by Betty Neels
The doctor hid a smile. ‘I can assure you that when you meet a man who will love you, none of these things will matter.’
She said in her matter-of-fact way, ‘But I don’t meet men—young men. Father and Mother have friends I’ve known for years. They’re all old and mostly married.’ She tossed back the rest of the brandy, feeing light-headed. Vaguely she realised that in the morning she was going to feel awful about having had this conversation. ‘I shall, of course, make nursing my career and be very successful.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll go to bed now.’ She made for the door. ‘I feel a little sick.’
He crossed the hall with her and stood watching while she made her way upstairs. She looked forlorn and he ignored a wish to help her. Her pride had been shattered; he wouldn’t make it worse.
Thanks to the brandy, Araminta slept all night, but everything came rushing back into her head when she woke up. She remembered only too clearly the talk she had had with the doctor. To weep all over him had been bad enough, but she had said a great deal too much. She got up, went to call the boys and prayed that he would have left the house before they went down to breakfast.
Her prayers weren’t answered; he was sitting at the table just as usual, reading his letters, his spectacles perched on his splendid nose.
He got up as they went in, received the boys’ hugs and wished her good morning with his usual cool politeness. She gave him a quick look as she sat down; there was no sign of the gentle man who had comforted her last night. He was as he always was: indifferent, polite and totally uninterested in her. Her rather high colour subsided; it was clear their conversation was to be a closed book. Well, she had learned her lesson; if ever a man fell in love with her—and she doubted that—he would have to prove it to her in no uncertain fashion. And she would take care to stay heartwhole.
The day passed in its well-ordered fashion; there was plenty to keep her occupied. The boys, fit again, were full of energy, noisy, demanding her attention and time. She welcomed that, just as she welcomed the routine, with their uncle’s return in the evening and the hour of leisure while they were with him. He went out again as soon as they were in bed, wishing her a cool goodnight as he went.
Araminta, eating her dinner under Bas’s kindly eye, wondered where he was. Probably with Christina Lutyns, she supposed. Much as she disliked the woman there was no doubt that she would make a suitable wife for the doctor. Suitable, but not the right one. There was a side to him which she had only glimpsed from time to time—not the cool, bland man with his beautiful manners and ease; there was a different man behind that impassive face and she wished she could know that man. A wish not likely to be granted.
The following week wore on, and there had been no mention of her free day. Perhaps he thought she wouldn’t want one. It was on Friday evening, when she went to collect the boys at bedtime that he asked her to stay for a moment.
‘I don’t know if you had any plans of your own, Miss Pomfrey, but on Sunday I’m taking the boys up to Friesland to visit their aunt and uncle. I should say their great-aunt and great-uncle. They live near Leeuwarden, in the lake district, and I think we might make time to take you on a quick tour of the capital. The boys and I would be delighted to have you with us, and my aunt and uncle will welcome you.’ His smile was kind. ‘You may, of course, wish to be well rid of us!’
It was a thoughtful kindness she hadn’t expected. ‘I wouldn’t be in the way?’
‘No. No, on the contrary. I promise you the boys won’t bother you, and if you feel like exploring on your own you have only to say so. It would give you the opportunity of seeing a little more of Holland before we go back to England.’
‘Then I’d like to come. Thank you for asking me. Is it a long drive?’
‘Just over a hundred miles. We shall need to leave soon after eight o’clock; that will give us an hour or so at Huis Breugh and then after lunch we can spend an hour in Leeuwarden before going back for tea. The boys can have their supper when we get back and go straight to bed.’
Even if she hadn’t wanted to go, she would never have been able to resist the boys’ eager little faces. She agreed that it all sounded great fun and presently urged them upstairs to baths and bed. When she went down later it was to find the doctor had gone out. She hadn’t expected anything else, but all the same she was disappointed.
Which is silly of me, said Araminta to herself, for he must be scared that I’ll weep all over him again. He must have hated it, and want to forget it as quickly as possible.
