by Betty Neels
‘Twice,’ he replied smoothly, ‘and only because we—Lady Belway and Sue and myself—decided that you were far too alive to stay in hospital for the rest of your life. Archie seemed the answer.’
She said flatly, ‘Well, he’s not. Discussing me behind my back…’ her eyes-flashed, which for some reason gave a glow to her rusty hair.
‘Naturally,’ he said imperturbably. ‘Didn’t you ever discuss us?’
She went pink under his gently mocking gaze. ‘Yes—at least, it was mostly Miss Belsize’s clothes.’
She was unprepared for his deep bellow of laughter. ‘I deserved that. But of course, Sue’s clothes are—er—outstanding.’
It was the chance she had been waiting for. She began ‘Who…?’ and he deprived her neatly of it. ‘If we’re going to bicker, let’s do it over a meal—it’s so much more comfortable and I’m famished. I was up most of the night with a baby case, and by the time I got back, it was time for morning surgery.’
She said instantly, her mouth curved in sympathy, ‘Oh, how awful for you! Why didn’t you say so—I could have made coffee for you before we left…’ She broke off, conscious that her concern had sounded rather warmer than need be. He didn’t seem to have noticed. He said mildly:
‘Nice of you to say so, but it would have delayed our trip, wouldn’t it, and I’ve been looking forward to it.’ He went on deliberately, ‘And you? Have you been looking forward to it too?’
Without hesitation she answered, ‘Oh, yes.’ And then, ‘You shouldn’t shoot questions at me like that. I didn’t have time to prevar…’ she frowned, ‘tell fibs,’ she ended.
He began to laugh. ‘The word is prevaricate. And do you find it necessary to—er—tell fibs to me? If so, you really shouldn’t.’
‘It’s of no use anyway, I’m no good at it—social fibbing, I mean. I tell just as many as everyone else, but people always know.’
They had sat down at their table; he picked up his menu and began to study it. Without looking up he said, ‘Well, I should warn you never to try it on me, for I should most certainly know. Now, what would you like to eat? How about mushrooms in cream and sherry for a starter and then the terrine of duck—and I see that there’s that delicious pudding, Marquise Montmorency, which I can recommend.’
Augusta agreed happily; she had had her fair share of going out, but rarely on this level. In a way, it seemed a waste of good food, for she was enjoying his company so much that she would have been just as happy with a cup of coffee and a plate of sandwiches. But when the food came she was forced to admit to herself that it was perfection and made more so by the right companion with which to eat it, and spiced with a conversation which never once flagged. They talked about everything under the sun, and she was much struck by the discovery that they agreed closely about everything that mattered most. It was vaguely disquieting, too, to find herself telling him some of her deeper thoughts and feelings. She stopped in mid-sentence, much struck by this fact, her green eyes wide. He said quietly:
‘You agreed with me that you believe in Fate…sometimes two people meet, you know. Perhaps only for a brief hour, sometimes for a lifetime, sharing the same star.’
Augusta stared at him. ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’ she asked breathlessly, because he had put into words something that had lain at the back of her mind like the shreds of a dream.
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘My dear Miss Augusta Brown, your face is like an open book for me to read.’ He smiled a little, his eyes twinkling, so that she was emboldened to ask, ‘Why did you ask me if my thumbs pricked?’
The smile became mocking. ‘What? Is your knowledge of Shakespeare so poor? I can’t believe that.’
‘Of course it’s not,’ she said crossly. ‘But you’re—you’re not something wicked…’
‘From the way you treated me, very off-hand and hoity-toity, I rather gathered that I was.’
She giggled; wrinkling her tip-tilted nose in an engaging manner which was all the more engaging because she was unaware of it, and paused to watch the waiter as he served their pudding. It was a glorious confection of meringue and cherries, chocolate cream and whipped cream, adorned with little cornets lined with chocolate and themselves bulging with cream. It tasted even better than it looked. She savoured the last mouthful of it and Constantijn asked:
‘Want some more, Augusta? No? Coffee, then?’
