Medical; she had stayed up late the night before, listening, with three other Ward Sisters, to Agnes Bent, who had Men’s Medical and was leaving to get married in a few weeks’ time and had still to solve the knotty problem of whether to wear a hat or a veil at her wedding. She was a girl of gentle nature, easily swayed by other opinions, and the argument had gone on until after midnight. Henrietta had rather enjoyed it; she liked Agnes, who was pretty enough to wear whatever she fancied and look lovely, but the others had been divided in their opinions, so that the discussion, prolonged with several pots of tea, had gone on for longer than she had bargained for, and when she had at last got to bed, it was to lie awake until the small hours.

Agnes’ happy chatter had reminded her that she was going to be twenty-nine in a week’s time, and what was worse, she had recently refused Roger Thorpe, the chief pharmacist at St Clement’s, for the second time, and she didn’t think that he would ask her again. If she had had any relatives to advise her, they would probably have told her that she had been silly to have given up the chance of marrying such a worthy man—her own age, steady and serious and hard-working. And so dull, added Henrietta to herself. Roger hadn’t been the first man to ask her to marry him, but he could possibly be the last.

She had sat up in bed at three o’clock in the morning, struck by the sobering thought that twenty-nine was only a year from thirty. Had she been foolish? Roger had all the makings of a good husband, and yet, she had reflected, he had accepted her refusal with a lukewarm regret; he might have been disappointed, but he hadn’t been heartbroken. Her tired mind registered that fact while it had wondered in a nebulous fashion if she would ever meet a man who was neither too worthy nor dull, and who, if she were fool enough to refuse him, would follow her ruthlessly until she changed her mind—he would have to be rich, because she was poor, and good-looking, and because she was tall and well built, he would have to be bigger than she was… She had slid back against the pillow, and slept on the idea.

She remembered it all very clearly now as she crossed the landing to her office, her ears registering the various ward sounds; the breakfast things being collected on to the trolleys, the swish of the curtains as the nurses started to draw them round the beds, the metallic clink of bedpans from the far end of the ward and Mrs Pim’s shrill old voice calling: ‘Nurse, Nurse!’ just as she always did after each and every breakfast. But nothing untoward—Henrietta nodded to herself and opened the office door.

The night nurses were waiting for her, and so was her staff nurse, Joan Legg. She wished them good morning in her quiet, pretty voice, and sat down at her desk. The Kardex was open at the first patient’s name, ready for her to read, but instead she asked: ‘Did you have a good night, Nurse Cutts? That new case—Miss Crow—was the sedation enough or do you want a bigger dose for tonight?’

She looked up and smiled at the student nurse she was talking to, and the smile lighted the whole of her lovely face. Henrietta might be eight or nine years older than her companions, but it was difficult to see that. She was a tall girl, built on generous lines without being plump, with a creamy skin and dark hair curling gently which she pinned up ruthlessly into a bun. Her mouth was kind as well as generously curved and her eyes were dark and thickly lashed. The student nurse, meeting their inquiring gaze and knowing all about the chief pharmacist, thought it a good thing that Sister Brodie had refused him. She was too dishy to be wasted on anyone so ordinary; she ought to marry someone dramatic—tall and dark and a little wicked…

‘Nurse?’ Henrietta’s voice was inquiring, and Cutts abandoned her ideas for her superior’s future happiness and plunged into a businesslike account of the night’s work.

When the night nurses had gone, Henrietta got up, rearranged her frilled muslin cap before the tiny mirror, tweaked the bow under her chin to a more dignified angle and went to look out of the window. ‘Now let’s see,’ she said, ‘there’s the barium meal at ten and three X-rays, and Mrs Pim to persuade to go down to Physio—get them started on the bed-baths, will you, Legg? I’ll be out in a minute.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘God won’t be here until half past ten, but we’d better be ready by ten if we can manage it.’

She was referring to the senior consultant, Sir Cuthbert Cornish, whose day it was to do a ward round. He was a peppery man, very tall and thin, with a booming voice which reduced the younger nurses to a state of mindless jelly; a bedside manner which charmed his patients and a confirmed opinion that he was always right. He nearly always was; Henrietta liked him, and not being afraid of his loud voice, treated him with a sangfroid which he enjoyed. She went and sat down again after Staff had gone and sorted through the patients’ notes and X-rays, refreshing her memory, for God, while permitting her to speak her mind when it concerned the patients or the ward, would brook no slipshod treatment; he expected the right answer when he asked a question.

