by Betty Neels
Jaap marshalled his English. ‘To London, Juffrouw—the ten o’clock flight.’
Adilia nodded dismissal and he went away, looking puzzled and a little worried; Miss Prendergast had looked quite ill when he had said that...
‘You see?’ asked Adilia when the door had been closed. She crossed the room and tapped Lucy on the shoulder. ‘Jaap does not lie—you have to believe him. And now you will have to believe me; I am going to London too.’
She went to the door. ‘There is one thing of which you may be very sure: I am very discreet. But what should you care? You will have what you want—this house, Fraam’s money and a clutch of children—they will be plain, just like you.’
She had gone, closing the door very quietly behind her, and Lucy stood speechless, the strength of her feelings tearing through her like a force-ten gale. Rage and misery and humiliation all jostled for a place in her bewildered head and for the moment at any rate, rage won. She tore at the ring on her finger and then raced from the room, up the stairs and into her bedroom, there to fling on her coat, tie a scarf over her hair and snatch up her gloves. She was in the hall and almost at the door when Jaap came through the little arched door which led to the kitchens.
‘You go out, miss?’ he asked. He didn’t allow his well-schooled features to lose their blandness, but his voice was anxious.
‘Yes. Yes, Jaap.’ She looked at him quite wildly, still re-living those terrible minutes with Adilia. ‘I’m going away.’ She darted past him, got the heavy door open and was away before he could stop her.
She had no idea where she was going, but she wasn’t thinking about that. She had no idea in which direction she was walking either; she was running away, intent on putting as much distance between her and her hurt as possible. She hurried along, thinking how strange it was that she had been so happy and that just a few words from someone could sweep that happiness away like sand before the wind.
She walked on, right through the heart of the city, without being aware of it, and when the street she was in merged into the Mauritskade, she turned along it and then into Stadhouderskade and so into Leidsestraat. She trudged down that too, and if it hadn’t begun to rain she might have gone on and on and ended up at Schiphol; as it was she turned round and started back again towards the centre of Amsterdam. She was tired now and she wasn’t really thinking any more, aware only of a dull headache and an empty feeling deep inside her. It had grown from afternoon dusk to wintry evening and she realised that she was cold and hungry and needed to rest, and over and above that, it was impossible for her to go back to Fraam’s house ever again. She would go home, of course, but just at the moment she was quite incapable of making any plans, first she must have a meal.
She had reached the inner ring of the grachten again and there were hotels on every side. She recognised one of them; Fraam had taken her there to dine only a short time ago. She went inside and booked a room at the reception desk, for she had to sleep somewhere and she remembered that he had told her that it was a respectable hotel. She didn’t ask the price of the room; her head was still full of her own unhappy thoughts and she brushed aside the receptionist’s polite enquiry as to luggage, following the bell boy into the lift like an automaton and when she was alone in the room, sitting down without even taking her coat off. But presently she bestirred herself and looked around her. The apartment was luxurious, more so than she had expected, and the adjoining bathroom was quite magnificent. She washed her white face and telephoned for a meal. It was while she was waiting for it that she realised that she had no money. And no passport either.
She ate her dinner when it came because whatever trouble lay ahead of her, and there would be trouble, it would be easier to face if she were nicely full; all the same, she had no idea what she ate.
When the room waiter had cleared away she undressed, had a bath and got into bed. She already owed for her dinner, she might as well owe for a night’s rest as well. She really didn’t care what they would do to her, although she wondered what the Dutch prisons were like. But her thoughts soon returned to Fraam. She would have to send him a message or write to him—probably from prison. She chuckled at the thought and the chuckle turned into tears until, quite worn out with her weeping, she slept.
She woke in the night, her mind clear and sensible; all she had to do was to telephone Jaap in the morning and ask him to send round her handbag. All the money she possessed was in it, and so was her passport. It was a pity she would have to leave her clothes behind, but they weren’t important; she would be able to pay the bill and go to Schiphol and catch the first flight possible. She wondered if she had enough money; as far as she could remember there had been all of fifty pounds in her purse, surely more than sufficient. She closed her eyes and slept again.
It was after breakfast, taken in her room, and an unsatisfactory toilet that she went down to the reception desk. There was another clerk on duty now, a sharp-faced woman who bade her a grudging good morning and asked her if she wanted her bill.
It seemed the right moment to explain. Lucy embarked on her story; she had left the house without her purse and could she telephone to have it sent to her at the hotel. It wasn’t until she had come to the end of it that she saw that the clerk didn’t believe a word of it. All the same she gave her the number. ‘It’s Mijnheer der Linssen’s house,’ she explained. ‘He is known here, isn’t he?’ And when the woman nodded grudgingly: ‘Well, I’m his fiancée.’ Too late she saw the woman’s eyes fly to her ringless hands. She had plucked off her lovely ring and left it...where had she left it? She had no idea.
