Heaven is Gentle

Hardly an enjoyable trip, Eliza thought as he brought the car to a halt at the lodge front door.

And yet it had been wonderful. She had been with the professor for hours, and even if she hadn’t been sure before, she knew now that there wasn’t another man like him—not for her, anyway.

He came around the hood of the car, opened Eliza’s door and lifted her out to place her gently on the porch.

“Go down to the cottage through the house,” he advised her. “I’ll bring the parcels.”

She did as she was told, and found the little place warm and lighted, and a tea tray laid ready. Eliza would put the kettle on and when Christian came they would have a cup of tea. But when the professor did come, five minutes later, he gave her a bleak refusal when she suggested it. At the door he halted, though, when Eliza said in a level little voice, “Thank you for my lunch and for driving me, Professor. It was a lovely day.”

He turned right round and looked at her frowningly. He said almost angrily, “A lovely day.” And then, as though the words were being dragged out of him, “And a lovely girl.”

About the Author

Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of BETTY NEELS in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality. She was a wonderful writer, and she will be greatly missed. Her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.

Heaven is Gentle
Betty Neels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

THE room was large and well lighted, and by reason of the cheerful fire in the wide chimneypiece and the thick curtains drawn against the grey January afternoon, cosy enough. There were three persons in it; an elderly man, sitting at his ease behind a very large, extremely untidy desk, a thin, prim woman at a small table close by and a tall, broad-shouldered man sitting astride a small chair, his arms folded across its back, his square, determined chin resting on two large and well cared for hands. He was a handsome man, his dark hair silvered at the temples, and possessing a pair of formidable black brows above very dark eyes. In repose he appeared to be of an age approaching forty, but when he smiled, and he was smiling now, he looked a good deal younger.

Miss Trim paused in the reading of the names from a typed list before her and glanced at the two men. They were smoking pipes and she gave a small protesting cough which she knew would be ignored, anyhow.

‘They sound like a line of chorus girls,’ commented the younger of her two companions. His smile turned to an engaging grin. ‘How do you like the idea of being nursed by a Shirley Anne, or an Angela, or—what was that last one, Miss Trim? A Felicity?’

His elderly companion puffed a smoke ring and viewed it with satisfaction. ‘We should have tried for a male nurse,’ he mused out loud, ‘but from a psychological point of view that would not have been satisfactory.’

‘There are still a few names on the list, Professor Wyllie.’ Miss Trim sounded faintly tart, probably because of the smoke wreathing itself around her head. She coughed again and continued to read: ‘Annette Dawes, Marilyn Jones, Eliza Proudfoot, Heather Cox…’

She was interrupted. ‘A moment, Miss Trim—that name again, Eliza…?’

‘Miss Eliza Proudfoot, Professor van Duyl.’

‘This is the one,’ his deep voice with its faint trace of an accent, sounded incisive. ‘With a name like that, I don’t see how we can go wrong.’

He glanced at the older man, his eyebrows lifted. ‘What do you say, sir?’

‘You’re probably right. Let’s hear the details, Miss Trim.’

Before she could speak: ‘Five foot ten,’ murmured Professor van Duyl, ‘with vital statistics to match.’ He caught the secretary’s disapproving eye. ‘She’ll need to be strong,’ he reminded her blandly, ‘not young any more, rather on the plain side and decidedly motherly.’ He turned his smiling gaze on Professor Wyllie. ‘Will you like that?’

His companion chuckled. ‘I daresay she will do as well as any, provided that her qualifications are good.’ He gave Miss Trim a questioning look, and she answered promptly, mentioning one of the larger London hospitals.

‘She trained there,’ she recited from her meticulous notes, ‘and is now Ward Sister of Men’s Medical. She is twenty-eight years old, unmarried, and thought very highly of by those members of the medical profession for whom she works.’ She added primly, ‘Shall I telephone Sir Harry Bliss, Professor? He is the consultant in charge of her ward.’

‘Good lord, woman,’ exploded her employer, ‘you don’t have to tell me that! Of course I know it’s old Harry—known him man and boy, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Get him on the telephone and then go away and concoct the right sort of letter to send to this young woman.’

