The Chain of Destiny (13 page)

At least the water was hot in the shower and the room had warmed up nicely; she ate her supper, made a list of shopping and went to bed. To her surprise her last thoughts were of the professor. Rather sad, although she didn't know why.

He was thinking of her too, but without sadness. Cobb, when questioned, had been unable to give any accurate information as to where Suzannah had gone, and the professor was fair-minded enough not to blame him for letting her leave without giving an address, but he was annoyed that she should go in such a fashion. Almost as though she didn't want him to know just where she had gone; she should have remained at his house until he had made sure that this good job really was good. He frowned; the wretched girl was intruding too deeply into his busy life and it was nonsensical of him to concern himself with her; she had shown clearly enough that she was quite capable of looking after herself. But a nagging doubt remained; he felt compelled to telephone first his aunts and then Mrs Coffin, asking them to let him know if Suzannah should get in touch with them.

Suzannah was up early, breakfasted and tidied her room and had seen to Horace and was ready in the hall when the first of the toddlers arrived. And after that the day became too busy to think. The children for the most part were good, but they needed amusing, and the older
ones had to be given simple lessons. Midday dinner was chaotic but thankfully, when it was over, the children were ready to rest for an hour or so. Suzannah had agreed to mind them while Melanie had her free hour, and Melanie, glad to have someone to help her, agreed to Suzannah slipping down to her room to see Horace before she went. She was a melancholy girl but, like Suzannah, needed to earn her own living, and she was good with the children. She lived with a widowed mother at the other end of the street and had a boyfriend who wanted to marry her. ‘Only of course there's Mother,' said Melanie. ‘She doesn't like him overmuch and won't have him to live at home, so we have to wait until we can find rooms or a small flat.'

Suzannah listened with sympathy, begged her not to hurry back and settled down to watch over the toddlers, arranged in neat rows to sleep. The day seemed endless, but the next day was easier; it was her turn to be free while the children rested and she went shopping with an eye to Christmas, now so close. She found the public library too and chose two books. When she returned she spent a short time with Horace and went back to sing nursery rhymes with the ten children she was looking after.

She saw very little of Mrs Willis, but on the second day, as they passed each other in the hall, she paused long enough to ask if Suzannah was managing and was she warm enough in her room?

Suzannah said cheerfully that she was perfectly happy and everything was fine. All the same, she cried herself to sleep that night. Even with Horace for company, she was lonely.

On Christmas Eve the children had a party so that they were fetched a little later than usual, and when they had all gone the three teachers cleared away the card-
board plates and mugs, tidied the place, wished each other a happy Christmas and went their separate ways. By early evening the house was quiet, for Mrs Willis had gone and so had Melanie, and Suzannah was very conscious of the silence, even with the radio on. She had bought a chicken already cooked, sausage rolls and a few mince pies and a few sprigs of holly. She would go to church in the morning, she decided, and on Boxing Day go for a walk in one of the parks.

She ate a mince pie, gave Horace an extra snack of sardines, drew the rather down-at-heel armchair close to the gas fire and settled down to read.

She wasn't a girl to mope; all the same she was quite glad to think that the place would be open the next morning as she got ready for bed on Boxing Night. She had gone to church on Christmas morning and come back to share the chicken with Horace and listen to the radio, and on Boxing Day she had gone for a really long walk, finding her way to Green Park and then into St James's Park and walking all the way back again. She had had a good think as she walked, and she knew what she was going to do: stay with Mrs Willis for six months and then apply to one of the London hospitals to train as a nurse. She would have liked to have done that sooner, but there was the problem of Horace; she would need to save enough money to rent a room so that she could live out while she trained, and if she was careful and saved every penny she could spare and added it to the money she already had, she would be able to manage on a student nurse's pay. She had walked the long way back, doing mental arithmetic and pondering ways and means; the results weren't always very clear, for the sums kept coming out differently because she found that her thoughts were side-
tracked far too often by thoughts of Professor Bowers-Bentinck.

‘And I can't think why,' she observed crossly to Horace, ‘for he was a ship passing in the night, as they say.'

She was more than busy when the children arrived in the morning; most of them were tired, queasy from too many sweets and pettish and whiney in consequence. She spent a good deal of her day mopping up after puking toddlers, and the rest-hour was a nightmare of grizzling moppets. They were feeling more themselves on the next day, and since it was her turn to have an hour off in the afternoon she was able to go to the shops and stock up once more, and after that everyone fell easily enough into the usual routine. It was broken again at the New Year, but only for a day, and Suzannah, now quite at home in her job, hardly noticed the small upsets caused by upset tummies and a rash of head colds.

