Stormy Springtime
October 5th, 2024 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vintageromancereader
"He needs a wife - someone like me!"
Meg Collins was an old-fashioned country girl facing an uncertain future. Now that the family house was being sold, Meg had to find a job. But where? Her skills were in cooking and gardening - not shorthand and typing.
Professor Ralph Culver offered a solution. The eminent doctor needed a "sensible, domestic person" to work in his London office. Someone like Meg.
But it wasn't very sensible to fall in love with the professor. Or to hope that he would fall in love with her, too...
Original Publisher: Harlequin
Original Year of Publication: 1987
Page Count: 187
This is my first foray into the world of Betty Neels, an extremely profile Harlequin author who had a few interesting writing quirks: her books feature doctors and/or nurses, at least one of them is Dutch, and at least part of the story takes place somewhere in Holland. I am faintly amused by this (there's nothing better than a category writer who knows her strengths, after all) and curious, because I studied in the Netherlands for grad school. I've picked up quite a few vintage Neels novels from my last few thrift store trips, and this one seemed like a good one to start with.
Meg Collins is a mousy little woman, the mostly-forgotten middle child who stayed at her home with her mother in Hertfordshire and nursed said parent at the end of her life. As the book opens, Meg and her sisters are talking about selling the home and how they are going to use their shares of the money. Cora, older sister, is married with kids; Doreen, younger sister, is a vivacious nurse at a London hospital. Both sisters have always run roughshod over Meg, telling her what to do for her entire life, and now is no different. They each encourage her to move to London and find a secretary job, even though she has no secretarial skills and London is extremely expensive, even in the post-war era.
Meg had some ideas of her own for her future. As much as she doesn't want to leave her childhood home, she grudgingly accepts it, and considers hiring herself out as a housekeeper on a similar country estate. After all, those *are* the skills she has: managing a household. She has a vague notion of marrying and having kids someday, and running her own household, but more important right now is to find a roof and a situation that pays wages.
Several people come tour the home when it's put on the market, including a very arrogant man who says nothing and displays even less. Meg takes an instant dislike to him, but manages to forget him when a real potential buyer arrives: the elegant, elderly Mrs Culver, freshly arrived back in England after her husband's death. Meg takes a shine to her, especially after she graciously agrees to let Meg and the cook, Betsy, stay on for awhile while her own housekeeper recovers. The only fly in the ointment? That arrogant man is nice Mrs Culver's son, Ralph, who came to inspect the home because he knew his mother was interested in it.
Once Mrs Culver's housekeeper arrives, Meg is persuaded to go to London to check out a flat her sister Doreen found for her, which she can afford with her share of the money. It's a horrible little place behind an underground station, and Meg is in tears at the idea of leaving her beautiful home for such a place. Mercifully, Ralph Culver swoops to her rescue, assuring her that she shouldn't live in the rundown little hovel because it was structurally unsound. On the way back to Mrs Culver's house, he casually mentions that he can help her out: he has a private practice in London where he sees patients between his rounds at various hospitals around the city. It's a receptionist job, and it comes with a flat because she has to take off-hours calls for him. It also comes with the chance to visit his own country estate, with a little gardener's cottage Meg can make her own on the weekends. Meg jumps at the chance for at least partial country life, and finds herself intrigued by the man. He is a physician, a Professor of Radiology, and once she takes the job in his office, she truly takes interest in his work, as part of her job is to chat with his patients, especially the nervous ones.
Meg is quite happy with her state of affairs, all told; she has a lovely flat in the nice part of town, a little weekend lodge, and enough facetime with Professor Culver that she falls in love with him fairly quickly. She also takes in stray animals, including a one-eyed stray cat in London whom she names Nelson. (My heart melted at this, especially when she insists on taking Nelson with her to the country!)
Meg's grand idea to get the Professor to notice her is basically to fade into the background: being perfectly polite and professional, but otherwise having no personality at all. This is a change for her, and it is indeed one he notices, but it does not seem to have the desired effect. He goes out with glamorous women all the time and invites them for weekends at his estate, especially one particularly stunning blonde. Meg keeps in touch with Betsy and Mrs Culver, and learns that his mother thinks it unlikely her handsome son will settle down with the types of women he dates, but Meg is unsure.
We're nearly 70% into the book before the inevitable trip to Holland arrives. As it turns out, Mrs Culver is Dutch and her mother still lives in Amsterdam. When the Professor takes a week-long trip to visit his grandmother, he invites Meg along - because his grandmother's housekeeper is going on holiday, and the Culvers want Meg along to fill her place. I mean, you just have to laugh, really. Meg is excited, because again, being a housekeeper is her dream in life, and she loves the Culver family, so why not?
Ralph does the same things in the Netherlands that he does in England: teaching, rounds, and dates with beautiful women. He does go out of his way to spend time with Meg, including the scene featured on the cover where they spend an afternoon taking in the sights around Amsterdam. Meg's love just continues to grow, and she continues to suffer in silence. Even the intriguing looks Ralph gives her are only stings, nothing to really hang her dreams on.
They return to England and life carries on. One weekend at Ralph's country home, Meg rushes up to his house to fetch him because a young couple have broken down at her garden gate; the woman is in labor and the man is trying to get her to hospital. Ralph, despite not having delivered a baby since he was a resident, of course handles everything with aplomb, and sends the young couple on to hospital in the aftermath, checking up on them, etc. Meg learns that the man is an out of work farm laborer, and then - to her surprise - that Ralph has offered him the position of gardener at his estate, which means the couple with the baby will be moving into her beloved little cottage! Meg is devastated at losing this place, and decides that she needs to move on with her life. She's just another one of Ralph's success stories; he finds people in need and sets them onto a better path in life; this accounts for basically everyone who works for him, in the country and in the city.
Meg starts looking for a new job in London and a new place to live. Ralph runs hot and cold around her; seeking out her company one moment (and even kissing her, though he confesses he doesn't know why) and ignoring her the next. She calls around to find him one night because of an urgent call from the hospital and finds him at the blonde's apartment, and that's just about the final straw.
One day she goes down to the offices and everyone is acting extremely polite and professional, without the warmth she's become accustomed to. She's called into Ralph's office, knowing that he's going to sack her, which he does. She's incredibly upset until he basically says, "You know why I hired another receptionist? Because I want you as my wife!"
I had to laugh, honestly. It's like everyone in the world knew what was going on, except Meg. How was she the last one to know he was in love with her and wanted to marry her? It's a mystery to me. The story is told nearly 100% from Meg's POV (with just a few scenes from Ralph's POV), and since she is pretty clueless, so are we, the readers. Ralph claims that he fell in love with her right from the start, basically because she was not like other girls he knew. We don't really see this on the page, so it was a bit of hard sell for me. I mean, yay that Meg got her happy ending, but also a little WTF??
I enjoyed this for the most part (and the shout-out to my city, Leiden, during the trip to Holland!), just was amused by that ending. Ms Neels writes a compelling story, and this was a quick read. I look forward to the next!
⭐⭐⭐
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Date: October 6th, 2024 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: October 6th, 2024 07:55 pm (UTC)