‘You wish to interview her, sir?’

‘No, no. There’s no time for that; if Harry says she’s OK she’ll do. We go to Inverpolly on the tenth; ask her to come up there whichever way she likes to by the fifteenth—expenses paid, of course. See that she gets a good idea how to reach the place and add a few trimmings—benefit to mankind and all that stuff. Oh, and warn her that she must be prepared to look after me as well if I should have an attack.’

He waved a hand at Miss Trim and she understood herself to be dismissed as she murmured suitably, thanked Professor van Duyl for opening the door for her and went back to her own office, where she set about composing a suitable letter to Miss Proudfoot, thinking as she did so that the young lady in question would need to be tough indeed if she accepted the post she was couching in such cautiously attractive terms. Conditions in the Highlands of Wester Ross at this time of year would be hard enough, working for the two men she had just left harder still. Professor Wyllie was a dear old man, but after acting as his secretary for fifteen years, she knew him inside out; he was irascible at times, wildly unpredictable, and his language when he was in a bad temper was quite unprintable. And as for Professor van Duyl—Miss Trim paused in her typing and her rather sharp features relaxed into a smile. She had met him on several occasions over the last five years or so, and while he had been unfailingly courteous and charming towards her, she sensed that here was a man with a nasty temper, nicely under control, and a very strong will behind that handsome face. As she finished her letter, she found herself hoping that Miss Proudfoot was good at managing men as well as being tough.

The subject of her thoughts, blithely unaware of the future hurtling towards her, was doing a round with Sir Harry Bliss, his registrar—one Donald Jones, a clutch of worried housemen, and the social worker, a beaky-nosed lady with a heart of gold, known throughout the hospital as Ducky. And keeping an eye on the whole bunch of them was Staff Nurse Mary Price, an amiable beanpole of a girl, much prized by Sister Proudfoot, and her willing slave as well as friend. She sidled up to her now, bent down and whispered urgently, listened in her turn, nodded and sped away.

‘And where is our little Mary Price going?’ enquired Sir Harry without lifting his eyes from the notes he was reading. There was a faint murmur of laughter because he prided himself on his sense of humour, but Sister Proudfoot who had heard that one a dozen times before merely handed him the patient’s chart as the housemen fanned out into a respectful semi-circle around the foot of the bed. ‘It’s time for nurses’ dinner,’ she said in a composed voice.

‘Implying that I am too slow on my round, Sister?’ He stared down at her over his glasses.

She gave him a serene glance. ‘No, sir—just stating a fact.’ She smiled at him and he rumbled out a laugh. ‘All right, all right—let’s get on with the job, then. Let me see Mr Atkins’ chest.’

She bent to the patient, a small, shapely girl with bright golden hair swept into a neat bun from which little curls escaped. Her eyes were unexpectedly hazel, richly fringed, her nose small and straight and her mouth sweetly curved. A very pretty girl, who looked years younger than her age and far too fragile for her job.

She was on her way back from a late dinner when the faithful Staff came hurrying to meet her. ‘They’ve just telephoned from the office—Miss Smythe wants to see you at once, Sister.’ She beamed down at Eliza like a good-natured stork. ‘I’ll start the medicines, shall I, and get old Mr Pearce ready for X-ray.’

Eliza nodded. ‘Yes, do. I wonder what I’ve done,’ she mused. ‘Do you suppose it’s because I complained about the shortage of linen bags? You know we have to be careful nowadays.’ She added a little vaguely, ‘Unions and things.’

‘But you weren’t nasty,’ Mary reassured her, ‘you never are.’

Eliza beamed at her. ‘What a great comfort you always are, Mary. We’ll have a cup of tea when I get back and I’ll tell you all about it.’

She turned round and sped back the way she had come, up and down corridors and a staircase or so, until she came to the Office door, where she stopped for a moment to fetch her breath before tapping on it, and in response to the green light above it, entered.

