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Tempestuous April
Betty Neels
Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors.It just had to be…a dream wedding. Harriet had met the man of her dreams, the one she’d always imagined herself marrying. But Dr Friso Eijsinck was very attractive, and he seemed to be surrounded by pretty girls. Harriet began to feel that, as far as Friso was concerned, she was only one of many.What she didn’t know was that Friso had met his dream wife, and he was going to make sure that he married her.
Tempestuous April
Betty Neels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
MEN’S SURGICAL was quiet—there had been two emergency admissions before midnight; a case in theatre—a rather nasty appendix—at one o’clock, and a cardiac arrest at half past two; these happenings interspersed by old Mr Gadd’s frequent and successful attempts to climb over his cot sides and amble down the ward in search of refreshment. But none of these happenings appeared to have upset Miss Harriet Slocombe, sitting, as neat as a new pin, at Sister’s desk, writing the bare bones of her report. She appeared to be as fresh as the proverbial daisy and would have been genuinely surprised if anyone had suggested to her that she had had a busy night. She sucked the top of her ballpoint and frowned at the clatter of plates from the kitchen where her junior nurse was cutting bread and butter for the patients’ breakfasts. It was four o’clock, almost time for her, in company with Nurse Potter, to consume the tea and toast with which they fortified themselves before beginning their early morning work. Miss Slocombe removed the pen from her mouth and got up in order to do a round of her patients. She went from bed to bed, making no sound, due very largely to the fact that she had removed her shoes from her feet some time previously, and was in her stockings. The shoes stood side by side under Sister’s desk, waiting to be donned again after her tea break. She reached the end of the ward and paused by the windows opening on to the balcony, to look out into the chill gloom of the early morning. March could be dreary; especially just before dawn. She stood watching the fine drizzle and thought with pleasure of the three-week holiday she was to have in a fortnight’s time … and at the end of it she would be coming back to St Nick’s as Ward Sister of Men’s Surgical. A rosy future, she told herself robustly, and sighed. She was twenty-four years old and pretty, with wide blue eyes, a retroussé nose and a gently curving mouth; she wore her bright blonde hair—the envy of her friends—in a complicated knot on top of her head, and her person was small, so that she looked extremely fragile. She was in fact, as strong as an ox. She had a faint air of reserve and a nasty temper when roused, which was seldom. She was liked by everyone in the hospital with the possible exception of one or two of the housemen, who had expected her to be as fragile as her appearance and were still smarting from her astringent tongue. They called her Haughty Harry amongst themselves, and when she had heard about it, she had laughed with everybody else, but a little wistfully, because she knew that with the right man she wouldn’t be in the least haughty … She sighed again, and went to tuck up Mr Gadd who had, as usual, fallen sound asleep at the wrong end of the night. In the next bed to him, the theatre case opened hazy eyes and said in a woolly drugged voice,
‘Cor, dang me, you’m as pretty as a picture,’ and went immediately to sleep again.
Harriet smiled, a warm, motherly smile, wholly without conceit; she was aware that she was a pretty girl, but two elder sisters and three brothers younger than herself had taught her at an early age to put things in their proper perspective. She had long since outgrown her youthful dreams of captivating some young, handsome and wealthy man with her good looks; but outgrown though they might be, they had so far made it impossible for her to settle for anything less. She moved soundlessly down the ward, adjusted two drips, took a blood pressure and carefully and gently examined the two emergencies; they were sleeping soundly. She supposed that they would go to Theatre during the day. She reached the last bed and stood a moment facing the quiet ward, listening. She ignored the snores, the sighs and Mr Bolt’s tracheostomy tube’s faint whistle, she ignored the background sissing of the hot water pipes and the soft rhythm of the electric pump beneath young Butcher’s bed—all these sounds were familiar; she knew who and what made them. It was other sounds she was listening for—a change in breathing, an unexpectedly sudden restlessness and more sinister—the quiet from a bed where there should be the small sounds of a sleeping man. Her trained ear detected nothing untoward, however, and she nodded, well satisfied, and turned to Sister’s table, just as Nurse Potter, plump and beaming, edged herself round the ward door with a tray. She put it down carefully and whispered breathily,
‘I made Bovril toast, Staff,’ and indicated the generous pile before them. Harriet was already pouring out the tea.
‘Good. I love it and I’m famished. I only hope we’ll get the chance to eat it all.’
They began to munch, and presently, when their hunger was a little blunted, Harriet started to plan the morning’s work.
Night nurses’ breakfast was always a noisy meal—everyone talked and laughed with a false energy inspired by the knowledge that the night was over once more. The paralysis of tiredness which had crept over them in the early hours of the morning had been forgotten. Later, it would return, so that those who weren’t already in bed were liable to sleep in the bath or drop off over a late morning cup of cocoa—in the meantime they were all bursting with vigour. The staff nurses sat at a table on their own; there were perhaps a dozen of them, of whom Harriet was the last to arrive that morning. Late though she was, she looked unruffled and incredibly neat and not in the least tired.
‘We stayed to help,’ she volunteered as she sat down. ‘There’s been an accident at the brickworks.’
There was an understanding murmur—the brickworks was notorious for the fact that it could always be relied upon to fill any vacant bed in Men’s Surgical at all times.
She was left to make a substantial breakfast at her leisure, and not until she had poured her third cup of tea did someone ask,
‘Has anyone seen the new RMO? I ought to have done—after all, I am on Medical, but all I got last night was our Mr Rugg.’ Mr Rugg was young and uncertain and definitely not a lady’s man. The speaker looked around the table until her eye lighted upon Harriet, who had gone a delicious pink.
‘I might have known … Harry, where did you meet him?’
Harry put down her cup. ‘He came on to the ward last night,’ she said serenely. ‘We had that cardiac arrest, remember?’ She looked inside the empty teapot and put it down again resignedly. ‘He’s nice—good-looking and one of those gravelly voices and polished manners—’ She was interrupted by a chorus of knowing groans; when they had subsided she added gently, ‘He’s engaged.’
A disappointed voice asked, ‘How do you know? He couldn’t have had time to tell you that!’
‘He talked while he was making up the chart. I expect he felt lonely and wanted to talk about her. Perhaps I’ve got a sympathetic face,’ she observed hopefully, and was greeted by a shriek of friendly laughter; her friends and acquaintances holding the opinion that anyone as pretty as Harry Slocombe needed to be nothing else. After a moment she laughed with them, privately wondering why everyone other than her own family attached such importance to looks.
A couple of hours later she was sitting up in bed reading sleepily when there was a knock on the door and a tall well-built girl came in.
Harriet put her book down. ‘Sieske, you’re never on at eleven again?’
The girl nodded gloomily and came to sit on the end of the bed. She was nice-looking, with a pleasant, placid face framed in pale hair which she wore in an unfashionable and highly becoming bun in the nape of her neck.
‘Aunt Agnes must loathe me,’ she remarked. Aunt Agnes was the Sister on Men’s Medical, she had been there for unnumbered years and made a habit of loathing everyone. ‘It is because I am not English, you think?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘She never likes anyone. I shouldn’t worry anyway, it’s only another two weeks, isn’t it? I shall miss you, Sieske.’
‘Me you too,’ said Sieske with obscure sincerity. She patted her bun with a large capable and very beautiful hand and turned solemn blue eyes on Harriet.
‘Harry, will you not come with me when I go? You have three weeks’ holiday; you could see much of Holland in that time—we should all be so glad; my family think of you as a friend, you know. I tell them many times of my visits to your home—we shall be highly pleased to have you as guest. It is a quiet place where we live, but we have many friends, and the country is pretty too.’ She paused and went on shyly, ‘I should like you to meet Wierd.’ Wierd was her fiancé; after several months of friendship with Sieske, Harriet looked upon him as an old friend, just as the Dutch girl’s family—her mother and father, younger sisters and the older brother who had just qualified as a doctor at Leiden—seemed like old friends too. The Dutch girl had told her so much about them that she felt that she already knew them. It would be delightful to go and stay with Sieske and meet them all—there was a partner too, she remembered; mentioned casually from time to time. Harriet searched her sleep-clogged brain for his name. Friso Eijsinck. She didn’t know much more about him than his name, though. Sieske had mentioned too that he wasn’t married. Harriet felt faintly sympathetic towards him, picturing him as a middle-aged bachelor with a soup-stained waistcoat. She dismissed his vague image from her mind.
‘I’d love to come,’ she said warmly. ‘But are you sure it will be all right with your family?’
