by Betty Neels
Phyllida caught her breath and jumped to her feet. ‘Philip—why ever are you here? How did you find out where I was? What’s the matter?’
Philip wasn’t a man to be bustled into making hurried answers; he didn’t say anything for a moment, only stood in the doorway, looking first at her and then at the doctor, standing beside her. At length he said: ‘Hullo.’
The doctor stepped smoothly into the awkward silence. ‘A friend of Phyllida’s?’ he wanted to know pleasantly. ‘How delightful.’ He crossed the room and shook Philip’s hand. ‘Pieter van Sittardt. I’ve heard of you, of course.’
His visitor shook hands cautiously. ‘Oh, have you?’
‘You’ll want to have a talk—I’ll get someone to bring in some coffee—do make yourself at home, and I hope you’ll stay to dinner.’
He waved Philip to a chair, smiled benignly at him, beamed at Phyllida, standing there as though she were stuffed, and went away so quickly that no one else had a chance to say a word. Phyllida gnashed her teeth; there had been no need for Pieter to be quite so hospitable; he had almost flung Philip at her—perhaps he felt that providence, in the shape of Philip Mount, had saved him in the nick of time from saying something to her which he might have regretted. She sat down rather abruptly and Philip asked sharply:
‘Who’s he?’
‘You heard—our host.’ She had found her voice at last. ‘Why on earth are you here?’
He took no notice of her question. ‘He said he’d heard of me—from you?’
‘Well, I suppose so.’ She felt as though she had been blindfolded, turned round three times and abandoned. She asked again: ‘Why are you here, Philip?’
‘To see you, of course.’
‘But why?’
He answered with a smugness which made her seethe. ‘I knew you wouldn’t forget me—and you haven’t, have you? talking about me to what’s-his-name.’
‘Doctor van Sittardt. And I haven’t been talking about you. I may have mentioned you by name, that’s all.’
She broke off as Aap came in with the coffee tray, walking slowly so that he could get a good look at the unexpected guest. Phyllida poured coffee for them both, asked Philip if he wanted a biscuit in a snappy voice and waited. Philip had always been deliberate, now he was maddeningly so.
‘I had a few days off,’ he told her. ‘I telephoned your home and your sister told me where you were. I’ve come to take you back with me.’
‘Whatever for? I don’t want to go. You’re mad, Philip!’ She had got to her feet. ‘I’m not staying to listen to any more of your nonsense!’
He put his coffee cup down and got up too. ‘It’s not nonsense, Phyllida; just because you’ve been living it up for the last few weeks, you’ve lost all your good sense. I suppose you think you’re in love with this fellow—well, stop your daydreaming and be your sensible self again. Come back with me and we’ll start again.’
‘I don’t want to start again!’ Her voice rose several octaves. ‘Can’t you understand? I don’t want…’ He had crossed the room and caught her clumsily in his arms.
‘Don’t be a silly girl,’ he begged her. ‘Once you’re married to me…’
He was facing the door and she felt his arms slacken around her. Someone had come in, and she knew at once who it was.
‘So sorry,’ said the doctor with loud cheerfulness. ‘I should have remembered. You really must stay to dinner, Mount, and spend the night too.’
Philip’s voice sounded stiff and sullen. ‘Thanks—I’d like to stay to dinner; I’ve already booked at an hotel for the night.’
‘Splendid!’ Pieter smiled, his eyes icily bright beneath their lids. ‘Aap shall show you where you can freshen up presently, but while Phyllida changes we’ll have a drink. You’re a doctor, are you not? What do you specialise in?’
He barely glanced at Phyllida as he opened the door for her, and when she peeped at him, she could see a mocking little smile on his face.
Her mother and Willy weren’t to be found. She bathed and dressed in the new tunic, did her hair and face with tremendous care and sat down to wait until the very last minute before dinner. The idea of spending even a few minutes with Philip made her feel quite sick. Somehow she would have to get Pieter alone and explain…
She had no chance; when she eventually went downstairs it was to find not only Pieter with his unexpected guest, but her mother, Willy, Pieter’s mother and father and Marena, grouped around the log fire, having what appeared to be a high old time over drinks.
