by Betty Neels
‘Friso’s on call,’ remarked Doctor Van Minnen. ‘I hope he won’t need to go out tonight.’
Harriet remembered his remark when she was lying in bed, listening to the storm. She wondered if anyone bothered to see that Friso had a hot drink and took off his wet clothes when he went out on a bad night. She worried about it for quite a time until her common sense told her that he had servants enough to look after him. He didn’t look in the least neglected. She turned over, thumping her pillow with an unnecessary violence, and told herself that she was a fool, and after a little while went to sleep.
She awoke the next morning to a sudden fierce clap of thunder. The wind had apparently gathered strength from the night hours; so had the rain. She turned from the unpleasing prospect outside as Sieske tapped on the door and came in. She was already dressed and offered the information that she would have to go to Sneek after breakfast. Oma wasn’t well—she would have to take the Mini and see what was the matter.
‘I’ll not ask you to come with me, Harry,’ she said. ‘Not in this weather. Father has gone to Leeuwarden—he’s anaesthetizing at the hospital today. Do you mind being at home with Moeder?’
‘Me?’ asked Harriet. ‘No, of course not. I shall air my Dutch.’ She was putting up her hair and her mouth was full of pins; she said indistinctly, ‘Isn’t there a surgery here today?’
Sieske uncurled herself from the bed. ‘No. Friso sees Father’s urgent cases when he’s at the hospital; but he doesn’t come here.’ She didn’t look at Harriet. ‘He just does the visits.’ Harriet didn’t speak, so after a minute she went on, ‘I’ve been listening to the news—the wind’s done quite a lot of damage and there’s a little flooding locally—It’s the spring tide, you know, and the wind blowing from the north-west at the same time.’
They went downstairs to breakfast.
The morning passed slowly; Harriet and Mevrouw Van Minnen had an early lunch—there wasn’t much else to do and it kept their minds off the dismal scene outside. Sieske had telephoned from Sneek, and although she had made light of it, they gathered that she had had a very unpleasant journey. It was shortly after that the telephone went dead. They were in the sitting-room, improving Harriet’s Dutch when they heard a car coming wetly along the street. It stopped; brakes squealing, outside the house, and Mevrouw Van Minnen, who had gone to look out of the window, said, ‘De jeep van Friso,’ which remark Harriet was well able to understand. She got up and went to the window too. Why had Friso come? But it wasn’t Friso who got out and ran up the steps to peal the bell with a desperate urgency, but a young man who was a stranger. He stood in the hall, dripping over the carpet, talking to Mevrouw Van Minnen. He spoke as though he was repeating a lesson learned by heart, and when he had finished, she nodded calmly and stood thinking. At length she turned to Harriet.
‘Friso calls help. Calls for Sieske—baby.’ She paused, frowning in deep concentration. Harriet snatched up her writing pad and pen and held them out. Mevrouw Van Minnen nodded and smiled and proceeded to draw a pair of forceps. Harriet had no difficulty in recognizing them; so Friso wanted to do a forceps delivery—he’d want the Minnett’s gas-air portable; she had seen it in Doctor Van Minnen’s surgery. Not to be outdone by Mevrouw Van Minnen’s basic English, she said, ‘Ik ga.’ She turned to go to the surgery—she knew exactly what she would need to take with her—but Mevrouw Van Minnen put a hand on her arm and said painstakingly,
‘Dyke break. Much water.’ She held a hand a foot or so above the floor, and looked hopefully at Harriet, who made a frustrated sound which changed to a crow of triumph as she remembered the dictionary on the sitting-room table. With its invaluable help and some lucky guesswork, she possessed herself of the fact that there had been some sort of accident to the sea dyke above the patient’s house; a small area was under water. She would have liked to know more, but there simply wasn’t time—Friso was waiting.