Sieske smiled. ‘But of course I am sure. Already they have written with an invitation, which I extend to you. I am most happy, as they will be. We will make plans together for the journey.’ She got up. ‘Now you will sleep and I will write to Moeder.’
‘We’ll arrange it all on my nights off,’ said Harriet sleepily. ‘Get a day off and come home with me—tell Aunt Agnes you have to go to your grandmother’s funeral.’
‘A joke?’ queried Sieske. She had a hand on the door but paused to look back doubtfully at Harriet. But Harriet was already asleep.
Harriet’s family lived in a small west country village some forty miles from the city where she worked. Her father had had a practice there for twenty-five years or more and lived in a roomy rather ramshackle house that had sheltered his large family with ease, and now housed a growing band of grandchildren during school holidays. His eldest son had just qualified in his turn and had already taken his place in the wide-flung practice. It was he who fetched the two girls from hospital a few days later. He owned an elderly Sprite, which was always overloaded with passengers, but both girls were used to travelling in this cramped fashion and packed themselves in without demur. The country looked fresh and green after the rain, the moors rolled away into the distance—Harriet tied a scarf tightly round her hair and drew a deep breath; she was always happiest where the horizon was wide. The village looked cosy, with its thatched and cob walled cottages; the daffodils were out in the doctor’s garden as they shot up the drive and stopped with a tooth-jolting jerk at the front door. The girls scrambled out and ran inside to the comfort of the shabby hall and thence to the big sitting-room at the back of the house, where Mrs Slocombe was waiting with tea and the warm welcome she offered to anyone who set foot inside her home. She listened to the girls’ plans as they ate their way through home-made scones with a great deal of butter and jam, and the large fruit cake Mrs Slocombe had thoughtfully baked against their coming. She refilled their cups and said calmly, ‘How lovely for you, Harry darling. You’ll need a passport and a photo—better go into town tomorrow and get them settled. How will you go?’
Sieske answered, ‘From Harwich. We can go by train from the Hoek and my father will meet us at Leeuwarden.’
Mrs Slocombe replenished the teapot. ‘Travel broadens the mind,’ she observed, and looked at Harriet, immersed in a map. Such a dear child, and so unlike her brothers and sisters with her delicate prettiness and femininity and so gently pliant until one encountered the sturdy core of proud independence and plain common sense beneath it. Mrs Slocombe sighed. It would be nice to see Harriet happily married as her two sisters were. Heaven knew it wasn’t for lack of opportunity, the dear girl was surrounded by men as though they were bees round a honeypot; and she treated all of them as though they were brothers. Perhaps she would meet some nice man in Holland. Mrs Slocombe smiled happily at the thought and gave her mind to the serious business of the right clothes to take.
They spent the rest of that evening making their plans, helped and sometimes hindered by the advice and suggestions proffered by members of the family and their friends as they drifted in and out of the sitting-room. Her brother William, coming in from evening surgery, remarked with all the experience of someone who had been to the Continent of Europe on several occasions, ‘Still at it? Good lord, Harry, anyone would think you were going to the other side of the world instead of the other side of the North Sea.’
His sister remained unmoved by his observations, and merely picked up a small cushion and threw it at his head with the unerring aim of much practice. ‘Beast,’ she said affectionately. ‘But it is the other side of the world to me, isn’t it? I’ve never been outside Britain before, so any part of the world is foreign—just as foreign as the other side of the world—and everyone I meet will be a foreigner.’
This ingenuous remark caused a great deal of merriment. ‘I hope,’ said William, half seriously, ‘that you’ll remember that you are going to be the foreigner.’
‘Harriet will not feel foreign with us,’ said Sieske stoutly. ‘We all speak English—that is, Father and Aede and Friso speak it very well, and Maggina and Taeike are learning it at school—only my mother does not speak it though she does at times understand.’
‘And then there’s you,’ pointed out Harriet. ‘You speak marvellous English.’
Sieske glowed with pleasure. ‘Yes, I think I do, but then you helped me very much; it is not an easy language to learn.’
‘Nor, I gather, is Dutch,’ remarked Dr Slocombe dryly, ‘although it doesn’t sound as though Harry will need to know one word of it.’
‘No, of course she won’t,’ agreed Mrs Slocombe comfortably. She looked across the room at her daughter and thought with maternal satisfaction what a very pretty girl she was. A great deal could happen in three weeks, whatever part of the world one happened to be in.
CHAPTER TWO
THEY TRAVELLED by the night boat from Harwich, and Harriet, whose longest sea trip had been between Penzance and the Scillies, was disagreeably surprised to find the North Sea so spiteful. She lay in her bunk, listening to Sieske’s gentle breathing above her, and wondered if she would be seasick. It was fortunate that she fell asleep while she was still making up her mind about this, and didn’t wake up until the stewardess wakened them with their early morning tea. It was delightful to take turns with Sieske, to peer out of the porthole at the low coast of Holland. It looked as flat as she had always imagined it would be, and lonely as well. An hour later, however, disembarking amidst the cheerful bustle, she reversed her opinion. There seemed to be a great many people, all working very hard and apparently delighted to see the passengers coming off the boat; a larger porter took their luggage and led them to the Customs shed, exchanging pleasantries with Sieske, and thumped down their cases in front of a small rat-faced man who asked them in a surprisingly pleasant voice why they had come and what they had brought with them. Here again Sieske was useful; Harriet found that she did not need to utter a word, although she said ‘Thank you’ politely when she was handed her passport, and was taken aback when the Customs Officer wished her a happy holiday—in quite beautiful English.
The train snaked silently through green meadows where black and white cows, coated against the chilly wind, stood placidly to watch them flash by; there were farms dotted here and there, with steep roofs, and gardens arranged very neatly around them—the villages were dominated by their churches; Harriet had never seen so many soaring steeples in her life, nor, for that matter, had she seen so many factories, each with its small satellite of new houses close by. She didn’t like them very much and turned with relief to the contemplation of a canal, running like a ruler through the neat countryside, and carrying a variety of picturesque traffic. Presently they were served coffee and ham rolls, and the two girls sat back, watching the country flash by under a blue, rather watery sky stretching away to the flat horizon. In no time at all they were at Rotterdam—Harriet watched the early morning crowds racing to work with a faintly smug sympathy. The three weeks of her holiday stretching ahead of her seemed a very long time indeed. She wondered idly what she would feel like on the return journey. Once they had left Rotterdam, the scenery became more rural, the villages lying neatly amongst the flat meadows, like cakes arranged tidily on a plate—Gouda, even from a distance, looked intriguing—Harriet wished that they might have stopped to look around, but the train went remorselessly on to Utrecht and then to Amersfoort, where they had to get out anyway and change trains. They stood on the platform and watched the express rush away towards the frontier, and then because they had half an hour to wait, they went and had a cup of coffee and Sieske spread the incredibly small Dutch money on the table between them and gave Harriet her first lesson. They laughed a great deal and the time passed so quickly that they were surprised when the train for Leeuwarden arrived and they were stowed on board by a kindly porter, who tossed their cases in after them and waved cheerfully as the train pulled out.
They still had a two-hour journey before them, Harriet settled herself by the window once more, listening to Sieske’s unhurried voice and watching the subtle changing of the countryside. It began to look very like the New Forest, with stretches of heath and charming little woods; there were glimpses of houses too, not large, but having an air of luxury, each set in its own immaculate grounds. Presently the woods and heathland gave way in their turn to rolling grassland. The farms looked large and prosperous, even the cows looked plumply outsize and although there were plenty of villages and towns there was a refreshing lack of factories.
Sieske’s father was waiting at Leeuwarden, a large, very tall man with thick grey hair, a neat moustache and an elegant Van Dyke beard. He had a round merry face, but his eyes were shrewd behind the horn-rimmed glasses he wore. He greeted Sieske with a bear-like hug and a flow of incomprehensible words, but as he turned to shake Harriet’s hand, she was relieved to find that his English was almost as good as her own.
‘You are most welcome, Harriet,’ he said warmly. ‘We hope that you will have a pleasant holiday with us—and now we will go home; Mother is waiting—she is most excited, but she would not come with me because everything has to be ready for you when you arrive.’
He led the way over to a BMW, and Harriet looked at it with an appreciative eye as they got in. She gazed around her as they went through Leeuwarden, glimpsing small side streets that would be fun to explore. Dr Van Minnen seemed to read her thoughts, for without taking his eyes off the road, he said, ‘You shall come here, Harriet, and look around one day soon. There is a great deal to see as well as a museum of which we are very proud.’
