Cassandra by Chance

by Betty Neels

  ‘So you will have a day off tomorrow, Cassandra,’ said Benedict.

  ‘But I haven’t worked long enough.’

  ‘Let us not argue about that,’ and this time his voice was remote and commanding. ‘I suppose Cassandra will take over Lulu’s room?’

  ‘Lulu?’ she was surprised into saying, ‘What a funny name—for a nurse I mean.’

  ‘Her own name is even funnier. No girl likes to be called Harmonia.’

  Cassandra choked back a laugh and Mijnheer van Tromp explained:

  ‘Lulu has a room just across the street from my house. It is a very pleasant room and I think you will be quite comfortable there. Shall Mevrouw Schat expect you tomorrow evening?’

  ‘Very well—I’ll come after tea.’

  ‘Dinner,’ interposed Benedict quietly. ‘Don’t forget that we are having a small gathering of friends tomorrow evening, Cor. Afterwards will do, I take it?’

  He turned his face to Cassandra and said mildly, ‘And before you speak out of turn, Cassandra, we shall be delighted to have your company tomorrow evening. Tante Beatrix will be desolated if you refuse.’

  Hypnotized by the dark glasses, she found herself accepting meekly; she would have to have dinner somewhere, and she supposed the green would do—she really needed another dress. ‘It won’t be a big party?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘If you are thinking about clothes and suchlike nonsense, there is no need. Anything will do.’

  She loved him with all her heart, but how annoying a man could be! She was on the point of contradicting him flatly when Mijnheer van Tromp said quickly, ‘I’m sure you will look very nice, Cassandra. Then I can rest assured that you will stay until my new nurse comes?’ He had turned his back on his partner.

  ‘Yes—about how long do you think that will be?’

  He looked suddenly vague. ‘Oh, a week—ten days. You will be home for Christmas.’

  The prospect gave her no pleasure. How would her dear ogre spend Christmas, she wondered, and how many more pretty girls did he number amongst his acquaintances? She gave him a swift glance; his face was turned towards her, he might not be able to see her clearly, all the same she assumed a pleased expression. ‘That will be delightful,’ she told them.

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ he had looked away from her and now he walked towards the door, his stick sweeping an invisible path before him. ‘Shall we go and have a drink with Tante Beatrix?’

  The evening passed off very well; Cassandra kept as far away from Benedict as she could, occupying herself exclusively with the old lady and when he showed signs of breaking into their conversation, she transferred her attention to his partner. At the end of the evening she was able to congratulate herself on her strategy, for they had exchanged barely a dozen words or so. At last she slipped quietly from the room and started up the stairs, then gave a soundless shriek as Benedict came across the hall and caught her around the waist. He had his glasses off again and even though the light was dim, she felt called upon to point this out to him. Benedict said something in his own language which sounded blunt, to say the least of it. ‘You have avoided me for the entire evening,’ he pointed out, this time in English. ‘Why?’

  She stood still, wary of his arm. ‘Indeed I have not,’ she assured him mendaciously, and took a tentative step backwards.

  ‘When you tell fibs the tip of your nose quivers.’ He was laughing at her. He was still laughing as he bent his head to kiss her with such gentleness that she felt tears in her eyes. When he let her go she hurried up the stairs, to pause when he called after her, ‘You’ll come with me tomorrow, you aren’t being fired until the evening—and don’t wear uniform, Cassandra!’

  They were at the hospital in Utrecht by nine o’clock the following morning, and this time she stayed with Jan in the car. She watched Benedict, who had been met at the entrance by Mijnheer Viske, walk briskly away. Her eyes were glued on his disappearing back when Jan said, ‘Half an hour for the check-up, Miss Cassandra, and another half an hour for a final look at his eyes, do you not think? And then he must try his new spectacles, and of course they will talk. You are happy to sit here, or you wish for a little drive?’

  She said quickly, ‘Let’s stay here, Jan, just in case...’ she left the thought unspoken, but he understood, for he said at once:

  ‘Don’t worry, he will be all right. To pass the time I will tell you about my daughter and my wife, that is if you would like to hear—it is not altogether nice, the story...perhaps you would rather not know, after all?’

