by Betty Neels
Victoria picked up her handbag. ‘Sometimes,’ she remarked austerely, ‘you make very silly remarks.’ She accompanied this censure with a look which left no doubt as to her willingness to be driven round for as long as he might wish.
He smiled. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he said softly. ‘I shall put you down outside the Nurses Home door at midnight and not a moment later.’
He was as good as his word; she went sleepily to bed, in a happy dream that for her, at the moment, had no ending.
She had a split duty the next day and tore off duty to scramble into a jersey dress and do her hair and face. It was beautiful weather, although she had scarcely had time to notice it during the morning, but now, getting into the car beside Alexander, she let out a great sigh of content as he said: ‘We’ll run out into the country—I think we can just manage it. There’s a place called Cole Green, only about twenty miles, we might get a late lunch there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’ll have to come straight back, but it’s better than London on a day like this.’ He smiled down at her, a warm, tender smile which lighted up his whole face. ‘Have you been busy, my love?’
She recounted the morning’s work briefly and then demanded to know about his own work in Holland. The subject kept them occupied until they reached Cole Green where the inn offered them a good lunch. It was as they were coming to an end of it that Alexander told her that he wouldn’t be able to get over to see her again: ‘Not if I’m to get a week or two later on, my darling—besides, I want some leisure when you are in Holland. I’ll telephone you whenever I can and write often.’
Victoria thought of the brief scribbles he had sent her from time to time and smiled gently. ‘That’ll be nice—your letters are so newsy,’ and when he laughed, added: ‘I write you pages and pages.’
‘I only write for one reason,’ he assured her, ‘to tell you that I love you—the news can wait.’
‘In that case,’ said Victoria, a little nettled, ‘I shall send you a postcard now and then.’
‘Don’t dare—I love your letters, I’ve kept them all and always shall. And now we must go, dear love.’
It was dreadfully dull without him again, especially now that she knew she wouldn’t be seeing him until she left St Judd’s. Even his frequent telephone calls and scant letters did little to speed the days passing so slowly. The ward wasn’t busy either, so that she had time on her hands to think of him constantly. But suddenly there were only a couple of days left and she could at last pack her cases, do some last-minute shopping, say goodbye to her friends and telephone her family for the last time before she left England. Sister Crow bade her goodbye with a good deal of tut-tutting as to the future. Johnny hugged her and wished her luck in a way to warm her heart, as did the Major and Mr Bates. The nurses had clubbed together and given her a delicate china dish which she promised to use every day. Only Jeremy Blake said nothing. She was actually on the point of going off duty for the last time when he waylaid her in the corridor once more.
‘Well, well,’ he began in what she was forced to admit was a friendly manner, ‘so you’re leaving us for a rosy future, presumably. Let’s hope it is.’
Victoria had paused, because he had looked friendly; now she started to walk on, away from him. ‘I’ve no doubt of it,’ she said without rancour because, after all, nothing he said could annoy her any more; she would never see him again after that evening. She smiled to herself, remembering how Matron had told her that should she ever wish to return, there would always be a place for her. She could imagine Alexander’s views if she suggested working after they were married! All the same, it was nice to know that she hadn’t burnt quite all her boats. The thought pulled her up short, for it smacked of disloyalty to Alexander. She dismissed the subject from her mind and turned to the contemplation of her happy future.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE boat was crowded. Whichever way they turned, they were hemmed in by people, so that any conversation they had was of a purely impersonal nature. They had had dinner on the way down from London—and a good thing too, said the doctor, surveying the packed tables in the ship’s restaurant.
‘We’re going to your cabin, Vicky,’ he decided, ‘I’ll get someone to bring us some coffee there and then leave you to have a good sleep. We dock quite early—half past six, but we’ll breakfast on board so that it will be quieter by the time we leave.’
Victoria agreed, not caring in the least what they did, so long as they did it together. She followed him down to her cabin, drank the coffee he poured for her, and after he had bidden her a most satisfactory goodnight and instructed her to apply to him in his cabin next door if she needed anything, she was left to sleep. She had hardly closed her eyes the night before for excitement and the moment she laid her head on the pillow she slept, not to wake until she was called the following morning. Alexander was knocking on her door long before she was ready. She called an indistinct ‘come in’ through a mouthful of hairpins, which he instantly removed the better to wish her good morning and then sat down on the berth while she rapidly started to put up her hair, ramming the pins in at a great rate.
The sun was up, shining over the complex of Euraport as they got into the car. Victoria, who had expected black and white cows in green fields and distant pastoral views, tried not to show her disappointment at the scene around them, which could have been Tilbury Docks or Merseyside. They were already clear of the Hoek, going towards den Haag along the main road, when Alexander said: ‘Don’t take any notice of the view, darling, it will get better very soon, once we are away from this industrial area.’
As indeed it did; presently she was exclaiming over the shape of the farm buildings, the extreme smallness of some of the houses in the villages they passed through, and the flatness of the surrounding countryside.
‘They’re quite right, you know,’ she observed to her companion. ‘It’s just like a soup plate—is that the Hague in front of us? What a long way one can see, it makes everything seem very close by.’
