The Edge of Winter

by Betty Neels

  The doctor pushed open the door and looked around him, nodding a civil good evening to the half dozen people sitting in the coffee room—a distinctly old-fashioned apartment, its dark panelled walls hung with heavily framed pictures, a huge stove, crowned with an ornate metal cap, jutted out into the room from under an over-mantel bristling with old pistols and pewter tankards, and the tables and chairs were arranged with almost military precision around its walls. At the farther end there was a bar, very old-fashioned and massive too, with an enormous mirror behind it, freely ornamented with fretwork shelves and an elaborately carved frame. Crispin took in these antiquated features in one all-embracing glance, he also took lightning stock of the pleasant-faced, elderly woman watching him from behind the bar. Without further hesitation he crossed the room and addressed himself to her.

  Araminta woke up again as the doctor lifted her from the car and asked in a panicky voice: ‘Where are we? What are you doing?’

  Crispin didn’t pause on his way over the cobbles back to the inn door, and since it was still teeming with rain, she could hardly have blamed him. He kicked the door open with a foot, set her down at a table nearby and observed: ‘We’re in the village of Thorn—south of Eindhoven. The weather is too bad to go on; besides, you need a meal and a night’s sleep. Sit there while I find somewhere to put the car, and don’t let us have any nonsense about running away—you have no shoes and we are both much too tired to splash around in this confounded weather. Drink your coffee when it comes and don’t worry about speaking to anyone—I told the landlady that you’re English.’

  She peered at him, her tired, unmade-up face framed by the soft wool of the rug. ‘Are you still angry?’ she wanted to know.

  He didn’t answer her, only smiled a little and went away, and a moment later a young girl came with a tray of coffee. It was hot and creamy and sweet and there were little biscuits in the saucers. Araminta ate hers at once, aware that she was famished, then sipped the coffee slowly, her hungry eyes on the biscuit in the other saucer—presently she ate that one too.

  Crispin was taking a long time, she thought uneasily. Supposing he had driven off and left her? The preposterous idea took root in her muddled head and swelled out of all proportions, to disappear like a pricked balloon when he opened the door and came in, sat down opposite her and put her jacket, shoes and bag on the chair between them.

  The woman from behind the bar came with fresh coffee and the menu card, and Araminta said apologetically: ‘I ate your biscuit…’

  The doctor gave her a quick glance and picked up the card. ‘Soup?’ he asked her, and there was no hint of rage in his face now. ‘Echte soup, I think—there’s not much choice, I’m afraid, but there are gehakt balletjes and pommes frites. What would you like to drink? I doubt if they serve tea—how about more coffee?’

  He gave the order, hung his Burberry on the old-fashioned coat stand by the door and sat down again to sip his coffee, his face still blandly impassive. Araminta, feeling better after the coffee, eyed him doubtfully. Perhaps this wasn’t quite the place in which to have a serious discussion, but provided they both kept their tempers… She began in a carefully polite voice: ‘How did you know where I was? I thought Valkenburg was a long way away…’

  ‘Not far enough, Araminta.’ His eyes glinted beneath their lids. ‘I was fortunate enough to find the clerk who sold you your ticket—he remembered you.’ He didn’t mention how long it had taken him to do that, or how many clerks he had searched out and asked before he had been successful.

  ‘Oh, I should have thought of that—my Dutch…’

  ‘Your pretty face, Araminta,’ he corrected her gently.

  She decided to ignore that. ‘But you didn’t know where I was in Valkenburg.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not a very large town. The hotel at which you stayed was the third one I visited. They didn’t know where you were, but one of the waiters had seen you walking back into the town—it was just a question of looking.’

  She said ‘Oh,’ again, at a loss for words, but presently she said: ‘It was very kind of you to come after me, but unnecessary—I’m perfectly all right, you know, and I—I knew exactly what I was doing.’

