by Betty Neels
‘Go on,’ urged Britannia, and was disappointed when Emmie came in, taking charge with all the firmness of a trusted old servant, so that Corinne went obediently away and left her to help Britannia to bed.
But Britannia was too happy to lie awake worrying about Madeleine; she slept soundly on the thought that Jake loved her and they were going to marry very soon. This pleasant glow continued throughout the morning, and although no one actually asked her any questions, there was a good deal of family discussion in which she was included as though she were already one of them, and when after lunch Jake came home, he came straight to her room and with Zuster Hagenbroek’s assistance, took the strapping off the ankle, examined it at length, encased it in an elastic stocking, pronounced it well on the way to recovery and declared that he would be back in half an hour, during which time she could dress. ‘A stick and a strong arm is what you need now, we’ll try them out presently.’ He looked at Zuster Hagenbroek. ‘I think we can manage without you after today—if you can be ready, I’ll run you in after breakfast tomorrow.’
He went away, and Britannia got down to the business of dressing while Zuster Hagenbroek tidied the room and gossiped. She had heard about Britannia and the professor, she said happily, the whole household knew, and everyone was so pleased. She stopped to smile broadly at Britannia. Such a nice man he was too, very popular at the hospital and with an enormous private practice, but perhaps Britannia knew about that? And no puffed-up airs and graces, either, for all he was a wealthy man, but of course that wasn’t news… And when, asked the dear soul, was the wedding to be?
Britannia said that she didn’t know; nothing had been decided, but it would be a very quiet one. ‘And I hope that when I’m settled in you’ll come and see me, for you’ve been so kind—I don’t know what I should have done without you.’
Zuster Hagenbroek looked gratified. ‘Well, you’ve been a model patient—and here’s the professor back again.’
Britannia had done her face with extra care and brushed her hair until it shone. She had put on a tweed skirt and a pink woolly sweater which she knew suited her very well and now she turned to the door, her face alight with happiness as the professor came in. ‘Are you home for the rest of the day?’ she wanted to know.
‘I must go back to my rooms for an hour this evening—I’ve a couple of patients I have to see, but I’ll be back for dinner. How’s the ankle?’
‘Fine.’ She felt a little shy of him because this was the Jake she didn’t know very well, the calm, rather impersonal surgeon—not that she would have liked him to have been anything else while Zuster Hagenbroek was there.
He carried her downstairs, set her on a highbacked chair in the hall and fetched a stick from the wall cupboard. ‘I thought you might like to see over some of the house, darling. We won’t hurry and you can sit down every now and then, I know you’ve been in the sitting room and the big drawing room, but there are some quite interesting paintings and the silver is worth looking at too.’
He came over to her and pulled her gently to her feet and stood looking down at her, laughing. ‘Why do you look like that? Are you shy?’
She shook her head. ‘No, at least, only a little. You see, I don’t know you very well…’
‘My darling, but you do. The number of times you have pointed out my faults and given me advice as to how to overcome them…’
She stood within the circle of his arm. ‘I always thought you were such a bad-tempered man…’
‘I am, but not at the moment.’ He kissed her again. ‘Let’s start in the sitting room, shall we? We’re bound to meet the family, but we won’t let them hinder us.’
The afternoon was a delight to her; she had a natural flair for beautiful things and some of the portraits on the walls were beautiful, as were the silver and the porcelain in their great marquetry cabinets. They spent a long time in the sitting room before they inspected the dining room, the big drawing room, and a charming smaller room which was the little drawing room, with white-painted walls and soft pink and blue furnishings, little inlaid tables and a collection of watercolours hung on either side of the steel fireplace. Jake pointed out a Leickert, a van Schendel and a van der Stok which an ancestor had commissioned in the nineteenth century, and over and above those were a Carabain and two charming river scenes by van Deventer which he had bought during the last few years.
‘We shall be able to search for treasures together,’ he observed, and stopped to kiss her before picking her up and carrying her down a small staircase. ‘This is the oldest part of the house and on a different level. There’s a games room and a garden room and here at the end is the music room. Do you play the piano, Britannia?’
