by Betty Neels
It was in the small hours of the morning that Augusta was wakened by Tante Emma, wrapped untidily in a voluminous dressing gown and looking quite distraught. ‘Your dear aunt,’ she said, a little wildly. ‘She’s ill—dying, I believe.’
Augusta got out of bed. She said in an instinctively soothing voice:
‘All right, Tante Emma,’ her mind already busy. That sickness—but there hadn’t been any other symptoms unless Tante Marijna had been holding out on her. She flung her pale pink housecoat over its matching nightie, pushed her feet into heelless slippers, said a trifle breathlessly to her aunt, ‘Don’t hurry, darling—I’ll go down,’ and was off down the stairs, her bright hair flying, her feet making no sound on the thick carpet. Outside Tante Marijna’s door she stopped and then went in with deliberate, calm steps and no trace of worry upon her face.
The old lady lay against her pillows, very pale. Her blue eyes were resolutely open while the sweat trickled slowly down her drawn face. Augusta went to the bedside, possessed herself of her aunt’s hand and took her pulse, saying at the same time, ‘Hullo, Tante Marijna—is there a pain in your chest?’
The lids dropped over the anxious blue eyes, giving her the answer she had expected. She said gently, ‘Keep very still, darling—you’re going to be all right, but I have to fetch the doctor.’ She smiled reassuringly and turned to Tante Emma who had just come into the room.
‘Will you stay here while I telephone him—is the number in the book on the hall table?’
Tante Emma nodded and Augusta flew down another flight of stairs and picked up the receiver. Dr van Lindemann—she noted the name and dialled the number.
The voice that answered her sounded alert and calm and merely stated its name and didn’t interrupt at all while she gave her brief details, being careful to get the Dutch as correct as she could, although she fancied, thinking about it afterwards, that she might have muddled a few verbs. However, she must have made sense, for the voice said crisply that yes, he would be round in ten minutes.
She ran back upstairs and found Tante Marijna just the same and Tante Emma in quiet tears. She wiped the sweat from the former’s face and the tears from Tante Emma’s woebegone countenance, breathed a few words of reassurance once more, and took flight once again, this time to the top of the house, to Maartje’s room. Maartje was a little deaf; it took a minute or two to make her understand, but once she did, she was at once her sensible quick-witted self. She listened carefully to what Augusta had to tell her and was already throwing back the bed-clothes as Augusta left the room. She had barely reached her aunt’s room again when the front door bell pealed—just once and gently. The doctor. Once more she sped down the narrow staircase and flung open the door. He came into the hall, and the old-fashioned lamp, hanging from its high ceiling, shone on his straw-coloured hair, so that it appeared white. He stared at her from the pale blue eyes which had occupied her thoughts more often than she cared to think. He said, softly, ‘Hullo, Miss Augusta Brown,’ and she, speechless, led him upstairs, aware of a sudden delight despite her anxiety for her aunt.
It seemed he was no stranger to her aunts. Tante Emma greeted him tearfully. ‘Constantijn, I am so glad to see you—my sister…’
He smiled at her with great kindness. ‘Why not go back to your room with Maartje—I’ll come and see you presently.’
While he was talking he had been standing by the bed, looking at his patient, who stared back at him and presently smiled very faintly at him. He smiled back warmly, and gently pressed the hand he was holding. He said quietly and with great calmness, ‘I’m going to have a look at you—I believe I know what is wrong, but I must be sure, then you shall have something to take away the pain and allow you to sleep. When you wake up you will feel better.’
He set about his examination and Augusta helped him, because it was the natural thing to do, even without her cap and apron, and he seemed to expect it anyway. When he had finished, he opened his bag and took out a phial of morphia and presently slid a needle gently into Tante Marijna’s arm. The old lady’s eyes slid from his impassive face to Augusta’s and back again.
‘I absolutely refuse to go to hospital,’ she said in a clear thready voice.
‘I hadn’t thought of it,’ said Dr van Lindemann. ‘Why should you when you’ve a perfectly good nurse here?’
