by Betty Neels
There was no expression on his face when he answered her. ‘No, Eliza had no idea of how I lived, but I must remind you that she is just as much a guest in my house as you are, Estelle. And in passing, I wasn’t aware that you had invited her. I believe that inviting my friends to my home is still very much my own affair.’ He got up from the table and went to kiss his mother. On the way to the door he said quite pleasantly:
‘Let me put you right on something; I like small women, just a little plump, and with no urge to be distinguished.’
This remark had the effect of putting a satisfied gleam into his parent’s eye, while Estelle, composed as always, turned to Doctor Peters and said in a low voice: ‘He is so changed, I feel that I no longer need to consider him…’
Eliza was in Professor Wyllie’s room, pottering around and wondering what she should do. Christian had said nothing about her going with him, and he had been in a nasty, cold temper; if she kept out of the way, he might go without her, and when they met later she could pretend that she had forgotten the whole arrangement. Better still, he might have forgotten about it too.
She was mistaken, for he came into the room at that very moment, wished his colleague a good morning and told her in a perfectly ordinary voice to get her coat and not keep him waiting. And something in his face caused her to obey him meekly without uttering a single word of dissent.
CHAPTER NINE
THE drive to Nijmegen was short and undertaken in silence. Eliza sat beside Christian in the Bentley convertible she had never seen before and which was still taking her breath at its subdued magnificence, and wondered what she was supposed to do. Would he put her down at some convenient spot in the city, and was she to make her own way back? Or would she be expected to meet him later? She was still mulling over these problems when they reached the city’s outskirts, and by the time she had paused for a minute or two in her thinking to look around her, he had drawn up before a narrow house, one of a row, in a quiet, tree-lined street with a canal running down its centre. Presumably this was to be the convenient spot. She undid her safety belt and put a hand on the door handle, but not quickly enough, for he was out of his own seat and had opened her door while she was still trying to turn its handle. ‘What time do you want me to be ready?’ she asked in a bright little voice.
‘Come inside and see my rooms,’ he invited without answering her question. ‘I’d like you to meet Ina, my secretary and right hand.’
Eliza felt an absurd jealousy of this paragon as they crossed the brick pavement and entered a narrow doorway. The house was used by several doctors, she saw, their names displayed on well-polished brass plates on the wall. Christian had the ground floor; he flung open a door and waved her into a pleasant room, empty save for a middle-aged woman in a white overall sitting at a desk under the window. She got up and smiled at them as they went in and spoke to him in Dutch, then when he introduced her to Eliza, switched over to English, her mild blue eyes studying her as she talked. She broke off in a few moments, however, to speak to Christian again, who answered her briefly, took Eliza by the arm and led her to a door at the back of the room. ‘My first patient is due in ten minutes, just time to see the rest of the place.’
But in his consulting room he made no effort to show her anything, but stood looking out of the window at the quiet street below. ‘I’ll be ready by half past eleven,’ he told her, ‘then I have a hospital round to do—say an hour. Would you like to come with me? I’ll get someone to show you round while I’m on the wards. I thought we might have lunch before we go back home.’
She was surprised and it showed in her face. ‘Oh, how nice! I didn’t expect…that is, I thought you would just pick me up when you’d finished.’
He smiled at her and she looked away quickly, because although she had steeled herself against his bad temper, she hadn’t expected that he would look at her like that, disarming her completely.
‘If you want to look round the shops—there are some rather nice ones—and come back here at about a quarter past eleven? So that we can all have coffee. You would like to have lunch with me, Eliza?’
She felt reckless under the dark-eyed, intent look. ‘Yes, very much, thank you. Would you tell me the name of this street in case I miss my way?’
He wrote the address down and gave it to her. ‘Have you enough money?’ he asked her matter-of-factly.
‘Yes, oh, yes, thanks. I don’t want to buy a great deal—presents, that’s all.’