Pieter crossed the room to her as she stood, quite taken aback, just inside the door. The nasty little smile was still there, she saw uneasily, and he observed just as nastily: ‘A new dress? Very charming—kept for Philip, I suppose.’
‘You suppose wrong,’ snapped Phyllida very quietly so that no one else could hear. ‘It’s a new dress, but I bought it for…’ She couldn’t tell him that she had bought it for his benefit; she closed her mouth firmly and glared at him.
‘You didn’t know that he was coming?’ His soft voice held incredulity.
‘Of course I didn’t! Pieter—oh, Pieter…’
‘Oh, Phylly!’ His voice mocked her. ‘What will you have to drink?’
Hemlock would have been a good choice, she thought silently, but aloud she settled for a dry sherry and went to speak to his parents.
Marena was talking to her mother and neither of them looked over-happy. Phyllida smiled emptily at them both and drank her sherry far too quickly, plunging into an animated conversation with Mevrouw van Sittardt and puzzling that lady considerably by answering her questions with a series of random replies, engendered by the sherry and her chaotic thoughts. Out of the corner of her eye she had seen Marena leave her mother and go and stand by Pieter, so close that she was almost in his pocket. No one, she thought bitterly, had warned her that there was to be company for dinner. Which was hardly surprising since the doctor had made lightning telephone calls to his guests at the last minute, intimating that a close friend of Phyllida had arrived to see her and it seemed a good idea to invite a few people to meet him.
His parents had arrived full of curiosity, although to look at their dignified calm, no one would have guessed it; Marena had accepted gleefully, wanting to see Phyllida’s close friend. Only Mrs Cresswell had accepted the situation with placid calm, apparently doing nothing about it, merely waiting to see what would happen. She had greeted Philip with well concealed surprise, asked kindly after his well-being and engaged Marena in conversation. But now, seeing her daughter looking quite distracted, Mrs Cresswell wandered over to Pieter and Marena, prised her away from him with a ruthless charm which made his blue eyes sparkle with appreciation, and wandered off again, Marena in tow, beckoning to Philip and talking to Willy as she did so.
‘Philip, I don’t know if Pieter told you, but Marena is an artist—so clever of her, because she’s far too pretty to do anything at all, don’t you agree?’
Her listeners swallowed this barefaced flattery with no trouble at all; Marena had such a good opinion of herself that she found it not in the least unusual that other people should share it, and as for Philip, he had been staring at her ever since she had entered the room and had longed to talk to her, something his host hadn’t seemed to think he might want to do, for he had stationed Philip in front of him so that he had had no more than a glimpse of her from time to time because the doctor’s broad person had quite blocked his view.
Mrs Cresswell, standing between them, listened with interest to Philip, usually so staid, letting himself go. The pair of them, she considered, were ideally suited. She sipped her sherry and glanced around the room, to encounter the doctor’s hard stare. She returned it with a vague smile and presently he strolled over and invited her to admire the charming view from the window. They stood for a minute admiring the riot of colour outside.
‘Mother love is a wonderful thing,’ observed the doctor silkily.
‘Oh, indeed, yes,’ agreed Mrs Cresswell imperturbably,
‘it should never be underestimated.’
‘How right, Mrs Cresswell. The pity of it is that it is so often called into action when none is required.’
She turned to look at him. ‘Interfering?’ she asked. ‘Now that’s something I never do, Pieter.’ She gave him one of her vague, sweet smiles. ‘What a lovely girl Marena is.’
He didn’t answer her, only smiled a little, and a moment later Aap appeared to bid them to dinner.
Later, during a mostly sleepless night, Phyllida reviewed the evening. It had been pure disaster for her; Philip had been placed next to her at table and Pieter had treated her with the politeness of a good host with whom she was only slightly acquainted, and was bent on giving her every opportunity to be alone with Philip. And the awful thing had been that Philip, although he had stuck to her like a leech, could hardly take his eyes off Marena. And when she had tried to get him alone— really alone where they could talk without anyone overhearing them—it had been impossible; Pieter might have contrived in the most ostentatious manner possible that they should be in each other’s company, and yet each time she had sneaked off into a quiet corner with Philip, he had materialised like an evil genie and swept them back with the other guests.
