The Fifth Day of Christmas

by Betty Neels

  In consequence the next morning she presented a pale face at breakfast, and when Ivo asked her kindly if she would rather not go with him to Oisterwijk, she snapped, ‘Of course I shall come—why do you ask?’ and frowned so forbiddingly that he said mildly, ‘well, don’t slay me, Julia. I only wondered if you felt too tired.’

  She poured a second cup of coffee. ‘I’m not in the least tired,’ she informed him haughtily, and was even crosser when he said carelessly,

  ‘Oh, good, just bad-tempered.’

  The desire to say something telling concerning those who worked and those who sat at home doing nothing, while quite unfair, was nevertheless very great. Against her better judgment she had her mouth open to utter something along these lines when Doctor van den Werff forestalled her by remarking smoothly that as she had been such a great help on the previous evening he hoped that she would be prepared to lend a hand that evening as well. ‘I shall be finished at Beizel by midday,’ he went on, ‘so Nurse and I will join you two and the team coming out from Tilburg. We should finish some time tomorrow.’

  He gave her a smile of great charm and turned to Ivo. ‘We should get the results of the culture by midday,’ he observed. ‘I hope we caught it in time…thank God most of the babies had been at least partly immunised.’

  The conversation was on safe ground once more and stayed so for the remainder of the meal and during the short drive to the schoolhouse, although Julia, for her part, remained a little cold. He had, after all, accused her of being bad-tempered.

  The day went much the same as the previous one had, although now that there were more doctors and nurses they got through many more patients. But they still kept on coming; not only from Oisterwijk itself but from the outlying farms and smallholdings and hamlets tucked away in the heath surrounding the little town.

  Between twelve and two o’clock they went, team by team, to eat a quick lunch, and Julia, whose temper was quite restored, found herself looking forward to half an hour in Ivo’s company; she was of course in his company now, and had been all the morning, but working together was not the same as just being together; they had exchanged barely half a dozen words and those concerned their work. It was a pity that just as they were leaving the schoolhouse, someone should come after them with a message that Ivo was wanted on the telephone. She crossed the street alone and went into the coffee room, where she ordered their coffee and ham rolls and sat down to wait—half an hour wasn’t long and five minutes of it had gone already. Ivo came shortly after, though; there was still twenty minutes of time—away from work perhaps she could steer the conversation round to the vexed question of when she was to leave. It was like turning the knife in a wound to bring it up, but Marcia had mentioned it twice already; had in fact disclaimed her need for a nurse any longer. She was only still with them because they needed another pair of hands.

  Her carefully laid plans were wasted; all Ivo talked about were the results of the CSF cultures—the first one was through and it was positive, as everyone had expected it would be. She listened to him speculating as to how many more cases they might expect, nodding agreement to his quick-thinking statistics as though she had worked them out for herself, whereas she wasn’t actually listening at all.

  ‘Wasted breath,’ said Ivo suddenly, and she pinkened under his quizzical look. She said, ‘Yes—no, that is, it’s very interesting. Ivo, I want to ask you, when am I…’ to be interrupted by his brisk, ‘Time we went back, come along.’

  He got to his feet and paid the bill, then accompanied her back to the schoolhouse, where they were once more plunged in work and spoke hardly a word to each other until four o’clock when their relief arrived.

  Julia had hoped to talk to him again on the way home; there would be time between his visits, but today he didn’t give her the opportunity to go with him but drove her straight back to the house, set her down at the door, said that he would be back in an hour or so and tore off down the lane again.

