Читать книгу Tempestuous April - Бетти Нилс - Страница 5

SHE AWOKE EARLY to a sparkling April morning and the sound of church bells, and lay between sleeping and waking listening to them until Sieske came in, to sit on the end of the bed and talk happily about the previous evening.

‘You enjoyed it too, Harry?’ she asked anxiously.

Harriet sat up in bed—she was wearing a pink nightgown, a frivolous garment, all lace and ribbons. Her hair fell, straight and gold and shining, almost to her waist; she looked delightful.

‘It was lovely,’ she said warmly. ‘I think your Wierd is a dear—you’re going to be very happy.’

Sieske blushed. ‘Yes, I know. You like Aede?’

Harriet nodded. ‘Oh, yes. He’s just like you, Sieske.’

‘And Friso?’

Harriet said lightly, ‘Well, we only said hullo and good-bye, you know. He’s not quite what I expected.’ She explained about the gravy stains and the permanent stoop, and Sieske giggled.

‘Harry, how could you, and he is so handsome, don’t you think?’

Harriet said ‘Very,’ with a magnificent nonchalance.

‘And so very rich,’ Sieske went on.

‘So I heard,’ said Harriet, maintaining the nonchalance. ‘How nice for him.’

Sieske curled her legs up under her and settled herself more comfortably. ‘Also nice for his wife,’ she remarked.

Harriet felt a sudden chill. ‘Oh? Is he going to marry, then?’ she asked, and wondered why the answer mattered so much.

Sieske laughed.

‘Well, he will one day, I expect, but I think he enjoys being a … vrijgezel. I don’t know the English—it is a man who is not yet married.’

‘Bachelor,’ said Harriet.

‘Yes—well, he has many girl-friends, you see, but he does not love any of them.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Harriet in a deceptively calm voice.

‘I asked him,’ said Sieske simply, ‘and he told me. I should like him to be happy as Wierd is happy; and I would like you to be happy too, Harry,’ she added disarmingly.

Harriet felt herself getting red in the face. ‘But I am happy,’ she cried. ‘I’ve got what I wanted, haven’t I? A sister’s post, and—and—’ The thought struck her that probably in twenty years’ time she would still have that same sister’s post. She shuddered. ‘I’ll get up,’ she said, briskly cheerful to dispel the gloomy thought. But this she wasn’t allowed to do; the family, it seemed, were going to church at nine o’clock, and had decided that the unfamiliar service and the long sermon wouldn’t be of the least benefit to her. She was to stay in bed and go down to breakfast when she felt like it.

Sieske got up from the bed and stretched herself. ‘We are back soon after ten, and Wierd comes to lunch. We will plan something nice to do.’ She turned round as she reached the door. ‘Go to sleep again, Harry.’

Harriet, however, had no desire for sleep. She lay staring at the roses on the wallpaper, contemplating her future with a complete lack of enthusiasm, and was suddenly struck by the fact that this was entirely due to the knowledge that Dr Eijsinck would have no part of it. The front door banged and she got out of bed to watch the Van Minnen family make their way down the street towards church, glad of the interruption of thoughts she didn’t care to think. It wasn’t quite nine o’clock; she slipped on the nightgown’s matching peignoir and the rather ridiculous slippers which went with it, and made her way downstairs through the quiet old house to the dining-room.

Someone had thoughtfully drawn a small table up to the soft warmth of the stove and laid it with care, for cup, saucer and plate of a bright brown earthenware, flanked by butter in a Delft blue dish, stood invitingly ready. There was coffee too, and a small basket full of an assortment of bread, and grouped together, jam and sausage and cheese. Harriet poured coffee, buttered a crusty slice of bread with a lavish hand and took a large satisfying bite. She had lifted her coffee cup half-way to her lips when the door opened.

‘Where’s everybody?’ asked Dr Eijsinck, without bothering to say good morning. ‘Church?’

Harriet put down her cup. ‘Yes,’ she said, with her mouth full. His glance flickered over her and she went pink under it.

‘Are you ill?’ he asked politely, although his look denied his words.

‘Me? Ill? No.’ If he chose to think of her as a useless lazy creature, she thought furiously, she for one would not enlighten him.

‘Well, if you’re not ill, you’d better come to the surgery and hold down a brat with a bead up his nose.’

‘Certainly,’ said Harriet, ‘since you ask me so nicely; but I must dress first.’

‘Why? There’s no one around who’s interested in seeing you like that. The child’s about three; his mother’s in the waiting room because she’s too frightened to hold him herself; and as for me, I assure you that I am quite unaffected.’