Of one thing she was fairly sure—Philip might have come with the intention of asking her to marry him, under the impression that he loved her, but now that he had actually seen her again, he’d gone off her completely. An arrangement which suited her very well if only Pieter hadn’t foiled her every chance to tell Philip that. He had even insisted that Philip should call round on the following morning: ‘For I’m rather booked up myself,’ he had observed urbanely, ‘but do consider yourself at home—I hope to be back for lunch, and I’ll see you then.’ He had added blandly: ‘I had arranged to drive Phyllida back, but if she wants to, by all means take her with you.’
And he hadn’t even asked her what she had wanted to do! fumed Phyllida, sitting up in bed, choking with temper at the mere memory. ‘If he wants to get rid of me, he can,’ she cried loudly, ‘then he can spend all the time he wants with his beastly Marena. I can’t think why he asked me in the first place…’
She had cried then and gone to sleep with puffy red eyes and a pink nose. Her eyes were still puffy when she went down to breakfast, but she hadn’t bothered to find her dark glasses; Pieter had said he had a busy morning—at the hospital, she supposed, or Marena, of course.
He was occupied with neither. He was sitting at his breakfast table, chatting pleasantly to Mrs Cresswell and discussing the chances of another fishing trip with Willy. He stood up as Phyllida went in, wished her a cheerful good morning, asked her if she had a cold and added: ‘Your eyes are puffy,’ before begging her to help herself to anything she fancied.
She didn’t fancy anything. She crumbled toast on her plate and drank several cups of coffee and had great difficulty in not throwing a plate at his head when he suggested that she should take a couple of Panadol tablets. ‘So that you’ll feel up to young Mount’s company. Have you decided if you are going back with him, Phylly?’
‘If Phylly can bear it, I’d much rather she went back with us,’ interposed Mrs Cresswell. ‘I really cannot manage by myself,’ she explained plaintively. She wasn’t going to have to lift a finger, everyone knew that, but Phyllida couldn’t agree fast enough, the relief in her voice so obvious that Pieter’s mouth twitched and his eyes danced with laughter. But all he said, and that seriously, was:
‘Of course—I should have remembered that. Mount will be disappointed.’
‘No, he won’t,’ she snapped, tossing her fringe with a pettish shake of her head. ‘I can’t think why he came in the first place.’
‘My dear Phylly,’ his voice was very smooth, ‘isn’t it obvious why he came?’
She went a fiery red, a dozen furious words on her tongue waiting to be uttered, but she had no chance. Willy said in a matter-of-fact voice: ‘He’s such a saphead I never thought he’d come after you, Phylly— I mean, he’s not really stuck on you, is he?’ He added with brotherly candour: ‘I daresay he fancied you for a bit—you’re not bad to look at, you know.’
This remark was received in silence. The doctor’s face was impassive and he had dropped the lids over his eyes so that no one could see their expression. Mrs Cresswell buttered a roll with deliberation before remarking: ‘I do not like to curb the young, Willy, but I think that you have rather overreached yourself.’ And Phyllida stared at him and then burst out laughing, only half way through the laughter changed to tears. Pieter jumped to his feet, but before he could reach her, she had rushed out of the room.
Pieter sat down again. He said thoughtfully, looking at Mrs Cresswell: ‘I can but guess at the reason for that; I can only hope that I have guessed correctly.’
Neither of his two companions answered him; Willy for the obvious reason that it might be better to hold his tongue for a while, and his mother because she could see that the doctor required no answer.
He went away presently and as soon as the Bentley had disappeared Philip arrived in the local taxi and Phyllida came downstairs, greeted him quite cheerfully, explained that she was wearing dark glasses because she had a slight headache, and agreed readily to go for a walk.
