holiday. This was thought to be the most convenient course for everybody, and the next day she left the hospital for Mitcham with an armful of home-building magazines.
'We'll announce it when I get back,' she declared as I saw her off. 'So far, I haven't told a soul-except my best friends, of course. It'll be nice to have the date fixed for the wedding, won't it? Now don't forget-no late nights while I'm away.'
A couple of afternoons later, in a state of devilish excitement, I started Haemorrhagic Hilda and drove from the hospital car park to pick up Nurse Macpherson.
Our plans had been laid the night before, over a cup of Ovaltine. I had left my junior house surgeon on duty for me, asking Mr Cambridge for permission to spend the night away from the hospital; she had told Bingham that duty to her parents demanded a visit. To allay suspicion, I arranged to meet her outside the Zoo.
She was waiting with her attachй-case by the main gates.
'Hello, hello, hello!' I called, drawing up and unhooking the loop of string that restrained the near-side door. 'What a cad I am! Fancy keeping a girl waiting on an occasion like this.'
I noticed that she was staring at me in amazement. 'What's the matter?' I asked in alarm. 'Is my suit all right? It's my second best.'
'My God! Am I supposed to travel in
I remembered that she hadn't seen Haemorrhagic Hilda before. 'It's a remarkably good motor car,' I told her stoutly. 'As reliable as a London bus and with a lot of charm about it. You wait till we get going.'
'Oh, it's charming all right. Like one of Emett's railway engines. How do I get aboard-do you let down a pair of steps?'
I helped her into the car, and she settled in the Windsor chair I had lashed specially to the floorboards beside me. I felt nettled. I was proud of Haemorrhagic Hilda, and even if she looked as startling on the road as George Stevenson's
'By the way,' she said lighting a cigarette. 'I've got to go to Oxford Street first.'
'Oxford Street! But that's miles out of our way. What on earth do you want to go there for?'
'I simply must do my shopping. I've got to get a length of curtain material for my room-I can't stand the hospital stuff any longer-and a birthday present for Cissy Jenkins, and some kirbigrips and some linen buttons for my uniform and a tea-pot and some soap.'
'But couldn't you do it another time? I mean to say-Apart from anything else, I'd like to get there in daylight. The headlamps aren't terribly efficient.'
'What other time? You seem to forget I'm a working girl, my dear young man.'
'Oh, sorry. No offence, of course.'
She left me for an hour and a quarter in Oxford Street, though the time passed quickly enough because I spent it driving through side-streets looking for somewhere to park and anxiously peering out for policemen, as though I were about to hold up a bank. She rejoined me with a Christmas Eve load of parcels, which she threw on to the sofa in the back, and said, 'Phew! What a bloody tussle! Drive on, James.'
'Are you sure you've got everything?' I asked stiffly.
'Except some cigarettes. But that doesn't matter. I can smoke yours.'
My spirits had dropped badly since leaving St Swithin's, and now it occurred to me that I had never seen Nurse Macpherson out of uniform before. Indeed, I had never seen her in daylight at all for several weeks. She was unfortunately one of those nurses who are flattered by the starched severity of their dress, and she had chosen for our escapade an odd orange knitted outfit that recalled the woollen suits worn at one period by Mr Bernard Shaw. Her face, too, suffered away from the night-club dimness of a sleeping ward. Her make-up was careless, the freckles that had enchanted me across the Night Report Book now reminded me of a dozen skin diseases, and I reflected that she must have begun her nursing training comparatively late, because she was clearly several years older than I was.
My mood was darkened further by the weather, which had turned from a lunch-time of brittle blue sky and sharp-edged sun to an afternoon in which the clouds and the twilight were already conspiring to make me confess Hilda's deficient headlights. On top of this, I was getting a sore throat. Nurse Plumtree's streptococcus, breathed into our farewell kiss, was already breeding generations of grandchildren across the mucous membrane of my pharynx. I had left the hospital with a half-perceived tickling in the back of my throat, and now I felt like a fire-eater after a bad performance.
Fortunately, Nurse Macpherson became more romantic as we left the outskirts of London, and began stroking my arm against the steering-wheel while murmuring that she felt deliciously abandoned. She even managed a few flattering words about Hilda, expressing surprise that the car had managed to travel so far without stopping or coming off the road. This was encouraging, but I was too busy to listen attentively through contending with the traffic on the Great North Road, which that afternoon was composed only of cars driven by men late for important interviews, bicycles propelled by blind imbeciles, and lorries carrying boilers for ocean liners. But we progressed without breakdown or accident, and when darkness fell I was delighted to find that the headlights shone more brightly than before, sometimes both of them at once. By the time The Judge's Arms appeared in front of us I began to feel more cheerful and more appreciative of the unusual treat in store for me.
'Here we are, Nan,' I said, as I pulled up at the front door.
She peered through the cracked window. 'Are you sure? It looks like a municipal lunatic asylum to me.'
'It's very romantic inside. And-according to a friend of mine who ought to know-they're very broad- minded.'
My heart was beginning to beat more quickly. 'Sure you've got the ring on the right finger?' I asked nervously.
'Of course I have. Put these parcels in your case, will you? I can't possibly get them in mine.'
We got out of the car.
When I had asked Grimsdyke more about The Judge's Arms he had murmured that it was a coaching inn in the best English tradition'. It was in the English inn-keeping tradition, right enough, but the most widespread rather than the best. The walls of the hall sprouted thickly the heads of deer, otters, badgers, foxes, ferrets, stoats, and weasels, among the glazed bodies of pike, salmon, trout, perch, and bream in generous glass coffins; in the corner a pair of rigid snipe huddled beneath a glass dome, and over the stairs was impaled the horned skull of a buffalo. The place was so dark, empty, and musty that it immediately reminded me of a corner in the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road.
On one side of the hall was a door with a cracked frosted-glass panel embossed with the words 'Coffee Room' in curly letters; opposite was a similar door marked 'Lounge'. In the corner, carefully hidden by a spiky palm leaning in a large brass pot, was a hatch with a panel inviting 'Inquiries'. In front of the hatch was a ledge bearing a small brass hand-bell, secured to the wall by a length of chain.
'Cosy place,' murmured Nurse Macpherson.
'It's bound to be rather quiet,' I said, feeling I ought to defend the hotel as well as Haemorrhagic Hilda. 'We're in the country, you know.'
She made no reply, so I set down our cases, picked up the bell, and gave a timid tinkle. She began to make up her face, and I read a large notice in a black frame explaining that it was your own fault if anyone walked off with your valuables. As no one appeared, I rang the bell again.
Not a sound came from the hotel.
'I suppose they haven't all been scared away?' said Nurse Macpherson, snapping her compact closed. 'You know, like the _Marie Celeste?'_
'It's just a sleepy part of the world,' I told her testily, for my throat was beginning to hurt badly. 'We're not in Piccadilly Circus, you know.'
'I can see it now,' she went on, gazing at the sooty ceiling where it was gathered round the root of the tarnished chandelier. 'We shall find every room empty, meals half-eaten on the tables, baths filled, beds turned down, fires burning in the grates. Some awful thing came through the front door, perhaps from Mars. Everyone has fled except for one corpse in the garden, with its features twisted into an expression of spine-chilling terror. What a wonderful story for the newspapers! We'll phone the _Daily Express,_ and in no time there'll be reporters and