  She felt better when she had bathed and put on another uniform. She did her face and hair carefully and dabbed a little Chanel Number Five here and there; it might not be quite the thing for a girl in uniform, but it gave her a badly needed uplift, and she might need that because Marcia would be the only one in the sitting room and Marcia wanted her out of the way. She went slowly downstairs and slowed to a halt half-way down, because the sitting room door had opened and Marcia and August de Winter were standing together silhouetted against the soft glow of the room’s lamps. Julia watched them as they kissed, too surprised to move, and went on watching as Mijnheer de Winter crossed the hall and let himself out into the evening, while Marcia went back into the sitting room and shut the door gently. Only then did Julia continue on her way, wondering if what she had just seen had been actual fact or just her tired imagination. She stood for a few moments in the hall, listening for a car, but there was no sound; Mijnheer de Winter had either walked or parked his car somewhere along the road. She opened the sitting room door and went in. Marcia was draped on one of the sofas, languidly turning the pages of some tome or other, but she looked up as Julia went in and said, ‘Oh, there you are. Well, at least you’re someone—I have been lonely all day by myself.’

  ‘And that,’ said Julia vulgarly and in a towering rage, ‘is a load of old trot! I’ve just this minute seen you and Mijnheer de Winter kissing each other goodbye. Has he been here all day? I suppose that just because Ivo said he would do his visits after the clinic, you banked on me being with him and not coming home until five or thereabouts. Well, I came home at four!’ She crossed the room and stood in front of Marcia, glowing with indignation. ‘You seem to think that the whole lot of us are blind and deaf to your goings-on. Well, I for one am not! It’s sickening the way you bleat to Ivo about your loneliness and self-sacrifice and bravery each time you see him, while all the time you’re none of these things.’

  Julia drew a deep breath, looking quite magnificent. ‘You are,’ she said clearly and unhurriedly, ‘a complete fraud. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you—Oh, you had polio, but not as badly as you would have everyone believe, and you’ve recovered from it weeks ago. I suppose when you came here to stay you had made up your mind to marry Ivo—you bamboozled him into feeling responsible for you getting polio in the first place, didn’t you, because he persuaded you to go to a party where there was someone already infected—but I doubt if that was ever proved. I expect you put the idea into everyone’s head and no one thought to disbelieve you. Well, I disbelieve you, Marcia. And then you met August de Winter, but you had to go on pretending you loved Ivo, didn’t you, so that you could stay here and you could see your August as often as possible while he made up his mind.’ She stared down at Marcia, her dark eyes flashing with her wrath. ‘You’re a harpy,’ she said deliberately, ‘and a complete fraud!’ Then she sat down and waited to hear what Marcia would say.

  For once Marcia found words difficult to come by and when she did speak her low measured voice had become almost strident.

  ‘How dare you—’ she began, and then with a vicious little smile, ‘You’re in love with Ivo, aren’t you? I know that—that’s why I said I didn’t want you any more. I don’t want him, not now, but I’ll take good care that you don’t get him. Don’t think you’ll get away with anything, dear, dear Julia, for you won’t. What I intend to do is my own business, but you’ll know soon enough…’ She broke off as Bep came in with the tea tray, murmuring, ‘’N beetje laat,’ as she set it down by Julia, and Julia wondered if she and Marcia would have stayed silent for ever and ever if Bep hadn’t been late.

  They drank their tea in silence and when they had finished Marcia went back to her book, just as though Julia wasn’t there, while Julia picked up Elsevier’s Weekblad and turned to the small ads page, because by reading the columns of bedsitters to let and help in the house wanted, she had picked up several useful words. They were still sitting, the picture of silent companionship, when Doctor van den Werff came in an hour l
ater. He left again after a few pleasantries, pleading work in his surgery, and was followed shortly after by Ivo, who came in, sat down and drank the cup of coffee Bep insisted that he should have, talking idly as he did so, before getting up in his turn. He was halfway to the door when Marcia said with gentle firmness, ‘Ivo, I want to talk to you—could you manage a few minutes some time this evening?’

  He stood with his hand on the door and said with his usual courtesy, ‘Why, of course, Marcia. After surgery, I should think—no, we had better say after dinner. We can be comfortable in my study.’ He glanced at the great Zaandse clock on the wall. ‘I must go now, though—surgery starts in ten minutes and I’ve some telephone calls to make first.’

  He left the room and a few minutes later Julia got up and went out of the room too to admit the first patient. Neither Marcia nor Julia looked at each other as she went, nor did they speak.

