The Little Dragon

by Betty Neels

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ she replied. ‘Jeroen, thank you for telling Rietje and Tarnus to sleep in. That was kind of you.’

  ‘I forgot to tell you—I shall be home tomorrow afternoon. The children come on the next day, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. Their rooms are ready.’

  He said softly: ‘I miss you, Constantia. Goodnight.’

  Her ‘goodnight’ was almost a whisper—surprise had taken her voice. She reflected that there hadn’t been anyone to miss her for as long as she could remember; it was a pleasant feeling.

  She was in the garden room at the back of the house, grooming the dogs, when Jeroen got back. She didn’t know he was there until his quiet, ‘Hullo,’ from the door. He was instantly engulfed in dogs and there wasn’t any need for her to say much; she asked after his trip, hoped that it had been successful and asked him in a motherly voice if he would like his tea.

  They had it together and it seemed to her that he was thoughtful, as though he was trying to decide something—or perhaps, she told herself sensibly, he was going over the events at the seminar. So she didn’t talk much herself, only when he got up presently and said he would have to take surgery, she agreed cheerfully, and hoped it wouldn’t be too busy an evening. A forlorn hope, as it turned out, for he was called away in the middle of dinner, and although she stayed up until after midnight, he still hadn’t come home.

  But he was at breakfast, his usual placid self, although a little tired. He would be in to lunch, he told her. ‘The children will be here, won’t they? And I should be able to manage it.’

  A remark which hurt just a little, although it had no reason to do so. The children were, after all, his own blood and he loved them.

  Regina and Bram came in time to drink coffee but stopped only long enough to see the children safely settled in. ‘You’re an angel to have them,’ declared Regina, ‘and you’re sure you don’t mind? It’s only for a few days this time.’ She grinned cheerfully. ‘I’ll do the same for you one of these days!’

  She left a few minutes later, with Bram at the wheel of their Mercedes and Constantia, trailed by the children, the dogs and Butch, who was taking a well-earned rest from the kittens, went down to the kitchen. There were koekjes and milk ready for them and they sat in a row at the table while Constantia put on an apron and began to make a chocolate pudding for their dinners. It was cosy and noisy and she became a little flushed and untidy, which was perhaps why the doctor, when he put his head round the door, smiled as his eye lighted upon her.

  It was amazing what a difference the children made; more meals to think about, hair to be brushed, hands to be inspected, beds to make; the inevitable games to be played after tea. Constantia was happy. She decided that she must be the domestic type. She liked having her days full, she liked the children crowding in from the garden, shouting for her to come and play with them, and she loved the sound of her husband’s key in the lock when he came home. Her cooking, under the watchful, kindly eye of Rietje, improved daily, and her Dutch, fragmentary though it was, was at last beginning to make some sort of sense both to her hearers and herself.

  It was on the third day of the children’s visit that Jeroen came home a little earlier than usual. There was no surgery that evening; they had a merry tea and repaired at once to the nursery.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THEY WERE playing a noisy card game when the telephone in one corner of the nursery rang. There was a blinding flash of lightning at the same moment and a crash of thunder, which sent Elisabeth to bury her head in Constantia’s lap. And the thunder was followed by the wind; the stillness which had been so unnatural for the past hour or so was torn to shreds by a great crescendo of sound.

  Constantia, who hated storms, preserved her calm, administering comfort to the little girl while she longed to bury her own head. It was impossible to hear what Jeroen was saying, but his eyes met hers across the room and she saw the urgency in them. He put the receiver down presently and crossed the room to her. His voice was calm and unhurried and he said, largely for the benefit of the children, she thought,

  ‘There’s been an accident—they would like me to go along. I’d like you to come with me.’