She hobbled to the baby grand piano in the big bay window. ‘A little.’ She ran her fingers up and down the yellowed keys and then sat down on the wide stool and tried a little Chopin. She played with spirit if a bit inaccurately, but she stopped when Jake sat down beside her and took over the tune.
‘No, go on, my love—I come here sometimes for half an hour, now we can share an added pleasure!’
He played well and with no tiresome mannerisms; they thundered through a mazurka and then skimmed through a waltz, and when they stopped Britannia said: ‘Jake, you play very well—I had no idea…’
He gave her a wicked glance. ‘We shall probably have a child prodigy.’
‘Oh, no,’ cried Britannia, ‘not a musician, they’ll all be brilliant surgeons like their papa.’
‘So I am to be rivalled in my old age?’
She answered him seriously. ‘Not rivalled, for you will have handed on your skill, just as your father did to you. And you’ll never be old.’
‘My darling, there is fifteen years’ difference between us.’ He had closed the piano and was leaning on it, looking at her with a little mocking smile.
‘Pooh, what’s fifteen years,’ cried Britannia with some asperity, and then suddenly: ‘You don’t think it’s too much? You don’t think that I… Jake, perhaps after we’re married you’ll wish we weren’t. You don’t know much about me and nothing of my family, would it be better if we waited?’
‘You have second thoughts?’ His voice was faintly cool and she hastened to protest.
‘Of course I haven’t, not for me.’ She frowned a little. ‘I think what it is, I wanted to marry you so much and now I’m going to and it doesn’t seem possible, it’s like a lovely dream and I’m afraid of waking up.’
‘Then I must convince you that you are wrong.’ Which he did to such good purpose that Britannia forgot all her doubts and kissed him back.
The garden room was full of colour even on the grey winter’s afternoon; they wandered around while Britannia admired the chrysanthemums and the forced spring flowers and an enormous assortment of house plants.
‘But it’s one person’s work,’ observed Britannia.
‘More or less—old Cor sees to this side of the greenhouses. When you can manage it, we’ll go and look at the gardens and the hothouses. Shall we join the family for tea, or would you like it here?’
‘They’re all going tomorrow, aren’t they? And they haven’t seen much of you.’ She would have liked to have stayed there alone with Jake, but it might look as though she wasn’t prepared to share him with his family. They went slowly through the house again and into the sitting room, full of people. The children were there too, the little ones under the wing of the two nannies, the babies on any lap which came handy, while everyone talked their heads off. Britannia, settled on a sofa with her foot up once more, was instantly absorbed into the cheerful gathering and now they spoke quite openly about her joining the family, laughingly warning her that New Year would be a splendid opportunity for her to meet even more of them. ‘You’ll have to open up all the bedrooms, Britannia, there are hordes of us; Emmie cooks for days before and Jake gives a dance; it’s tremendous fun.’
Britannia suppressed a tiny qualm; supposing she couldn’t cope with entertaining on that scale
? There would be any number of things she wouldn’t know, and would Jake expect her to know them? Just for a moment she thought of Madeleine, who would know exactly what to do on such an occasion and be relied upon to be a perfect hostess. And supposing she did something silly and Jake felt ashamed of her? She looked up and found the professor’s eye on her and he shook his head slightly at her and smiled, just as though he guessed what she was thinking.
He took her with him the next afternoon; he had patients to see at his consulting rooms and as he explained, it would be a good opportunity for her to see them and meet Mien, his secretary, and Willa, the receptionist and nurse. There were his two partners whom she must meet, too, he told her, but not just yet; one was on holiday, the other in Luxembourg. So Britannia, wrapped up against the cold wind and the fine powdering of snow which had begun to fall, was made comfortable beside him when he came to fetch her after lunch.
‘Warm enough?’ he wanted to know, sending the car towards Arnhem. And when she nodded, for who wouldn’t be warm in such a magnificent car? he went on: ‘I should like to wrap you in furs, my darling, but I think that you wouldn’t like that—not just yet.’