Franeker, Sieske’s home, was only a short distance from Leeuwarden; in less than twenty minutes they were slowing down past a large church and turning into the main street of the charming little town.
The doctor lived in a large house overlooking a tree-lined canal which ran between narrow cobbled streets lined with buildings from another era. No two houses were alike, except in a shared dignity of age and beauty. Harriet got out of the car and stood gaping at the variety of rooftops. She would have liked to have asked about them, but Sieske was already at the great wooden door with its imposing fanlight, and the doctor caught hold of her arm and hurried her inside behind his daughter, to be greeted by his wife. Mevrouw Van Minnen was very like her daughter and still remarkably youthful—there was no hint of grey in her pale blonde hair and her eyes were as bright a blue as Sieske’s; she was a big woman, but there was nothing middle-aged in her brisk movements. The next hour or so was taken up most agreeably, drinking coffee and eating the crisp little biscuits—sprits—that went with it. There was a great deal of conversation which lost none of its zest by reason of Harriet’s lack of Dutch, and Mevrouw Van Minnen’s scant knowledge of English. Presently they all went upstairs to show Harriet her room—it overlooked the street, so that she could see the canal below, which delighted her; and although it was small it was very comfortable. She unpacked happily; it was, she decided, going to be a delightful holiday. She did her hair and her face and went downstairs to join the family for koffietafel, and ate her bread and cold meat and cheese and omelette with a healthy appetite which called forth delighted surprise from Mevrouw Van Minnen, who had thought she had looked too delicate to do more than peck at her food. Sieske translated this to Harriet, giggling a great deal, and then said in Dutch to her mother:
‘Harry isn’t quite what she looks, Moeder. She appears to be a fairy, but she’s not in the least delicate; and of course it notices here, doesn’t it, because we’re all so big.’
‘Such a pretty girl, too,’ her mother murmured. ‘I wonder what Aede and Friso will say when they see her.’
Aede wouldn’t be home until the evening, it seemed, and no one knew what Friso was doing—he had taken the morning surgery so that Dr Van Minnen could go to Leeuwarden—he had presumably gone to his own home. They would see him later, said Mevrouw Van Minnen comfortably, and suggested that the two girls went out for a walk so that Harriet could see something of the town.
An hour later, the two of them were strolling along looking in the shop windows while Sieske carefully explained the prices. They had reached a particularly interesting display of clocks and jewellery when Sieske suddenly exclaimed, ‘I forgot, I have to buy stamps for Father—the post office is in the next street. Wait here, Harry—you can practise your Dutch in this window—I won’t be a minute.’
Harriet looked her fill, and then because Sieske still hadn’t come back, went to the edge of the pavement and looked up and down the street. It was surprisingly busy for a small town, with a constant thin stream of traffic. She was standing on the corner outside the beautiful town hall and she watched idly as the various buses and lorries halted by her; the cars were mostly small, so that when an AC 428 Fastback pulled up it caught her attention immediately. There was a girl sitting in the front by the driver—a girl so dark that it was impossible not to notice her amongst the fair-haired giants around the town, thought Harriet; she was quite beautiful too. She turned her head and stared at Harriet with great black eyes which barely noticed her. She looked cross, and Harriet, with that extraordinary feeling that in someone else’s country you can do things you wouldn’t do in your own, stared back openly before transferring her gaze to the driver. He was looking ahead and she studied his profile at her leisure; it was a handsome one, with a domineering nose and a firm chin; his forehead was high and wide and his very fair hair was brushed smoothly back from it. Looking at him, she had the sudden deep conviction that they had met before; her heart started to race, she wished with all her heart that he would turn and look at her. As though she had shouted her wish out loud at him, he turned his head and she found herself gazing into level grey eyes. It seemed to her that she had known him—a complete stranger—all her life; she smiled with the sudden delight of it, wondering if he felt the same way too. Apparently he did not; there was no expression on his face at all, and she went slowly pink under his cool stare. The traffic ahead of him sorted itself out, and he was gone, leaving her gazing sadly after him; the man who had been in her thoughts for so many years; the reason for her being more than friends with the men she had met. He had been her dream; but dreams didn’t last. A good thing perhaps, as quite obviously she had no part in his; indeed, he had looked at her as though she had been a lamp-post.
Sieske came back then, and said, ‘Harry, what is it? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
Harriet turned to walk beside her friend. ‘No, not a ghost.’ She so obviously didn’t want to say any more that Sieske bit off the questions she was going to ask, and started to talk about something quite different.
Aede arrived after tea—which wasn’t a meal at all, Harriet discovered, just a cup of tea with no milk and a plate of delicate little biscuits. He was like his father, tall and broad, and looked younger than his twenty-five years. He had just qualified as a doctor and was at the hospital at Leeuwarden working as a houseman, and it would be at least another six months before he started to specialize; eventually, of course, he would join his father’s practice. He told Harriet these interesting facts in fluent English, sitting beside her on the comfortable sofa near the stove. He drank the decidedly cool tea without apparently minding in the least, and consumed the remainder of the biscuits. Harriet liked him; he wasn’t as placid as Sieske, but he was obviously good-natured and an excellent companion. They sat around happily talking shop until almost supper time, while Mevrouw Van Minnen, looking almost as young as her daughter, sat in a straight-backed chair by her work table, knitting a sock at speed and managing to take a lion’s share in the talk despite the fact that everything had to be said twice in both languages.
They sat down to the evening meal soon after seven, with a great deal of laughing and talking. Dr Van Minnen, who had disappeared soon after tea to take his evening surgery, came back in time to dispense an excellent sherry from a beautiful decanter into crystal glasses.
‘Where’s Friso?’ inquired his wife. ‘He hasn’t called to see Sieske.’
The doctor answered her and then repeated his words, this time in English for Harriet’s benefit. ‘My partner has had to go to Dongjum, a small village a few miles from this town—an extended breech, so he’s likely to be there most of the night.’
Harriet felt a pang of pity for the poor man—she had been told that he didn’t live in Franeker, but in a nearby village close to the sea; he looked after the rural side of the practice while Dr Van Minnen attended his patients in Franeker.
‘Is Dr Eijsinck’s share of the practice a large one?’ she asked Aede.
‘Hemel, yes—and very scattered, but he’s a glutton for work.’
And Harriet added a harassed expression and a permanent stoop to the stained waistcoat, and then forgot all about him in the excitement of discussing Sieske’s and Wierd’s engagement party, when their forthcoming marriage would be announced. It was to be a splendid affair, with the burgemeester and the dominee and various colleagues of the doctor coming, as well as a great many young people. It was fortunate that the sitting-room and the drawing-room were connected by folding doors, which could be pushed back, making one room. Harriet sat back, listening quietly and wondering which of her two party dresses she had had the forethought to bring with her she should wear. Every now and then she thought about the man in the AC 428 Fastback.
The following morning after breakfast, Harriet took the post along to the doctor in his surgery. She hadn’t been there yet, but she had been told the way. She went down the long narrow passage leading to the back of the house and through the little door in the wall opposite the kitchen. She could hear a murmur of sound—shuffling feet, coughs and a baby crying, as she knocked on the surgery door. The doctor was alone, searching through a filing cabinet with concentrated fierceness. His voice was mild enough, however, as he remarked.
‘Mevrouw Van Hoeve’s card is here somewhere—the poor woman is in the waiting room, but how can I give her an injection until I check her notes?’
Harriet put the post down on the desk. It seemed that doctors were all the same the world over.
‘I’ve brought your post,’ she said soothingly. ‘If you’ll spell the name to me I’ll look for the card while you see if there’s anything important …’
Dr Van Minnen gave her a grateful look. ‘I do have an assistant,’ he explained, ‘but she’s on holiday.’
He sat down with a relieved sigh and picked up the first of his letters, and Harriet started to go through the filing cabinet. Mevrouw Van Hoeve was half-way through the second drawer, filed away under P-S; no wonder she couldn’t be found. Harriet took it out and turned round in triumph to find that the door had opened and a man had come in; he spoke briefly to Dr Van Minnen and stood staring at her with the same cool grey eyes that she had been trying so hard to forget. She stood staring back at him in her turn, clutching the folder to her; her pretty mouth agape, while the bright colour flooded her face.
Dr Van Minnen glanced up briefly from his desk. ‘Harriet, this is my partner, Friso Eijsinck.’
