by Betty Neels
The little girls were overjoyed to see her; she was hugged and kissed while they told her about Miss Bloom. ‘Papa took her to Schiphol and we gave her a present, but it’s very lonely.’ Teile sniffed dolefully. ‘I suppose you couldn’t possibly stay with us?’
‘Well, I do work at the hospital, you see,’ said Charity gently. ‘I’m sure your father will find another governess for you.’
‘We asked him and he said wait and see,’ said Letizia.
‘That can be quite fun sometimes,’ observed Charity soothingly, and was glad to see Jolly arriving with the tea tray.
They had finished tea and were deep in the construction of a dolls’ house, for, rather to Charity’s surprise, the little girls had gathered together cardboard, glue, paints and paper. So after tea she spread a newspaper over the table and assembled everything she needed and began, helped and hindered by the children. She was glueing the walls together when Mr van der Brons joined them and since it was a little bit of a ticklish business she cast him only a fleeting glance, and her ‘good evening’ was preoccupied.
The children flung themselves at him, Samson barked joyfully, and it struck her that she might have been more friendly. She gave him rather a shy enquiring look and found him smiling at her. She was quite taken unawares when he asked, ‘Well, have you thought about it, Charity?’
She glowered at him; it had been bad enough being proposed to in Sister’s office and in such a down-to-earth manner too, and now she was expected to give him her answer with the two little girls, all agog, listening to every word.
He was laughing at her. ‘No, no, I’m sorry, Charity, how very thoughtless of me. But you will stay this evening, won’t you? Mrs Jolly is determined to excel herself. We might have dinner a little earlier, perhaps, and these two can share it.’ And at their whoops of delight, he added, ‘On the condition that they go to bed immediately afterwards.’
He wandered over to the table and bent over the little cardboard house, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Nice,’ he observed. ‘I won’t disturb you for a while—I’ve some work to do. I’ll be back.’ He went away, taking Samson with him, and Charity was very surprised to find that she missed him.
They dined presently; a treat for the children because they were still sad at Miss Bloom’s going and Mrs Jolly had indeed excelled herself—mushrooms in garlic, poulet a l’estragon served with creamed potatoes and pumpkin soufflé, followed by a coffee Bavarois. The little girls had been allowed a thimbleful of wine; a white wine which Charity pronounced delicious and enquired in her sensible way as to its name.
The professor hid a gentle amusement but answered her gravely. ‘It is a white burgundy, rather dry for your taste perhaps?’
‘I think it is just right, but of course I don’t know much about wine.’
She applied herself to her chicken with an unselfconscious appetite, something which he found very refreshing after the jaded palates of the women he had occasionally asked out to dinner. Miss Bloom had described her as a nice girl and she was; he liked her very much, and she would fit into their lives very well, slipping into their way of living without disturbing it in any way. He smiled warmly at her across the table and she smiled back at him, thinking that when he was there her small worries and anxieties seemed to disappear.
The little girls went to bed, led away by a plump smiling girl whom Mr van der Brons introduced as Nel. ‘She is what you call a housemaid, I think; she is also very good with the children when Miss Bloom is not here.’
He paused and took the coffee-cup she was offering. They were in the drawing-room now, sitting one each side of the brisk fire with Samson between them. ‘Charity, I very much hope that you are going to tell me that you will marry me. I am a little out of practice with pretty speeches. I can but reiterate what I have already told you: that I think that we could build a happy home-life for the children together. To say more—to promise more—would be wrong, but unlike young van Kamp I do mean what I say.’
Charity sat very still; she had gone rather pale but she looked at him calmly. She believed him, but before she could answer him there were one or two points to settle. ‘If I marry you you will believe me when I say that although it will be very nice to live here in comfort and have the children to love and look after and have pretty clothes, I dare say, I wouldn’t be doing it for any of those things. I’m fond of Teile and Letizia, and if you were a struggling GP I’d be just as willing to marry you. I—I like you and I think we could be content together. Only I don’t love you, you know…’ She paused. ‘I’m making a muddle of it, but do you understand?’
He was smiling a little. ‘Oh, yes, and I think we might leave the romantic side of it for the time being, don’t you? Neither of us is impulsive and both of us have tried romance and found it—what shall I say?—disappointing. A calm friendship will suit us both, will it not?’
Charity drew a deep breath. ‘Well, then, I’ll marry you if you really want me to.’
He got out of his chair and came to pluck her gently from hers. His hands on her shoulders were gentle and his voice was gentle too.
‘I believe that we shall deal together very well…’ he bent and kissed her cheek ‘…and the children will be enchanted.’
