Cottage Hospital Page 14

  But even if she had married him on their original terms this time would have come, she knew. He would have had to face the fact that she could never love him, as he wanted her to, accept the loneliness that had always been a part of his marriage, and would now continue to be a part of his life alone.

  Slowly, Barbara walked to the door. She looked back for a moment at Josie sitting still on her pouffe, staring up at her father, at Geoffrey, straight and alone in his unhappiness. And then she went.

  The last thing she saw of the house was the pile of parcels in gay Christmas paper that she had dropped on the chair in the hall. Then she closed the door, and walked back through the raw December darkness to the hospital.

  It was as though she were another person. The Barbara she had always been, the cool composed elegant woman she knew as herself seemed to be far away. Now, she was someone else, someone who had been a fool, and knew it, someone who knew now what she wanted, and was going to get it.

  The main hall of the hospital was dim and quiet, the shape of the Christmas tree that was waiting to be trimmed looming darkly in one corner. Quietly she climbed the uneven old staircase, listening with one ear to the night-time sounds of the hospital around her. One of the children in the babies’ ward was crying, the sleepy cry of a child too tired and cross to let himself sleep. Someone was rattling dishes in the kitchen, preparing the night nurses’ midnight meal, and from the corridor above she could hear the sound of bathwater running in Matron’s bathroom.

  At the top of the stairs she stopped for a moment, looking at the narrow pencil of light under Daniel’s door. And then, her head high, she went across the polished floor, and pushed open the door.

  He was sitting at the desk in the corner, his hair ruffled and shining redly in the lamplight. As the door opened, he lifted his head to look at her, his face blank and stupefied.

  She stood there for a long moment, her smooth dark head thrown up, her slender body rigid. And then she said softly, “Daniel.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, and then stood up, his face shadowed as his body blocked out the light.

  She took a deep breath. “Daniel,” she said again, “I love you. Will you marry me?”

  And she closed the door behind her, plunging the corridor outside back into its dim quiet.

  And in the babies’ ward, the crying child gulped once more, and fell into the sudden sleep of the very young.