by Betty Neels
They were back in Ommen before Doctor van der Tacx spoke and then it was only to thank her for her help, but when he stopped close by Mevrouw de Winter’s small house he switched off the engine and got out to open her door. ‘It took longer than I had imagined,’ he observed.
She looked up at him and smiled a little. ‘Yes, but there’s still plenty of evening left.’
He didn’t smile. ‘I had a date—with Tritia, my cousin—my adopted cousin. She has lived with one of my aunts for years and we see a good deal of her. She will be very disappointed.’
‘And you’re disappointed too,’ observed Philomena.
‘Yes.’
‘There will be other evenings,’ she pointed out kindly. ‘I’m sorry your evening has been spoilt.’ And hers too, she added silently; supper and bed and perhaps half an hour’s difficult conversation with her landlady; not exactly what she had planned. She said goodnight and went indoors, to be met by Mevrouw de Winter’s gentle scolding because her supper had been ready for more than an hour.
She was changing a dressing on an old lady’s varicose ulcer the next morning when Doctor van der Tacx put his head round the door. He wished the old lady a good day before turning to Philomena. ‘I owe you an apology,’ he said, ‘I didn’t stop to think about you—the least I could have done was to have given you a meal to make up for your lost free time.’
She eyed him steadily. ‘But I wasn’t doing anything special, you must have realised that,’ and at his sudden sharp glance: ‘I’ve only been here six days, you know, hardly time to get to know anyone.’
She fastened her bandage and began to roll up the old lady’s stocking. She had taken great pains with her hair that morning and the new make-up, now that she had got expert with it, must surely have improved her mediocre looks. She didn’t look at him but smiled at her patient, told her haltingly to return in a week and led her to the door. The doctor opened it wider and stood on one side and then, when Philomena would have gone through too, closed it. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he told her. ‘Would you like to spend Sunday at my home? My mother would like to meet you.’
Regret welled up so strongly that she had a job to answer him. ‘How kind of you, but I’m spending the weekend with Doctor and Mevrouw Stanversen—but please thank your mother—I hope she’ll ask me again.’
‘She will be away for a week or so,’ he answered carelessly. ‘When she returns, perhaps. You’re settling down, I hope? You’re comfortable with Mevrouw de Winter?’
‘I’m very happy, thank you, Doctor.’ She was getting another dressing tray ready.
‘No regrets?’ he persisted.
‘None. Ommen seems a delightful place and the country round it is charming.’
‘What do you do with your evenings? Are you not lonely? Don’t you miss the cinema and dinner out or the theatre?’
‘I didn’t go out a great deal,’ she told him drily, ‘so I don’t miss any of them, and I’ve only had two evenings so far.’ She longed to remind him that she had been given the job in the first place because she was a sensible girl not given to gallivanting every night of the week, but she didn’t. ‘That’s Doctor de Klein’s bell,’ she informed him. ‘He’s ready for his next patient.’
He opened the door at once. She was almost through it when he said to surprise her: ‘You’ve done something to your hair—it looks very pretty.’
She was too busy to analyse her feelings at his remark, but the glow of satisfaction was reflected in her face so that Doctor de Klein, glancing up as she ushered the next patient in, decided that he had been mistaken and that she wasn’t such a very plain girl, after all.
Doctor Stanversen had suggested that he should fetch her on Saturday afternoon and drive her to Dalfsen, but Philomena had asked if she might drive herself in the Mini; the more experience she had on the Dutch roads, the better; later she would explore further afield. So on Saturday afternoon she set out under a bright May sky, wearing one of her new outfits; green slacks and a knitted cotton top in white and green, with a matching cardigan if it should get chilly. She had prudently put her raincoat in the car too, and packed a dress in her overnight bag just in case the Stanversens liked to be formal in the evening. The road took her through Vilsteren again, and once through the village it became even prettier with great trees arched overhead and expensive-looking bungalows and small villas tucked away behind well laid out gardens. She wondered if Doctor van der Tacx lived in one of them. She could ask the Stanversens, of course, but that would look nosey; she would have to wait until he invited her again to his home. Perhaps he wouldn’t; perhaps he had been making a conventional friendly gesture in case she was lonely.
