by Betty Neels
Suzannah sipped her rather tepid tea and ate a biscuit, feeling lonely. When the other two paused for a moment she said, ‘Well, thank you for showing me Panorama Mesdag and for my tea…’ She intended to get up, but Hebert put out an urgent hand.
‘Suzannah, you are a kind girl; will you do something for me—for us? I—we, that is—can only see each other secretly. Monique is married and I am engaged, but neither of us is happy. This is the only way we can meet. I ask you not to say anything to my parents—if you would let them think that we have spent the afternoon and evening together.’ He added, ‘They do not approve.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose they do,’ said Suzannah. ‘It seems rather hard on your fiancée and on Monique’s husband. I won’t tell. But don’t think that I’ll do this again for you, for I won’t.’
She got to her feet, nodded briefly at them both and went into the street. It was almost dark by now and she wondered what she would do for the next hour or so. The shops were shutting and she was shy of going to a café on her own. It would have to be the cinema. She sat through an American film with Dutch subtitles, a combination which confused her, for a couple of hours, and then walked to the nearest tram stop.
The professor, driving through the city on his way to see Julie, stared at her small, hurrying figure, unable to stop because of the traffic lights. Her free day, he decided idly.
He was there sitting with Mevrouw van Dijl and Julie when Suzannah went into the drawing-room. He got to his feet, but before she could do more than greet them Hebert came in. The professor nodded coolly, having a poor opinion of him, but Hebert was effusive.
‘Come to check on Julie, have you?’ He wanted to know. ‘She looks pretty fit to me.’ He sat down close to Suzannah. ‘I’ve been putting the car away. Suzannah and I had a delightful time in town—saw a few sights and had lunch and tea—introduced her to some of our famous cream cakes at Saur’s and had a stroll round the shops afterwards.’
He laughed for no reason at all and glanced at Suzannah. ‘We had a delightful time, didn’t we, Suzannah?’
She didn’t look at him and, since she was aware that the professor was watching her, she addressed her feet. ‘Oh, very,’ she agreed.
She was saved from saying more by Julie’s rather petulant, ‘Well, if you want to take a look at me, Guy, I suppose you’d better do it now. Suzannah, come with us—you can tidy up afterwards.’
Suzannah was only too glad to escape; perhaps by the time the professor had finished his examination Hebert would be gone. At least the professor wouldn’t be there to hear her fibbing about her outing with Hebert.
He was in no hurry; he went over Julie with calm thoroughness, then sat down to talk to her while Suzannah fidgeted uneasily in the background. The moment she could, she would escape, she told herself, and was frustrated by the ringing of the telephone by the bed. When Julie went to answer it the professor said quietly, ‘We’ll wait outside,’ and scooped Suzannah out of the room before she could think up a reason for staying.
He went to lean against the gallery rail overlooking the hall and turned to look at her. ‘You had a delightful time with Hebert?’ he wanted to know.
Suzannah turned a little way from him and became engrossed in the hall below. ‘Yes.’
‘It doesn’t sound like him at all, looking into shop windows.’ There was something in his voice which made her uneasy. ‘I’m glad he gave you a good tea, though. Saur’s is a delightful café—did you go upstairs?’
‘Yes, yes, we did,’ declared Suzannah, ‘and the tea was splendid.’
‘Although I don’t care for that pink and gold china,’ observed the professor.
The blandness of his voice made her glance quickly at him. He returned the look with a smile as bland, and she was emboldened to say with foolish sang froid, ‘I thought it rather pretty…’
He spoke very quietly in a voice to chill her to her bones. ‘Suzannah, Saur’s has no upstairs tea-room and certainly no pink and gold china; moreover, Hebert was not with you when I saw you walking down Lange Voorhout. Who did you spend the time with?’ He watched her face. ‘And don’t waste time thinking up more lies—Oh, I dare say you were at Panorama Mesdag, it’s an ideal place to meet and slip out again unobserved. But why, I wonder, did you and Hebert connive together?’
