Stars Through the Mist

by Betty Neels

  The road they were on stretched apparently unending between the flat fields, and save for a group of farm cottages half a mile away, and ahead of them the vague outline of a farmhouse, there was nothing moving except a farm tractor being driven across a ploughed field. Deborah watched the driver idly as they came level with him. ‘He must be lonely,’ she said idly, and then urgently: ‘Gerard, that tractor’s going to turn over!’

  She was glad that he wasn’t one of those men who asked needless questions; they weren’t travelling fast, so he slid to a halt and had the door open as the tractor, some way off, reared itself up like an angry monster and crashed down on to its hapless driver.

  Even in his hurry, it warmed Deborah’s heart when Gerard leaned across her to undo her door and snap back her safety belt so that she could get out quickly. There was a narrow ditch between the road and the field; he bridged it easily with his long legs and then turned to give her a hand before they started to run as best they might across the newly turned earth.

  The man had made no sound. When they reached him he was unconscious, trapped by the bonnet of the tractor, its edge biting across the lower half of his body.

  It was like being back in theatre, thought Deborah wildly, working in a silent agreed pattern which needed no speech. She found a pulse and counted it with care while Gerard’s hands began a careful search over the man’s body.

  ‘Nasty crack on his head on this side,’ she offered, and peered at the eyes under their closed lids. ‘Pupil reaction is equal.’

  Gerard grunted, his fingers probing and feeling and probing again.

  ‘I’m pretty sure his pelvis is fractured, God knows what’s happened to his legs—how’s his pulse?’ She told him and he nodded. ‘Not too bad,’ and examined more closely the wound on the man’s head. ‘Can’t feel a fracture, though I think there may be a crack. We’ve got to get this thing eased off him, even if it’s only a centimetre.’

  He slid a powerful arm as far as it would go and heaved with great caution and slowness. ‘Half an inch would do it.’ He was talking to himself. ‘Your belt, Debby—if we could budge this thing just a shade and stuff your belt in…’

  She had her belt off while he was still speaking. ‘How about trying to scoop the earth from under him and slip the belt in?’

  He had understood her at once. He crouched beside the man, the belt in his hand, his arm ready to thrust it between the bonnet’s rim and the man’s body. Deborah dug with speedy calm; there was nothing to use but her hands. She felt the nails crack and tear and saw, in a detached way, the front of her expensive tweed two-piece gradually disappear under an encrustation of damp earth, but presently she was able to say: ‘Try now, Gerard.’

  It worked, albeit the pressure was eased fractionally and wouldn’t last long. Gerard withdrew his arm with great care and said: ‘We have to get help.’ His voice was as calm as though he was commenting upon the weather. ‘Take the keys and drive the car to that farm we saw ahead of us and ask…no, that’ll take too long, I’ll go. Stay here—there’s nothing much you can do. Push the belt in further if you get the chance.’ He got to his feet. ‘Thank heaven you’re a strapping girl with plenty of strength and common sense!’

  He started to run back towards the car, leaving her smouldering; did he really regard her as strapping? He had made her sound like some muscly creature with no feminine attributes at all! Deborah chuckled and the chuckle changed to a sob which she sternly swallowed; now was no time to be feminine. She took the man’s pulse once more and wondered how long she would have to wait before Gerard got back.

  Not long—she saw the car racing down the road and prayed silently that there would be nothing in the way. The next minutes seemed like eternity. Deborah turned her head at length to see Gerard with four or five men, coming towards her. They were carrying ropes and when he was near enough she said in the matter-of-fact voice he would expect of her: ‘His pulse is going up, but it’s steady. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Get ropes round this infernal thing and try and drag it off.’

  ‘You’ll get double hernias,’ she warned him seriously.

  Gerard gave a crack of laughter. ‘A risk we must all take. I fear, there’s no other tractor for miles around.’

  He turned away from her and became immersed in the task before him. They had the ropes in place and were heaving on them steadily when the first police car arrived, disgorging two men to join the team of sweating, swearing men. The tractor shuddered and rolled over with a thud, leaving the man free just as the second police car and an ambulance arrived.

