by Betty Neels
She remembered the trouble he had taken over Henry, and how he had gone to the rescue of the children on that snowy afternoon, and was filled with contrition. ‘Oh, Fulk, I didn’t mean that, really I didn’t. I suppose I’m tired and my tongue’s too sharp—and how could we possibly agree about anything?’
He put the book down. ‘Now, why not?’
‘Well, we don’t lead the same kind of life, do we? All this…?’ She waved a hand at the luxurious room. ‘And me—I like sitting in the loft at home with Mrs Trot…’ It sounded very silly when she had said it, and she wasn’t looking at him, so she didn’t see his smile.
‘One can have the best of both worlds,’ he observed blandly.
‘Now what on earth do you mean by that?’ she demanded in a whisper.
‘Never mind now. Has Henry slept all the evening?’
‘Yes, and so restfully too. Do you suppose he’ll wake before morning?’
‘Unlikely—the antibiotics have taken effect; he’ll feel fighting fit in the morning and it will take our united efforts to keep him quiet in bed.’
She fetched a small sigh. ‘It’s such a load off my mind—we all love him very much, you see. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for all you’ve done.’
‘I may take you up on that one day.’ He bent and kissed her cheek lightly. ‘Now let us examine these charts.’
He studied her carefully kept records, took Henry’s pulse, used his stethoscope on the small sleeping chest, expressed satisfaction at his findings, and went to the door. ‘With care he’ll do, and no after-effects, either.’
His smile was so kind that she found herself saying: ‘What a dear you are! I do hope you had a pleasant evening; I don’t suppose you get out much.’
‘Er—no—not when Imogen is away. The evening was pleasant enough. Imogen’s mother was interested to hear about Henry and sends her good wishes for his speedy recovery.’
‘How very kind of her.’ She was laying the charts tidily on the table. ‘You must miss Imogen very much.’
He didn’t answer her, merely wished her goodnight and closed the door soundlessly. If she hadn’t been so tired she might have wondered at that. As it was she took a final look at her small brother and went thankfully to her bed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FULK HAD BEEN quite right; Henry wakened in the morning feeling so much more himself that he wanted to get up; Eleanor was arguing gently with him about it when Fulk walked in and said at once: ‘Ah, good—I see that you are on the road to recovery, boy. Eleanor, go and have your breakfast while I explain to Henry just why he has to stay quietly in bed for a little longer.’ He glanced at her. ‘You slept? Good. I’ve had breakfast and I don’t need to leave the house for an hour, so don’t hurry back.’ His smile dismissed her.
Margaret caught her up on the staircase and tucked a hand into hers. ‘It’s all so grand,’ she confided, ‘but Fulk doesn’t seem to notice it, does he?’
‘Well, I suppose when you’ve lived in a place like this all your life, it’s as much home to him as the manse is to us, dear.’
‘Fulk says Henry’s better, he says that if I ask you nicely you might let me come and talk to Henry later on. May I?’
They had reached the small room where they had their breakfast and sat down at the table, essayed a ’Goeden morgen,’ to Tekla and made much of Flan who had joined them silently. Margaret offered him a piece of toast and said: ‘I went to see Moggy just now, he’s in the kitchen with Juffrouw Witsma—he likes her cat, you know, but he had his breakfast here with Fulk, he always does.’
Eleanor was conscious of surprise; Fulk was a busy man and yet he hadn’t just consigned Moggy to the care of his housekeeper, he had offered him companionship as well. She hadn’t expected it. ‘Does he?’ she commented, ‘how nice.’ Fulk had qualities she hadn’t suspected. ‘He doesn’t have much time…’
Margaret slipped Flan some more toast. ‘No, he doesn’t, does he? But when he comes home in the evening he always fetches Moggy to sit with him. Flan sits with him too, of course.’
They ate their breakfast without haste while they discussed various ways of amusing Henry during his convalescence. ‘Cards,’ declared Margaret emphatically, ‘he loves playing cards.’
‘As long as he doesn’t get too excited. Draughts, too, and what about Ludo?’
Margaret curled her lip. ‘Eleanor, that’s a child’s game!’
‘But Henry’s a child, dear.’