  His stern mouth curved just a little. ‘Yes.’ He might have added more, but just then the soup arrived and instead of speaking he watched Araminta’s delightful nose twitch at its appetising smell. He passed her the salt and enquired in an off-hand manner: ‘What did you have instead of supper last night?’

  She didn’t look at him. ‘Well, I—I wasn’t hungry. I bought a bag of chips and then I had coffee at the hotel.’ She picked up her spoon then and he forbore from asking any more questions, leaving her to enjoy her meal.

  The gehakt balletjes, richly brown and crisp, tasted like heaven. Araminta ate them slowly and the chips and appelmoes besides, thankful that her companion was leaving her in peace. The thought reminded her that even though he might wish to remain silent, there were several things she must say. She accepted yet more coffee and when he offered her brandy to go with it, prudently refused. ‘The brandy you gave me to drink,’ she reminded him coldly, ‘was very strong; it sent me to sleep.’

  His eyes gleamed with laughter. ‘It does have that effect on an empty stomach, and I neglected to ask you whether yours was empty or not. I’m sorry.’ He smiled properly for the first time and she said quickly: ‘But you wanted that, didn’t you, so that I would go with you without a fuss—how very unfair!’

  ‘Everything’s fair in love and war, Araminta.’

  She put down her coffee cup, noticing that her hand was shaking. He must be very anxious to be rid of her— Tante Maybella had been right, and nothing was turning out as she had planned. She had meant to disappear without a fuss and write a letter—a dignified letter, betraying none of her feelings—when she got home to Dunster, instead of which she had merely given him a great deal of trouble of leaving him free to go to his Nelissa with a clear conscience. She wondered briefly if Nelissa was a nice girl and said meekly: I’m sorry I’ve been such a nuisance. Everything went wrong—I should have stopped and packed some things and made sure that I had my notecase with me…but you see I thought that if I could get away before you got home…’

  The doctor eyed her narrowly across the table, but she wasn’t looking at him. ‘I should like to talk…’ she began once more.

  He interrupted her very firmly. ‘And so should I; I fancy we have a great deal to say to each other, Araminta, but not now. You are too tired, and so, for that matter, am I. Tomorrow will be time enough. Now you will go to bed and sleep.’

  He got up as he spoke and she got to her feet reluctantly, for she had screwed up her courage and now it was oozing out of her again, but he was right, of course. So bade him good night without another word and followed the young girl up a narrow uncarpeted flight of stairs and into a small, very clean bedroom, where she was made to understand that she was to let her guide have her damp skirt. She supposed that that too was to be cleaned, together with her jacket and shoes, which, Crispin had already told her, would be returned to her in the morning.

  He had been as good as his word. Not only were they returned to her dry and pressed and the shoes shining, but the girl brought her a tray of tea in the morning, as well. True, the tea was in a glass and there was no milk, but it was a nice normal way in which to start the day, although whether the day itself was going to be normal remained to be seen. There was a note under the miniature teapot, too, in Crispin’s wellnigh unreadable scrawl: ‘I imagine you might not get up without your tea. Breakfast is in half an hour.’

  ‘Orders, orders!’ muttered Araminta pettishly, and swept the hair out of her eyes and drank her tea, then got out of her comfortable bed and dressed herself, taking a defiant extra five minutes over her exquisitely neat hair-do. But if she had hoped to annoy the doctor by this, she was disappointed, for he merely put down his paper, got to his feet, wished her an austere good morning and hoped that she had slept well.
He then asked her if she would like coffee with her breakfast, sat down again and resumed his reading. There was no one else in the coffee room, so it was an excellent opportunity to state her case, even borrow some money from him so that she might carry out her still nebulous plans to run away again, but somehow it was difficult to address herself to an upheld newspaper.

  When their breakfast came, Araminta ate and drank mechanically, rehearsing what she would say when she had the chance, and presently, when he lowered his newspaper, the chance came. Even then, she found it difficult to begin, for he made some matter-of-fact remark about the weather which quite put her off her stroke, although she did finally achieve: ‘You said we might talk…’

  He was looking over the bill the landlady had just presented, but he put it down so that he might give her his full attention. ‘Ah, yes—and so we will, but not, I think, until we have Tante Maybella with us. It would only be a waste of time and we should be at loggerheads.’