Presently she got up once more and went into the ward, a little pile of letters and parcels in her hand; it killed two birds with one stone, giving out the post and having a short chat with each patient as she did her round. It took quite a long time, but she never tried to hurry it, some of the women had few visitors and almost no post; they needed to talk even if only for five minutes, the other, luckier ones, with large families to visit them and letters every day, took up only a few minutes of her time, but even so, with thirty patients the round took an hour and sometimes longer, with constant interruptions, small emergencies and the occasional early visit from a doctor. This morning, however, there were few interruptions to take up her time. She went from bed to bed, finding time to keep an eye on the running of the ward as she did so, and by the time she had reached old Mrs Pim in the last bed by the door, the morning’s routine was nicely started—even if God came early they would be ready for him. Henrietta dispatched the cases to X-Ray, sent a nurse down with the barium meal, who was a nervous woman and would probably be sick when she got there anyway, sent the first of the student nurses to their coffee break and went back into her office.

Legg knocked on the door a minute later. ‘Coffee, Sister?’ she asked. ‘Everything’s going nicely.’

Henrietta nodded. ‘Bring a cup for you,’ she invited as she picked up a letter addressed to herself from the desk. Sam, the porter, must have brought it up when he came for the stores list; he knew that on round days she had no chance to leave the ward to collect her post from the nurses’ home. She turned it over idly; it looked official and as it was typed, she had no idea from whom it might be, only that the postmark was London. She slipped it into her pocket, to be read later on when the round was over.

Sir Cuthbert Cornish arrived early; usually he was late but just now and again he turned up at least twenty minutes too soon, presumably in the hope that no one would be ready for him and he would be able to complain, but Henrietta had been Ward Sister for some years now and was up to his tricks; he was met, as always, by his registrar, his houseman, the social worker and the girl from Physio, with her a yard or so in front, so that he might be greeted in the correct way, and Staff lurking discreetly in the background, reinforced by a student nurse ready to do any of the odd jobs the great man might think up. Today, however, he was in a genial mood; the round went well with a few setbacks and a kind of interval half way up the ward while he told Henrietta a funny story. The round done at last, they parted on the best of terms at the ward door, and while his little procession made its way to Men’s Medical on the other side of the block, Henrietta went back into the ward, where the dinner trolley, concealed in the kitchen, had been rushed into place ready for her to serve the patients’ dinners. She doled out steamed fish, diabetic diets and stew for the well ones, while she and Staff conned over the round. She had made notes from time to time, but most of God’s instructions she held in her head; after their own dinner she and Legg would go to her office during the visiting hour and go over the notes together so that his orders—and they had been many—might be carried out to the letter.

Henrietta didn’t remember her letter until the visitors had gone and the patients were having tea. The ward was almost quiet, with only two nurses keeping an eye on its occupants while the rest of the staff went to their own tea. Legg had gone off duty at half past two and would be back at half past six to relieve her. She looked out of the window at the grey dreary January afternoon, trying to make up her mind if she would go out that evening or go to bed early—bed would be nice, she decided as she drew the Kardex towards her and began the bare bones of the day report so that Legg could fill it in later, but she pushed it aside when Florrie, the ward maid, came in with her tea; a good excuse to take a few minutes off, she told herself, and at the same time remembered her letter.

She opened it without much curiosity and paused to sip her tea before she read it. It was from a firm of solicitors, informing her that her aunt, Miss Henrietta Brodie, had died a week previously and that, by the terms of her will, she, her niece and sole surviving relative, was to inherit the property known as Dam 3 in the village of Gijzelmortel, situated in the province of North Brabant, Holland, together with its contents and such moneys as remained after the payment of certain legacies. The writer begged her to pay him a visit at the earliest opportunity and remained hers faithfully, Jeremy Boggett, of Messrs Boggett, Payne, Boggett and Boggett.