‘I’ll call the manager,’ said the clerk, still polite but hostile. And when he came, elegant and courteous, the whole story was repeated, but this time in Dutch and by the clerk, so that Lucy couldn’t understand a word. At the end of it the manager spoke pleasantly enough. ‘By all means make your call, Miss...’ he refreshed his memory from the register before him, ‘Miss Prendergast. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind waiting in your room afterwards?’ He smiled. ‘Your handbag shall be brought to you there.’
Lucy sighed with relief and went to one of the telephone booths. Jaap sounded upset, but she didn’t give him a chance to speak. ‘My handbag,’ she urged him, ‘it’s on the dressing table in my room, please will you send it round as soon as you can? You do understand?’ She heard him draw breath and his hurried ‘Yes, miss,’ but didn’t give him a chance to say anything else. ‘And Jaap, don’t tell anyone I’m here—not anyone. Here’s the address, and do please hurry. And thank you, Jaap.’
She went upstairs at once since the manager had been so insistent; perhaps they thought it would be easier and save time if they knew where she was. It was a little irksome to stay there, though, for the urge to get away was getting stronger every minute. An hour passed and she became more and more uneasy; she didn’t think that it would take all that time to come from Fraam’s house, she decided to go down to the desk and see if it had been delivered and forgotten.
She had been locked in. She stared at the door in disbelief and tried the handle again, fruitlessly, and when she lifted the receiver no one answered. Not a girl to panic, she went and sat down and tried to think calmly. In a way it was a relief to have something to worry about; it stopped her thinking about Fraam. She thought of him now of course and tears she really couldn’t stop spilled from her tired eyes and ran down her unmade-up face. If he had been there, this would never have happened, she told herself with muddled logic. But he wasn’t there, he was in London, possibly even now waiting eagerly at the airport for Adilia. The thought made the tears flow even faster and she uttered a small wail. The sound of the key turning in the lock sent her round facing the wall so that they shouldn’t see her face. When the door was opened and shut again she cried in a soggy whisper: ‘Oh, do please go away!’ only to swing round at once, because of course if they went away she wouldn’t get her bag...
; Fraam was standing there with a white and furious face, her handbag in his hand. He said in a bitter voice she hardly recognised: ‘You wanted this? Presumably you left home so fast that you forgot it.’
He looked enquiringly at her, his brows raised, but she didn’t answer him.
‘You should be more careful,’ he told her. ‘You need both money and passport when you run away.’ His eyes swept over her tatty person. ‘Make-up too, and a comb.’
Surprise had checked her tears, but at this remark they all came rushing back again. How dared he poke fun at her! She meant to tell him so, but all she said in a wispy voice was: ‘They locked me in.’
His mouth twitched. ‘And quite right too. They weren’t to know whether you were lying or not, were they? And you were lying, Lucy. I found your ring in your teacup—an extraordinary place—so I must take it that you are no longer my fiancée.’ He added sternly: ‘There is a law against false pretences.’
It seemed to Lucy that she was getting nowhere at all. She had the right to upbraid him, but she had had no chance. To point out his duplicity, confront him with his two-faced behaviour. Suddenly indignant, she took a deep breath and opened her mouth. She was dreadfully unhappy, but an angry outburst might help her to forget that.
‘And before you launch your attack,’ said Fraam in a surprisingly mild voice now, ‘I want an explanation.’
She choked on the words she had been preparing to utter. ‘You want an explanation? It’s me that wants one!’ Her voice rose to a watery squeak. ‘Adilia said...’
‘Ah, now we are getting to the heart of the matter, the—er—nigger in the woodpile.’
Her rage had gone, there was nothing but a cold unhappy lump in her chest.
‘Don’t joke, Fraam—please don’t joke,’ and when she saw how good-humoured he was looking now, she added pettishly: ‘Why do you look so pleased with yourself? Just now when you came in you were furiously angry.’
He was leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets, looking, she was shocked to see, as though he was enjoying himself. ‘My dear girl, no man worth his salt likes to find his fiancée—ex-fiancée—locked in an hotel bedroom because she can’t pay the bill. Over and above that, I was roused from a night’s sleep by Jaap’s agitated request that I should catch the next plane and return home because you had left the house rather more hastily than he liked. I’ve had no breakfast and I’m tired, and until a few minutes ago, the most terrified man on earth. And now tell me what Adilia said to cause you to tear away in such a fashion.’
‘You went to London,’ Lucy pointed out in a wobbly voice, ‘and you told me you were going to Brussels, and Adilia said—she said that she was going to London too and that I was a parson’s daughter and you only wanted to marry me because she wouldn’t have you.’ She sucked in a breath like a tearful child. ‘And she said I’d have p-plain children, just like me.’
