He was all right. No, that was unfair. He was more than all right, he was very nice. Interesting. Mildly amusing. Quite good-looking in a quiet sort of way. Light brown hair, grey eyes, tall, fairly – if conventionally – well dressed, but then she’d had enough of flamboyant dressers, they seemed to trail trouble in their wake. He was a medic too, a surgeon at St Thomas’. She’d met him through her uncle, who’d invited her to a lecture on developments in anaesthesia. At the drinks reception afterwards they’d been chatting and her uncle had spotted them together and suggested they came to supper with him. Jillie looked at him suspiciously.
‘Your aunt’s agreed to join me; I’d already invited Patrick.’
‘Oh, no, Uncle William, I can’t. I’ve got work to do.’
‘Come on, Jillie, all you ever do is work. You know what they say, all work and no play –’
‘Makes Jill a dull girl,’ said Jillie, smiling at him. ‘Yes, all right, I give in.’
She did indeed feel very dull; Julius had lit her up, made her feel sparkly and special. Since then, the lights had all gone out. She didn’t have great hopes of Patrick in that direction, but at least it wouldn’t be yet another evening reading in her room.
They went to a small restaurant in the Strand; the chat was easy and interesting. It emerged that Patrick Brownlow was a gastroenterologist and had been working in Edinburgh, had only just come to London. At the end of the evening he asked her if he could have her phone number and she (only a little unwillingly) gave it to him. Since then, they had seen a couple of films and eaten a few meals together, always at small, unpretentious restaurants. It was all oddly soothing after the excesses of Sundays with Julius. She wasn’t in love with him, but she did like him, and felt happier than she had for some time.
And then one night, after seeing a play, they decided to go to a small, slightly smarter restaurant called Angelo’s in Albemarle Street. They walked into the restaurant rather briskly as it was pouring with rain, with Patrick’s arm round Jillie’s shoulders (where it had never been before) in order more easily to share his umbrella, and almost collided with Nell Henderson and Julius Noble who were leaving.
Jillie managed a smile, the introductions and an expression of delight when Nell announced that her book was to be published. ‘And it’s all thanks to you – everyone loves the surgeon bit best.’
After some graceful protestations, Jillie handed her wet coat to the ma?tre d’ and, with a sweet smile at Nell, said goodbye.
To Julius she spoke not a word.
Julius was not, anyway, in a chatty mood because Nell wanted to postpone the wedding date.
‘The thing is, darling, that’s precisely when they want to publish my book – not a good idea. The clash, I mean.’
Julius’s suggestion that the publication might be postponed rather than their wedding got a very poor reception. ‘Darling, you can’t possibly realise how lucky I am to be getting published by these people at all; I can’t start arguing with them about dates. Please don’t be difficult, Julius, it’s so easy to change our date.’
Julius said mildly that he wasn’t being difficult, merely a little disappointed, and it was a good thing they hadn’t sent out the invitations yet; they then spent most of the rest of the meal in silence.
Finding the next morning that, along with feeling like a discarded handkerchief, he was experiencing something close to relief – and wondering, not for the first time in recent weeks, if their marriage was actually such a good idea – Julius thought he would ring Jillie and beg her yet again for a meeting. But after a little more careful thought over his breakfast, he decided against it; she had clearly found someone else and it was equally clearly at least a little serious.
Nobody who was present forgot the night that Mr Edward Welles and Sir Neil Lawson faced one another literally over the bed of a child in Mr Welles’s ward, and did battle over her.
It began with the crying; the crying of a sick, frightened child for her mother. Sister looked at the ward clock, saw that it was after nine, and breathed a sigh of relief that Mr Welles had had a very long list; he had pulled off his surgical gloves and operating mask a full hour earlier, said he was exhausted and looking forward to getting home. With luck, they could settle the child themselves. Sister was growing very weary of the problems caused by Mr Welles’s interference. Not just the interference in itself, but the unpleasantness of having to report it to Sir Neil (these were his strict instructions now), of recording every detail of what happened, and at times being called into Sir Neil’s office, along with Mr Welles, and having to act as witness – and in such a way as to make it very plain that Mr Welles and his methods caused disruption and distress to the other patients, the nurses on duty and indeed to herself.
The problem was that several of the nurses, the younger ones anyway, agreed with Mr Welles. The children did settle more quietly and happily if their mothers were allowed to remain with them until they went down to theatre, and certainly, if they were very poorly afterwards; Sister couldn’t work out at first how these women managed to find out how their children were post-operative, and, if the news was not good, to arrive at the entrance to the ward. But the answer was simple: if it was a difficult case and the child was high on his list, he would tell the mother to wait in the waiting room. Sir Neil’s wrath when he heard this reputedly brought him close to heart failure.
They couldn’t go on like this, or rather she couldn’t, and in fact Sir Neil had promised her he was gathering cases and then intended to hold a meeting with the entire medical board of the hospital and get Mr Welles dealt with once and for all; but it seemed like a long time coming. She had resolved that she would put in a formal complaint herself if the next episode was not dealt with to her satisfaction.
But Mr Welles was still in the hospital, had been worried about one of the day’s cases, and, wanting to make a final visit before he went home, walked straight over to the little girl’s bed (without seeking permission from Sister) and attempted to comfort her. He was not entirely successful; the child’s tears turned into near-hysteria as a result of his sympathy, at which several other children, also operated on that day, began to cry as well.