by Betty Neels
‘How interesting. I’ve never met an artist, it must be wonderful to be able to paint.’
‘Anyone can learn,’ Marena assured her sweetly, and dismissed her. ‘Pieter, can I speak to you for one minute? It is important and private.’
Phyllida was at the door before she had finished speaking; she could take a hint as well as the next one and Marena clearly wanted her out of the way. ‘I must tidy myself,’ she muttered. ‘I expect I’ll see you again before we leave—so nice meeting you.’ She wrenched open the door and ducked through it, casting a totally meaningless smile over her shoulder as she went.
Willy had melted away as only boys can, and Aap, crossing the hall as she stood a little uncertainly, offered the information that he and his mother had gone down to the lake to see if they could find the swan’s nest there. There was still plenty of time before dinner; she flew upstairs and without bothering to do more than run a comb through her hair, flung on a cardigan, and using the back stairs, went out of the house. Somehow she couldn’t bear to join the doctor and Marena again— indeed, she thought it unlikely that they would want her to. A good walk would do her good and if she returned with only enough time to change for the evening, the chance of meeting the girl again would be slight, although she might stay for dinner.
‘And why should I care?’ asked Phyllida loudly of the trees around her. ‘Well, I do, anyway.’ And indeed, to be quite honest, she had begun to think that Pieter had fallen a little in love with her, and she, moreover, had fallen a little in love with him. She stopped her brisk walking, struck by a sudden blinding thought. She wasn’t a little in love with him; she was head over heels; no one and nothing else mattered in the world. Never to see him again would be a sorrow she wouldn’t be able to bear, and it was a sorrow she wouldn’t be able to share with anyone, least of all Pieter. At all costs she would have to hide her feelings. They would be going back home in ten days or so and she would have to be very careful. She walked on faster than ever, trying to escape the awful thought that she had allowed him to see that she liked him very much. Well, she could soon put that right. Cool friendliness and steering clear of anything personal when they were talking—that would leave him free to dote on his precious Marena. She ground her splendid teeth at the thought.
She turned for home presently, for she had been out too long already, and reached the garden door just as Pieter came out of it. He was looking preoccupied although he smiled when he saw her.
‘Hullo there,’ he said easily, and there was a glint of amusement in his eyes as he took in her flyaway appearance. ‘You’ve been out and I thought you were still doing things to your hair. I’ve just left a message with Aap—I’m afraid I’ll have to go out this evening and I do apologise to you all. I doubt if I’ll be back until late.’
He held the door for her to go through. ‘By the way, Marena wants us all to go over for drinks before you go back—may I tell her that you would like to?’
He was going to spend the evening with the horrid creature. Phyllida said in a cool little voice: ‘Why, of course—we shall be delighted. How very kind.’ She gave him a bright smile and hurried past him.
Mrs Cresswell made no comment when Phyllida told her that their host would be out for the evening, but Willy asked anxiously: ‘Did he say when he’d be back? We’re going fishing at four o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Don’t worry, dear,’ soothed his mother, ‘I’m sure Pieter wouldn’t forget anything as important as that.’
But hours later, listening to the stable clock chiming twice, Phyllida wondered if he had, and she was sure of it when half an hour later she heard the Bentley whisper past her windows.
She slept after that, a miserable exhausted sleep which left her heavy-eyed and snappy, and when Berta the housemaid brought her her morning tea, she had no desire to get up. All the same, she went down to breakfast presently and found her mother and brother already there. Her mother wished her good morning and ignored her pale cross face, but Willy was less perceptive. ‘I say, Phylly, you do look cross. We had a smashing time…’
‘You went fishing? But Pieter…’She stopped herself in time. ‘I didn’t think Pieter would get up so early.’
‘He wanted to,’ said Willy simply.
‘One can always find time to do what one wants,’ observed her mother comfortably. ‘Phylly, pass me another of those delicious rolls, will you? It’s such a splendid morning, I think I’ll take that gardening catalogue Pieter lent me and go and sit in that dear little summer house. What are you two going to do?’
