A Match for Sister Maggy

by Betty Neels

  ‘Of course you may stay, Paul. What nonsense to ask when it’s your house! I felt sure you would want to go to Utrecht.’ He made no answer and she went on airily, ‘I suppose I shall have to rest until teatime. May I not lie down on the sofa in the drawing room—just for once?’ She looked enquiringly at Maggy, who smiled and said comfortably that she didn’t see why not—just for once, and then relapsed into silence while Paul and his mother discussed the visits she was planning to make to her daughters.

  It was as they were leaving the dining room that Mevrouw Doelsma said,

  ‘Why don’t you take Maggy for a walk, Paul? I’m sure you would both enjoy the exercise.’

  Maggy watched the dark brows gather in a frown before he answered shortly. His, ‘Yes, of course,’ was uninviting. ‘Would you like that, Maggy?’ He barely glanced at her.

  Maggy gave him a cool stare. She loved him with her whole heart, but he could annoy her very much too! ‘I think not, thank you, Dr Doelsma, there are several things I should like to do before tea.’

  She might have saved her breath. As he opened the door for them to pass through, he said coolly,

  ‘I have some telephone calls to make. I’ll be in the study…about ten minutes, if that suits you?’

  She made no answer; what was the use? She wasn’t going to stand there wrangling about a walk, but she had no intention of going with him, not after that frown. Besides, she told herself for the hundredth time, the less she saw of him before she went back to England, the better.

  She followed Mevrouw Doelsma into the drawing room and unhurriedly set about making her comfortable on the large velvet-covered sofa before the log fire, and lingered about her small tasks in the beautiful room, until, lying back against high-piled cushions, glasses and book within reach, her patient said, ‘There, Maggy, there’s not another thing I want. Go and enjoy your walk.’

  But Maggy lingered. ‘Would you not like me to read to you, Mevrouw Doelsma?’

  ‘Not today, my dear. I shall go to sleep at once.’

  She closed her eyes in proof of her statement, and Maggy walked reluctantly to the door. It was a large double one, but it opened noiselessly under her hand; she closed it quietly behind her. The walls of the old house were very thick, but she didn’t think anyone—Paul—would hear her. The study door was across the hall to her left, and she kept her eyes on it as she took off her shoes. If she could get upstairs to her room he would probably forget about the wretched walk. There was a vast expanse of black and white tiles between her and the staircase. Maggy started to cross it, her eyes on the door.

  She had almost reached the stairs when she froze at Paul’s voice. Without turning round she knew where he was. There was a great chair by one of the console tables on the right of the drawing room door…she hadn’t even glanced that way.

  ‘Were you thinking of changing your shoes? There’s no need, you know. It isn’t wet underfoot.’ He was gently mocking; she knew that if she looked at him, he would be smiling. She sat down deliberately on the bottom stair and put on her shoes.

  ‘I did say that I would prefer not to go for a walk, Doctor,’ she said in a reasonable voice. ‘I meant it.’ She ventured to look at him. Yes, he was smiling—she looked away quickly, and reiterated, ‘There are some things I wish to do.’

  He had got up from his chair. ‘Something very secret,’ he remarked affably, ‘since it requires you to creep about the house in your stockings.’ He walked over to where she was standing on the lowest stair, and despite her own six feet, he still looked down at her. ‘And now tell me the real reason. Maggy.’

  She said, very calm and composed. ‘You frowned…you looked quite—quite saturnine. I have no intention of going for a walk with someone who finds the prospect so unwelcome.’

  She turned on her heel and started up the stairs, to be caught round the waist and swung round and put gently on her feet beside him.

  He released her at once. ‘Maggy, I’m sorry. What an ill-mannered boor you must think me.’ His grey eyes looked very bright; she wanted to look away and found she couldn’t. ‘Will it be enough if I say that I should very much like to go walking with you?’

  It was impossible to say no when he was looking at her like that. She went over to the table where she had put hat and gloves, and he followed her over and opened a drawer, pulled out a scarf and tossed it to her.

  ‘Here,’ he said lightly, ‘tie your hair up in this—there’s a wind blowing.’