‘You’re sure? I’m not at all like Miss Bloom.’
He laughed then. ‘No, not in the slightest. Shall we marry soon? And do you wish to be married in England or here—there is the English Church in the Begijnhof, just off the Kalverstraat, I expect you know of it? We can marry there.’
‘I would like that. But don’t I have to fulfil my contract—I can’t just leave?’
‘Leave that to me. Have you friends in England whom you would like to come to our wedding? I know that you have a stepsister…’
‘I’ve friends there, yes—nurses mostly. It’s well—it’s rather expensive and a long way for them to come just for our wedding and I don’t suppose they could afford it. I don’t know where Eunice is. I had a card at Christmas but it was posted in Zurich. I’ve got her London address, though.’
‘Then shall we have a very quiet wedding? Just you and me, someone to give you away and someone else to be best man? The children, of course… I’ll take you to meet my family afterwards—I can manage a few days off at the end of January.’
She thought about it and then said matter-of-factly, ‘That seems a good idea. You wouldn’t mind? I mean, not having a proper wedding? Your family won’t mind either?’
His mouth twitched. ‘No, but they will be delighted to welcome you. Just leave everything to me, will you, my dear? I’ll see about a licence—perhaps in a week’s time?’
‘A week?’ Her voice came out in a squeak. ‘But I must do some shopping.’
‘Just something for the wedding. You can shop all you want to afterwards. You have the early shift tomorrow, haven’t you? Come here to tea, I’ll come home as soon as I can. I shall tell the children at breakfast.’
It all sounded so simple; she could leave everything to him and she was quite sure that it would be exactly as he had said. ‘Supposing it doesn’t work out?’ She sounded anxious.
‘But it will.’ He sounded quite certain and she felt reassured.
‘It’s for the rest of our lives,’ she reminded him.
‘Indeed it is.
That is why we have a good chance of making a success of it. We have good reasons to marry, Charity, not sudden whims or infatuation—we both know about those, do we not?’
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask about Mevrouw de Groot, but she stopped in time. Probably she was an old family friend and really she didn’t know Mr van der Brons well enough to ask. It occurred to her then that she didn’t know his name.
‘Tyco—and forty years old next birthday. Too old for you, Charity?’
She shook her head. ‘I hadn’t thought about it, but no, I don’t think it will matter at all.’
He said slowly, ‘When I’m seventy you will be a sprightly fifty-three.’
‘Well, if you are feeling your age, which I very much doubt, I’ll be young enough to look after you, won’t I?’ She spoke in such a matter-of-fact way that he burst out laughing.
‘I find myself looking forward to a delightful old age.’ He took her hands in his and she smiled up at him.
‘I should go back, please; it’s quite late and I’m on duty early.’
He drove her back to the hospital with a promptitude which pleased her at first but later on gave rise to the niggling doubt that he had had enough of her company now that he had got what he wanted. She wondered, as she lay in bed, waiting for sleep, just what the future held for her and if she had been wise to agree so quickly to his proposal, and yet, although she couldn’t put a finger on it, she felt that her reasons for doing so had been right. She was too sleepy to remember them anyway.
Mr van der Brons arrived at an early hour the next morning but, after examining the worst of his patients, went away, to return again this time with Wim van Beek, who started on the ward round with the most senior staff nurse while Mr van der Brons went into Sister’s office. Charity was in one of the side-wards feeding the small boy who had been playing with matches. He was a cheerful child despite his burnt hands and in a few days he would be moved in with the other convalescent children. Now he sat propped up in his little bed, chattering away to her, not caring that she understood perhaps one word in ten; their conversation, conducted in two languages, one of which was unintelligible to each of them, was quite satisfactory to them both; they laughed a lot while she spooned porridge into his eager little mouth and then patiently held bread and butter and cheese for him to gobble. They were giggling together when Sister and Mr van der Brons came in.
‘So we are to lose you,’ said Hoofdzuster Kingsma cheerfully. ‘It is a great surprise to us, but we are also pleased for you both and wish you every happiness.’
Charity fed her patient another finger of bread and cheese and looked reproachfully at Mr van der Brons—a look he ignored with blandness.
‘Oh, well,’ observed Charity, at a loss for words until he observed genially,
‘The directrice and Sister Kingsma are kind enough to allow you to leave at the end of the week, Charity. We are most grateful, are we not?’
She caught his eye and decided that he was amused about the whole thing. ‘Most grateful,’ she repeated, wondering where she was to go until he had made arrangements for the wedding. Presumably he would let her know when he saw fit. She gave him another look, questioning and rather cross, and he said,
‘We’ll discuss the details this evening.’
