by Betty Neels
They walked back to the entrance. ‘Is Tilburg hospital like this one?’
‘Very similar. I go to Eindhoven sometimes, there’s a splendid one there, and s’Hertogenbosch.’
‘Where?’
He laughed and repeated the name, and standing in the hospital entrance oblivious of curious passers-by, made her repeat it too until she had it right, and only then did they get into the car again. They were outside the town when Julia saw a signpost to Roosendaal and remarked that she had thought that town to be in the opposite direction to Tilburg.
‘And so it is, but you don’t suppose I can travel any farther without tea, do you?’ He glanced at her. ‘Don’t fidget, we’ve plenty of time. There’s a place at Princenhage, just along this road.’
They stopped at the Mirabelle restaurant and went inside to a warmth very welcome after the cold outside. They had tea, each with their own little pot which amused Julia very much, and some rich and elaborate cakes, which, she declared, were a shame to eat, although she contradicted her words by eating hers to the last crumb, and when pressed to have a second, did so. She licked a morsel of cream off her pretty mouth with the tip of her tongue and sighed contentedly. ‘I oughtn’t to have them,’ she said, although the remark was purely rhetoric, ‘I shall get fat.’
He smiled lazily at her across the table. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘You’ll stay as you are for ever and ever.’
Julia pushed back her chair and put on her gloves and said lightly to cover her feelings, ‘So now I’m indestructible as well as stoutly built!’ and giggled so infectiously that he laughed too.
The shopping expedition the next day was, on the whole, a success. Marcia, well wrapped against the cold, was as excited as she would allow herself to be and even though it turned out that most of the shopping was for herself, it was pleasant to spend most of the afternoon in the bigger stores, even though her insistence on being treated as an invalid became a little irksome towards the end. Only once did she show any desire to do anything for herself and that was to post a handful of letters, something in which she was frustrated by Ivo, despite her protests. Julia, watching him putting them into the letter box, saw that he was looking at each of them in turn; she knew when he saw the one addressed to Mijnheer de Winter because of his quick frown. He said nothing, however, and nothing in his manner indicated that he was annoyed, although she caught Marcia’s faintly worried look. Possibly Ivo had asked her not to continue her friendship with de Winter, but they weren’t likely to discuss it before her. They had tea presently and Ivo was at his most amusing and if anything, kinder and more considerate of Marcia than he had been before. Julia, sitting in the back of the car on their way home, watched him in the gloom, bending his head to hear what Marcia had to say, and when Marcia laughed, which was often, Julia clenched her hands tightly in her lap, hurting them, as if by doing so she could ease the hurt in her heart.
She avoided him for the next day or two, and although they saw each other at meals and in the sitting room there was always someone else there. And on the third day, when she was free after one o’clock, she walked into Oisterwijk and did her Christmas shopping; a quite handsome coffret of eau de Cologne for Marcia, a tobacco pouch for Doctor van den Werff, handkerchiefs—fine linen ones—for Ivo and for Jorina some French soap as well as the teacloth she had embroidered. For Bep she found a scarf and for the girl who came up from the village every day to work, a box of chocolates. She went straight to her room when she got back, did up her parcels and put them away at the back of the big cupboard in her bedroom, then went down to dinner. It was during that meal that Doctor van den Werff remarked,
‘It seems to me that Julia has a very bad bargain for her half day; it is in fact no half day at all. Here she is, back here with us, whether she likes it or not, because there’s nothing for her to do.’ He looked across the table at her, smiling. ‘Do you mind, Julia?’
She smiled back, ‘No, not at all. I’ve letters to write and those will take me all the evening. I had a nice afternoon in Oisterwijk too. One day when it’s fine, I shall go for a long walk.’
Ivo looked up from the pear he was peeling for Marcia. ‘Well take care if you do, there’s quite a lot of fen country around here and this time of year it’s rough underfoot.’
Julia thanked him politely and lapsed into silence once more while Marcia, with a sad little smile, wondered out aloud and at some length when she would be able to go for a long walk—or, she added bravely, if she ever would again.