In this she was mistaken. The doctor had admitted to himself that he had found nothing disagreeable in Araminta’s outburst of crying. True, she had made his jacket damp, and she had cried like a child, uncaring of sniffs and snivels, but he hadn’t forgotten any moment of it. Indeed, he had a vivid memory of the entire episode.
He reminded himself that she would leave his household in a short while now, and doubtless in a short time he would have forgotten all about her. In the meantime, however, there was no reason why he shouldn’t try and make up for her unhappy little episode with van Vleet.
He reminded himself that he had always kept her at arm’s length and would continue to do so. On no account must she be allowed to disrupt his life. His work was his life; he had a wide circle of friends and some day he would marry. The thought of Christina flashed through his mind and he frowned—she would be ideal, of course, for she would allow him to work without trying to alter his life.
He picked up his pen and began making notes for the lecture he was to give that evening.
Araminta, getting up early on Sunday morning, was relieved to see that it was a clear day with a pale blue sky and mild sunshine. She would wear the new dress and jacket and take her short coat with her. That important problem solved, she got the boys dressed and, on going down to breakfast, found the doctor already there.
‘It’s a splendid day,’ he assured them. ‘I’ve been out with Humphrey. The wind is chilly.’ He glanced at Araminta. ‘Bring a coat with you, Miss Pomfrey.’
‘Yes, I will. The boys have their thick jerseys on, but I’ll put their jackets in the car. Is Humphrey coming with us?’
‘Yes, he’ll sit at the back with the boys.’
The boys needed no urging to eat their breakfast, and a few minutes after eight o’clock they were all in the car, with Bas at the door waving them away.
The doctor took the motorway to Amsterdam and then north to Purmerend and Hoorn and so on to the Afsluitdijk.
‘A pity we have no time to stop and look at some of the towns we are passing,’ he observed to Araminta. ‘Perhaps some other time…’
There wasn’t likely to be another time, she reflected, and thrust the thought aside; she was going to enjoy the day and forget everything else. She had told herself sensibly that she must forget about Piet van Vleet. She hadn’t been in love with him, but she had been hurt, and was taken by surprise and she was still getting over that. But today’s outing was an unexpected treat and she was going to enjoy every minute of it.
Once off the dijk the doctor took the road to Leeuwarden and, just past Franeker, took a narrow country road leading south of the city. It ran through farm land: wide fields intersected by narrow canals, grazed by cows and horses. There were prosperous-looking farmhouses and an occasional village.
‘It’s not at all like the country round Utrecht.’
‘No. One has the feeling of wide open spaces here, which in a country as small as Holland seems a solecism. You like it?’
‘Yes, very much.’
He drove on without speaking, and when the road curved through a small copse and emerged on the further side, she could see a lake.
It stretched into the distance, bordered by trees and shrubs. There was a canal running beside it and a narrow waterway leading to a smaller lake. There were sailing boats of every description on it and, here and there, men fishing from its banks, sitting like statues.
The boys were excited now, begging her
to look at first one thing, then another. ‘Isn’t it great?’ they wanted to know. ‘And it gets better and better. Aren’t you glad you came, Mintie?’
She assured them that she was, quite truthfully.
There were houses here and there on the lake’s bank, each with its own small jetty, most of them with boats moored there. She didn’t like to ask if they were almost there, but she did hope that it might be one of these houses, sitting four-square and solid among the sheltering trees around it.
The doctor turned the car into a narrow brick lane beside a narrow inlet, slowed to go through an open gateway and stopped before a white-walled house with a gabled roof. It had a small square tower to one side and tall chimneys, and it was surrounded by a formal garden. The windows were small, with painted shutters. It was an old house, lovingly maintained, and she could hardly wait to see what it was like inside.
