by Betty Neels
‘Salmon mostly—we own a stretch of water between here and Laerdal.’
They began to walk back to the car. ‘Do you ever want to live here all the time?’ Charity asked.
‘When I am an old man and retired, perhaps, but only if my wife wanted to. But my work is in London and for the moment that’s my life.’
Brenda would never consent to live in this lovely silent land, Charity thought, not if she were a hundred. And would she like his family? She longed to ask him if she had visited them, but she didn’t dare.
They drove back through the tail end of daylight and the evening was spent talking. Getting ready for bed, she concluded that she knew more about Jake from his family than she had ever learned from him.
They made an early start in the morning but the family came downstairs all the same to say goodbye and when Charity thanked Mrs Wyllie-Lyon for her weekend that lady surprised her by saying, ‘Oh, but we shall see you again on Saturday, Charity.’
And when she had cast an enquiring look at the professor he said placidly, ‘I meant to mention it. We won’t be leaving until Monday and you could do with another few skiing lessons.’
He swept her out to the car and drove away into the dark morning.
He was an easy person to talk to; she was quite at ease with him although at the back of her mind was the thought that very soon it would all have to end; she would be his secretary again and he would retire behind his calm shell once more. There was no sign of that at the moment, though; he regaled her with tales of Trolls and Vikings and once they were back at the hotel he ushered her in, found a porter to take her bag, ordered coffee to be sent to her room and took himself off with the reminder that she should be at the hospital by two o’clock.
She took off her outdoor things, drank her coffee and uncovered her typewriter. If only they could have had a breakdown or a puncture, anything to have delayed them on the way; she enlarged on this pleasing idea for some minutes and then, catching sight of the time, sat down and began to type. After all, two o’clock wasn’t more than a few hours away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARITY, FORTIFIED BY a sandwich lunch and more coffee, caught the electric train to the National Theatre, walked quickly through the streets to the hospital and presented herself at precisely two o’clock, ready for work, to find that her pleasant companion of the weekend had metamorphosed into a courteous, reserved and learned man, exactly like all the other learned men there. She hastily rearranged her pretty face into suitably serious lines and took care to address him as ‘sir’, not seeing the spark of laughter in his eyes.
She wasn’t needed after four o’clock. She made her way back to the hotel, had tea and addressed herself once more to her typewriter. It was a couple of hours later when the desk phoned her to ask if the professor was available for a phone call.
‘He is at the hospital still, as far as I know, but he could easily be over at the research centre or with one of the other members of the convention. Can I help?’
The voice was apologetic. ‘A lady, telephoning from England, wishes to speak to him. Perhaps you might be able to help her?’
There were vague mutterings at the other end of the line and then a voice she hadn’t expected, although she might have known.
‘You are Professor Wyllie-Lyon’s secretary? Well, I want to speak to him. Get hold of him for me and look sharp, will you?’
Charity quelled a desire to put the receiver back. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. He should be back this evening—he usually leaves the hospital about six o’clock but quite often goes on to a meeting or a dinner. Perhaps you could telephone again later?’
‘Who are you?’ Brenda’s voice held suspicion.
‘The professor’s secretary,’ confirmed Charity and pulled a face at the receiver.
‘Then do your job properly and ring the hospital.’
‘Will you hang on while I go down to the desk and phone from there, Miss Cornwallis?’
‘You know me?’ The voice was sharp.
Charity bit back a variety of telling remarks. ‘You will hold on?’
‘Yes, but hurry up, I haven’t all day.’
‘Nor have I,’ said Charity sweetly, ‘and yes, we have met.’
She put down the receiver, ignoring the voice at the other end, and went down to the desk. It took a little time for the professor to be found and when at last he came to the phone he sounded coldly annoyed.
‘Charity, what is so important that it can’t wait until I get back this evening? Surely you can cope…’
‘Of course I can cope,’ said Charity snappishly. ‘Miss Cornwallis insisted on you being found; she is waiting on the hotel phone…’
He broke in. ‘Not here, in heaven’s name?’
