by Betty Neels
Olympia rubbed a sore knee and looked up at her rescuer; a large man, very tall and not so very young; forty, she judged, with pale coloured hair heavily sprinkled with grey and a handsome face which rather took her breath. Such men seldom came her way, and now, she thought with regret and annoyance, she had to be fool enough to fall down so absurdly-her suit would be a mess too-she glanced down at it and he spoke. He had a nice voice too, slow and deep and faintly accented. "Not much harm done, I think-sore knees perhaps, and a bruise or two…'
She answered him shyly. "I was really more bothered about my clothes."
His blue eyes studied her without haste. "Nothing a clothes brush can't tackle." He dropped his hands from her shoulders and went on with casual friendliness. "Were you going to the exhibition? If so, I daresay an attendant could find a brush for you."
She nodded once more. "But I think I'd better go home."
He gave her another long, considered look. "Surely no need for that? I suggest that you go and tidy yourself, and be sure and wash your grazes with soap and water. I'll wait and we'll walk round together."
His cool command of the situation should have nettled her, but it didn't. "But…' began Olympia.
He interrupted her crisply. "We will introduce ourselves," his voice became mild, "and then all will he most proper, will it not? I'm Waldo van der Graaf," he held out a large hand and she put hers into it and he wrung it gently.
"Mine's Randle O-Olympia."
He showed no signs of amusement but queried: "You are not married?"
It was more of a statement than a question, and she winced a little that he should have taken it for granted, though heaven knew by the look of her he had no reason to suppose otherwise. She said, "No," rather defiantly.
They went inside then and she found herself, after her companion had murmured briefly to one of the attendants, being led away to a cloakroom, where mindful of the large man's words, she washed the dirt from her knees and then stood patiently while the attendant got to work on the stains. She looked a little better then, but still woefully inadequate to be a companion to such a handsome and distinguished-looking man. She went back into the entrance hall, half expecting him to be gone, but he was still standing where she had left him, studying a catalogue in an unconcerned way, as though he had all the time in the world before him. He looked up as she reached him and smiled, and then without speaking took her arm and ushered her into the first room.
They didn't hurry, and she was so absorbed that she didn't notice the time; it was delightful to be with someone who actually listened to her, and even shared her tastes, and when he didn't, refrained from ramming his own down her throat. They were still lingering in the last room when she happened to see a clock.
"I must go," she declared, appalled. "It's almost half past four, the bus queues will be packed if I don't hurry-I'll never get back in time."
He gave her a quick side-glance. "You have to return at a certain time?"
She told him, guardedly, about Aunt Maria and Mr Gibson coming to supper. "So you see, I must…' she smiled at him, feeling as though he were an old friend. "It's been a lovely afternoon, thank you."
She held out a hand, but instead of shaking it he took it between his own. "You have to be back by six o'clock? Time enough for a cup of tea together, and it just so happens that I have to go to-er-Hampstead this evening. I should be delighted to offer you a lift in my taxi."
She eyed him uncertainly. "But won't it be…? That is, you won't mind? And you'll be sure and get me there by six?"
He smiled down at her, kind and reassuring and yet casual. "Cross my heart-is that not what you say in English?"
They had walked slowly out of the entrance and down the steps as they were talking. "You're not English?" Olympia wanted to know.
"Dutch, but I come often to England-I have English relations." He lifted a hand at a passing taxi and settled her into it, then got in beside her. She heard him say: "Fortnum and Mason, please," with a sudden childish excitement; she had never been there in her life, not inside at any rate. She said now a little anxiously: "I'm not dressed for a super place like that," and was instantly and ridiculously reassured by his quiet: "You are very nicely dressed, Miss Randle."
All the same, she was a little apprehensive as they seated themselves in the elegant tea-room; the place seemed to her excited mind to be full of fur coats and what the fashion magazines always referred to as little dresses, which cost the earth, she had no doubt. She took off her headscarf and smoothed her neat head with a nervous hand and met his eyes, twinkling nicely, across the table. "Tea?" he inquired. "Earl Grey, I think-and buttered toast and little cakes." His firm mouth turned its corners up briefly. "I enjoy your English tea."