The entrance was at the foot of the tower and led into a small lobby which, in turn, opened into a long wide hall. As they went in two people came to meet them. They were elderly, the man tall and spare, with white hair and still handsome, and the woman with him short and rather stout, with hair which had once been fair and was now silver. In her youth she might have been pretty, and she had beautiful eyes, large and blue with finely marked eyebrows. She was dressed in a tweed skirt and a cashmere twinset in a blue to match her eyes. When she spoke her voice was rather high and very clear.
‘Marcus—you’re here. I told Bep we would answer the door; she’s getting deaf, poor dear.’ She stood on tiptoe to receive Marcus’s kiss on her cheek and then bent to hug the boys.
‘And this is Miss Pomfrey,’ said the doctor, and the little lady beamed and clasped Araminta’s hand.
‘You see I speak English, because I am sure you have no time to speak our language, and it is good practice for me.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘We are so glad to meet you, Miss Pomfrey, now you must meet my husband…’
The two men had been greeting each other while the boys stood one each side of them, but now her host came to her and shook her hand.
‘You are most welcome, Miss Pomfrey. I hear from Marcus that you are a valued member of his household.’
‘Thank you. Well, yes, just for a few weeks.’ She smiled up into his elderly face and liked him.
He stared back at her and then nodded his head. She wondered what he was thinking, and then forgot about it as his wife reminded them that coffee was waiting for them in the drawing room. Araminta, offered a seat by her hostess, saw that the doctor had the two boys with him and his uncle and relaxed.
‘Of course, Marcus did not tell you our name? He is such a clever man, with that nose of his always in his books, and yet he forgets the simplest things. I am his mother’s sister—of course, you know that his parents are dead, some years ago now—our name is Nos-Wieringa. My husband was born and brought up in this house and we seldom leave it. But we love to see the family when they come to Holland. You have met the boys’ mother?’
Araminta said that, yes, she had.
‘And you, my dear? Do you have any brothers and sisters and parents?’
‘Parents. No brothers or sisters. I wish I had.’
‘A family is important. Marcus is the eldest, of course, and he has two younger brothers and Lucy. Of course you know she lives in England now that she is married, and the two boys are both doctors; one is in Canada and the other in New Zealand. They should be back shortly—some kind of exchange posts.’
Mevrouw Nos-Wieringa paused for breath and Araminta reflected that she had learned more about the doctor in five minutes than in the weeks she had been working for him.
Coffee drunk, the men took the boys down to the home farm, a little distance from the house. There were some very young calves there, explained the doctor, and one of the big shire horses had had a foal.
‘And I will show you the house,’ said Mevrouw Nos-Wieringa. ‘It is very old but we do not wish to alter it. We have central heating and plumbing and electricity, of course, but they are all concealed as far as possible. You like old houses?’
‘Yes, I do. My parents live in quite a small house,’ said Araminta, anxious not to sail under false pretences. ‘It is quite old, early nineteenth-century, but this house is far older than that, isn’t it?’
‘Part of it is thirteenth-century, the rest seventeenth-century. An ancestor made a great deal of money in the Dutch East Indies and rebuilt the older part.’
The rooms were large and lofty, with vast oak beams and white walls upon which hung a great many paintings.
‘Ancestors?’ asked Araminta.
‘Yes, mine as well as my husband’s. All very alike, aren’t they? You must have noticed that Marcus has the family nose. Strangely enough, few of the women had it. His mother was rather a plain little thing—the van der Breughs tend to marry plain women. They’re a very old family, of course, and his grandfather still lives in the family home. You haven’t been there?’
Araminta said that, no, she hadn’t, and almost added that it was most unlikely that she ever would. Seeking a change of subject, she admired a large oak pillow cupboard. She mustn’t allow her interest in the doctor to swamp common sense.
They lunched presently, sitting at a large oak table on rather uncomfortable chairs; it was a cheerful meal, since the children were allowed to join in the conversation. As they rose from the table Mevrouw Nos-Wieringa said, ‘Now, off you go, Marcus, and take Mintie—I may call you Mintie?—with you. We will enjoy having the boys to ourselves for a while, but be back by six o’clock for the evening meal.’
