Tulips for Augusta

by Betty Neels

  They went indoors, and presently, after she had unpacked in her own pretty bedroom, she went down to the kitchen, and carried the tea tray through to the sitting room on the other side of the flagstoned hall. There were flowers everywhere, and the furniture shone with well cherished age—it was a warm afternoon, but there was a small wood fire burning in the stone fireplace. She sighed contentedly. It was nice to be home again.

  After tea, she wandered outside with Stanley, the spaniel, walking sedately at her heels and the two Jack Russell terriers, Polly and Skipper, running in circles before her. She crossed the garden and went through the wicket gate at its end into a small paddock, used for convalescing horses and ponies, and permanently inhabited by Bottom, the family donkey. He wandered towards her now, nosed out the carrot she had thoughtfully brought with her, and allowed her to pull his rough furry ears and throw an affectionate arm about his neck. After a while, she wandered back again and in through the kitchen door, to sit down at the kitchen table and peel apples and talk to her mother, with Maudie the persian cat on her knee, and Fred, the battered old outcast tomcat who had latched himself on to them years ago, sitting beside her. They gossiped quietly until she bestirred herself to answer the telephone and fetch Charles.

  She spent the evening getting her things ready to go to Holland, but only after helping her father with his evening visits. Quite a few calls had come in during the afternoon. She drove him from one farm to the other and then back to the small surgery near the house, enjoying the unhurried routine. They sat a long time over supper that evening, for there was a lot to talk about. She hadn’t been home for several months; there was a lot of local news to catch up on, and she had plenty to talk about too, and presently, when the talk turned to herself, her father asked, as he usually did when she went home:

  ‘Well, Augusta, think of getting married yet?’ Her mother said gently, ‘How’s Archie?’

  Augusta bit into an apple with her excellent teeth. ‘Fine—but don’t get romantic about him, Mother. We like going out together, but he’s got years and years of work ahead of him and he’s ambitious, which means he’ll probably marry a girl with lots of money. I think I’m destined to be an old maid!’

  Which remark called forth a good deal of amused comment from her brother, a quiet. ‘Yes, dear’ from her mother and a grunt from her father.

  The next day went very quickly—too quickly, she thought, as she put the final touches to her packing in the evening. It was surprising how delightfully occupied it was possible to be, with no clock to watch and no reports to write, and feverish planning of off duty. She had, indeed, strolled down to the village stores and made a few purchases for her mother—an undertaking enlivened by a long chat over the counter with the grocer and any customers who had chanced to come into the shop—and in the afternoon she had got out the car and driven her mother down to the vicarage to join the committee organising the annual jumble sale. She had helped the vicar’s wife hand round the tea, and passed the time of day with the ladies present, most of whom had known her since she was a baby. And occasionally, much against her will, she had thought about the man who had sent her tulips because the sun had been shining.

  She thought about him again as she was going to sleep that night; wondering where he was and what he was doing. She wished she knew if he and Miss Belsize were…she sought for the right expression, and decided that ’emotionally involved’ would do very well. It was difficult to tell with those sort of people. She didn’t go too deeply into what sort of people they were—the subject was unrewarding; she pulled the blankets over her ears to shut out his too well-remembered voice, and went to sleep.

  Charles took her up to London the next day and put her on the Harwich train and rather unexpectedly kissed her goodbye. ‘Have fun,’ he said and they both laughed, for staying with the great-aunts, pleasant though it was, held few excitements. ‘Good for your Dutch,’ he added, as the train gave a preliminary shudder. ‘I’ll pick you up when you get back. ‘Bye.’

