Part 5 (2/2)
They sat side by side, talking about nothing much and deciding what they should eat; soup with garlic, Barquettes Girondines for Alethea and Entre cote Bordelais for her companion.
She sat back feeling more peaceful than she had done since the previous evening, while he chose the wines.
Getting ready for bed, much later, she found herself unable to remember just what they had talked about; they hadn't hurried over their meal, and she paused in her hair brus.h.i.+ng to drool a little over the memory of the zabaglione and then worried because the memory of its deliciousness was so much sharper than their conversation.
It was just as she was on the edge of sleep that she realised that she hadn't thought about Nick at all, not once they had started their meal.
Simultaneously she remembered that Mr van Diederijk had suggested that they might go to a theatre one evening.
She had accepted, too, with the sudden thought that perhaps if Nick heard about it, he might feel jealous enough to discover that he was in love with her after all.
She woke in the night with the clear recollection of the understanding in Mr van Diederijk's face when she had accepted his invitation.
Alethea was half way through her breakfast the next morning when she paused, a fork half way to her mouth.
How could she possibly have forgotten to pay Mr van Diederijk the money she, or rather.
Nick, owed him?
Her friends stared at her.
”Alethea, what's up?
You look as though you've remembered something simply frightful,” and someone said cheerfully: ”She's left the weights off someone's Balkan Beam.
' There was a little ripple of laughter and Alethea laughed with them.
”Much worse!
' but she didn't say more, and they, who had guessed that something had happened between her and Nick, carefully didn't ask what it was.
She would be bound to see him within the next day or so, perhaps even this very day, Alethea decided as she set about the business of allocating the day's work, but she didn't.
There was no sign of him.
Sir Walter came surrounded by his posse of a.s.sistants, talking to Nick, discussing his cases, but of Mr van Diederijk there was no sign.
Alethea, with a half day she didn't want, took herself off duty and spent it was.h.i.+ng her hair, writing letters and going for a brisk walk through the rather dingy streets around the hospital.
She might just as well have taken a bus and gone up to Oxford Street and at least gone out to tea, but she had no heart for doing anything.
Nick hadn't bothered to look at her during the round, and it dawned on her painfully that he really had finished with her, that he had meant it when he had declared that he wasn't going to waste time on her.
He had called her prissy too.
The thought roused her to anger, so that she glared at a perfectly blameless housewife, loaded with shopping, coming towards her on the pavement.
She walked herself tired and returned in time for supper at the hospital, and her friends, seeing her bleak face, talked about everything under the sun excepting herself.
”That charmer's gone,” observed Philly Chambers, a small dark girl who
was junior sister in the orthopaedic theatre.
”Much in demand he was too, and I'm not surprised--he should have been a film star.
' ”You mean that giant who was wandering round with Sir Walter?
' asked Patty c.o.x, senior sister on Women's Surgical.
”Very self-effacing despite his size, never used two words when one
would do.
I hear he's in charge of some new hospital in Holland where they
combine orthopaedics with osteopathy; surgeons and osteopaths work hand in glove, as it were.
Sir Walter's interested, that's why he's been over here.
He's coming back.
' ”You know an awful lot about him,” commented Philly, and looked
across at Alethea.
”You're the one who ought to know all the gen, Alethea,” she cried, and went on unthinkingly: ”Nick must know all about him.
' She stopped, muttered: ”Oh, lord, I'm sorry,” and then: ”T'll fetch
the pudding, shall I?
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