‘I’m going to the next village,’ said Willy importantly, ‘the one you can see across the fields from the side of the house. I have to deliver a note for Pieter; one of his patients has to go into hospital.’ He buttered himself some toast with a lavish hand. ‘We’re all going to the Keukenhof the day after tomorrow, he told me so this morning.’ He sighed with content. ‘I caught two bream this morning and Pieter got four.’ He wolfed down the toast. ‘Phylly, are you coming with me?’
She agreed readily. Her own company was something she wished to avoid at all costs, and presently they set off into the bright morning, pleased with each other’s company despite the dozen or so years between them, Phyllida rather silent and Willy talking non-stop.
‘It was super of Pieter to come this morning,’ he told her. ‘He’s been up most of the night, you know—that case at the hospital in Leiden.’
‘What case?’ asked Phyllida with instant interest. ‘And how do you know?’
Her brother gave her a kindly, impatient look. ‘He told me, of course—this boy had a relapse, so he was called in for a consultation. He’s very important, you know.’
‘Is he?’ she asked humbly. ‘I didn’t know—he never said.’
‘Well, of course not,’ said Willy with scorn. ‘I mean, a man doesn’t go around boasting. But he’s frightfully brainy—I expect he’d have told you if you’d asked—I did.’ His chest swelled with pride. ‘He knows I’m going to be a doctor when I’m a man, he says I’m a natural because Father’s a doctor anyway and it’s in the blood, like it is in his—he says you can’t help yourself if it is and that I’ll make a jolly good one. He talks to me just as though I’m grown up.’
Pieter loomed large in Willy’s life, that was obvious, but then he loomed even larger in hers. She sighed. ‘Oh, does he? What exactly does he specialise in, dear?’
They were almost at the village and had slowed their pace.
‘Hearts—you heard him say so, didn’t you? And leukaemia, didn’t you know that either? And you’re always talking to him…’
‘Am I?’ asked Phyllida sadly. But not, it seemed, about anything that really mattered. She wondered what Pieter really thought of her behind that calm, handsome face. Probably nothing much.
Willy discharged his errand and they walked back, having a one-sided conversation about fishing, with him in full spate about lines and hooks and flies and she saying yes and no and really, while she allowed her mind to dwell upon Pieter, so that she followed her brother in through the garden door rather dreamily, to bump almost at once into the master of the house, lying back in a large cane chair in the garden room, his feet on another chair, fast asleep.
They stood and looked at him for a moment and Phyllida saw how weary he was, with lines etched on his face which she hadn’t noticed before, a faint frown between his brows. Willy wandered away, but she went on staring and then gave a squeak of surprise when the doctor asked softly: ‘Why do you look like that, Phylly?’
‘Like what?’
‘Motherly and sad.’ He unfolded himself and stood up, smiling.
‘Oh—oh, I don’t know. I’m sorry if we woke you up.’
‘I’m not. Let’s get Aap to bring some coffee to the summer house. I saw that your mother was there.’
So they all had their coffee together and he didn’t say a word about where he had been or why, indeed, he presented the perfect picture of a man of leisure, onl
y presently he went to sleep again and Mrs Cresswell and Willy crept away, leaving Phyllida sitting there with him. She wasn’t sure why she wanted to stay, perhaps because it was wonderful just to be there; presently he would go off again and she wouldn’t know where, or perhaps Marena would come frisking along to make him laugh. Two large slow tears trickled down her cheeks; she was only half aware of them and didn’t bother to do anything about them and there was no one to see.
‘Why are you crying?’ asked the doctor softly.
She was so vexed with herself that she could hardly speak. She might have guessed that he wasn’t asleep, but he had looked so tired. She didn’t answer, only looked away from him, wiping the tears away with a finger.
‘No job?’ he persisted. ‘An uncertain future? Not happy here, perhaps?’