  They went out of the door together and started down the short drive.

  ‘Let’s go to the village—have you seen the church?’

  ‘No,’ said Maggy. ‘It’s always shut, and I didn’t know how to ask for the key.’

  He gave her a brief look. ‘Poor girl, we’ve treated you very badly. You’ve been left a great deal to your own devices, haven’t you?’

  Maggy looked surprised. ‘I’m not on holiday, Doctor.’

  Paul looked as though he was about to say something else, but he remained silent, striding along the pleasant road. Maggy for once was glad to match him for size; anyone smaller would have been running by now… Stien, for instance. She squashed the thought—she would enjoy herself; had Paul not said that he had wanted to take her walking? She looked at him and met the same bright gaze she had found so disturbing in the hall. He blinked rapidly and his eyes were their usual cool grey once more.

  ‘We’re on a dead dyke,’ he explained. Maggy stood still and looked around her. They were indeed walking above the level of the fields all around them. But the sea was several miles away.

  ‘It’s not needed any more,’ she hazarded. ‘You reclaimed the land, and so another dyke was built…’

  ‘Clever girl!’ He sounded pleased at her interest. By the time they reached the village, he had told her all about Sleepers and Dreamers and Watchers.

  ‘Such lovely names,’ she said. ‘They sound like sentinels on duty.’

  Paul smiled. ‘But that’s just what they are,’ he said.

  They were in the village by now and he slowed his pace a little. The few people about greeted him with smiles and nods and incomprehensible words.

  ‘We like to speak our own language,’ he explained briefly as he knocked on the door of a very small house indeed; the end one in a similar row. ‘You were disgusted with Madame Riveau’s house, weren’t you? Now you shall see how a Friesian housewife keeps house.’

  The woman who answered the door was big and tall—as tall as Maggy herself—but no longer young. When she saw Paul she beamed and shook hands, and when he introduced Maggy, wrung her hand too.

  ‘We’re to go inside and have tea—Mevrouw Stijlma is the sexton’s wife; we can get the keys of the church from her.’

  The three of them almost filled the tiny room. Maggy, pushed gently into a chair by Paul, looked around her with interest.

  ‘May I stare?’ she enquired of him. ‘I know it’s rude, but there’s so much to see.’

  The room sparkled and shone with a perfection of cleanliness Maggy had seldom seen. The walls were almost covered with enlarged photos, some of them a dingy brown with age, and all framed in dark wood. They jostled some of the most beautiful plates; worthy of a museum. The mantelpiece was shrouded in plum-coloured chenille with an important bobble fringe; it held brass candlesticks of as fine a workmanship as could be found. She guessed that they were probably two hundred years old. The furniture was solid and Victorian in style and draped in snowy anti-macassars, but the wooden chairs round the table were painted in the traditional bright colours of Hindeloopen and were a great deal older than the rest of the furniture.

  Paul left her to gaze her fill, and then asked, ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s so clean. I mean everything—and some of the things are beautiful.’

  Her startled eye lighted on a large woollen square hung on the wall, woven into a startling picture of unlikely kittens and a ball of very pink wool. Next to it hung a sampler, exquisitely stitched and almost colou
rless with age.

  ‘Things get handed down from one generation to another.’ Paul’s eyes were twinkling. ‘There’s quite a variety.’

  They drank their tea, milkless and in paper-thin cups, while he and the sexton’s wife talked with little pauses while the conversation was translated for Maggy’s benefit. After a little while they took their leave, the church keys swinging from Paul’s hand.

  It was a large church, old and rather austere, with a thin spire crowned by its weathercock. Paul opened the low wide door and it creaked ajar to let them pass through. It was quiet and cool inside, with plain white-washed walls and no stained glass windows or ornaments, and no flowers. Maggy found it very much to her taste, for it reminded her of the bare little church near her own home. It seemed natural for Paul to take her hand and lead her down the centre aisle between the high wooden pews with their carved ends, each with its card, neatly inserted in its brass holder, bearing the names of its occupants. He stopped by the front pew and she stooped down to see his name, Van Beijen Doelsma, and his mother’s name beneath it, and when she looked at the stone flags they were standing upon, his name was there too. The letters were impossible to understand but the name was clear and the date: 1649.