Miss Smythe, the Principal Nursing Officer, was sitting at her desk. She was a stern-faced woman, but at the moment Eliza was relieved to see that she was looking quite amiable. She waved a hand at a chair, said, ‘Good afternoon, Sister Proudfoot,’ waited until Eliza had sat down and began: ‘I have received a letter about you, and with it a letter for yourself—from Professor Wyllie.’

Wyllie, thought Eliza, a shade uneasily, the name rang a bell; asthma research and heart complications or something of that sort, and hadn’t someone told her once that he himself was a sufferer? She said cautiously:

‘Yes, Miss Smythe?’

For answer her superior handed her a letter. ‘I suggest that you read this for yourself, Sister, and then let me have your comments.’

Miss Trim had done her work well; the letter, while astonishing Eliza very much, could not help but flatter her. She read it to its end and then looked across at Miss Smythe. ‘Well, I never!’ she declared.

The lady’s features relaxed into the beginnings of a smile. ‘I was surprised too, Sister. It is of course a great honour, which will reflect upon St Anne’s. I hope that you will consider it well and agree to go.’

‘It’s a long way away.’

Miss Smythe’s voice was smoothly persuasive. ‘Yes, but I believe that you have a car? There is no reason why you shouldn’t drive yourself up there, and Professor Wyllie assures me that the whole experiment, while most important to him, will take only a few weeks. Sir Harry Bliss thinks that you should avail yourself of the opportunity, it may be of the utmost advantage to you in your career.’

Eliza frowned faintly. She had never wanted a career; somehow or other it had been thrust upon her; she had enjoyed training as a nurse, she had liked staffing afterwards and when she had been offered a Sister’s post she had accepted it with pleasure, never imagining that she would still be in it five years later. She wasn’t a career girl at all; she had grown up with the idea of marrying and having children of her own, but despite numerous opportunities to do this, she had always hung back at the last minute, aware, somewhere at the back of her mind, that this wasn’t the right man. And now here she was, as near as not twenty-nine and Miss Smythe talking as though she was going to be a Ward Sister for ever. She sighed. ‘May I have a little time to think about it? I should like to see exactly where this place is and discover precisely what it’s all about. Am I to be the only woman there?’

‘Yes, so I understand. That is why they wanted a somewhat older girl, and a trained nurse, of course. As a precaution, I believe; Professor Wyllie is a sufferer from asthma as well as having heart failure; his health must be safe-guarded. Over and above that, he seems to think that a woman nurse would be of more benefit to the patients. There will also be a number of technicians, the patients, of course—and a colleague of the professor’s. A Dutch Professor of Medicine, highly thought of, I believe.’

Eliza dismissed him at once; he would be learned and bald and use long words in a thick accent, like the elderly brilliant friend of Sir Harry Bliss, who had discussed each patient at such length that she had had to go without her dinner.

‘Let me know by this evening, Sister Proudfoot,’ advised Miss Smythe, ‘sooner if you can manage it—it seems that Professor Wyllie wants an answer as soon as possible.’

An observation which almost decided Eliza to refuse out of sheer perversity; she was by nature an obliging girl, but she didn’t like being pushed; there were several things she wanted to know about the job, and no chance of finding out about any of them in such a short time. She walked back through the hospital, her head bowed in thought, so that when she narrowly avoided bumping into Sir Harry she was forced to stop and apologise.

‘Deep in thought,’ pronounced that gentleman, ‘about that job my old friend Willy Wyllie has offered you, eh? Oh, I thought so—take it, girl, it will make a nice change from this place, put a bit of colour into those cheeks and a pound or two on to your bones.’

Eliza stared at him thoughtfully. ‘Probably,’ she agreed amiably. ‘You seem to know all about it, sir, but I don’t, do I? I mean the bare facts are in the letter, but where do I live while I’m there, and what about time off and how far away is it from the shops and shall I be expected to do night duty?’

‘Tell you what,’ said Sir Harry, ‘we’ll go and telephone someone this very minute and find out.’

‘But I’m on duty. And you, sir, if I might remind you, are expected in Women’s Medical…’ She glanced at her watch. ‘You were expected…’ she corrected herself demurely, ‘fifteen minutes ago.’

