Sun and Candlelight

by Betty Neels

  She was brushing Rough, sitting on the lawn at the back of the house and sat back on her heels to answer him. ‘Oh, Sarre, I’d love to. Shall you be there long?’

  ‘Three or four days. I shall be at the hospital for most of the time, but we should have the evenings together. I’ll drive up, it will be a good opportunity to try out the Bristol.’

  ‘What sort of clothes shall I need?’

  ‘Well, we may go out one evening—it’s not a very big hotel, but I expect you’ll want a pretty dress for dinner.’

  Alethea thanked him, thinking privately that it had been a waste of time asking him, men never noticed…

  ‘Have you got that grey thing with the patterns?’

  ‘Grey crêpe with an amber and green pattern. Yes. Why?’

  He spread himself out on the grass beside her and closed his eyes. ‘I should like you to wear it.’

  ‘Oh—all right. Does Al pack for you, or shall I do it?’

  He opened one eye. ‘Al rather fancies himself as a valet, you might hurt his feelings.’

  She said slowly: ‘I don’t feel that I’m being of much use to anyone…’ She wasn’t looking at him, so she didn’t see the sharp glance he gave her downcast face.

  ‘You’re being of the greatest use. Besides, you’re not only useful, you’re ornamental as well.’

  She allowed Rough to wander away. Sarre looked very placid lying there; perhaps it was the right time to ask about Anna.

  ‘I thought Anna might have called to see us,’ she said at length, keeping her voice casual.

  ‘She sees me every day.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ persisted Alethea, determined to keep to the subject at all costs now she had started it. ‘But you did say that she was a very old friend. I expected her to…I thought we might see more of her—she hasn’t been at all.’

  Sarre had his eyes closed again. ‘Jealous, my dear?’ he asked softly.

  She flared up at once. There was no expression on his face at all, and she suddenly wanted to stir him up.

  ‘No,’ she told him waspishly. ‘How could I be? One must love someone to be jealous of them.’

  ‘You’re wrong, my dear. If one loves enough, there is no jealousy.’ He sat up. ‘What about tea out here? The children will be home presently.’

  Alethea got to her feet. ‘I’ll go and see Mrs McCrea—it’s Al’s half day, he’s gone to the cinema.’

  ‘He’s a keen filmgoer. Is it too short notice if we ask Wienand and his girlfriend round to dinner tomorrow evening? He’s had a lot of work to catch up on, but he tells me he can’t wait to see you again.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mrs McCrea now—she loves dinner parties. Is it the same girl? Marthe?’

  ‘Er—no. The current favourite, and I fancy the final one, is Irene, a small mouselike girl with no looks to speak of. He’s known her for years—her parents are great friends of the family, but he’s always treated her like a rather tiresome small sister.’ He got to his feet and stretched widely. ‘Love is no respecter of persons.’

  Alethea paused on her way. ‘Do you like her?’

  ‘Yes, she’s right for Wienand.’

  And Alethea had to agree with him when Wienand and Irene arrived the following evening. Wienand greeted her extravagantly. ‘And what do you think of my Irene?’ he wanted to know when he’d finished hugging her.

  Alethea smiled at the girl and put out a hand. ‘What an impossible question to answer!’ she laughed, and slipped an arm through Irene’s. ‘I think you must be an angel to put up with Wienand in the first place—come over here and tell me how you manage to do it.’

  Sarre had been right, Irene was mouselike; small and dainty with a face that just failed to be pretty and soft brown hair, she was also desperately shy. Alethea set herself the task of making her feel at home and succeeded so well that by the time they sat down to table Irene was quite enjoying herself. Alethea, watching Wienand, decided that he really was in love this time, and with someone who would suit him very well. Irene might be shy, but she had a lovely smile and a charming voice and she dressed well. The evening passed off very well and when their visitors had gone, Alethea said in a satisfied voice: ‘He’s really in love with her, isn’t he—and she’s a dear.’

  ‘Matchmaking, Alethea?’ Sarre sounded amused.

  ‘No, it’s just nice to see two people so happy…’ She looked away, thinking of Nick.