  ‘We shan’t…I won’t come back with you, I won’t…can’t you see?’ Her voice rose a little.

  ‘No, I don’t see,’ he told her, ‘but I believe I can guess…afraid to come back?’

  ‘Of course not—it’s simply that there’s no point…I don’t know why you pretended to…’ She stopped, for she was making no headway at all, and Crispin must have shared her view, for he said gravely: ‘You know, you haven’t finished a single sentence since we started this conversation—I think it would be better if we waited.’

  His manner was pleasant, faintly amused now, and wholly impersonal; it was impossible to imagine that this was the same man who had called her his darling, although it wasn’t very wise to remember that now.

  ‘If you had told me about her—right at the beginning,’ said Araminta wistfully.

  His eyes were steady on her face. ‘About her?’ he queried softly.

  ‘Nelissa.’

  He said sharply. ‘Ah—Aunt Maybella has been talking to you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He didn’t say anything for a minute or two but got to his feet. ‘We will go home now,’ he told her. ‘There is a great deal to say to you, but I prefer to wait until we are there. If when we have had our—er—discussion, you still wish to go back to Dunster, you have only to say so and I will arrange for you to go immediately.’

  It was a handsome offer and she could see that there was no alternative; he would stop her if she tried to make off, and if he couldn’t stop her he would come after her. ‘Purely from a sense of duty,’ she reminded herself sadly. So she said: ‘Very well, I’ll get my bag,’ in a wooden voice and went back to her little room to fetch it. But when she reached it she sat down on the little bed to think. Things weren’t turning out the way she had wanted them to; Crispin was determined to take her back with him; perhaps his sense of hospitality had been outraged and he wished to make amends. He had liked her even if he hadn’t loved her; possibly, if Nelissa hadn’t suddenly become available, they might have been quite happily married. She sighed; she would have been, anyway.

  She got up and went to look at her face in the very small looking-glass which was all the hotel allowed its guests as a concession to their vanity; she looked awful, no wonder Crispin hadn’t bothered to look at her during breakfast. She picked up her bag and went downstairs to find the Rolls, polished and gleaming from some hardworking, invisible hand, standing before the inn door. There was no sign of Crispin, and she looked around in a sudden absurd state of panic, quite forgetful of her brave resolve to run away if she had the chance, aware that it was ridiculous to feel utterly lost just because he wasn’t there. After all, she was going to have to manage without him for the rest of her life, wasn’t she?

  She didn’t hear him come up behind her. ‘I’ve been listening to the weather report,’ he observed mildly. ‘More bad weather on the way, I’m afraid, but we should be home in time for lunch.’

  He ushered her into the car, talking about the village as he did so—a small feudal town, he told her, owned by one family for a very long time, hence its pristine appearance, its cobbled streets and its air of not belonging to modern times. Araminta listened with half an ear, her mind already kilometres away, in Amsterdam, trying to think what she should do, and say, when they got there. She observed politely that the information was fascinating, and the doctor, who had passed on to some mundane remark about the state of the road, hid a smile as he started the car.

  He talked for a good part of their journey, seemingly oblivious of the fact that her replies were distrait to say the least, and when they reached s’ Hertogenbosch, he left the motorway briefly and took her to the Chalet Royal for coffee. The leaden sky which had been brooding over them since they had left Thorn dissolved into a torrent of rain while they were drinking it, made worse by the strong wind which came from nowhere to toss the bare branches of the trees and turn hastily opened umbrellas inside out. Araminta gazed out of the window and shuddered despite the luxurious warmth of the restaurant. What would she have done and where would she have gone if Crispin hadn’t found her? Something of her feelings must have shown on her face, for he leaned forward to say: ‘Don’t think about it now, Araminta. Shall we go? It’s only another sixty miles.’ And at the entrance: ‘Wait here while I get the car, there’s no need for us both to get wet.’