Henrietta read this exciting information through a second time, looked at the back and then the envelope to make sure that she had missed nothing and then laid it down on the desk and drank her tea. Her first reaction was that she was dreaming, to be quickly supplanted by the idea that it was a mistake. She had had an Aunt Henrietta, true enough, a vague relative she had never seen and whom her parents, when they had been alive, never mentioned. She had presumed her dead for years and had never known where she had lived or anything about her. She poured herself another cup of tea and lifted the telephone receiver; private calls were not allowed from the hospital, but this, she considered, justified breaking that rule. She dialled the number engraved on the letter, not quite believing that anyone would answer her—but they did; an efficient feminine voice, enquiring what might be done for her, and when she asked rather uncertainly if she might see Mr Jeremy Boggett the following morning and gave her name, the voice asked her to hold the line, and after a few minutes an elderly man’s voice, owned presumably by that gentleman, assured her that he would be glad to see her at her earliest convenience and would ten o’clock suit her?

Henrietta put the receiver down and reread the letter while a number of exciting ideas raced round inside her head. A house of her own—she could go and stay…and money too, perhaps enough to allow her to give up nursing for a while. After all, she could always get another job when the money had run out. The prospect was tempting; she would see what the solicitor had to say and then go and see Miss Brice, the Principal Nursing Officer. Meanwhile there was her work to get on with. She put the letter into her pocket and drew the Kardex towards her.

She wasn’t on until one o’clock the next day, time enough to go to the solicitor’s office, have a snack in a coffee shop somewhere and be on duty on time, and because it was a fine morning, though cold, and she had time on her hands, she walked for the half hour needed to get her from the hospital to Lincoln’s Inn. Messrs Boggett, Payne, Boggett and Boggett had an office on the top floor of a narrow Georgian house: Henrietta climbed the stairs, the letter clutched in her hand as a kind of talisman, still not quite believing it.

It was true, however. Mr Jeremy Boggett, surely the senior partner, she thought irrelevantly, for he was white-haired and whiskered and very, very old, offered a chair and applied himself to the task of reading her aunt’s will.

The house was indeed hers. ‘A snug little property, Miss Brodie, but small—furnished, of course, and extremely economical in upkeep.’ He peered at her over his glasses and smiled. ‘I believe, from your aunt’s letter sent to me just before her death, that you have no relatives, in which case it will be doubly pleasant for you to have a home of your own, although you are quite free to do what you wish with the property. Sell it, perhaps?’

Henrietta shook her head. ‘Oh, no—that’s the last thing I would wish to do. I haven’t had much time to think about it, but I like the idea of going there for a little while—to live, you know.’

He glanced down at the papers in his hand. ‘That is quite possible of course. I do not know how you are placed financially, Miss Brodie, but as far as we can calculate at the moment, your aunt left only a small sum of money—about six hundred pounds—which will be advanced to you should you require it.’

It sounded a great deal, even in these days; if she were careful she would be able to live there, if she liked it, for quite a long time; there would be no rent and if she were desperate at the end of that time she could always get herself a job and let the house besides. ‘Are there any extras to pay?’ she wanted to know. ‘Rates and things like that,’ she added vaguely.

Mr Boggett consulted his papers once more. ‘Certainly, but the village is rural and the rates are low, I imagine that an outlay of fifty pounds or so annually would cover them.’

Henrietta was doing rapid sums in her head. She had a little money saved, she was young and strong and could get a job whenever she needed one. She drew a breath and smiled at the old man. ‘You know, I think I’ll arrange to go over and stay there for a while—if I like it very much perhaps I could stay—you see, there’s nothing to keep me here.’

He nodded in agreement. ‘I believe your decision would have made your aunt very happy.’ He took off his glasses and polished them. ‘It is a long time since I last saw Miss Brodie, she went to live in Holland many years ago now, but she always wrote charming letters.’ He coughed. ‘I shall be happy to help you in any way, Miss Brodie. The estate is a small one and once we have arranged things with the Dutch authorities and so forth, it should be a simple matter to clear the matter up within a few weeks. Perhaps you will let me know when you wish to go and I will do my best to have everything in order by then. The money is in Holland, naturally. I take it that you would wish it to be left where it is, in the bank.’

‘Oh, please. I’ll be able to get it out?’

‘Yes, I will arrange for you to have a letter to present to the manager. You are unacquainted with the Dutch language?’

‘I daresay there’ll be someone there who speaks English? I expect I’ll pick up enough Dutch to get by once I’m there.’ She paused. ‘I suppose my aunt didn’t leave me a letter, or—or anything?’

‘I’m afraid not. She had seen you only once or twice, I believe, when you were a baby, but she seems to have retained an affection for you. Blood,’ observed Mr Boggett, ‘is thicker than water.’

