Tempestuous April

by Betty Neels

  ‘Harry, did you have a good time?’ She eyed her friend critically. ‘How nice you look—that’s a lovely dress.’ She went and sat on one of the little chairs and Harriet put away the lipstick and looked down at herself.

  It was a pretty dress; a soft gold-coloured sheath, patterned with honeysuckle; she had felt rather guilty when she had bought it, for it had cost a lot of money; now her feeling was one of satisfaction. Without doubt it did something for her. She hoped that Friso would share her opinion.

  It seemed he did not, for beyond a laughing reference to her seamanship as he offered a glass of sherry, he addressed her in only the most general of terms throughout the evening. The oyster soup, the fillets of sole Maconaise, the saddle of lamb—even the sweet—some frothy confection of marrons glacés—Anna’s own invention—were dust in her pretty mouth.

  She allowed none of her true feelings to show, however, and laughed and talked with the faintly shy air which she had never managed to overcome. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she surveyed her surroundings. The dining-room was large and square and in the front of the house; its walls were panelled with a wood she couldn’t identify; it was furnished with the massive round table at which they sat. It had been made to accommodate a dozen guests at the least, but now the ribbon-back chairs had been reduced to a paltry seven. The sideboard, large and splendidly simple, took up most of one wall, and all around them were more portraits of bygone Eijsincks, their painted eyes watching each morsel of food she ate. She looked away from a particularly haughty old gentleman with side-whiskers and encountered Friso’s lifted brows. He looked so like the portrait that she averted her gaze and applied herself to her dinner.

  They sat after dinner in the salon, drinking their coffee and something richly potent and velvety from delicate liqueur glasses. Harriet, sharing one of the sofas with Maggina, was content to listen, for the most part, to the conversation around her—the easy, not too serious talk of old friends. She longed to explore the room thoroughly, to pick up the china pieces lying about and examine them and run her hand down the thick velvet folds of the curtains. Everything was so very beautiful. She checked a sigh, looked up and caught Friso’s eye upon her again.

  It was soon after this that the front door knocker suddenly reverberated through the house, not once, but half a dozen times, to cease as suddenly, presumably upon the opening of the door. Everyone had stopped talking to listen to the faint agitated voice from the hall, and every head turned as Wim came in, moving somewhat faster than was his wont, and bent to speak quietly in his master’s ear. He had barely finished what he was saying before the doctor was on his feet. He said something in his turn to Dr Van Minnen in a crisp voice totally unlike his usual slight drawl, so that gentleman got to his feet and started for the door. Harriet, seething with curiosity, was forced to sit quiet while he spoke to Mevrouw Van Minnen too. It wasn’t until he was on the point of leaving them that he spoke to Sieske. He sounded like a general giving orders and he didn’t wait to see if they had been understood. The two younger girls he ignored.

  Sieske got to her feet and started to follow him from the room, saying over her shoulder, ‘Come on, Harry. There’s a car in the canal—they don’t know yet who’s in it—they’ll bring them here. We have to get the surgery ready.’ She led the way across the hall and opened a door under the staircase and switched on the light. Harriet, close on her heels, saw that the surgery was roomy, with a door at the other end of it, presumably leading to a side entrance. She went straight across the room and opened the door and found a light switch there too, which shone on to the drive running alongside the house. She had no idea how much time they had; Sieske, who knew her way around, was busy with the oxygen cylinder, fitting on the tube and mask and putting the catheters ready. Harriet began to clear what furniture there was away from the centre of the room; they would want all the space they could have if they had to do any resuscitation. She found a notepad and pen, and several pairs of scissors which she took from the well stocked instrument cabinet in one corner. There were some syringes and needles there too; she took those as well and cleared a space on the doctor’s desk and arranged them neatly where they could be got at in a hurry. She wasn’t sure that the doctor would approve of the way she had piled his papers and swept them to one side. In her experience, doctors in general practice preferred to work at a desk cluttered with unread circulars, cryptic notes on the backs of envelopes, electricity bills, samples of pills, snapshots of their loved ones and a great variety of official forms. It seemed to her that Friso’s desk ran true to form. She said without turning round,

  ‘Has anyone telephoned the police and the ambulance?’