  Gerard scarcely heeded them; he was on his knees, examining the man’s legs. ‘By some miracle,’ he said quietly to Deborah, ‘they’re not pulped. I may be able to do something about them provided we can get at him quickly enough. Get me some splints.’

  She went to meet the ambulance men making all the speed they could over the soft earth. She had no idea what the word splint was in Dutch, but luckily they were carrying an armful, so she took several from one rather astonished man, smiled at him and raced back to Gerard. He took them without a word and then said: ‘Good lord, girl, what am I supposed to tie them with?’

  She raced back again and this time the ambulance man ran to meet her and kept beside her as she ran back with the calico slings. There was help enough now, she stood back and waited patiently. It took a long time to get the man on to the stretcher and carry him, with infinite caution across the field to the waiting ambulance. She waited until the little procession had reached it before following it and when she reached the car there was no sign of Gerard, so she got in and sat waiting with the patience she had learned during her years of nursing. The ambulance drove off presently and one of the policemen leaned through the car window and proffered her a note—from Gerard, scribbled in his almost undecipherable scrawl. ‘I must go with the ambulance to the Grotehof,’ he had written on a sheet torn out of his pocket book. ‘Drive the car back and wait in the hospital courtyard.’ He had signed it ‘G’ and added a postscript: ‘The BMW is just like the Fiat, only larger.’

  All the same, reading these heartening words, Deborah felt a pang of nervousness; she had never driven the BMW; if she thought about it for too long she would be terrified of doing so. She thanked the policeman who saluted politely, and happily ignorant of the fact that she was almost sick with fright, drove away. It was quite five minutes before she could summon up the courage to press the self-starter.

  She was still shaking when she stopped the car cautiously before the entrance to the hospital, wondering what she was supposed to do next. But Gerard had thought of that; Deborah was sitting back in her seat, taking a few calming breaths when the Medical Ward Sister, whom she had already met, popped her head through the window. ‘Mevrouw van Doorninck, you will come with me, please.’

  ‘Hullo,’ said Deborah, and then: ‘Why, Zuster?’

  ‘It is the wish of Mijnheer van Doorninck.’ Her tone implied that there was sufficient reason there without the need for any more questions.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Deborah, sitting stubbornly where she was.

  ‘In theatre, already scrubbed. But he wishes most earnestly that you will come with me.’ She added plaintively: ‘I am so busy, Mevrouw.’

  Deborah got out of the car at once, locked it and put the keys in her handbag. She would have to get them to Gerard somehow; she had no intention of driving through Amsterdam in the BMW—getting to the hospital had been bad enough. She shuddered and followed the Sister to the lift.

  They got out on the Medical floor and she was bustled through several corridors and finally through a door. ‘So—we are here,’ murmured the Sister, said something to whoever was in the room, gave Deborah a smile and tore away. Deborah watched her go, knowing just how she felt; probably she was saying the Dutch equivalent of ‘I’ll never get finished,’ as she went; even the simple task of escorting someone through the hospital could make a mockery of a tight and well-planned schedule
of work.

  It was Doctor Schipper inside the room waiting for her. Deborah had met him before; she and Gerard had had dinner with him and his wife only the week before. She wished him a good afternoon, a little puzzled, and he came across the little room to shake her hand.

  ‘You are surprised, Mevrouw van Doorninck, but Gerard wishes most urgently that you should have a check-up without delay. He fears that you may have strained yourself in some way—even a small cut…’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she declared, aware of sore hands. ‘Well, I’ve broken a few fingernails and I was scared stiff!’

  A young nurse had slid into the room, so Deborah, submitting to the inevitable, allowed herself to be helped out of her deplorable dress and examined with thoroughness by Doctor Schipper. He stood back at length. ‘Quite OK,’ he assured her. ‘A rapid pulse, but I imagine you had an unpleasant shock—the accident was distressing…’

  ‘Yes, but I think it was having to drive the car which scared me stiff. I only drive a Fiat 500, you know—there’s quite a difference. Can I go home now?’