She enjoyed it too; her companion had the gift of making her feel at ease, even amongst the Givenchy scarves and crocodile handbags. She found herself telling him about Aunt Maria and the nursing home and then stopped rather suddenly because she was being disloyal to her aunt and he was, after all, a stranger. He didn't appear to notice her discomfiture, however, but talked on, filling awkward pauses with an easy blandness, so that by the time she got up to go she was a little hazy as to what she had actually said.
He talked nothings in the taxi too, so that by the time they arrived outside the nursing home she had quite forgotten, for the time being at least, a good deal of what they had talked about during tea.
He got out with her and walked to the door and when she had bidden him good-bye and opened it, he gave the cold, austere hall the same shrewd look as he had given her, but he made no remark, merely said that he had enjoyed his afternoon without evincing any wish to see her again, as indeed, she had expected. She was not, she reminded herself sadly, the kind of girl men wanted to take out a second time; she had no sparkle, no looks above the ordinary, and living for years with Aunt Maria, who liked to do all the talking, had hardly improved her conversation. She wished him good-bye in a quiet little voice, thanked him again, and went into the house.
If she was more subdued than ever that evening, her aunt was far too absorbed in her conversation with Mr Gibson to notice; certainly she had no time to question her niece as to how she had spent her afternoon, something for which Olympia was thankful. She got the supper and cleared it away again, then went to her room with the perfectly legitimate excuse that she was on duty early the next morning. But she didn't go to bed immediately; she sat and thought about Mr van der Graaf; she thought about their tea together and then, a little uneasily, of the things she had told him; she was still hazy as to exactly what she had said, but as she would never see hirn again, she consoled herself with the fact that it wouldn't really matter, he would have forgotten her already; he had whisked in and out of her life, large and elegant and very sure of himself. Olympia sighed, frowned at her reflection in the old-fashioned dressing-table mirror, and went to bed.
CHAPTER TWO
THE next few days went quietly by. The local doctors made their visits and relations made their infrequent appearance, and Olympia went about her duties with her usual quiet competence, and very much against the counsel of her common sense, found herself thinking far too much about the man she had met so unexpectedly. It took her several days to discipline her thoughts into more workaday channels, and she had just achieved this laudable object when she went to open the street door because the daily maid hadn't come that day, and found him on the doorstep. Not alone-he was with old Doctor Sims. Doctor Sims was an old dear, kind and wise, and despite his advanced years, still clever. He was untidy, too, and rotund and addicted to smoking cigars. He had one in his mouth now; the ash from it fell on to his coat and he flicked it on one side with an impatient finger which scattered it disastrously.
He said cheerfully: "Morning, Olympia don't stare so, girl, you've seen me a hundred times, anyone would think that you were seeing a pair of ghosts." He waved a careless hand at his companion. "This is Doctor van der Graaf, son of an old friend of mine, now alas, dead. I
've brought him along to see Mrs. Parsons."
Olympia stood aside to allow them to pass her into the hall, said: "How do you do?" to the Dutchman's sober tie and shut the door carefully behind them. He answered her with a casual friendliness which took away her awkwardness immediately. "Hullo again-have the bruises gone?"
She nodded, on the point of finding her surprised tongue, when Doctor Sims asked testily: "Where's the girl who opens the door? Why are you doing it?"
"She's taken a day off-she does sometimes, and nobody says anything because daily maids are hard to get. My aunt's out. I'll take you up to Mrs. Parsons, shall I?"
The old gentleman grunted, flicked ash on to the pristine floor and took off his overcoat.
"Well run place," he mumbled to no one in particular. "Clean-food's quite good too. Warm enough, plenty of bed linen, but it's all too stark, not enough nurses either. Your aunt's a woman to make a success of a place like this though-gets a packet out of it, I don't doubt. But you do the work, don't you, Olympia?"
