Betty Neels - When May Follows

The morning began badly with two road accidents being admitted just after eight o’clock, and it got worse as the day wore on, so that when Jack Bentall rather fussily examined Mr Knowles’ patients during the afternoon, demanding unnecessary attention and calling for things he didn’t really need, she found her patience wearing thin. The urge to cry off the evening’s entertainment was very strong, but she was a kind-hearted girl and she had refused to go out with him on so many occasions she couldn’t avoid this one without hurting his feelings. Not that she minded about that over-much; he was a young man of unbounded conceit and she doubted if even the severest snub would affect him for more than a few minutes.

She dressed unwillingly and went just as unwillingly to the car park where Jack had asked her to meet him. He drove a souped-up Mini, very battered and uncomfortable and he tended to regard the road as his. She felt a pang of relief as he stopped with a teeth-jarring suddenness in front of a Chinese restaurant in the Tottenham Court Road. It was unfortunate that Katrina didn’t like Chinese food and that Jack hadn’t thought to ask her. Now if it had been the Professor, with all his faults, she added mentally, he would have made it his business to find out. And even if he hadn’t, she mused with surprise, she would have felt quite at liberty to have told him that she loathed sweet and sour pork and could have asked him if they could go somewhere else. But Jack would either laugh at her and tell her that she didn’t know good food when she saw it, or worse, sulk.

She ate her way through a great many dishes without once betraying her dislike of them, listening to Jack, carrying on about the other housemen and their inefficiencies, what Mr Knowles had said to him and he had said to Mr Knowles; he droned on and on and Katrina’s thoughts turned more and more to the previous evening. Professor van Tellerinck might annoy her, although she wasn’t sure why any more—but he didn’t bore her. She came out of a flurry of half-formed thoughts to hear Jack say:

‘Well, what about it? Everyone else does it these days and getting married seems a bit silly until I’ve reached the top, and you’re not all that keen on it, are you? You can’t be—you must have had plenty of chances, but after all, you are twenty-seven.’

She gave him a look of such astonishment that he added querulously: ‘Well, you don’t have to look like that—I thought we understood each other.’

As well as being astonished she was furiously angry, but she discovered at the same time that she simply couldn’t be bothered to explain to him just how wrong he was. She could of course have said: ‘I am a clergyman’s daughter and old-fashioned in my views about matrimony’; instead she heard herself saying in a reasonable voice: ‘I really should have told you sooner, Jack, but I didn’t realise…’ She left the sentence hanging delicately in mid-air. ‘I’ve resigned—I’m going abroad in a few weeks’ time.’ She paused, trying to think of a country as far away as possible: ‘The Gulf—a lovely job.’ Her imagination was working well by now. ‘One of those new hospitals, a fabulous salary and a flat of my own…’

He looked at her gobbling with rage. ‘Well, you could have told me before we came out to dinner!’ he said furiously. He put a hand up for the bill. ‘I don’t suppose you want coffee.’

They tore back to Benedict’s through the almost empty streets and as he came to a squealing halt in the forecourt: ‘I hope you get what you deserve!’ he hissed at her.

Just as though I’d led him on, thought Katrina as she went into the nurses’ home, and giggled. She stopped giggling almost at once, though. She would have to resign in the morning; she had done herself out of a job and banished herself to the Gulf to boot. Jack would tell everyone, he was a noted gossip, and really there was nothing she could do about it but leave; even if she explained to him why she had done it, he wouldn’t understand but would merely think that she had been playing hard to get and would pester her more than ever. She lay awake for a long time getting more and more worried, and fell asleep at last with her mind in a dither.

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