He manoeuvred the car past a string of air force jeeps. ‘I haven’t given you a ring, have I? But a ring is binding.’
Britannia didn’t know why his words should make her suddenly cold inside; after all, she had asked him to wait. She peeped sideways at him and saw that his profile was stern. She said meekly: ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ and when he didn’t say anything else she forbore from further speech. But when he drew up before one of the tall, narrow houses in a quiet side street of the city, the face he turned to her was quite free from any sternness.
‘Wait while I get you out,’ he cautioned, ‘and I shall have to carry you up the stairs—there’s a lift, but it’s out of order.’
His rooms were on the first floor, indeed they occupied the whole of it, three consulting rooms, a most comfortably furnished waiting room, a tiny office for Mien, a bespectacled, rather plain girl with a charming smile, and another small room used by Willa for any small treatment which might be necessary. Britannia was enchanted by it all and spent the ensuing hours sitting with Mien, whose English was really rather good, while Jake went away to see his patients.
‘It is a large practice,’ explained Mien, ‘and as well as his work here, the professor has many beds in the hospitals. He operates several times a week and also goes to Utrecht and to London and sometimes Vienna.’
And Britannia, anxious to know all there was to know about Jake, listened to every word. There was still so much to discover about him and not a great deal of time before they married. With Mien on the telephone beside her, Britannia went into a pleasant daydream; being married to Jake was going to be fun.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE OLD HOUSE seemed very quiet after everyone had gone the next day, leaving only Mevrouw Luitingh van Thien behind. The professor had left before breakfast and it was after that meal that his mother suggested that she might take Britannia over the rest of the house. ‘That’s if you can manage the stairs, my dear,’ she added. ‘Jake would not forgive me if I suggested anything which might harm your ankle.’
‘I can hop,’ declared Britannia cheerfully. ‘It’s much better, you know, and the elastic stocking supports it. I’d love to come with you.’
Their tour took most of the morning, there was so much to see: magnificent bedrooms furnished with what Britannia could see were valuable antiques, cunningly concealed bathrooms and clothes closets and a dear little room which had been called ‘Mevrouw’s kamertje’, a name which had been handed down from one generation to another without anyone really knowing why it should be so. It had a work table, its original silk lining still intact, though faded, and some small high-backed chairs which her guide assured her were most comfortable. There was a games table too, exquisitely inlaid with applewood, and a sofa table in the window, as well as an escritoire with its accompanying chair. The curtains were brocade in muted greens and blues and the highly polished wood floor had a scattering of fine rugs upon it. The only concession to modernity were the table lamps; little silver stands with peach shades which blended exactly with the room.
They sat there for a little while carrying on a placid conversation about nothing in particular until Mevrouw Luitingh van Thien remarked unexpectedly: ‘I have said nothing to you as yet, my dear, for Jake has told me that you want a few days in which to think over his proposal—indeed, he tells me that nothing has actually been settled, but I hope very much that you will accept him. I do not mind telling you now that I—in fact, all of us, have been very much against him marrying Madeleine de Venz.’ She sighed. ‘Not that he would have taken any notice of anything we might have had to say. You can imagine my delight, Britannia, when after years of dreaded expectation that he would marry her, he should meet you and fall in love with you at your first meeting.’
‘He intended to marry her.’ Britannia wasn’t asking a question but stating a fact.
Her companion corrected her, ‘No, my dear, she intended to marry him.’
Which remark merely substantiated what Britannia herself already knew. She picked up a dainty little figurine, admiring its vivid blue glaze and then looked at its base. ‘Longton Hall,’ she said absentmindedly, ‘mid-eighteenth century and quite charming. Madeleine hates me.’
‘Naturally, Britannia. You’re not afraid of her?’