‘I can’t see why not,’ said Julia kindly. ‘Why not come into the garden with me tomorrow morning? We needn’t go far and the worst that can happen is for you to fall over, when I shall pick you up again.’
They all laughed except Marcia, who flushed faintly and said gently,
‘How kind of you to offer, nurse, but I couldn’t trust myself to you—I need someone big and strong.’ She glanced at Ivo as she spoke and he said placidly, ‘That sounds like me, but unfortunately I’m going away for a couple of days.’ He looked up briefly. ‘I can’t see what harm there would be in going with Julia as long as there’s no ice about—you said yourself she was robust.’
Julia, who had just taken some wine, choked on it, laughing. ‘I’ll never live that down, shall I?’ she declared cheerfully.
She went back to her room as soon as dinner was over because she felt that they expected her to, but once there she wrote no letters at all, for the only one she had to answer was an angry one from her brother, full of approaches and pointing out how selfish she had become. She sat, instead, in a chair, doing nothing until bedtime. She heard Marcia, with Ivo as escort, come upstairs and there Jorina to make sure Marcia was safely in bed. She felt a fraud, sitting there doing nothing and being paid handsomely for it. They would surely send her back to England directly after Christmas. She went on sitting idly, long after the others came to bed. Ivo was last of all; she heard him in the garden with Ben and then presently come indoors again. The house was quite silent when at last she went to bed herself.
CHAPTER SIX
THE OPPORTUNITY to go for a walk came sooner than Julia had expected, for two days later Ivo, back from wherever he had been, took Marcia into Tilburg in the morning. She had complained with her usual steely gentleness that her hair looked terrible, adding at the same time that she quite understood that no one could spare the time to take her to the hairdresser, but when Julia had immediately offered to go with her and Jorina had offered to drive them she refused on the grounds that she was selfishly taking up their time. It was inevitable that she contrived to tell Ivo in such a way that she gained his instant attention and the promise to take her himself on his way to hospital, and when Julia had asked if she was to go too, Marcia had said quite cheerfully, having gained her own ends,
‘Of course not, Nurse Pennyfeather—you may have your free time this morning, that will make a nice change for you.’ Whereupon Ivo had said, ‘Why not have a lift in with us, Julia? There must be something you can amuse yourself with for a couple of hours.’
But Julia had declined because she considered he had listened too readily to Marcia’s curdled account of her efforts to get to the hairdresser while he was away—besides, the less she saw of him the better. She had thanked him politely in a serene voice which betrayed nothing of her true feelings and declared her intention of taking a walk.
She tried not to think about Ivo and Marcia while she changed into her outdoor clothes. It was cold and a little misty outside and the sky was a mass of thick grey clouds, but there was always the chance that the sun would shine. She tucked a scarf into the neck of her top coat and tied the fur bonnet securely. She had studied a local map the previous evening and knew just where she was going. She ran downstairs and put her head round the kitchen door, called goodbye to Jorina and went out of the house.
The heath stretched away beyond the woods behind the house, and according to the map, it was criss-crossed by bicycle paths. She intended to take one of these as
far as the village of Breukelen about three miles away and then return along another of the paths.
The wind stung her cheeks and whipped her black hair from under her bonnet, but it was exhilarating and the exercise did her good, and presently, glowing with warmth, she slowed her pace a little the better to think. She would have to go back to England soon—after Christmas, she thought, and if Marcia was going home shortly, would it not be a good idea if they were to travel together. But was Marcia going home? She had said nothing to that effect; perhaps she intended to remain until she married Ivo. The thought of it made Julia catch her breath and was swamped by the idea she had kept buried until now. Ivo wasn’t in love with Marcia; he didn’t want to marry her, although perhaps he had been attracted to her when they first met, for she was undoubtedly a very clever girl and in her way attractive too, but the pity he had shown her when she was taken ill had been mistakenly—or deliberately?—misconstrued as love by Marcia and he had been unable to let her see that she was wrong because she had been so ill. Perhaps he had thought that an absence of six months would terminate the affair in a gentler fashion. But it hadn’t, or so it seemed to Ivo at least, and Julia had the uneasy suspicion that if he thought that Marcia still loved him he would never do anything to hurt her because in some way Marcia had made him feel responsible for her illness. Julia was certain that this wasn’t the case, but she had no proof. It was a pity that Ivo held such lofty principles. She said loudly in exasperation, ‘Old-fashioned bunkum—no one behaves like that any more,’ and knew even as she said it that Ivo did.