‘Oh, I am, I am. It’s lovely—I thought when I first came that it was all so grand, but now I know just what you meant about it being a home, because it is.’ She went on in a muddled way: ‘Cats on the chairs and that nice old dog and the way you fling your jacket down on that magnificent table in the hall, and your mother and father…’
The doctor’s eyes gleamed beneath their lids, but all he said was: ‘Then you must be in love.’
She went red, and then, unable to stop herself: ‘Yes, I am—I’ve only just found out, though I think that I knew days ago. It’s funny…’
It was fortunate that she was interrupted, for she had flung caution to the winds and had actually started to tell him that she was in love with him. She froze with horror and for once was glad to see Marena crossing the lawn and smiling with the air of someone who was sure of a welcome. She flung her arms round the doctor’s neck and kissed him with what Phyllida considered to be a sickening display of sentiment and then smiled at her. Her voice was gracious.
‘Hullo—you look much nicer today, but I do not like your fringe. Fringes are for little girls, are they not? And you are no longer that.’
Phyllida tried to think of a suitable answer to this snide remark, but her head was still full of the things she had so nearly said; she felt sick just remembering them. The doctor answered for her: ‘You’re wrong, Marena, Phylly isn’t grown up at all, not nearly as grown up as you are. And I like the fringe.’
‘I am but nineteen,’ declared Marena prettily, and perched on the arm of his chair.
‘In years, in worldly knowledge, double that.’
She pouted and dropped a kiss on to his head. ‘I do not know why I like you so very much, Pieter.’
‘Nor I. Without wishing to be inhospitable, I should warn you that I am about to leave for my rooms. What do you want this time?’ He sounded amused.
‘Darling, I need some money and the bank say no more until my allowance is paid. If I could have five hundred gulden—just till then—I will pay back…’
He put a hand into a pocket and fished out a roll of notes. ‘Here you are. A new dress, I suppose.’
Marena took the notes and stuffed them into her handbag, flashing a triumphant look at Phyllida. ‘Of course—such a charming one. I shall wear it for you when you come.’
‘I look forward to it.’ He submitted to another embrace and with a careless wave of the hand for Phyllida, Marena skipped off. A moment later Phyllida heard a car start up and roar away.
‘She’s the world’s worst driver,’ murmured the doctor, and closed his eyes again.
Phyllida sat and looked at him, suspicious that he was only foxing again, but presently he snored, very faintly, but still a snore. She gave him ten minutes and then ventured: ‘I say, you said you had to leave…’
He opened one eye. ‘Did I really say that? Then I made a mistake—I have nothing to do until this evening, when I have to give a lecture at a hospital in Utrecht. You can come with me if you like.’
She sat up very straight. ‘May I really—I’d like to.’
‘Good. And now shall we finish that very interesting conversation we were having when we were interrupted? You were saying?’
‘Nothing.’ She couldn’t get it out fast enough. ‘It wasn’t anything, really it wasn’t.’
‘No?’ His tone implied disbelief. ‘Ah, well, later on, perhaps.’ He smiled at her and her heart bounced so that she caught her breath.
‘I thought we might go to the Keukenhof the day after tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘It should be looking at its best; your mother is anxious to inspect the flowers.’
Phyllida was glad of the change in the conversation. ‘Yes, she’s a great gardener…’She babbled on for a few minutes and then stopped a bit abruptly; even in her own ears she sounded foolish.
They dined early by reason of the lecture and then drove the forty miles to Utrecht. The evening was fine and the country as they approached the city looked pretty and peaceful. ‘But not as pretty as where you live,’ declared Phyllida.
‘Well, I do agree with you there, but I daresay I’m prejudiced.’ He swept the car through the main streets, worked his way through some very narrow lanes and entered the hospital courtyard.
She was given a seat near the back of the lecture hall and made to feel at home by the young doctor who had been asked to look after her. She hadn’t given much thought to the lecture. That it was delivered in Dutch really didn’t matter; it was bliss just to sit there and stare at Pieter, elegant and assured and presumably amusing, for every now and again there would be a burst of laughter around her. He had a lovely voice, she thought, deep and a bit gravelly and unhurried. She sighed gustily and the young doctor gave her an anxious look which she dispelled with a beaming smile.