The road curved gently and she slowed to admire a castle standing well back from the road, the river glinting behind it, trees grouped around its park, through which the drive ran as straight as a ruler to widen into a circle of gravel around its walls. Its windows were long and narrow and their green and white painted shutters showed up gaily against the brickwork. Philomena put her neatly shod foot down on the accelerator. ‘And very nice too,’ she told herself aloud, ‘though I suppose it’s an agricultural college or something equally unromantic!’
Dalfsen, when she reached it, was charming. It lay on the further side of the river and she had to cross a bridge to reach its church and cluster of houses, and it didn’t prove difficult to find Doctor Stanversen’s house. It stood back from the village square, solid and large-windowed, its garden, filled with spring flowers, hedged by an iron railing. Philomena drove the Mini up its short drive and was getting out when the door opened and her host came to meet her. He looked thinner and taller than ever in an elderly tweed jacket and even older slacks, accounted for by the garden shears he was holding in one hand. His greeting was pleasantly friendly as he put down the shears, got her bag from the car and led her indoors, letting out a bellow for his wife as he did so. All the doors in the hall seemed to open at once; his wife, a big woman with a long, serious face; several children, and an elderly woman with the coffee tray all converged on them.
‘Tina, my wife,’ said Doctor Stanversen, and Philomena discovered that the serious face could smile with such charm that its owner became at once a nice-looking young woman, ‘the children…’ There were four of them, two boys in their early teens and two girls, one still very small. ‘And Lien, who looks after us all.’ The elderly woman nodded and smiled and continued on her way with the tray, and they all followed her into a large, airy room, well furnished with big, comfortable chairs and several rather splendid antique cupboards and tables. They sat in a wide circle and Philomena was relieved to find that Mevrouw Stanversen spoke English too, as indeed did the two boys and the elder girl.
‘You drink tea,’ observed her hostess, ‘do you not? At four o’clock we will all drink tea, but now I hope that you do not mind coffee?’
Philomena didn’t mind at all; the coffee was good, hot and creamy and fragrant. They lingered over it until Mevrouw Stanversen offered to show her her room and they went upstairs, the two girls with them.
They had given her a dear little room, its high window overlooking the village square and beyond, the river and the bridge she had crossed. The three of them sat down and watched her unpack her case and then escorted her downstairs again.
‘You would like to go into the garden?’ her hostess wanted to know. ‘We are busy planting, ready for the summer.’
They found the doctor there, digging in a wide herbaceous border which ran the length of the ground behind the house; the two boys were busy too, Philomena rightly deduced that her help might be welcomed, and presently found herself, a sacking apron over her smart jersey and slacks, heavy gardening gloves on her hands, and wooden klompen on her feet, wielding a hoe. And enjoying it.
It must have been an hour or more later when they heard a car stop before the house. The children cast down their gardening tools as one man and raced down the garden and out of sight, and Philomena felt a little s
pirt of excitement; perhaps it was Walle van der Tacx—after all, the three doctors were good friends, so there must be a fair amount of visiting between them—perhaps he would stay for tea.
The man who came round the corner of the house with the children prancing round him wasn’t Walle. She had never seen him before, but as he got nearer she could guess who he was: a brother of Doctor Stanversen, a younger, broader version with fair hair and an open, friendly face. He kissed his sister-in-law now, wrung his brother’s hand and looked at Philomena. She found herself smiling back at him as they were introduced, his casual friendliness making her feel that she had known him already. They stood talking for a few minutes and then by common consent collected up the spades and forks and hoes and repaired indoors for tea.
Hubert Stanversen was a doctor too, so he told Philomena, working in a Utrecht hospital as a house physician. He had only been qualified for two years, but although he modestly disclaimed any pretensions to brains, his elder brother told her with some pride that he was thought to be outstanding in his work. ‘Give him another five or six years, and he’ll outstrip the lot of us,’ he observed. ‘How about taking Philomena for a walk? There’s the village to see and it’s pretty down by the river. Wear something warm, Philomena—it may be May, but it’s cool in the evenings.’