  ‘Of course.’ There was no point in asking questions, for he wasn’t going to answer them for the moment. She lifted Elisabeth to her feet and said hearteningly: ‘Look, no more thunder—I’m going to pull the curtains; better still, while I’m away with your uncle, wouldn’t it be a splendid idea to take the cards down to the kitchen and have a game with Rietje? I daresay she’ll give you some of that cake she baked this afternoon.’ She smiled at the three of them and hoped she looked as placid and unworried as Jeroen. But at least she had done and said the right thing—he gave her an approving glance and said at once: ‘I’ll go down and warn her—five minutes, Constantia, and put on some slacks.’

  The children, great cake eaters, weren’t too difficult to persuade and she took them down to the kitchen, where Rietje had already put the cake on the table. She smiled reassuringly at Constantia as she settled the children, told them to be good and go to bed if by some remote chance she wasn’t back by that time, returned Elisabeth’s strangling hug and went upstairs, tearing like a mad thing through the house once she had the kitchen door shut behind her.

  Slacks, Jeroen had said. She dragged them on, put a heavy sweater over her thin one, tied her hair into a scarf and caught up a pair of thick woollen gloves. She remembered her shoes at the last moment and changed them for a pair of solid lace-ups.

  She got to the front door at the same time as the Fiat; she was barely in the seat beside him before Jeroen drove off.

  It was market day, it had to be, Constantia thought savagely as he crawled through the heavy traffic in the centre of the town and then turned off into the narrow side-streets to bring him at last on to the main road in the direction of the Hoek van Holland and Naaldwijk. The road was fairly clear here and he drove very fast, taking advantage of every chance to overtake; keeping his foot down on the accelerator, ignoring speed regulations. She stole a look at him and saw that his profile was as calm and placid as always; they might have been going on a Sunday afternoon’s ride.

  They had covered a mile or so when the wind, which had died down, started up again and hit the car from all sides, but Jeroen didn’t slacken his speed. The sky was pitch black in front of them, but on the horizon to their left it glowed with a metallic gleam so that the fields around them seemed to change colour. She was wondering about that when he spoke. His ‘Good girl!’ brought a pleasant glow under the sweater; it covered so many things that he hadn’t the time to say.

  ‘There’s been a bad accident in a factory this side of Naaldwijk. There was a whirlwind,’ he paused to look ahead of him, ‘and it looks as though there will be another—it flattened glasshouses for several miles, blew off roofs and lifted cars off the road. It also took the roof off a scrap-iron yard and sent it into the air, to land on a pile of scrap metal.’

  ‘People trapped?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. And the rest of the roof in danger of falling unless this wind stops.’ He peered ahead into the unnatural gloom. ‘The road from Rotterdam is blocked by débris, so is the main road from den Haag—they’ll have to work their way round—and so shall we,’ he added rather grimly, and nodded to where a few hundred yards further along the road, two cars were hopelessly tangled. There were people there, but the doctor, with a muttered: ‘I dare not stop,’ swung the car down a side lane, not slackening his pace. Constantia, who had always considered that she had strong nerves, began to wonder if she had been mistaken. ‘Scared?’ asked Jeroen mildly.

  ‘Yes, but don’t mind me—am I to stay with you when we get there?’

  ‘Yes—there are bandages and splints and so on in that canvas bag behind you. Your job will be mainly first aid—if we lose sight of each other, go back to the car and get into it.’ He drew a sharp breath. ‘There it is.’

  Ahead of them and to their left were t
he beginnings of a factory area and he turned at the next crossroads to rejoin the main road once more. There was already evidence of damage; broken windows, one or two cars on their sides at the edge of the road and débris scattered, but even that couldn’t warn them of the disastrous scene which met their eyes as the road curved and they reached the scrap yard.

  It must have been an untidy place at the best of times; now it looked as though a bomb had struck it. The doctor pulled the car round in a half circle to avoid a great heap of twisted metal and brought it to a halt. There were several other cars already there, and behind the towering heap of rubble in front of them, people; Constantia could hear them shouting and calling to each other. Jeroen caught her hand as she got out of the car and with his case, and the canvas bag in the other hand, hurried her between the stones and bricks and hunks of wood to where a small group of men were clearing a crazy pile-up of scrap-heap cars.