  ‘Wim,’ replied Sieske. She had her head in a wall cupboard. ‘There’s plenty of Savlon; I’ll put some into a couple of gallipots and dilute enough to fill a jug. Someone’s sure to need cleaning up.’

  Harriet nodded to the back of her friend’s head, ‘Blankets?’ she asked.

  ‘Wim,’ said Sieske, emerging. Harriet flew across the hall in search of him, encountered him coming through a door beyond the stairs and remembered too late that she didn’t know the word for blankets. She stopped before him and said hopelessly, ‘Blankets, Wim.’ And he said, ‘Yes, miss, I have them here.’ He indicated a pile of them beyond the door and began to pile them into her arms; when he thought she had enough he said, ‘I’ll bring the rest, miss.’ She went back across the hall, thinking that it was just like Friso to have a servant who spoke English when required. It was quite good English too.

  She piled the blankets neatly on to the doctor’s chair, and Wim went away again, presumably to fetch more. There were sounds of feet coming along the drive and a moment later Dr Van Minnen and another man came in carrying a man between them; he streamed water, his clothes plastered with mud and weed; his face was white, his eyes closed. They put him carefully on the floor and Dr Van Minnen dropped down on his knees beside him while his helper squelched his way out again. Sieske was already on the other side of the prone figure, but Harriet wasted no time in watching her, for Friso had come in through the door carrying an elderly woman. He laid her down with the same care as the others had used and Harriet rolled the unconscious form expertly over into the prone position, turned the limp head gently to one side and swept a hand into the mouth, but the woman’s teeth were her own; there was no danger there. She swept the sopping arms above her patient’s head, and then sank back on her heels and put her hands on the small of the woman’s back.

  ‘I see you know what you’re about,’ said Friso from above her, and was gone. It was hard work, but worth it; for after a few minutes she felt the first faint movement in the body beneath her hands; she persevered and was rewarded by the faint tinge of colour in the white cheeks, before long she saw the slight fluttering of the woman’s eyelids. She stopped her efforts long enough to catch at a still flaccid wrist and check the pulse; it was weak but steady. Harriet straightened her back and found Mevrouw Van Minnen standing by her, holding a blanket. They wrapped the woman in it between them and began to remove her wet clothing, beginning with her shoes. But Harriet had barely unlaced one of them when there was a commotion at the door again and Friso came in with a half-grown boy. He gave one brief glance in Harriet’s direction and said, ‘Leave the woman to Mevrouw Van Minnen and come here. I’ve emptied his lungs.’

  He laid the boy down and Harriet saw at once that they wouldn’t be able to turn him over because of the wound in his chest. It wasn’t a large wound, but a circular depression, oozing with a gentle persistence. Someone had opened his jacket and shirt, probably to see where he was hurt. She snatched up a wad of gauze and covered it, then took another piece of gauze and opened the boy’s mouth to catch and hold his tongue. Friso had peeled off his jacket and she saw that he was soaked and as muddy as the boy he had brought in. He knelt down behind the boy’s head, caught his arms above the elbow and started artificial respiration. It wasn’t an ideal state of affairs, for the ches
t wound needed urgent attention, but still more urgent was the task of getting the boy to breathe again.

  ‘Let go his tongue,’ said Friso, and started the kiss of life. Released, Harriet got to her feet and started to collect swabs and dressings; there would have to be an anti-tetanus injection too, as well as one for gas gangrene. She went back to the boy, told the doctor what she had done, asked, ‘Shall I give them both now?’ and at his nod, possessed herself of scissors and began to cut the wet sleeve open.