‘Oh, of course not,’ said Charity, snappier than ever, and then added, ‘Sir. She asked me to find you, presumably it’s urgent. Shall I give her your number?’
The professor said, ‘Tell her I will ring her in an hour. Book me a call for seven o’clock, will you?’ He wasn’t annoyed any more, but his usual calm self.
Brenda wasted a few minutes telling her how inefficient she was and then hung up, but not before Charity, remembering to the last to be the perfect secretary, asked for her number. To be told, ‘He knows it.’
She was covering her typewriter when the professor knocked and came in. It was five minutes to seven o’clock and she said at once, ‘I have asked them to ring you in your room, Professor.’
He nodded and handed her a bundle of notes. ‘If you could manage to get these typed before dinner?’ he wanted to know.
She took the cover off her typewriter again, resigned to another hour’s work, and felt the stirrings of temper when he added mildly, ‘I’ve some letters—after dinner perhaps? I shan’t want you in the morning, you could type them up then and let me have them at lunch.’
Her ‘Certainly, sir’, was uttered in a wooden voice which quite unknowingly made her feelings apparent.
The notes were almost unreadable; she was barely finished in time to have a quick shower and go down to dinner. As she reached the bottom of the staircase the professor appeared silently beside her. ‘Time for a drink—you’re late.’ His tone was mild.
‘Your notes weren’t very clear,’ she told him haughtily, not looking him in the eye because her heart would melt with love if she did.
They dined off ansjos—marinated sprats, torsk—cod, served with boiled potatoes and red cabbage, beautifully cooked with apples and spices, and flotte vaffels, served with cloudberries.
‘A truly Norwegian meal,’ commented the professor, urging her to try geitost—a brown cheese made from goat’s milk and which she found unattractive. Nevertheless, because she loved him very much, she obediently ate it, helped down with Melba toast.
‘And now, if you are ready?’ suggested the professor. ‘Just a few letters.’
Half a dozen, all of them full of long medical terms she would have to check for spelling. She wished him a sedate good night and watched him stroll away; doubtless to enjoy the rest of his evening.
‘He pays me for it,’ she muttered sharply and started in on the medical dictionary she never dared to be without.
Something she reminded herself about during the next day, for she was kept busy with barely time to take a quick walk near the hotel, what with the professor handing her scrawled notes and having to take down his lectures in shorthand, and having to spend a good deal of her evenings typing them.
But she had her reward on Wednesday. She hadn’t been needed in the morning so that she had cleared her desk by midday, and there was nothing on the agenda for the afternoon; she would go shopping for presents, she decided, unless there was a message from the professor.
There was; the desk clerk handed her a note as she crossed the foyer to the dining room. A scrawl asking her to be in the foyer, ready to go out, at two o’clock. More work, she wondered and hurried over her lunch so that she had time to do her fa
ce and hair to their best advantage.
It was precisely on the hour as she reached the bottom of the stairs and the professor was waiting. His ‘Good afternoon, Charity’ was polite, but when he added, ‘Shopping,’ she gaped at him.
‘Shopping? I thought—that is, I’ve got my notebook with me.’
‘What a girl you are for work,’ he observed blandly and took it from her and handed it to the desk clerk. ‘I’m free this afternoon; a splendid opportunity to choose the gifts expected of me…’
‘Miss Cornwallis,’ said Charity quickly.
He said in a voice which sounded amused. ‘She is already dealt with. We have Mrs Kemp, the office cleaner, the office porter, my housekeeper and Snook.’ He urged her to the door and opened it on to the dusk of the grey afternoon. ‘And you?’ he asked as she got into the car. ‘Do you not want to buy things?’
‘Well, yes. As a matter of fact, as I’d finished early, I thought I would go to the shops.’
‘Excellent—we can go together and you shall give me the benefit of your advice.’
