The occasion of their second meeting was the autumn visit of the mobile Blood Transfusion Unit to Comerbourne Grammar School in the last week of September. Dominic had stayed late for football practice, and after his shower had remembered something he wanted to look up for his history essay, and lingered an extra hour in the library. When he finally crossed the forecourt on his way to the side gate it was already dusk, and he saw the unit’s van drawn up close to the gymnasium block, and a nurse trotting across from the rear doors with an armful of documents and equipment. The session was a quarterly occurrence, and he had never paid the least attention to it before and would not have done so now but for the dark-red Karmann-Ghia which was just turning into park in the narrow space behind the van. The car brought him up standing, with a gasp of pleasure for its compact and subtle beauties, and when its door opened he could scarcely drag his eyes from that chaste thoroughbred shape even to satisfy his curiosity about its lucky owner. But the next moment even the car was in eclipse. A girl swung long, elegant legs out of it, and walked slowly across the concrete to the door of the block, as if she was a little dubious of her errand or her welcome when it came to the point. And the girl was Kitty.
Dusk or daylight or unrelieved midnight, Dominic would have known her. She had only to put in an appearance, even after fifteen months, and everything that had to do with her acquired a significance so intense as to blot out the rest of the world. The parked van, the lighted windows behind which the nurses moved busily, the whole apparatus of donating blood suddenly became a vital reality to Dominic, because Kitty was a donor. He knew he ought to go home and tackle his homework, but he couldn’t bring himself to move from the spot, and when finally he did compel his legs into action he found that they were carrying him towards the gymnasium block instead of towards the gate.
In any case he’d probably missed the bus he’d intended to take by now, and there was twenty-five minutes to wait for the next. If he went away now he might never have such an opportunity again. She wasn’t with a party this time, she wasn’t on a terrace ten feet above him; anybody could go in there and join her at the mere cost of a pint of blood. After all, it was a good cause, and even if they did have a list of regular donors they surely wouldn’t turn down another one. I really ought to think about these services more, he said to himself virtuously, especially with Dad being in the position he is, it’s up to me to do him credit, actually. It’s now or never, warned some more candid demon at the back of his mind, she’s on her own as yet because she drove herself here, but if you don’t make up your mind pretty smartly the official transport will be there, and you won’t have a dog’s chance of getting near her. And you’ll have tapped off a pint of blood for nothing, it added spitefully, demolishing the pretence that he was contemplating the sacrifice out of any impulse of public-spiritedness. But he was beyond noticing the intricacies of this argument within him, for he was already pushing open the swing-door and shouldering his way through into the hall.
She was sitting alone on one of the chairs ranged along the wall, looking a little perplexed and a little forlorn, as if she wondered what she was doing there at all. She wore a dark green jersey suit with a skirt fashionably short and tight, and the magnificent legs which had made his senses swim gleamed smoothly golden from knee to ankle, so perfectly tanned that he couldn’t tell whether she was wearing nylons or not. She looked up quickly as he came in, pleased not to be alone any longer. The heavy coil of honey-coloured hair swayed on her smooth cheek, the disconcerting eyes smiled at him hopefully.
“Hallo!” she said almost shyly, almost ingratiatingly.
She didn’t recognise him, he saw that at once, she was merely welcoming him as a fellow-victim. “Hallo!” he said with a hesitant smile. He stacked his books on a window-sill, and sat down several places away from her, afraid to make too sudden a claim upon her attention merely because she found his company preferable to being alone.
“We’re early,” said Kitty. “They’re not ready for us yet. I hate waiting for this sort of thing, don’t you? Is it your first time?”
“Yes,” said Dominic rather stiffly, because he thought for a moment that she was making an oblique reference to his youth.
“Mine, too,” she said, cheered, and he saw that he’d been misjudging her. “I felt I ought to do something about something. Every now and again it gets me like that. I’m not much use at anything much, but at least I’ve got blood. I hope! Was yours a case of conscience, too?”
She grinned at him. There was no other word for it, it was too wry and funny and conspiratorial to be called merely a smile. He felt his stiffness melting like ice in sunlight, and with it the marrow in his bones.
“Well, it was sort of on the spur of the moment,” he admitted, grinning back shyly, he who was seldom shy and frequently a good deal too cocky. “I just happened to be late leaving and I saw the van here, and I thought maybe I ought, well, you see, my father’s a policeman, , , “
“No, really?” said Kitty, impressed. The big eyes dilated; they weren’t really the colour of violets, he saw, but of purple-brown pansies.
“Well, a detective actually,” said Dominic punctiliously, and then blushed because it sounded dramatic, and in reality he knew that it was normally nothing of the kind. The very name of the profession carries such artificial overtones, you’d never dream how humdrum is the daily life of a member of the County C.I.D.
“Gosh!” said Kitty, eyes now enormous with pleased respect. “I see I must keep in with you. Who knows when I may need a friend? What with all these fifty limits around at weekends, and no parking allowed anywhere less than a mile from the middle of town, I could be run in almost any minute.” She caught his fixed and fascinated eye, and laughed. “I’m talking an awful lot, aren’t I? You know why? I’m nervous of this thing we’ve got coming along. I know it’s nothing, but somehow I don’t like the idea of being tapped like a barrel.”
“I’m scared of it, too,” said Dominic.
It wasn’t true, he hadn’t given the actual operation a single thought; but it was generously meant, and it never occurred to him how difficult he was making it for her to hit upon a reply which would be equally graceful to his self-esteem. But she managed it, some natural genius guiding her. She gave him a pleased look, and then a doubtful one, and then a wonderful smile.
“I don’t believe you,” she said confidently, “but it’s jolly nice of you to say it, anyhow. If I yell when they prick my ear for a sample, will you promise to yell, too, so I won’t feel alone in my cowardice!”
“I shall probably be the first to yell,” he said gallantly, hot with delight and embarrassment.
A door opened with a flourish upon their solitude, and a plump young nurse put her head out into the hall. “My, my!” she said, with that rallying brightness which is almost an occupational hazard in her profession. “Two of us here before time! We are eager to help, aren’t we?”
“Yes, aren’t we?” said Kitty like a meek echo, dragging her eyes away from Dominic’s before the giggles could overwhelm them both.
“If you’d like to get it over with, folks, you can come in now.”