  It was wonderful when the boy started to breathe—he was shocked and severely injured—it was hard to know just how severely until he could be got to hospital, but at least he was alive; all three of them were alive. She got the oxygen and fixed it up and set about cleaning the wound. She had just about finished when a great many people arrived at once—the police, who came in quietly and got busy with notebooks and quiet questions, and the ambulance men with their stretchers. The man and woman were conscious now and able to answer the few essential questions which were put to them, the boy lay quiet, his breath fluttering, his face bluish-white. Dr Eijsinck, using a sharper tone than Harriet had ever heard before, but not raising his voice at all, said something—sufficient to cause the boy to be lifted carefully on to a stretcher and borne away without further ado. She heard the ambulance a moment later, its sing-song warning sounding loud on the night air, moving fast along the road. His mother and father followed him a few minutes later, leaving the rest of them standing in a welter of discarded blankets, stray fragments of wet clothing, used swabs and a good deal of weed and mud. Wim, who, Harriet suspected, had been doing a great deal in an unobtrusive way, was already collecting blankets, but when Dr Eijsinck said, ‘Coffee, I think, Wim,’ he relinquished the task to Mevrouw Van Minnen and went away. Sieske had her head in the cupboard again, putting back what she had taken out. Harriet turned to the desk and began to clear away the small paraphernalia—swabs, scissors, gallipots—she cleaned them all in turn and returned them where they belonged, then returned to restore the desk to its original state of ordered chaos. She had picked up an old copy of the Lancet and was trying to remember if it had been under the blotter or with a pile of circulars she had swept aside, when Friso, who was conferring with Dr Van Minnen and the policemen, broke off the conversation long enough to say, mildly,

  ‘Don’t bother, Harry. My desk needed a clean-up anyway.’

  She put the Lancet down thankfully and went to fold blankets with Mevrouw Van Minnen—they had them tidy just as Wim came back and informed them, in two languages, that coffee was in the salon, and the two young ladies were anxious for news. ‘The gentlemen,’ he added, ‘will take their coffee where they are.’

  Maggina and Taeike fell upon them when they reached the salon, slightly aggrieved that they had not been allowed to help but nevertheless curious to hear what had occurred. The three ladies spent a pleasurable half hour answering their questions, repairing their make-up and drinking a great many cups of coffee, and deploring the muddy state of their shoes and stockings. Harriet glanced down at her own dress and saw the little blobs of dried mud and pieces of weed and here and there, small specks of blood. The dress, she thought regretfully, would never be quite the same again. The two doctors came in presently—the police had gone and the men had changed into dry clothes, Dr Van Minnen rather precariously rigged out in a shirt and trousers of Friso’s. He lowered his rather portly frame into a chair, remarking that he must have put on weight for everything was so tight. His homely little joke relieved a little of the delayed excitement and tension and when Wim appeared with a tray on which was a tall silver jug and some glasses the atmosphere lightened considerably. Harriet took a sip of the frothy yellow liquid, and found it to be warm. It was only after she had swallowed that she discovered it to be extremely fiery as well. She choked a little, and Friso, who had sat down opposite her, raised an eyebrow at her and asked, ‘Do you like it, Harriet? It’s Cambridge Punch, from a very old English recipe, and a splendid pick-me-up.’

  She took another cautious sip; it really was very nice. ‘What’s in it?’ she asked.

  ‘Eggs, milk, brandy and rum.’ He smiled suddenly and kindly at her. ‘Just what you need after all that excitement. You worked like a beaver; thank you, Harry.’

  There was really nothing she could say—’ Not at all’ would sound ridiculous—so would ‘It was a pleasure.’ She smiled shyly and took another sip and felt the rum and brandy combine to give her a pleasant glow inside.

  Everyone was suddenly talking at once again, and he didn’t speak to her again. It was only when they were on the point of leaving that he asked her, ‘Do you like my home, Harriet?’

  He had her hand between his own and showed no sign of relinquishing it. She looked up at him. ‘Yes, Friso, very much.’

  ‘As I had hoped,’ was all he said. She fell asleep that night still wondering what exactly he had meant.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AEDE TELEPHONED the next morning; he would be free on the following day, he explained, so how would Harriet like to spend it with him in Leeuwarden. She agreed readily, suppressing the thought that if she did so, she would be unable to see Friso, always supposing that he came to his partner’s house. She thanked Aede with a false enthusiasm and went to find Sieske.

  When she awoke the next day, it was to find the sky shrouded in high grey cloud, and by the time Aede arrived to fetch her, another lower layer of cloud was scudding in from the sea, blown by a wind which whined and whistled around the housetops. The road to Leeuwarden looked bare and sad; the country on either side unprotected.

  ‘It’s very flat,’ said Harriet. ‘The sea could rush in.’

  Aede laughed comfortably. ‘You forget our dykes; they do not break so easily—it would need an earthquake or a bomb; besides, there are always men watching.’

