The Edge of Winter. Betty Neels
no sign of him, although the yacht was still in the harbour. Araminta, put out for no good reason, dressed in her well-cut tweed suit, put her shining hair up in a neat coil on the top of her pretty head, got into her elderly Mini and began the drive back to London. Her father and aunt saw her off. Her father, as usual, had very little to say beyond wishing her a good journey and not too much work. It was Aunt Martha who said in her measured tones:
‘That was an interesting man who brought you back yesterday. A pity you won’t see him again, my dear.’
Araminta put a stylishly shod foot down on the accelerator. ‘He was the rudest man I’ve ever met,’ she pronounced coldly. ‘The only pity is that I shan’t see him to tell him so.’
CHAPTER TWO
ST KATHERINE’S was one of the older hospitals, maintaining its proud reputation despite its out-of-date wards, its endless corridors and numerous, quite unnecessary flights of stairs. It looked particularly depressing and down-at-heel as Araminta parked the Mini in the shed reserved for the nursing staff and walked across the wide forecourt and in through the hospital’s forbidding entrance. She had driven the two hundred and seventy-odd miles with only the shortest of breaks and it had taken her eight hours; she was tired and hungry and anxious to get to her small basement flat not five minutes’ walk away from the hospital, but first she had to let Pamela Carr, the relief Sister who had been doing her duties for her, know that she was back, so that she wouldn’t need to come on duty in the morning. She found her in the Accident Room, and for once there was a mere handful of patients there, and none of those in dire need. Sylvia Dawes was there too, sitting in the office, frowning over the pile of forms on the desk. She was a small, neat girl, Junior Sister on the department and a great friend of Araminta. She looked up as she went in and said in a relieved voice: ‘Oh, good, you’re back—now I can leave these wretched things for you. Did you have a good time?’
Araminta perched on the edge of the desk, ‘Lovely. Quiet—rotten weather most of the time, though, but a smashing hotel; oak beams and comfy chairs and gorgeous food.’
‘No men?’
She shook her head. ‘Middle-aged, and one or two sailing enthusiasts.’
‘Did you go sailing, then?’
‘No—yes—well, I did, just once.’
‘Was it fun?’
Araminta allowed her thoughts to dwell on the ill-tempered giant who had rescued her and Mary Rose. ‘No, not really,’ she admitted, and felt regret that it hadn’t been. ‘Anything happen while I was away?’
‘The usual,’ Sylvia told her, and Araminta nodded her head. ‘The usual’ covered a multitude of things: road accidents, small children who had fallen into the washing machine, old ladies with fractured thighs, old men dying for lack of warmth or good food, housewives who had fallen off chairs while hanging the curtains, youths with broken noses and badly cut up faces, coronaries, and distraught men and women of all ages who had taken an overdose. She got off the desk, said: ‘Oh, well—back to work tomorrow. Pam’s off in the morning, isn’t she? Are we on together at eight o’clock?’
Sylvia nodded. ‘I’m off at one o’clock and then two days off—you’ve got Staff Nurse Getty, though, and that nice Mrs Pink as well as two students.’
Araminta nodded in her turn. ‘I’m going home now—see you in the morning.’ She said goodnight and went back to the Mini and drove herself back into the street, to turn into a narrow, dark thoroughfare not a stone’s throw away. It was lined with grim Victorian houses, all exactly alike and all long since turned into flats. She stopped half way down the terrace, opened the squeaky area gate and descended the steps to the neatly painted door of her flat, and went inside. There was the tiniest of lobbies leading to a quite large sitting room where she cast down her handbag, wound the clock, switched on the radio and then went back to the car for her luggage before driving a few yards down the road where she had a lock up garage. The little car safely stowed, she went back to the flat, shut the door on the dark evening and went along to the minute kitchen to put on the kettle.
The little place looked pleasant enough with the lamps switched on and the gas fire burning; she went to the bedroom next and unpacked her case, then made tea and sat down to drink it, casting a housewifely eye round her as she did so. The place needed a good dust, otherwise it was as clean and tidy as she had left it; its cheerful red carpet brushed, the colourful cushions nicely plumped up, the small round table where she had her meals shining with polish. It was a very small flat and rather dark on account of it being almost a basement, but Araminta counted herself lucky to have a home of her own, and so close to her work, too.
She poured herself a second cup and looked through her post; the electricity bill, a leaflet asking her if she had any old iron or scrap metal, and a letter or two from friends who had married and gone to live in other parts of the country. She read them all in turn and poured more tea. ‘What I would really like,’ she told herself out loud, ‘would be a huge box of wildly expensive flowers and a note begging me to spend the evening at one of those places where the women wear real diamonds and there’s a champagne bucket on very table.’ She kicked off her shoes for greater comfort. ‘I should have to wear that pink dress,’ she mused, absorbed in her absurd daydream, ‘and I’d be fetched by someone in a Rolls—the best there is—driven by…’ She stopped, because the dark, bad-tempered man in the yacht had suddenly popped into her head, so clearly that there was no question of anyone else taking his place.
‘Fool,’ said Araminta cheerfully, and took the tray out to the kitchen.
The morning began badly with a severely burned toddler being brought in by a terrified mother. Araminta, her honey-coloured hair crowned by a frilled cap, her slim person very neat in its navy blue uniform and white apron, sent an urgent message to James Hickory, the Casualty Officer, to leave his breakfast and come at once, and began the difficult task of saving the child’s life; putting up a plasma drip, assembling the equipment they would need, preparing the pain-killing drug the small screaming creature needed so urgently. It was an hour or more before Mr Hickory, the redoubtable Mrs Pink and Araminta had done everything necessary; the small, unconscious form was wheeled away to the ICU at last, and she was able to turn her attention to the less serious cases which had come in and which Staff Nurse Getty was dealing with.
The morning followed its usual pattern after that, with a steady stream of patients arriving, being treated, and dispatched, either home again or to the appropriate ward, and because there was a sudden rush at midday, Araminta didn’t go to the dining room for her dinner, but gobbled a sandwich, washed down with a pot of tea, in her office. She didn’t mind much; she was off duty at five o’clock; she would cook herself a meal when she got home, go to bed early and read. Viewed from the peak hour of a busy day, the prospect was delightful.
She managed to get over to the Nurses’ Home for tea; the Sisters had a sitting room there, and it had long been the custom for them to foregather at four o’clock, that was if they could spare the time. There had been a break in the steady stream of patients coming into the Accident Room, and Araminta, leaving Mrs Pink—a trained nurse of wide experience—in charge, felt justified in taking her tea break.
There was quite a crowd in the sitting room, bunched round the electric fire while Sister Bates, by virtue of her seniority both in service and in years, poured out. Araminta squeezed in between a striking redhead of fragile appearance, who ruled Men’s Medical with an iron hand, and a small, mousey girl who looked as though she couldn’t say bo to a goose, but who nevertheless held down the exacting job of ENT Theatre Sister. They both said: ‘Hi—how’s work after the Cornish fleshpots?’
‘Foul,’ declared Araminta succinctly. ‘That trachie we sent you—how’s it going?’ she asked the mousey girl, and the three of them talked shop for a few minutes while they drank their tea and ate toast and the remains of someone’s birthday cake. ‘Going out this evening?’ asked Debby, the redhead.
Araminta shook her head. ‘Supper round the fire, bed and a book.’
‘And