He started up the stairs with her behind him, trying to think of some suitable reply to make to this remark, and behind her came Doctor van der Graaf, silent but for his few words of greeting. Despite his silence, though, she was intensely aware of him, and as they reached the first floor she was annoyingly sure that her appearance could have been improved upon; her hair had escaped from the severely pinned bun and was bobbing around her ears in wispy curls. She put up a tentative hand and arrested it in mid-air when he said quietly: "It looks nice like that, leave it alone."
She didn't turn round, though she put her hand down again as she led the way up the next flight of stairs and then pausing to allow Doctor Sims to regain his breath, started up the last narrow staircase.
Mrs. Parsons shared a room on the top floor with three other old ladies because the pension she received as a rather obscure Civil Servant's widow didn't stretch to anything else. She was very old now, afflicted with a variety of minor ailments and quite alone save for a nephew who came to see her at Christmas, who criticized the treatment she was receiving, presenting her with a box of rather inferior handkerchiefs when he had done so, before returning to some obscure country retreat. No one, certainly not his aunt, took much notice of him, and Olympia, backed up by Doctor Sims, had done her best to act as substitute for the family she no longer had.
She was a garrulous old lady, given to repeating herself continually and forgetting what she had said as soon as she had said it, but the two doctors sat down beside her chair and talked pleasantly about the small things which might amuse her, and listened with patient kindness to her jumbled answers. She had accepted Doctor Sims' companion without surprise, merely stopping to ask him every few minutes what his name might be, and each time he answered with no sign of impatience. Olympia, straightening beds nearby, decided that he was the nicest man she had ever met and certainly the handsomest, and when he looked up suddenly and smiled at her, she smiled back, the whole of her quiet little face lighting up.
The two men went away presently and Olympia stifled disappointment because Doctor van der Graaf said nothing more than a brief good-bye. Making beds after they had gone, she told herself that she had no reason to be disappointed; he had asked after her bruises, hadn't he? and said hullo and good-bye. What more could she expect? Distinguished and goodlooking men who wore gold cuff links and silk shirts and exquisitely tailored suits wouldn't be likely to look twice at a rather colourless girl who, even if she had had warning of a meeting, would still have looked unremarkable despite all her best efforts. He had been nice about taking her to tea at Fortnum and Mason, though, and he had told her to leave her hair alone and it had somehow sounded like a compliment.
She dropped the blanket she was spreading and went to the mirror over the washbasin. Her face was faintly flushed with the excitement of the visitors and the exertion of bed-making, so that her hair was still curling in little tendrils round her ears. She gave one an experimental tug and then let it go; the front door below had closed with the decisive snap which was the hallmark of Aunt Maria's comings and goings. Olympia turned away from the mirror, finished the bed and went soberly downstairs; her aunt would expect her to go immediately to her office and render an account of what had happened during her absence.
Aunt Maria dismissed the visitor with a shrug; Doctor Sims had a habit of bringing friends with him from time to time; they seldom returned, she didn't even inquire closely about him, so that Olympia was saved the trouble of saying much about him, something she had felt curiously unwilling to do; he was a secret, a rather nice one and the only one she had. Her aunt dismissed her with a curt nod and sent her back to her duties without any further questions.
Doctor van der Graaf came exactly two days later, although Olympia was unaware of his visit until Miss Snow came fluttering upstairs with a message that she was to go to her aunt's office immediately. Olympia consigned old Mr Ross, tottering to slow recovery after a stroke, to Miss Snow's care and went slowly downstairs, wondering what she had done wrong now.
She was quite unprepared for the sight of the Dutchman sitting calmly in the chair opposite her aunt's desk, the very picture of a man who was confident that he would get his own way. He got up as she went in, smiling a little at her surprise, and said easily: "Good afternoon, Miss Randle. I have been persuading your aunt to allow you to act as guide; there are things I wish to purchase and I am woefully ignorant as to how to set about my shopping. I remembered you and I wondered if you would be so kind?"