‘Oh, I know that, but he’s so bright for his age—why, he’s been playing chess with Daddy ever since last winter.’
‘Heavens! What about Monopoly? That’s a good game, but he might get too excited. Anyway, I’ll ask Fulk.’
But there was no opportunity to do that when she went back upstairs. Fulk had resumed his role of doctor again, and beyond giving her his precise instructions about her brother, he had nothing more to say, indeed, his very manner discouraged her from anything but a meek: ‘Yes, Fulk, no, Fulk,’ in answer.
The day passed without incident, and Henry was so much improved by the afternoon that Eleanor felt justified in allowing Margaret to sit with him for a brief while, so that she might take a brisk walk in the gardens. They were larger than she had thought and in excellent order. She poked around, exploring paths and examining the variety of shrubs and trees bordering them, and it was quite half an hour before she returned to the house, to find a Mercedes outside the front door; it was a 450SE, and a new model, all gleaming coachwork and chromium. It looked a little vulgar. Perhaps it belonged to Hermina’s father, although Eleanor couldn’t remember Margaret saying that her new friend would be coming that afternoon. She mounted the steps, pausing in the vestibule to take off her boots, for she had got them muddy at the edge of the pond she had discovered behind the house, and it would never do to sully the shining floors. She tugged off her headscarf, pulling her hair askew as she did so, and with the boots dangling from one hand, opened the inner door and started for the stairs. She had a stockinged foot on the lowest tread when the drawing room door opened and a woman came out and stood looking at her.
She was of middle age, handsome in a large way and dressed with taste and, Eleanor guessed, great expense. Her voice, when she spoke, was commanding and her English, although fluent, was heavily accented.
‘You are the nurse?’ She sounded surprised too, which wasn’t to be wondered at, thought Eleanor reasonably; the word hardly conjured up a windswept hairdo, stockinged feet and muddy boots dangling…
She said: ‘Yes, I am. Did you want me?’
The lady advanced a foot or two. ‘Do you know who I am?’ she enquired.
‘I’m afraid I don’t—ought I to?’ Eleanor hoped her voice didn’t betray her growing dislike of her interrogator.
‘Did the professor not tell you?’
‘The professor? Who’s he?…oh, you mean Fulk.’ Eleanor smiled and met a stony stare.
‘I,’ said the lady weightily, ‘am the professor’s future mother-in-law.’
Eleanor stopped herself just in time from saying ‘Poor Fulk’, and murmured a polite how do you do instead. Surely Imogen wasn’t like this dreadful woman—Fulk must love her very much to be able to put up with her mother. She said, still polite: ‘It was kind of you to enquire about my brother—he’s better today; we’re all very relieved.’
Imogen’s mother inclined her severely coiffured head graciously. ‘I am glad to hear it. I must say that you are hardly what I imagined you to be.’ Her cold eyes swept over Eleanor’s somewhat tatty person, so that she felt constrained to say: ‘Oh, I look better in uniform—and now if you will excuse me I must go back to my brother. I expect you’re waiting for Fulk?’
‘No, Nurse, I came to see you. As Imogen is not here, I felt it to be my duty…’
‘To look me over and make sure that I wasn’t getting my claws into Fulk?’ asked Eleanor, quite forgetting her manners. ‘Well, I daresay you feel better about it now— I’m not the glamorous t
ype, you see—I just work for a living. Goodbye, Mevrouw…I don’t know your name, I’m afraid.’
She started up the stairs and was brought to a halt by the commanding voice. ‘Oss van Oss, Nurse, Baroness Oss van Oss—and you are quite correct. I can quite see now why Fulk is not in the least attracted to you—I am greatly reassured. I told him last night that I considered it a little irregular for you to be in his house, and I advised him to obtain one of the older nurses from his hospital in your place now that the little boy is no longer dangerously ill. I would not wish to influence him unduly, but I have dear Imogen’s feelings to consider.’
Eleanor had swung round to face the Baroness. ‘Can’t she look after her own feelings?’ she enquired pertly, and then: ‘What a horrid conversation this is, isn’t it? You might as well know that your daughter’s feelings are of no importance to me, but my brother’s health is. I shall stay here until he is better, and since, as you have just told me, Fulk isn’t in the least attracted to me, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Goodbye, Baroness Oss—no, Oss van Oss, isn’t it?’