  She settled back in her seat and picked up Vogue, which Charles had thoughtfully provided for her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AUGUSTA, getting out of the train at Alkmaar, thought how nice it was to be in Holland again. She had forgotten how wide the sky could be, and how incredibly flat and peaceful the countryside was. And she was delighted too, that her Dutch, although a little rusty and slow, was still adequate. The station was a little way out of the centre of the small water-encircled town; she got herself a taxi, and spent the short ride rediscovering landmarks she had almost forgotten. Her great-aunts lived in a seventeenth-century house with a stepped gable in the heart of the bustling town; it was awkward by modern standards, with steep stairs, high ceilings and quantities of heavy furniture which needed constant polishing. But the bathroom and kitchen, though they might look old-world, were remarkably well equipped, and the house had the cosy air of having been built for comfort hundreds of years earlier, and having, through thick and thin, retained that comfort. Augusta loved it, and when, on occasion, she heard some sightseer or other remark upon its picturesque appearance, she was apt to swell with pride, even though her connections with it were extraneous.

  Maartje opened the door—she had been cooking and cleaning and housekeeping for the aunts for as long as Augusta could remember, and excepting for her hair, which had faded from pale corn to silver, she hadn’t changed at all. They greeted each other like the old friends they were.

  ‘Your aunts are in the little sitting room,’ said Maartje, ‘go straight in, Augusta, and I will bring the coffee.’

  Augusta made her way down the passage, narrow and panelled and hung with china plates and dim portraits; and knocked on the door at its end, and obedient to the quiet voice which bade her enter, went in. Her aunts were sitting as they always sat. At the round table in the middle of the room, both very upright in their straight, overstuffed chairs. The table had a finely woven rug thrown across it, upon which rested a Delft blue bowl filled with fruit. The windows, small and narrow, were hung with thick dark red curtains, and the wooden floor, worn and polished with its age, was partly covered with hand-pulled rugs. It looked exactly the same as when she had last seen it, three years ago…so did her great-aunts. Probably their clothes were different, for they were sufficiently well provided for to indulge in varied wardrobes, but as they invariably had their new dresses made exactly as those they were wearing, it was difficult to know this. They wore a great deal of black, the material being always of the finest and they each wore a quantity of gold jewellery, inherited from their mother, who had inherited it from her mother, and so on back over several generations, so that their rings and brooches and delicate dangling earrings were quite valuable. Both ladies were tall—a good deal taller than their great-niece, and they wore their hair in identical buns, perched high on their heads.

  Augusta greeted them warmly, for she was fond of them both—and they, she knew, were fond of her. She stood patiently so that they might take a good look at her and comment on her looks and clothes, and she was pleased and not a little relieved when they approved of her new green coat and matching dress. Then, at their invitation, she took the coat off, and sat down between them as Maartje brought in the coffee and little biscuits called Alkmaarse Jongens. She sipped the delicious coffee and ate the Alkmaar boys, wondering, as she always did, why the Dutch had such picturesque names for their biscuits. She must remember to take some home with her…the thought put her in mind of all the messages she had been charged to deliver. She gave them now, stopping to search for a forgotten word from time to time, and occasionally muddling her verbs. When she had finished, Tante Marijna observed in a gentle voice that it was a good thing that she had come to pay them a visit, for, although her Dutch was fluent enough, her grammar was, at times, quite regrettable. Tante Emma, who was the younger of the two old ladies, echoed this in a voice even more gentle, adding the rider that her English accent was fortunately very slight.

  ‘Y
ou shall do the shopping, Augusta, while you are with us—there is no better way of improving your knowledge of our language—and we will have a few friends in, so that you will have an opportunity to converse.’

  Augusta smiled and said with genuine pleasure that that would be nice, and how about her going up to her room so that she could unpack the presents which she had brought with her. The old ladies looked pleased and a little excited, and she left them happily engaged in guessing what the presents would be, while she went upstairs to the room in which she always slept when she paid them a visit.