She was ready in ten minutes. She had put on slacks and a sweater and borrowed an anorak and boots from Taeike’s wardrobe. The needed equipment stood in the hall while the messenger swallowed coffee; he had said very little after his one long speech, now he muttered something to Mevrouw Van Minnen, shouldered the Minnett’s and opened the door. The Land-Rover seemed a haven of refuge after the few seconds’ walk from the house. Harriet sighed soundlessly with relief and hoped that the journey was to be a short one. In this she was disappointed. Once out of the little town, they headed, as she knew they would, for the coast. It was slow progress in the teeth of the gale and the rain lashing down to flood the windscreen as though there were no wipers working, but in time they reached Tzummarum, which straddled the coast road. Harriet looked hopefully at her companion, and above the wind he shouted something at her and shook his head. Clearly, they had further to go.
It was at St Annaparochie, several kilometres further, that he turned off the road, and into a country lane winding past the church, straight to the sea. Perhaps in good weather it had a passable surface, but now it was covered in a wet sand which had turned to mud. Clear of the village, Harriet could see the flooded polder land with the sea dyke behind it. Her companion waved a vague arm towards the sea and, for the first time, smiled at her. She concluded that they were almost at the end of their journey, and sure enough, after a further five minutes of skidding and sliding in the mud, he drew up.
Harriet couldn’t see anything at all when she first got out. The wind took her breath and the rain lashed her face with such frenzy that she was half blinded. She held on to the Land-Rover with all her might, and presently was able to take stock of her surroundings. The dyke was closer now; it looked undamaged, but in the distance, where it followed the curve of the coast, she could make out a great many figures moving what looked like a dragline; there was a pile of what might have been wreckage, but it was too far off to see. She transferred her gaze to the cottage under the dyke—it was already under water as far as its low window-sills, as was the larger house only a few hundred yards away from where they had stopped. She became aware that the man was beside her, and without a word, she picked up one of the bags and started down the small slippery path behind him. It led them to what she supposed was a field when it was dry; it was now boot-high in water, and was obviously going to get deeper as they proceeded. She sloshed along in her companion’s wake, her thoughts intent on keeping her feet at all costs.
It was when they were level with the first house that she stopped. She had heard a faint whine, but when it wasn’t repeated, she supposed that it was the wind, but after a few more steps she stopped again. The wind was whining; but this wasn’t the wind. In the little yard behind the house there was a large ruffiany dog, up to his belly in water, and fastened securely to the wall by a stout rope. The man had gone past it with barely a glance; Harriet guessed that he was too worried about his wife to think of anything else; she would get no help from him, nor would he stop. It would only take a minute. She put her hand into the pocket of her slacks and withdrew the sort of all-purpose knife that all boys carry. It seemed a surprising thing for the delicate-looking and ultra-feminine Miss Slocombe to have about her person, but as she had once sensibly observed, it was only common sense to be equipped for any eventuality. She put the bag she was carrying on the top of a convenient wall and went over to the dog, selecting the strongest blade as she did so.
The man didn’t look round until they were at the door of the cottage. Harriet stood quietly while he gave vent to his feelings. She gathered they weren’t happy ones, and when he made to wade back towards the dog beside her, she put a protective hand on the shabby head pressed against her knee, and said, ‘No. He stays here with me. I’ll not leave him to drown.’ She spoke with an air of authority which he could understand, even though her words were unintelligible. She walked past him, her hand on the beast’s head and, still muttering, he pushed the door open and they went inside. The passage was small, with a door on either side and a narrow steep stair between; the water was already lapping th
e lower steps. They stood, the three of them, listening to the ceiling creaking under Dr Eijsinck’s tread. He called out something as he came, and in a moment his long legs, encased in gumboots, appeared on the stairs. He stopped just above the water, staring at them. After a long silence he said in a cold voice to make her shiver,
‘You! Why in heaven’s name have you come here? I asked for Sieske…even if she couldn’t come, surely someone could have been found.’
He looked so fierce that Harriet clutched the dog’s fur harder and it whimpered softly. She said ‘Sorry’ and patted its dirty head. It gave her a moment to bottle up her rage, when she spoke her voice was as quiet and level as usual.
