by Neels, Betty
He didn’t speak on the way to Huys Oosterwelde. Only when they were in the hall and he was taking off his coat, he said over his shoulder, ‘Take Miss Greenslade into the small sitting room, will you, Goe-den?’ He followed her in and said ‘Sit down,’ in the same curt voice, so that she immediately and naturally refused, standing very straight beside a circular walnut table. He shrugged his shoulders and went over to the fireplace and stood looking at her.
‘Sophia, there is something I must tell you.’
She lifted her eyes briefly from the painstaking scrutiny she was giving the table. ‘No. I have already told you that I don’t want to hear. In any case, there’s nothing to tell. I saw you—both of you—in the hall last night.’
Max watched her through narrowed lids. ‘Yes? Go on.’
He strolled over to the french windows and let in Jack and Meg, who greeted him ecstatically before trotting over to the fire to spread themselves before its warmth. They had ignored Sophy, and Max said in a politely cool voice, ‘I must apologise for my dogs’ ill manners, Sophia.’ He had gone back to the fireplace to lean against it, and stare at her.
Suddenly her rage and misery and humiliation boiled up and out in a torrent of words she didn’t attempt to control.
‘Don’t dare call me Sophia to mock me! I hate you, and I hate myself for believing you last night and even more for forgetting poor Tineke—she was crying in your arms; breaking her heart, but how would you know that, for you have no heart. Oh, never mind me—I’m a nurse with no prospects and a plain face— fair game to such as you...’ She was checked momentarily by the blazing anger in his white face, but her own anger spurred her on. ‘But Tineke—how could you be so cruel? Why, you’re nothing but a playboy; unscrupulous, and selfish and arrogant, safe behind your money and position and name...’
‘Be quiet.’ His voice was soft, but the chill of it froze her very bones. ‘You’ve said enough, you don’t need to labour the point. I cannot force you to listen to me, nor do I wish to do so.’ He stirred Meg with a well-shod foot and went on in a quietly menacing voice, ‘I should warn you that I cannot allow you to say these things.’
Sophy put a hand on the table and stood very straight in defiance of her trembling legs. ‘I shall say what I like,’ she said defiantly. She broke off as Goe-den came in with a loaded tea tray which he put down on the table beside her and said, quiet-voiced,
‘I expect Miss Greenslade would like a cup of tea before she goes back, sir—I took the liberty of bringing it in a little early.’ He looked at Sophy in a fatherly way and murmured ‘Cook thought you might like to try some of her muffins, miss.’
His master, however, did not share his solicitude for his guests’ comfort. He waved a careless hand and said, ‘Miss Greenslade won’t require tea, Goeden, she will be returning immediately to hospital. Perhaps you will fetch the car—now.’
They stood in silence when he had gone, Max, his anger contained, relaxed, perfectly at ease. Sophy stood where she was, her anger gone, leaving her tired and listless; even in her low state of spirits able to appreciate the delicious smell coming from the muffin dish. There was bread and butter too, cut paper-thin, and tiny iced cakes. A cup of tea would be a great comfort. Her mouth watered; she had had no breakfast and only a pretence of dinner.
Max said suddenly from the fireplace, ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Yes,’ said Sophy simply.
He looked at his watch, and said at his blandest, ‘I’m sorry you are unable to stay for tea.’ He stood looking at her, laughing softly, his handsome head on one side the better to study her discomfiture.
Sophy gulped. ‘I hate you—do you hear?—hate you! I can think of nothing nicer than leaving Holland and never having to see you again!’
She took an urgent step backwards as he advanced towards her. It was of no use; he caught her by the shoulders with a grip that hurt and kissed her with slow deliberation, then let her go so suddenly that she had to clutch the table to keep on her feet. She put up a shaking hand and automatically straightened her cap, saying in a little voice, ‘Oh, why did you do that?’
‘My dear good girl—isn’t that what you would expect from a playboy—an ageing playboy?’ he added, on a bitter little laugh.