  It was two flights up, and overlooked the street below—a rather small room, plainly whitewashed and furnished simply in the Empire style. The curtains were a faded blue brocade and the coverlet was of patchwork, made by the great-aunts’ mother before she married. There were a variety of samplers upon the walls—Augusta knew them all by heart, as well as the histories of those who had stitched them. She walked slowly round the room, looking at each in turn—it was a little like meeting old friends again—then she unpacked quickly and took her armful of parcels downstairs; pale pastel woollen stoles for the old ladies, warm sheepskin slippers for Maartje, English chocolates and homemade marmalade and tins of chocolate biscuits, and some packets of their favourite tea from Jacksons in Piccadilly. By the time all these delights had been tried on and tasted and admired, it was lunch time. The old ladies had Koffietafel at noon each day—a meal of rolls and different sorts of bread, with cheese and sausage and cold meat and a salad arranged before each place upon a small silver dish—and of course, coffee. Augusta, who was hungry after her journey, ate with a healthy appetite which pleased the aunts, who were, as far as she could remember, the only members of her family who had not, at one time or another, made some reference to her delicate plumpness. She still remembered how, when she was a little girl, she had paid them a visit with her parents from time to time, and they had staunchly maintained that she was exactly as she should be, remarks which had endeared them for always to a small girl sensitive to the word fat, and possessed of a brother who teased.

  The transient excitement of her arrival had died down by the evening, and when she got up the next morning, it was as though she had been integrated into the even tenor of their lives without any change in its placid routine. She went shopping after breakfast, and then, because there was no hurry, strolled down Houtil towards Laat, peering in shop windows until she fetched up in Vroom and Dreesman’s store, wandering happily from one counter to the next, pricing tights and undies and even trying on a few hats. But it was still early, and although the aunts had coffee soon after ten o’clock each morning, she could always get a cup from Maartje later. She turned her steps towards the Weigh House, because it was Friday and May and the cheese market would be in full swing. It was still a little early in the year for tourists, but there was a small crowd watching the cheese porters in their white shirts and trousers and coloured straw hats, going briskly to and fro in pairs, each pair carrying a large curved tray piled with cheeses between them. She had seen it all a dozen times before, but she stood and watched now with as much pleasure as though it was for the first time. The carillon was playing from the Weigh House tower too—she listened to Piet Hein and other Dutch folk songs she had half forgotten and then lingered just a little longer so that she could watch, as the clock struck the hour, the little figures of knights on horseback, high up on the tower, come charging through their doors, lances raised, while the clarion trumpeted over them. It made her a little late getting back, but the excuse that she hadn’t been able to leave the cheese market until the clock had struck was quite sufficient for her aunts. They were proud of their town and its traditions and found it quite proper that she should have wanted to renew acquaintance with one of her childhood’s pleasures.

  The days resolved themselves into a slow, smooth pattern of doing nothing much. Friends came to tea or coffee, until one afternoon a car was hired and the aunts, incredibly elegant, drove, with her between them to Bergen, a large village on the edge of the sand dunes bordering the North Sea, to visit family friends. Augusta had been a little amused at their sharp-eyed scrutiny of her person before they went. She had put on another dress, the colour of caramel and simply cut, with an important chain belt encircling her slim waist, and offset by the jade earrings her father had given her because they matched her eyes. Apparently her appearance pleased them, for they smiled in unison and nodded their old heads before embarking on the tricky business of getting into the car.

  The friends were elderly—a distant cousin and his wife. Augusta sipped sherry and made polite talk in her best Dutch and found herself wishing for a slightly younger companion. Her wish was to be granted, for presently the drawing room door was thrown open and a young man came in. She guessed he was a year or two older than herself, maybe twenty-five or six, and barely had time to wonder who he was before he had greeted everyone in the room and was standing beside her with their hostess. He was, it appeared, the son of another dear old friend. ‘Pieter van Leewijk,’ he murmured as they shook hands, ‘but call me Piet. I’ve heard about you, of course, and I daresay we may have met years ago when we were children.’

  He smiled charmingly, first at her, then at his hostess, accepted a glass of sherry, and steered Augusta over to the window. They stood side by side looking out across the broad road to the island of grass and trees in its centre, inhabited by a few small, graceful deer.

