Betty Neels - Wish with the Candles

‘Then get in.’

It seemed foolish to waste any more time; she got in and he leaned across her and shut the door, and without bothering to say any more, guided the car sleekly through the gates and on to the main road. They were well into the city before he spoke again.

‘Could you spare time for a cup of coffee? I’m going to the Dolphin, I can leave the car there.’

It seemed churlish to refuse—besides, suddenly the new dress didn’t seem important any more. Emma thanked him nicely as he turned the car into the arched entrance to the hotel and allowed herself to be led into one of the large bow-windowed rooms facing the street. Afterwards, thinking about it, she was unable to remember what they had talked about while they drank their coffee, only that the professor had maintained a steady flow of easy talk which required very little answering. When she at length rose with a garbled little speech in which thanks were rather wildly mixed with a quite unnecessary description of the shops she intended to visit, she was interrupted by his quiet, ‘I shall be in town myself until midday. I’ll wait for you here.’

‘Oh, will you?’ asked Emma, astonished. ‘But I can go back by bus—they run every ten minutes.’

‘I daresay they do,’ observed the professor, not very much interested in the local transport service. ‘I shall wait for you here.’

She arrived back at five minutes past the hour, without the dress because she had been unable to put her mind to the task of searching for it with the proper amount of concentration such a purchase deserved.

‘I’m late,’ she began, breathless, to which the professor replied with calm, ‘For a woman who has been shopping, I imagine you are remarkably punctual. Where do you lunch?’

She hadn’t given lunch a thought—she would make a cup of tea in the Home and there were biscuits in a tin somewhere or other. She didn’t answer as he wove the car like a gleaming black silken thread through the fustian of delivery vans and long-distance transports.

‘No lunch?’ he queried. ‘We must arrange things better next time.’ He glanced at her sideways and she caught the gleam in his green eyes. ‘And where’s the shopping?’

‘I wanted a dress,’ said Emma, ‘but I didn’t see one I liked.’

‘Hard to please?’ He sounded mocking.

She heard the mockery and was stung into replying, ‘Of course I’m not. I saw plenty I should have liked…’

‘You have just said you hadn’t seen one you liked,’ he reminded her silkily.

‘Well,’ explained Emma patiently, ‘it’s no good liking something you can’t afford, is it?’ and added hastily in case he should pity her, which was the last thing she wanted, ‘I don’t really need a dress, anyway.’

He laughed at that, but it was kindly laughter and presently she laughed with him. It was as they were turning into the hospital forecourt that he asked, ‘When does your sister return your car?’

‘Saturday morning, so that I can go home for the week-end. It’s a bit of a scramble really, for she has to get the midday train up to London.’

‘What does she do? Leave the car at the station?’

‘No, she brings it here and parks it and leaves the key at the lodge unless I can manage to slip down.’

‘Box and Cox, I see.’ He opened the door for her to get out and smiled and she smiled too. ‘Yes, it is rather, but it works quite well. Thank you for the lift.’

It wasn’t until she was scrubbing up for the first case that afternoon that she began to wonder why he had asked all those questions about Kitty. Perhaps he wanted to meet her—he had had a glimpse of her when she had fetched the car. A sharp pain pierced her at the thought so that she stopped scrubbing for a moment to wonder at it. The pain was replaced by a dull ache which, when she thought about the professor, became worse. It was still there ten minutes later when, already in the theatre laying up the Mayo’s table, she watched him stroll in with Little Willy, gowned and gloved and masked. There was nothing of him to be seen excepting his green eyes and the high arch of his preposterous nose, but that didn’t matter. She realized all of a sudden that she knew every line of his face by heart, just as she knew every calm, controlled movement of his hands when he operated or drove the car or picked up a cup of coffee; she knew every inflection of his voice as well. She clashed two pairs of tissue forceps together as the realization that she had fallen in love with him hit her like a blast from a bomb. Such a foolish thing to do, she chided herself silently as she laid the necrosis forceps down with precise care, especially as she still owed him for the repair of his car—it didn’t seem right to fall in love with someone to whom she owed money. He wished her good afternoon with pleasant friendliness and she replied in like vein, glad of her mask to cover the flush which crept up her cheeks. They plunged into their work after that and there was no more time for thoughts other than those to do with the job on hand. And when the afternoon was over, he went away with a careless good-bye, scarcely looking at her.

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