  The surgery went well, although it was packed out. Halfway through it Julia slipped into Doctor van den Werff’s surgery and asked,

  ‘Shall I ask Bep to delay supper?—the waiting room’s still full.’

  He looked up from the notes he was reading. ‘Do that, Julia. How many patients are there still to see?’

  ‘Four for Ivo, six for you.’

  ‘I wonder if they’re quick ones?’ He started to shuffle through the patients’ cards before him in a rather untidy fashion. Julia took them away from him, restored them to order and said,

  ‘An old man with ear muffs and a Vandyck beard is the next—he’s deaf, then a mother with a baby who’s got the earache; a girl who looks as though she’s going to have twins within the hour, a woman with a black eye, and a fierce old lady with a very small boy who’s got a nasty cold.’

  Dr van den Werff sat back in his chair and laughed. ‘My dear Julia, how very observant you are—shall we tell Bep forty minutes or so?’

  She nodded and went to the door and his voice, so very like his son’s followed, ‘Am I right in thinking that you and Marcia have—er—fallen out?’

  Julia turned to face him. ‘Yes, we’ve quarrelled. How did you know?’

  ‘You must give Ivo the credit for that. He’s perceptive. He’s also very deep; perhaps you didn’t know that?’

  Julia said carefully, ‘It doesn’t really matter if I know or not, does it?’ and went out, shutting the door carefully behind her.

  They sat down to a late dinner presently, and to a conversation which, while easy enough on the part of the two men, sounded decidedly false when the ladies took part, for they were careful not to address each other directly unless it was unavoidable and then with a politeness which was quite awe-inspiring. But neither gentleman gave any hint of unease; they talked at random about the contents of the newspapers, the forthcoming marriage of Jorina and the possibility of skating if the frost held for a few days more. This remark prompted Julia to ask if everyone skated as a matter of course.

  ‘Certainly we do,’ said Ivo. ‘We learn as soon as we can toddle and we skate every winter until our legs grow too stiff to support us. Do you skate, Julia?’

  ‘A little—not very well. I fall down a lot.’

  ‘How fortunate,’ said Marcia sweetly, ‘that there’s plenty of you to take the shock.’ She laughed as she said it so that everyone should know that it was a joke, and Julia, not to be outdone, laughed too.

  ‘Falling down doesn’t matter in the least,’ said Ivo, just as though Marcia hadn’t spoken. ‘We all do it at first. A little practice and you’ll be as good as everyone else.’

  The conversation took on a new lease of life; they talked about sport in its various forms for the rest of the meal. But the meal couldn’t last for ever; presently Julia found herself in the sitting room with Doctor van den Werff, listening to the receding footsteps of Marcia and Ivo crossing the hall to his study.

  They came back almost an hour later, Marcia looking very pleased with herself and Ivo looking bland. Only when Julia looked at him closely she saw that his eyes weren’t bland at all. She sat stubbornly in her chair, looking serenely unaware of anything untoward. If she was to be hauled over the coals then and now, he could get on with it. She told herself she hadn’t any intention of running away, nor was she afraid of him. All the same, when after half an hour of desultory talk, first Marcia and then Doctor van den Werff got up to go to bed, she felt decidedly nervous, but she sat on. She had bought some wool before Christmas to knit herself a sweater; she plied her needles now as though her very life depended on getting it finished within the next hour or so.

  Ivo spoke and she dropped a stitch. ‘You know what Marcia wanted to see me about?’

  She skewered the stitch. ‘Yes—at least I think I do.’

  ‘Did you call her a fraud, Julia?’

  Her needles click-clacked along half a row. ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘No harm in asking,’ said Julia flippantly, and fell to counting stitches.

  ‘You also called her a harpy?’

  ‘Thirty-six, thirty-seven…’ she raised her head. ‘Quite right.’ After a moment she asked, ‘Did I say thirty-seven?’

  He said nastily, ‘Put that damn knitting down—you’re only using it to hide behind.’