She didn’t like the note of mockery—he was being deliberately tiresome! She put her cup back in its saucer, got up without a word and followed him down the passage to the surgery where she waited while he fetched the child from its mother. She took the little boy in capable arms and said, ‘There, there,’ in the soft, kind voice she used to anyone ill or afraid. He sniffed and gulped, and under her approving, ‘There’s a big man, then!’ subsided into quietness punctuated by heaving breaths, so that she was able to lay him on the examination table without further ado, and steady his round head between her small firm hands. Dr Eijsinck, standing with speculum, probe and curved forceps ready to hand, grunted something she couldn’t understand and switched on his head lamp.

‘Will you be able to hold him with one arm?’ she asked matter-of-factly.

He looked as though he was going to laugh, but his voice was mild enough as he replied. ‘I believe I can manage, Miss Slocombe. He’s quite small, and my arm is—er—large enough to suffice.’

He sprayed the tiny nostril carefully and got to work, his big hand manipulating the instruments with a surprising delicacy. While he worked he talked softly to his small patient; a meaningless jumble of words Harriet could make nothing of.

‘Are you speaking Fries?’ she wanted to know.

He didn’t look up. ‘Yes … I don’t mean to be rude, but Atse here doesn’t understand anything else at present.’ He withdrew a bright blue bead from the small nose and Atse at once burst into tearful roars, the while his face was mopped up. Harriet scooped him up into her arms.

‘Silly boy, it’s all over.’ She gave him a hug and he stopped his sobbing to look at her and say something. She returned his look in her turn. ‘It’s no good, Atse, I can’t understand.’

Dr Eijsinck looked up from the sink where he was washing his hands.

‘Allow me to translate. He is observing—as I daresay many other members of his sex have done before him—that you and your—er—dress are very beautiful.’

Harriet felt her cheeks grow hot, but she answered in a composed voice, ‘What a lovely compliment—something to remember when I get home.’

The doctor had come to stand close to her and she handed him the little boy. ‘Good-bye, Atse, I hope I see you again.’ She shook the fat little hand, straightened the examination table, thumped up its pillow with a few brisk movements, and made for the door. She had opened it before Dr Eijsinck said quietly, ‘Thank you for your help, Miss Slocombe.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ she said airily, as she went through.

The breakfast table still looked very attractive; she plugged in the coffee pot and took another bite from her bread and butter. She was spreading a second slice with a generous wafer of cheese when the door opened again. Dr Eijsinck said from the doorway, ‘I’m sorry I disturbed your breakfast.’ And then, ‘Is the coffee hot?’

She wiped a few crumbs away from her mouth, using a finger.

‘Don’t apologize, Doctor … and yes, thank you, the coffee is hot.’

There was a pause during which she remembered how unpleasant he had been. The look she cast him was undoubtedly a reflection of her thoughts, for he gave a sudden quizzical smile, said good-bye abruptly, and went.

They were having morning coffee when he arrived for the second time. He took the cup Mevrouw Van Minnen handed him and sat down unhurriedly; it seemed to Harriet, sitting by the window with Sieske, that he was very much one of the family. He was answering a great number of questions which Dr Van Minnen was putting to him, and Harriet thought what a pity it was she couldn’t understand Dutch. Sieske must have read her thoughts, for she called across the room.

‘Friso, were you called out?’ and she spoke in English.

He replied in the same tongue. ‘Yes, for my sins … an impacted fractured femur and premature twins.’

Sieske said quickly with a sideways look at Harriet, ‘Don’t forget Atse. Weren’t you glad that Harry was here to help you?’

‘Delighted,’ he said in a dry voice, ‘and so was Atse.’

Harriet, studying her coffee cup with a downbent head, was nonetheless aware that he was looking at her.

‘So you didn’t get to bed at all?’ asked Aede.

‘Er—no. I was on my way home when I encountered Atse and his mother; I was nearer here than my own place—it seemed logical to bring them with me. I’d forgotten that you would all be in church.’

Harriet abandoned the close scrutiny of her coffee cup. So he had been up all night; being a reasonable young woman she understood how he must have felt when he found her. And the coffee—he had asked if it was hot and she hadn’t even asked him if he wanted a cup. How mean of her—she opened her mouth to say so, caught his eye and knew that he had guessed her intention. Before she could speak, he went on smoothly,

‘I am indebted to—er—Harriet for her help; very competent help too.’

Mevrouw Van Minnen said something, Harriet had no idea what until she heard the word koffie. She opened her mouth once more, feeling guilty, but he was speaking before she could get a word out.