They sat over it, still talking, this time more light-heartedly, telling each other about their childhood. He asked abruptly, ‘Where exactly do you live?’
She didn’t intend to tell him. It was unlikely that he knew England all that well, and Dorset was still very rural. She was vague.
‘On the border of Dorset and Somerset…I thought I had told you. Between two villages, miles from anywhere. It’s entirely different from London. Do you like London?’
His good manners would not allow him to ignore her evasion. They talked about the theatres and discussed the parks and how delightful it was to ride on top of a bus through London, but never once did he mention Susan Belsize.
It was still raining when they decided to walk around and look at the shops. Augusta was surprised—most men loathed looking in shop windows. She said so, and he replied:
‘I couldn’t agree more, but it does rather depend on who you are with, you know.’
They strolled along, getting soaked without noticing it at all, stopping to gaze at anything which caught their eye, and presently they turned away from the main streets and wandered off down the small, old streets lining the canals. Their waters looked dull and sluggish, the trees which lined their banks dripped steadily, even the old houses with their picturesque steeple roofs looked damp and sad. They stood in the middle of a little bridge spanning the water, and looked around them.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Augusta, and meant it. ‘Water mains and electricity and cars haven’t made any difference, have they? It still belongs to its own time.’
Constantijn leaned his elbows on the bridge’s stone balustrade.
‘You like Holland.’ It was a statement, not a question, but she answered it at once. ‘Yes—very much. You see, I’ve visited the aunts regularly for as long as I can remember. I used to sit on Tante Emma’s knee while she read Sjors to me.’
They smiled at each other, sharing a remembered pleasure from their childhood. Constantijn said presently, ‘He goes on for ever and ever—just like Rupert Bear in England. You can still buy the book—a bit updated, of course. Johanna adores him—so did I.’ He laughed. ‘I suppose every child in Holland has had Sjors read to him at bedtime.’
Augusta was watching a horse and cart trundling slowly down the street, its driver stopping at each doorway to collect the food scraps each householder had left tidily in a bin for the pigs. When the doctor asked:
‘Would you like to live in Holland, Augusta?’ she answered him without taking her eyes off the slowmoving cart:
‘You mean for ever and ever? I wouldn’t mind at all. Only I’d want to go to England for holidays. I did think about it when I qualified last year, but it means doing a year over here as a student to get a Dutch qualification before I could stay as a trained nurse indefinitely…and I’ve still got my Midwifery to do, and perhaps Children’s. They’ll take up a couple of years at least.’
She turned to look at him, and found him smiling a little. ‘Ah, of course, I had forgotten your career.’ He stood up and said abruptly:
‘Would you rather have tea here or go back to Alkmaar and have it with Johanna?’
She chose the latter, because she dearly wanted to see his home again—besides that, she wanted a breathing space. She had been in his company for only a few hours; and she was fast losing her common sense, owing, no doubt, to the fact that they had been flung into each other’s company during the last week and there was nothing much else to interest her in Alkmaar. She told herself with firmness, so that she would believe it.
The rain took on a fresh fury as the doct
or turned the car’s nose towards Alkmaar. Nevertheless, he said lightly:
‘Since we’re out for pleasure, I thought we’d go back through Velsen and along the coast road. You know, through Castricum and Egmond-Binnen. The dunes will be sodden…we haven’t been lucky with the weather, have we?’
They talked all the way home, and when they reached Alkmaar, Augusta admitted to herself that she hadn’t noticed the dunes at all, because she had been thinking exclusively of the man beside her, even while she carried on an intelligent conversation with him.
It was pleasant to go indoors, into the faint warmth of the old house. They were met in the hall by Johanna, who shrieked with pleasure because they had come back in time for tea, and then, obedient to her uncle’s request, led Augusta upstairs to comb her hair and repair her complexion.