He nodded and opened the door for her, and she crossed the waiting room which already held his first two patients, exchanging smiles with Ina as she went out.
She found the shopping streets easily enough and spent an hour buying cigars for her father, and for her mother a brooch, a garnet set in a gold circle, and then wandered round, to stare at the Town Hall and its statues and peer at the old houses with their quaint gables, but she didn’t go far because she was afraid of being late for Christian. As it was she was exactly on time, and the three of them drank their coffee together in the waiting room. She spoke little because she could see that Christian had instructions and notes to give to Ina, who scrawled away in shorthand and yet had time to ask kindly of Eliza if she had enjoyed her tour of the shops. They left her to clear up presently, and went out to the car, and for want of anything else to talk about Eliza made the observation that the Bentley was quite super.
Christian had eased it into the thin stream of traffic. ‘I’m glad you like her. She’s a beauty to handle and much roomier than the Porsche 911s I sometimes use. My mother has a little car of her own—a small Mercedes—and she’s a splendid driver, though I like Hub to be with her if I’m not there.’ He turned into a narrow street, going slowly. ‘My mother likes you.’
Eliza said readily: ‘And I like your mother; she’s kind and sweet,’ and then, afraid that it sounded as though she had deliberately left Estelle out of it, she added: ‘Estelle is very nice too.’ Perhaps she had offended him, for he made no answer. It was a relief when he turned into a large paved courtyard and stopped outside the hospital entrance.
He was met at the door by two house doctors and a pretty girl in nurse’s uniform whom he introduced as Lottie. ‘She will take you round the place,’ he explained. ‘Be back here within the hour, will you?’
He was gone, striding along the corridor without a backward glance; Eliza suspected that he had already forgotten her. Lottie, though, seemed to know a good deal about her and her English was excellent. ‘I am Hoofd Zuster of the Medical Floor,’ she told Eliza, ‘and you are that also, are you not? We will therefore go first to that part of the hospital.’
She led the way down the same corridor as Christian had taken and the pair of them wandered happily in and out of small, modern wards, each patient with his or her own intercom and a nurses’ station in each broad corridor. It was all well planned, light and airy, and the nurses looked exactly like the nurses in Eliza’s own hospital, and when she remarked on this, they had an interesting exchange of views about caps and uniforms and whether it was best to live in or out. They became so engrossed that they had to hurry through the Surgical Wing, the Children’s Unit and the Theatre Block, where they paused again to compare notes on the Intensive Care Unit, and only a glance at the clock prevented them from continuing this absorbing chat and caused them to hurry back to the entrance, to arrive just as Christian appeared in the corridor. Lottie went over to him and spoke laughingly, then said in English: ‘We have had so much to talk about, you must please allow Eliza to come again, for there is a great deal she has yet to see.’
He looked interested. ‘I’ll see that she does,’ he promised without saying how that would be arranged, so that Eliza guessed that he was just being polite, for as far as she could see, she would only be in Holland for a few more days. Professor Wyllie had finished his article and even allowing for a day or two’s holiday, he must surely be thinking of returning soon. She got back into the car and when he was beside her thanked him for a
rranging the visit. ‘Lottie was so sweet,’ she told him, ‘and I really enjoyed it.’
He started the car. ‘Yes, she’s very popular and the senior Sister on the Medical side. You liked the hospital?’
There was plenty to talk about as he drove through the city and out on to the motorway towards Arnhem, but presently Eliza broke off in mid-sentence to say: ‘We didn’t come this way this morning.’
‘No. We’re going to a place on the Rhine for lunch. The view is charming and I’ve booked a window table so that we can watch the barges going up and down the river.’ He turned to smile at her. ‘We’ll go home on one of the quieter roads and cross the river at Ochten instead of going through Nijmegen again.’