‘What is Dr Eijsinck saying, Sieske?’ she said softly.

Her friend gave a sympathetic giggle. ‘Poor Harry, not understanding a word! He’s explaining that he couldn’t stay for the coffee you had ready for him because he had to go straight back to the twins.’

Harriet had only been in Holland a short time, but already she had realized that hospitality was a built-in feature of the Dutch character—to deny it to anyone was unthinkable. Mevrouw Van Minnen would have been upset. Friso was being magnanimous. The least she could do was to apologize and thank him for his thoughtfulness.

He got up a few minutes later and strolled to the door with a casual parting word which embraced the whole company. She was too shy to get up too and follow him out—it might be days before she saw him again. He had banged the front door behind him when Sieske said urgently,

‘There, I forgot to tell Friso about the flowers for Wednesday! Harry, you’re so much faster than I—run after him, will you? Tell him it’s all right. He’ll understand.’

Harriet reached the pavement just as he was getting into the car. He straightened when he saw her, and stood waiting, his hand still on the car door.

She said, short-breathed, ‘Sieske asked me to give you a message. That it’s all right about the flowers, and that you would understand.’

She stood looking at him and after a moment he gave a glimmer of a smile and said, ‘Oh, yes. Of course. Thanks for reminding me.’

‘I wanted to—It was lucky Sieske asked me. I’m so sorry about this morning—you know, the coffee. It was mean of me. I don’t know why I did it.’ She stopped and frowned, ‘Yes, I do. You weren’t very nice about me being in a dressing-gown, but of course I understand now, you must have been very tired if you were up all night—I daresay you wouldn’t have minded so much if you had had a good night’s sleep,’ she finished ingenuously.

‘No, I don’t suppose I should,’ he agreed gravely. He got into the car, said good-bye rather abruptly, and was gone, leaving her still uncertain as to whether he disliked her or not.

It suddenly mattered very much that she should know, one way or the other.

They were immersed in plans when she got back to the sitting-room. Wierd was coming to luncheon, reiterated Sieske; they would go for a drive, she and Wierd and Harriet and Aede. Dokkum, they decided, with an eye on Harriet’s ignorance of the countryside, and then on to the coast to Oostmahorn, when the boat sailed for the small island of Schiermonnikoog.

They set out about two o’clock, Wierd and Sieske leading the way. It was glorious weather, although the blue sky was still pale and the wind keen. Harriet in a thick tweed suit and a headscarf hoped she would be warm enough; the others seemed to take the wind for granted, but she hadn’t got used to it. It was warm enough in the car, however, and Aede proved to be an excellent guide. By the time they had reached Dokkum, she had mastered a great deal of Friesian history and had even learnt—after a fashion—the Friesian National Anthem, although she thought the translation, ‘Friesian blood, rise up and boil,’ could be improved upon. The others were waiting for them in the little town, and she was taken at once to see the church of St Boniface and then the outside of the Town Hall, with a promise that she should be brought again so that she could see its beautiful, painted council room.

The coast, when they reached it, was a surprise and a contrast. Harriet found it difficult to reconcile the sleepy little town they had just left with the flat shores protected from the sea by the dykes built so patiently by the Friesians over the centuries. Land was still being reclaimed, too. She looked at the expanse of mud, and tried to imagine people living on it in a decade of time; she found it much more to her liking to think of the people who had lived in Dokkum hundreds of years ago, and had gone to the self-same church that she had just visited. She explained this to Aede, who listened carefully.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘but if we had no dykes there would be no Dokkum.’ Which was unanswerable. They turned for home soon afterwards and towards the end of the journey, Aede said, ‘Here’s Friso’s village—his house is on the left.’ They were approaching it from the other side at an angle which allowed her to catch a glimpse of the back of the house. It looked bigger somehow, perhaps because of the verandah stretching across its breadth. There were steps from it leading down to the garden, which she saw was a great deal larger than she had supposed. She peered through the high iron railing, but there was no one to see. He must be lonely, she thought, living there all by himself. The road curved, and they passed the entrance. At the moment, at any rate, he wasn’t lonely—there were two cars parked by the door. Aede was going rather fast, so that she had only a glimpse; but with three car-crazy brothers, her knowledge of cars was sound and up to date. One was a Lotus Elan, the other a Marcos. It seemed that Dr Eijsinck’s friends liked speed. Harriet thought darkly of the beautiful brunette; she would look just right behind the wheel of the Lotus … Her thoughts were interrupted by Aede.