The Friso she had imagined disintegrated. This elegant waistcoat had never borne a soup stain in its well-cared-for life; indeed, the whole appearance of its wearer was one of a well-dressed man about town. There was no sign of a stoop either; he was a giant among the giantlike people around her and he wore his great height with a careless arrogance; and as for the harassed expression—she tried her best to imagine him presenting anything but a calm, controlled face to the world, and failed utterly.
She said, ‘How do you do, Doctor,’ in a voice which would have done credit to one of Miss Austen’s young ladies, and this time she didn’t smile.
His own, ‘How do you do, Miss Slocombe,’ was uttered in a deep, rather slow voice with a faint impatience in its tones. There was a pause, during which she realized that he was waiting for her to go. She closed the filing cabinet carefully, smiled at Dr Van Minnen, and walked without haste to the door which he was holding open for her, and passed him with no more than a brief glance, her head very high. To her chagrin he wasn’t even looking at her. Outside, with the door closed gently behind her, she stopped and reviewed the brief, disappointing meeting. She doubted if he had looked at her—not to see her, at any rate; he had made her feel in the way, and awkward, and this without saying anything at all. She walked on slowly; perhaps he hated the English, or, she amended honestly, he didn’t like her.
Sieske was calling her from the top of the house and she went upstairs and put on her clove pink raincoat and tugged its matching hat on to her bright hair, then went shopping with Sieske and her mother.
Wierd was coming that evening. Harriet spent the afternoon setting Sieske’s hair, and after their tea combed it out and arranged it for her, then stood back to admire her handiwork. What with a pretty hair-do and the prospect of seeing Wierd again, Sieske looked like a large and a very good-looking angel.
There was no evening surgery that day; they were to meet in the drawing-room for drinks at six-thirty. Harriet went upstairs to change her dress wondering what she was going to do until that time. She suspected that the arrangement had been made so that Sieske and her young man would have some time to themselves before the family assembled. She was just putting the last pin into her hair when there was a knock on the door, and when she called ‘Come in’, Aede put his inquiring head into the room.
‘Harriet? Are you ready? I wondered if you would like to put on a coat and come for a quick run in the car—there’s heaps of time.’
She had already caught up the pink raincoat; it wasn’t raining any more, but it lay handy on a chair and she put it on, saying,
‘I’d love to, Aede. But do we tell someone?’
They were going downstairs. ‘I told Moeder,’ he said. ‘She thought it was a jolly good idea.’
His car was outside—a Volkswagen and rather battered. Harriet got in, remarking knowledgeably that it was a good car and how long had he had it. This remark triggered off a conversation which lasted them out of Franeker and several miles along the main road. When he turned off, however, she asked, ‘Where are we going?’
‘Just round the country so that you can see what it is like,’ Aede replied, and turned the car into a still smaller road. The country looked green and pleasant in the spring evening light. The farms stood well apart from each other, each joined to its own huge barn by a narrow corridor at its back. They looked secure and prosperous and very different from the more picturesque, less compact English farms. They passed through several small villages with unpronounceable names in the Fries language, then circled back and crossed the main road again so that they were going towards the coast. On the outskirts of one village there was a large house, with an important front door and neat windows across its face. It had a curved gabled roof and a large garden alive with daffodils and tulips and hyacinths. Harriet cried out in delight, ‘Oh, Aede, stop—please stop! I simply must stare. Will anyone mind?’
He pulled up obligingly and grinned. ‘No, of course not. It is rather lovely, isn’t it?’
‘And the house,’ she breathed, ‘that’s lovely too. How old is it? Who lives there?’
‘About 1760, I think, but you can ask Friso next time you see him; it’s his.’
Harriet turned an astonished face to her companion. ‘You mean Dr Eijsinck? He lives there? All by himself?’
Aede started the car again. He nodded. ‘Yes, that is, if you don’t count a gardener and a cook and a valet and a housemaid or two. He’s got a great deal of money, you know; he doesn’t need to be a doctor, but his work is the love of his life. That doesn’t mean to say that he doesn’t love girls too,’ he added on a laugh.
‘Why doesn’t he marry, then?’ She waited for Aede’s answer. Perhaps Friso was engaged or at least in love; what about that dark girl in his car?
Aede thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I asked him once—oh, a long time ago, and he said he was waiting for the girl.’ He shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘It didn’t make much sense …’ He broke off. ‘Here’s Franeker again; we’re a bit late, but I don’t suppose it will matter.’
Harriet smiled at him. ‘It was lovely, Aede. I enjoyed every minute of it.’
He brought the car to a rather abrupt halt in front of the house and they both went inside.
‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ said Harriet, and flew upstairs, to throw down her raincoat, look hastily at herself in the mirror and then race downstairs again. Almost at the bottom of the staircase she checked herself abruptly and continued down to the hall with steps as sedate as the voice with which she greeted Dr Eijsinck, whom she had observed at that very moment standing there. Disconcertingly he didn’t answer, and she stood looking up at him—he was in her way, but his size precluded her from passing him unless she pushed by. It seemed a long time before he said reluctantly,
‘You smiled. Why?’ He gave her a hard, not too friendly stare. ‘You didn’t know me.’
So he had seen her after all. Harriet felt her heart thudding and ignored it. She said in a steady voice,
‘No, I didn’t know who you were, Dr Eijsinck. It was just … I thought that I recognized you.’ Which was, she thought, perfectly true, although she could hardly explain to him that she had dreamed about him so often that she couldn’t help but recognize him.
He nodded, and said, to surprise her, ‘Yes, I thought perhaps it was that. It happens to us all, I suppose, that once or twice in a lifetime we meet someone who should be a stranger, and is not.’
She longed to ask him what he meant and dared not, and instead said in a stiff, conversational voice,
‘What excellent English you speak, Doctor,’ and came to a halt at the amused look on his face. And there was amusement in his voice when he answered.
‘How very kind of you to say so, Miss Slocombe.’
She looked down at her shoes, so that her thick brown lashes curled on to her cheeks. He was making her feel awkward again. She swallowed and tried once more.
‘Should we go into the drawing-room, do you think?’
He stood aside without further preamble, and followed her into the room where she was instantly pounced upon by Sieske so that she could meet Wierd and see for herself that he was everything that her friend had said. He was indeed charming, and exactly right for Sieske. They made a handsome couple and a happy one too. Harriet suppressed a small pang of envy; it must be nice to be loved as Wierd so obviously loved Sieske. She drank the sherry Aede brought her and sat next to him during the meal which followed and joined in the laughter and talk, which was wholly concerned with the engagement party. It was discussed through the excellent soup, the rolpens met rodekool, the poffertjes—delicious morsels of dough fried in butter to an unbelievable lightness—and was only exhausted when an enormous bowl of fruit was put on the table. Harriet sat quietly while Aede peeled a peach for her, and listened to Dr Eijsinck’s deep voice—he was discussing rose grafting with her hostess, who turned to her and said kindly, but in her own language,
‘Harry, you must go and see Friso’s garden, it is such a beautiful one.’
Aede repeated her words in English, and then went on in the same language.
‘We went past your place this evening, Friso. I took Harriet for a run and we stopped while she admired your flowers.’
Harriet looked across the table at him then and smiled, and was puzzled to see his mobile mouth pulled down at the corners by a cynical smile, just as though he didn’t in the least believe that she had a real fondness for flowers and gardens. When he said carelessly, ‘By all means come and look round, Miss Slocombe,’ she knew that he had given the invitation because there was nothing else he could do. She thanked him quietly, gave him a cool glance, and occupied herself with her peach. She took care to avoid him for the rest of the evening, an easy matter as it turned out, for Dr Van Minnen had discovered that she had only the sketchiest knowledge of Friesland’s history, and set himself to rectify this gap in her education. It was only at the end of the evening that Dr Eijsinck spoke to her again and that was to wish her good night, and that a most casual one.
Later, in her pleasant little room, she sat brushing her hair and thinking about the evening. Something had gone wrong with her dream. It had seemed that kindly fate had intervened when she had met him again, but now she wasn’t so sure, for that same fickle fate was showing her that dreams had no place in her workaday world. Harriet ground her even little teeth—even though he had a dozen beautiful girl-friends, he could at least pretend to like her. On reflection, though, she didn’t think that he would bother to pretend about anything. She got into bed and turned out the light and lay in the comfortable darkness, wondering when she would see him again.
CHAPTER THREE
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,
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Betty Neels
Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors.It just had to be…a dream wedding. Harriet had met the man of her dreams, the one she’d always imagined herself marrying. But Dr Friso Eijsinck was very attractive, and he seemed to be surrounded by pretty girls. Harriet began to feel that, as far as Friso was concerned, she was only one of many.What she didn’t know was that Friso had met his dream wife, and he was going to make sure that he married her.
Tempestuous April
Betty Neels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
MEN’S SURGICAL was quiet—there had been two emergency admissions before midnight; a case in theatre—a rather nasty appendix—at one o’clock, and a cardiac arrest at half past two; these happenings interspersed by old Mr Gadd’s frequent and successful attempts to climb over his cot sides and amble down the ward in search of refreshment. But none of these happenings appeared to have upset Miss Harriet Slocombe, sitting, as neat as a new pin, at Sister’s desk, writing the bare bones of her report. She appeared to be as fresh as the proverbial daisy and would have been genuinely surprised if anyone had suggested to her that she had had a busy night. She sucked the top of her ballpoint and frowned at the clatter of plates from the kitchen where her junior nurse was cutting bread and butter for the patients’ breakfasts. It was four o’clock, almost time for her, in company with Nurse Potter, to consume the tea and toast with which they fortified themselves before beginning their early morning work. Miss Slocombe removed the pen from her mouth and got up in order to do a round of her patients. She went from bed to bed, making no sound, due very largely to the fact that she had removed her shoes from her feet some time previously, and was in her stockings. The shoes stood side by side under Sister’s desk, waiting to be donned again after her tea break. She reached the end of the ward and paused by the windows opening on to the balcony, to look out into the chill gloom of the early morning. March could be dreary; especially just before dawn. She stood watching the fine drizzle and thought with pleasure of the three-week holiday she was to have in a fortnight’s time … and at the end of it she would be coming back to St Nick’s as Ward Sister of Men’s Surgical. A rosy future, she told herself robustly, and sighed. She was twenty-four years old and pretty, with wide blue eyes, a retroussé nose and a gently curving mouth; she wore her bright blonde hair—the envy of her friends—in a complicated knot on top of her head, and her person was small, so that she looked extremely fragile. She was in fact, as strong as an ox. She had a faint air of reserve and a nasty temper when roused, which was seldom. She was liked by everyone in the hospital with the possible exception of one or two of the housemen, who had expected her to be as fragile as her appearance and were still smarting from her astringent tongue. They called her Haughty Harry amongst themselves, and when she had heard about it, she had laughed with everybody else, but a little wistfully, because she knew that with the right man she wouldn’t be in the least haughty … She sighed again, and went to tuck up Mr Gadd who had, as usual, fallen sound asleep at the wrong end of the night. In the next bed to him, the theatre case opened hazy eyes and said in a woolly drugged voice,
‘Cor, dang me, you’m as pretty as a picture,’ and went immediately to sleep again.
Harriet smiled, a warm, motherly smile, wholly without conceit; she was aware that she was a pretty girl, but two elder sisters and three brothers younger than herself had taught her at an early age to put things in their proper perspective. She had long since outgrown her youthful dreams of captivating some young, handsome and wealthy man with her good looks; but outgrown though they might be, they had so far made it impossible for her to settle for anything less. She moved soundlessly down the ward, adjusted two drips, took a blood pressure and carefully and gently examined the two emergencies; they were sleeping soundly. She supposed that they would go to Theatre during the day. She reached the last bed and stood a moment facing the quiet ward, listening. She ignored the snores, the sighs and Mr Bolt’s tracheostomy tube’s faint whistle, she ignored the background sissing of the hot water pipes and the soft rhythm of the electric pump beneath young Butcher’s bed—all these sounds were familiar; she knew who and what made them. It was other sounds she was listening for—a change in breathing, an unexpectedly sudden restlessness and more sinister—the quiet from a bed where there should be the small sounds of a sleeping man. Her trained ear detected nothing untoward, however, and she nodded, well satisfied, and turned to Sister’s table, just as Nurse Potter, plump and beaming, edged herself round the ward door with a tray. She put it down carefully and whispered breathily,
‘I made Bovril toast, Staff,’ and indicated the generous pile before them. Harriet was already pouring out the tea.
‘Good. I love it and I’m famished. I only hope we’ll get the chance to eat it all.’
They began to munch, and presently, when their hunger was a little blunted, Harriet started to plan the morning’s work.
Night nurses’ breakfast was always a noisy meal—everyone talked and laughed with a false energy inspired by the knowledge that the night was over once more. The paralysis of tiredness which had crept over them in the early hours of the morning had been forgotten. Later, it would return, so that those who weren’t already in bed were liable to sleep in the bath or drop off over a late morning cup of cocoa—in the meantime they were all bursting with vigour. The staff nurses sat at a table on their own; there were perhaps a dozen of them, of whom Harriet was the last to arrive that morning. Late though she was, she looked unruffled and incredibly neat and not in the least tired.
‘We stayed to help,’ she volunteered as she sat down. ‘There’s been an accident at the brickworks.’
There was an understanding murmur—the brickworks was notorious for the fact that it could always be relied upon to fill any vacant bed in Men’s Surgical at all times.
She was left to make a substantial breakfast at her leisure, and not until she had poured her third cup of tea did someone ask,
‘Has anyone seen the new RMO? I ought to have done—after all, I am on Medical, but all I got last night was our Mr Rugg.’ Mr Rugg was young and uncertain and definitely not a lady’s man. The speaker looked around the table until her eye lighted upon Harriet, who had gone a delicious pink.
‘I might have known … Harry, where did you meet him?’
Harry put down her cup. ‘He came on to the ward last night,’ she said serenely. ‘We had that cardiac arrest, remember?’ She looked inside the empty teapot and put it down again resignedly. ‘He’s nice—good-looking and one of those gravelly voices and polished manners—’ She was interrupted by a chorus of knowing groans; when they had subsided she added gently, ‘He’s engaged.’
A disappointed voice asked, ‘How do you know? He couldn’t have had time to tell you that!’
‘He talked while he was making up the chart. I expect he felt lonely and wanted to talk about her. Perhaps I’ve got a sympathetic face,’ she observed hopefully, and was greeted by a shriek of friendly laughter; her friends and acquaintances holding the opinion that anyone as pretty as Harry Slocombe needed to be nothing else. After a moment she laughed with them, privately wondering why everyone other than her own family attached such importance to looks.
A couple of hours later she was sitting up in bed reading sleepily when there was a knock on the door and a tall well-built girl came in.
Harriet put her book down. ‘Sieske, you’re never on at eleven again?’
The girl nodded gloomily and came to sit on the end of the bed. She was nice-looking, with a pleasant, placid face framed in pale hair which she wore in an unfashionable and highly becoming bun in the nape of her neck.
‘Aunt Agnes must loathe me,’ she remarked. Aunt Agnes was the Sister on Men’s Medical, she had been there for unnumbered years and made a habit of loathing everyone. ‘It is because I am not English, you think?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘She never likes anyone. I shouldn’t worry anyway, it’s only another two weeks, isn’t it? I shall miss you, Sieske.’
‘Me you too,’ said Sieske with obscure sincerity. She patted her bun with a large capable and very beautiful hand and turned solemn blue eyes on Harriet.
‘Harry, will you not come with me when I go? You have three weeks’ holiday; you could see much of Holland in that time—we should all be so glad; my family think of you as a friend, you know. I tell them many times of my visits to your home—we shall be highly pleased to have you as guest. It is a quiet place where we live, but we have many friends, and the country is pretty too.’ She paused and went on shyly, ‘I should like you to meet Wierd.’ Wierd was her fiancé; after several months of friendship with Sieske, Harriet looked upon him as an old friend, just as the Dutch girl’s family—her mother and father, younger sisters and the older brother who had just qualified as a doctor at Leiden—seemed like old friends too. The Dutch girl had told her so much about them that she felt that she already knew them. It would be delightful to go and stay with Sieske and meet them all—there was a partner too, she remembered; mentioned casually from time to time. Harriet searched her sleep-clogged brain for his name. Friso Eijsinck. She didn’t know much more about him than his name, though. Sieske had mentioned too that he wasn’t married. Harriet felt faintly sympathetic towards him, picturing him as a middle-aged bachelor with a soup-stained waistcoat. She dismissed his vague image from her mind.
‘I’d love to come,’ she said warmly. ‘But are you sure it will be all right with your family?’
Sieske smiled. ‘But of course I am sure. Already they have written with an invitation, which I extend to you. I am most happy, as they will be. We will make plans together for the journey.’ She got up. ‘Now you will sleep and I will write to Moeder.’
‘We’ll arrange it all on my nights off,’ said Harriet sleepily. ‘Get a day off and come home with me—tell Aunt Agnes you have to go to your grandmother’s funeral.’
‘A joke?’ queried Sieske. She had a hand on the door but paused to look back doubtfully at Harriet. But Harriet was already asleep.
Harriet’s family lived in a small west country village some forty miles from the city where she worked. Her father had had a practice there for twenty-five years or more and lived in a roomy rather ramshackle house that had sheltered his large family with ease, and now housed a growing band of grandchildren during school holidays. His eldest son had just qualified in his turn and had already taken his place in the wide-flung practice. It was he who fetched the two girls from hospital a few days later. He owned an elderly Sprite, which was always overloaded with passengers, but both girls were used to travelling in this cramped fashion and packed themselves in without demur. The country looked fresh and green after the rain, the moors rolled away into the distance—Harriet tied a scarf tightly round her hair and drew a deep breath; she was always happiest where the horizon was wide. The village looked cosy, with its thatched and cob walled cottages; the daffodils were out in the doctor’s garden as they shot up the drive and stopped with a tooth-jolting jerk at the front door. The girls scrambled out and ran inside to the comfort of the shabby hall and thence to the big sitting-room at the back of the house, where Mrs Slocombe was waiting with tea and the warm welcome she offered to anyone who set foot inside her home. She listened to the girls’ plans as they ate their way through home-made scones with a great deal of butter and jam, and the large fruit cake Mrs Slocombe had thoughtfully baked against their coming. She refilled their cups and said calmly, ‘How lovely for you, Harry darling. You’ll need a passport and a photo—better go into town tomorrow and get them settled. How will you go?’
Sieske answered, ‘From Harwich. We can go by train from the Hoek and my father will meet us at Leeuwarden.’
Mrs Slocombe replenished the teapot. ‘Travel broadens the mind,’ she observed, and looked at Harriet, immersed in a map. Such a dear child, and so unlike her brothers and sisters with her delicate prettiness and femininity and so gently pliant until one encountered the sturdy core of proud independence and plain common sense beneath it. Mrs Slocombe sighed. It would be nice to see Harriet happily married as her two sisters were. Heaven knew it wasn’t for lack of opportunity, the dear girl was surrounded by men as though they were bees round a honeypot; and she treated all of them as though they were brothers. Perhaps she would meet some nice man in Holland. Mrs Slocombe smiled happily at the thought and gave her mind to the serious business of the right clothes to take.
They spent the rest of that evening making their plans, helped and sometimes hindered by the advice and suggestions proffered by members of the family and their friends as they drifted in and out of the sitting-room. Her brother William, coming in from evening surgery, remarked with all the experience of someone who had been to the Continent of Europe on several occasions, ‘Still at it? Good lord, Harry, anyone would think you were going to the other side of the world instead of the other side of the North Sea.’
His sister remained unmoved by his observations, and merely picked up a small cushion and threw it at his head with the unerring aim of much practice. ‘Beast,’ she said affectionately. ‘But it is the other side of the world to me, isn’t it? I’ve never been outside Britain before, so any part of the world is foreign—just as foreign as the other side of the world—and everyone I meet will be a foreigner.’
This ingenuous remark caused a great deal of merriment. ‘I hope,’ said William, half seriously, ‘that you’ll remember that you are going to be the foreigner.’
‘Harriet will not feel foreign with us,’ said Sieske stoutly. ‘We all speak English—that is, Father and Aede and Friso speak it very well, and Maggina and Taeike are learning it at school—only my mother does not speak it though she does at times understand.’
‘And then there’s you,’ pointed out Harriet. ‘You speak marvellous English.’
Sieske glowed with pleasure. ‘Yes, I think I do, but then you helped me very much; it is not an easy language to learn.’
‘Nor, I gather, is Dutch,’ remarked Dr Slocombe dryly, ‘although it doesn’t sound as though Harry will need to know one word of it.’
‘No, of course she won’t,’ agreed Mrs Slocombe comfortably. She looked across the room at her daughter and thought with maternal satisfaction what a very pretty girl she was. A great deal could happen in three weeks, whatever part of the world one happened to be in.
CHAPTER TWO
THEY TRAVELLED by the night boat from Harwich, and Harriet, whose longest sea trip had been between Penzance and the Scillies, was disagreeably surprised to find the North Sea so spiteful. She lay in her bunk, listening to Sieske’s gentle breathing above her, and wondered if she would be seasick. It was fortunate that she fell asleep while she was still making up her mind about this, and didn’t wake up until the stewardess wakened them with their early morning tea. It was delightful to take turns with Sieske, to peer out of the porthole at the low coast of Holland. It looked as flat as she had always imagined it would be, and lonely as well. An hour later, however, disembarking amidst the cheerful bustle, she reversed her opinion. There seemed to be a great many people, all working very hard and apparently delighted to see the passengers coming off the boat; a larger porter took their luggage and led them to the Customs shed, exchanging pleasantries with Sieske, and thumped down their cases in front of a small rat-faced man who asked them in a surprisingly pleasant voice why they had come and what they had brought with them. Here again Sieske was useful; Harriet found that she did not need to utter a word, although she said ‘Thank you’ politely when she was handed her passport, and was taken aback when the Customs Officer wished her a happy holiday—in quite beautiful English.
The train snaked silently through green meadows where black and white cows, coated against the chilly wind, stood placidly to watch them flash by; there were farms dotted here and there, with steep roofs, and gardens arranged very neatly around them—the villages were dominated by their churches; Harriet had never seen so many soaring steeples in her life, nor, for that matter, had she seen so many factories, each with its small satellite of new houses close by. She didn’t like them very much and turned with relief to the contemplation of a canal, running like a ruler through the neat countryside, and carrying a variety of picturesque traffic. Presently they were served coffee and ham rolls, and the two girls sat back, watching the country flash by under a blue, rather watery sky stretching away to the flat horizon. In no time at all they were at Rotterdam—Harriet watched the early morning crowds racing to work with a faintly smug sympathy. The three weeks of her holiday stretching ahead of her seemed a very long time indeed. She wondered idly what she would feel like on the return journey. Once they had left Rotterdam, the scenery became more rural, the villages lying neatly amongst the flat meadows, like cakes arranged tidily on a plate—Gouda, even from a distance, looked intriguing—Harriet wished that they might have stopped to look around, but the train went remorselessly on to Utrecht and then to Amersfoort, where they had to get out anyway and change trains. They stood on the platform and watched the express rush away towards the frontier, and then because they had half an hour to wait, they went and had a cup of coffee and Sieske spread the incredibly small Dutch money on the table between them and gave Harriet her first lesson. They laughed a great deal and the time passed so quickly that they were surprised when the train for Leeuwarden arrived and they were stowed on board by a kindly porter, who tossed their cases in after them and waved cheerfully as the train pulled out.
They still had a two-hour journey before them, Harriet settled herself by the window once more, listening to Sieske’s unhurried voice and watching the subtle changing of the countryside. It began to look very like the New Forest, with stretches of heath and charming little woods; there were glimpses of houses too, not large, but having an air of luxury, each set in its own immaculate grounds. Presently the woods and heathland gave way in their turn to rolling grassland. The farms looked large and prosperous, even the cows looked plumply outsize and although there were plenty of villages and towns there was a refreshing lack of factories.
Sieske’s father was waiting at Leeuwarden, a large, very tall man with thick grey hair, a neat moustache and an elegant Van Dyke beard. He had a round merry face, but his eyes were shrewd behind the horn-rimmed glasses he wore. He greeted Sieske with a bear-like hug and a flow of incomprehensible words, but as he turned to shake Harriet’s hand, she was relieved to find that his English was almost as good as her own.
‘You are most welcome, Harriet,’ he said warmly. ‘We hope that you will have a pleasant holiday with us—and now we will go home; Mother is waiting—she is most excited, but she would not come with me because everything has to be ready for you when you arrive.’
He led the way over to a BMW, and Harriet looked at it with an appreciative eye as they got in. She gazed around her as they went through Leeuwarden, glimpsing small side streets that would be fun to explore. Dr Van Minnen seemed to read her thoughts, for without taking his eyes off the road, he said, ‘You shall come here, Harriet, and look around one day soon. There is a great deal to see as well as a museum of which we are very proud.’