  Julia flared up at this undoubtedly true remark. ‘I am not! I could have sneaked off to bed…’

  ‘And I,’ he said silkily, ‘would have come and hauled you out again.’ He got up and walked to the window and back again. ‘Why did you do it, Julia? Why in heaven’s name…’ He came to a halt in front of her chair and stood looking down at her. His voice was calm now even though she was aware that he was seething with rage. ‘Couldn’t you have left well alone?’

  She wondered what he meant by that. She began, ‘Do you know—’ and stopped. Impossible to tell him about August de Winter being there that afternoon; for a moment she wondered if that was what Marcia had told him too, in which case he already knew. But he didn’t, for he said in a reasonable voice—the kind of voice an exasperated grown-up might have used to an annoying child—’Marcia had been alone all day; probably she had become lonely and low-spirited, and you burst in without any warning and call her a—a harpy!’ A muscle at the side of his mouth twitched as he said it.

  Julia gathered up her knitting. ‘Is that what she told you?’ she asked. ‘Then why bother to ask me? I’m so obviously in the wrong, aren’t I?’

  She got to her feet and swept out of the room, her lovely head high. In her room she undressed rapidly and when she was ready for bed, sat down and laboriously unpicked the knitting she had done, for the pattern was sadly awry, crying silently as she did so.

  She was greeted at breakfast by Doctor van den Werff’s friendly good morning and by Ivo’s bland pleasantness. Both gentlemen, after taking a searching glance at her face, refrained from hoping that she had had a good night, desired her to help herself to anything she required, and went back to the discussion they had been having when she joined them.

  ‘I shall go to Sneek,’ said Doctor van den Werff. ‘Your grandfather’s house is there and empty most of the year. I shall enjoy living in it and I can indulge in a little gentle sailing when I feel like it. And of course you can all come for holidays whenever you wish; think how convenient it will be to send the children up to me later on.’ He added a little wistfully, ‘Your mother was very happy there.’

  Ivo said, ‘Yes,’ in a quiet voice and then more briskly, ‘A little young to retire, isn’t it, Vader?’ He smiled across the table. ‘Barely sixty.’

  ‘Oh, I daresay I’ll do a little part-time work of some sort, but I shall enjoy my freedom. You’ll need a partner, Ivo. Theo, if he’ll consider it in a year or so.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but there’s time enough…a year, two. You’re not in too great a hurry, I hope, Vader?’

  ‘No, and there’s a good deal to be done to the house in Sneek—’ He went on to enumerate such alterations as he had in mind and Julia stared at her empty plate, half listening. So
Ivo had made a decision to marry Marcia; yesterday evening probably when they had been so long in his study and Marcia had looked so pleased with herself—as well she might with the prospect of living in the lovely old house for the rest of her days and with Ivo for a husband. She finished her coffee and when the doctor paused she said in a quiet little voice,

  ‘I should like to return to England as soon as it can be arranged, doctor. I—I’ve been offered a job in my old hospital. They don’t want to wait and I’m not needed here any more; I’m only wasting your money.’

  If Doctor van den Werff was surprised at her request, shot at him out of the blue in such a fashion, he said nothing about it, merely looked at her with sharp blue eyes and said, ‘Ah, yes, of course, Julia. We shall finish at the school today, so supposing we have a little talk—let me see—tomorrow morning. That gives us plenty of time.’

  She agreed, wondering why they should need time; he must have known that it was time for her to leave them. She went to get her coat and came downstairs in time to hear Ivo say, ‘I’ll deal with it in my own way…’ He stopped when he saw her and she was left to speculate as to exactly what he was intending to deal with. She sat in the car beside him, cudgelling her brains, and came to no conclusion at all. They were almost in Oisterwijk when he asked, ‘This job—have you been offered it, Julia?’

  She was, on the whole, a truthful girl, so she said now, ‘Well, not exactly—but they said when I left they would always have me back.’

  ‘So you have arranged nothing? You have no job to go to?’

  She said crossly, because he had found her out in her small deception.