by Betty Neels
‘Nothing much, that’s why I said half an hour. Longer tomorrow, perhaps. Now, what do you want to do first? See Willem—Jo’s here, too, and so is Doctor Fiske.’
‘Willem and Fiske, then. What about you?’
‘I’ll see a couple of patients while I’m here.’ Fraam’s eyes slid to Lucy, standing between them. ‘Will you wait for half an hour, Lucy? Perhaps with Mies.’
She couldn’t really see why she had to wait. There were plenty of people to see the doctor back to his house; on the other hand, there would be less day to get through... She nodded and went to find Mies and give her a hand with the patients’ files.
It seemed less than half an hour when Fraam put his head round the door: ‘Mies, your father’s ready to leave.’ He had his own coat on again, too, so presumably he was driving them back after all. Lucy got up too and went to the door with Mies, to find a taxi there and Doctor de Groot already in it. He called cheerfully to her as Mies got in and she smiled and waved and then turned away to start walking into the city. Mies had said it wasn’t a very nice part for a girl to walk alone, but she wasn’t worried about that.
Fraam’s hand on her arm stopped her before she had gone ten yards.
‘Wrong way,’ he observed blandly, ‘the car’s over here.’
‘I should like to walk,’ she told him, ‘thank you all the same.’
‘So you shall, but I can’t leave the car here, I’ll take it home and we can start walking from there.’
‘We?’ she asked weakly.
‘I told you that I had a day off.’
‘Yes—but...’
‘Well, we’re going to spend it together.’
It didn’t make sense. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she began, ‘but there’s no need. I mean, I don’t suppose you get many days off and it’s a pity to waste one.’
‘Why should I be wasting it?’ He sounded amused, standing there on the pavement, looking down at her.
‘Well,’ she began once more, ‘with me, you know.’
There was no one about, the bleak street was empty of everything but the wind, the shabby buildings around them presented blind fronts. Fraam bent down and kissed her very gently. ‘For a parson’s daughter,’ he said in a gentle voice to melt her very bones, ‘you talk a great deal of nonsense.’ He took her arm and stuffed her just as gently into the Rolls and got in beside her. ‘I’m going to marry you,’ he told her. ‘You can think about it on the way to the house.’
Of course she thought about it, but not coherently. Thoughts tumbled and jostled themselves round her head and none of them made sense. They were halfway there before she ventured without looking at him: ‘Why?’
‘We’ll come to that later.’
‘Yes, but—but I thought—there’s a girl called Eloise...’ She paused to think. ‘And that lovely girl who was in the car when the little boy ran across the road...’
‘For the life of me I can’t remember her name. She was just a girl, Lucy, like quite a few others. Eloise too.’ He allowed the Rolls to sigh to a dignified halt before his house and turned to look at her. ‘Do you mind?’
‘No, not in the least.’ A whopping great lie; she minded very much, she was, she discovered, fiercely jealous of each and every one of them.
‘No? I’m disappointed, I hoped that you would mind very much.’ He didn’t sound in the least disappointed.
Jaap had the door open and his dignified smile held a welcome. ‘Coffee is in the small sitting room,’ he informed them, and led the way across the hall to throw open a door. Lucy, following him, thought that Fraam must be one of the few people left in the world whose servants treated him as though he were something to be cherished.
The room was small and extremely comfortably furnished with deep velvet-covered chairs and sofas in a rich plum colour. The walls were white and hung with paintings—lovely flower paintings, delicately done. There was a fire burning in the small marble fireplace and as they went in a stout, fresh-faced girl brought in the coffee tray.
‘Take off that coat,’ suggested Fraam, ‘and sit over here by the fire.’ He had flung his own coat down as they had entered the hall and she put hers tidily over the back of a chair and sat down, wishing she was wearing something smarter than the tweed skirt and woolly sweater she had considered good enough for her day out.
She was feeling awkward too, although it was obvious that Fraam was perfectly at ease. He gave her her coffee and began to discuss what they should do with their day, but only to put her at her ease, for presently he said: ‘Supposing we don’t do any sightseeing and go to my mother’s for lunch?’