Sophy stared at his face. He didn’t look like Max any more; although he was laughing she knew that he was angry still. Some of the things she had said seeped back into her mind; they had been awful— horrible. An urgent desire to take them all back was frustrated by the return of Goeden, who looked reproachfully at the tea tray before informing them that he had the car ready.
Sophy turned to go; she had wanted to say goodbye, but if she spoke now she would cry. Max had said nothing at all. She went through the door without looking back.
Chapter 11
The morning’s list was a heavy one, and Sophy was glad of it. She welcomed the busy theatre routine as something familiar that she could depend upon. The first case was scheduled for eight-thirty, and came in promptly. Karel was anaesthetising; the change in his appearance was so marked that Sophy stared, wondering what could have happened to wipe away all trace of anxiety and worry from his face, but there was no time to talk, for Max, followed by Jan, had arrived promptly too. He wished her good morning, his eyes flickering over her as though she was someone he couldn’t quite remember having met; they looked like blue ice. It was after eleven when he called a halt for coffee, and the three men went into the office followed by a nurse with the coffee tray, but Sophy stayed behind, ostensibly to put more blades in the Hibutane. When the nurse came back with a message that Professor van Oosterwelde wished her to take her coffee with him, she hesitated, unwilling to make an intolerable situation even more so. But on second thoughts she realised that Max was doing the only thing possible; they would have to work side by side for another week at least. On the surface they would have to continue on a friendly footing.
As she went into the tiny room, Max got up from the chair. ‘Ah, Sister, there you are, do come and sit down.’ He spoke pleasantly, but his eyes were chill as they met hers; she guessed his beautiful manners were hiding anger and even dislike. She shivered and took the mug of coffee Jan was holding out to her, and was for once thankful when he launched into an involved query about English public schools. She had just finished a painstaking explanation of higher education in England, when she became aware that Max was speaking.
‘I have some good news for Sister,’ he announced quietly, ‘though I’m sure that you two are not likely to share her view. Zuster Smid telephoned me this morning—she is coming back this evening, to start work tomorrow. It seems she does not want the holiday she was to have had after her quarantine.’ He turned his head and looked at Sophy, sitting like a small whitefaced statue with wide, sad eyes, watching him. ‘We shall be sorry to see you go, Sister Green-slade, although of course we are delighted to welcome Zuster Smid back again. You have been an excellent Theatre Sister, and we have all enjoyed working with you.’
He smiled at her, his eyes hard, and Sophy closed her own for a moment, then opened them quickly because Karel van Steen was speaking to her.
‘You’re very white, Sophy.’ He looked at her kindly. ‘Has the surprise been too much for you?’
Sophy achieved a smile. ‘Yes, I think perhaps it was—but what a lovely one. I must see about my return home...’
Max cut in. ‘That has all been arranged, Sister. You are booked on an afternoon flight tomorrow; naturally you want to go home as soon as possible.’
It seemed he couldn’t get her out of the country fast enough. She heard Jan protesting, ‘But, Professor, Sister might have stayed a few days on holiday.’ He turned to Sophy. ‘I’d love to show you something of Holland; you can’t have seen much.’
Sophy smiled at him gratefully. ‘That would have been very nice, and thank you for thinking of it, Jan, but I promised my family that I would go back just as soon as I wasn’t needed here any more.’ She hoped she had made the lie sound convin
cing. She stood up and went on with a gaiety she wasn’t feeling, ‘Well, all this excitement has made me quite light-headed. I think I’ll go and check the instruments and get my mind back on my work.’
She smiled brilliantly at them all and went back to the theatre. She was far too seasoned a nurse to allow her private emotions to interfere with her job; she suppressed them sternly, and went about her work with her usual quiet competence. For once she was grateful for a curtailed lunch hour and the emergency appendix which had to be fitted in instead of a tea break. It was after six when they had finished and she took off the green gown for the last time and put it tidily in the bin. Max had disappeared, leaving the final stitching of the last case for Jan to do. He did it with his usual competence, then pulled off his gloves and wished her a regretful goodbye.