Franeker, Sieske’s home, was only a short distance from Leeuwarden; in less than twenty minutes they were slowing down past a large church and turning into the main street of the charming little town.
The doctor lived in a large house overlooking a tree-lined canal which ran between narrow cobbled streets lined with buildings from another era. No two houses were alike, except in a shared dignity of age and beauty. Harriet got out of the car and stood gaping at the variety of rooftops. She would have liked to have asked about them, but Sieske was already at the great wooden door with its imposing fanlight, and the doctor caught hold of her arm and hurried her inside behind his daughter, to be greeted by his wife. Mevrouw Van Minnen was very like her daughter and still remarkably youthful—there was no hint of grey in her pale blonde hair and her eyes were as bright a blue as Sieske’s; she was a big woman, but there was nothing middle-aged in her brisk movements. The next hour or so was taken up most agreeably, drinking coffee and eating the crisp little biscuits—sprits—that went with it. There was a great deal of conversation which lost none of its zest by reason of Harriet’s lack of Dutch, and Mevrouw Van Minnen’s scant knowledge of English. Presently they all went upstairs to show Harriet her room—it overlooked the street, so that she could see the canal below, which delighted her; and although it was small it was very comfortable. She unpacked happily; it was, she decided, going to be a delightful holiday. She did her hair and her face and went downstairs to join the family for koffietafel, and ate her bread and cold meat and cheese and omelette with a healthy appetite which called forth delighted surprise from Mevrouw Van Minnen, who had thought she had looked too delicate to do more than peck at her food. Sieske translated this to Harriet, giggling a great deal, and then said in Dutch to her mother:
‘Harry isn’t quite what she looks, Moeder. She appears to be a fairy, but she’s not in the least delicate; and of course it notices here, doesn’t it, because we’re all so big.’
‘Such a pretty girl, too,’ her mother murmured. ‘I wonder what Aede and Friso will say when they see her.’
Aede wouldn’t be home until the evening, it seemed, and no one knew what Friso was doing—he had taken the morning surgery so that Dr Van Minnen could go to Leeuwarden—he had presumably gone to his own home. They would see him later, said Mevrouw Van Minnen comfortably, and suggested that the two girls went out for a walk so that Harriet could see something of the town.
An hour later, the two of them were strolling along looking in the shop windows while Sieske carefully explained the prices. They had reached a particularly interesting display of clocks and jewellery when Sieske suddenly exclaimed, ‘I forgot, I have to buy stamps for Father—the post office is in the next street. Wait here, Harry—you can practise your Dutch in this window—I won’t be a minute.’
Harriet looked her fill, and then because Sieske still hadn’t come back, went to the edge of the pavement and looked up and down the street. It was surprisingly busy for a small town, with a constant thin stream of traffic. She was standing on the corner outside the beautiful town hall and she watched idly as the various buses and lorries halted by her; the cars were mostly small, so that when an AC 428 Fastback pulled up it caught her attention immediately. There was a girl sitting in the front by the driver—a girl so dark that it was impossible not to notice her amongst the fair-haired giants around the town, thought Harriet; she was quite beautiful too. She turned her head and stared at Harriet with great black eyes which barely noticed her. She looked cross, and Harriet, with that extraordinary feeling that in someone else’s country you can do things you wouldn’t do in your own, stared back openly before transferring her gaze to the driver. He was looking ahead and she studied his profile at her leisure; it was a handsome one, with a domineering nose and a firm chin; his forehead was high and wide and his very fair hair was brushed smoothly back from it. Looking at him, she had the sudden deep conviction that they had met before; her heart started to race, she wished with all her heart that he would turn and look at her. As though she had shouted her wish out loud at him, he turned his head and she found herself gazing into level grey eyes. It seemed to her that she had known him—a complete stranger—all her life; she smiled with the sudden delight of it, wondering if he felt the same way too. Apparently he did not; there was no expression on his face at all, and she went slowly pink under his cool stare. The traffic ahead of him sorted itself out, and he was gone, leaving her gazing sadly after him; the man who had been in her thoughts for so many years; the reason for her being more than friends with the men she had met. He had been her dream; but dreams didn’t last. A good thing perhaps, as quite obviously she had no part in his; indeed, he had looked at her as though she had been a lamp-post.
Sieske came back then, and said, ‘Harry, what is it? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
Harriet turned to walk beside her friend. ‘No, not a ghost.’ She so obviously didn’t want to say any more that Sieske bit off the questions she was going to ask, and started to talk about something quite different.
Aede arrived after tea—which wasn’t a meal at all, Harriet discovered, just a cup of tea with no milk and a plate of delicate little biscuits. He was like his father, tall and broad, and looked younger than his twenty-five years. He had just qualified as a doctor and was at the hospital at Leeuwarden working as a houseman, and it would be at least another six months before he started to specialize; eventually, of course, he would join his father’s practice. He told Harriet these interesting facts in fluent English, sitting beside her on the comfortable sofa near the stove. He drank the decidedly cool tea without apparently minding in the least, and consumed the remainder of the biscuits. Harriet liked him; he wasn’t as placid as Sieske, but he was obviously good-natured and an excellent companion. They sat around happily talking shop until almost supper time, while Mevrouw Van Minnen, looking almost as young as her daughter, sat in a straight-backed chair by her work table, knitting a sock at speed and managing to take a lion’s share in the talk despite the fact that everything had to be said twice in both languages.
They sat down to the evening meal soon after seven, with a great deal of laughing and talking. Dr Van Minnen, who had disappeared soon after tea to take his evening surgery, came back in time to dispense an excellent sherry from a beautiful decanter into crystal glasses.
‘Where’s Friso?’ inquired his wife. ‘He hasn’t called to see Sieske.’
The doctor answered her and then repeated his words, this time in English for Harriet’s benefit. ‘My partner has had to go to Dongjum, a small village a few miles from this town—an extended breech, so he’s likely to be there most of the night.’
Harriet felt a pang of pity for the poor man—she had been told that he didn’t live in Franeker, but in a nearby village close to the sea; he looked after the rural side of the practice while Dr Van Minnen attended his patients in Franeker.
‘Is Dr Eijsinck’s share of the practice a large one?’ she asked Aede.
‘Hemel, yes—and very scattered, but he’s a glutton for work.’
And Harriet added a harassed expression and a permanent stoop to the stained waistcoat, and then forgot all about him in the excitement of discussing Sieske’s and Wierd’s engagement party, when their forthcoming marriage would be announced. It was to be a splendid affair, with the burgemeester and the dominee and various colleagues of the doctor coming, as well as a great many young people. It was fortunate that the sitting-room and the drawing-room were connected by folding doors, which could be pushed back, making one room. Harriet sat back, listening quietly and wondering which of her two party dresses she had had the forethought to bring with her she should wear. Every now and then she thought about the man in the AC 428 Fastback.
The following morning after breakfast, Harriet took the post along to the doctor in his surgery. She hadn’t been there yet, but she had been told the way. She went down the long narrow passage leading to the back of the house and through the little door in the wall opposite the kitchen. She could hear a murmur of sound—shuffling feet, coughs and a baby crying, as she knocked on the surgery door. The doctor was alone, searching through a filing cabinet with concentrated fierceness. His voice was mild enough, however, as he remarked.
‘Mevrouw Van Hoeve’s card is here somewhere—the poor woman is in the waiting room, but how can I give her an injection until I check her notes?’
Harriet put the post down on the desk. It seemed that doctors were all the same the world over.
‘I’ve brought your post,’ she said soothingly. ‘If you’ll spell the name to me I’ll look for the card while you see if there’s anything important …’
Dr Van Minnen gave her a grateful look. ‘I do have an assistant,’ he explained, ‘but she’s on holiday.’
He sat down with a relieved sigh and picked up the first of his letters, and Harriet started to go through the filing cabinet. Mevrouw Van Hoeve was half-way through the second drawer, filed away under P-S; no wonder she couldn’t be found. Harriet took it out and turned round in triumph to find that the door had opened and a man had come in; he spoke briefly to Dr Van Minnen and stood staring at her with the same cool grey eyes that she had been trying so hard to forget. She stood staring back at him in her turn, clutching the folder to her; her pretty mouth agape, while the bright colour flooded her face.
Dr Van Minnen glanced up briefly from his desk. ‘Harriet, this is my partner, Friso Eijsinck.’