  ‘You still think of him, Alethea?’ Sarre’s voice was as placid as usual.

  ‘Not often.’ She smiled at him. ‘I think I’ll go up to bed, I’ve a lot to do tomorrow before we go.’ She wished him goodnight and went to her room, and only when she was on the point of getting into bed did she remember that she had promised Jacomina that she would ask her father if he would drop her off at school in the morning because her bike needed repairing. She slipped into her dressing gown and pattered downstairs; she hadn’t heard him come up to bed, he would be in his study still.

  She made no sound, although the old house creaked and sighed all around her and the tick-tock of the great Friesian clock in the hall dripped with soft deliberation into the silence. She gained the hall and slipped down its length to where she could see the study door, half open. The powerful reading lamp on Sarre’s desk was on, shining on to his head and face, and she paused to look at him. He looked bone weary, every line of his face highlighted. He looked sad, too, and the sudden surge of feeling which gripped her was so strong that she stopped dead in her tracks. It was with the greatest difficulty that she prevented herself from rushing madly to him and throwing her arms round him and begging him not to look like that. It was more than she could bear, she told herself, and how could she ever have thought that she was in love with Nick when all the time it was Sarre she loved?

  She stood, staring her fill at him, sitting there, unconscious of her peering at him from the darkened hall until presently, unable to trust herself to speak to him about something so mundane as a bicycle, she turned and crept back to her room where she climbed into her enormous bed, to sit up against her pillows and think what to do. Why, for a start, did Sarre look so dreadfully unhappy? Had something gone wrong at the hospital? Was he worried about a patient? Was he thinking about Anna? She shied away from the idea, but it persisted, thrusting itself into the forefront of her thoughts, so that presently that was all she was thinking about. She took a long time to go to sleep, because she had to go over all the conversations she had had with Sarre to try and find some clue, and then, tired out, she gave up worrying and allowed herself the luxury of a little daydreaming. She woke once during the night and promised herself that she would try and find out in the morning if there was something worrying him.

  But when she got downstairs, a little earlier than usual because she was so anxious to be with him, she found it quite impossible. His good morning was as placid as usual, not a trace of worry was on his face, his manner towards her was just as usual, friendly. He received her request about Jacomina with perfect equanimity, wanted to know if she were ready to leave with him directly after lunch and made a few casual remarks about his appointments for the morning. With eyes made sharp by love, she studied his face covertly, loving every line of it. Whatever had been making him look like that the night before, he had thrust out of sight—her sight.

  He got up to go presently, stopping to drop a swift kiss on her cheek. She felt herself stiffen as he did so and could have wept when he drew back quickly and with a brief: ‘I’ll see you at lunch,’ left the room, calling to Jacomina as he did so.

  She was ready and waiting when he got back, with a cold lunch on the table, her overnight bag in the hall and her case in Al’s care ready to load. She was wearing a new outfit, a blue patterned skirt and blouse with a little matching quilted waistcoat, and she had taken great care with her hair and face, not admitting to herself that it was a kind of insurance against the swift coolness she had felt when Sarre had left that morning. Her fault too. She need not have worried; he
greeted her in his usual placid way, enquired if she would be ready to leave as soon as they’d had lunch, informed her that he had decided to take the Jaguar instead of the Bristol, and asked where the children had got to. Before she could answer him, they arrived, launched themselves at him boisterously, begged him to bring them a present from Hamburg and sat down to eat their lunch. Alethea, working away at a pleasant general conversation, found them ultra-polite, ready to answer if she spoke to them, careful to see that she had all she wanted and at the same time, just when she thought that she was getting somewhere, switching to Dutch, so that she was left out of the conversation. Never for long, of course, Sarre saw to that. She only hoped that the cold-shouldering she was getting wasn’t as obvious to him as it was to her.

  It was a relief to be in the car at last, with the prospect of several days with Sarre. It was exciting, and she tried not to show it too much, asking questions about their journey and his work in Hamburg, talking about the children because she sensed that he would like that, and presently, when they reached and crossed the German border, there were questions to ask about the country they were going through. They stopped for tea at a pleasant little café outside Oldenburg, half way through their two-hundred-mile journey, and soon after joined the motorway.