  ‘Of course. Nurse will arrange for you to have a taxi, but first she will clean up your hands, and perhaps an injection of ATS to be on the safe side—all that earth…’

  She submitted to the nurse’s attentions and remembered the car keys just as she was ready to go. ‘Shall I leave them at the front door?’ she asked Doctor Schipper.

  He held out a hand. ‘Leave them with me—I’ll get them to Gerard. He won’t want them just yet, I imagine.’

  Deborah thanked him, reminded him that he and his wife were dining with them in a few days’ time and set off for the entrance with the nurse, where she climbed into a taxi and went home to find Wim and Marijke, worried about their non-appearance for lunch, waiting anxiously.

  She was herself again by the evening, presenting a bandbox freshness to the world marred only by her deplorable nails and an odd bruise or two. She had deliberately put on a softly clinging dress and used her perfume with discreet lavishness; studying herself in the mirror, she decided that despite her height and curves, she looked almost fragile. She patted a stray wisp of hair into position, and much comforted by the thought, went downstairs to wait for Gerard.

  He came just before dinner, gave her a brief greeting and went on: ‘Well, we’ve saved the legs and I’ve done what I could with the pelvis—he’s in a double hip spica.’ He poured their drinks and handed hers, at the same time looking her over with what she could only describe to herself as a professional eye. ‘Schipper told me that you were none the worse—you’ve recovered very well. Thank heaven you were with me!’

  ‘Yes,’ she spoke lightly without looking at him. ‘There’s nothing like beef and brawn…’

  His eyes strayed over her, slowly this time and to her satisfaction, not in the least professionally. ‘Did I say that? I must have been mad! Anyone less like beef and brawn I have yet to see—you look charming.’

  Deborah thanked him in a level voice while her heart bounced happily. When he asked to see her hands she came and stood before him, holding them out. There were some scratches and the bruises on her knuckles were beginning to show, and the nails made her shudder. He put his drink down and stood up and surprised her very much by picking up first one hand and then the other and kissing them, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, he bent his head and kissed her cheek too.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DEBORAH HAD GONE to sleep that night in a state of mind very far removed from her usual matter-of-factness. She wakened after hours of dreaming, shreds and tatters with no beginning and no end and went downstairs with the remnants of those same dreams still in her eyes. Nothing could have brought her down to earth more quickly than Gerard’s brief good morning before he plunged into a list of things he begged her, if she had time, to do for him during the day—small errands which she knew quite well he would have no time to see to for himself, but it made her feel like a secretary, and from his businesslike manner he must think of her as that, or was he letting her know that his behaviour on the previous evening was a momentary weakness, not to be taken as a precedent for the future?

  She went round to see her mother-in-law in the afternoon. The morning had been nicely filled with Gerard’s commissions and a lesson with the professor, and now, burdened with her homework, she made her way to Mevrouw van Doorninck’s flat, walking briskly because the weather, although fine, was decidedly chilly. She paused to look at one or two shops as she went; the two-piece she had worn the day before was a write-off; the earth had been ground into its fine fabric and when she had shown it to Marijke that good soul had given her opinion, with the aid of Wim, that no dry-cleaner would touch it. She would have to buy another outfit to replace it, Deborah decided, and rang the bell.

  Mevrouw van Doorninck was pleased to see her. They got on very well, for the older woman had accepted her as a member of the family although she had never invited Deborah’s confidence. She was urged to sit down now and tell all that had happened on the previous day.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew about it,’ observed Deborah as she accepted a cup of tea.

  ‘Gerard telephoned me in the evening—he was so proud of you.’

  Deborah managed to laugh. ‘Was he? I only know that he thanked heaven that I was a strong young woman and not a—a delicate feminine creature.’

  She turned her head away as she spoke; it was amazing how that still hurt. Her mother-in-law’s reply was vigorous. ‘You may not be delicate, my dear, but you are certainly very feminine. I can’t imagine Gerard falling in love with any other type of woman.’

  Deborah drank some tea. ‘What about Sasja?’ she asked boldly. ‘Gerard told me a little about her, but what was she really like—he said that she was very pretty.’