  He was kind, she thought, watching his broad back in its enveloping Burberry weave its way through the other cars to where the Rolls stood. He would be kind to anyone—he could also be, she reminded herself, the nastiest-tempered man she had ever met. Moreover, he liked his own way, he was overbearing too… She saw him get out of the car and walk towards her, unmindful of the rain. A prudent man would have stayed where he was behind the wheel and beckoned… Her heart rocked at the sight of him; he could be as nasty as he chose and marry his Nelissa and forget all about her, but he would be the only man she could ever love. She sloshed through the rain, trying not to notice the grip of his hand on her arm.

  The rain turned to sleet as they neared Utrecht and then almost imperceptibly to snow, but the Rolls speeded along the straight ribbon of highway ahead of them, cutting the slowly whitening fields on either side of them in two.

  ‘It’s winter,’ said Araminta.

  ‘The edge of winter—the first uncertain days of cold and snow and wind. The seasons have their uncertainties as well as us, you know.’

  ‘I’m not in the least uncertain,’ she assured him, too quickly.

  ‘Good. Neither am I.’ He slowed the car to edge it into the Amsterdam lane and presently they were in the outskirts and then the heart of the city. She had had hours in which to think, thought Araminta, and she had wasted them; she had used her wits to no good purpose and her mind was most regrettably blank. She saw the familiar grachten, veiled in snow now and quite beautiful, and in no time at all Crispin was stopping before the house, hurrying her across the pavement and up the steps and in through the door, and there was Jos coming to meet them across the hall. His ‘Good morning, doctor, good morning, Miss Shaw’ was very correct, although he did allow the faint flicker of a satisfied smile to cross his blunt features.

  Araminta gave him a shy smile and stood uncertainly. A ridiculous, vague idea of flight, back through the solid door behind her and into the icy street, had taken possession of her once again. ‘I shouldn’t,’ said the doctor, so that she jumped and went pink. ‘I must say you’re a very persistent girl. Go upstairs and comb your hair,’ he suggested. ‘Lunch will be ready.’

  She stood her ground. ‘You said we could talk…’

  He looked shocked. ‘My dear girl, on an empty stomach? Unthinkable! Now make haste, do.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  HER ROOM LOOKED exactly as it had done when she had left it, although when she looked round she saw that the bed had been made up with fresh linen, there were violets and baby cyclamen in the cloisonné bowl on the bedside table and a fresh stock of magazines and English newspapers, and in the bathroom there was a pile of fluffy pink
towels and a fresh assortment of soaps, for all the world as though someone had known that she would be returning. Had Crispin been so certain of finding her that he had given orders for her room to be got ready? She took off her jacket and wandered over to the window and stared out. When someone tapped on the door she said ‘Come in’ without thinking.

  It was Crispin. He said at once and gently: ‘Now stop mooning about, Araminta. You’re on the wrong tack, and the more you puzzle the more wrong you’ll get. Come along—you’ll feel better when you’ve had a meal.’

  He crossed the room and took her hand, and when she protested that she hadn’t tidied herself, said in the same gentle voice: ‘Never mind, you look very nice,’ and bent to kiss her surprised mouth.

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Araminta, and went on quite fiercely: ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Nelissa?’ she paused to swallow tears. ‘It was unfair—if I’d known about her and you I’d never have come, and if I’d been told after we got here I’d have gone back home, and now, when I’m trying to put things right, you’re making it as difficult as possible.’

  Crispin was staring at her, standing very still. He said slowly: ‘I wonder just what Tante Maybella told you…’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it, and if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have know…’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. Araminta, Nelissa died sixteen years ago.’ He went to the door and held it open. ‘Shall we go down?’

  Araminta had gone rather pale, but she didn’t move an inch. ‘I should like to know…’ she began just a little shrilly.