The Islands in the Bay – Chapter (194) St Valentine’s Day

 

February

 

Richard Leadbitter was a Staff Nurse at the Bellevue Cottage Hospital on Beaumont Island and shared a house on the island with two Junior Doctors, Andrew Lightstone and Claudine Newton and another Nurse, Anna Rue, who all worked at the same Hospital.

The house was a four-bedroom terraced property situated.

in Manor Row, overlooking Manor Cliff beach.

It wasn’t a huge house, but it was perfect for them as it was close to work, which was ideal for all of them as they worked shifts, and it meant that split between the four of them their expenses were very manageable. 

They were all single, though they were all looking and all quite pessimistic regarding their prospects in the relationship department given their working hours.

But they all got on well and made the most of the situation.

They all had hopes and dreams though, of finding the right person and settling down and for Richard he hoped that person would be Anna Rue.

He had been in love with her since he first saw her on the ward at the Bellevue Cottage Hospital and those feelings had just grown deeper in the twelve months they had been living under the same roof until he loved her body and soul.

She was a bit of a dynamo about the place and was not the sitting around sort and he liked to watch her while she did the mundane things around the house, especially when she was in the kitchen making lunch.

She would be hunched over the kitchen counter fastidiously assembling a sandwich, and as she applied the finishing touch of mustard mayonnaise she would adopt a stance not unlike a world class table tennis player preparing to serve.

He wasn’t sure why she stooped over so dramatically, she wasn’t exceptionally tall, but he really didn’t care he was just glad she did.

However he had held his feelings for her in check because he didn’t want to upset the dynamic, after all it had taken him a long time to find a group of people he was happy to share a house with, and he thought having a relationship with one of them could get messy if that relationship failed, or worse than that what if he asked her and she said no, how awkward would that be and what an atmosphere it could evoke, and there was always the likelihood that she would say no, as he was well aware that she was out of his league.

But he was encouraged to at least entertain the idea of asking her after his housemates Andrew and Claudine became an item at the beginning of February.

So, he set his sights on winning her by Valentine’s Day, which was slightly ambitious given his poor success rate during the season, when February normally bought him, no Valentines save for the jokey kind he would get at work, but this time he had high hopes.

His new-found confidence sprang from the knowledge that Andrew and Claudine were attending the upcoming Valentine’s Ball together which gave him the idea for his own Valentine.

 

Because Valentine’s Day fell on Thursday, the Valentine’s Ball wasn’t to be held until the Saturday following which meant he could invite her without her actually knowing it was him.

 

His first action was to purchase two tickets for the Ball, one of which he kept for himself while he placed the other one in the envelope with the Valentines card he had carefully selected for her.

On the day itself, she was on the night shift, so he stamped the envelope and then sneaked it into the pile of that day’s mail before she got home.

As he wasn’t working, he was in the house when she returned and when she paused by the front door and thumbed through the pile of mail he was crouched down on the landing watching her through the bannisters in order to gauge her reaction.

Which he took to be favourable by the way she held the card to her chest and grinned.

Richard continued to watch from his hiding place as Anna then hugged herself before she skipped away, giggling to the kitchen.

 

He was very pleased with her reaction, it was a far more positive one than he could ever have hoped for, however once he was alone in his room doubt began to creep in.

Anna was undoubtedly thrilled with the Valentine and the ticket to the Ball but what began to worry him was the imagined identity of the sender.

His hope was that she was thrilled because she had guessed that it was from him, but what if there was some other recipient of her affections whom she had wrongly given the credit for the missive and the gift, and these doubts tortured him for the next two days.

 

His anxiety was not diminished by the fact that on the day of the Ball he had been at work all day, which was problematic in two ways, firstly because he didn’t have time to go home before and had to shower and change at the hospital, and secondly because he didn’t go home he didn’t get to see her and wasn’t even certain sure she was actually going, despite her obvious pleasure when she opened the Valentine.

So after making his way up the road to the Beaumont Manor Hotel he went through to the Ballroom but had no idea if he was going to see Anna dressed up to the nines in a designer dress or find nothing more than another empty chair when he reached the table, as a result of his lengthy and fruitless musings he was one of the last to arrive.

     

Richard checked the seating plan to locate his table and found it was the furthest away from the entrance, so as he entered there was no clear view across the crowded Ballroom, which did not ease his anxiety one iota.

As he was one of the last to arrive, he could only make slow progress through the assembled melee of revelers.

It would have been a quicker passage had they chosen to take their seats more promptly rather than standing in groups and engaging in conversation in the gaps between the tables.

However, by the time he reached halfway good sense had begun to prevail and there were more seated than standing and at the three-quarter mark those still on their feet had reduced to a handful which allowed him his first glimpse of his destination.

The round, twelve-seat table was almost fully populated save for his empty seat, but as it was the one nearest to him, the girls on either side of it had their backs to him so he wasn’t able to identify them, although the girl on the left had an abundance of flaming red hair so he immediately ruled her out.

The girl on the right was the right build and hair colour but Anna had long straight hair and the girl he was looking at had her hair arranged in braids, plaits and buns atop her head.

She was also wearing a yellow halter neck dress which he had never seen her wear before, although that didn’t really mean anything, but it contributed to his anxiety going up several fold as he began to suspect that not only was Anna a no show but that she had given the ticket away.

He tentatively approached while casually checking the table number with that on his ticket and having confirmed that the empty seat was indeed his and he was all too soon standing behind the vacant chair. 

“Hello” he said, and the girl visibly tensed as he pulled the chair out “I’m sorry I’m late.”

As he sat, the girl in the yellow dress turned slowly towards him and the first view he got of her was best described as expressionless, but only for the briefest moment because the instance of recognition her face lit up and she beamed a radiant smile at him.

“I was hoping it would be you” Anna said and took hold of his hand “And it is.”