‘Sieske’s in Sneek. There’s only her mother at home—and me. There was no time to find anyone else.’ She swallowed returning rage. ‘May I remind you that I am a nurse?’
He didn’t appear to hear her. His eyes were on the dog. It stared at him with its yellow eyes, red tongue hung between terrifying teeth. Dr Eijsinck laughed softly, and with genuine amusement.
‘Do tell me, Harriet, why have you brought this dog with you?’
She explained and added, ‘Please don’t let that man turn him loose. He’s cold and wet and hungry.’
He didn’t answer her, but turned to the man and said something and the man growled a reply. ‘Come upstairs then, since you are here, and bring that damned great beast with you.’
Upstairs was an attic, one corner of which had been boarded up to form a bedroom. Harriet peeled off her soaking anorak, bade the dog sit down and not stir and started to unpack the bags with a practised hand. The patient was dozing fitfully—worn out, she supposed. Friso was washing his hands in the little tin basin on the chest which was pushed against one wall. Without turning round, he asked,
‘You understand Minnett’s?’
Harriet tied the tapes of the gown which she had had the forethought to include in one of the bags, and started to lay out the things Friso would need; they were each packed in sealed packets, ready for use. She was trying, unsuccessfully, to forget the look of anger on his face when he had seen her—he had looked at her quite differently when they had gone sailing, and later that evening too…she brushed the thought aside and answered his question in a civil voice which betrayed nothing of her real feelings.
‘Yes, Doctor, I do know about Dutch rules. In England, provided the patient has been previously examined and pronounced fit by the doctor, the midwife may administer gas-and-air analgesia from a Minnett’s apparatus without supervision. I am a midwife,’ she added unnecessarily.
He had his back to her, and in any case, she didn’t look up from loosening the packs so that he could withdraw their contents with a sterile hand. He spoke softly. ‘My good girl, are you presuming to teach me the rules?’
Harriet took a very small blanket out of one of the bags and laid it handy, ready for the baby.
‘Certainly not,’ she said briskly. ‘I merely wish to reassure you.’
She squeezed her small person past his bulk and went to the head of the bed; the patient was awake. Harriet took her hand and smiled and nodded at her, waiting patiently for Friso to explain to the woman what had to be done.
The baby was a boy. Harriet wrapped him in the blanket with all the care of a saleswoman wrapping a valuable parcel, and gave him to his tired, happy mother, whose pulse, she noted, was too rapid. She told Friso, wondering if he would snub her again when she told him that she had brought two vacolitres of five per cent saline with her. He made it easy by telling her that the woman would have to go to Leeuwarden as soon as she could be moved.
‘She’ll need a transfusion, and this is no place for her at the moment.’
Harriet agreed soberly and mentioned the vacolitres, suffering a mixture of relief and disappointment when all he said was,
‘Good girl—let’s have one up, shall we?’
It only took a few minutes, then Friso called something through the half-open door and the man came in, smiling and faintly uneasy at the sight of his wife. Harriet took off her gown, listening with half an ear to the unintelligible talk, until Friso said, ‘Coffee outside. We’ll leave them for a bit.’
The dog was sitting where she had left him in a corner of the attic. He whined gently and wagged a stumpy tail, and she went and sat down beside him on the floor, leaving Friso to fetch two mugs of coffee from a table which also held a small paraffin stove and a collection of pots and pans and crockery. There was a box too, full of food, doubtless swept in haste from a downstairs cupboard. Furniture had been stacked neatly along one wall of the attic. Harriet wondered about the carpets.
‘Will they get compensation?’ she asked, accepting her coffee. Friso put a pan of water down in front of the dog, who drank with pathetic gusto, then fetched two chairs and, as an afterthought, an end of bread from the table. They sat side by side, watching the animal dispose of the unappetizing meal with a relish highlighted by a display of awesome teeth and rolling eye.