She had been there rather more than a month when Mrs Willis decided that the children, well wrapped up against the cold, should be taken for a short walk twice a week. Suzannah and Melanie welcomed the idea; it would fill in the later part of the morning before dinner, and it would be nice to have a breath of air. A school-leaver glad of the pocket money agreed to give a hand, and the first expedition went well. The children were, on the whole, good, and the weather, though cold, was bright and it made a nice change for everyone.

The dry, cold weather held and the morning walks became part of the week's regime, down side streets, across the Tottenham Court Road and ten minutes running around in the grassy square on the other side and then back again.

It was when the procession of small children was
wending its toddling way back, with Melanie in front, the teenager in the middle and Suzannah bringing up the rear, carrying a reluctant walker, that Professor Bowers-Bentinck, waiting at the traffic lights for the slow-moving procession to trot across the road, saw Suzannah, one toddler clinging round her neck, another held by the hand, making her careful way behind the string of small people.

Shaken from his usual calm, he uttered a startling sound between a groan and a great sigh, and only when the driver behind him hooted urgently did he see that the lights were green again and the wavering crocodile was disappearing down a street on the opposite side. He had perforce to drive on, but presently he found a side turning, reversed the car and drove back the way he had come, to stop by a parking meter, get out and make his way to the row of shops across the pavement.

He tried several shops before he found somebody who could answer his questions. Oh, yes, said the beady-eyed old lady behind the counter in the general stores, there was a nursery school not too far away. ‘Want to send the little ‘uns there?' she wanted to know. ‘Well, you could do worse than Mrs Willis. Takes the kids when the mums go to work, and one or two besides.' She paused infuriatingly to think and scratch her permed head with a pencil. ‘Felix Road, that's where she is. Near the hospital.'

The professor thanked her with a suave charm which left her smiling, and went back to the Bentley. He had no difficulty in finding Felix Road, and he drew up outside the house, spent a few minutes telephoning to his registrar and sat, a prey to a number of thoughts. But when he saw the door open and Suzannah go down the steps to her basement, he got out and followed her without hurry.

It was her turn to have an hour off. She was feeding Horace when the door-knocker was thumped. She opened it and the professor walked in.

T
HE PROFESSOR
walked in without hesitation, so that Suzannah retreated before him until she came up against the table and couldn't go back any further. It took her a moment or so to find her voice, surprise and a sensation she had no time to guess at had taken her breath, so that her, ‘Hello,' was uttered in a strangled squeak.

Rather disconcertingly, he said nothing, merely stood there, looming over her, his ice-blue eyes cold. Presently he took his gaze from her face and studied his surroundings. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and gentle.

‘You were going to write,' he said mildly.

She could see that he was coldly angry, despite his tolerant tones.

‘Yes, well, I did mean to, and then I thought it was a bit silly…' He raised his eyebrows and she hurried on, ‘I mean, you're busy, going here and there and everywhere, and important too, I dare say, and you must have a great many friends. We weren't likely to see each other again—there seemed no point…' Her voice petered out under his stare.

He said harshly, ‘I see. But was it necessary to lie to me, Suzannah?'

She went red. ‘I'm sorry about that, but I didn't want to be a nuisance; you have done such a lot for me—I can't think why.'

‘Nor can I.' A reply which she found disconcerting.

She said politely, ‘Will you sit down. I have to go back to the children in half an hour or so; it's my free hour—we take it in turns.'

He sat down on the wooden chair at the table and it creaked alarmingly. He asked casually, ‘You live here? The other teachers too?'

‘Mrs Willis, the one who owns the school, lives on the top floor in a proper flat. Melanie, the other helper, lives with her mother at the end of the street.'

‘And do you intend to make this your life's work?'

‘Oh, no. I thought I'd stay here for six months, then I can train as a nurse.'

‘Why not sooner than that?'

‘Well, I'll need to have a room and live out because of Horace.'

She was sitting on the edge of the divan, her hands in her lap.

‘I've had time to think about it. I don't want to teach; I like children, but I don't think I'd make a good teacher.'

‘So you have your future settled.'

‘Yes. How did you know I was here?'

‘You crossed the road with a string of infants a short while ago; I was waiting at the traffic lights and my curiosity got the better of me.' He gave her a hooded glance. ‘Are you lonely, Suzannah? Where did you spend Christmas?'

‘No. I'm too busy to be lonely.' She said it too quickly, without looking at him. ‘I spent Christmas here.'

‘Alone?'

‘I had Horace.' She spoke defiantly, uneasy at his questions. ‘I really am very happy.'

He got to his feet, dwarfing everything around him. ‘I am delighted to hear it.' He smiled thinly. ‘Do you want me to go?'