‘Friso’s got visitors … That man’s cast iron; he works for two most of the time, and when he’s not working he’s off to Utrecht or Amsterdam or Den Haag. Even if he stays home, there are always people calling.’

Harriet watched the Friso of her dreams fade—the Friso who would have loved her for always; happy to be with her and no one else—but this flesh and blood Friso didn’t need her at all. She went a little pink, remembering how she had smiled at him when she had seen him for the first time; he must have thought how silly she was, or worse, how cheap. The pink turned to red; she had been a fool. She resolved then and there to stop dreaming and demonstrated her resolution by turning to Aede and asking intelligent questions about the reclamation of land. Harriet listened with great attention to the answers, not hearing them at all, but thinking about Friso Eijsinck.

At breakfast the following morning, Harriet learned that Sieske’s two sisters would be returning in time for tea. They had been visiting their grandparents in Sneek, but now the Easter holidays were over and they would be going back to high school. Aede had gone back to hospital the previous evening; Dr Van Minnen had an unexpected appointment that afternoon; the question as to who should fetch them was debated over the rolls and coffee. Sieske supposed she could go, but there was the party to arrange.

Her father got to his feet. ‘I’ll telephone Friso,’ he said, ‘he’s got no afternoon surgery, I’m certain. He’ll go, and the girls simply love that car of his.’

He disappeared in the direction of his surgery, leaving his wife and Sieske, with Harriet as a willing listener, to plunge into the final details concerning the party. This fascinating discussion naturally led the three ladies upstairs to look at each other’s dresses for the occasion; Sieske had brought a dress back from England—the blue of it matched her eyes; its straight classical lines made her look like a golden-haired goddess. They admired it at some length before repairing to Mevrouw Van Minnen’s bedroom to watch approvingly while she held up the handsome black crepe gown she had bought in Leeuwarden. Evidently the party was to be an occasion for dressing up; Harriet was glad that she had packed the long white silk dress she had bought in a fit of extravagance a month or so previously. It had a lace bodice, square-necked and short-sleeved, with a rich satin ribbon defining the high waistline. It would provide a good foil for Sieske’s dress without stealing any of its limelight. She could see from Mevrouw Van Minnen’s satisfied nod that she thought so too. They all went downstairs, satisfied that they had already done a great deal towards making Sieske’s evening a success, and over cups of coffee the menu for the buffet supper was finally checked, for, said Mevrouw Van Minnen in sudden, surprising English,

‘We are beautiful ladies … but men eat too.’ She laughed at her efforts and looked as young and pretty as her daughter.

‘Will it be black ties?’ Harriet wanted to know.

Sieske nodded. ‘Of course. We call it Smoking—their clothes, I mean.’

Harriet giggled. ‘How funny, though they look nice whatever you call it.’ Friso Eijsinck, for instance, would look very nice indeed …

Harriet was sitting writing postcards at the desk under the sitting-room window when she heard a car draw up outside. It was the AC 428. She watched the two girls and Dr Eijsinck get out and cross the pavement to the front door; the girls were obviously in high spirits, and so, for that matter, was the doctor. Harriet, peeping from her chair, thought that he looked at least ten years younger and great fun. She returned to her writing, and presently they all three entered the room, bringing with them the unmistakable aura of longstanding friendship, which, quite unintentionally, made her feel more of a stranger than she had felt since she had arrived in Holland, and because of this, her ‘Good afternoon, Doctor’, was rather stiff and she was all the more annoyed when he said,

‘Oh hullo—all alone again? I’d better introduce you to these two.’ He turned to the elder of the girls.

‘This is Maggina.’ The girls shook hands and Maggina said ‘How do you do?’—she was like her mother and Sieske, but without their vividness. Rather like a carbon copy, thought Harriet, liking her.

‘And Taeike,’ said the doctor. She was fourteen or fifteen, and one saw she was going to be quite lovely; now she was just a very pretty girl, with a charming smile and nice manners. She shook hands with Harriet, then went and stood by Friso and slipped her hand under his arm. He patted it absent-mindedly and asked Harriet in a perfunctory manner if she had had a busy day, but there was no need for her to reply, for just then the rest of the family came in and everybody talked at once and there was nothing for her to do but to smile and withdraw a little into the background. She looked up once and found Dr Eijsinck watching her across the room, with an expression on his face which she found hard to read, but he gave her no opportunity to do so, for the next moment he had taken his leave. She heard the front door bang and his car start up, but withstood the temptation to turn round and look out of the window.