His glance flickered across the bed. ‘Stay here a moment, will you, while I talk to your aunt?’ He didn’t wait for her nod, but disappeared through the door, to reappear presently with Maartje.
‘Maartje will sit here for a short while…there are a few things… I’ve given Juffrouw van den Pol some trichloral; I think she’ll settle.’ He glanced at the bed. ‘Your aunt will be all right, I think. Maartje tells me there’s coffee in the kitchen—come down and have a cup while we decide what to do.’
Augusta followed him meekly, and found the coffee pot warm on top of the stove; there was milk in a double saucepan too, hot enough to have a creamy coat wrinkling its surface. The doctor strolled around the kitchen collecting cups and saucers and a sugar pot, talking as he did so.
‘Your aunt’s had an attack of angina—just as you thought—nasty enough, but she’ll recover. She’s as fit as a woman of half her age and has great determination. Five days’ complete bed rest and then gradual convalescence.’
Augusta nodded, the coffee pot in one hand, the milk in the other.
‘Do you like the skin?’ she inquired.
He looked as though he was going to laugh. ‘Yes—do you?’
She began to pour. ‘Yes. You’d better have it as you’re the guest.’
‘How nicely you put it,’ he said smoothly. ‘We’ll share.’
They sat down opposite each other on the rush-seated wooden chairs that any museum would have been glad to possess. ‘How long are you staying?’ He was the doctor again, deliberate and detached.
She told him.
‘That should be long enough to get her up and about again, provided all goes as it should. It will give me time to get hold of a nurse before you go. When did you get here?’
She told him that too, and added seriously, ‘My aunt hasn’t done too much—I mean, they’re always glad to see me, but I don’t excite them.’
‘As to whether you excite anyone or not is a matter of opinion.’
She saw the corner of his mouth twitch and knew that he was laughing at her, and went pink, but when he spoke again, his tone was impersonal.
‘Could you manage to stay up for the rest of the night? There’s not much of it left.’
She nodded, ‘Yes, of course,’ and he continued, ‘Now, tell me, did your aunt do anything out of the way today—excitement—food—worry?’
She went over the day’s happenings with the same care that she would have given to a ward report, but there wasn’t much to learn from them, only the nausea in the car on the way home. She got up and put the cups in the sink and the milk and coffee back on the stove and they went back upstairs again, and while he checked his now sleeping patient’s pulse and BP he sent Maartje down for coffee and gave Augusta some last-minute instructions, standing by the bed, looking at the old face on the pillows, peaceful once more and quite a good colour. Presently he nodded, well satisfied, and went across the landing to Tante Emma’s room, to come back almost at once to say that she was asleep.
‘Get Maartje to bed,’ he suggested, ‘then you will be able to get an hour or so yourself in the morning.’
Augusta agreed politely, privately of the opinion that she wouldn’t be able to do anything of the sort—someone would have to stay with the patient, someone would have to shop and get the meals and keep Tante Emma company. Doubtless the problem would sort itself out in the morning.
Maartje had come upstairs again. The doctor took a last look at Tante Marijna and said, ‘I’ll leave you some trinitrate—you know what to do if she has another attack—but I want to know at once.’
He closed his bag and got up to go and Augusta
followed him downstairs once more—the Friesian clock on the wall at the bottom of the staircase struck five as they passed it; the night was almost over. He opened the door and she said suddenly, because the thought had only just struck her:
‘You weren’t surprised to see me.’
He paused with his hand on the door; if he was irritable at this further, trivial delay to keep him from his bed, he showed no sign. He said, speaking English for the first time that night:
‘I knew your voice.’
‘But I was speaking Dutch.’
She saw the twitch come and go. ‘My dear girl, I should know your voice anywhere, in whatever language you chose to speak—which reminds me, I must give you some lessons on Dutch verbs. You had them in a hopeless tangle!’
He was gone, leaving her in the dim early morning light. She would have liked to think about what he had just said; but there was no time just then.