‘In that case, five minutes more won’t be noticed.’ He swept her along with him to the consultants’ room, opened the door and thrust her inside ahead of him. ‘Well, really,’ began Eliza, and seeing it was hopeless to say anything, watched him pick up the telephone and demand a number.

He talked for some minutes, firing questions at his unseen listener like bullets from a gun, and presently said: ‘Hold on, I’ll ask her.’

‘Two days off a week, but probably you won’t get them, three hours off a day, these to be arranged according to the day’s requirements. You will have a little cottage to live in—by yourself, close to the main house. There will be an opportunity to go to the nearest town and shop if you should wish to, but it’s only fair to mention that there isn’t much in the way of entertainment.’ He barely gave her time to absorb this sparse information before he barked: ‘Well, how about it, Eliza?’ He grinned at her. ‘I recommended you, you can’t let me down.’

She gave him a severe look. ‘Did you now, sir? Miss Smythe said that I could think it over.’

‘That was before you knew all these details I’ve gone to so much trouble to discover for you,’ he wheedled. ‘Come on now—it’ll make a nice change.’

She gave him a sudden smile. ‘All right, though I shall have to miss the hospital ball.’

He had picked up the receiver again. ‘Pooh, you can go dancing any night of the week; there isn’t a man in the hospital who hasn’t asked you out, one way and another.’ He turned away before she could reply and spoke to the patient soul at the other end of the line. ‘OK, she’ll come. Details later.’ And when she started to protest at his high-handed methods: ‘Well, why not, girl? You said you would go—you can fix the details with Miss Smythe.’ He bustled her to the door. ‘And now I’m late for my round, and it’s your fault.’

He trod on his way, leaving her speechless with indignation.

Mary Price had tea ready, the ward under control and five minutes to spare when Eliza got back to Men’s Medical. They sipped the dark, sweet brew in the peace and quiet of the office while Eliza explained briefly about the strange offer she had been made.

‘Oh, take it, Sister,’ begged her faithful colleague. ‘We shall miss you dreadfully, but it’ll only be for a week or two, and think of the fun you’ll have.’ Her brown eyes sparkled at the thought. ‘You could go up by car.’

‘Um,’ said Eliza, ‘so I could. Miss Smythe said that I’d been chosen from quite a long list of likely nurses. Why me, I wonder?’

‘Sir Harry, of course—you said yourself that he knew all about it.’ She refilled their cups. ‘What are you supposed to do once you’re there?’

‘I’m not quite sure. It’s an experiment—cardiac asthma as well as the intrinsic and extrinsic kinds—they want to prove something or other about climate and the effect of complete freedom from stress or strain.’

‘Sounds interesting. When do you have to leave?’

‘I have to report for duty on the fifteenth,’ she peered at the calendar, ‘eight days’ time. We’ll have to do something about the off duty, if you have a weekend before I go…’

They became immersed in the complicated jigsaw of days off, and presently, having got everything arranged to their mutual satisfaction, they left the office; Staff to supervise the return of the convalescent patients to their beds and Sister Proudfoot to cast her professional eye over the ward in general.

So that Mary might get her weekend off before she herself went away, Eliza took her own days off a couple of days later. She left the hospital after a long day’s work, driving her Fiat 500, a vehicle she had acquired some five years previously and saw little hope of replacing for the next few years at least. But even though it was by now a little shabby, and the engine made strange noises from time to time, it still served her well. She turned its small nose towards the west now, and after what seemed an age of slow driving through London, reached its outskirts and at length the M3. Here at least she could travel as fast as the Fiat would allow, and even when the motorway gave way to the Winchester bypass, she maintained a steady fifty miles an hour, only once past Winchester and on the Romsey road, she slowed down a little. It was very dark, and she had wasted a long time getting out of London; she wouldn’t reach Charmouth until midnight. The thought of the pleasant house where her parents lived spurred her on; they would wait up for her, they always did, and there would be hot soup and sausage rolls, warm and featherlight from the oven. Eliza, who hadn’t stopped for supper, put her small foot down on the accelerator.