‘And there’s always a wind blowing,’ she declared. ‘It doesn’t matter which corner I turn, it meets me head on.’
They all laughed and Doctor Stanversen said: ‘I have just remembered that you are owed an evening—Walle borrowed you for the measles injections, didn’t he? He told me to see that you had a few hours off to make up for it. Doctor de Klein and I will discuss it on Monday and let you know.’
Philomena put down her cup and saucer. ‘Oh, please, it doesn’t matter at all…I wasn’t going to do anything…’
He smiled at her in a fatherly fashion. ‘Ah, but Doctor van der Tacx is the boss around here, you know—if he says you are to have time off, then time off you shall have.’ He looked across at his wife. ‘My dear, what time do you want us to have our dinner this evening?’
Philomena found herself gently urged to fetch her coat and join Hubert for the suggested walk, and indeed, she wasn’t loath to go; she had liked him at once and it was pleasant to have someone to talk to—someone of her own age, more or less, someone to laugh and joke with. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit it until now, but she had been just a little lonely.
They wandered round the little place and then made their way down to the river, crossed the bridge and walked on down the road which led eventually back to Ommen. They had been strolling along for five minutes or so when Doctor van der Tacx passed them in the Khamsin, driving fast, but not so fast that Philomena didn’t have time to see that he had a passenger; a girl with short fair hair, sitting beside him, laughing up at him. She acknowledged his casual wave with a wooden nod and asked, rather too earnestly, what Hubert’s chances of getting a junior registrar’s post were, while she wondered just where Walle lived—not far away, she was sure. Not that it mattered; despite his invitation, she didn’t think it likely that he would ask her to his home again; he had done the right thing and she hadn’t been free to accept. She listened to her companion’s enthusiastic hopes for the future while she brooded on the waste of most of her small nest egg on a lot of new clothes.
When they got back to the house and she was in her room, tidying herself for dinner, she took a long look in the small mirror above the wall table; it hadn’t only been a waste of money, it had been a waste, full stop. No smart clothes or different make-up could disguise the fact that she had no looks to speak of. She had been silly to imagine even for a moment that Walle would notice any difference; he had built up a picture of her—a sensible girl with no nonsense about her and no prospect of getting married, that was what he had said, and that was only another way of saying a plain girl with no hope of being anything else but a bachelor girl for the rest of her days. She heaved a sigh, blinked her green eyes rapidly to prevent the weakness of tears, arranged her hair with more than usual care, and went downstairs to join everyone else.
Back in the clinic on Monday morning, she thought with pleasure of the remainder of her weekend; it had been fun and everyone had been kind. And Hubert had asked her to go out with him sometime; no time or place, but his invitation had been sincere and she had accepted with a mild pleasure at the idea of seeing more of him. He was a nice boy, but not of course in the least like Walle…
Philomena saw a good deal of Walle during that week; he was in and out of the clinic each day, and now that she was on her own, she was hard put to it to keep pace with all three of the doctors, but she managed, with the secretary and the receptionist helping her out and her Dutch improving almost hourly. But he had little to say to her, and that concerned his patients, and although his manner was as kind as ever he made no attempt to engage her in conversation, indeed, he seemed to her to be withdrawn, so much so that to call him Walle even when the clinic was over was more than she cared to do, so she addressed him as Doctor and he didn’t seem to object to that. The friendliness she had been so happy about when they had first met seemed to have gone; perhaps he felt that now she was working for him, they should be more formal, and as for his noticing her new clothes and hair-do, that was hopeless for he never saw her except in her white uniform dress with a cap hiding the carefully dressed hair.
When Hubert telephoned on Friday evening and asked her to go out with him on the Sunday, she agreed at once, stifling a wish that it had been Walle who had invited her. It was vexing that on Saturday morning, while she was clearing away after a short clinic, he should arrive and ask her if she would care to go to lunch with his mother on Sunday. She dropped the pile of towels she was folding on to the table and said with real distress: ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I would have loved to, but Hubert Stanversen asked me out; he’s coming for me on Sunday morning.’ She watched his face anxiously as she spoke, but there was nothing in it to show her if he was disappointed or put out. His: ‘Our fault, we should have asked you sooner, but never mind, you will enjoy yourself with young Hubert,’ was carelessly cheerful. ‘You’re not worked too hard, I hope?’