The little girl took her to a bedroom on the first floor—a large room furnished simply and perfectly with a canopied bed, hung with the same patterned chintz as the curtains, and an enormous pillow cupboard against one wall. The other wall held a fireplace with a burnished steel grate and embellished with a quantity of carved wood. There was a Pembroke table between the two windows, holding a round mirror and a quantity of silver; and a number of comfortable chairs. Augusta sat down before the mirror and took the pins out of her hair, while Johanna perched on the side of the bed, watching her.
‘Your hair’s a nice colour,’ she observed at length.
Augusta smiled, and said, ‘Is this your room, Johanna? It’s very beautiful.’
‘No—my room’s along the passage and up the stairs— Nurse sleeps up there too. Susan slept here,’ she added, to shatter Augusta’s quiet thoughts, and cause her to dig a pin into her scalp and wince with pain. ‘Oh, yes, Susan Belsize,’ she answered in as careless a voice as she could muster. ‘I met her in London. Isn’t she pretty?’
The small creature nodded vigorously. ‘Uncle Constantijn says she’s just too gorgeous, but Papa doesn’t say that, because Mama’s much prettier.’ She got off the bed and came close to Augusta and peered into her face. ‘You’re not pretty exactly,’ she remarked, and added kindly, ‘But you’ve got green eyes.’
They went downstairs again presently, to find the doctor in the drawing room, standing in front of the small open fire. His gaze swept over them both and returned to Augusta. She jumped visibly when he asked:
‘And what has my small niece been telling you this time?’
Before she could reply, Johanna shrilled, ‘We talked about the bedroom. I told Augusta that Susan sleeps in it when she comes.’
She pranced across the room to him. ‘Your Susan, Uncle Constantijn, your gorgeous Susan with the black hair,’ she chanted.
He picked her up and tossed her high into the air, and she shrieked with delight. As he put her down he said easily:
‘Sit down, Augusta. Tea will be here in a minute. Come over here by the fire—it’s not cold, but it’s cheerful after all that grey sky.’
He sat down opposite her, and started to tell her about the nurse he had found for Tante Marijna, and she realised that, for some reason or other, nothing more was going to be said about the lovely Miss Belsize. She was, she discovered, boiling with rage; the fun had gone out of the day; she fought a strong desire to get up and walk out of the house, only that wouldn’t be very practical, as her raincoat and scarf had been borne away to be dried, and the rain was coming down harder than ever. It was fortunate that Huib came in at that moment and there was little need to talk very much to Constantijn. She ate her tea without appetite and got up to go soon afterwards. By then her rage had evaporated, leaving nothing but a rather sad feeling that she was just what Susan had said—a ship passing in the night, someone to whom it was unnecessary to explain things, even though for a few hours at least, she and Constantijn had reached a depth of friendship she would not have believed possible. All the same, he had no intention of allowing her to know anything of himself or his life, however pleasant their relationship had been a short time ago.
She stood making conversation, while he went to fetch her things, and when he returned, she tied the scarf rather savagely with no regard at all for her appearance and buttoned her raincoat with quick determined fingers. She said goodbye to Huib, whom she liked, to Johanna who demanded a prolonged hug, and went briskly to the door, followed by Constantijn, to whom she kept up a constant flow of meaningless chatter, partly because she was nervous, and partly because it kept her from thinking. Outside the drawing room door, he took her arm and drew her in the opposite direction to the front door.
‘There’s a rather interesting room you should see,’ he remarked conversationally, cutting through her babble as though he hadn’t heard a word of it. ‘Painted—done by the same man who did the Town Hall in Dokkum. I should like you to see it.’