  There were already several men freed; they sat propped up against whatever came handy, looking dazed or lay very still, covered with other men’s coats. Constantia, mindful of instructions, clung to Jeroen like his shadow while he examined them, bandaging and splinting and reassuring as best she could. She was applying pressure to a nasty head injury when he said: ‘I’m going to give a hand—there are several more men underneath. You’re to stay here, Constantia.’

  She nodded. He so seldom told her to do something in that arbitrary fashion that the idea of disobeying him never entered her head.

  It took her a few minutes to staunch the bleeding; she applied an emergency dressing, took the man’s pulse and went to look at the man lying close by—a fractured pelvis, Jeroen had said, and perhaps internal injuries, he hadn’t looked too good when they had attended to him and she wasn’t too happy about his colour now. It was while she was bending over him that she heard the sound of the wind change to a roaring whistle—and when she glanced up, it was to see the strange metallic sky tearing across the heavens. Another whirlwind? she wondered, and her mouth went dry. She was still staring upwards when she was pushed, none too gently, flat on to the ground and Jeroen’s voice said in her terrified ear: ‘Don’t move.’

  An impossibility; he had flung himself on top of her and she lay trying to breathe under his weight. ‘You must weigh a ton,’ she mumbled, and felt him laugh. And after that normal little sound there was nothing to hear but the eerie whistle and roar of the wind as it swept down on them, sending bits of roof flying in all directions, lifting some bicycles stacked against a wall and sending them spinning, shifting the scrap metal into rending, tearing, terrible weapons flying in all directions. There was something else to hear, though, the steady thump of Jeroen’s heart; it made her feel perfectly safe.

  It was all over in a couple of minutes, then the whirlwind roared its way seawards leaving a trail of destruction behind it. Constantia found herself on her feet again, taking pulses, trying bandages and holding instruments for Jeroen when he had to perform on-the-spot surgery. She had no idea how long it was before she heard the reassuring sing-song of the ambulances and police; it seemed like hours, but afterwards she discovered that it was less than half an hour. The surgical teams took over then, and Jeroen walked her back to the car and told her to sit there until he was ready. She fell asleep almost at once and awoke to find him beside her, looking at her. She mumbled, ‘So sorry,’ and then watching the lift of his eyebrows, burst out: ‘I must look awful!’

  He leaned over and kissed her gently. ‘You look like a worn-out child—or do I mean a dragon? We’re going home.’

  ‘Were there many hurt?’ she wanted to know. ‘Did the second whirlwind do much damage? That man—the one with the head wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding—is he all right?’

  ‘He’s fine—in hospital by now. Thank heaven, the damage wasn’t too bad the second time round.’ He was feeling in the pocket of the car door and took out a brandy flask. ‘Have some of this, you need it.’

  ‘How many were killed?’ she asked flatly.

  ‘Seven—there are several still missing, they’re searching for them now. Twelve wounded here, and the police tell me that there are quite a number of minor injuries in the area. Luckily the path was narrow and missed the heavily populated areas.’

  He held the flask out with unspoken firmness and she took a mouthful, choked, coughed and asked: ‘It didn’t touch Delft, did it? The children…’

  ‘No, they should be safe,’ he reassured her. ‘In any case, I told Rietje to rush them into the cellars if the wind got too bad.’

  She said almost pettishly, for her head ached: ‘How can you remember everything?’

  ‘One always remembers those most precious to one—especially in a moment of emergency.’

  Just as he had remembered her, even though she wasn’t precious to him. He had flung her down and shielded her from danger in less time than it had taken her to think about it. He had even laughed.

  He started up the car and backed slowly away from the mess and muddle and several men waved as they passed, and the two policemen at the entrance saluted him. Constantia felt very proud of him.