On the way home, later, Pieter observed idly: ‘It can’t have been much fun for you—did you go to sleep? I must have been out of my mind to have asked you in the first place.’
‘Oh, but I loved it, and I didn’t go to sleep—I listened to every word,’ and when he gave a great shout of laughter: ‘Well, you know what I mean.’
‘I like to think that I do.’
A remark which gave her plenty to think about until they got back.
She saw little of the doctor during the following day, though, surprisingly, Phyllida thought. His mother called in the afternoon and had tea with them, going round the gardens with her mother, enjoying a long talk about flower growing.
‘I like her,’ declared Mrs Cresswell when Mevrouw van Sittardt had been driven away in an old-fashioned, beautifully kept motor-car. ‘She’s a bit overpowering, but she’s a woman after my own heart.’ She added by way of explanation: ‘She doesn’t cut her roses back either.’
The doctor arrived home in the late afternoon, waved aside offers of tea and disclosed the fact that they were all going to Marena’s studio for drinks before dinner. Phyllida instantly went into a flurry of hair brushing and fresh make-up, deploring the fact that the weather had turned quite warm and she really had nothing to wear. It would have to be the thin wool, which meant that after the first drink and with the central heating, she would be as red as a beet in no time at all.
Marena’s flat was in the centre of den Haag, high up in a modern block, all black marble entrance and chromium fittings, and her studio was very similar—a vast room with paintings stacked along one wall and an easel under one enormous window. It was furnished in a modern style and its walls hung with Impressionist paintings, a fitting background for Marena who was wearing an outrageous outfit; a tunic slashed to the waist and tight velvet pants. Phyllida eyed her with real envy, wishing she dared to dress like that; it might capture Pieter’s attention.
And it did, but not in the way she had expected. He took a long look and said slowly: ‘If that’s what you borrowed five hundred gulden for, my dear, it’s been wasted.’
Phyllida saw the flash of anger in the girl’s eyes although she laughed at him. ‘It’s not for you, Pieter—I’ve a new boy-friend.’ She flashed a look at Phyllida, who looked back at her woodenly.
They drank a concoction in long glasses which Phyllida didn’t like but didn’t dare to say so, an
d yet it must have shown on her face, for while Marena was showing Mrs Cresswell her paintings, Pieter crossed the room and took the glass from her and gave her his empty one. He must think her an awful baby, she mused sadly.
They stayed a couple of hours, which gave Phyllida ample time in which to watch Marena at work on Pieter, who was treating her as one might treat a pretty child; goodnaturedly answering her preposterous remarks, praising her paintings, telling her that she was getting prettier each time he saw her. Phyllida, feeling a frump in the woollen dress, registered a firm resolve to go out the very next day and buy some new clothes. It wasn’t until they were on the way home that she remembered that they were going to spend the whole of the next day at the Keukenhof.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE KEUKENHOF WAS beautiful under a cloudless sky, although a chilly wind set the flowers nodding and swaying. They had left the house shortly after breakfast and driven the few miles there in no time at all, so that when they reached the park there were very few people about. They strolled round while the doctor and Mrs Cresswell exchanged Latin names and methods of propagation in an assured manner which left Phyllida and Willy quite at sea. But whatever they were called, the tulips and hyacinths and daffodils were a colourful sight, arranged in glowing patches of colour so that whichever way one turned there was something to delight the eye.
‘Mind you,’ remarked Mrs Cresswell, ‘your own gardens are magnificent and must take a good deal of planning.’
The doctor laughed. ‘I must plead guilty to leaving most of the work to Bauke, who has been with the family for so long I can’t remember what he looked like as a young man. He’s a wizard with flowers—I only study the catalogues and say what I like.’
‘Do you ever garden yourself?’ asked Phyllida, remembering the wheelbarrow and the spade.
‘Oh, yes—the odd hour or so when I have the time; it’s good exercise. And you, Phyllida?’