  The Hamburg skyline was clear against the early evening sky as they neared the city; lovely slender spires and the ugly rectangles of modern buildings thrusting up into the blue above them. Alethea took her interested gaze off them long enough to look admiringly at Sarre and exclaim: ‘You do know your way around, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been before—oh, several times, and I only know the main streets of the city. We’re going to the hospital first, if you don’t mind—it’s over there, you can see it already, that large square building; it has more than a thousand beds. Then we’ll go on to the hotel.’

  He invited her to go in with him when they reached the hospital, but she refused nicely and was glad of it when she saw the faint relief on his face.

  ‘I’ll be about ten minutes,’ he told her. ‘If I’m much longer than that I’ll send someone out with a message.’

  He was as good as his word and Alethea jeered silently at herself for the panic she had been in until she had seen him coming unhurriedly out of the hospital again. He had two men with him, who accompanied him to the car and who were introduced as two of his colleagues, who bowed over her hand and looked her over with interest, expressing the wish that she would enjoy her brief stay. On their way once more, she waited for Sarre to tell her something of them, but his laconic: ‘Well, that’s settled,’ seemed to be the sum of any information she could expect.

  She murmured something she hoped sounded like wifely agreement and then as they reached the Binnenalster, exclaimed excitedly: ‘Oh, Sarre, look, all that beautiful water and the yachts!’

  ‘It’s rather nice, isn’t it? The Outer Alster is very much larger. The street we’re in now is called the Virgin’s Passage. In the Middle Ages it was very select; all the rich merchants lived here, and their daughters took their daily walks by the lake. It was so select that no one was allowed to carry a basket or have a dog with them. It’s still considered select. There’s a very good hotel here, but an even better one—much quieter and smaller—on the shores of the Aussenalster.’

  He turned into a busy city street and Alethea caught a glimpse of shops before seeing the lake again, this time stretching out of sight, its banks lined with trees and grass, its smooth water ruffled by small ferry boats going from side to side, and any number of sailing boats.

  ‘Now we’re in the Alsterufer,’ Sarre told her. ‘It leads to the Harvestehuder Weg—the hotel’s just along here, in front of the park alongside the lake.’

  It looked delightful, white-painted, its windowsills ablaze with red geraniums, set amidst a formal garden. Sarre turned the car off the road into the short drive and stopped before the entrance and while a porter saw to the luggage, ushered her inside.

  They had rooms overlooking the lake, and in the gathering twilight, it looked quite beautiful. Alethea, hanging over her balcony in order to watch the swans and ducks on the water, turned when Sarre spoke to her from the door.

  ‘I’m operating in the morning,’ he observed, ‘and I’m afraid I shall have to go back after dinner for a consultation. Will you be all right here on your own? If you like you could go shopping in the morning—I can drop you off as I go. You’ll find the shops very good, only please take a taxi back here. I hope to get away in the afternoon, but it’s possible that I shan’t be free until seven o’clock or thereabouts.’

  She wasn’t going to let him see how disappointed she was at the prospect of a whole day without him. ‘I’d love to poke around,’ she assured him cheerfully. ‘I’ve been reading up a lot about Hamburg, and there’s a street of little frame houses I want to go and look at.’

  ‘The Kramer Amtsstuben,’ he replied. ‘I know where they are. I don’t have to be at the hospital until nine o’clock. If you don’t mind getting up early I’ll take you there and then drop you off in the Monckeberg Strasse—that’s where the shops are.’

  She would at least see him for a short time; she agreed readily and, she hoped, not too eagerly, and agreed again when he suggested a stroll by the lake before they changed for the evening.

  It was incredibly peaceful, right in the heart of the city and yet surrounded by trees and shrubs, the grass under their feet going to the water’s edge. The sailing boats and dinghies had finished for the day, and there, by the quiet lake, they might have been miles from anywhere, only as they retraced their steps Alethea could see the lights of the city shining over the far end of the water. They stopped for a minute and she pointed across to the opposite shore. ‘That looks delightful over there.’ And indeed it did, the grass and the trees and beyond them the dim outlines of large villas against the sky.