  It was a comforting thought; Harriet turned her attention to the city outskirts, and forgot the weather. They were driving down a rather dull road which led to a roundabout surrounded by modern buildings, then suddenly they were in the old city—there was nothing dull about the canal they crossed to enter the bustling, shop-lined street, bisected by a much bridged canal. The shops were modern, but above them rose a variety of old roofs, which Harriet found enchanting, but when she begged Aede to stop, he said,

  ‘Lord, no. Not here. We’ll go and have coffee and leave the car at the hotel; then we can walk around.’

  At the end of the street, past the old Weigh House, he turned into an even busier street, crossed the canal again and stopped outside a pleasant hotel overlooking a square. They got out, and before they went inside. Aede took her arm and turned her round.

  ‘This is our most important statue,’ he explained, and pointed towards a pedestal upon which stood a cow. ‘Our prosperity.’ he said simply. ‘We owe it to our cows.’

  They drank their coffee in the hotel, sitting in the window of the café overlooking the busy square, talking leisurely about the happenings of the previous week.

  ‘Did you enjoy Delft?’ Aede asked.

  Harriet nibbled the little sugary biscuit which had come with her coffee. ‘Very much—I got lost.’ She told him all about it and he laughed and then said, ‘But you should be careful, you know, you’re a foreigner—you must never go off on your own again.’

  ‘That’s what Friso said.’

  ‘Did he? Well, yes, naturally.’ He stopped abruptly, and Harriet knitted her brows, trying to make sense of this remark. Why should it be natural for Friso to be concerned about her? She pondered it briefly and then went faintly pink as a possible solution struck her, to be at once cast down by Aede’s next words.

  ‘What I meant was, Friso would have said that to any pretty girl.’ He frowned, hunting for words. Harriet achieved a creditable smile.

  ‘Aede, what a nice compliment! And now do tell me what we’re going to do first.’

  He responded to this conversational red herring with an obvious relief.

  ‘How about
the Museum—the Friesian Museum? We could walk there and pick the car up later.’

  They set off, back over the canal, driven to walk at a furious pace by the ferocious wind. The sky seemed lower and blacker than ever, but at least it wouldn’t rain until the wind died down.

  They walked along arm in arm, talking comfortably. ‘Where’s your hospital?’ asked Harriet.

  Aede waved a careless arm. ‘Over there. Just outside the town. It’s new, not completed, in fact, but there’s plenty of work just the same.’

  He went on talking about it until they reached the museum, which had once upon a time been a private mansion and still contrived to look like one. The curator was large and white-haired and spoke scholarly English in a gentle voice. Harriet thought that Friso would look something like him in twenty years or so. The train of thought set up by this idea was broken only by Aede’s quite dramatic description of Great Pier’s achievements in the sixteenth century. Judging by the size of the sword she was called upon to examine this Friesian hero must have been a giant even amongst his own giant-like race. They stayed a long time, going from room to room; sometimes the curator joined them for a few minutes, but most of the time Aede painstakingly led her round; he seemed to be enjoying it as much as she. It was almost two o’clock when they got back to the hotel for lunch, and the wind showed no signs of abating. Now there were short flurries of rain—they decided to stay in Leeuwarden for the rest of the day, and in spite of the worsening weather, they prowled happily up and down the narrow lanes, looking at the old, small houses, while Aede pointed out their architectural points, and when Harriet at length had had her fill, they strolled in and out of the shops, where she bought presents to take home—silver teaspoons and Makkum pottery, and tobacco for her father. They had forgotten all about tea and presently they went back to the hotel again and sat over drinks and then ate a leisurely meal before going back to Franeker. The countryside looked even more desolate in the heavy dusk; the road stretched before them, shining wetly. Harriet was glad when they stopped outside the cheerfully lighted house in Franeker. It was pleasant to sit quietly, talking about their day with the rest of the family, and drinking Mevrouw Van Minnen’s excellent coffee. The howling wind and rain beating on the windows seemed curiously unreal heard from the comfort of the sitting-room. Aede got reluctantly to his feet after a time and went of, cheerfully enough, back to his hospital in Leeuwarden. After he’d gone, the rest of them sat around, still talking.