The road was dark and lonely once she had passed Cadnam Corner. She left the New Forest behind, skirted Ringwood and threaded her way through Wimborne, silent under the blanket of winter clouds. Dorchester was silent too—she was getting near home now, there were only the hills between her and Bridport and then down and up through Chideock and then home. Here eager thoughts ran ahead of her, so that it seemed nearer than it actually was.

The lights of the house were still on as she brought the little car to a halt at the top of the hill at the further end of the little town, it lay back from the road, flanked by neighbours, all three of them little Regency houses, bowfronted, with verandahs and roomy front gardens. She was out of the car, her case in her hand, and running up the garden path almost as soon as she had switched off the engine; the cold bit into her as she turned the old-fashioned brass knob of the door and went inside. Her mother and father were still up, as she knew they would be, sitting one each side of the open fire, dozing a little, to wake as she went into the room. She embraced them with affection; her mother, as small a woman as she was, her father, tall and thin and scholarly. ‘Darlings,’ she declared, ‘how lovely to see you! It seems ages since I was home and I’ve heaps to tell you. I’ll just run the car across the road.’

She flew outside again; the car park belonged to the hotel opposite but the manager never minded her using it. She tucked the Fiat away in a corner and went back indoors, to find the soup and the sausage rolls, just as she had anticipated, waiting for her. She gobbled delicately and between mouthfuls began to tell her parents about the unexpected job she had been asked to take. ‘There was a list,’ she explained. ‘Heaven knows how they made it in the first place or why they picked on me—with a pin, most likely. I almost decided not to accept it, but Sir Harry Bliss thought it would be a good idea—and it’s only for a few weeks.’

Her mother offered her another sausage roll. ‘Yes, darling, I see. But isn’t this place miles away from everywhere?’

‘Yes. But I’m to have my own cottage to live in and I daresay I’ll be too busy to want to do much when I’m not on duty.’

‘There will be another nurse there?’ asked her father.

She shook her head. ‘No—I’m the only one and it sounds as though I shan’t have much to do. A handful of volunteer patients—all men, a few technicians and the two professors; William Wyllie—he’s an asthma case himself and I may have to look after him; he’s quite old—well, not very old, touching seventy.’

‘And the other doctor?’ It was her mother this time.

‘Oh, a friend of his. I daresay he’ll have asthma too, he’ll certainly be elderly.’ She brushed the crumbs from her pretty mouth and sat back with a sigh of content. ‘Now tell me all the news, my dears. Have you heard from Henry? and has Pat got over the measles?’

Henry was a younger brother, working in Brussels for the Common Market, and Pat was her small niece, her younger sister Polly’s daughter, who had married several years earlier. Her mother embarked on family news, wondering as she did so why it was that this pretty little creature sitting beside her hadn’t married herself, years ago. Of course she didn’t look anything like her age, but thirty wasn’t far off; Mrs Proudfoot belonged to the generation which considered thirty to be getting a little long in the tooth, and she worried about Eliza. The dear girl had had her chances—was still having them; she knew for a fact that at least two eligible young men had proposed to her during the last six months. And now she was off to this godforsaken spot in the Highlands where, as far as she could make out, there wasn’t going to be a man under sixty.

The two days passed quickly; there was so much to do, so many friends to visit, as well as helping her mother in the nice old house and going for walks with her father, who, now that he had retired from the Civil Service, found time to indulge in his hobby of fossil gathering. Eliza, who knew nothing about fossils, obligingly accompanied him to the beach and collected what she hoped were fine specimens, and which were almost always just pebbles. All the same, they enjoyed each other’s company and the fresh air gave her a glow which made her prettier than ever, so that one of the eligible young men, meeting her by chance in the main street, took the instant opportunity of proposing for a second time, an offer which she gently refused, aware that she was throwing away a good chance.