‘Goodness me, no, mevrouw, not of her. She has become a habit with Jake—habits are hard to shake off. She has a lot that I haven’t—breeding and knowing how to do things and what to say, she knows all his friends and, I daresay, how he likes his house run…’
Mevrouw Luitingh van Thien snorted elegantly. ‘His servants dislike her, did you know that? Even the dogs avoid her.’ She glanced round at the two faithful beasts who had accompanied them silently and were now sitting between them. ‘And as for breeding, Britannia, I find your manners much more to my taste. She is sophisticated, certainly, and probably able to cope with any social occasion, but there is no warmth in her; her love for Jake, if one can call it love, is purely selfish; if he were to lose his possessions overnight or fall victim to some incurable illness, she would have no more to do with him. You, I know, would love Jake under any circumstance.’
‘Yes, I would,’ said Britannia baldly. ‘I’d starve for him. And if I thought I wouldn’t make him happy, then I’d go away.’
She frowned, for she hadn’t meant to be quite so dramatic about it; one’s thoughts sometimes sounded silly spoken aloud. But apparently Mevrouw Luitingh van Thien didn’t think so; she said approvingly, ‘I have always been sure of that, my dear.’
They sat in a comfortable silence for a few minutes and then went on with their inspection: the remainder of the bedrooms on the first floor, and at the back of the house, in the older part, the large nursery, very much as it must have looked when the professor was a small boy; there was a night nursery too, and a bathroom and tiny kitchen and several smaller bedrooms. They inspected it in silence until Mevrouw Luitingh van Thien remarked softly: ‘Jake’s nanny married when Corinne left the nursery—she has a daughter who is also a nanny—a pleasant homely girl, like her mother.’
Britannia went a bright pink, but spoke up in her honest way. ‘You mean she would come to us if we wanted her.’
‘Yes, my dear, that is what I meant. We had better go back the way we came; there is a small staircase at the end of this passage, but it is too narrow for you. We will leave the top floor until you can walk in comfort. There is a wonderful view from the parapet and when the children were young, we turned one of the rooms into a games room where they could play those noisy games young people love. The other rooms are for the servants—they have a sitting room there too, and Emmie and Marinus have a small flat, and there are the attics, of course, full of the odds and ends families accumulate over the years.’
They were making their way back as she talked and now Britann
ia was making her way clumsily down the staircase. At the bottom she said politely: ‘Thank you for showing me round; it’s quite beautiful. Would you mind if I put my leg up for half an hour before lunch? It’s a little uncomfortable.’
Which it was, but she wanted a little time to think, too. At the back of her mind she was worrying about Madeleine. She couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t do all she could to get Jake back, if she had ever had him… Britannia lay back on the sofa, determined to be sensible about it, think the whole thing out in a rational manner and make up her mind what to do. She didn’t get very far, of course; she knew what she wanted to do; she wanted to marry Jake and when he brought the subject up again, she would tell him that. Having settled everything in this simple fashion, she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
The professor came home after lunch, examined her ankle and pronounced it to be progressing splendidly, then suggested that they might drive to the outskirts of Hilversum and visit a friend of his, Reilof van Meerum. ‘He has an English wife, Laura—I think you might like each other.’
‘Don’t you have any more patients today?’
‘Lord, yes, but not until half past six at my rooms—I’ll have to go on to the hospital after that to take a look at one of my patients there, but I’m free this afternoon. Like to come?’
Of course she liked to go with him. Madeleine was forgotten, she put on her outdoor things and limped downstairs under his watchful eye. ‘You’re making astounding progress,’ he observed, ‘but go easy on the stairs, my darling, and use a stick for another day or two.’
It was a cold, crisp day and the road to Apeldoorn was beautiful in the thin sunshine. Britannia occupied the few miles before they joined the motorway in telling Jake about her morning, and they passed the time pleasantly enough as they raced towards Amersfoort, and if she was a little disappointed because he had nothing to say concerning their future, she was careful not to let it spoil her happy mood. They left the motorway at Amersfoort and took the road to Baarn, and a mile or two beyond that pleasant town, along a fine avenue lined with great trees, he turned in between brick pillars and along a short drive, to stop before a large square house with a stone balustrade and a massive porch.