He was back in three hours’ time, during which period she had contrived to get the household organised. Maartje had crept down soon after seven and had taken Augusta’s place by her aunt’s bed, while she bathed and dressed with a speed which didn’t permit of make-up or a hair-do. She tied her tresses back with a ribbon and ran back to her aunt, peeping in at Tante Emma on the way. She was still asleep—Augusta hoped that she would go on sleeping for several hours. She had remembered that a daily woman came in three days a week to help with the housework—if she could be persuaded to come every day, that would give Maartje time to do the shopping and cooking, and herself free to look after Tante Marijna, as well as bear Tante Emma company. She suggested this tentatively to Maartje, who approved; Mevrouw Blom would be coming shortly, she would arrange something with her. She hurried away to dress, and presently put her silvery head round the door with the whispered promise of breakfast.
Tante Marijna was showing signs of rousing. Augusta had taken her pulse and found it to be improved—her colour was better too, and her skin felt dry and faintly warm. She started tidying the room, pausing at the mirror to look at herself. She was a little pale, and without powder and lipstick her face looked very young—she gave her hair a vexed tweak; it looked hideous, dragged back from her face all anyhow; she would find time to do it properly before Dr van Lindemann arrived. Having decided which, it hardly added to her good humour when he came, light-footed and very fast, up the stairs only a minute or so later.
He said ‘Dag, my dear Miss Brown,’ and raked her from head to foot with his sharp, pale gaze, but he said nothing else, only turned at once to the bed, asking over one shoulder, ‘She’s not been conscious?’ He possessed himself of Tante Marijna’s wrist. ‘She looks as though she’s coming round.’
‘She stirred a little about half an hour ago,’ said Augusta, ‘but I’ve not tried to rouse her.’
‘Good girl. Fluids for today, and as little movement as possible—I’ll leave you to see to washing and feeding and so forth. You’ll need several things, though, if she’s to be nursed here. I’ll give you a note for van Dijk, the apotheek on the corner—you know him? He’ll let you have all you need.’
He turned back to the bed to find Tante Marijna’s blue eyes looking at him, and spent the next five minutes explaining in a calm, exact manner what had been the matter with her and what he proposed to do to put it right. When he had finished, she whispered with a smile:
‘What a nuisance I am, Constantijn—my apologies; and poor Augusta—it’s her holiday.’ She frowned. ‘Perhaps I should go into hospital.’
Augusta shook her head. ‘Of course not—you’ll be on your feet long before I go home,’ which was a little exaggerated, but who cared about that, so long as her aunt was put at ease? ‘Besides,’ she observed, ‘I shall like looking after you.’
Her great-aunt smiled again. ‘Dear child, but what about that nice Pieter—if he should want to take you out?’
Augusta found herself blushing, which was all the more annoying because the doctor was staring at her. ‘I told you, Tante Marijna, he’s gone back to Utrecht.’
‘Oh, well, in that case…it will be delightful if you will look after me, Augusta.’
She closed her eyes and the doctor prepared to go, saying merely:
‘I leave you in capable hands, Juffrouw van den Pol.’ And then, ‘See me to the door, if you will, Miss Brown.’
She obeyed this somewhat highhanded request, but only, she told herself, because he might wish to tell her something about her aunt.
He didn’t. Halfway down the stairs he asked, ‘Who’s Pieter?’
She came to a halt, and he half turned, lounging against the carved wood banisters. ‘Whatever business is it of yours?’ she wanted to know.
He raised a pale eyebrow. ‘But of course it’s my business I shouldn’t like you to pine away through lack of seeing your boy-friends.’
‘He’s not my boy-friend,’ she snapped. She hadn’t meant to tell him, but she was annoyed, so that common sense played no part in her answer.
‘He’s a ghastly young man I met yesterday at Bergen—a photographer of models and clothes and suchlike stuff, and full of himself.’ She paused to draw a furious breath. ‘He dared—he actually dared—to…to criticise my dress because I’m not the right shape…’ She stopped, choking back rage, eyeing the man on the stair below her. If he dared to laugh! He did no such thing, but said mildly, ‘I should have thought your shape would be—er—exactly right for any vagary of fashion.’ He added with interest, ‘I imagine you dealt with him?’