  They drove back at a more sober pace, not talking, busy with their thoughts. The children would be on the point of going to bed, but she would have to change her clothes before she went to say goodnight to them. She glanced sideways at Jeroen; he would have to change his clothes too, they were torn and stained with blood and mud and grease, quite beyond her powers of repair. He would have to have a new suit. She was still thinking about it when they arrived at the house.

  They went in very quietly and she whispered in the hall: ‘The children will be in their rooms. I’m going to creep up and change and then go and say goodnight.’

  He looked her over slowly. Her hair had come loose a long time ago, the scarf had been used as an impromptu sling, her sweater was as filthy as his jacket and that was torn too, and she had a rip in her slacks which made them barely decent. She had a smear of oil on her forehead, although she didn’t know that, and her fingernails were torn. Jeroen grinned suddenly at her and caught her close and kissed her hard.

  ‘You look quite beautiful,’ he told her. ‘I’ll see you in the children’s rooms—I’ve some telephoning to do.’

  She felt a little lightheaded and curiously happy as she washed and changed and tidied her hair. She supposed that it was excitement and brandy and fright; it wasn’t until she reached the boys’ room and found Jeroen already there, as immaculate as though he had never left the house, that she knew that it was none of these things—it was love. She loved Jeroen, who stood there so endearingly large and placid, his hands in his pockets, laughing and joking with the boys as though he had not a care in the world.

  He smiled at her now and she managed to smile back, while she longed to race across the room and fling herself at him. How ridiculous it was that she hadn’t discovered it sooner, and what on earth was there to be done about it? Would she have to spend the rest of her life with him pretending to the pleasant, easy-going relationship between them? Until now it had served well enough, undemanding and yet solidly assured, and she had been happy…

  Anyway, there was no time to think about it now; she joined in the lighthearted chatter and went through to a sleepy Elisabeth’s room to sit on the bed and tell the next instalment of the long-drawn-out tale she was inventing each evening at bedtime.

  And while she told, Constantia allowed part of her mind to think about Jeroen, longing to be with him again and yet shy…but no need to be shy, she reminded herself ruefully, he was going out that evening, to some dinner or other to do with the College of Surgeons.

  She saw him only briefly before he went, and beyond asking her if she had quite recovered from the afternoon’s experience, he had little to say. She agreed to his suggestion that she should go to bed early because it seemed the best thing to say, although the idea of lying in bed and worrying away at her problems didn’t appeal to her in the least, and she saw him off with what she hoped was a con
vincing display of just the right amount of wifely interest without being fulsome. Her efforts were indeed wooden, to say the least, and the doctor gave her a long intent look as he went, which she didn’t see.

  But circumstances were on her side. Corrie didn’t turn up the next morning, and shortly after she was due to arrive a small boy came with a note to say that she was ill in bed with ’flu. Constantia, pressed into instant service as receptionist and general helper at morning surgery, forgot to be wooden; she struggled with names, found notes, procured forms and did a little bandaging on the side, with commendable aplomb. It was a relief to find that Tarnus had come that morning and was bustling around, fetching the coffee to the doctor’s study after surgery and assuring Constantia that she had no need to worry about anything.

  He came a good deal, she thought, surely the silver didn’t take up quite as much time as he appeared to spend at the house? She mentioned it a shade diffidently to Jeroen, who looked up from the notes he was writing up and smiled briefly with a casual: ‘The better for us, don’t you agree, my dear?’

  One of those unanswerable remarks he seemed so adept at giving when he didn’t want to pursue a conversation. She said rather pettishly: ‘Oh, well, I suppose so,’ and then: ‘Jeroen, shall we ever have a home of our own?’

  He paused in his writing, his face blandly enquiring. ‘I thought you liked this place?’

  She put the coffee cup under his splendid nose. ‘Oh, I do—you know that—it’s just that if it’s not yours—ours—it will never be home.’

  He saw the coffee at last and absentmindedly drank half of it. ‘Then we must do something about it, Constantia.’

  Her peevishness evaporated. ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that—I don’t want to interfere—you’re happy here.’