He knew Oslo well for he drove to a car park and then walked her to the Hegdehaugsvn and Borgstadvn where there were a variety of shops of the better sort: boutiques squeezed between department stores, and all of them expensive.
A fact which didn’t bother the professor. He purchased a small silver box, its lid enamelled with a wreath of coloured flowers, for Mrs Kemp, gloves, and a scarf for Mrs Weekes and cigars for the porter. He had asked Charity’s advice about the box and she had fingered the delicate thing lovingly and in her turn bought an enamelled brooch for Aunt Emily and, since she couldn’t resist it, canvas and embroidery silks for that lady to occupy herself with as a change from her crochet work.
‘Mrs Kemp?’ the professor wanted to know as they wandered along looking in the windows.
‘A troll; I’ve seen some small ones, pewter, silvered over; and a painted wooden bowl for Mrs Weekes. There’s the porter…’
‘A giant box of matches for the cigars.’ He took her arm. ‘Let’s have tea?’ He crossed the street and opened the door of a conditori and sat her down at a table in the window. ‘Tea and cakes? Now, what am I to get for the Snooks? Something special. Any ideas?’
‘Do they live in your house? I mean, they have a home?’
‘The basement is all theirs and they wouldn’t move if you offered them Buckingham Palace. It’s very cosy, too.’
‘Then something for the home. I don’t know how much you want to spend…’
‘Don’t worry about that. What would you choose, regardless of price?’
‘Silver—a small dish—they can use it if they wish and it will never break or be smashed; and if they want to display it, it would look nice on a table or a sideboard.’
She poured their tea and waited for his answer. ‘A nice idea, we’ll go to David Andersen.’ He passed her the plate of cakes. ‘There is a busy day tomorrow—start at half past eight and on the go until the evening. You’ll be hard at it until God knows when. I’ve a dinner engagement, too, and there is a farewell banquet the following night. A pity you can’t come, too.’
She thought it prudent not to answer that. ‘When do we leave on Monday?’ she asked; regret as the very thought shot through her like an acute pain.
‘We don’t. We’ll go to Flam on Saturday and spend Sunday there. We’ve both worked hard, we deserve a day off. We’ll drive down to Bergen on Monday and spend the day there and fly back on Tuesday afternoon. Snook can meet us at Heathrow and we’ll have an hour or two at the rooms before we go home.’
She agreed pleasantly, not that it would have made any difference at all if she had demurred. As it was, she was brimming over with delight, a feeling she kept sternly under control, although it was impossible to prevent the delighted shine in her eyes. Something the professor, an observant man, noticed.
They bought the silver dish and Charity lingered in the lovely shop, examining the magnificent jewellery and the splendid silverware; she could have spent an hour there, only it was closing time by now and besides, the professor murmured placidly that he was dining with several of the members of the seminar.
Back at the hotel there was nothing for her to do; the presents had been beautifully wrapped and tied in the various shops, all she needed to do was make a note of which was which, and stow them neatly in a drawer. She dined early, sitting alone at their usual table with a book for company, and then she went back to her room, washed her hair, and did her nails, and spent some time examining her face for the first sign of wrinkles and went early to bed. It had been a super afternoon. They got on so well together; she couldn’t think of anyone else with whom she could be silent without feeling awkward about it. She sighed and fell asleep.
He had been quite right; the next day was a busy one. Half the time she didn’t know where she was, whisked in the car from one building to another, making notes of names and meetings and a long discussion on sympathomimetic amines which left her with cramp in her hand and a complete ignorance of the subject. And by the time she had typed up her notes, the brief day had turned into early evening. She had dinner early again and went to bed with a book.
The last day, she reminded herself as she dressed in the morning. It was a lovely morning, still dark but with a clear starry sky and no wind. There had been snow during the night and it glistened in the lights from the hotel.