Her green eyes lighted up with satisfaction. ‘Yes, I told him that he was an insufferable conceited boor, and other things besides.’
He gave her a considered look. ‘I don’t think that I number this Pieter among my acquaintances, but I can find it in my heart to be sorry for him. I don’t suppose he stood a chance.’ He turned on his heel and started on down the stairs. ‘I’ll be in some time this evening. Dag.’
The house seemed empty when he had gone, possibly because he was such a large man that the small rooms tended to be crowded when he was in them. Augusta sighed without knowing it, and went to the kitchen to make the weak tea he had prescribed for his patient.
The day went smoothly. Tante Marijna continued to improve, and Tante Emma, once she was awake and had been convinced that her sister was alive and likely to stay so, became quite cheerful, and even derived some satisfaction from doing little things to help around the house. All the same, despite Mevrouw Blom’s willingness to help out, Augusta found it quite impossible to get even an hour’s sleep. By evening time she was so sleepy that the voices around her had taken on a dreamlike quality, either very loud or very soft, and none of them making much sense. It was bliss when Tante Marijna dropped off into a light doze and Maartje and Tante Emma had gone down to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal. Augusta allowed her heavy lids to droop, only to drag them agonisingly open as the front door bell pealed. Another peal like that one and Tante Marijna would start awake. She glanced at the old lady, still quietly sleeping, and listened for footsteps below, but presumably the ladies in the kitchen hadn’t heard, and if it had been the doctor, he would have opened the door and brought himself upstairs. She went down to the door, yawning. The boy outside, waiting, grinned cheerfully and thrust an enormous bouquet at her. Tulips—golden tulips; dozens of them. She took them from him, hunted on the hall table for some small change, pressed it into his hand, shut the door quietly and went upstairs again, clasping the tulips. Her aunt was still sleeping; she made sure of that before she turned her attention to the small white envelope tucked in with the flowers. It was addressed to herself in the same untidy scrawl in which the note to the apotheek had been written.
Her first feeling had been one of relief, because on the way upstairs she had been beset with the dreadful idea that they might have been from Pieter van Leewijk; now she opened the envelope with mixed feelings which she didn’t pause to analyse, drew out the card and read:
‘I shall call for you tomorrow afternoo
n at two o’clock if you are agreeable to a short run in the car.’
It was signed C. van Lindemann. She read it again, just to make sure that that was what he had written. It was, and she found herself a little disconcerted at this somewhat businesslike invitation. All the same, she knew that she would accept—he would presumably mention it when he next came; it would give her a chance to find out something about him, and there would be time enough afterwards to tell him that she had found his note a trifle peremptory. There was quite a lot she wanted to know. She supposed that he lived in Alkmaar, for he obviously had a practice—but he seemed equally at home in London, and he had told her that Lady Belway was his godmother—and where did Susan Belsize fit in? She sat engrossed in speculation, some of it somewhat wild, until her aunt’s voice startled her.
‘Those beautiful flowers! They’re yours, Augusta?’
She admitted that they were, and when her aunt wanted to know who had sent them, said with extreme nonchalance, ‘Well, actually, they’re from Doctor van Lindemann.’
Tante Marijna murmured, ‘Just so, child. Put them in water—I am quite well enough to be left for a few minutes.’
Which Augusta did, filling the old house with their fragrance and colour.
She thanked the doctor later that evening, after he had seen Tante Marijna and pronounced her better, with the corollary that she was still to do absolutely nothing for the next few days. Augusta accompanied him to the door, where she said a little coolly because he had made no mention of their outing, ‘Thank you for the tulips—the whole house is full of them.’
He gave her a bright glance, and on the point of speaking, said nothing, but opened the door and then bent and kissed her lightly on her mouth, and had gone, shutting the door quietly behind him, before she could so much as draw breath.
She wasn’t tired any more. She went back to her aunt’s room and gave her the small amount of supper she was allowed, and then prepared her for the night, and presently, with Maartje to take her place, went to her own room. It was after she had returned and was sitting by her aunt’s bed that she noticed the old lady’s distress. She caught up an old frail hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze and asked:
