by Betty Neels
‘What did you talk about?’ growled the old man.
‘Oh, his work, naturally. And a girl he met while he was in hospital—he’s very taken with her. He—talked a lot about her.’
Jonkheer van der Blocq laughed until he had no breath. Mary Jane gave him a drink, told him severely that there was nothing to laugh about, wished him good night and presently went to bed herself. She hadn’t mentioned to anyone that Fabian had been at the hotel too, and she didn’t think she would.
He came the next morning while they were in church, and this time it was the Rolls parked outside the door when they returned. As they went in he came downstairs, wished them a pleasant good morning, agreed that a cup of coffee would be welcome and when Emma had disappeared kitchenwards to find someone to make it, turned to Mary Jane and invited her to enter the sitting room.
‘I’ll take my things upstairs first,’ she told him coldly, and was frustrated by his instant offer to take her coat, which he tossed on to a chair.
‘It can stay there for a moment,’ he told her rather impatiently. ‘I see you are wearing the new hat. It’s pretty—so you found it.’
She gave him a frosty look and said witheringly, ‘It wasn’t difficult, it was on my head.’
The dark wings of his brows soared. ‘Oh dear—I can see that I must apologise, my dear girl, and I do. I could make a flowery speech, but you would make mincemeat of it, so I’ll just say that I’m sorry.’
She walked away from him into the sitting room, where she sat down, telling herself indignantly that she didn’t care if he followed her or not. He took the chair opposite hers and stretched his long legs and studied her carefully.
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I say how charming you looked yesterday evening?’ he asked mildly.
‘No.’ She added nastily, ‘You haven’t a clue as to what I was wearing.’
His smile mocked her. ‘Sea green, or would you call it sea blue, something thin and silky. It had long sleeves with frills over your wrists and a frill under your chin and a row of buttons down the back of the bodice.’
She was astounded, but she managed to say with a tinge of sarcasm:
‘A photographic eye, I see,’ and then because her female curiosity had got the better of her good sense. ‘The girl you were with was lovely.’
He picked a tiny thread from a well-tailored sleeve. ‘Delightfully so. She wears a different wig every day of the week and the longest false eyelashes I have ever seen.’
Mary Jane turned a chuckle into a cough. ‘And why not? It’s the fashion. Besides, she would look gorgeous in anything she chose to put on.’
He agreed placidly. ‘And you found William Trouw entertaining?’ he asked suavely.
‘We had a very pleasant evening,’ she told him guardedly.
‘A worthy young man,’ went on her companion ruminatively. ‘He would make a good husband—do you fancy him?’
She choked. ‘Well, of all the things to say! I’ve been out with him once, and here you are, talking as though…’
He went on just as though she had never interrupted him. ‘He has a good practice with his father, so he wouldn’t be after your money, and I imagine he has all the attributes of a good husband—good-natured, no interest in drinking or betting, or girls, for that matter—a calm disposition, he…’
She ground her teeth. ‘Be quiet! You may be my guardian, but you shan’t talk like that. I’ll marry whom I please and when I want to, and until then you can mind your own business!’
‘From which outburst I conclude that Willem hasn’t won your heart?’
She wanted to laugh, but she choked it back. ‘No, he hasn’t. As a matter of fact he spent quite a long time telling me about a girl he knew in hospital. I think he intends to marry her.’
‘Ah, I wondered what it was that you found so interesting, though surely it was unkind of you to laugh so much during the recital?’
‘I didn’t…’ she began, and stopped, because of course she had, so that Fabian should think she was having a lovely time. ‘I enjoyed myself very much,’ she muttered peevishly, and was glad to see Cousin Emma and Jaap with the coffee tray, coming into the room.
Fabian stayed for lunch, and his uncle insisted upon coming down to join them, contributing to the conversation with such gusto that Mary Jane feared for his blood pressure. But at least he was so tired after his meal that she had no difficulty in persuading him to take his customary nap, and when she had tucked him up and come downstairs again it was to find that Emma had allowed herself to be driven over to Doctor Trouw’s house for tea. Which left her and Fabian. He was waiting for her in the hall and he sounded impatient.
‘Shall we have a walk before tea?’
Mary Jane paused at the bottom of the staircase. ‘Thank you, no. I have letters to write.’
‘Which you can write at any time.’ He came towards her. ‘It’s not often I’m here.’
‘Oh—should I mind?’
‘Don’t be an impudent girl, and don’t imagine it is because I want your company,’ he added quite violently. ‘I had a letter from Mr North asking me to explain certain aspects of your inheritance to you, so I might just as well do it and take some exercise at the same time.’
‘Charming!’ observed Mary Jane, her eyes snapping with temper, ‘and so good of you to fit me in with one of your more healthy activities.’
‘And what,’ he asked awfully, ‘exactly do you mean by that remark?’
‘Just exactly what I say. I’ll come for half an hour—in that time you should be able to tell me whatever I’m supposed to know.’
She crossed the hall and picked up her coat, caught up her gloves and went to the pillow cupboard, rummaged around in its depths until she found a scarf which she tied carelessly over her hair. ‘Ready,’ she said with a distinct snap.
They walked away from the village, into the teeth of a mean wind, while Fabian talked about stocks and shares and gilt-edged securities and capital gains tax to all of which she lent only half an ear. As far as she could see she would have a perfectly adequate income whatever he and Mr North decided to do with her money. As long as she had sufficient to run the house and pay for Mrs Body and Lily and have some over to run the car and buy clothes… She stopped suddenly and told him so.
‘You are not only a tiresome girl, you are also a very ungrateful one,’ Fabian informed her bitterly.
‘I’m sorry—about being ungrateful, I mean, but I can’t remember being tiresome—was it on any particular occasion?’
He sounded quite weary. ‘You are tiresome all the time,’ he told her, which surprised her so much that she walked in silence until he observed that since she wished to return to Midwoude within half an hour, they had better go back. They didn’t speak at all, and in the hall they parted. When Mary Jane came downstairs ten minutes later, it was to find that he had gone. She told herself with a little surge of rage that it was a good thing too, for when they were together they did nothing but disagree. She wandered across to the sitting room, telling herself again, this time out loud, that she was delighted, and added the hope that she wouldn’t see him for simply ages.
But it wasn’t simply ages, it was the following Wednesday, or rather three o’clock on Thursday morning. Jonkheer van der Blocq had had, for him, a very good day. They had played their usual game of cards, and she had helped him to bed, just a little worried because his colour was bad. But Doctor Trouw had called that afternoon, and although the old gentleman was failing rapidly now, he had seen no cause for immediate alarm. Mary Jane went to bed early, first taking another look at her patient. He was asleep, and there was nothing to justify her unease.
The peal of the bell wakened her. She bundled on her dressing gown, and not waiting to put her feet in slippers, ran across the dim landing. The old man was lying very much as she had left him, but now his colour was livid, although he said with his usual irascibility, ‘I feel most peculiar—I want Fabian here at once.’
She mu
rmured soothingly while she took a frighteningly weak pulse and studied his tired old face before she went to the telephone. It was quite wrong to ring up in front of the patient, but she didn’t dare leave him. She rang Doctor Trouw first, with a suitably guarded request for him to come, and then dialled Fabian’s number. His voice, calm and clear over the line, gave her the instant feeling that she didn’t need to worry about anything because he was there—she forgot that they weren’t on speaking terms, that he was arrogant and treated her like a tiresome child. She said simply, ‘Oh, Fabian—will you come at once? Your uncle’—she paused, aware that the bed’s occupant was listening—’would like to speak to you,’ she finished.
‘He’s listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes. Get Trouw.’
‘I have.’
‘Good girl! Get Jaap up and tell him to open the gates and the door. Get Emma up too—no, wait—tell Jaap to do that. You stay with my uncle.’
She said, ‘Yes, Fabian,’ and put down the receiver. ‘Fabian’s on his way,’ she told Jonkheer van der Blocq in a calm, reassuring voice. ‘I’m to wake Jaap so that he can open the gates. Stay just as you are—I’ll only be few moments.’
Doctor Trouw came a few minutes later, and in response to the old gentleman’s demand to be given something to keep him going, gave him an injection, told him to save his breath in the understanding voice of an old friend and went to Emma’s room, where she could be heard crying very loudly.
Mary Jane pulled up a chair to the bedside, tucked her cold feet under her and took Jonkheer van der Blocq’s hand in hers. ‘Fabian won’t be long,’ she told him again, because she sensed that was what he wanted above anything else. She certainly was justified, because a moment later she heard the soft, powerful murmur of the Rolls’ engine and the faint crunch of its tyres as Fabian stopped outside the front door.
He entered the room without haste, wearing a thick sweater and slacks and looking very wide awake. He said: ‘Hullo, Uncle Georgius,’ and nodded to Mary Jane, his dark, bright gaze taking in the dressing-gown, the plaited hair and her bare feet. He said kindly, ‘What a girl you are for forgetting your slippers! Go and put them on, it’s cold, and tell Trouw I’m here, will you. I don’t suppose he heard me come, with the row Emma’s making.’
His uncle made a weak, explosive sound. ‘Silly woman,’ he said, in a voice suddenly small, ‘always crying—you’ll keep an eye on her, Fabian?’
‘Of course.’ He lapsed into Dutch as Mary Jane reached the door.
Emma was in no state to be left alone; Mary Jane stayed with her as Doctor Trouw hurried across the landing, and was still with her when he came back to tell them that his patient was dead. It wasn’t until poor Emma had had something to send her to sleep, and Mary Jane had tucked her up in bed, that she felt free to leave her.
The old house was very quiet; there was a murmur of voices coming from the kitchen, and still more voices behind the closed door of the small sitting room. She stood in the hall, wondering if she should go back to bed, a little uncertain as to what Doctor Trouw might expect of her. It was chilly in the hall and the tick-tock of the over-elaborate French grandfather dripped into the stillness with an oily sloth which she found intensely irritating. A cup of tea would have been nice, she thought despondently, and turned to go back upstairs just as the sitting room door opened and Fabian said: ‘Ah, there you are. Come in— Jaap’s bringing tea.’ He glanced at her pale face. ‘You look as though you need it. Cousin Emma’s asleep?’
She nodded, then sat down in a chair by the still burning fire and drank her tea, listening to the two men talking and saying very little herself. When she had finished she got to her feet. ‘Is there anything you would like me to do?’ she asked.
Doctor Trouw shook his head. ‘The district nurse will be here very shortly. Go to bed, Mary Jane, and get some sleep. I am most grateful to you for all you have done and I will ask you to do something else. Would you look after Emma for a few days? She has very sensitive nature and I am afraid this will be too much for her—I will leave something for her, if you will give it when she wakes, and be round about lunch time to see how she is.’
She nodded, thinking that Cousin Emma would be even more difficult than her father, and went to the door which Fabian had opened for her. He followed her into the hall, shutting the door behind him, and she turned round tiredly to see what he wanted.
His voice was quiet. ‘I know what you are thinking. We have imposed upon you and we have no right but I too would be grateful if you would stay just for little while and help Emma—she likes you and she needs you.’
She said shortly, ‘Oh, that’s all right. Of course I’ll stay.
He came nearer. ‘You have had a lot to bear in the last few weeks, Mary Jane. Once I called you a tiresome girl. I apologise.’ He bent and kissed her cheek with a gentleness which disturbed her more than any of the harsh words he had uttered in the past. She went upstairs, not answering his good night.
The next few days were a peculiar medley of intense activity, doing all the things Cousin Emma insisted should be done; receiving visitors, whose hushed voices and platitudes caused her to sit in floods of tears for hours after they had gone; going to Groningen to buy the black garments she considered essential and relating, seemingly endlessly, her father’s perfections to Mary Jane, while crying herself sick again.
Mary Jane found it all a little difficult to stomach—father and daughter had hardly had a happy relationship while he was alive, now that he was dead he had somehow become a kind of saint. But she liked Emma, although she found her histrionics a little trying, and she did what she could to keep her as calm as possible, addressed countless envelopes and kept out of Fabian’s way as much as possible.
He came frequently, but her quick ears, tuned to the gentle hum of the Rolls-Royce or the exuberant roar of the Jaguar, gave her warning enough to slip away while he was in the house. But one evening she had made the mistake of supposing that he had left the house; it was almost dinner time and there was no sound of voices from either of the sitting rooms. He must have gone, she decided, while she had been up in the attic, packing away Jonkheer van der Blocq’s clothes until such time as his daughter found herself capable of deciding what to do with them. The small sitting room was dimly lit by the firelight and one lamp, and Freule van der Blocq was lying asleep on the sofa. Fabian was on one of the easy chairs, his legs thrust out before him, contemplating the ceiling, but he got up as Mary Jane started to leave the room as silently and quickly as she had entered it. Outside in the hall he demanded: ‘Where have you been?’
‘Upstairs in the attics, sorting your uncle’s clothes.’
‘Have you, by God? Surely there’s someone else to such work? And that was not what I meant. Where have you been? Whenever I come, I am conscious of your disappearing footsteps. Do you dislike me so much?’
She eyed him thoughtfully. ‘I never think about it,’ she said at length, not quite truthfully.
His expressive eyebrows rose. ‘No? You thought I had gone?’
‘Yes.’
He grinned. ‘I’m staying to dinner, and now you’re here there’s no point in retreating, is there? We’ll have a glass of sherry.’
She accompanied him to the big sitting room and sat down composedly while he poured their drinks. When he had settled himself near her he asked, ‘When do you want to go home?’
‘I should like to go as soon as the funeral is over. I understand that Emma is going away the day after—I could leave at the same time.’ She sipped her sherry. ‘If you would be kind enough to let me have some more money, I can see about getting my ticket.’
‘No need. I shall take you with the car.’
She kept her voice reasonable. ‘I don’t want to go in your car. I’m quite capable of looking after myself, you know. Besides, you have your work.’ She looked at him, saw his smouldering gaze bent upon her and added hastily, ‘I’m very grate
ful, but I can’t let you waste any more time on me.’
‘Have I ever complained that I was wasting my time on you?’
‘No—but one senses these things.’
He gave a crack of laughter. ‘One might be mistaken. Would you feel better about it if I told you that I have to go over to England anyway within the next few days—I’m only offering you a lift.’
She said doubtfully, ‘Really? Well, that’s different, I’ll be glad to go with you.’
She missed the gleam in his eyes. ‘Tuesday, then. Cousin Emma will be fetched by her friends after breakfast. I’ll come for you about four o’clock. I’ve a ward round to do in the morning and a couple of patients to see after that. We’ll go from Rotterdam, I think straight to Hull.’ He thought for a minute. ‘If we leave here after tea we shall have plenty of time to catch the ferry at Europort. If I’m not here by half past four, have tea and be ready to leave, will you?’
‘Certainly.’
‘You’ll want to telephone Mrs Body.’ He strolled across the room and picked up the receiver from the telephone on the delicate serpentine table between the windows. ‘What is the number?’
It was nice to hear Mrs Body’s motherly voice again. Mary Jane listened to her comfortable comments and felt a wave of homesickness sweep over her. It would be lovely to be home again. She told Mrs Body her news and heard that lady’s voice asking if the dear doctor would be staying. Mary Jane hadn’t thought about that. She repeated the enquiry and he turned to look at her. ‘I began to think you weren’t going to ask me,’ he remarked mildly. ‘A day or so, if I may.’