She choked a little on her coffee. ‘Your mother? But does she...where does she live?’ She tried to sound cool while all the while all she wanted to do was to fling down her delicate coffee cup and beg him to explain—there must be some reason why he wanted to marry her, he couldn’t love her, and surely she wasn’t the kind of girl with whom a man got infatuated? Perhaps she was a change from all the lovely creatures she had seen him with?
She heard him laugh softly. ‘You’re not listening and I can read every thought in your face, Lucy. Mother lives in Wassenaar. If you like, we’ll have lunch with her and my father and then go for a walk—there’s miles of beach—it’s empty at this time of year.’ He got up to fill her coffee cup. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? Perhaps when we’ve had our walk, you will.’
They set out half an hour later, Fraam chatting easily about nothing that mattered and Lucy almost silent, a dozen questions on her tongue and not daring to utter one of them.
Fraam’s parents had a house by the sea, with the golf course behind the house and the wide sands only a few hundred yards away. The house was large and Edwardian in style, with a great many small windows and balconies and a roof which arched itself over them like eyebrows. It was encircled by a large garden, very neat and bare now that winter was upon them, but behind the flower beds there were a great many trees, sheltering it from the stares of anyone on the road. Lucy, who still hadn’t found her tongue, crossed the well-raked gravel beside Fraam and when he opened the door beneath a heavy arch, went past him into a square lobby. They were met here by a bustling elderly woman who opened the inner door for them, made some laughing rejoinder to Fraam’s greeting and then smiled at Lucy. ‘This is Ton—she housekeeps for my mother. If you like to go with her you can leave your coat.’
He spoke in a friendly way, but there was nothing warmer in his manner than that; Lucy, following Ton across the hall to a small cloakroom, began to wonder if she had dreamt their conversation. She still looked bewildered when she returned to where he was waiting for her in the hall, but it hadn’t been a dream; he bent and kissed her hard before taking her arm and ushering her down a short passage and into a room at the side of the house. It was high-ceilinged, as most Dutch houses are, with a heavily embossed hanging on the walls, a richly coloured carpet covering most of the parquet floor and some quite beautiful William and Mary furniture.
Fraam’s parents were there, standing at one of the big windows looking out over the garden, but they turned as they went in and came forward to greet them, looking not in the least surprised. And although nothing was said either then or during the lunch they presently ate, she couldn’t fail to see that she was regarded as part of the family, so that presently, walking briskly along the hard sand with Fraam, she was emboldened to ask: ‘Do your parents know—about—well, about you asking me to marry you?’
He had tucked a hand under her arm, steadying her against the wind. ‘Oh, yes—I mentioned it some time ago.’
She turned her head to look at him. ‘Some time ago? But you never said...’ She trailed off into silence, and watched him smile.
‘No. I had to wait for the right moment, didn’t I?’ He stopped and turned her round to face him. ‘And perhaps this is the right moment for
you to give me your answer.’
He hadn’t said that he loved her, had he? But he wanted to marry her. She would make him a good wife; she was sure of that because she loved him. She put up a hand to tuck in a strand of hair the wind had whipped loose.
‘Yes, I’ll marry you, Fraam. I’m—I’m still surprised about it, but I’m quite sure.’
‘Why are you sure, dear girl?’
She met his steady gaze without affectation. ‘I love you, Fraam; I didn’t know until that day we were shovelling snow...’
‘I know, Lucy.’ His voice was very gentle.
She looked at him, startled. ‘Oh, did you? How?’
He had pulled her close. ‘I’m a mind-reader, especially when it comes to you.’ He kissed her slowly. ‘We’ll marry soon, Lucy—there’s no reason why we shouldn’t, is there?’
She rubbed her cheek against the thick wool of his coat. ‘Yes, there is. I have to give a month’s notice.’
‘I’ll settle that,’ he told her carelessly. ‘You won’t need to go back to St Norbert’s.’