‘Den Haag,’ he corrected her. ‘Yes, it’s not far, you see, it’s such a small country.’ He gave her a quick sidelong glance. ‘Do you suppose you could be happy in it, darling?’
Victoria had no doubts; she smiled at him enchantingly. ‘I don’t mind where I live as long as you’re there,’ she told him, ‘and I’m sure I shall like Holland. I can’t wait to see where you live.’
‘Well, dear girl, you’ll have to—I’m taking you straight to my consulting rooms to pick up any letters or messages my secretary may have left for me and then driving you on to my father’s house in Leiden. Tomorrow I’ll take you to Wassenaar and you shall look over your future home and tell me what you think of it.’
She stifled disappointment; she very much wanted to see his home in Wassenaar, but his consulting rooms would be the next best thing, and he was, after all, free for the rest of the day. She longed to be with him all the time; his parents were strangers. Supposing they found that they didn’t like her? Supposing she didn’t like them? She sighed without knowing she did so and he rather surprisingly answered her thoughts.
‘Don’t panic, my darling, Mother and Father are looking forward to your stay; I’ve told them a great deal about you and I shall be coming over to see you each day and every weekend.’
They were in the suburbs of den Haag by now, travelling fairly slowly, presently they came to the heart of the city and Victoria craned her neck, anxious to miss none of the sights Alexander was pointing out to her.
‘This is called Lange Vijverburg,’ he explained. ‘My rooms are in one of the streets leading from it.’ He turned the car as he spoke and drove down a narrow thoroughfare lined with tall houses, before one of which he stopped. Victoria went up the steps leading to the heavy wooden door without speaking and waited while he unlocked it. Inside the hall was lofty and narrow with an elaborately plastered ceiling and plain walls. The floor was tiled and a staircase at the further end led to the floor above. Alexander opened a doo
r close to where they were standing and stood aside for her to go in. A waiting room, an opulent one, she was quick to see, with a businesslike desk in one corner and several comfortable chairs scattered around. The doctor gave it scant attention, however, but took her arm and led her across the thick carpet to a door in the opposite wall and ushered her in. His consulting room was comfortable and very tidy, with shelves of books and an outsize desk. It was perhaps a little sombre, but nonetheless it exuded an atmosphere of calm and security which she knew from experience most patients both expected and needed. She toured the room slowly, picking things up and putting them down again and peering at the books, presently she went to the window and looked out. The street outside was quiet because it was Sunday, but she fancied that even on a weekday it would preserve its bygone air of unhurried peace. She turned round and found Alexander close behind her.
‘I like it. I’ve often wondered where you worked. Now I know, and when I think of you the right background will be there.’ She gave him a bewitching smile as she spoke and was at once crushed tightly to him, to be kissed and kissed again.
‘Dear love,’ said the doctor, ‘very soon you won’t need to think of me, because we shall be together against any background you may choose.’
Victoria laughed at that and lifted her face to kiss him. ‘What would you like me to do?’ she asked, trying to be sensible. ‘Do you not have letters to read and suchlike things to do?’
He released her, smiling. ‘Yes—will you sit here while I go through them? I don’t suppose there’s much to worry about.’
She sat as still as a mouse, watching him as he sat at his desk and went quickly through the pile of letters upon it. Some he put on one side; some he threw straight into the waste paper basket, and some he frowned over and switched on his dictaphone and spoke into it. In Dutch, of course—Victoria, who hadn’t heard him speak that language before, sat fascinated, listening to him. It sounded nonsense; she doubted if she would ever be able to speak a word, let alone the whole language.
When he had finished he said in English: ‘I leave instructions for my secretary if there’s something that needs attending to—then she can get on with it as soon as she comes in in the morning, it saves us both a great deal of time and saves the poor girl reminding me to do something I might forget.’
Victoria nodded and then, ‘You seem different when you speak Dutch.’
‘Well, I’m not, my love. As soon as you’ve learned a little of the language you won’t think that. We’ll speak English together as much as possible if you would prefer that, but I should like you to learn my language, it will be so much easier for you—and think how hard it will be on our children if we don’t share the same tongue.’
She went a very beautiful pink. ‘Oh—I hadn’t thought of that. Won’t they be clever, speaking two languages at once?’
The doctor put down the paper in his hand and came over to her. ‘The prospect fills me with pleasure,’ he declared, and kissed her several times before he went back to finish what he was reading.
He was done in another ten minutes or so and they got back into the car and drove on through the city, stopping at a small café to drink coffee as they went. Once on the motorway, Victoria could see Leiden against the near horizon; it seemed no time at all before they were threading their way through the corkscrew streets. ‘Breestraat,’ Alexander informed her, ‘and now we’re crossing the Rapenburg Canal—the university is just behind those houses.’
‘Yours?’ Victoria wanted to know.
He nodded. ‘And now we’re going west towards the sea. My father’s house is just outside the city. I’ve taken you the long way round so that you could have a quick glimpse.’