She began to walk faster as if to get away from her thoughts, and when she came to a fork in the path, took the right-hand one without really noticing. It was some time later when she realised that she must have taken the wrong direction, for by now she should have reached the village. She stood still, trying to get her bearings, and decided that the path would probably end at some houses at least. But it didn’t; she had walked steadily for some time now and it had no end, she stopped again and felt the first drops of freezing rain sting her face. She hadn’t noticed that the sky, already grey, had become almost black behind her, and she would have to find shelter as quickly as possible. There were woods to the right of her. She looked at them carefully and decided that they must be part of the woods she had walked through when she had started out—if so, she had only to reach them and then walk in their shelter in the direction she had come from.
With the rain had come a gale of wind, whistling through the trees so that their branches creaked and groaned about her head, caring twigs and smaller branches with it. She was tired by now and very cold as well as hungry, and once or twice, in the dimness under the trees, she fell. It was only too apparent that she was lost, and in the blinding rain, even if she ventured away from the woods, she had little hope of finding her way. The sensible thing to do was to keep on walking; she knew from the map that the area of heath and fen land round Oisterwijk was a rough triangle, bounded by roads, so sooner or later, she was bound to strike one or other of them. Not too much later, she hoped, for it was after two o’clock now and getting dark, with the rain still pouring from an unbroken pall of cloud.
She went on walking, beginning to get a little frightened, for the night would be long and cold and although she would have liked to rest, she dared not in case she fell asleep. Someone would have missed her by now—Jorina or Bep. Doctor van den Werff would have been out on his rounds and wouldn’t know anyway, and neither would Ivo, who would probably stay in Tilburg with Marcia until the weather cleared. She stumbled a little and fell into a small hollow between two fir trees. It was dry, covered in pine needles and sheltered from the wind. She hadn’t meant to rest, but it was warmer there and surely five minutes wouldn’t hurt. Julia sat down, drew her knees up under her chin, clasped her gloved hands round them and rested her head upon them. She was asleep within seconds.
She was roused by a hand on her shoulders, shaking her roughly awake. A voice—Ivo’s voice—was telling her, equally roughly, that she was a damned little idiot. He pulled her to her feet, which were numb to the knees so that she lurched against him, and tore off her gloves to rub her cold hands.
‘You fool!’ he said violently, as he rubbed. ‘Haven’t you got the sense to keep moving in weather like this—and what possessed you to walk all these miles?’
He stopped his rubbing for a moment, flung an arm around her shoulders to hold her steady and poured some brandy down her throat in a ruthless fashion which left her spluttering and choking, and then resumed his work.
‘Ugh!’ uttered Julia, gaining strength from the brandy. ‘Leave me alone—shouting at me like that. You’re hurting me!’
He sat her down with a thump, pulled off a boot and started on her foot. When he spoke it was forcefully and in his own language. He sounded furious, and what with too much brandy on an empty stomach and pain from the reviving circulation of her hands she felt most peculiar. She said in a voice that choked a little, ‘I got lost.’
He put the boot back on again, and took off the other one.
‘What possessed you—’ he began harshly, and then in a rigidly controlled voice: ‘Jorina told me you left the house before eleven—do you know the time now?’
Julia gave a weak but spirited snort. ‘How can I? It’s dark. When I looked at my watch it was just after three, but that must be half an hour or so ago.’