Araminta, taken by surprise, looked at the doctor. He was smiling.
‘Ah, yes, it slipped my memory. The boys and I decided that I should take you to Leeuwarden and give you a glimpse of it…’
When she opened her mouth to argue, he said, ‘No, don’t say you don’t want to come; the boys will be disappointed. It was their idea that you should have a treat on your free day.’
The boys chorused agreement. ‘We knew you’d like to go with Uncle Marcus. He’ll show you the weigh house and the town hall, and there’s a little café by the park where you could have tea.’
In the face of their eager pleasure there was nothing she could say.
‘It sounds marvellous,’ she told them. ‘And what dears you are to have thought of giving me a treat.’
In the car presently, driving along the narrow fields towards Leeuwarden, she said stiffly, ‘This is kind of you, but it’s disrupting your day. You must wish to spend time with your aunt and uncle.’
He glanced at her rather cross face. ‘No, no, Miss Pomfrey, I shall enjoy showing you round. Besides, I can come here as often as I wish, but you are not likely to come to Friesland—Holland—again, are you? What free time you get from hospital you will want to spend at your own home.’
She agreed, at the same time surprised to discover that the prospect of hospital was no longer filling her with happy anticipation. She should never have taken this job, she reflected. It had unsettled her—a foreign country, living in comfort, having to see the doctor each day. She rethought that—he might unsettle her, but she had to admit that he had made life interesting…
She asked suddenly, and then could have bitten out her tongue, ‘Do you mean to marry Mevrouw Lutyns?’ Before he could reply she added, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t think why I asked that. It was just—just an idle thought.’
He appeared unsurprised. ‘Do you think that I should?’ He added pleasantly, ‘Feel free to speak your mind, Miss Pomfrey. I value your opinion.’
This astonished her. ‘Do you? Do you really? Is it because I’m a stranger—a kind of outside observer? Though I don’t suppose you would take any notice of what I say.’
‘Very likely not.’
‘Well, since you ask… Mevrouw Lutyns is very beautiful, and she wears lovely clothes—you know, they don’t look expensive but they are, and they fit. Clothes off the peg have to be taken up or let out or hitched up, and that
isn’t the same…’
They were on the outskirts of Leeuwarden, and she watched the prosperous houses on either side of the street. ‘This looks a nice place.’
‘It is. Answer my question, Miss Pomfrey.’
‘Well…’ Why must she always begin with ‘well’? she wondered. Her mother would say it was because she was a poor conversationalist. ‘I think that perhaps you wouldn’t be happy together. I imagine that she has lots of friends and likes going out and dancing and meeting people, and you always have your nose in a book or are going off to some hospital or other.’ She added suddenly, ‘I’m sure I don’t know why you asked me this; it’s none of my business.’ She thought for a moment. ‘You would make a handsome pair.’
The doctor turned a laugh into a cough. ‘I must say that your opinion is refreshing.’
‘Yes, but it isn’t going to make any difference.’
He didn’t answer but drove on into the inner city and parked the car by the weigh house. ‘I should have liked to take you to the Friesian Museum, but if I do there will be no time to see anything of the city. We will go to the Grote Kerk first, and then the Oldehove Tower, and then walk around so that you may see some of the townhouses. They are rather fine…’
He took her from here to there, stopping to point out an interesting house, the canals and bridges, interesting gables, and the town hall. Araminta gazed around, trying to see everything at once, determined to remember it all.
‘Now we will do as the boys suggested and have tea—there is the café. They remember it because it has such a variety of cakes. We had better sample some or they will be disappointed.’
It was a charming place, surrounded by a small lawn and flowerbeds which even in autumn were full of colour. The tea was delicious, pale and weak, with no milk, but she was thirsty and the dish of cakes put before them were rich with cream and chocolate and crystallised fruit. Araminta ate one with a simple pleasure and, pressed to do so, ate another.