He turned off the main street and went smoothly along a tree-lined road. The town houses seemed to have been left behind, although here and there there were villas. Victoria found them rather elaborate and not very old, but the house at whose gate they turned in was another matter—not large, but square and solid with no-nonsense windows and a beautifully carved front door. It had a garden to match it too, very neat and formal, the beds filled with orderly rows of flowers and the whole circumvented by a high iron fence partly screened by shrubs. They came to a halt before the door and were getting out when it was opened. The man who stood waiting for them seemed very old to be Alexander’s father; his hair was snow white and his shoulders were bowed. She was halfway up the shallow steps when the doctor said in a low voice: ‘This is Jaap, he’s been with us—er—man and boy. That’s the right expression, is it not?’
He clapped the old man gently on the shoulders and spoke to him in his own language, then said to Victoria: ‘He doesn’t speak any English, but he knows all about you.’
Victoria extended a hand, to have it wrung with surprising strength by Jaap, who beamed at her, gave her an unintelligible welcome and led the way indoors. The hall was narrow and lofty, just as the hall at the consulting rooms had been, only unlike it, this was handsomely panelled in dark oak below an ornately plastered ceiling. Doors led from it on both sides and the second one on the right was opened by Jaap, to disclose a square, sunny room overlooking the back of the house, furnished in the Beidermeier manner, the rather heavy furniture offset by the muted browns and creams of the curtains and covers. The floor was of highly polished wood, covered for the greater part by a carpet patterned in a rich terra-cotta and olive green, which colours were picked out by the china in the display cabinet along one wall and the various table lamps scattered around. A comfortable sofa took up the space before the large hearth, flanked by a number of comfortable easy chairs. From two of these rose Alexander’s parents.
Victoria had often tried to imagine them, for she hadn’t liked to question him about them too much, and although his father was very much as she had expected, being in fact an older edition of his son, his mother bore no resemblance to her imaginings, for she was shorter than Victoria herself with what could only be described as a cosily plump figure. Her hair, which had been very fair, was now heavily silvered and beautifully dressed, as was her person. She smiled as she stood up and her rather severe good looks were immediately transformed by its warmth. Alexander crossed the room to her, kissed her soundly, wrung his father’s hand and turned to Victoria with a smile of such pride and tenderness that any lingering doubts she might have had were instantly melted.
‘Mother, Father, this is Victoria.’ He caught her by the arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘Victoria, my mother and father.’
She was welcomed with a kindness she hadn’t quite expected. Before she knew where she was, she was sitting beside her hostess on the sofa telling her about the journey. Alexander interrupted them presently to offer them sherry and the conversation became general until Mevrouw van Schuylen invited her to go upstairs to her room. ‘Alexander will fetch your luggage and Jaap can take it up for you,’ she stated comfortably as she led Victoria up the straight, steep staircase.
The landing above was as narrow as the hall with a similar number of doors leading from it, and at its end was a small archway through which she could see more doors and a little flight of stairs. Mevrouw van Schuylen saw her interested look and explained: ‘There’s a wing behind the house—you can’t see it from the front, and another floor above us. The house is really too big for us now, but we have a large family’—she paused to smile. ‘Alexander will have told you—two daughters and two sons as well as he—and of course, grandchildren. Besides, the house will become Alexander’s one day; it has belonged to my husband’s family for a very long time and both he and Alexander love it dearly.’
She opened a door as she spoke and invited Victoria to enter. The room was of a fair size, facing the front garden, with a tranquil view of the fields beyond the road from its windows. It was furnished prettily with Regency furniture with a couple of small easy chairs and a davenport against one wall. Victoria saw that it held notepaper and a small silver ink standish, ready for her use. The bedspread was of pale blue
, as were the chair covers and the curtains, and Victoria was charmed when her hostess told her that she had been given the room because its colour scheme would become her. ‘Such pretty hair,’ went on Mevrouw van Schuylen, ‘and you are even lovelier than Alexander told us. I’ll leave you for a few minutes,’ she added kindly. ‘Come down when you are ready, Victoria. There is a bathroom next to this room—regard it as your own, and if there is anything you should want, you will please ask.’
She went away with a backward smile over her shoulder, and Victoria, after a hasty inspection in the mirror, wasted a few minutes gazing out of the window, looking at several delightful flower paintings on the walls, and inspecting the bathroom, a luxurious apartment which, despite the age of the house, lacked for nothing in modern amenities. Some ten minutes later she went downstairs again, feeling a little shy; it had been easy enough to enter the sitting room with Alexander beside her, but on her own she felt a vague reluctance—entirely wasted, as it turned out, because Alexander was waiting for her in the hall, standing casually with his hands in his pockets, staring at a family portrait, dark with age. He went to meet her as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
‘Come and see the garden before lunch,’ he invited her in a matter-of-fact voice which made nonsense of her shyness, and tucked her hand under his arm and led her through another door at the end of the hall which in turn led into a conservatory of some size, opening on to the garden.
It was bigger than she had supposed and there was a small gate in one corner leading to a sunken garden with a pool in its centre and a number of small ornamental trees around its borders. It was completely hidden from the house; a small sunny refuge, and very peaceful.
‘Oh, this is lovely!’ exclaimed Victoria. ‘Whoever designed it? Someone who liked peace and quiet, I should suppose—why, you could hide here all day and no one would know.’
