by Betty Neels
The restaurant was down a passage, double-fronted and modern, and Mary Jane, by now famished, chose fillet of beef in shirtsleeves, because it sounded quaint and filling at the same time. She was given a dry sherry to drink before they ate; she would have preferred a sweet one, but somehow Fabian looked the kind of man who would wish to order the drinks himself and she felt certain that he knew a great deal more about them than she ever would; she might be a splendid nurse, a tolerable cook and handy in the garden, but the more sophisticated talents had so far eluded her. It surprised her when he suggested, after she had disposed of the beef in its shirtsleeves and he had eaten his carpet bag steak, that she might like to sample Robert’s Chocolate Fancy.
‘Women like sweet things,’ he told her tolerantly, and asked for the cheese board for himself.
Pope’s looked greyer, more old-fashioned and more hedged in by the towering blocks of flats around it than ever before. ‘You’ll have to see the Matron—you had better do that first,’ said Fabian as he helped her out of the car. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’
She declined politely and with secret regret; it would have been a pleasure to have walked through the hospital with Fabian beside her; she could just imagine the curious and envious glances that would have been cast at her.
He nodded. ‘Good. I’ve one or two things to do. I’ll be here at seven exactly.’
There was a great deal for her to do too. After the interview with Miss Shepherd, which was unexpectedly pleasant, there was a brief visit to Women’s Surgical, where Sister Thompson wasn’t pleasant at all, and then a long session of packing in her room. It was amazing what she had collected over the years! After due thought she packed a trunk with everything she judged might be unsuitable in a Dutch winter, which left her with some thick tweeds in a pleasing shade of brown, a variety of sweaters, a couple of jersey dresses and a rather nice evening dress she couldn’t resist taking, although she saw no chance of wearing it. It was pale blue and green organza with long tight sleeves and a pie-frill collar, and it suited her admirably.
When she had finished packing she went along to the sitting room, where most of her friends were having tea, and found so much to talk about that she had to hurry to complete the tiresome chores of handing in her uniform to the linen room and waiting while it was checked, and then running all over the home to hand in the key of her room, both tasks requiring patience while the appropriate persons were found, the right forms filled in and signed and the farewells made, but she was at the hospital entrance by seven o’clock, wearing the brown tweeds and a felt hat which did nothing for her at all. All the same, she looked nice; her handbag and gloves and shoes were good and the tweed suit and coat suited her small slender person.
She reached the door just as Fabian drew up and got out of the car. He gave her a laconic ‘Hullo’, put her case in the boot and enquired about the rest of the luggage.
‘It’s in my trunk—one of my friends will send it on to Mrs Body.’
‘Good. And Miss Shepherd—any difficulties?’
‘No, thank you. None.’
‘Get in, then.’
She didn’t much like being ordered about, she was on the point of saying so when those of her closer friends who were off duty or who had been able to escape from their wards for a few minutes arrived in a chattering bunch to see her off. They embraced her in turn and with some warmth, at the same time taking a good look at Mr van der Blocq, who bore their scrutiny with a faint smile and complete equanimity, even when Penny Martin, the prettiest and giddiest of the lot of them, darted forward and caught him by the arm.
‘Take care of Mary Jane,’ she begged him with the faint lisp which most of the housemen found irresistible, ‘and if you want another nurse at any time, I’d love to come.’
He smiled down at her, and Mary Jane, glimpsing the charm of it, felt quite shaken by some feeling she had no time to consider. He had never smiled at her like that; he must dislike her very much. The supposition caused her to be very quiet as they drove away from the cheerful little group on the steps, in fact, she didn’t speak at all until they had crossed the river, gone through Southwark and joined the A2.
‘You’ll miss your friends,’ commented her companion, slowing down for the traffic lights, ‘and hospital life.’ The car swept ahead again. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t go back to work there later on—you could spend your holidays in Cumbria.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that,’ declared Mary Jane, startled out of her silence. ‘I shall like living in Grandfather’s house and I shall find plenty to do. I shall miss Pope’s, of course, but not the ward I was on.’
