Giant’s Bread · Book IV · III · Chapter 4 3 2

II

“There’s someone asking for you, Nurse Deyre.”

“For me?” Nell was surprised.

It must be Sebastian. Only he was likely to come down here and look her up. Did she want to see him or not? She hardly knew.

But to her great surprise, her visitor was George Chetwynd. He explained that he was passing through Wiltsbury, and had stopped to see if he could see her. He asked whether she couldn’t come out to lunch with him.

“I thought you were on afternoon duty,” he explained.

“I was changed to the morning shift yesterday. I’ll ask Matron. We’re not very busy.”

Permission was accorded her, and half an hour later she was sitting opposite George Chetwynd at the County Hotel with a plate of roast beef in front of her and a waiter hovering over her with a vast dish of cabbage.

“The only vegetable the County Hotel knows,” observed Chetwynd.

He talked interestingly and made no reference to her loss. All he said was that her continuing to work here was the pluckiest thing he had ever heard of.

“I can’t tell you how I admire all you women. Carrying on, tackling one job after another. No fuss⁠—no heroics⁠—just sticking to it as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I think Englishwomen are fine.”

“One must do something.”

“I know. I can understand that feeling. Anything’s better than sitting with your hands in your lap, eh?”

“That’s it.”

She was grateful. George always understood. He told her that he was off to Serbia in a day or two, organizing relief work there.

“Frankly,” he said, “I’m ashamed of my country for not coming in. But they will. I’m convinced of that. It’s only a matter of time. In the meantime we do what we can to alleviate the horrors of war.”

“You look very well.”

He looked younger than she remembered him⁠—well set up, bronzed, the grey in his hair a mere distinction rather than a sign of age.

“I’m feeling well. Nothing like having plenty to do. Relief work’s pretty strenuous.”

“When are you off?”

“Day after tomorrow.” He paused, then said in a different voice. “Look here⁠—you didn’t mind my looking you up like this? You don’t feel I’d no business to butt in?”

“No⁠—no. It was very kind of you. Especially after I⁠—I⁠—”

“You know I’ve never borne any rancour over that. I admire you for following your heart. You loved him and you didn’t love me. But there’s no reason we shouldn’t be friends, is there?”

He looked so friendly, so very unsentimental, that Nell answered happily that there wasn’t.

He said: “That’s fine. And you’ll let me do anything for you that a friend can? Advise you in any bothers that arise, I mean?”

Nell said she’d be only too grateful.

They left it like that. He departed in his car shortly after lunch, wringing her hand and saying he hoped they’d meet again in about six months’ time, and begging her again to consult him if she were in a difficulty any time.

Nell promised that she would.