He became all at once brisk. ‘We might take a look at this little chap—a skin graft on the left hand, I think. As soon as possible we will send him home and then have him back to see what can be done. His mother is a very sensible woman and once we can have these bandages off she should be able to look after him.’ He turned to Zuster Kingsma. ‘There are no other children?’ He switched to Dutch and Charity finished feeding the bread and cheese and offered milk through a straw. She was feeling annoyed; Mr van der Brons was arranging everything to suit himself. She had always thought herself that the bride made all the decisions, but here he was, making plans without so much as a by-your-leave…
She stayed cross all day and went off duty that afternoon in something of a bad temper. She had been overwhelmed by the good wishes of her friends when she went to her dinner; the grapevine was as strong in Holland as it was in England, apparently, although she hadn’t said a word to anyone, and to their excited questions as to when she was to marry and where she was to live and when she was going to leave she had to give vague answers, being not much wiser than they were.
However, it was impossible to stay cross when she reached Mr van der Brons’s house; the little girls fell upon her and there was no doubt that they were happy at the news. ‘What shall we call you?’ they wanted to know, and, what was more important, ‘What are you going to wear at the wedding?’
Charity’s peevishness melted before their delight. ‘Well, I haven’t had time to think about it. Have you any ideas?’
They were bursting with them. Their shrill voices rang with suggestions; white satin, yards of lace, pearl-embroidered veils, satin slippers, long white gloves…!
‘Well,’ said Charity cautiously, ‘I rather thought as it is to be a very quiet wedding that I might wear a dress and jacket.’ At the look of disappointment on their faces, she added hastily, ‘Silk, of course, and in a pretty colour and a hat. I couldn’t wear satin slippers but I could have, well—patent leather? You know, shiny and black?’
They were having tea and arguing happily about what should go on the hat when Mr van der Brons joined them. His daughters hurled themselves at him with Samson weaving in and out.
‘Charity wants to wear a hat,’ they told him. ‘She doesn’t want to look like a proper bride.’ They lapsed into Dutch and he listened patiently.
‘Of course she will look like a bride,’ he assured them. ‘I rather fancy a hat myself and a large bouquet…very bridal.’
He came across to where Charity was sitting and bent to kiss her cheek. ‘I am sure that you will be a charming bride,’ he told her kindly. ‘Now, supposing we take Charity round her new home.’
They set off, the four of them and Samson, of course. The drawing-room she had already seen but she was taken on a tour of the family portraits on its walls and then led across the hall to the dining-room where there were even more portraits. ‘I’m afraid our family is a vast one, and the ancestor who built this house had ten children who astonishingly all survived to enlarge the family even more.’
There was a smaller room behind the dining-room, a sitting-room, very cosy and charmingly furnished, and, on the other side of the hall, the study. She peeped inside to admire the vast desk, rows of bookshelves and the comfortable leather armchairs on each side of the old-fashioned stove.
Upstairs she was led in and out of any number of bedrooms; from the street the house hadn’t appeared all that vast, but inside it was a rabbit warren of rooms and small passages. They mounted even higher to find still more bedrooms and then up a staircase there was the flat where the Jollys lived.
‘There’s a cellar too,’ Mr van der Brons told her, ‘but we’ll leave that for another time.’
They all went down to the drawing-room again and presently the little girls went with Nel to have their supper. ‘They will be back to say goodnight,’ said Mr van der Brons, ‘but I suspect that when you come to live with us you will be expected to tuck them up at bedtime. A task I have undertaken when I have been at home,
for Miss Bloom, bless her, didn’t hold with cuddles and kisses although she was always kind to the children.’
He invited her to sit in a chair by the fire and fetched their drinks from the rent table which stood between the windows. ‘Now let us get things clear. You are to leave at the end of next week—Saturday. I have arranged a special licence and we can be married that afternoon and come back here. I have arranged to be free on the Sunday but I have a list on the Monday morning. Perhaps we can take a holiday later on. I have a croft in Scotland—in the Highlands—and a small villa in Portugal; we could go to whichever one you would like.’
‘What about the children?’
‘They might come with us.’ He spoke casually. ‘They’ll be going to school next week and I suppose we could wait until the Easter holidays.’
She agreed quietly, conscious of disappointment—to get to know each other would be nice, she thought wistfully and then told herself bracingly that it was early days; they weren’t even married yet. She wasn’t even quite sure if they were engaged. A doubt which was set at rest within the next few minutes, for he opened a drawer in the rent table and took out a small velvet box.
‘My grandmother gave me this a long time ago and told me to give it to whoever I married. My first wife wanted a modern ring but I think that it will be right for you, Charity.’