‘Yes. I have a great deal to do…'

‘You said that once before,' he reminded her. ‘And once before I came to see if I could help you, but it seems that I am once more mistaken.'

He went to the door and with his hand on the door knob turned to ask, ‘There was no friend, was there, Suzannah?'

‘No.'

He nodded his head and opened the door, and went up the steps, got into his car and drove away.

She stood listening to the Bentley's quiet departure and made no move to sit down. ‘I don't suppose I shall ever see him again,' she told Horace. ‘I said all the wrong things, didn't I? I didn't even thank him for coming to see me, and there was no need for him to have done that. I thought I didn't like him, but I think I do, even when he's angry and goes all icy and quiet!' There seemed no reason why she should burst into tears, but she did, so that when she went back presently and Melanie commented upon her puffy eyes and red nose, she had to pretend that she had a cold.

She found the days passing very slowly. They were not monotonous, for thirty small children each doing his or her own thing hardly made for monotony, but they needed to be played with, taught their letters, how to count, how to feed themselves, and they needed to be cuddled and amused and kept clean. Suzannah was tired by the end of the day, and yet she went to her room reluctantly when the last of the children had been fetched home. She had told the professor stoutly that she wasn't
lonely, but that hadn't been true; despite Horace's cosy presence, she longed for someone to talk to. Preferably the professor; she admitted that, to her own astonishment. They might dislike each other, but even while he was poking his nose into her affairs he was reassuringly large and dependable; moreover, when he chose, he was a delightful companion. ‘Although I don't like him,' she told Horace, too often and too loudly.

It was a couple of weeks later, well into the middle of a snowy February, that fate took a hand once again. The children hadn't gone out that morning—the weather was too bad. They sat at their little tables, painting and modelling with clay, evenly divided between Suzannah and Melanie while Mrs Willis had gone to supervise their dinners being prepared in the kitchen at the back of the house.

Suzannah, scraping modelling clay off an overenthusiastic moppet, twitched her small nose and then frowned. There was a faint smell of burning and not from the kitchen, for it was acrid, like scorching cloth.

Melanie was in the adjoining room with the door half-open. Suzannah opened it wide and called her, and then, as the smell was suddenly stronger and she could hear a faint crackling, she shouted urgently.

Melanie came across the room, frowning. ‘That's no way to talk in front of the kids,' she began. ‘Someone's burning the dinner…'

‘I'm going to see what it is; look after my lot,' said Suzannah, and didn't wait for an answer. She shut the door after her and went into the hall. The kitchen was beyond the staircase and she could hear voices from it; the crackling was coming from somewhere upstairs, and as she began to run up them a puff of smoke eddied from under a door on the landing.

It was the door leading to Mrs Willis's flat, and it was locked. She tore down the stairs again, breathless with fright, flung open the kitchen door and found the room empty. Mrs Willis and the cook were in the small room beyond where the bowls and the spoons were kept.

‘There's a fire in your flat, Mrs Willis,' said Suzannah, and without waiting for an answer she raced back again to where Melanie was rounding up the children for their dinners.

‘Don't ask questions—there's a fire upstairs, get the children's coats and get them out—quick!'

Melanie was a nice girl, but not quick on the uptake. ‘Fire?' she asked. ‘I thought it was the kitchen burning something…'

‘Oh, be quick, do!' cried Suzannah, quite out of patience as well as being scared to death. She went to the small cloakroom off the hall and hauled out coats and hats and scarves and began putting them on the children whether they belonged or not. She was aware that Melanie had rushed up to her, clutching her arm, shouting that there was a fire and they must get out of the house, but she shook her off, still bundling the children into coats. ‘Of course there's a fire!' she shouted. ‘The children will catch their deaths without coats; for heaven's sake wrap them up and get them out.'

Mrs Willis and the cook were there now, marshalling the children into the hall and out through the door and down the steps.

‘I've phoned the fire brigade,' shouted Mrs Willis. ‘Get the children counted.' A blast of unpleasantly hot air billowed down the stairs and she coughed. The last of the children were being hustled out when one small boy turned and ran back into the second of the playrooms. The smoke was thick now and a small tongue
of flame whipped round the top of the stairs. Suzannah snatched up a woolly scarf, wound it round her face and plunged into the smoke. The child was at the back of the room, still comparatively free from smoke, searching frantically through the box of toys in one corner. Suzannah saw who it was then: Billy Reeves, small and undernourished and inseparable from the grubby teddy bear he dragged with him each day. Common sense told her that it was madness to delay there, but it might be quicker to find the bear and hurry Billy away from danger than try and prise him loose from something he was determined to do. She had learned a lot since she had joined the staff at the nursery school.