Karel, however, seemed disposed to linger. He looked at her curiously and asked, ‘Are you really glad to be leaving us, Sophy?’
She said, too promptly, ‘Oh, yes. It will be lovely to be home again.’
‘Have you been so unhappy with us, then?’ Sophy arranged the cutting needles in meticulous order and said carefully, ‘I’ve enjoyed my work here.’
He waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, asked, ‘Has Max said goodbye to you yet?’
She remembered the disastrous conversation at Huys Oosterwelde, and said, ‘No.’
Karel looked relieved. ‘Oh, well. He will.’
Sophy thought that this was unlikely, but there seemed no point in saying so: she merely smiled and Karel went away, looking uncertain.
It was easier saying goodbye to the nurses in the ungrammatical mixture of English and Dutch words which had served them so well during her stay. The last one went away, and she was left in the theatre alone. Beyond saying goodbye to the Directrice and her personal farewells to some of the Sisters, she had finished at the hospital. She collected her cape and handbag and started off along the complex of corridors which would lead her to the nurses’ home. It was a good thing that Max had gone; she wouldn’t have known what to say to him. She rounded a corner, and there he was, talking to two of the surgical housemen. He looked up and watched her pass by, his face carved in granite. She no longer existed for him, she told herself fiercely; she was glad that she had said all the things she hadn’t meant to say at all, but which had somehow tumbled out. She started to climb the stairs. Perhaps he would be happy again once she had gone. She stumbled a little, small and forlorn, and Max, who could see her from where he was standing, suddenly turned his back on the sight of her and strode away, leaving two astonished young men in mid-sentence.
* * *
Sophy sat in her room the next morning, doing nothing. She had said goodbye to the Directrice, who had been charming; and to the Sisters whom she had grown to like so much, and now, because she had got up very early to finish her packing, she had nothing more to occupy her. At five o’clock, unable to sleep, it had seemed a sensible idea to occupy herself with the numerous little jobs which would make day seem nearer, but now she saw her mistake. She looked at her watch: it was barely midday. The taxi—for Max had arranged for a taxi too—would fetch her at half-past three. She could go out, she supposed, and decided against it, refusing to admit to herself that she wanted to stay under the same roof as Max until the last minute. There seemed little point in going to lunch; she sat on her bed, contemplating her shoes, her thoughts jostling each other around her tired brain.
When somebody knocked on the door, she called ‘Come in’ without looking up. The maid for the bed linen, probably.
It was Tineke van der Wijde. Sophy got off the bed, but before she could speak, Tineke said, ‘Sophy, I had to see you—Karel telephoned me. It’s a surprise, your leaving like this. I mean, I thought you would be here for another week.’
Sophy, white-faced, pulled forward the little easy chair by the window. ‘Please sit down. I’m glad you’ve come. I—I wanted to see you, but I didn’t think that you would want to see me, so I wrote you a letter; I was going to post it at Schiphol’ She watched Tineke unfasten her fur coat and sit down. She looked radiant—probably she had seen Max...
‘I want to tell you how sorry I am,’ began Sophy, ‘about last night. I’m so ashamed. You see, I like you; I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, and I did. When I saw you and Max in the hall afterwards I felt so small and mean—could you forget about it? You see, it doesn’t matter—Max was only—he didn’t mean anything, you know.’ She stopped a minute to steady her voice. ‘I’ll be gone in an hour or two, and you’ll forget me, and I know Max will be glad that I’ve gone.’
Tineke sat forward in her chair. ‘You love Max, don’t you, Sophy?’
Sophy looked up briefly. ‘Yes. But I shall get over it.’
‘Karel says that you and Max have quarrelled—oh, Max said nothing, but Karel could see... Did Max talk to you last night?’
‘No, I left early.’
‘Because you saw me and Max in the hall, and I was in his arms?’
‘Yes.’
Tineke got up and walked over to the bed, where she made herself comfortable beside Sophy. ‘Now, listen to me,’ she said. ‘There is a great deal you should know. I have been a fool; I should have told you right at the beginning, for Max would not, for it is not his secret, but mine—mine and Karel’s.