She went on her way unhurriedly, aware that she was being stared at, and despite her deliberate step, she seethed with rage. How dared the woman come to look her over, and how dared Fulk allow it? She was just beginning to like him despite his offhand manner, now she found herself disliking him more than ever. She would have something to say when she saw him!
Which wasn’t until much later, although he came in the early evening to see Henry; but he brought someone with him, an elderly man, who called Henry little man and herself dear lady, and muttered a good deal to himself. Fulk introduced him as Professor van Esbink, explaining that he had thought a second opinion of Henry’s condition might reassure them all. Eleanor hadn’t answered him and had given him a stony stare when he smiled at her, so that the smile turned into a mocking one before he turned away to answer his learned colleague’s questions. Any other man might have been disconcerted, but Fulk wasn’t like other men. She became very professional in her manner and when she saw the two gentlemen to the door, her manner was not only professional, it was glacial, at least towards Fulk.
‘You’ve taken umbrage,’ said Henry from his bed, and when, an hour later, Fulk came back he pointed this interesting fact out to the doctor. ‘Eleanor is in a temper,’ he said, ‘and I don’t know why.’
Fulk glanced across the room to where Eleanor was standing, measuring medicine into a glass. ‘She’s plain ratty,’ he declared cheerfully, ‘and I think I know why.’
‘Why?’ asked Henry with interest.
‘Since I have no intention of telling you, I shouldn’t waste time asking, boy. Let us concentrate instead on what Professor van Esbink had to say about you. He agrees with me that you are doing very nicely, but just as I explained to you, you still have to remain quietly in bed, though I think that Margaret might come and play some quiet game with you for a couple of hours each day, and I daresay Moggy would be glad to visit you.’
‘Oh. I say—may he really come? On to my bed?’
‘Why not? And certainly he may stay here as long as he likes. I daresay that once he has been shown the way, he’ll pop in and out as the fancy takes him.’ He smiled down at the boy. ‘I’ll go and find Margaret and ask her to bring him up here for a little while, shall I?’
He was back very soon with Margaret, clutching Moggy. The kitten was settled under Henry’s hand, and his sister ensconced in a chair by the bed. ‘And no sitting up, Henry,’ said Fulk firmly. ‘Margaret, ring the bell if you should need us, I’m going to take Eleanor down to dinner.’
Eleanor cast him a look to freeze a man’s bones, ‘I am not hungry, thank you.’
He said nothing at all, merely crossed the room, took her by the arm and led her away, hurrying her down the staircase so fast that she had much ado not to trip up.
In the drawing room he shut the door behind them and invited her to sit down by the fire. ‘And what would you like to drink?’ he enquired solicitously. ‘Not spirits, I think; they might only serve to inflame your temper even more. How about Madeira? Pleasantly alcoholic without clouding the mind.’
She accepted the glass he offered her, for there was really nothing else she could do about it. Besides, it gave her a few minutes in which to gather her thoughts; she had no wish to lose her temper; calm, cool, reasoning, with a slight hint of hurt feelings would fill the bill very well.
‘I’m waiting for the outburst,’ he prompted blandly, so that she was instantly possessed of a great desire to speak her mind. But she made a strong effort to keep her cool; her voice was mild as she said slowly: ‘Your future mother-in-law came this afternoon, but I expect you know that already.’
‘Juffrouw Witsma told me when I came in. I wondered if she would.’
Eleanor put her glass carefully down on the charming little lamp table at her elbow. ‘You knew she was coming? To look me over? I cannot quite understand why you could not have reassured her sufficiently; it would have saved her a journey.’ Her voice, despite her best efforts, became a little shrill. ‘She was good enough to explain to me that as you were not in the least attracted to me she felt quite at ease about me, although she considered that I should be—removed…’ She choked on rage. ‘How dared you allow her…she’s a detestable woman, and I have no intention of apologizing to you for saying so; it’s to be hoped that your Imogen doesn’t take after her.’ Her wrathful voice petered out before the expression on Fulk’s face, but it served to fan her temper at the same time. ‘If I go, I shall take Henry too,’ she told him flatly. ‘I’ll get an ambulance if it takes every penny I’ve got—and I hope I never, never see you again!’