She very nearly choked. He had taken it for granted that she was meeting someone—a man—on the sly, and if that was what he thought of her he was even worse than she had always thought him to be, arrogant, narrow-minded, cold-blooded. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she told him, but her voice, despite her best efforts, shook a little.
‘Oh, but it is. I asked you to come here…’ He stopped as two tears rolled down Suzannah’s cheeks. She turned her back and wiped them away with a finger like a child. He said suddenly, ‘I have it all wrong, haven’t I? Hebert’s up to his nasty tricks again and is using you. Oh, you don’t need to fib any more, my dear, I shan’t give him away, but neither will I permit him to do that to you.’
He turned her round to face him and lifted her chin to stare into her unhappy face. ‘You don’t like me, do you? But believe me, I wouldn’t wish you any harm or any unhappiness.’
She made a small sound, a watery hiccup followed by a sniff, and he offered her a very white handkerchief. ‘When do you have your next free day?’
‘Julie is going to visit an aunt next Thursday, Mevrouw van Dijl is going with her, and so it’s convenient for them if I have my day off then.’
‘Nine days’time…’ He thought for a moment. ‘I’ll be over again on the Wednesday for a final visit until Julie’s routine check-ups; I’ll have the car and we will make a tour of some of the country.’
She regarded him with astonishment. ‘But there’s no need,’ she told him urgently. ‘Such a waste of your day, taking me out.’
‘Oh, no, I shall enjoy seeing something of the Veluwe, it is a favourite time of year for me. And I dare say if we are very careful we shall manage not to disagree for an hour or so.’
He smiled then and she was quite taken aback to see his whole austere face alter; he looked kind and friendly, and at the same time comfortably detached. Perhaps, she thought confusedly, I shall like him after all. She nodded her bright head. ‘I’d like to do that,’ she told him, ‘if you’re sure it’s not spoiling your leisure.’
He thought of the lunch with medical colleagues he would have to put off and the dinner he had intended to give to the charming daughter of an old family friend, and wondered why on earth he had so rashly committed himself to a day with this small, plain girl with the sharp tongue and the bright hair. He remembered the tears and smiled ruefully and, seeing her sharp look, said cheerfully. ‘It is always a pleasure to show off one’s adopted country.’
‘I thought you were English.’
‘I am, but my aunt married a Dutchman, as you know, and I spent all my school holidays here, as well as taking a medical degree at Leiden.’
He spoke casually, and she thought that he might be getting bored; it was providential that Julie should join them then and presently all three of them went back to the drawing-room. After a little while the professor went away.
Suzannah contrived not to speak to Hebert during the evening; indeed, she rather felt that he was avoiding her while he talked loudly and at length about his work and the holiday he was planning to take. He gave so many details about it that it amounted to a timetable of his movements while he was away, so that Suzannah began to wonder if he and Monique had planned something together and he was trailing red herrings for his mother. That lady remarked during the evening that he was giving them such a detailed account of where he would be and what he would be doing that there would be no need for him to send postcards.
He had laughed heartily, and Julie had given him a quick look and giggled.
He stayed one more day and, since his father was at home, he spent a good part of it closeted in the study, discussing business. Beyond an occasional wo
rd, Suzannah had been able to keep away from him.
Julie had said nothing to her about her supposed outing with Hebert, and she decided that the girl knew more about it than she intended to say. She was growing impatient of Suzannah’s company; although she rested reluctantly during the day and agreed to go to bed by midnight, there was always a tussle between the pair of them, with Julie lazing around her bedroom, lying for ages in the bath and then calling Suzannah back once she was in bed to fetch a book or a drink or whatever.
Suzannah didn’t allow it to annoy her; the professor had said that his next visit would be the last until the three-monthly check-ups which meant that she would be leaving very soon now, and although she had been more than thankful for the job and she had been able to save most of her wages, she looked forward to being back in England. It would be lovely to see Horace again; the professor had told her that he was happy and had settled down very well, but the sooner she found a room so that he could be with her again, the better. The question of where she was to go on her return worried her; as soon as she knew when she was to return she would have to write to Mrs Coffin and ask if she and Horace might stay with her until she could find another job. She would have to collect Horace on the way, of course; she spent some time poring over timetables trying to fit in her journey to suit collecting him and going on to Mrs Coffin’s on the same day.
True to his promise the professor arrived on the Wednesday, walking in as she sat at breakfast just as he had done previously. He wished her good morning civilly enough, ate his breakfast with only the modicum of conversation and asked her how Julie was.
He looked impatient, so she made her replies brief before they went upstairs to Julie’s room. She was awake, drinking her morning tea and reading her letters, but she bounced up in bed as he went in flung her arms round his neck.
‘Very much better,’ commented the professor. ‘I wonder why.’
She waved a letter at him. ‘He’s coming home,’ she told him in an excited voice. ‘Evert—you remember him?’
‘Of course I do.’ He added deliberately, ‘You refused to let anyone tell him that you had a brain tumour…’
‘Yes, but he says in his letter that he would never have gone away if he had known—how did he know?’ She paused to puzzle over it.
‘I wrote and told him,’ said the professor placidly. ‘You may have forgotten, but you never made me promise not to tell. He has been having weekly reports from me since I operated. I told him not to come back until you were quite cured. And you are. When does he get here?’
‘Guy, oh, Guy—in two days’time. I thought I’d never see him again, and I didn’t care what happened. I even thought for a little while that I’d marry you.’
The professor received this remark calmly. ‘Well, now you won’t have to, and as it happens I don’t think I want to marry you; much as I find you very beautiful and charming! Now let us be serious for ten minutes and take a final and thorough look at you.’
Suzannah had been standing quietly a little apart, listening with the greatest interest, pleased that Julie’s future was so rosy, and vaguely wistful and sad that something like that didn’t happen to her. How easily her problems would be solved if a man were to appear, sweep her off her feet, marry her out of hand and never allow her to worry again for the rest of her life. She stood there daydreaming while the professor and Julie watched her. It wasn’t until he had said, ‘Suzannah,’ for the third time that she came back to her senses.
‘If you don’t mind,’ observed the professor, ‘I would be glad if you would fetch Julie’s pills—they need to be changed.’
She blushed and went to the bathroom to fetch them from the cupboard there. She thought he looked impatient again; she must vex him very much. He certainly wouldn’t want to take her out as he had suggested. He must have been comforting her; people said all kinds of thing upon occasion and didn’t mean them.
She offered the little bottles and Julie asked, ‘When can Suzannah go? I don’t need her now, you know. And when Evert comes…’
The professor didn’t even look at Suzannah. ‘He comes in two days’time—so, let me see, Suzannah can leave on the day after tomorrow. I will talk to your mother before I go.’
Julie flung her arms round his neck again. ‘You really are a darling; you would make a lovely husband, only I can’t think of a girl nice enough for you.’ She looked at Suzannah. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had much fun,’ she commented. ‘You’ll be glad to get home and go out and about.’
Suzannah agreed smilingly. It was quite true, she reflected, half the world had no idea how the other half lived, and there was no point in enlightening Julie.
The professor patted Julie on the shoulder. ‘Be a good girl,’ he begged her. ‘I’m going to see your mother now. You know where I am if you need help. Suzannah, come downstairs with me.’
In the hall he said, ‘I’ll be here at nine o’clock tomorrow; that will give us a long day out.’
‘Oh, well, I thought…that is, I have to pack and look up trains and things.’
He swept an eye over her person. ‘Packing will take you half an hour, perhaps less; you haven’t a very large wardrobe, have you? And you’ll travel back with me—on the day ferry to Harwich—I booked you on in it.’
She goggled at him. ‘But how did you know I would be leaving?’
‘Well, of course I knew. Evert had told me that he would be coming and I was almost certain that I could discharge Julie, at least for the three months. You’re no longer needed and I imagine you would wish to return to England. Unless you have some other plan?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I mean to go to Mrs Coffin, if you wouldn’t mind me picking up Horace on the way?’
‘We’ll talk about that tomorrow.’ He studied her tweed skirt and jumper. ‘Have you a winter coat? We might want to walk tomorrow and it has turned cold.’
She went a bright pink. ‘Yes, thank you…’
‘Good. I’ll see you in the morning.’ He nodded goodbye and crossed the hall to the drawing-room, leaving her to stand there, relief flooding through her because she wouldn’t have to worry about the journey back. Even stronger than her relief was annoyance at his careless remarks about her clothes. ‘It’s all very well for him,’ she muttered, going back upstairs, ‘with his Bentley and his Savile Row suits and silk ties. Arranging things to suit himself.’ An unfair remark, she admitted reluctantly; he had, after all, arranged for her return.
CHAPTER SIX
SUZANNAH STOOD in front of the dressing-table looking-glass and studied her reflection. It didn’t please her. Her coat was a useful brown; it had been a good one some years ago, but it was faintly threadbare around the cuffs and down the front, and the brown dress beneath it did nothing to improve her appearance. She tucked a leaf-green scarf into the collar of the coat and, cold weather or not, decided not to wear the only hat she had: brown again and presumably prudently purchased with an eye to its usefulness rather than any pretentions to fashion. At least her gloves and handbag were passable. She wished suddenly that she hadn’t accepted the professor’s invitation, but it was too late to change things now and, thinking about it, he hadn’t given her much chance to refuse. At this very moment he might be wishing that he wasn’t to be saddled with her for a whole day.
His thoughts weren’t quite as drastic as that; but as he drove through den Haag to pick her up he wondered why on earth he had asked her out. They had never had a real conversation, and for all he knew she would be tongue-tied, or, worse, chatty, and yet he found himself wishing to know more about her. And her eyes were beautiful. He thumped the door-knocker of the van Dijls’ house and went in.
Suzannah came down the stairs, outwardly calm. She had been to see Julie, sitting up in bed enjoying her breakfast, and that young lady had thoughtlessly remarked that brown was all the wrong colour for Suzannah. ‘You should wear green or that lovely greeny-blue tweed’, she observed blithely, ‘and of course you could wear black
with that hair. Still, I don’t suppose Guy will take you anywhere where he’ll see anyone he knows.’
Suzannah had been quite unable to answer this; she had ducked out of the room and waited a moment before going down to the hall, rather pale with suppressed rage and humiliation. She crossed the hall to where the professor was standing and said good morning in a tight little voice, wanting very much to turn and run, only he said just the right thing. ‘It’s a cold, dark day and that hair of yours is like a ray of sunshine.’ His smile was so warm that she found herself smiling in return, and suddenly the brown coat didn’t matter at all.
In the car, sitting beside him in the greatest comfort, she was told to take the map from the pocket beside her. ‘We shall go to Utrecht and then Appeldoorn and Zwolle, Kampen Sneek, across the Isselmeer, then across to Bergen and down the coast to Haarlem, across to Hilversum, then down the river Vecht—that’s a beauty spot—and back here.’
‘All in a day?’
‘Holland is a small country, and we have eight or nine hours.’ He smiled at her again, and she knew that the day was going to be fun, after all.
A few miles out of den Haag, the professor turned off the motorway, drove slowly through Gouda and took a secondary road through Oudewater, where he stopped the car to tell her about the witches’ weighing scales there. She was surprised to find that he was both interesting and amusing, and when they reached Utrecht, although he didn’t stop, he told her a good deal about the city as they drove through it.
Once out of the city he took another secondary road through the Veluwe, driving slowly so that she might enjoy the woods all around them, circumventing Appeldoorn and turning north to Vaasen where they stopped for coffee at a restaurant—’T Neotshuis. Its interior was spectacular and besides, close by was Kasteel Cannenburch, with its beginnings in the fourteenth century. The professor knew its history well, and over coffee he related it. ‘Such a pity that it is closed, but the grounds are open if you would like to see them?’