  She said quietly, ‘It makes you feel small, doesn’t it?’ and then, ‘You really belong here, don’t you?’

  They were peering up at a wall plaque, a riot of carved plumes, elaborate scrolls and cherubim arranged around the stone profile of a haughty-looking gentleman with a determined chin and a Napoleonic hairstyle.

  ‘Great-great-Grandfather,’ said Paul. ‘He didn’t take kindly to being occupied by the French troops under Napoleon. He spent a lot of time in prison, leaving his wife to bring up six children—they’re all here—each generation follows the same pattern of life as the previous one. We are christened and married and buried here.’ He looked down at her. ‘And I shall follow that pattern.’

  Maggy had a sudden blindingly vivid picture of Stien standing in the aged church, a vision in white satin and tulle. She said hastily, to forget it, ‘Won’t that be rather difficult for you? You work in Leiden and you are often in Utrecht.’

  They moved slowly side by side down the aisle and contemplated the magnificent sounding-board above the pulpit.

  ‘I shan’t need to go to Utrecht so often,’—Maggy silently agreed; he would have Stien with him always, wouldn’t he?—‘We’ll spend the week in Leiden and come up here for weekends, and my wife and children will do the same.’

  ‘Naturally,’ murmured Maggy. She supposed Stien wouldn’t mind—after all, she would have the best of both worlds and Paul for a husband; what more could any girl want?

  They wandered slowly to the door and so out into the late afternoon and back down the road to return the keys to Mevrouw Stijlma, and when they turned to leave, Maggy, rather shyly, said, ‘Dag, Mevrouw,’ which released a flood of kindly praise, not one word of which she could understand.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Paul. ‘Have you managed to acquire any Dutch while you’ve been in Holland?’ He sounded really interested, and Maggy was emboldened to recite her vocabulary—a hotch-potch of words she had heard and remembered to look up in her dictionary. He laughed a good deal at some of them, and spent the whole of the walk back to Oudehof explaining the complications of Dutch grammar to her. Maggy listened attentively and thought wistfully that there were more interesting things to talk of other than the pitfalls to be found in the Dutch language.

  The afternoon had become unpleasantly chilly by the time they had reached the house. Great clouds billowed over the wide sky, the wind tore at Maggy’s headscarf and whipped her hair around her face. The hall was warm and welcoming. Maggy stood at the foot of the staircase, taking off her gloves. Her face glowed with the chill; her eyes sparkled. She refused Paul’s offer of tea and in reply to his enquiry as to whether she had enjoyed her walk, said soberly,

  ‘Aye, it was a grand wee walk, Dr Doelsma. Thank you for showing me the kirk…’

  He interrupted her rather impatiently.

  ‘There’s no question of thanks, Maggy. I don’t know when I have enjoyed a walk so much, perhaps because I seldom have the chance of airing my knowledge to such a good listener as yourself.’

  ‘Och, aye,’ Maggy said shortly. Her brows knitted into a frown; she was suddenly out of temper with her world. If it had been Stien with Paul, it wouldn’t have mattered what sort of a listener he had…

  ‘I’m away to Mevrouw Doelsma.’ She didn’t look at him, but went upstairs at a great rate, her long legs taking two steps at a time.

  By the time she had left Mevrouw Doelsma there wasn’t more than half an hour to dinner. She changed rapidly into the pink dress and pinned her hair neatly. It was still damp from her bath and she brushed the curly tendrils tidily aside, and then, when they sprang loose again, threw down her brush with an unwonted impatience, and with barely a second glance in the mirror went down to the drawing room to find Mevrouw Doelsma and the doctor already there.

  Dinner passed pleasantly enough. The talk was of the kind that needed very little thought, the food and pleasant surroundings had their effect on her. Maggy rose from the table quite cheerful and went as usual to her room while Paul and his mother had their hour or so together. It was almost ten o’clock when she returned to the drawing room. Mevrouw Doelsma was more than ready for bed and got up at once and kissed her son. ‘Goodnight, Paul. I’ll see you before you go in the morning.’