A spasm passed over Fraam’s handsome features. He dealt with what was obvious to him to be the most hurtful of these remarks. ‘Little girls with green eyes and soft mouths are the most beautiful of God’s creatures,’ he said in a gentle voice, ‘and as for the boys, they will be our sons, Lucy, with, I hope, their mother’s sweet nature and my muscle.’
He left the wall so suddenly that the next thing she knew she was wrapped in his arms. ‘You silly, silly little girl,’ he observed, ‘did you not know that I would come after you wherever you went?’
Lucy sniffed. It was very satisfying to feel his tight hold, but they still hadn’t dealt with the crux of the matter. ‘Adilia said...’ she began, and was interrupted by Fraam’s forceful: ‘Damn Adilia, but since you have to get her off your chest, my darling, let us hear what the woman said and be done with it.’
It was a little difficult to begin. Lucy muttered and mumbled a good deal, but once she got started the words poured out in a jumble which hardly made sense. But Fraam listened patiently and when she paused at last, not at all sure that she had made herself clear, he had the salient points at his fingertips. ‘Dear heart, will you believe me when I say that Adilia has never, at any time, stayed at my house? There was nothing of hers in the Brocade Room or anywhere else in my home. Why should there be? You have been the only girl, Lucy. She was making mischief—people do, you know; they’re bored with their own lives and it amuses them to upset those of other people.’
‘Of course I believe you,’ declared Lucy, and added after a moment’s thought: ‘You went to London—she asked Jaap, you know, and he told us. Because I didn’t believe her.’
‘I went to London, my dearest darling, to see the Senior Nursing Officer of St Norbert’s, for it had become increasingly clear to me that getting married to you was more important than anything else and all this hanging around for a month until you could leave was quite unnecessary. I saw your father briefly too and asked him about a licence. If you would agree, we could be married within the week.’
‘But you didn’t say a word...’
‘I was afraid you would have all kinds of arguments against it, my love.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘No time to buy clothes, you would have said, certainly no time to arrange for bridesmaids, no time to send out invitations...’
Lucy considered. ‘I don’t mind about any of those things,’ she told him, ‘though of course I must buy a dress...’
‘My dear sensible girl, and so beautiful too.’ And when she looked at him she saw that he meant it. ‘At your home? And your father, of course. My family can fly over,’ his eyes narrowed in thought, ‘I’ll charter a plane.’
‘But that’s extravagant!’
‘Surely one may be forgiven a little extravagance at such a time, my darling.’ He loosed her for a moment, found her ring in a pocket and slipped it on her finger. ‘Why a teacup?’ he wanted to know.
‘I don’t know—I don’t remember, I was so unhappy.’
‘You shall never be unhappy again, dear heart.’ He kissed her slowly. ‘And now we’re going home.’
Lucy received the manager’s apology with a smile. She was so happy herself that she wanted everyone else to be the same, only she longed to wave her hand with the ring once more upon it under the clerk’s nose.
They hardly spoke as Fraam drove through the city. It wasn’t until they were in the hall with a beaming Jaap shutting the door on the outside world that Lucy spoke.
‘Fraam, were you ever in love with Adilia, or—or any of those girls you danced with at the hospital ball?’
He turned her round to face him, holding her gently by the shoulders.
‘No, my love, just amusing myself while I was waiting for you to come along, and when you did I was so afraid that you would have none of me...I think I am still a little afraid of that.’
Lucy flung her arms round his neck. ‘The first time you saw me—at that lecture, you looked as though you wanted to shake me.’
‘Did I? I wanted to get off that platform and carry you off and marry you out of hand...I fell in love with you then, my darling.’
She leaned back the better to see his face. ‘Did you really? And I looked such a mess!’
His hands were gentle on her. ‘You looked beautiful, my darling, just as you look beautiful now.’
She leaned up and kissed him. ‘That’s such a satisfactory thing to have said of one,’ she commented. ‘I’m not sure that it’s quite true, but oh, Fraam, I’m so glad I’m me!’
Jaap, coming from the dining room, looked carefully into the middle distance and coughed. ‘There is breakfast,’ he mentioned with dignity.
They both turned to look at him. ‘Jaap, old friend, you think of everything,’ remarked Fraam as Lucy left him to take Jaap’s hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ll be my old friend too.’
Jaap beamed once more. ‘It will be my pleasure, Miss Prendergast.’<
br />
He watched the pair of them go into the dining room and then closed the door. On his way to the kitchen he ruminated happily on the days ahead. Such a lot to do; a wedding was always a nice thing to have in a family. He nodded his elderly head with deep satisfaction.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460318676
Copyright © 1978 by Betty Neels
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.