He was leading her across the hall as he spoke, taking no notice of her protests. Now he opened a small door under the right wing of the staircase and led her inside. It was indeed a beautiful room, although small. Its walls were canvas, painted with Biblical scenes, and it was simply, almost austerely furnished with an oak gatelegged table and some narrow rush-seated chairs. There were two carved oak armchairs on either side of the tiled fireplace, and a corner cupboard, upon the shelves of which was displayed a collection of silver tankards. Augusta was interested despite her firm intention not to be. She walked to the centre of the room, and ran an appreciative hand over the mellow, shining wood of the table top. ‘It’s like a Pieter de Hooch painting,’ she murmured, and went to peer at the tankards. They were all different, and all, she judged, sixteenth or seventeenth century. She turned round to ask about them, and perceived that the doctor had shut the door, and was lounging against it, staring at her. He looked forbidding and a little arrogant. He said forcefully:
‘You are the most stubborn girl! I had hoped this afternoon… But no, you are determined to make me into the villain of your imagination. I thought that you might change your mind when you got to know me a little, but I see that it is useless.’ He sighed loudly, took a couple of strides across the little room, and caught her by the shoulders, not at all gently. He said, in quite a temper, ‘Well, my pretty—if you want a villain, how’s this for a start?’
No one had ever kissed her like that before. It took her breath and emptied her head of sense and set her heart thudding. When he let her go, she stood, with his hands still on her shoulders, and stared at him with huge green eyes shining with the tears she had no intention of shedding—not in front of him anyway.
‘I’m too angry to think of anything to say,’ she said icily, ‘but when I do I shall say it.’ Her voice wobbled a little and she closed her mouth tightly because it was shaking. He said nothing at all, and when she stole a look at him, it was disconcerting to find that he didn’t appear in the least ashamed of himself. Instead, he stood aside for her to pass and opened the door for her, before walking beside her to the front door. They didn’t speak at all on the short drive, but as she got out of the car at her aunts’ door, she contrived to say in a normal voice, ‘Do you want to see my aunt, Doctor?’
He already had his door open. ‘Of course I do. But don’t worry, Miss Augusta Brown, I never combine business with pleasure—you’ll be quite safe.’
Augusta tossed her head with such violence that a pin fell out, and a tiresome tress of hair fell over her face. When he laughed softly, she could have cheerfully thrown something at him, but there was nothing handy—only a valuable porcelain vase on the hall table.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS a pity that the doctor didn’t find it necessary to pay her aunt a visit the following day, for Augusta had several wakeful hours, rehearsing a selection of remarks suitable for his reception. They varied greatly, from something short and scathing, through the whole gamut of emotions, to a gentle reproof, very dignified and forgiving. She rather thought that she would choose that one, and finally went to sleep, pleased with her efforts, only to wake an hour or so later, and re
call with clarity the regrettable incident in the painted room, so that she changed her mind once more. It was getting light by the time she went to sleep again, and that only after admitting to herself that she hadn’t minded being kissed roughly by Constantijn in the very least; what she had minded, though, was that he had done it to annoy her.
He didn’t come until the evening of the following day, by which time Augusta’s frustration had rendered her alternatively icy with ill-temper or acutely miserable because she might not see him again—a natural enough feeling, she told herself, as she would have no opportunity of paying him back in his own ill-mannered coin. She reminded herself of this repeatedly throughout a long and tedious day, and as the evening approached and there was still no sign of him, declared to herself that she was delighted not to be seeing him again, a view wholly at variance with the interest she showed in any passing car.
And when he did come, he wasn’t alone. He brought the nurse with him—Zuster Wils, a round-faced, blue-eyed creature who obviously adored him. He greeted Augusta with a cheerful friendliness which she hadn’t reckoned with, so that she was prevented, most effectively, from making any of the speeches she had so painstakingly thought up. She remained silent while the arrangements for Tante Marijna’s care were discussed, scowling at Zuster Wils’ unsuspecting back, studying her covertly as she stood by Tante Marijna’s bed, and forced to admit that the girl was pretty—blue eyes, honey-coloured hair and a way of looking up at the doctor through her lashes. Stupid creature, thought Augusta waspishly, and looked away to encounter Constantijn’s hooded gaze, his mouth lifted by the faintest smile. She scowled at him too.
The visit was over in ten minutes—his large, cool hand engulfed hers for a brief moment while he made some polite comment on her journey home, and before she could think of a word to say, he had gone without so much as a backward glance.