She had had a good cry upstairs and time to think. She would have to pretend that she intended to marry Philip because that was what Pieter wanted. They had got a little too friendly, but only through force of circumstances; now he wanted to get back to his Marena. She hadn’t been able to understand his bad temper of the previous evening, nor guess at what he had been going to say just before Philip arrived, but it couldn’t have been what she had hoped and now she would never know. Besides, he had fairly flung her at Philip… She had stopped thinking about it, otherwise she’d cry again, and had allowed her mind to dwell on their first meeting on Madeira. He had been so easy to like…to love…
She took Philip for a long walk, following the narrow brick roads between the canals, carefully pointing out anything of interest as they went. They had walked for more than half an hour before Philip, abandoning the threadbare theme of the weather upon which she had been harping, said: ‘You met this fellow on Madeira, didn’t you? I suppose he turned your head and now you fancy you’re in love with him, just as I was saying when he interrupted us. He’s got a girl anyway, that little beauty who came to dinner.’ He added, not unkindly: ‘You haven’t a chance; you’re pretty enough in a nice open-air way, but she’s gorgeous.’
Phyllida had stopped so that she might steady her breath and answer him with calm. She would have liked to have screamed at him, but that would have done no good—besides, she had realised something in the last few moments.
She said with an entirely false enthusiasm: ‘She’s terrific, she’s known Pieter van Sittardt for simply ages and I suppose they’ll marry sooner or later, but I don’t know—I’m not sure if she’s in love with him, or he with her.’ She added distractedly: ‘It’s hard to tell, isn’t it? Philip, all this time while you thought you were in love with me you weren’t, you only thought you were, and now you’ve discovered you aren’t. We get on well, I told you that, but you wouldn’t listen, and that’s not the same as loving someone. I’m not saying you’re in love with Marena, but she excites you as I never did, doesn’t she? One day you’ll find a girl like her.’ She stopped because it had just occurred to her that she would never find a man quite like Pieter, even if she searched for the rest of her life.
‘She’s wonderful,’ said Phillip. ‘Why can’t I meet a girl like that? Clever and stunning to look at…’ He went on awkwardly: ‘I say, Phylly, I didn’t mean to say that—I mean, you’re very pretty and no end of a good companion, but you’re right—I came over here intending to ask you to marry me, but now…’ He paused and she finished for him:
‘And now you’ve seen me, and you don’t want to. Well I don’t want to either, so don’t waste time on me, Philip; there must be hundreds of girls like Marena— you’ll just have to
look for them. Why don’t you ask her out to dinner? She might have sisters or friends or—or someone…’
They had turned for home once more, not hurrying. ‘Well, as a matter of fact I did ask her if she’d have dinner with me. I’ll have to go back tomorrow some time, but I can catch the night ferry. She wants to show me her paintings.’
Phyllida stifled a giggle. Marena must have heard that one about men asking girls up to see their etchings—only hers were paintings.
Philip gave her a look of suspicion. ‘Why are you giggling?’
‘Oh, I’m not,’ she denied hastily. ‘Philip, don’t get too serious, will you? It wouldn’t be fair to cut out Pieter.’
He gave an angry laugh. ‘Good lord, I’ve never met a man more capable of getting his own way! I thought his mother was a bit of a tartar, too.’
‘She’s a darling,’ said Phyllida warmly, instantly up in arms. ‘She’s a bit—well, large, but she’s kind and— and…’
‘Oh dear,’ his voice mocked her. ‘I had no idea you were so keen on her, but I suppose that’s natural.’
They could see the house now, through the trees. ‘It’s a wonderful place he’s got here. We had quite a chat yesterday evening. Can’t say that I like him, though.’
She thought it very likely that Pieter didn’t like him either, but she didn’t say so. There was no point in stirring things up; heaven knew that the muddle was bad enough as it was. But at least she and Philip could part finally and on friendly terms. She would go back home, start all over again and forget Pieter and his family and those nice friends of his on Madeira and the brief period of happiness she had had.
‘You’re not listening,’ complained Philip. ‘I was telling you about this new job I’ve applied for.’
Phyllida said she was sorry and gave her full attention to him prosing on about senior registrars’ posts and getting a consulting job in a few years’ time and his expectations from an elderly grandparent which was going to make his future a decidedly better one. It lasted until they were within a few yards of the garden room, where they paused.