Wednesday came, the day of the party, and with it a Land-Rover from Dr Eijsinck’s house. It was driven by his gardener, and filled to overflowing with azaleas and polyanthus, and great bunches of irises and tulips and freesias. Harriet, helping to arrange them around the house, paused to study the complicated erection of flowers she had achieved in one corner of the drawing-room and to remark,

‘I suppose Dr Eijsinck has a very large green house?’

It was Taeike who answered. ‘He has three. I go many times—also to his house.’

Harriet twitched a branch of forsythia into its exact position before she answered, ‘How nice.’ It would be easy to find out a great deal about the doctor from Taeike, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She asked instead,

‘Tell me about your school, will you?’ then listened to Taeike’s polite, halting English, aware that the girl would have much rather talked about Friso Eijsinck.

Wierd came after tea, with more flowers, and sat talking to Dr Van Minnen until Sieske, who had gone upstairs to dress, came down again looking radiant. It was the signal for everyone else to go and dress too, leaving the pair of them to each other’s company, to foregather presently in the drawing-room where they admired the plain gold rings the happy couple had exchanged. They would wear them until their marriage, when they would be transferred from their left hands to their right. It seemed to Harriet that this exchange of rings made everything rather solemn and binding. ‘Plighting their troth,’ she mused, and added her congratulations to everyone else’s.

The guests arrived soon afterwards, and she circled the room with first one then the other of the Van Minnens, shaking hands and uttering her name with each handshake. A splendid idea—only some of the names were hard to remember. She was standing by the door, listening rather nervously to the burgemeester, a handsome man with an imposing presence who spoke the pedantic English she was beginning to associate with the educated Dutch, when Friso Eijsinck came in. She had been right. He looked—she sought for the right word and came up with eye-catching; but then so did the girl with him. A blonde this time, Harriet noted, watching her while she smiled attentively at her companion, and wearing a dress straight out of Harpers & Queen. In her efforts to prevent a scowl of envy, Harriet smiled even more brilliantly and gazed at the burgemeester with such a look of absorbed attention that he embarked upon a monologue, and a very knowledgeable one, about the various theatres he had visited when he was last in London. It was fortunate that he didn’t expect an answer, for Harriet was abysmally ignorant about social life in the great metropolis, and was about to say so, when he paused for breath and Friso said from behind her,

‘Good evening, Miss Slocombe … burgemeester.’

He shook hands with them both, and the burgemeester said,

‘I was just telling this charming young lady how much I enjoyed “The Mousetrap”!’ He turned to Harriet. ‘I also went to see “Cats”.’ He coughed. ‘You’ve seen it, of course, Miss Slocombe?’

Both men were looking down at her, the speaker with a look of polite inquiry, Dr Eijsinck with a decided twinkle in his grey eyes. Her colour deepened. ‘Well, no. You see I live in a very small village on the edge of Dartmoor. I … I don’t go to London often.’ She forbore to mention that she hadn’t been there for at least five years. She withdrew her gaze from the older man and looked quickly at the doctor, whose face was a mask of polite interest; all the same, she was very well aware that he was laughing at her. She opened her eyes very wide and said with hauteur, ‘Even if I lived in London I think it would be unlikely that I should go to see “Cats”. I’m not very with-it, I’m afraid.’

She allowed her long curling lashes to sweep down on to her cheeks for just a sufficient length of time for her two companions to note that they were real. The burgemeester, who was really rather a dear, allowed a discreet eye to rove over her person. He said with elderly gallantry,

‘I think that you are most delightfully with-it, Miss Slocombe. I hope that I shall see more of you before you return to that village of yours. And now take her away, Friso, for I am sure that was your reason for joining us.’

There was nothing to do but smile, and, very conscious of Friso’s hand on her arm, allow herself to be guided across the room. Once out of earshot, however, she stood still and said,

‘I’ll be quite all right here, Doctor. I’m sure there are a great many people to whom you wish to talk.’ She looked pointedly through the open double doors into the dining-room, where the beautiful blonde, glass in hand, was holding court. Somebody had started the record-player; Sieske started to dance and half a dozen couples joined them. Her companion, without bothering to answer her, swung Harriet on to the impromptu dance floor. He danced well, with a complete lack of tiresome mannerisms. Harriet, who was a good dancer herself, would have been happy to have remained as his partner for the rest of the evening, but in fact it was long after midnight before he came near her again. She was perched on the bottom stair, between two of Aede’s friends, listening to their account of life on the wards in a Rotterdam hospital where they were housemen. She saw him standing in the open doorway of the drawing-room across the hall, watching them. After a minute he started to cross the hall, taking care that both young men saw his approach. When he was near enough, he said smoothly,