The hotel was rather splendid and its restaurant even more so. Eliza was glad that she wearing the good tweed coat and had put on the prettier of her two dresses, a pleasing garment of green and brown which matched her eyes. She saw Christian’s look of approval as they sat down, and glowed under it. But he said nothing, only called her attention to the promised view and asked her what she would like to drink. She chose Dubonnet and then, under his guidance, decided on Croquettes de Turbot Sauce Homard followed by a Soufflé aux Pêches. She wasn’t quite sure what this might be—a pancake with peaches didn’t seem quite exquisite enough for their surroundings, but the turbot was delicious, washed down with a Chablis which her companion assured her would make the meal all the more enjoyable. He was quite right; by the time the dessert arrived, she was feeling very much at ease with him. It was like being back at Inverpolly; they had quarrelled often enough while they were there, but there had been times when they had been good friends, just as they were now. She beamed across the table at him. ‘This is quite super, you know. What a lot I shall have to tell everyone when I get back!’
She eyed the confection on her plate and saw that it was very worthy of its opulent surroundings—peaches, Kirsch, apricot sauce and piles of whipped cream. She ate it with pleasure and no self-conscious remarks about putting on weight, while Christian ate his cheese and biscuits and watched her with a gleam in his eyes which she failed to see. They drank their coffee, still talking with the enthusiasm of two people who have discovered each other for the first time and then, quite reluctantly, went back to the car.
Perhaps it was the Chablis which emboldened her to ask: ‘Why were you so cross yesterday when I said I wouldn’t go out to dinner?’
‘I thought, mistakenly, that you didn’t want to come.’
‘Who told you that I did?’ she wanted to know suspiciously.
‘Estelle—at least, she felt sure that you did and refused because you had no dress to wear, although she didn’t say this until breakfast this morning.’
‘She said that?’ Eliza’s voice was a little shrill with indignation. ‘Well…’ words failed her. After a few minutes she said: ‘She was quite right, actually.’
He said gravely: ‘Yes, I supposed she was, but I’m ashamed that I didn’t think of it at the time; I was only ready to believe that you merely wished to vex me.’
They were going quite slowly along a country road, well away from Nijmegen. Eliza looked at the quiet fields sliding past, wondering how to answer that, and said finally: ‘No, I had no wish to do that, it’s just that I do vex you sometimes, don’t I, without meaning to—or most of the time anyway.’ She missed his little smile as she went on: ‘Thank you for my outing, it was kind of you.’
‘My pleasure. Besides, I wanted to take you to that particular restaurant, for it’s as pleasant by day as it is in the evening.’
Enlightenment was painful. ‘That’s where you all went last night?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer, because she was sure that it was so. ‘You took me there because of what Estelle said.’ Her voice trembled with outraged pride. ‘She didn’t ask you to take me?’
‘Of course not.’ His surprise was comfortingly genuine.
‘You invited me out of pity…’ She stammered a little, her pretty face quite pink.
He drew into the side of the road and switched off the engine and turned to face her. ‘No. If you remember I asked you to come with me to Nijmegen yesterday morning and I had already formed the intention of taking you out to lunch. Why are you so annoyed?’
It was difficult to put into words; in the end she gave up and said in a rather mumbling voice: ‘I’m not.’ There was really nothing she could add, she decided, and added with the air of someone making polite conversation:
‘When is Professor Wyllie going home?’
If he found the change of conversation a little unexpected he gave no sign. ‘The day after tomorrow, I believe.’
So that, thought Eliza, was that. She had achieved nothing; Christian would marry Estelle and be unhappy ever after, which was very silly, because it was evident to any female eye that Estelle rather liked Doctor Peters, who definitely liked her… What a stupid situation, when all it needed was one person to speak the truth. And now it was too late. She bit her lip with vexation, knowing that her hands were tied and even if she had succeeded in charming him away from Estelle there would always be the vexed question as to whether she had wanted him for his money. Perhaps it was better like this. She said overbrightly: ‘Don’t you have to get back for your patient?’