The Friso she had imagined disintegrated. This elegant waistcoat had never borne a soup stain in its well-cared-for life; indeed, the whole appearance of its wearer was one of a well-dressed man about town. There was no sign of a stoop either; he was a giant among the giantlike people around her and he wore his great height with a careless arrogance; and as for the harassed expression—she tried her best to imagine him presenting anything but a calm, controlled face to the world, and failed utterly.
She said, ‘How do you do, Doctor,’ in a voice which would have done credit to one of Miss Austen’s young ladies, and this time she didn’t smile.
His own, ‘How do you do, Miss Slocombe,’ was uttered in a deep, rather slow voice with a faint impatience in its tones. There was a pause, during which she realized that he was waiting for her to go. She closed the filing cabinet carefully, smiled at Dr Van Minnen, and walked without haste to the door which he was holding open for her, and passed him with no more than a brief glance, her head very high. To her chagrin he wasn’t even looking at her. Outside, with the door closed gently behind her, she stopped and reviewed the brief, disappointing meeting. She doubted if he had looked at her—not to see her, at any rate; he had made her feel in the way, and awkward, and this without saying anything at all. She walked on slowly; perhaps he hated the English, or, she amended honestly, he didn’t like her.
Sieske was calling her from the top of the house and she went upstairs and put on her clove pink raincoat and tugged its matching hat on to her bright hair, then went shopping with Sieske and her mother.
Wierd was coming that evening. Harriet spent the afternoon setting Sieske’s hair, and after their tea combed it out and arranged it for her, then stood back to admire her handiwork. What with a pretty hair-do and the prospect of seeing Wierd again, Sieske looked like a large and a very good-looking angel.
There was no evening surgery that day; they were to meet in the drawing-room for drinks at six-thirty. Harriet went upstairs to change her dress wondering what she was going to do until that time. She suspected that the arrangement had been made so that Sieske and her young man would have some time to themselves before the family assembled. She was just putting the last pin into her hair when there was a knock on the door, and when she called ‘Come in’, Aede put his inquiring head into the room.
‘Harriet? Are you ready? I wondered if you would like to put on a coat and come for a quick run in the car—there’s heaps of time.’
She had already caught up the pink raincoat; it wasn’t raining any more, but it lay handy on a chair and she put it on, saying,
‘I’d love to, Aede. But do we tell someone?’
They were going downstairs. ‘I told Moeder,’ he said. ‘She thought it was a jolly good idea.’
His car was outside—a Volkswagen and rather battered. Harriet got in, remarking knowledgeably that it was a good car and how long had he had it. This remark triggered off a conversation which lasted them out of Franeker and several miles along the main road. When he turned off, however, she asked, ‘Where are we going?’
‘Just round the country so that you can see what it is like,’ Aede replied, and turned the car into a still smaller road. The country looked green and pleasant in the spring evening light. The farms stood well apart from each other, each joined to its own huge barn by a narrow corridor at its back. They looked secure and prosperous and very different from the more picturesque, less compact English farms. They passed through several small villages with unpronounceable names in the Fries language, then circled back and crossed the main road again so that they were going towards the coast. On the outskirts of one village there was a large house, with an important front door and neat windows across its face. It had a curved gabled roof and a large garden alive with daffodils and tulips and hyacinths. Harriet cried out in delight, ‘Oh, Aede, stop—please stop! I simply must stare. Will anyone mind?’
He pulled up obligingly and grinned. ‘No, of course not. It is rather lovely, isn’t it?’
‘And the house,’ she breathed, ‘that’s lovely too. How old is it? Who lives there?’
‘About 1760, I think, but you can ask Friso next time you see him; it’s his.’
Harriet turned an astonished face to her companion. ‘You mean Dr Eijsinck? He lives there? All by himself?’
Aede started the car again. He nodded. ‘Yes, that is, if you don’t count a gardener and a cook and a valet and a housemaid or two. He’s got a great deal of money, you know; he doesn’t need to be a doctor, but his work is the love of his life. That doesn’t mean to say that he doesn’t love girls too,’ he added on a laugh.
‘Why doesn’t he marry, then?’ She waited for Aede’s answer. Perhaps Friso was engaged or at least in love; what about that dark girl in his car?
Aede thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I asked him once—oh, a long time ago, and he said he was waiting for the girl.’ He shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘It didn’t make much sense …’ He broke off. ‘Here’s Franeker again; we’re a bit late, but I don’t suppose it will matter.’
Harriet smiled at him. ‘It was lovely, Aede. I enjoyed every minute of it.’
He brought the car to a rather abrupt halt in front of the house and they both went inside.
‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ said Harriet, and flew upstairs, to throw down her raincoat, look hastily at herself in the mirror and then race downstairs again. Almost at the bottom of the staircase she checked herself abruptly and continued down to the hall with steps as sedate as the voice with which she greeted Dr Eijsinck, whom she had observed at that very moment standing there. Disconcertingly he didn’t answer, and she stood looking up at him—he was in her way, but his size precluded her from passing him unless she pushed by. It seemed a long time before he said reluctantly,
‘You smiled. Why?’ He gave her a hard, not too friendly stare. ‘You didn’t know me.’
So he had seen her after all. Harriet felt her heart thudding and ignored it. She said in a steady voice,
‘No, I didn’t know who you were, Dr Eijsinck. It was just … I thought that I recognized you.’ Which was, she thought, perfectly true, although she could hardly explain to him that she had dreamed about him so often that she couldn’t help but recognize him.
He nodded, and said, to surprise her, ‘Yes, I thought perhaps it was that. It happens to us all, I suppose, that once or twice in a lifetime we meet someone who should be a stranger, and is not.’
She longed to ask him what he meant and dared not, and instead said in a stiff, conversational voice,
‘What excellent English you speak, Doctor,’ and came to a halt at the amused look on his face. And there was amusement in his voice when he answered.
‘How very kind of you to say so, Miss Slocombe.’
She looked down at her shoes, so that her thick brown lashes curled on to her cheeks. He was making her feel awkward again. She swallowed and tried once more.
‘Should we go into the drawing-room, do you think?’
He stood aside without further preamble, and followed her into the room where she was instantly pounced upon by Sieske so that she could meet Wierd and see for herself that he was everything that her friend had said. He was indeed charming, and exactly right for Sieske. They made a handsome couple and a happy one too. Harriet suppressed a small pang of envy; it must be nice to be loved as Wierd so obviously loved Sieske. She drank the sherry Aede brought her and sat next to him during the meal which followed and joined in the laughter and talk, which was wholly concerned with the engagement party. It was discussed through the excellent soup, the rolpens met rodekool, the poffertjes—delicious morsels of dough fried in butter to an unbelievable lightness—and was only exhausted when an enormous bowl of fruit was put on the table. Harriet sat quietly while Aede peeled a peach for her, and listened to Dr Eijsinck’s deep voice—he was discussing rose grafting with her hostess, who turned to her and said kindly, but in her own language,
‘Harry, you must go and see Friso’s garden, it is such a beautiful one.’
Aede repeated her words in English, and then went on in the same language.
‘We went past your place this evening, Friso. I took Harriet for a run and we stopped while she admired your flowers.’
Harriet looked across the table at him then and smiled, and was puzzled to see his mobile mouth pulled down at the corners by a cynical smile, just as though he didn’t in the least believe that she had a real fondness for flowers and gardens. When he said carelessly, ‘By all means come and look round, Miss Slocombe,’ she knew that he had given the invitation because there was nothing else he could do. She thanked him quietly, gave him a cool glance, and occupied herself with her peach. She took care to avoid him for the rest of the evening, an easy matter as it turned out, for Dr Van Minnen had discovered that she had only the sketchiest knowledge of Friesland’s history, and set himself to rectify this gap in her education. It was only at the end of the evening that Dr Eijsinck spoke to her again and that was to wish her good night, and that a most casual one.
Later, in her pleasant little room, she sat brushing her hair and thinking about the evening. Something had gone wrong with her dream. It had seemed that kindly fate had intervened when she had met him again, but now she wasn’t so sure, for that same fickle fate was showing her that dreams had no place in her workaday world. Harriet ground her even little teeth—even though he had a dozen beautiful girl-friends, he could at least pretend to like her. On reflection, though, she didn’t think that he would bother to pretend about anything. She got into bed and turned out the light and lay in the comfortable darkness, wondering when she would see him again.
CHAPTER THREE
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,
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