‘Oh, but I must—I mean, it will all have to be explained.’ She frowned a little. ‘I can’t just walk out.’
‘We’ll sort that out later on.’ Fraam started to walk again, his arm round her shoulders. ‘We’ll telephone your mother and father when we go back.’
‘They’ll be surprised.’
He said on a laugh: ‘Your mother won’t.’ And then: ‘You’ll be able to leave Doctor de Groot in a couple of days and come to my house until we can go back to England—I’ve several cases coming up, I’m afraid...’
‘Oh, but I can’t do that!’
She felt his hand tighten on her shoulder. ‘You haven’t met my young sister yet, have you? She’s coming to pay me a visit—you’ll enjoy getting to know her.’
‘Oh,’ said Lucy again, ‘well, yes, I shall.’ The wind was in their faces now and the seashore looked bleak and grey under the wintry sky—the bad weather had come early, there had been no mild days for quite a while. She was cold even in her winter coat but so happy that she hardly felt it. None of it seemed real, of course; just a lovely dream which could shatter and become her mundane life once more with no Fraam in it. ‘I can’t think why...’ she began, and caught her breath.
‘You’re still scared, aren’t you? When you’re quite used to the idea, I’ll tell you why.’ He smiled so kindly that she felt a lump in her throat. ‘Mama wanted us to stay for dinner, but I thought we would go somewhere and dine together. Would you like that?’
Lucy nodded and then frowned. ‘I’m not dressed for going out.’
‘You look perfectly all right to me—we’ll go to Dikker and Thijs, it’ll be quiet at this time of year, we can stay as long as we like.’
It was a lovely evening. Lucy, lying wide-awake in bed that night, went over every second of it, fingering the magnificent ruby and diamond ring on her finger. Fraam had taken it from his pocket during the evening and put it there and by some good chance it had fitted perfectly. It was old, he had explained, left to him by his grandmother when he had been a very young man; he had promised himself then that he would keep it until he could put it on the hand of the girl he was going to marry. Lucy sat up in bed and turned the light on just to have another look at it. It was so beautiful that she left the light on and sat up against her pillows and went on thinking about the evening.
Fraam’s parents had been kind. They had welcomed her into the family with just the right kind of remarks, told her that she was to come and see them again as soon as possible and expressed their delight at the idea of having her for a daughter-in-law. And Fraam had been a dear. She repeated that to herself because right at the back of her mind was the vague thought that he still hadn’t said that he loved her and his manner, although flatteringly attentive, had been almost like that of an old friend, not a man who had just proposed. She wanted too much, she told herself; more than likely she wasn’t a girl to inspire that kind of feeling in a man. It was surely enough that he wanted her for his wife. She went to sleep on the thought and by morning her doubts had dwindled to mere wisps in her mind.
Mies was flatteringly impressed but disconcertingly surprised too. She exclaimed with unthinking frankness: ‘I am amazed, Lucy—Fraam has had eyes only for Adilia, who is beautiful—when you returned to England he took her out many times. What will your parents say?’
‘They’re delighted.’ Lucy tried to speak lightly, but she frowned as she spoke. Here was a new name and a new girl. ‘Adilia—I don’t think I’ve heard about her. Did I ever meet her?’
Mies thought. ‘Fraam danced with her at the hospital ball, she was wearing a flame-coloured dress, very chic. They’ve known each other for ages. I quite thought...’ She looked at Lucy’s face and added brightly: ‘But that means nothing; he has had so many girl-friends, but Adilia he sees more than the others. But not of course now that he is engaged to you.’ She added hastily: ‘You must not be worried.’
‘I’m not in the least worried,’ declared Lucy, consumed with enough worry to sink her. She would ask Fraam; he would probably see her during the day. She cheered up at the thought and went along to see how Doctor de Groot was and to break the news to him. He wasn’t in the least surprised, indeed he suggested that she might like to leave then and there. ‘I’m quite able to look after myself,’ he told her, ‘and Fraam did mention something about his sister paying him a visit—I daresay he plans for you to go and stay with him while she’s there.’