Perhaps her aunt had been glad to have someone to whom she could leave her home; it struck Henrietta with some force that she herself had no one.

Too excited to drink more than a cup of coffee, she took an extravagant taxi back to St Clement’s and went at once to see Miss Brice. It was unusual for anyone to demand an interview at such short notice; the Admin. Sisters, sitting at their desks in the outer office, tried to fob her off with an appointment for the next day, but Henrietta, uplifted by the knowledge that she was now a woman of property, however small, and had means of her own, even smaller, refused to be put off. She walked into Miss Brice’s office, feeling a little topheavy with excitement and looking twice as pretty as she normally did because of it.

Miss Brice blinked at her Ward Sister’s blinding good looks, wishing to herself that she could look the same, and inquired as to the reason for Henrietta’s urgency. She listened while it was explained to her and only when it was finished did she say: ‘You appear to have made up your mind rather quickly, Sister. You are quite sure about it? You have a splendid job here with a good chance of promotion later on, and forgive me for saying so, but you tell me that you have no relatives, and in such circumstances surely it would be better for you to remain in secure employment?’

‘I’ve been in secure employment since I started nursing, ten years ago,’ Henrietta reminded her. ‘Ten years,’ she repeated with faint bitterness, ‘and I’ve not so much as gone on a day trip to Boulogne. I do not wish to be secure, Miss Brice.’

Miss Brice looked startled. ‘Well—I really don’t know what to say, Sister Brodie. I certainly can’t prevent you from doing something you wish to do. You say that you have two weeks’ holiday left from this year? Supposing you take those and let me know your decision during that period? You will, of course, have to forfeit your salary if you leave on those terms, and I hope that you will allow a reasonable time to elapse before taking your holiday.’

Henrietta was on her feet. ‘Would a month be long enough?’ she asked. ‘If I could have my holiday in one month’s time and then let you know about leaving—I shall know more about it by then.’

Miss Brice could lose gracefully when she had to. ‘That will suit me very well, Sister. If you do decide to give up your post you do realize that I shall fill it immediately? If you should, at some future date, apply for a post here, I shall always be pleased to consider you for it, though I must warn you that it might not be exactly what you wished for.’ She bowed her elegantly capped head in dismissal, and Henrietta, with a suitable murmur, almost danced from the room.

She went on duty looking much as usual. Certainly her manner was as calm and assured as it always was, only her fine eyes sparkled whenever she allowed herself to think of her changed future, but in the Sisters’ sitting room at tea time, she told her news to those of her friends who were sharing tea and buttered toast round the electric fire, and it was received with gratifying surprise and a good deal of speculation as well as instant requests to be invited to stay, and unlike Miss Brice, they agreed wholeheartedly that in her shoes they would have done exactly the same thing. ‘And probably,’ said a voice, ‘Miss Brice would have done the same if she’d been twenty years younger,’ a remark which gave rise to a short pause while everyone there thought how awful it must be to be as old as Miss Brice; fifty if she was a day.

‘How are you going, and when?’ asked some-one else.

‘Well, I haven’t a clue at the moment how to go,’ said Henrietta thoughtfully, ‘though I shall take Charlie.’ A very old Mini bought from one of the housemen three years previously, it had been second-hand then, and the man at the garage assured her each time she went for petrol that it was a miracle that Charlie went at all. ‘At least he’ll get me there,’ she added.

Whereupon they fell to discussing just what she would need to take with her and became so absorbed in this engrossing subject that they forgot the time and went back to the wards a little late.

The month went quickly; there was a lot to see to—passport, visits to Mr Boggett, Charlie to be overhauled, her few friends to be bidden a temporary farewell—and the ward was extra busy too, so that she was tired enough to sleep soundly each night and not lie awake wondering if she had been rash, exchanging a steady, safe life for an unknown one. True, she had read up a great deal about Holland, she knew exactly where the village of Gijzelmortel lay, even though she hadn’t an idea how to pronounce it, and she had bought a phrase book which she hoped would get her over the first few weeks. She had drawn some of her savings from the bank too, for it seemed logical that if she were going to change her life, she should change her wardrobe too. She bought a tweed suit in a pleasing shade of brown which went very well with her last year’s coat and she bought, amongst other things, a pair of sensible lined boots. They struck her as unfashionable, but if it were cold—and there was, after all, a good deal of winter left—she might be glad of them; the guide book had said that it could be cold in Holland and that skating was a national pastime, which led her to believe that there might be degrees of coldness, for it wasn’t a national pastime in England.