She picked up her glass and was annoyed to find that her hand was trembling so that it was hard to hold it steady. Fulk must have seen it too, for he came over to her, took the glass from her and put it down again. ‘A family heirloom,’ he explained mildly. ‘You know, Eleanor, it is a remarkable thing that you can stir up my deepest feelings with such ease; at one moment I am so angry with you that I could cheerfully wring your neck, and at the next I find abject apologies for my shocking behaviour tripping off my tongue. Of course I discussed you with Baroness Oss van Oss, but hardly in the manner which she implied—indeed, I imagined that she was joking when she said that she would like to meet you and see what you were like for herself, and when she persisted, I told her that I could see no reason why she shouldn’t if she wished—I imagined that it would be a friendly visit, no more; I had no idea that she was going to upset you and I am deeply sorry for that. And as for all that nonsense about replacing you with another nurse, I have no intention of doing any such thing; you will remain until you are perfectly satisfied that Henry is well again.’ He smiled wryly. ‘You know, I have the strongest feeling that we should be laughing about the whole thing, enjoying the joke together. And here we are, quarrelling again.’
‘People who don’t like each other always quarrel,’ said Eleanor, not bothering to look at him.
‘Ah, yes—I was forgetting that you have a long-standing dislike of me; not even the common denominator of Henry’s illness has altered that, has it?’ He put her glass back into her hand. ‘Drink up and we will go in to dinner. I’m hungry.’
It was disconcerting that, just when she was striving to reduce her rage to reasonable argument, he should dampen it down by wanting his dinner. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh about it or have a good cry.
She found herself in the dining room, facing him across the broad expanse of linen set with heavy old silver and delicate glass, and rather to her surprise she found that she was hungry too, and after a little while, enjoying herself. The food was delicious and Fulk’s gentle flow of small talk was undemanding and mildly amusing. She studied his face as he bent to pull gently on one of Flan’s ears—the dog was sitting like a statue beside his chair, watching him with adoring eyes. Fulk was smiling a little and she wondered if she had been mistaken at the expression on his face when she
had mentioned Imogen. She still wasn’t quite sure what it had been, only it had made her uncertain; perhaps she had been mistaken about him, too—perhaps all her ideas about him had been wrong. It was an ever-recurring thought which refused to be dispelled, and the memory of her strongly voiced wish never to see him again struck her so forcibly that she put down her spoon and stared at the contents of her plate, wondering what she should do about it.
‘Don’t you like caramel custard?’ asked Fulk. ‘I’ll ring and get Juffrouw Witsma to bring something else.’
Eleanor transferred her gaze from her plate to his face. ‘I like it very much, thank you.’ She went on quite humbly: ‘Fulk, I’m sorry I was so rude just now—about Baroness Oss van Oss, I mean. I had no right to speak like that and I’m sure your Imogen is the nicest and most beautiful girl in the world, and if you want to discuss me with anyone, I—I really don’t mind; I’m only the nurse, after all, and I don’t care about anything except getting Henry well again so that he’ll grow up strong and healthy.’
He got up and came round the table to sit carelessly on it beside her so that he could look down into her face. ‘My dear Eleanor,’ he begged, ‘for heaven’s sake don’t talk like that, it just isn’t you—so meek and penitent. And you’re not ‘only the nurse,’ he paused, his dark eyes looking over her head, ‘you are a great many things…’ His sombre expression was gone, he grinned at her. ‘Shall we telephone your people before we go upstairs?’
Henry had a relapse the next day; not a severe one but sufficient to delay his convalescence. Eleanor, looking back on those few days when they were happily past, wondered how she would have got through them without Fulk’s help. Henry had been querulous and difficult and the very mention of another nurse coming to relieve Eleanor caused him to toss and turn in such a frenzy of unrest that the idea was given up and Fulk took turns with Eleanor in nursing him, something which he did with no fuss at all, apparently being quite able to work at his consulting rooms and the hospital by day, and sit up for a good part of each night without any ill effects.