  ‘Of course.’ He looked at Maggy standing quietly near the door. She said goodnight, too, but he didn’t answer at once, and she turned to go. He said, at his most persuasive, ‘Come riding in the morning, Maggy? Is seven o’clock too early for you?’

  She hadn’t meant to say yes. She was half way up the stairs, still trying to decide why she had been so weak-willed, and at the same time bubbling over with happiness.

  It was a wild grey morning, but dry, Maggy was at the stables well before the hour, to find the doctor gentling Cobber and Biddy ready for her. They swung into the saddles and started off across the park and out into the little lane at its back, not hurrying, but talking idly. She was completely taken by surprise when Paul said casually,

  ‘I should like to take you out, Maggy. Perhaps we could have dinner and dance somewhere, if you would like that.’

  She took so long to reply that he turned to look at her.

  ‘Of course, if you don’t want to, my dear girl, don’t hesitate to say so.’

  ‘Of course I want to come!’ Maggy burst out, and stopped. She did, but was it rather unwise? She squashed her more prudent thoughts, and said, ‘You see, I haven’t a dress.’

  He chuckled. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard that used as an excuse for not going on a date! Usually it’s the other way round; surely an invitation is a good reason for buying a new dress?’

  They turned the horses and started for home.

  ‘Mother shall go with you to Leeuwarden. You may have discovered already that she loves to shop. There’s bound to be something to fit you there. They cater for big women here, you know.’

  Maggy said indignantly, ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me a big woman!’

  He gave her a sideways glance; there was a gleam in his eye. ‘Certainly I won’t call you a big woman if you don’t like it. I can think of several alternatives—shall I try out a few?’

  Maggy frowned. ‘No,’ she said severely.

  He said. ‘Just as you like, Maggy,’ in a deceptively meek voice, so that she had to laugh. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now about this evening…’

  He left soon after breakfast, and his mother came down to see him off.

  ‘You’ll be in Leiden for lunch,’ she remarked.

  ‘I’m going to Utrecht, Mother.’ He was stuffing papers into a briefcase.

  ‘I can’t think why you don’t live there!’ his mother declared rather pettishly.

  ‘Yes, you can, dearest. You know how much I am attached to my home in
Leiden, I could never give it up. Besides, my son must inherit it in his turn, must he not?’

  Maggy, standing rather uncertainly close by, not sure if she was wanted, heard him. He looked very handsome and more arrogant than ever. She thought of him in his house on the Rapenburg, with a very large family and a devoted and well-loved wife. She couldn’t bear it and turned to slip quietly upstairs, but he had seen her move and put out a long arm and swung her round to walk with them to the door, where he kissed his mother, then turned and dropped a light kiss on the tip of her own nose and got into his car and drove away.

  He had said that he was coming back in two days’ time to take her out. Maggy had plenty of time to think about it meanwhile. She supposed that the evening out was a kind of thank-you from a grateful employer. She would be going back to England in a few days, just as soon as she heard from Matron. Paul, she thought without conceit, had grown to like her as a friend, and there was no reason why two friends shouldn’t have a pleasant evening together. She hadn’t expected to see him again; she would make the most of what would most certainly be their last meeting.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAGGY STOOD in front of the mirror in her bedroom at Grotehof, and looked at herself. She supposed she was all right—it was a pity that there was so much of her—but the dress was certainly rather nice, cream guipure lace over a matching slip with a narrow blue velvet ribbon at the waist. It just skimmed her knees, showing off her long legs to advantage; it was sleeveless too. She had been rather doubtful about so much bosom showing, but Mevrouw Doelsma had told her that a low décolleté was quite a proper thing.

  Maggy gave her hair a final pat, picked up her little evening purse and went downstairs. Paul and his mother were sitting by the fire in the hall. He saw her first and got up and came towards her, looking elegant and immensely tall. She stood shyly on the bottom step while he looked her frankly up and down.

  ‘Delightful, Maggy. I can see that you will turn all the men’s heads this evening.’