He gave her a look of such fierceness through the gloom that she caught her breath. ‘It’s after six o’clock,’ he said dryly.
She shivered violently. ‘It can’t be—I sat down for a minute.’
‘It was pure chance that I found you—you know what would have happened if I hadn’t?’
‘Well, I suppose I should have gone on sleeping.’
‘And died of exposure.’ He sounded grim.
‘I—I didn’t think of that,’ she faltered a little. ‘Have you been looking for me for a long time?’
‘Rub your hands together and then clap them. Since we got home at about one o’clock.’
Julia was stricken into silence. She ventured at last, ‘Just you?’
‘No. Until it became really dark and the weather got too bad, we all searched—which meant leaving Marcia alone in the house. We left this stretch of the woods until last because it didn’t seem possible that you could get so far.’
She said stupidly, ‘But I’m not far. I’m on my way back to your house. If I had walked straight on…’
‘You would have eventually come to the village of Oirschot—ten kilometres from Oisterwijk—that is, if you had wakened up.’
‘You must be mistaken.’
He put on her boot and stood her on her feet again and gave her a little shake. ‘For God’s sake stop arguing with me,’ he said loudly, then caught her close and kissed her so fiercely that she had no breath. ‘Fool,’ he declared. ‘Fool!’ and let her go so suddenly that she almost fell. If her mind as well as her body hadn’t been so numbed, she would most certainly have given this piece of rudeness the answer it so richly deserved, for she felt certain that it was directed against herself, but her teeth were chattering so much that she found it impossible to speak. She made a small, indignant noise and he said harshly,
‘Too cold to talk, eh? That’s a good thing, now I shan’t have to listen to your excuses all the way home.’ His voice was so furiously angry that Julia felt her eyes fill with tears and was thankful for the dark, but even as she had thought, he turned his torch on her face. She felt his arm round her once more, but this time it was gentle and comforting. He said in a quite different voice, ‘Drink this, dear girl—I know you dislike it, but it will help to warm you.’
She swallowed obediently and the spirit’s warmth crept over her, making her feel more cheerful as well as less cold, although the tears ran down her cheeks still. But she made no attempt to wipe them away, she had indeed forgotten them; she sniffed a little forlornly and began to walk wordlessly, urged on by his arm in the light from
the torch. It seemed a long way to the car; she stumbled along beside him as he strode ahead, unworried by the rain and the wind and the blackness of the early evening, but presently they came with unexpected suddenness out of the woods and on to a road and she saw the Jensen’s lights.
Ivo picked her up and tossed her into the seat beside his without a word, then got in beside her, and at the same time she became aware that Ben was in the car too, warm and doggy-smelling. He leaned his shaggy head over the back of her seat and licked her gently, then at a quiet word from Ivo, he slid between them to settle at her feet. Julia felt his solid warmth envelop her feet and legs and said through chattering teeth, ‘Dear Ben…’
‘He’ll warm you up,’ said Ivo in a perfectly ordinary voice as he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. ‘He wanted to come with me, but he’s been looking for you too all the afternoon and he’s—as you so aptly say—dog-tired.’
He didn’t say any more, but turned the car with a good deal of skill on the icy road and started for home. The car skidded several times on the way back, but Julia, now that the effects of the brandy were wearing off, was feeling too miserable to notice anything as trivial—her thoughts were entirely of Ivo’s anger with her. It had perhaps been foolish of her to have gone so far, but she hadn’t got lost deliberately, it was something which could have happened to anyone. She said out loud,
‘How intolerant you are!’
Ivo laughed, sounding amused and irritated too. ‘You do me less than justice—at any moment now you will be telling me that it was my fault that you got lost.’ He sighed. ‘Didn’t you look to see where you were going when you started out?’
Julia clutched Ben round the reassuring thickness of his neck as the car went into another skid. ‘Of course I did, but I was thinking. I—I must have taken a wrong turning.’
‘What were you thinking of, Julia?’
She said a little too quickly, ‘I don’t remember.’