  ‘Such a nice idea,’ she remarked, ‘deer living in the centre of the village.’ She smiled at the young man, who wasn’t looking at the deer but staring at her. He spoke in Dutch. ‘You are fluent in our language—someone said you were a nurse. I always thought nurses were dowdy, worthy girls.’

  She raised sable brows. ‘Indeed? Perhaps you don’t get around a great deal.’

  He laughed. ‘I was paying you a compliment.’

  She decided that he was, but he sounded a little too sure of himself. She asked sweetly, ‘And you—what do you do?’

  ‘I’m a fashion photographer. You see, it was a compliment.’ He smiled again and took her glass. ‘More sherry?’

  She shook her head. ‘Tell me about your work—it sounds interesting.’

  It wasn’t. It took only a few minutes for her to realise that he wasn’t interested in anything else but beautiful models and how much money he could make, and how quickly he could make it. They went in to lunch, and inevitably, she found herself sitting beside him, with the older members of the party beaming at her, delighted with themselves that they had produced such a nice young man to entertain her. Only he didn’t; he wasn’t interested in anything she had to say—it was sufficient for her to say Yes and No and look suitably impressed. All the same, she tried her best to like him, for he was probably the only young man she would meet while she was in Alkmaar. He might even ask her out, and being a fair-minded girl, she was quite prepared to admit that she wasn’t quite as groovy as the models. Probably he found her dull—all the same, if he did ask her out, she thought she would go.

  He said carelessly, ‘You shouldn’t wear these new long skirts—they’re for tall, slim girls—long legs and…’ His eyes swept over her. They were eating a rich ice pudding with a great deal of cream. Augusta checked a desire to throw her portion into his smiling face.

  She said crisply in English, ‘Of all the insufferable, conceited bores that I’ve met, you’re easily the prize specimen! How dare you tell me what to wear, and—and criticize my legs? Keep your shallow-brained remarks for the bird-witted creatures you purport to photograph.’

  She smiled at him, her eyes like green ice, and was pleased to see him getting slowly red. She had been rude, but then so had he…and she had enjoyed every word of what she had said.

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know that I have a very good knowledge of English?’ he queried stiffly.

  ‘Why, I counted on that,’ she said quietly. She flipped her eyelashes at him, smiled without warmth and said for the benefit of anyone who m
ight have paused to listen to them, ‘How delicious this pudding is—how lucky I am not to have to diet.’

  They went back to the drawing room soon afterwards and she allowed herself to be drawn into a conversation on the subject of cheeses with her host, and later, when she took her departure with her two great-aunts and everyone was shaking everyone else by the hand, she allowed hers to rest a bare second in Pieter van Leewijk’s, and under cover of the hum of farewells, murmured, ‘Goodbye, Piet. So interesting meeting you,’ and gave him a naughty smile before turning away.

  On the way back to Alkmaar, the old ladies, on either side of her, discussed their outing. ‘Such a pleasant young man,’ remarked Tante Emma guilelessly, ‘perhaps he invited you out, liefje?’

  ‘No, Tante Emma, Pieter is a busy young man, you know…he’s going back to Utrecht this evening.’ She saw their old faces drop—they had always wanted her to marry a Dutchman. ‘I daresay he’ll be back,’ she added gently. ‘He told me a great deal about his work,’ and was rewarded by their pleased faces.

  They were almost home when Tante Marijna complained of feeling a little sick. Augusta thought that the excitement of the day and the rather rich food they had eaten might be the cause; all the same, she asked a few pertinent questions—the aunts were nearly eighty and were of the generation which stoically concealed goodness knows what behind a well-bred reticence—but the old lady would admit to no pain or headache or tingling of the fingers. Nonetheless, she readily agreed to go to bed early, and when Augusta suggested that weak tea and a bischuit would suit a queasy stomach, agreed to that too, and when Augusta went to see her, last thing before she went to her own bed, she looked comfortable enough, and assured her niece that she would sleep all night.