The guide book also advised the taking of cosmetics just in case one couldn’t buy that particular brand, so she stocked up lavishly and had her collection topped by a large bottle of Dioressence given to her by her friends. And being a practical girl she packed candles and matches and a powerful torch and enough food to keep her going for a day or so. Presumably there would be a village shop, and she would have Charlie, if he was still on his wheels, to take her to the neighbouring towns. She wondered uneasily about garages, but surely every village had one these days—anyway, she mustn’t start crossing her bridges until she came to them. She had never understood Charlie’s insides; the man at the garage had kept them working, and now it was too late for her to learn anything about them, but that was something she wasn’t going to worry about either—she wasn’t going to worry about anything, she was going to enjoy herself.

She began her journey on a cold, bleak morning whose sky promised snow before the day was out. She had booked on the Dover ferry and planned to arrive on the other side of the Channel in the early afternoon so that she would have several hours of daylight in which to travel. The ferry was almost empty and the sea was rough. Henrietta sat uneasily, hoping that she wouldn’t be sick, her eyes averted from the weather outside, and presently she slept for a little while and when she woke and staggered down below to tidy herself it was to hear that because of the rough weather they would be docking at least an hour late. She got herself a cup of tea and settled down to read, only to cast her book down and con her map once more, making sure that she knew the route she had to take. It looked an alarmingly long way, although she knew that once she landed at Zeebrugge it was barely forty miles to Breskens where she would have to take the ferry across the river Schold, and once at Vlissingen, it was only a little more than seventy miles. It would be well after two when they landed, she calculated, and it was dark by five o’clock, so provided she could get to Vlissingen by then it should be easy enough. It was towards her journey’s end that she would have to be careful not to miss the side road which would take her to Gijzelmortel. There was a landmark on the map, a castle, but in the dark she doubted if that would be of much use to her. She folded the map, determined not to get worried, aware that she would be glad when she was safely there.

It was sleeting when they docked, and bitter cold. Henrietta, one of the first away, drove carefully along the coast road which would lead her to the border town of Sluis and Holland. There was almost no traffic, something she was grateful for; the dark sky was closing in rapidly now and she could see that the hours of daylight she had reckoned on were to be considerably shortened. She ignored her desire to get as much out of Charlie as possible; the roads were treacherous and there were signposts to look out for as well as remembering to drive on the other side of the road.

She pressed on steadily, through the Customs post at Sluis and on to Breskens where the ferry was waiting. She breathed a sigh of relief as she got out of her little car and climbed the narrow iron stairs to the deck above. There was a brightly lit saloon there and a coffee bar at one end of it, doing a roaring trade. Henrietta pointed at what she wanted, handed over a note, received a handful of change and found herself a table where she drank her coffee, ate her cheese roll and examined the money. It seemed small, although when she looked at it carefully she could see that it was similar to the money at home, only the tiny silver coins were different. She stowed them away now that she had had something to eat. Her cheerful mood lasted as she drove off the ferry and took the N97, which would take her to Breda without any complications. She encouraged Charlie to a steady forty-five and kept doggedly on. Sleet was still falling, but the motorway was wide and well surfaced and she was a good driver, so in due time she found herself on the roundabout outside that city and heaved another sigh of relief. Not very far now and she would be there.

The motorway skirted Tilburg too. Henrietta left it soon after, and in another seven or eight miles saw what she was looking for—the signpost to Gijzelmortel. She turned into the exit point, swung the little car under a flyover and joined a narrow road on the other side, where presently another signpost directed her into a still narrower lane. After that there was no sign, no houses, no lights even, only her headlamps cutting into the sleety darkness. She should be there, she told herself, and discovered that she was, for there was the village sign on the side of the road and a few yards further she saw the first house. The road curved away to the left and she followed it, to discover that the village—and Mr Boggett had been quite right, it was very small—was a mere circle of houses round a cobbled square with a bandstand in its centre. There were one or two narrow lanes leading away from it, but he had told her that the house was in the centre of the village. She slowed the car to a crawl round the square, cheered by the sight of the lighted windows around her, and presently reached a massive gateway, with lanterns on its brick posts, and just a few yards further on a row of tiny houses. There was a wall plaque on the first one with Dam written on it. The third house along was number three. She was there!