  ‘Bellevue,’ Sarre told her. ‘Napoleon stayed here once and remarked “Quelle belle vue” when he saw it for the first time, and it’s been Bellevue ever since. A very wealthy neighbourhood, so I understand.’

  As wealthy as the neighbourhood in which they lived in Groningen, thought Alethea wryly.

  ‘Do you speak German?’ asked Sarre casually as he took her arm and they walked on.

  ‘Bitte,’ said Alethea promptly, and he roared with laughter.

  ‘One of the most useful words in the language,’ he assured her, ‘and you’re so pretty that you don’t need to know even that.’

  She was glad of the gathering darkness so that he wouldn’t see how red her face was. ‘Oh, well,’ she stammered, ‘that’s nice of you to say so…’ and hoped he would say more, but he only suggested that it was time they returned to the hotel.

  She put on a new dress, pink crêpe patterned in a deep rose, and her heart gave a little leap of pleasure at Sarre’s approving look when she joined him in the bar. It went on leaping for most of that evening, for he kept looking at her with open admiration during their dinner and said presently, when they got up to dance: ‘I think I’m the envy of every man in the room, my dear.’

  Alethea could have danced the night through after that, but when for form’s sake she suggested that she should go to bed, he agreed so readily that she wondered if she had imagined the look on his face just because she had so much wanted him to admire her. She wished him a rather brief goodnight and only then remembered that he hadn’t returned to the hospital. But he hadn’t forgotten, it seemed; he had arranged to go late in the evening, so that she hadn’t needed to be alone. She said ‘Oh’, in a startled little voice, and felt tears prick her eyelids. ‘Now I feel selfish…’

  He smiled down at her. ‘It is I who am selfish, keeping you to myself all the evening, my dear.’ He bent to kiss her cheek. ‘Goodnight.’

  It was a glorious morning and Alethea was up early to dress and knock on Sarre’s door half an hour later. He was sitting at a small desk writing and she said at once: ‘Oh, sorry—I’ll go down, shal
l I?’

  He had got to his feet at once. ‘I was filling in time. I hope you slept?’

  She nodded. ‘And you? They didn’t keep you too late at the hospital?’

  He told her a little of what he intended doing that morning; a shattered arm and shoulder which he hoped to piece together again. ‘Probably it will take a good deal of the afternoon as well,’ he told her, ‘and after that there is a foot they’ve asked me to repair.’

  She listened carefully, deeply interested because she was a nurse, and wanting to know everything just because she loved him. But she kept an eye on the clock so that they were away in good time for him to take her to the Kramer Amtsstuben.

  He parked the car by St Michael’s church and crossed the road with her, to lead her down a narrow alley to the old merchants’ houses, lining a small cobbled street, and looking, she supposed, exactly as they must have looked centuries ago. They had been expertly restored and although they were shops or cafés now, their charm was still very evident. Alethea went from side to side and back again, trying to see everything at once, mindful that Sarre had very little time to spare. When he looked at his watch she hurried back to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alethea, but if I’m to drop you off at the shops, we must go.’

  Well, ten minutes with him had been better than nothing at all, she mused beside him in the car once more, although she was out of it again in no time at all. ‘Remember to take a taxi back to the hotel,’ cautioned Sarre, changing gear, ‘and if you’re short of money, there’s some in the top drawer of the chest in my room.’

  He had gone, easing the big car into the morning traffic, disappearing far too quickly from her view.

  Alethea shook off the feeling of being lost without him and took herself to the nearest store, where she whiled away an hour before finding her way to the pavilion by the Binnenalster and drinking a cup of very expensive coffee. She went back to the shops after that, to buy presents for the children, and her grandmother, Mrs Bustle and lastly for the staff in Groningen, an exercise which kept her busy until lunch time, when she obediently took a taxi back to the hotel, had her lunch and then went for a walk by the lake. The afternoon was as brilliantly fine as the morning had been. She walked the considerable length of the lake, keeping to the narrow path running round its edge, and then turned to hurry back, afraid that Sarre might have got back early after all.