He shot her a brief, amused glance. ‘Oh? Tell me about it.’
She did, rather haltingly at first, but he seemed interested and she found herself saying more than she intended.
‘There is certainly no point in you going back to Women’s Surgical,’ he agreed. ‘It sounds a joyless place, and your Sister Thompson needs to go on the retirement list.’
‘But she’s quite young, only forty.’
‘You think that forty is quite young?’
‘Heavens, yes.’ She broke off as he turned the car down a side road. ‘Where are we going? I thought this led to the M2.’
‘There’s a good place at Hollingbourne, and we have plenty of time.’
The restaurant was pleasantly quiet and the food exceptional. Mary Jane was beginning to think that Fabian wouldn’t go anywhere unless the food and the service were near perfection. She remembered the simple meals she and Mrs Body had cooked and wondered, as she ate her Kentish roast duckling, if he had enjoyed them. Probably not.
They kept up a desultory conversation as they ate—the kind of conversation, she told herself hopelessly, that one sustained with fellow patients in a dentist’s waiting room. Before she could stop the words, they popped out of her mouth. ‘What a pity we don’t get on.’
If she had hoped to take him by surprise, she had failed. His expression didn’t change as he answered in the pleasantest of voices.
‘Yes, it is. Probably as we get to know each other better, our—er—incompatibility will lessen.’ He smiled briefly and changed the subject abruptly. ‘Tell me, do you ride? If so, there is a good stables near my uncle’s house—they could let you have a mount.’
‘Oh, could they? I should like that. I’m not awfully good, but I enjoy it.’
‘In that case you had better not go out alone.’
Which remark compelled her to say, ‘Oh, I can ride well enough, you needn’t worry about that—it’s just that I’m not a first-class horsewoman.’
They sipped coffee in silence until she said defiantly, ‘I shall buy a horse when I get back home,’ and waited to see what he would say. She was disappointed when he replied blandly, ‘Why not? Shall we go?’
They were at Dover with time to spare. They left the car in the small queue and had coffee in the restaurant and Fabian bought her an armful of magazines. Once on board he suggested that she should go to her cabin. ‘We berth very early,’ he warned her, ‘half past four or thereabouts. We’ll stop for breakfast on the way to Friesland.’
His advice was sound. Mary Jane slept for a few hours, and fortified by tea, joined him on deck as the boat docked, and then followed him down to the car deck. There was no delay at all as they landed; they were away in a few minutes, tearing down the cobbled street towards the Dutch border.
The Rolls bored through the motorway from Antwerp towards the frontier and Breda, going through the town without stopping. It was quiet and dark, although a slow dawn was beginning to lighten the sky; by the time they reached Utrecht there was a dim, chilly daylight struggling through the clouds. Mary Jane shivered in the warm car and Fabian spoke after miles of silence. ‘We’ll stop here and have breakfast.’
It seemed a little early for there to be anywhere open, but he stopped the car outside Smits Hotel, said, ‘Stay where you are,’ and went inside to return very quickly and invite
her inside, where she was welcomed by the hall porter with a courtesy she would have found pleasant in broad daylight, let alone at that early hour of the morning, but Fabian seemed to take it all very much for granted, as he did the breakfast which was presently set before them. They ate at leisure, lingering over a final cup of coffee while he explained the route they were to follow. ‘Less than a hundred miles,’ he told her. ‘We shall be at my uncle’s house for coffee.’
And they were, after a drive during which Mary Jane, after several efforts at polite conversation, had become progressively more and more silent, staring out at the flat, frost-covered fields on either side of the road, observing with interest the cows in their coats, the large churches and the small villages so unlike her own home, and wishing with all her heart that she was back there—she even wished she was back at Pope’s, coping with Sister Thompson’s petty tyranny, but when her companion said, ‘Only a few more miles now,’ she pulled herself together; self-pity got one nowhere, and if Grandfather could know what she was thinking now he would be heartily ashamed of her show—even to herself—of weakness.