  ‘Very pretty—like a doll, she was also a heartless and immoral young woman and wildly extravagant. She made life for Gerard quite unbearable. And don’t think, my dear,’ she went on dryly, ‘that I tried to interfere or influence Gerard in any way, although I longed to do so. I had to stand aside and watch Gerard make the terrible mistake of marrying her. Infatuation is far worse than love, Deborah, it blinds one to reality; it destroys…fortunately he had his work.’ She sighed. ‘It is a pity that work has become such a habit with him that he hardly knows how to enjoy life any more.’ She looked at Deborah, who stared back with no expression at all. ‘You have found that, perhaps?’

  ‘I know he’s very busy getting everything just as he wants it at the Grotehof—I daresay when he is satisfied he’ll have more time to spare.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’ Mevrouw van Doorninck’s voice had that same dryness again, and Deborah wondered uneasily if she had guessed about Gerard and herself. It would be unlikely, for he always behaved beautifully towards her when there were guests or family present—he always behaved beautifully, she amended, even when they were alone. Her mother-in-law nodded. ‘I’m sure you are right, my dear. Tell me, who is coming to the dinner party tomorrow evening?’

  Deborah recited the names. She had met most of the guests already, there were one or two, visiting specialists, whose acquaintance she had yet to make; one of them would be spending the night. She told her mother-in-law what she intended wearing and got up to go. When she bent to kiss the older lady’s cheek she was surprised at the warmth of the kiss she received in return and still more surprised when she said: ‘If ever you need help or advice, Deborah, and once or twice I have thought…no matter. If you do, come to me and I will try and help you.’

  Deborah stammered her thanks and beat a hasty retreat, wondering just what Gerard’s mother had meant.

  She dressed early for the dinner party because she wanted to go downstairs and make sure that the table was just so, the flowers as they should be and the lamps lighted. It was to be rather a grand occasion this time because the Medical Director of the hospital was coming as well as the Burgemeester of the city, who, she was given to understand, was a very important person indeed. She was wearing a new
dress for the occasion, a soft lavender chiffon with long full sleeves, tight cuffed with a plunging neckline discreetly veiled by pleated frills. There was a frill round the hem of the skirt too and a swathed belt which made the most of her waist. She had added the pearls and the earrings and hoped that she looked just as a successful consultant’s wife should look.

  ‘Neat but not gaudy,’ she told herself aloud, inspecting her person in the big mirror on the landing, not because she hadn’t seen it already in her room where there were mirrors enough, but because this particular mirror, with its elaborate gilded frame somehow enhanced her appearance.

  ‘That’s a decidedly misleading statement.’ Gerard’s voice came from the head of the stairs and she whirled round in a cloud of chiffon to face him.

  ‘You’re early, how nice! Everything’s ready for you—I’m going down to see about the table.’

  ‘This first.’ He held out a large old-fashioned plush casket. ‘You told me the colour of your dress and it seemed to me that Great-aunt Emmiline’s garnets might be just the thing to go with it.’

  Deborah sat down on the top tread of the staircase, her skirts billowing around her, and opened the box. Great-aunt Emmiline must have liked garnets very much; there were rings and brooches and two heavy gold bracelets set with large stones, earrings and a thick gold necklace with garnets set in it.

  ‘They’re lovely—may I really borrow them? I’ll take great care…’

  He had come to sit beside her. ‘They’re yours, Deborah. I’ve just given them to you. I imagine you can’t wear the whole lot at once, but there must be something there you like?’

  ‘Oh, yes—yes. Thank you, Gerard, you give me so much.’ She smiled at him shyly and picked out one of the bracelets and fastened it round a wrist. It looked just right; she added the necklace, putting the precious pearls in her lap. She wasn’t going to take off her engagement ring; she added two of the simpler rings to the other hand and found a pair of drop earrings. She added her pearl earrings to the necklace in her lap and hooked in the garnets instead and went to look in the mirror. Gerard was right, they were exactly right with the dress. ‘Have I got too much on?’ she asked anxiously.