Spurred on by the child's frustrated screams and sheer terror lest they wouldn't be able to get out of the house, she hurled toys in all directions, found the bear, snatched up a suddenly happy Billy and rushed out into the hall. The stairs were well alight now, although the flames were not yet half-way down, but the smoke was worse. She clapped a hand over Billy's mouth and nose and ran to the door just as the wooden ceiling above their heads began to fall in. A smouldering plank fell across them, and she pushed it away with a free hand, not noticing the pain as it scorched her. She almost fell through the open door and pushed Billy into Mrs Willis's waiting arms.

‘Horace,' she shouted to no one in particular, and galloped down the area steps to scoop him into his basket and rush back again. There was quite a crowd by now, and the fire engine's reassuring siren very close, and hard on its heels a police car and an ambulance.

None of the children was hurt, but they were terrified and cold; they were stowed into the ambulance and taken the short distance to the hospital and a second am
bulance took the rest and Melanie. Mrs Willis refused to go, and Suzannah, shivering with cold and well aware of her throbbing hand, stayed with her. Mrs Willis, usually so efficient, looked as though she would faint at any moment. She clutched Suzannah as the fire took hold. ‘My flat,' she muttered, ‘and all the work I've put into the place…'

Suzannah put an arm round her. ‘The children are safe; you'll get insurance and be able to buy another house. And there must be an empty hall or rooms where you can carry on—the children will need you.'

Mrs Willis blew her nose and wiped her eyes. ‘You're right, it isn't the end of the world. I've plenty of friends, too.'

She saw that Suzannah was shivering and noticed her hand. ‘You're hurt, you must go to hospital and have that burn dressed. You were very brave to go after Billy I should have gone…'

‘I was the nearest,' said Suzannah, and broke off as a police officer tapped her on the shoulder. ‘We'll run you to the hospital, miss. That hand needs seeing to. There's nothing more to do here. And you too, ma'am. You're the owner? No need for you to catch your death of cold; we'll drop you off if you've friends who'll put you up until things are sorted out.'

‘At the end of this street.' Mrs Willis got into the car beside Suzannah. ‘And what about you, Suzannah? Have you somewhere to go when you've had your hand seen to?'

Suzannah had Horace's basket on her lap; his head was pressed up to the wires at its end and she was stroking him with a finger. She said cheerfully, ‘Oh, yes, I'll be all right, Mrs Willis.' The poor woman had enough to worry her.

The accident room was busy. Suzannah was sat down in a chair and told that someone would see her in a few minutes. The minutes ticked away while two road accidents were dealt with one after the other, which gave her more than enough time to wonder what she would do. She had no money and no clothes, only Horace, quiet in his basket beside her. She supposed that someone would tell her where she could get a bed for the night; the Salvation Army or perhaps the police would help. A cell, perhaps… She giggled tiredly and closed her eyes.

And that was how the professor found her; he had been called down to give his opinion of a severe head injury, and on his way back to the consultant's room he saw her. She was a deplorable sight and smelled horribly of smoke. Her hair was full of bits and pieces and specks of soot, and there was a smear down the front of her skirt and the sleeve of her sweater was badly scorched. She had laid her burned hand across her chest to ease the pain, while the other hand clutched Horace's basket.

The professor said something forcibly under his breath, and the house doctor with him said quickly, ‘I expect she's from the nursery school. There's been a fire there—the children came here to be checked, none of them hurt, luckily.'

‘When was this?'

‘Oh, an hour or so ago, sir.'

The professor swore quietly and the young surgeon looked at him in surprise. Professor Bowers-Bentinck never swore and seldom raised his voice, certainly never before a patient; he had the reputation of being a rather cold man, brilliant at his work and certainly very sure of himself.

‘I know this young lady,' said the professor. ‘I want her taken up to theatre—they'll be busy in the two main theatres, so put her in the surgery at the end, will you? Get a porter and do it now, if you please.'

She woke up when the porter brought a chair and still clutching Horace's basket, only half awake, she was transported to the fourth floor where the theatre block was.

The surgery was a small room used for taking out stitches and minor cuts and dressings, and the young surgeon hovered round her, not quite sure what to do. He had suggested leaving the cat basket outside, but Suzannah had clung to it and even tried to get up and go. And, since the professor had left her in his care, the young man was in two minds as to what to do.

Suzannah sat watching him; any minute now he might snatch Horace from her and he was all she had left in the world. Two large tears trickled down her dirty cheeks.

The professor, coming quietly into the room with everything needed to deal with her hand, dumped the lot on his houseman, whipped out a very white handkerchief and wiped her face.

‘Oh, it's you,' wailed Suzannah, and gave a really tremendous sniff.

He took Horace's basket from her and put it on the floor.