She sat up straight, rammed the unbecoming hat firmly upon her head and said, ‘I’m glad, and I’m sure you must be too—travelling with someone you dislike can be very tiresome.’
Mr van der Blocq allowed a short sharp exclamation to leave his lips. ‘Does that remark refer to myself or to you?’ he queried silkily.
‘Both of us.’ She spoke without heat and lapsed into silence, a silence she would have liked to break as he took the car gently through a very small village—cluster of one-storied cottages, a shop and an over-sized church—and turned off the road through massive iron gates and a tree-lined drive, and pulled up before his uncle’s house. She would have liked to exclaim over it, for it was worthy of comment; built of rose brick with a steep slate roof and an iron balcony above its massive front door. It had two stories, their windows exactly matching, and all with shutters. It reminded her of some fairy tale, standing there silent, within the semicircle of sheltering trees, most of them bare now. She was impressed and longed to say so.
Fabian got out, came round to help her out too and walked beside her up the shallow steps to the opening door. A white-haired man stood there, neatly dressed in a dark suit and looking so pleased to see them that she deduced, quite rightly, that this wasn’t Jonkheer van der Blocq. Fabian quickly put her right, explaining as he shook the old man’s hand, ‘This is Jaap, he has been in the family for forty years—he sees to everything and will be of great help to you.’
Mary Jane put out a hand and had it gently wrung while Jaap made her welcome—presumably—in his own language. She nodded and smiled and followed him into a handsome lobby and through its inner glass doors to the hall, an imposing place, its walls hung with dark, gilt-framed portraits, vicious-looking weapons and a variety of coats of arms. It needed flowers, she decided as she glanced about her, something vivid to offset the noble plastered ceiling and marble floor with its dim Persian rugs. She was arranging them in her mind’s eye when Fabian said: ‘The sitting room, I suppose—the first door on the left.’
She followed Jaap through a double door into a room whose proportions rivalled those of the hall—the ceiling was high, the walls, painted white and ornamented at their corners with a good deal of carved fruit and flowers, carried a further selection of paintings. The furniture was massive and she had the feeling that excepting for the easy chairs flanking the large open fire, and the Chesterfield drawn up before it, the seating accommodation would be uncomfortable—an opinion which Fabian probably shared, for he advised her to take a chair by the fire, taking her coat and tossing it to Jaap.
‘My cousin will be here in a moment,’ he told her, and went to look out of the windows, while Mary Jane, left to herself, rearranged the furniture in her mind, set a few floral arrangements on the various tables and regarded with awe a large cabinet on the opposite wall; it was inlaid, with a good deal of strapwork, and she considered it hideous.
‘German?’ she asked herself aloud.
‘You’re right,’ agreed Fabian from the window. ‘The Thirty Years’ War or thereabouts, I believe, and frankly appalling.’
She turned to look at him. ‘Now isn’t that nice, we actually agree about something!’ She added hastily, ‘I don’t mean to be rude—I have no business to pass an opinion…’
He shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘I’m flattered that we should share even an opinion.’
‘Now that’s a…’ She was saved from finishing the forceful remark she was about to make by the entry of a lady into the room. The cousin, without doubt—fortyish, tall and thin and good-looking, her face marred by the anxious frown between her brows and the look of harassment she wore. Indeed, she appeared to be so hunted that Mary Jane expected to see her followed by Fabian’s uncle in one of his more difficult moods. But no one else appeared; the lady trod across the room to Fabian, crying his name in a melodramatic fashion, and flung her arms around him. He received her embrace with a good-humoured tolerance, patted her on the shoulder and said in English: ‘Now, Emma, you can stop behaving like a wet hen. Here is Mary Jane come to nurse Oom Georgius.’
He turned round and went to Mary Jane’s side. ‘This is my cousin Emma van der Blocq—I’m sure you will be good friends, and I know she is delighted to have you here to lighten her burden.’
