The Language of Love

by Saunders, Jean

  As soon as the plane arrived in London, Annette hurried out of the airport and took a taxi home. The flat was cold and unwelcoming, the way it always seemed when she’d been busy and surrounded by people. This time it was even more empty, and the glow of the electric fire and the instant company of the television did little to help. She was lonely, more lonely than she’d been for a very long time. Or perhaps it was just that suddenly her loneliness seemed more unbearable than usual. She’d be better tomorrow, when she opened the shop and had the bright chatter of Margaret and the others to help her readjust. She told herself not to get so maudlin, that it was a sign of middle age, and made herself some coffee.

  By the middle of the evening she was reaching for her phone book. Had Sundays ever stretched this long before? Annette asked herself. But before now, she hadn’t had thoughts of Pieter Van Ness to complicate her life. Determined not to let them take over completely, she began planning one of her small dinner parties and arranged for three close friends to come to the flat on Tuesday evening, a married couple about her own age and an elderly solicitor of whom she was particularly fond.

  Once her invitations had been verbally accepted, Annette set about planning the evening with the expected touches her guests would expect. It gave her something on which to concentrate, planning the menu and the wine, and the style of her table and floral decorations. It effectively blotted out all wayward thoughts of a dark-haired man with laughing gray eyes and a way of kissing her that could scatter all her good intentions to the four winds.

  She would create a very simple table display in tune with the coming of spring. She’d use her white table linen and dainty yellow china with a simple display of yellow tulips and homely primroses, and the delicate addition of pussy willows. For once she completely rejected the idea that flowers had any symbolic meaning at all. It was childish, and she wouldn’t consider it for a moment, even though the primroses would whisper to her not to be bashful, and the tulips mourned an unrequited love.

  “How lovely,’’ her friend Tess commented when Annette and her three guests were seated around the table on Tuesday evening. “You're so clever, Annette. All my arrangements end up looking as if I’ve just stuffed the flowers in a milk bottle!”

  “Well, haven’t you?” Rob, her husband, teased her blandly.

  Their banter was so like hers and Tony’s used to be, Annette thought with a catch in her throat. But she’d long ago determined not to lose all their old friends, and besides, it kept Tony near. She turned to the older man with a smile as he asked how she had liked Amsterdam.

  “It’s some years since I was there,” Clive Lawson remarked, his eyes faraway as he stroked his gray mustache thoughtfully. “Such beautiful gables on the houses, as I remember, and on a still night their reflections seem to go right down in the water of the canals.”

  “I didn’t know you were such an old romantic, Clive.” Annette laughed affectionately, but his words evoked such a vivid picture of Pieter’s city it made her catch her breath for an instant.

  “I’d love to go there,” Tess said wistfully. “Somehow we never have.”

  “You’ve visited practically every other European city!” Annette teased her. “But I have to agree with Clive. There’s something very special about Amsterdam. Once you’ve been there, you want to go back. It takes hold of you somehow – and in my case, of course, it has the added attraction of the flowers,” she added quickly, before the others thought she was getting unusually sentimental. Annette the businesswoman, who rarely let her heart rule her head. The trite cliché was unbearably shallow and she was glad the words were all in her head.

  “And you’re actually going to leave us to do the flowers for your friend’s wedding?” Rob put in. “Whatever will London society do without you?”

  “Oh, I should think it would get along without me very well,” she replied. “Nobody’s indispensable!”

  It was perfectly true, she realized wryly. There was plenty of competition in her line of business, and always someone else eager to jump into her shoes. She was extremely lucky – not only did she have her own very successful business here, but also the chance to work with Gerrit Campen in Amsterdam if she chose. His offer of a job had been said teasingly, but she was willing to bet he’d jump at the chance if she took him up on it. She knew her own reputation and had worked hard to achieve it.

  Annette realized suddenly that this dinner party was doing nothing to put Pieter Van Ness out of her mind! Every mention of Amsterdam was synonymous with Pieter now. She excused herself quickly as the telephone rang in the hall, and closed the door on her guests as she went to answer it. Next minute she was gripping the cord, her skin tingling.

  “I’ve never known two days to be so long,” the voice at the other end of the line said softly. From this distance his voice had an even huskier timbre in it, more intimate, as if he stood close to her. Annette closed her eyes for a moment, almost imagining that he did.

  “How are you, Pieter?” She couldn’t make herself sound bright, and her voice was as husky as his.

  He gave a little laugh. “Don’t you know, sweetheart? I’m missing you, and wondering when you’re coming back.”

  “In plenty of time for the wedding.” That was ages away. It felt as if it was an eternity.

  “I can’t wait that long. I have to see you before. Should I come to London? I can easily manage a few days –”

  “No, please don’t, Pieter,” she pleaded with him. “Please...give me time. Don’t rush things. It’s too soon.”

  “I don’t mean to, Mrs. Granger. It’s just that I’m impatient to see you again. Can you honestly say you haven’t thought about me since you returned to London? If you can, I’ll leave you alone.”

  Thought about him? Only every minute, night and day... When she didn’t immediately answer, she heard him laugh softly again, making her throat constrict.

  “I miss you, Annette. Good night, my love.”

  The line went dead and it was some seconds before she replaced it. Oh, but she missed him too, she thought with a sudden surge of emotion. Yes, she missed him. Her mouth was suddenly dry at the force of her own feelings. A little burst of chatter reminded her of her dinner guests, and she put on a bright smile and went back to them.

  “Sorry about that,” she said lightly. “Just a friend I haven’t seen for some time. He’ll call again, I expect.”

  Now, why had she said that? It had only been two days, but they’d been as long for her as Pieter said they’d been for him. And why had she hidden his name, as if he was her special secret she wanted to share with no one else? It was a childish game, but her growing feelings for Pieter Van Ness were anything but comparable to the games that children played.

  “Well, whoever he was,” Clive Lawson said jestingly, “I hope he’ll call again soon if he can put such stars in your eyes. Here’s to romance, Annette!”

  He lifted his glass to her, and she felt herself blush as she told him not to be such an old silly. But as she stared into the bubbles in her own glass, she asked herself whom she was kidding.

  The telephone rang again on Friday evening. Annette and Margaret were in the midst of wedding bouquets and corsages that would be kept refrigerated overnight for an early Saturday wedding. Annette’s fingers were deftly twisting green florist’s tape around the wired stems, and it was Margaret who picked up the receiver in the reception area. After a moment she held out the phone and called to Annette in the workroom.

  “A very dishy-sounding man with an intriguing hint of an accent.” Margaret grinned as they passed each other. “I wouldn’t let this one get away if he was mine!”

  Annette knew at once who it would be, but she kept her expression bland as she went to answer the call.

  “Hello, Mrs. Granger,” said Pieter’s voice, as sexy as ever, and Annette saw that her hands were holding on tight to the phone. Ever since Tuesday night she’d been expecting him to call her again, and planning what she’d say to him in a co
ol, distant voice. Now that she could hear him, still seeming as close as if he stood beside her, all the planned cutting words flew from her mind. Instead, she knew she sounded inane, and so English.

  “Pieter! How...how nice to hear from you again. How are you? Are you well? And Elena –?”

  “We’re all fine,” he interrupted. “Physically, at least. I won’t answer for my emotional state of mind since meeting you, though.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Annette could see Margaret moving into the shop to collect some fresh fern from a container, careful to avoid glancing her way.

  “Pieter, did you want anything special?” she heard herself say, and cursed herself for sounding like an impatient school mistress. “I’m sorry to sound abrupt, but you caught me at rather a busy time. Friday nights are often busy if we’ve several weddings the next day, and I’m working now, as a matter of fact. We have to deliver the flowers some distance out of town by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  She was prattling and she knew it. She took a deep breath as she heard his throaty laugh. She wished he wouldn’t do that. It made something curl up inside her, and it was a feeling that was alternately delicious and uncomfortable.

  “I like to imagine you working, Annette, rather than gadding about with one of your English men friends.”

  “I don’t have men friends,” she said in annoyance, meaning the collective term, and too late she realized that was just what he wanted her to say.

  “Good. Then all that talk about your having plenty was just to put me off, as I thought. It won’t work, Annette. Already you’re too deeply in my heart to be dismissed that easily.”

  Annette stared at the phone helplessly. That quaint old-fashioned charm that came so naturally to him always caught her off guard. If it was insincere, then Pieter Van Ness was the best actor she’d ever met, but she didn’t believe anything he said was tongue-in-cheek. Hadn’t he once said they were too mature to waste time on preliminaries in the way of adolescents?

  “Are you still there, Annette?” Pieter said.

  “Yes, but I told you, I’m working. I really haven’t time to stand and chat.” Her voice was jerky, and she knew she sounded a little ungracious.

  “That’s all right. I’m working too. I’m at the hotel in my private suite at the moment.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t considered him having a private suite there, but of course he would, in case he wanted to entertain a special friend or stay the night. Her thoughts wandered.

  “We have a special evening at the Van Ness tonight,” he went on. “Important guests from a convention. And Helga is due to begin her floorshow in ten minutes, so I should be there to applaud her entrance.”

  “I mustn’t keep you, then.” Annette felt a childish urge to slam the phone down just at the mention of Helga’s name. She must be going crazy, she thought angrily.

  “That’s all right.” Pieter’s voice softened again, husky and intimate. “I just wanted to hear your voice, despite all the needles in it. And to remind you about our flower festival. I really would like to enter a Van Ness float, and of course I could discuss it with Gerrit Campen, but I would much prefer to work with you. We would make a perfect team, Annette. Give it some thought, won’t you? Good night, sweetheart.”

  As before, he didn’t give her any time to answer, and she was left holding a phone on which there was only a dull buzzing. She put it down quickly. He was right, she thought ashamedly. She did speak to him with a voice that had needles in it! She couldn’t seem to help it, yet she had the strongest feeling that if she once let down her guard with him, she’d be swept along on a course she didn’t choose to follow.

  And that other remark he’d made...

  “We’d make a perfect team, Annette.”

  Had he meant only in business? she wondered. She knew instinctively there was far more meaning in his words than that, and she gave a little shiver.

  “Are you all right, Annette?” Margaret’s voice was suddenly close to her, and she saw that her assistant was hovering about as she still stood with her hand on the phone.

  She turned quickly with a forced smile. “Yes, of course.” Margaret was looking at her curiously. “That was Pieter Van Ness –”

  “Aha! That gorgeous Dutchman of yours.”

  “He’s not mine,” Annette said crossly, making her way back to the workroom through the massed containers of early-spring flowers just in from the Scilly Isles.

  “Didn’t you say he phoned on Tuesday night as well?” Margaret went on relentlessly as they continued working on tomorrow’s bouquets. “That doesn’t sound like a man who gives up easily.”

  Annette agreed, but she wasn’t going to say as much. “He phoned about business this time. While I was in Amsterdam he was telling me about a flower festival they’re having there a few weeks before Elena’s wedding, and Pieter wants to enter a Van Ness float this year. He asked if I’d be interested in working with him on the project.”

  “How marvelous. You’ve never done that kind of work before, have you?”

  Annette shook her head, remembering the interest she had felt on hearing about the festival, and the idea of a new challenge. She shrugged, twisting the green florist’s wire deftly around the wired stems of tight-budded yellow roses and lilies of the valley, starred with tiny winter jasmine – the flowers Pieter had brought her, Annette remembered. Friends only. She stared at her handiwork, which was too humble a term to give to a beautiful “Annette” creation. The pretty combination of flowers would grace the beautiful bride who would carry it the following day. Annette felt a stab of envy toward her. Lucky, lucky girl, knowing what she wanted in life, and finding her fulfillment, becoming far more than friends only with her love.

  Blast Pieter Van Ness, she thought savagely. Because of him, she seemed to lose concentration all too easily these days. She eased a wired stem fractionally more central, a perfectionist as always.

  “Well?” Margaret wouldn’t let it go. “Don’t tell me you aren’t interested in creating a float for the flower festival?”

  “Of course I’m interested, but I shan’t do it!”

  “Why on earth not?”

  Annette looked at her impatiently. Margaret could be very obtuse at times.

  “You should be able to guess how long such a job would take, Margaret! I’d practically need to live over there for a couple of weeks to get it all organized.”

  “Well, why not? Things wouldn’t fall apart here, and I’m sure we could cope. Don’t you want to see more of your Dutchman? It’s a sure bet he wants to see more of you!”

  “Oh, I know that.” She stopped, knowing she’d spoken too quickly, and feeling a silly superstition about not bringing the conflict between her and Pieter out into the open. While it remained their problem, it didn’t seem so real, but she might have known Margaret would seize on her comment. They had been friends and colleagues far too long for Margaret to be anything but blunt. Margaret knew all about Tony, and Margaret wanted to see her married again.

  “You’re a fool sometimes, Annette. How long do you think you can live on dreams before you turn into an embittered old woman? You’re the kind of woman who needs a husband and children.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk,” Annette said tensely. “I had a husband, and I expected to have children. I know all about the priorities of life.”

  Margaret paused in her own careful fashioning of the corsages for the bride’s and bridegroom’s mothers.

  “Then having had a taste of it, how can you be content to go on providing the trappings for other people’s weddings? Tony wouldn’t have wanted it to be like this.”

  They’d had this conversation before, Annette thought wearily, and as always, she knew Margaret was right. But it didn’t change anything. It didn’t change the conviction inside her, that until someone came along who could replace Tony’s perfection, she just didn’t want to know. And it was impossible to find such perfection twice in a lifetime. She wouldn’t let hers
elf think of Pieter Van Ness at that moment.

  “I thought you were nagging me about the Amsterdam flower festival,” she said lightly to Margaret. “Stop changing the subject.”

  “I didn’t think I was, since the gorgeous Pieter Van Ness is concerned with both topics of conversation.” Margaret grinned, neatly cornering her. “Seriously, though, Annette, if you wanted to spend more time in Amsterdam, we’d cope. You trust me with the business, don’t you?”

  “You know I do. I’d defy anyone to guess which of us had done which arrangements here,” Annette said quickly in response to the sudden hurt look on Margaret’s face. She didn’t quite trust that look, of course. It would be just like Margaret to put on an act like that to push her in the direction she thought Annette ought to go. In this case, Amsterdam, and in Margaret’s romantic mind, straight into Pieter Van Ness’s arms. With a little jolt of her heart, Annette knew it was both an exciting and disturbing place to be, and she couldn’t pretend that the memory of the times he’d held her and pressed his sensual mouth to hers hadn’t excited her and aroused her.

  “Well, then?” Margaret said softly, watching her face.

  “I’ll think about it,” she answered slowly. And turning away from the satisfied smile on her assistant’s face, Annette told her she was going to make them both some coffee to keep them going. There was still an hour’s work to do.

  Upstairs in the kitchen of her flat, Annette tried to examine her own feelings toward Pieter, but it was hard to be objective as far as he was concerned. Her own emotions got in the way, and she admitted that it would be easy to fall in love with him. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to. In the past, romance had meant a few light frothy weeks, sometimes months, enjoying the same things, tastes in music and books and the theater. She had always been the one to finally call a halt, before she became too deeply involved, because that was the way she wanted it. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that once she let herself fall in love with Pieter Van Ness, it would take all her strength to get out of it. He wasn’t a man to let go of a woman he wanted, and Annette knew he wanted her.