"Oh, that would…' She paused and began again. "You're very kind to think of me, but I'm working until eight o'clock."
Miss Randle interrupted her in an irritable manner; she wasn't used to people riding roughshod over her wishes, but she seemed quite unable to argue with this tiresome giant of a man. "I will make an exception, Olympia, you may take your free time this afternoon, but you will, of course, return to evening duty at half past five."
It was barely half past two; Olympia murmured dutifully and got herself out of the room; her aunt would have to take over until she got back, there were no other trained nurses on duty-she might change her mind, thought Olympia, desperately tearing off her uniform and putting on the tweed suit like lightning. Thank heaven it was a fine day even if cold. She did her hair with a speed which did nothing to improve her appearance, tucked a silk scarf given her by a grateful patient round her neck, snatched up her gloves and bag and raced upstairs. He was still there. He took a leisurely farewell of her aunt, assured her of his gratitude, opened the door for Olympia and closed it with firmness behind him.
"What do you want to buy?" asked Olympia at once.
He stood on the pavement outside the house, deep in thought. "Well, let me see, something for Ria-my little daughter, you know. She is almost five years old and very precocious, I'm afraid. Her mother died a week or so after she was born."
Olympia restrained her feet from the impatient dance she felt like executing; any moment Aunt Maria might change her mind and they were still standing just outside the door. Quite shocked at what he had told her, she said, "I'm sorry," and felt inadequate. Of course he would have been married; men like him didn't go through life like monks; perhaps he had loved his wife very much, perhaps he was still grieving for her. She tried again. "It must be terrible for you."
He looked taken aback, but only for a moment. "Ria is a handful," he said blandly. "Shall we go?"
They went to Selfridges, this time to the toy department, where, after a prolonged tour of its delights, Olympia, asked to choose a suitable present for a five-year-old girl without worrying too much about the price, picked out a doll's house. It was a thing which she herself would have loved to possess and never had; it was furnished down to the last miniature saucepan in its magnificent kitchen, and was everything which a little girl could wish for. She spent a long time hanging over it, switching on the lights, opening and shutting the miniature doors, rearranging the furniture. When at last she looked up it was t
o find her companion's blue eyes regarding her with a tolerant patience which coloured her cheeks with guilty pink. She said apologetically: "I always wanted a doll's house-your little daughter will love this one."
She watched while he wrote a cheque for it-a fabulous sum, she considered, and fell to wondering how it was that he was able to write cheques when he was a Dutchman, living, presumably, in Holland. She spoke her thought. "You live in Holland, don't you?"
He smiled. "Oh, yes-I have a large practice in the country town called Middleburg. That is my home, but I do a good deal of lecturing, some of it in England."
So that accounted for the cheque book. "Have you been here ever since we-since you helped me that day?"
"No. I wished to see you again, so I came over three days ago."
She had nothing to say to that, and anyway the saleslady wanted to talk to him about the packing up of the doll's house. When he turned to her again it was only to say: "I think we have time for tea before you have to be back. Shall we go to Fortnum and Mason again, or would you prefer somewhere else?"
Olympia could not, from her limited experience, think of any place to better it, so she murmured a polite: "That would be nice," while her sober head buzzed with the effort of guessing why he had wanted to see her. They were in the taxi, travelling in a companionable silence, before a possible reason struck her. He was looking for a governess for his small daughter and had picked on her. The possibility of such a miracle filled her with a warm glow of delight, to be instantly quenched by the recollection of her promise to her aunt-only if she were to marry might she leave, Aunt Maria had said. She clenched the cheap handbag on her lap with suddenly desperate fingers so that her companion, watching her from his corner, asked: "Supposing you tell me what's bothering you?"
Her voice rose several notes in its urgency. "Nothing-nothing at all."