  ‘But I would—you don’t mind? It won’t be too painful for you to remember?’

  His laugh was bitter. ‘The pain remains, deep inside me, and I remember for always. If it had not been for Mijnheer, I should have gone mad.’

  Cassandra turned a little in her seat. ‘Tell me,’ she urged him.

  ‘I met Mijnheer van Manfeld in this hospital. I had lost my memory, you see, I did not know who I was—to this day I do not know. They took me off the streets and because I had something very wrong with my throat he came to see me. He saw these too,’ he touched the sleeve of his coat lightly, ‘and he guessed, and because I could not understand his language, he tried others—French, English, German, and when he spoke German I became enraged and spoke my own tongue, and as good fortune would have it, he understood a little of what I said, for he has a small knowledge of Polish. He took me to his home as soon as I was well, and asked me no questions but let me work—in the garden, round the house and then driving the car. And slowly there were things I remembered, terrible things, and he shared them with me; he made me see reason again; he dragged me back to life and even contentment. He was a young man then, for it was twelve years ago—barely twenty-four and a registrar at this hospital where he is now a senior consultant.’

  ‘But the war had been over for fifteen years when he found you...’

  ‘There were some who were lost or forgotten or who, like myself, wandered through Europe looking for their wives and children, their parents—anyone who belonged to them.’

  She put a hand on his arm. ‘Jan, how terrible, and I’m so very sorry, but I’m glad too that Mijnheer van Manfeld found you. No wonder you are such good friends. Don’t you remember what you did before...?’

  ‘No. I was, I think, adequately educated, but you see I don’t know my name—I am not sure of my age, but I believe that I am about sixty, perhaps older. I do not remember what part of Poland I came from, Mijnheer has taken me back there to try and discover—but it was impossible; I can remember nothing of it.’

  ‘But you remember that you have—had a wife and daughter.’

  He looked straight ahead of him, his hands clenched on the wheel. ‘Yes, they took us away, but not together. My wife and daughter one way and I another. They laughed about it.’

  Cassandra wanted to cry. ‘There’s no chance?’ she began gently.

  He smiled at her. ‘No—only if there should be a miracle. You see, Mijnheer has done everything—he has spent time and much effort and a great deal of money—he is a good man, Miss Cassandra.’

  They were still talking quietly when Benedict came out of the hospital, accompanied by Mijnheer Viske and the radiologist. He wasn’t wearing the dark glasses any more, but tinted ones. They made him look different, and if possible, even more handsome. He paused at the entrance just long enough to say good-bye and then came quickly to the car.

  ‘Move over, Jan,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m driving.’

  Cassandra, without being asked, got out and got in the back and sat silent while he drove back the way he had come, along the motorway, and very fast. Beyond a brief, smiling nod, he hadn’t spoken to her, but he and Jan talked, and in their own language, so that she was unable to understand a word, but they seemed pleased with themselves and when he said over one shoulder, ‘Well, Cassandra,
what do you think of my new glasses?’ she said brightly, ‘Oh, super—how wonderful you must feel.’

  He nodded, his eyes on the road, and didn’t speak to her again until he drew up outside the house.

  ‘Get in the front,’ he ordered, ‘we’re going to have the rest of the day off.’ He grinned at Jan, who didn’t seem in the least surprised but waved and smiled and went indoors as Benedict turned the car and took it back through Rhenen’s main street again. They were going towards Utrecht once more, but on the edge of the town he took a narrow road on the left which wound uphill—the first hill she remembered being on since she had arrived in Holland. There were a few houses to begin with, then nothing but trees and shrubs until they came abruptly on to its flattened top. There was a tall square tower with a pointed turret there, and around it and built into it, a hotel.

  ‘We’re going to have lunch here,’ said Benedict, ‘but first we’ll go for a walk—there’s a splendid view.’