‘Well, yes, he does. But don’t you want me here? I never did have much to do, I know, but you’re not going back to work yet...’
He looked benignly at her. ‘Just an hour each day,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve already discussed it with Fraam—I’ll go away for Christmas as I said I would, but I just want to keep my hand in. Now run along, my dear, I daresay Fraam will be along to see you.’
But Fraam didn’t come—he telephoned at lunchtime to say that he wouldn’t be able to get away but could she be ready if he called for her after breakfast the next day? He sounded remote and cool, and Lucy, anxious for her world to be quite perfect, put that down to pressure of work and perhaps other people listening to him telephoning. All the same, she thought wistfully, he could have called her dear just once. She shook her head to rid it of the doubts which kept filling it; just because Mies had told her about Adilia; probably it was all hot air...
She was ready and waiting when he arrived the next morning and his hard, urgent kiss was more than she had expected—a great deal more, she decided happily as they made their farewells and she got into the Mini beside him. Mies must have got it all wrong about Adilia. She responded to Fraam’s easy conversation with a lightheartedness which gave her a happy glow.
His sister came into the hall the moment they entered the house and before Fraam could speak volunteered the information that her name was Lisabertha, that she was delighted to meet Lucy, that they were almost the same age and that she was quite positive that they would be the firmest of friends. She paused just long enough to give Lucy a hug and then throw her arms round her brother’s neck. ‘Dear Fraam,’ she declared, ‘isn’t this fun? And may I ask Rob to dinner this evening?’ She turned to Lucy. ‘I’m going to marry him next year,’ she told her. ‘He works in Utrecht, but he said he could get here by seven o’clock.’
Fraam chuckled. ‘So he’s already been asked to dinner?’ He smiled at Lucy. ‘If you two like to go into the sitting room I’ll get Jaap to take the cases up.’
He stayed and had coffee with them and then left them to their own devices with the remark that he had work to do and would see them that evening. Lucy, who would have liked to have been kissed again, got a friendly smile, that was all.
The day passed very pleasantly. Lisabertha was obviously the darling of her family and had a great fondness for her eldest brother; she talke
d about him for a good deal of the time and Lucy listened to every word, filling in the gaps about him with interesting titbits of information. He had been in love several times, his young sister informed her, but never seriously. They had all begun to think that he would never marry, and now here was dear Lucy, and how glad they were. Where had they met and when was the wedding to be and what was Lucy going to wear? To all of which Lucy gave vague replies. Their meeting had been most unglamorous and the less said about it the better, she decided, and she had no idea when they were to marry. Fraam had suggested that she left the hospital at once, but at the back of her mind she wasn’t too sure about that. Supposing he were to change his mind? If she worked for another month, that would give him time to be quite sure. But even as she thought it, the other half of her mind was denying it. Fraam wasn’t a man to change his mind.
Certainly there was nothing in his manner to give her any cause for doubt that evening. The three of them dined together and then sat round the fire in the drawing room, talking idly, until Lisabertha declared that she was going to bed, and when Lucy said that she would go too, Fraam begged her to stay a little longer. ‘For I have hardly seen you,’ he protested, ‘and we have so much to discuss.’
But the discussion, it turned out, wasn’t quite what she had expected: whether they should visit his parents on the following day or the one after, and had she any preference as to when she returned to England.
‘Well, I hadn’t thought about it,’ said Lucy. ‘If I give a month’s notice I suppose the quicker I go back to St Norbert’s the better.’
He frowned. ‘You seem determined to do that,’ he observed rather coldly. ‘I told you that it could be arranged that you left at any time...’ He got up and strolled over to the window and looked out into the dark night, holding back the heavy curtains. ‘You are not anxious to marry me as soon as possible, then, Lucy?’
‘Yes—well, no. It’s...’ she paused, at a loss for words. ‘I mean, supposing you changed your mind and it would be too late.’