‘Yes, but not at once. Don’t worry about that. It’ll be seen to. Drink your coffee, then we can give Mevrouw Bal a cup and get things cleared up.’ He took his watch out of a pocket and put it back on his wrist. ‘It’s almost six; the tide will be high at half past seven—we shall have to stay here.’ He got up and went to peer out of the small window set in the attic wall.
Harriet drank her coffee, reserving the last of it for the dog. He licked the bowl hopefully long after no drop remained, then edged nearer to her so that she could put an arm round his matted woolly shoulders. She addressed Friso’s back. ‘How long shall we be here?’
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Most of the night at least, I should suppose. Once the tide’s on the turn they can get on with repairing the breach. If the ambulance can get through as far as Bal brought the Land-Rover, it’ll be easy enough. While we’re making his wife comfortable, he must go back to St Annaparochie and get the police to contact the hospital—they’ll send an ambulance as soon as it’s possible.’ He turned round to look at her. There was no sign of anger in his face now; she wasn’t sure of his expression, but there was something in it which emboldened her to ask, ‘Why were you angry when I came?’
He came and stood in front of her, very close, so that he appeared even taller and broader than he was. ‘Why do you suppose?’ His voice was dry.
‘Well,’ she said carefully, ‘I suppose you were disappointed because it was I and you were afraid that I wouldn’t be able to help you or understand the Minnett’s or—or make myself useful. I know,’ she added mournfully, ‘that you haven’t got much of an opinion of me.’
‘I was not aware that I had even offered an opinion of you—if you must know, I find you an excellent nurse, a woman of great good sense, and a beautiful and utterly charming companion. My anger was the result of my fears for your well-being, my dear—my very dear Harriet.’
He walked away as he spoke and she heard him talking to the couple in the bedroom, and a moment later Mijnheer Bal came out and went downstairs, and Friso put his head round the door and asked her to bring his patient a cup of coffee. His voice sounded so ordinary that she fancied that she must have imagined all that he had just said. But there was no time to think about it—she did as she was bid, and then, while Friso made shift to pack away the equipment, she washed the mother and bathed the baby and set the little room to rights, and when there was nothing more to do, she went back into the attic, feeling shy. Friso apparently did not share her feelings, for all he said was,
‘Finished? Can you open a few tins and warm something up for all of us to eat?’
Her practical nature took over, giving the shyness no chance. She said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and went to inspect the untidy pile of odds and ends on the table. From these she selected a number of tins and was pouring their contents into an iron pan she had providentially found in the clothes basket when Friso said, ‘Need any help?’ and strolled over to stand beside her. He eyed the neatly opened tins. ‘Naturally, you
carry a tin opener with you,’ he murmured blandly. ‘I should have known.’
Harriet looked apologetic. ‘Well, not always, but I’ve a knife I usually carry around.’
‘Ah, yes. With a corkscrew and that small instrument for digging stones out of horses’ hooves.’ His voice was grave, but he was laughing at her, though she didn’t dare to look up and see. She said ‘Yes,’ rather shortly, and then, ‘You’re in my way. And we’re running short of water.’
He picked up a kettle and a bucket and went obediently down the stairs. She could hear him wading about down below, and presently he began to whistle; the small domestic sound made everything very normal; she salted her pot-au-feu, unable to see it through sudden tears. She put down her spoon and brushed them away angrily, not sure why she was crying.
It was more than an hour before Bal returned; by then the contents of the pot were giving off a delicious aroma. Harriet had given Mevrouw Bal her supper and tucked her up once more with the baby and had then turned her attention to the dog, who had devoured a generously filled bowl of stew with such speed that there had been nothing to do but to give it, rather guiltily, a second helping. There was plenty in the pot anyway, and she had reason to be glad of this when Mijnheer Bal returned and Friso, who, between visits to his patient, had been on foraging expeditions of his own, joined them. The two men emptied their plates with almost as much speed as the dog had done; she gave them more and went on eating her own smaller helping. ‘When did you last have a meal?’ she inquired.
