Betty Neels - The Girl With Green Eyes

Alice laughed. ‘And there’s me wondering what on earth had happened. Your mother and father are in the drawing-room—you go too, sir. I’ll bring in a nice tray of coffee and you, Miss Lucy, go and fetch a pair of slippers this minute—what your ma will say I don’t know.’

‘It could happen to anyone,’ remarked the doctor mildly, and gave Alice a nice smile so that she said,

‘Oh, well, perhaps it won’t be noticed,’ and went ahead of them to open the drawing-room door.

Lucy’s mother and father were sitting one on each side of the hearth, her father immersed in a sheaf of papers and her mother turning the pages of Harper’s. They both looked up as she and the doctor went in and her father got to his feet. ‘There you are, Lucy and Dr Thurloe, how delightful. Come and sit down for half an hour—Lucy, run and ask Alice to bring coffee—’

‘She’s making it now, Father!’ Lucy bent to kiss her mother’s cheek and wished she knew how to raise a graceful hand to greet the doctor in the same manner as that lady. ‘Delighted to see you, Dr Thurloe. Do sit down. How very kind of you to take Lucy out to dinner.’

‘It was Lucy who was kind, Mrs Lockitt,’ he replied, and paused, smiling, as Mrs Lockitt caught sight of Lucy’s feet.

‘Lucy, your shoes? You’ve never lost them? You aren’t hurt?’

‘They pinched, Mother, so I took them off.’

‘Well, really!’ She turned her attention to her guest. ‘I have been hoping that we might meet again, you really must dine one evening before we go to Turkey.’

‘Kayseri, the ancient Hittite city—there have been some interesting finds lately, and I’ve been asked to go out there and take a look,’ Mr Lockitt joined in. ‘We plan to fly out at the end of next week.’

The doctor, much to Lucy’s surprise, expressed his delight at the invitation, and Mrs Lockitt said, ‘Lucy, dear, run up to my room and get my engagement book, will you? And do get some slippers at the same time.’

Lucy went slowly upstairs. Her parents, whom she loved dearly, were spoiling everything for her; she showed up in a bad light in her own home with no chance to outshine their intellectual talk—she had hardly scintillated over dinner, and since she had entered the drawing-room she had uttered only a few words. She found the book, poked her feet into a pair of frivolous satin mules and went back downstairs. Alice had brought in the coffee and Lucy’s father had fetched the brandy; the doctor looked as though he had settled for the rest of the evening, already making knowledgeable replies to her father’s observations—apparently he knew all about the iron-smelting activities of the Hittites, and he knew too where they had lived in Asia Minor.

As she handed round the coffee-cups he asked pleasantly, ‘And do you not wish to go too, Lucy?’

Her mother answered for her. ‘Lucy’s a home-bird, aren’t you, darling? This nice little job at the orphanage gives her something to do while we’re away.’ Mrs Lockitt went on, not meaning to be unkind, ‘She hasn’t had a training for anything. Of course, Imogen is the clever one in the family—she has this super job in the City—and Pauline works in an art gallery, and will marry at the end of this year. They are all such capable girls, and of course we have an excellent housekeeper.’

The doctor murmured politely and presently got up to go, and Mr Lockitt went to the door with him, so that beyond a stiff little speech of thanks Lucy had no chance to speak. There was nothing to say anyway. Her fragile dream, never more than a fantasy, had been blown away; he would think of her, if he ever did, as a dull girl not worth a second thought.

She bade her parents goodnight and went to bed. Surprisingly, just before she slept, she decided that somehow or other she would get to know him better, and eventually, in the teeth of all hazards, marry him.

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