  She got out obediently and he took her arm and walked her past the hotel on to a narrow path between the trees of the wood which crowned the hill’s top. They thinned presently to allow them to see the Rhine beyond and below them, and still further away, the Waal, very clear in the sharp winter morning. ‘It’s lonely here,’ he remarked. ‘We haven’t been alone—really alone, since we came back to Rhenen.’

  She shot him a puzzled look. ‘I hadn’t noticed that you wanted to be, and we went for that drive.’

  ‘Yes,’ his mouth curved in a smile but he didn’t pursue the subject which she found a pity, instead he asked, ‘You like the idea of working for van Tromp?’

  ‘Yes, very much. I hope I shan’t get into too many difficulties with the language, though.’

  They had come to a dried-up stream, not very wide. He strode over, lifted her after him and said, ‘Well, you’ll have to make a start somewhere,’ and kissed her, such a light kiss that it would have been foolish to have taken account of it. He took her arm again and walked her briskly up the hill, with the little wood on one side of them, and fields sloping away on the other.

  ‘It’s nice here,’ said Cassandra, ‘of course that’s why you came, to see the view.’

  She wasn’t looking at him, so she didn’t see him smile and all he said was, ‘We’ll have lunch, shall we?’

  The hotel was nice; comfortable, almost luxurious, with wide views from its windows overlooking the river. The meal was delicious, and it was after two o’clock when at last they got up to go. The afternoon was already dimming into an early dusk as they went out to the car. All the same, Benedict said: ‘A short run, don’t you think?’

  And Cassandra, happy and uncaring of the future, agreed eagerly.

  Back home at Rhenen, she paused in the hall to thank him for her day. ‘It was lovely, and I hadn’t expected it,’ she laughed up at him.

  He went with her to the foot of the staircase. ‘No?’ He kissed her lightly and said on a laugh, ‘I’m beginning to make a habit of that, aren’t I?’

  She answered him seriously. ‘No, it seems to me to be quite a natural thing to do after living a monk’s life for weeks.’

  He was still laughing. ‘Is that what you imagine my raison d’être is? To kiss girls?’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t think that at all,’ she assured him, and fell silent. Then she said, ‘I don’t know anything about you—have you a family?’

  His eyes were bright behind the glasses. ‘No—my parents are dead and I have no brothers or sisters—no family.’ His face became bland. ‘Are you going to urge me to marry and create a family for myself?’

  ‘It isn’t my business to urge you to do anything,’ she pointed out huffily, ‘and even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t, because,’ she went on a little obscurely, ‘if I did you would call me Miss Busybody.’ She paused. ‘Aren’t you lonely?’

  She had asked the question seriously, but his tone was light. ‘If I remember my story books, ogres are lonely.’

  She corrected him earnestly. ‘Oh, no, not all of them. The one on top of the beanstalk had a wife—only she was afraid of him.’

  ‘And have you ever been afraid of anyone, Cassandra?’

  She considered carefully. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘And you’re not afraid of me?’

  She was quite taken aback. ‘Heavens, no. Why?’

  ‘Perhaps you pitied me too much?’

  ‘No. At least, perhaps at first when the children told me about you and when I was in the shop and Jan bought almost no groceries and I thought perhaps you were very poor. That must seem very silly to you, with your great hampers of food—that’s why I made a cake. You weren’t very nice when I called.’

  ‘No. You see I thought you had come out of idle curiosity. It wasn’t until you bounced off, quivering with temper that I knew how very wrong I had been. Jan was very annoyed with me, you see, he fell under your spell the moment he set eyes on you.’

  Her voice was sharp. ‘I don’t know how to weave spells. I’d better go and pack.’

  He had turned away, saying carelessly, ‘Ah, yes, of course. You’re leaving this evening, aren’t you?’

  She was almost at the top of the stairs when he called after her,

  ‘Wear that green dress, you look pretty in it.’