She worried about it as she drove herself back to London. Charlie King was an old friend, she had known him for years; he would make a splendid husband and he had a good job. She would, she decided, think about him seriously while she was away in Scotland; no doubt there would be time to think while she was there, and being a long way from a problem often caused it to appear in a quite different light. She put the thought away firmly for the time being and concentrated on her driving, for there had been a frost overnight, and the road was treacherous.

The next few days went rapidly, for she was busy. Mary Price had gone on her promised weekend the day after she got back and although she had two part-time staff nurses to help her, there was a good deal of extra paper work because she was going away. It was nice to see Mary back again and talk over the managing of the ward while she was away. Eliza spent her last day smoothing out all the last-minute problems, bade her patients and staff a temporary goodbye and went off duty to while away an hour with her friends in the Sisters’ sitting room before going to her room to pack ready for an early start in the morning—warm clothes and not too many of them—thick sweaters and slacks, an old anorak she had brought from home and as a special concession to the faint hope of a social life, a long mohair skirt and cashmere top in a pleasing shade of old rose.

She left really early the following morning, her friends’ good wishes ringing in her ears, instructions as to how to reach her destination written neatly on the pad beside the map on the seat beside her. She planned to take two, perhaps three days to get to Inverpolly, for although the Fiat always did its best, it wasn’t capable of sustained speed; besides, the weather, cold and blustery now, might worsen and hold her up. She had three clear days in hand and she didn’t suppose anyone would mind if she arrived a little sooner than that.

She made good progress. She had intended to spend the night at York, but she found that she had several hours in hand when she reached that city. She had an early tea and pressed on to Darlington and then turned on to the Penrith road where she decided to spend the night at the George. She was well ahead of her schedule and she felt rather pleased with herself, everything had been much easier than she had expected. She ate a good supper and went early to bed.

It was raining when she left, quite early, the next morning. By the time she had got to Carlisle, it was a steady downpour and from the look of the sky, was likely to continue so for hours, but it was a bare two hundred miles to Fort William, though there were another hundred and sixty miles after that, probably more, it was so difficult to tell from the map, but she felt relaxed now, eager to keep on for as long as possible, perhaps even complete the journey. She had thought at first that she would take the road to Inverness, but the map showed another, winding road round the lochs, she had almost decided to try it when she reached Fort William for a quick, late lunch, studying the map meanwhile. But it would have to be Inverness, she decided, the coast road looked decidedly complicated, and there was a ferry which might not be running at this time of year. She would push on; it was only three o’clock and roughly speaking, only another hundred and thirty miles to go. Even allowing for the early dark, she had two hours of driving and she was used to driving at night. She took another look at the map and saw that she didn’t need to go to Inverness at all; there was a side road which would bring her out on the road to Bonar Bridge.

It was dark when she got there and she wanted her tea, but she was too near the end of her journey to spare the time now; only another thirty miles or so to go. But she hadn’t gone half that distance before she regretted her wild enthusiasm; it was a lonely road she was travelling along now and after a little while there were no villages at all and almost no traffic. To try to find the remote lodge where Professor Wyllie was working would be madness; fortunately she remembered that there was a village with an impossible name just outside the National Park of Inverpolly, she could spend the night there. She reflected rather crossly now because she was tired and thirsty and just the smallest bit nervous that it was an impossible place to reach, and if she hadn’t had a car what would they have done about getting her there? Being learned men, wrapped up in their work, they had probably not given it a thought. The road appeared to be going nowhere in particular. Perhaps she was lost, and that was her own fault, of course; she should have realised that parts of the Scottish Highlands really were remote from the rest of the world. Eliza glanced at the speedometer; she had come quite a distance and passed nothing at all; she must be on the wrong road and told herself not to be a fool, for there had been no other road to take. It was then she saw the signpost. Inchnadamph, one mile.

The hotel was pleasant; warm and friendly too, although by now she was so tired that a barn would have been heaven. They gave her a large, old-fashioned room and fed her like a queen because there was only a handful of guests and they had already dined. She met them briefly when she went to have her coffee in the lounge, and then, hardly able to keep her eyes open, retired to her comfortable bed. A good sleep, she promised herself, and after breakfast she would drive the last few miles of her journey.