He had been watching her while she thought; now he laughed softly as he started the car, and she wondered why. She made stilted conversation for the rest of the short journey and once indoors, flew upstairs with a murmured excuse that she had things to do. She heard him chuckling to himself as she reached the landing.
She didn’t see him again until dinner time, and then everyone else was there too. She had already told Professor Wyllie about her outing; Mevrouw van Duyl was the only other person who wanted to know if she had enjoyed herself; Estelle and Doctor Peters were too engrossed in planning another trip to more Roman remains to do more than wish her a civil good evening, and Christian, when he joined them, was a charming host and that was all. What he was really thinking behind that bland face was anyone’s guess.
Eliza tackled Professor Wyllie about their return before he went to bed that night; she had made one or two efforts to speak to him in the drawing room after dinner and had been frustrated; the old man had gone off with Christian after half an hour or so and not returned until almost eleven o’clock, leaving her to keep Mevrouw van Duyl company while the other two continued making their plans for the next day. Eliza waited until her patient had made his good nights, then did the same and followed him upstairs.
‘Professor van Duyl tells me that you are going back to England the day after tomorrow,’ she began without beating about the bush. ‘You didn’t say anything to me, though. When exactly do you want to leave, because I’ll need to take a look at the car. Are we going back the way we came?’
He mumbled something about not being sure and then observed testily that he wasn’t in the mood to be plagued with a lot of planning at that hour of night. ‘Time enough tomorrow,’ he told her, and sent her off to bed.
Eliza wakened early, and unable to sleep again got up and looked out of the window. It was early February now and still winter, yet the garden carried a hint of spring in the morning half-light from a clear sky which promised sunshine later. And as she looked, Christian came round the house, striding across the lawn, Willy beside him. Presently, she knew, he would be going to his surgery and the hospital, and she thought wistfully that it would have been nice to have gone with him again. If Professor Wyllie chose to leave early the following morning, she wouldn’t see much more of Christian. It was a saddening thought, but she threw it off, got dressed and finding Professor Wyllie asleep, went downstairs to find Hub, who willingly enough allowed her to visit Cat, who had just enjoyed a good breakfast and was lying back while the kittens enjoyed theirs. The little beast blinked at her and purred, looking the picture of content, and Eliza said: ‘She’s sweet, isn’t she, Hub? I suppose Willy has gone with his master?’
‘Yes, miss, half an hour
ago. Would you like your breakfast now?’
She breakfasted alone, for it was still early, wondering as she ate at what hour the servants got up; the whole place shone and sparkled already and there was a cheerful coming and going of people, half of whom she hadn’t yet seen. It was fantastic, in this day and age, to come across a house so well run and so well staffed.
She was on her way upstairs again when she remembered something and ran down again to ask Hub, in the hall sorting the post: ‘Does Professor van Duyl really own the Lodge at Inverpolly?’
He had acquired his master’s calm way of never looking surprised. ‘Yes, miss. He hasn’t been there very often in the last few years, though, but only yesterday he was telling me that the place is to be decorated and refurbished.’
She longed to ask more questions, but didn’t like to. Christian had told her that Estelle didn’t like the Scottish Highlands, or had she changed her mind since his return? It seemed unlikely. Eliza recalled the lonely place with something like homesickness as she went slowly up the staircase again.
She spent a wretched morning, typing notes from Professor Wyllie’s spidery hand, for as he explained to her, there would probably be a second article in the course of time and Christian might as well be given some of the data he might require before they left. But she was finished by lunchtime and went downstairs to find Mevrouw van Duyl and Professor Wyllie drinking sherry together.
‘Estelle and Doctor Peters are out,’ explained her hostess in a dry voice. ‘Probably they have decided to return later in the day.’ She looked at Eliza with bright-eyed intentness. ‘Go and take that uniform off, child, and then come and have lunch; I’m sure you don’t need to be a nurse any longer. Why not go for a walk this afternoon? Just in the park, perhaps? There is a charming lake beyond the trees.’