‘No, thank you. I like it very much, it’s a change from the wards and I enjoy meeting so many people. Were there any more measles in your village?’
‘Four more cases from the kleurterschool, but none of those we dealt with—although there’s time enough for them to develop spots. I hope it’s checked. Did you get your free time made up to you?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ She stood quietly, wishing she could think of something to say while he stood staring down at her, but her head was empty; in a minute he would go, and she would have liked him to have stayed.
‘You hear from your family—your sisters?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Well, no—they don’t have much time for letter writing.’ That sounded silly, so she added: ‘They don’t like it anyway. I telephoned my stepmother last week. They—they go out a good deal, especially in the summer.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I’m sure they must—such charming girls and so lovely.’
She had no idea what made her say: ‘The girl with you in your car last weekend was lovely too.’
He smiled a little and his voice was bland. ‘Yes, is she not? That was Tritia, she certainly livens up my rather orderly life.’
She had nothing to say to this and presently he asked gently: ‘You enjoy Hubert’s company?’
She didn’t suppose that he really wanted to know; she answered cautiously: ‘He seems very nice.’
Walle leaned back against the desk, his hands in his pockets, as though he had all day in which to gossip. ‘He has a very good future, I believe.’ His glance fell on the pile of towels Philomena had folded and unfolded and folded again and his eyes held a gleam of amusement. ‘Don’t let me keep you, Philly—I’ve some work to do. Enjoy your weekend.’
He sauntered away to his office and closed the door quiet
ly behind him, leaving her to put the towels away without ceremony and wish vaguely that he wouldn’t call her Philly; somehow when he did her name didn’t sound the same as when anyone else said it.
Hubert arrived soon after breakfast on Sunday, admired her outfit with suitable warmth, handed her into his Saab, settled himself beside her and asked her where she would like to go. Quite unfairly, this irritated her; she would have liked to have been whisked off for her day out without having a say in the matter, but he looked so earnest that she said at once: ‘Well, you know, I don’t know Holland at all, almost anywhere will be nice…’
‘How about Zwolle and Kampen?’
‘I should like that.’ She gave him a nice smile as he started the car.
Zwolle was charming, the gardens along its ramparts a sea of spring and early summer flowers. Hubert parked the car and they walked around for half an hour while Philomena admired the pepperpot tower of the Church of our Lady, and the Town Hall and the Sassenpoort gate, while her companion supplied her with the various interesting facts concerning these. He was knowledgeable, but she found him a little too earnest and it was quite a relief when he suggested that they should drive on to Kampen, a town she instantly fell in love with, its lovely old houses and churches spread along the banks of the Ijssel, a wide boulevard separating them from the water. She would have liked to stroll along its length, looking at the tall narrow houses, but Hubert pointed out sensibly enough that there were plenty more houses exactly the same in any town in the country, whereas the Town Hall and a number of the gateways were unique. So she obediently studied them, asking intelligent questions and listening carefully to what he had to say, and was rewarded by coffee in one of the many cafés along the boulevard, while Hubert tried to make up his mind if they should go on to Meppel to the north or turn south to Amersfoort.
He decided finally that Meppel would be the better of the two; they could lunch there and then make their way slowly back via Coeworden. Which they accordingly did, stopping for their meal at a small, pleasant roadside restaurant just outside the town and then going on again. Coeworden, Philomena discovered, wasn’t very interesting; it was the centre of the oil drilling industry and although the oil wells were well disguised, she found it a great shame to have spoilt the charming countryside. All the same, she listened to Hubert’s explanations and meticulously detailed descriptions of the work; not with all her mind, though. A tiny part of it was wondering what Walle was doing; out with Tritia, she supposed, and most certainly not talking about crude oil and its components.