  When she went downstairs later the room was full of people, or so it seemed to her as she went in, and some of them, she saw with relief, she had already met. Benedict, standing by the window talking to a burly man and a striking-looking girl, put down his glass and came across the room to meet her before walking her round, introducing her to those she didn’t know and waiting beside her while she exchanged greetings with those she did. They ended up by the couple he had been talking to; the man he introduced as Doctor van der Pol and the girl as his sister Paula, who, on closer inspection, proved to be older than Cassandra had first thought, but undeniably attractive. She was beautifully turned out too and, worst of all, on the friendliest terms with Benedict, far closer terms than those of his other two visitors, for as they talked she put a hand on his arm and almost at once he covered it with his own with a brief gesture. Cassandra looked away and then looked quickly at his face to find him looking at her, a very faint smile curving his lips, so that she went a bright pink, giving him the hateful opportunity to ask her if she found the room too warm.

  ‘No,’ she said coldly, and turned away.

  The dinner was a leisurely one, and it was only when Tante Beatrix had led the ladies from the room, because she was old-fashioned enough to consider that the men should be left to themselves for a little while, that Cassandra saw that it was almost ten o’clock.

  ‘You look anxious,’ said Paula beside her. ‘Are you tired, perhaps?’

  Cassandra explained that she was to leave that evening and Paula said pleasantly, ‘Oh, yes, Benedict told me. I shouldn’t worry, arrangements will have been made.’ She looked over her shoulder as she spoke and went on, ‘Here they are—Benedict, here is Cassandra very worried because she feels that she is forgotten. You will reassure her?’

  ‘Of course,’ he was smiling. ‘Van Tromp will leave in about half an hour, Cassandra, and will take you with him. You’re ready, I expect?’ He went on in careless apology, ‘I should have told you sooner, shouldn’t I?’ He turned to Paula. ‘We have been talking about Christmas—we shall be far apart, all of us—you in Scotland, Cassandra, and Paula in Canada, and van Tromp in France, even Teake will be away...’

  ‘And you?’ Cassandra asked because she simply had to know.

  He allowed his glance to drop momentarily to her face. ‘I? Not here.’

  She bade her quiet good-byes after that and went and fetched her things, then said good-bye to Jan and Miep. She had only been in the house a few days, and yet she felt sad at leaving it and sadder still because she was leaving Benedict.
>
  She found him in the hall with his partner. ‘Ready?’ he asked her, far too cheerfully. ‘No need to say good-bye, I’m sure to see you. Good luck with the job.’

  She put out a hand because everyone shook hands, didn’t they? At least she had learnt that. He took it and said seriously, ‘Thank you, Cassandra, for everything,’ and went to open the door. She followed Mijnheer van Tromp through it, out to his big Citroen car, got in beside him, and didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE JOURNEY WAS so short it seemed hardly worth while to have got into the car. Cassandra, her mind still full of Benedict, found herself getting out almost immediately and following Mijnheer van Tromp through the door of a little gabled house in a row of similar houses.

  ‘Mevrouw Schat will be in the kitchen,’ he told her. ‘She will take you to your room, and tomorrow at half past seven she will give you your breakfast and then come across the street to my house—number seventeen—my name is on the door. Lulu will be there and will show you everything. You will work with her until midday, so that you can learn the—the...’

  ‘Ropes,’ supplied Cassandra. ‘I’ll be there. Thank you for bringing me and arranging everything, I hope Mevrouw Schat...’

  The lady bearing that name joined them at that moment. The hall was small and narrow; she was a large woman, not fat, but strongly built and tall, so that the hall seemed even smaller than it was. They all went into the kitchen, a small, very neat place, not in the least modern but cosy, with a great many pot plants on shelves and bright gingham curtains. Mevrouw Schat, having shaken hands with great vigour, broke into voluble talk. She went on for some time and when she paused for breath Cassandra said, ‘I’m not sure if this is going to work, Mijnheer van Tromp. I have no idea what she’s saying.’

  He smiled at her in a kindly fashion. ‘She says nothing important, only that Lulu left her room today and she hopes that you will be comfortable while you are here, and that you will come downstairs for your breakfast at half past seven exactly. Would you like me to stay for a little while, or will you be all right?’