‘Until last night, Karel had a wife—hopelessly insane for nine years. He and I—we have loved each other for many years. I will not tell you all now, there is no time—but we were young together. When my husband died, I came back to Holland, and Karel and I knew that we had not changed. But Karel was a doctor with a fine career and he was a Roman Catholic too—so you see, there could be no divorce. Max knew about us; he has been our friend since we were at school together. He saw that we could not go on as we were—meeting by chance at some dance or party, never to be alone together, so one day he said to me, ‘‘Tineke, you and I are going to become very close friends, so that in a little while everyone will think that one day we shall marry. We shall go everywhere together and you shall spend each weekend at my home, and I promise you that Karel shall be there too, and no one will need to know.’ Dear Max! So many dances he has taken me to, so that I might dance just once with Karel, and so many dull evenings at Huys Oosterwelde, sitting in his study, so that Karel and I could be alone together. We went to the nursing home last night—Max and Karel and I— and Max went back before us because he said he had to talk to you, but of course, you were not there. But now everything is all right, for you know now that Max and I do not love each other at all, and you will have time to see him now, and explain.’
She got up and fastened her coat and bent and kissed Sophy on the cheek. ‘I am so happy,’ she said, ‘I want you to be happy too. You are so right for Max.’ She smiled. ‘And now Karel and I can marry.’
When she had gone, Sophy went back to the bed and sat down again. If she hadn’t behaved so badly towards Max she could have gone and found him. As it was, she would have to sit where she was, waiting for the taxi to take her on the first stage of her journey home. She hadn’t realised until that moment that Max had deliberately called Zuster Smid back so that he could send her home as soon as possible. Two tears rolled down her cheeks, and she wiped them away angrily. She had only herself to thank, nothing had been altered. There was something she could do, though, something she owed Max. She rummaged round in her luggage and found her writing case, opened it, then went and sat at the little table by the window, but the right words wouldn’t come; after a long while, she looked at her watch and saw that it was three o’clock. She put it away again and fastened her baggage, dressed herself in her thick tweed coat and the little fur hat and went downstairs to the front hall, where she found Hans. She asked him to send a porter for her bags and take them out to the taxi when it arrived, and ask the driver to go round to the side exit from Out-Patients. She wished Hans goodbye, and then, before she could change her mind, started down the passage leading to Out-Patients.
> There weren’t many people in the waiting room; two elderly ladies having a cosy gossip about their insides, an old man reading a newspaper and eating a roll out of a bag, and a young frightened girl. Sophy made her way over to the little desk in the corner, smiling at the girl as she passed her, for she looked lonely. The nurse on duty was one Sophy knew slightly. She looked up and said in surprise, ‘I thought you had gone, Zuster Greenslade.’ She spoke in Dutch, and Sophy who had tried very hard with the language, said ‘Nog niet, Zuster,’ with a vile accent, and tried to think of some more Dutch words, but there was no time to waste, so she said in English,
‘May I see Professor van Oosterwelde, please?’ The nurse understood. ‘I tell him,’ she said cheerfully, and got up.
Sophy said ‘No!’ so sharply that the nurse looked at her in astonishment. It was fortunate that a patient came out of the surgery at that moment. Sophy went to the door, regardless of the indignant voice of one of the gossiping ladies who was next. ‘Five minutes,’ she said imploringly over her shoulder, and went in.
Max was sitting at his desk, writing up notes; he didn’t look up but said in Dutch, ‘Come in and sit down, please.’ After a minute he pushed the papers away and saw who it was. Sophy watched his face empty itself of all expression, so that it wasn’t Max at all, but a polite, bland mask. She glanced at the clock on the wall; the second hand had already swept away one of her precious minutes. Max looked at the clock too and said, with a cold courtesy belied by the blaze of anger in his eyes,
‘This is unexpected; I regret that I am unable to see you...’ He waved a hand at the pile of notes on the desk. ‘Your taxi will be waiting, should you not go? You don’t want to miss your plane.’