She found the professor already at breakfast and reading a letter, pages long. His good morning was polite but brief as he bent his head over his correspondence again. Charity helped herself to coffee, cracked an egg, buttered a slice of toast and unscrupulously peeped at a page he had flung down on to the table. A woman’s writing—she was sure of that. Brenda, of course, and why this long letter after the phone call only a few days ago? And couldn’t she have phoned him again? He tossed down a second sheet and she bent her gaze on the middle distance, to withdraw it smartly when he said quietly, ‘Yes, it’s from Brenda; you have no need to pretend that you are riveted by that appalling picture on the wall.’
He watched her cheeks gradually glow with colour and added, ‘You look very pretty when you blush.’
She met his eyes squarely. ‘I’m sorry, I had no business to pry. Is there anything special for today?’ She was all at once the competent secretary. ‘Shall you want me at the morning lectures?’
‘No, I think not. They are by way of being farewell speeches. I think we’ve discussed everything worthwhile. But take a tape of the afternoon final session, will you, and type it up. There is the banquet this evening so you will have time to finish any outstanding work tonight. We will leave after breakfast.’
She transferred her gaze to her plate, anywhere but on the pages of the letter strewn around the table. The urge to snatch up a sheet and read it quite overwhelmed her. She hadn’t realised that she was capable of such wicked ideas. Being in love was proving rather more complicated than she had imagined and certainly bringing out the worst in her. She finished her breakfast in silence and presently went back to her room to pack her things, mindful of the professor’s injunction to present herself at the afternoon session and not be late. She never had been that; she threw him a reproachful glance as they parted but he didn’t seem to see it.
Save for one or two brief businesslike exchanges, she didn’t speak to him again that day; she made her own way back to the hotel at the end of the afternoon and settled down to her typing. There was more than enough to keep her busy. She did another hour’s work then she decided to stop for dinner. She showered and changed and went down to the dining room and began her solitary meal. She was almost finished when she saw the professor, resplendent in tails and a white tie, crossing the foyer on his way out. He hadn’t seen her. Indeed, she told herself with truth, he hadn’t looked for her; there was no reason why he should. She went back upstairs presently, got into her dressing-gown and finished her work, did the remainder of her packing and went to bed.
She went down to breakfa
st at her usual time, to find him already there. His ‘good morning’ was affable with the brisk rider to the effect that they should leave as soon as possible as the weather wasn’t too good. So she made short work of the meal, pronounced herself ready in ten minutes’ time, and went off to get her things. A porter came to take her case while she was still taking a last survey of her person and she skipped hurriedly after him, anxious to start the day on a good footing. The professor had been silent at breakfast. A hangover? she wondered and thought it unlikely; more likely that he had had a phone call from Brenda—perhaps he was regretting his plan to spend another day in Norway before they returned home. In the car, once clear of the city, she voiced her idea and had it instantly and firmly squashed, and after a minute he surprised her very much by asking, ‘Were you lonely last night, sitting there eating your dinner?’
She turned her gaze from the cold dark of the morning and stared at his calm profile. ‘Me? Lonely? You didn’t see me.’
‘I saw you. The banquet was long-winded and highly indigestible and that includes both the food and the speeches.’
‘Oh, did you make a speech?’
‘Yes. I hope the weather doesn’t break before we get in some skiing.’ He glanced at her. ‘The family are still there with Mother; you’ll have plenty of help with your ski lessons.’
It sounded as though she would be handed over to the nephews and nieces; the horrid thought that perhaps Brenda would be there crossed her mind so that she could only mumble a reply.
They stopped for coffee as they had done the previous week and the wind cut like an icy knife as they got out of the car. It was lighter now but there were heavy clouds banked on the horizon and the professor observed, ‘Snow, but we’ll be home before it reaches us.’
All the same they didn’t linger over coffee but drove on steadily until they reached the house. Charity, scanning the lowering sky, felt a pang of thankfulness that they had arrived; as they got out of the car a few flakes of snow drifted lazily down and they hurried indoors to a warm welcome.