‘Indeed yes,’ his cousin joined in, shaking Mary Jane’s hand in an agitated way. ‘I’m quite worn out, for my father thinks I am a very poor nurse and I daresay I am—I’m sure you will be able to manage him far better than I.’ She sighed deeply. ‘The nurses never stay.’
It sounded as though the old gentleman was going to be a handful, Mary Jane thought gloomily, but she had promised her grandfather, and in a way she was glad, because she would be too occupied to brood over his death. She said in her pleasant voice, ‘I’ll do my best. Perhaps when you have the time, you will tell me what you would like me to do.’
Cousin Emma became more agitated than ever. ‘Oh yes, of course, but first you shall see your room and we will have lunch.’ She looked at Fabian. ‘You will go and see Father?’
He nodded and followed them out of the room and up the elegant staircase at one side of the hall, but on the landing they parted, he going to the front of the house while Mary Jane and her hostess entered a room at the head of the stairs. It was a large room, but not, she was relieved to see, nearly as large as the sitting room. It was furnished with a quantity of heavy Mid-Victorian furniture, all very ornate, carved and inlaid. The bed was a ponderous affair too, but the curtains and coverlet were pretty and the carpet was richly thick under her feet.
Here she was left alone to tidy herself before going downstairs again, something she was about to do when she was halted by a thunderous voice from behind a pair of handsome doors across the landing, bellowing something in Dutch, and a moment later Fabian appeared, to lean over the balustrade as she went down the stairs and ask if she would be good enough to visit his uncle.
The room they entered was vast, with a fourposter bed dwarfed against one wall and a great many chests and tallboys and massive cupboards. In the centre of this splendour sat Jonkheer van der Blocq, facing a roaring fire. And a handsome old man he was too, with white hair, a little thin on top, and Fabian’s features. He didn’t wait for his nephew to speak but began at once in a stentorian voice.
‘Hah—so my good old friend died, and you are the Mary Jane he wrote so much of.’ He produced a pair of spectacles and planted them upon his nose and stared at her. ‘A dab of a girl, too. He promised me that if I should outlive him, he would send you to me. Nurses,’ he went on in a triumphant voice, ‘don’t stay. Do you suppose you will?’
Mary Jane walked up to his chair, not in the least put out. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said in a reasonable voice, ‘and anyway, I promised Grandfather I would. I’m not easily upset, you know.’ She gave him a kind smile and he croaked with laughter. ‘We’ll see about
that! At any rate you will be a change from that fool daughter of mine, always fussing around.’
‘I daresay she wants to help you, but some people—and you, I suspect, aren’t easy to do things for; they find fault all the time.’
He sat back against his cushions and she thought that he might explode; instead he burst out laughing. ‘Dammit, if you’re not like your grandfather!’ he declared. ‘No looks but plenty of spirit. I shall come down to lunch.’ He turned to Fabian. ‘And you, what do you think of her, eh?’
‘I have no doubt that Mary Jane is an excellent nurse.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant. However, you may give me an arm and we’ll go down. I rather fancy a glass of Genever before we lunch.’
‘You’ll not get it,’ observed his nephew good-humouredly. ‘A glass of white wine is all that Trouw allows you, and that’s what you will have.’
The old man, far from being annoyed at this arbitrary remark, chuckled, and the three of them went down to the dining room in the friendliest possible way. The old gentleman’s good humour lasted throughout the meal, and when Fabian got up to go, saying that he had an appointment that afternoon in Groningen, begged him to come again as soon as he could. ‘Though I daresay you have a good deal of work to catch up on. How long have you been away?’
And when Fabian told him he continued: ‘It will take you a week or two to work everything off, I daresay. Well, come when you can, Fabian.’
His thunderous voice sounded wistful and Mary Jane guessed that he was fond of his nephew, though probably nothing on earth would make him admit to it. Bidden by her host to see Fabian into his car, she walked a little self-consciously to the door and stood in the lobby while he spoke to Jaap, but presently he turned to her and said: