by Betty Neels
He led her across to a narrow door by the fireplace which opened into a much smaller apartment, with Regency furniture and remarkably cosy, with its French windows opening on to a wide expanse of lawn, and chintz curtains blowing in the light breeze. The circular table in the centre of the room was laid with a snowy cloth and rose-patterned china, and two chairs had been drawn up to it most invitingly.
They were greeted here by Lucky, free of his plasters and a little stiff in his hind legs and his coat glossy and sleek, who got out of his basket and came to sniff delightedly at them, closely followed by an elderly sheepdog, stiff in the hind legs too, but from age. Laura made much of them both, and looked up to ask: ‘Why Hovis?’
‘He adores brown bread,’ said Reilof. He put a hand on the old dog’s head. ‘The pair of them get on splendidly.’
The door opened then and a small, thin woman darted in, said something to Reilof and set a tray of coffee on the table. He answered her with a laugh and turned to Laura. ‘This is Truus, Piet’s wife—she looks after the house and does the cooking. I’m afraid she doesn’t speak any English, but you will quickly learn some Dutch.’
Laura offered her hand once more and smiled and said how do you do, which she realised was rather silly, but what else was one to say?
Truus smiled and broke into speech again, and Reilof said: ‘Truus says that she can see that you will be a good housewife and she welcomes a mistress to the house; she will be happy to work for you and to show you anything you may wish to see.’
Laura went a pretty pink. ‘How kind! Please will you tell Truus that I shall value her friendship and help. It’s generous of her to be so friendly—after all, I’m a complete stranger.’
‘You are my wife.’ Reilof spoke coolly and she wondered if she had annoyed him in some way. Perhaps he was reminding himself of the lovely bride he had expected to bring with him. Laura turned away to tickle Hovis’s chin, for his woolly head was comforting under her hand and she needed comfort. There would be many more such moments before her, and the quicker she faced up to them without self-pity the better. Reilof, with Truus gone, asked her to pour their coffee and the face she turned to him was serene again; she had no intention of ever letting him see it otherwise.
They had their early lunch together, talking casually about nothing in particular, and when they had finished Reilof said shortly, ‘You won’t mind if I leave you? I have a good deal of work to attend to, I doubt if I shall be finished before the evening. I’ll tell Truus to take you round the house. Piet will give you tea whenever you want it, and I daresay you want to unpack and have a rest. I have always had dinner at half-past seven, but if you would like to alter that time, please do as you think fit.’
Laura eyed him with surprise; he could have been addressing the new home help, but she forgave him. After all, he wasn’t yet used to having a wife, if one could call her that. ‘I don’t expect I shall want to change anything,’ she told him in a sensible voice, ‘and if I did, I shouldn’t dream of doing so until I consulted you and Truus.’ She smiled a little. ‘How wretched for you, having to plunge straight back into your work, though I daresay you don’t mind at all. I’ll see you this evening, then.’
He looked slightly taken aback as though he had expected her to complain at his going, although all he said was: ‘I’ll send Piet in as I go.’
Piet proved a mountain of helpfulness and common sense, and Laura found her afternoon gently organised for her. She should be taken at once to her room where she would find her clothes unpacked, and perhaps she would like an hour or so to herself, then perhaps Truus might come to her room at three o’clock and take her round the house. He would accompany them if mevrouw had no objection, so that any questions she might wish to ask could be answered.
Laura smiled at the cheerful little man. ‘That sounds perfect, Piet,’ she told him. ‘I’ll go to my room now if Truus will take me there.’
She followed the housekeeper up the thickly-carpeted staircase and along a gallery which ran round three sides of the hall, and found her room to be at the front of the house, a large, light apartment with wide windows opening on to the wrought-iron balcony. A wide four poster bed was hung with the same pink and blue chintz as curtained the windows, and a delicate bow-fronted chest of satin-wood with painted panels stood against one wall. There was a sofa-table too between the windows, with a shield-back mirror upon it and elegant satin-wood chairs upholstered in pink striped silk, and on the bedside tables were exquisite china groups serving as lamps. Laura stood trying to take it all in. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said at length. ‘I’ve never seen such a lovely room.’ Her eyes roamed everywhere; it certainly lacked nothing, from its silk-striped pearly pink walls to the thick carpet under her feet, it was perfection itself.
‘De badkamer.’ Truus had opened a door cut into a wall to reveal a bathroom as modern and luxurious as any woman could wish for. Pink again, its shelves stocked with every soap and powder and lotion one could think of. Reilof would have bought these, Laura guessed, ready for Joyce’s use. She wondered if Piet and Truus were surprised to find that his new wife was such a homely-looking girl with none of the sparkle attributed to a new bride, but when she thanked the housekeeper there was nothing in Truus’s face to suggest it. It smiled back at her with genuine goodwill and a desire to please while the housekeeper got herself to the door with a few cheerful, unintelligible words. When she had gone, Laura had a leisurely bath, put on another dress and disdaining the desire for a nap, did her face and hair, this time allowing her mousy tresses to hang down her back, tied back with a chiffon scarf, and by the time she had done that there was a discreet knock on the door and Truus came in. Piet’s voice from behind her said: ‘If you are ready, mevrouw, we shall be most happy to show you the house.’
Perhaps they found it a little odd, mused Laura as she walked beside Truus along the gallery, that the doctor’s new wife should be shown her new home by the housekeeper and not her husband. A vivid picture of Joyce arm-in-arm with Reilof, waltzing in and out of the rooms, discussing their furnishings, making him laugh, wheedling him to alter this and buy that, imprinted itself on her brain, but she frowned it away; Joyce mustn’t be allowed to spoil any chance of happiness there might be for Reilof and herself, although perhaps contentment was the word she needed.
They inspected the rooms downstairs first; the drawing room, which she now went round at her leisure, the smaller sitting room behind it, the elegant dining room with its Hepplewhite chairs and table and massive side table. Twenty persons could sit down to dinner, Piet informed her with pride, and the dinner service used for such occasions was almost two hundred years old. Across the hall was the doctor’s study; Laura didn’t go in, but stood at the door, looking at the kneehole desk with its big, solid chair behind it, the shelves of books and the two leather armchairs drawn up to the hooded fireplace before going on to a small panelled room which Piet called the parlour, and much used, she fancied, for there was a small oval table in its centre with a magazine or two on it, a couple of books and a bowl of fresh flowers. The dogs’ baskets were here too, as well as a charming little work-table with a button-backed balloon chair beside it.
Piet saw her looking at it and said at once, ‘The doctor’s mother used this room, mevrouw. She liked to have her tea here and sit quietly—he would come here each evening when she was alive…’
Which raised a problem. Would Reilof like her to use it too, or was it to be out of bounds? She would have to find out.
The kitchen premises last, said Piet firmly, leading the way upstairs again, past her own room, to open a neighbouring door with the words: ‘The doctor’s room, mevrouw.’ A very masculine apartment it was, too, its mahogany furniture set off by a honey-coloured carpet and amber curtains and bedspread. Laura, feeling an intruder, glanced round, murmured appreciatively and turned her back on it to be shown the adjoining bathroom before passing on to the second side of the gallery. There were three rooms here, a good deal smal
ler than her own but large enough by her own standards, each furnished with great good taste, and along the third side there was a larger room again, with a narrow passage beside it running towards the back of the house. She had been right, the back wing rambled; the passage had corners, steps and unexpected windows and a great many rooms, some small, all exquisitely furnished, leading from it. She rather lost count of their number and the bathrooms which adjoined them, but there seemed a great number.
‘The work!’ she declared, round-eyed.
Truus understood her and smiled, but it was Piet who answered. ‘These rooms are used only for guests,’ he explained. ‘At New Year and Christmas and when there is a family gathering. We have sufficient help in the house, mevrouw, and every modern aid to make the work light.’
Laura nodded. Reilof must have a great deal of money to live in a house of this size. Presumably, when he saw fit, he would tell her such details—after all, she was his wife, she had a right to know. She frowned; there were more and more problems cropping up to which she had given no thought at all.
The passage took a sharp turn and Truus opened the door which confronted them. ‘Kinderkamer,’ she pronounced happily, and Piet said: ‘Truus is very fond of children, mevrouw. This is the nursery—here is the day nursery, and here the sleeping rooms, three for the children, and one for the nursemaid. The doctor’s nanny lives here still—perhaps you knew that? She is old now but very sound in the head. She is at present in Scotland with her niece.’
He beamed at Laura and when she looked at Truus, Truus was smiling too. Presumably her arrival to them meant a nicely-filled nursery. The thought gave her a heartache; a number of little van Meerums romping around in the homely room would be exactly what the old house needed. She managed a smile, going a little pink in the face because she was, in a way, deceiving them. The pinkness made it worse; they exchanged happy, conspiratorial glances and shut the door with a satisfied click before escorting her up a narrow staircase to the floor above—more bedrooms and a small sitting room, cosily furnished.
‘Annie and Els, the two housemaids,’ explained Piet, ‘they have their rooms here, and there are also attics and store rooms and a bathroom. If you are not tired, mevrouw, we will go to the glass house.’
He meant the sunroom, a vast one, running the width of the house at the back and entered from the small sitting room where they had had their lunch as well as a narrow door in the hall. It housed a variety of plants and flowers, and a white-painted table and chairs as well as comfortable loungers. It opened on to a wide lawn behind the house, surrounded by a herbaceous border, flowering shrubs and ornamental trees and there was a square pool in its centre with a little fountain playing. Laura gazed about her, taking in its beauty, conscious of a feeling of resentment that Reilof hadn’t told her about it. Perhaps he had thought that she wouldn’t be interested, perhaps he couldn’t bear the thought of her enjoying something which Joyce would have revelled in. ‘Luxury,’ muttered Laura, and turned to listen to Piet explaining about the paths leading away from the lawn and into the shrubbery.
‘There is a swimming pool on that side,’ he waved an explanatory arm, ‘and on this side there are the garages and outbuildings, and at the end of the garden there is a pretty summer house, very quiet. You like it, mevrouw?’
‘Oh, I do,’ declared Laura fervently, ‘it’s pure heaven.’
He gave her a kindly look. ‘There is time enough for you to inspect the kitchens, mevrouw—you shall sit here and I will bring you the English afternoon tea. There is a pleasant seat near the fountain and a little table…’
She was pouring her first cup of Earl Grey from the gadrooned silver teapot when Piet came across the lawn once more, this time with a visitor. A thickset young man of middle height, with lint-fair hair and blue eyes in an open face. He smiled but didn’t speak until Piet announced: ‘Doctor Jan van Mijhof, the doctor’s partner, mevrouw.’ He added, ‘I will bring another cup and saucer.’
Laura was on her feet, holding out a hand. ‘Oh, how nice,’ she exclaimed, ‘I was feeling just a little lonely. Reilof told me about you, of course, but I didn’t expect to meet you so soon.’
His smile broadened. ‘For that I am guilty, Mevrouw van Meerum, I knew that Reilof would be back today. I am just returned from Amsterdam and I thought that I would call in on my way home. I expected that he would be here. Did some emergency make it necessary for him to work today?’
‘I—I don’t think so. He said that he had a great deal of work and wouldn’t be back until this evening. I’m delighted that you called, though. Now I can have tea with someone…’
Piet had brought another cup and saucer and she bade her guest sit down while she poured his tea and offered him one of the little macaroons Truus had put on the tea tray. She had liked the young man at once; here, at least, was someone she would be able to talk to. He was about her own age, perhaps a little younger, and he had an open face which invited friendship.
‘I’ve dozens of questions,’ she said happily. ‘You don’t live here? Close by, I suppose? Do you share Reilof’s consulting rooms, and do you have beds at the hospital too? And are you married…?’
Her companion laughed, although the look he gave her was thoughtful; it seemed that Reilof hadn’t told her much, which seemed strange, surely he would have told her these things long ago? All the same, he answered obligingly: ‘I live in Baarn, and yes, I have a room at Reilof’s consulting rooms, although he has by far the greater number of patients—he’s well-known, you see, and much sought after. I’m lucky to be his partner, for I’ve only had a few years’ postgraduate work, but when he offered me the partnership I jumped at it. I’m only a junior partner, of course, but I’m learning his ways and methods as quickly as I can.’ He added reverently, ‘He really is a splendid doctor and a fine man, mevrouw.’ He refreshed himself with a macaroon and continued, ‘I’m not married—at least, I should like to be…’ He looked suddenly shy and Laura said kindly:
‘Will you tell me about it when you know me better?’
‘I should like to—I don’t want to bother Reilof—in fact, I haven’t told anyone, only you.’
‘Then I’ll keep the secret,’ she promised. ‘Have some more tea and tell me how and where I can get someone to teach me Dutch.’
He gave her another thoughtful look. ‘I expect Reilof knows of someone,’ he suggested hesitantly, and when she just smiled, added boyishly: ‘I say, Mevrouw van Meerum, I am very glad that Reilof has married. He is a marvellous man, you know, although it’s silly for me to say that to you, isn’t it?’
Laura said soberly: ‘He’s a very good man, and by the way, since you and he are on Christian name terms, could you call me Laura? I feel a hundred when you say Mevrouw van Meerum.’
They laughed together and were still laughing as Reilof came out of the house towards them. He was quite close before Laura looked up and saw him, and she called gaily, ‘Oh, how nice, you’re home for tea after all—I’ll get another cup. Jan called to see you and stayed to keep me company.’
Reilof gave her a bland look which concealed she knew not what. ‘So I see—don’t bother about another cup, I had coffee at the hospital.’ He took a handful of Truus’s macaroons and sat down to eat them. ‘How are you, Jan?’ His voice was friendly, but the bland look was still there; he was annoyed about something and she didn’t know what. Of course, she could be imagining that; she would have to be a little less sensitive, and indeed, there was nothing in his manner to bear out her suspicion.
He stayed talking to Jan about their holiday for ten minutes or so and then suggested that they went to his study so that they might discuss some patient’s treatment. His, ‘I’ll be back shortly, my dear,’ was exactly the remark any wife might expect from a husband. She watched their retreating backs, relaxing in the sunshine. Jan was nice. His ‘goodbye, Laura,’ had been friendly and just a shade differential, which amused her very much; of course she was his partner’s wife… She mused gen
tly about nothing in particular, and presently closed her eyes and slept.
She was surprised to find that she had been asleep for almost an hour. The tea tray had gone and the two dogs, who had been sitting with her, were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Reilof had come back, decided not to disturb her, and gone back to the house. But when she went indoors there was no sign of him; she went in search of Piet finally, and he told her in some surprise that the doctor was in his study and that Doctor van Mijhof had been gone for half an hour or more. His look registered polite surprise that she hadn’t been to see for herself, and she said hastily: ‘I’ll not disturb him, he’s bound to be busy,’ very conscious that a newly-married man, however busy he might be, might be expected to welcome a visit from his bride, and went to her room. There was more than an hour to dinner, so she occupied it in changing her dress for the honey-coloured jersey and sweeping her hair up into its tidy bun once more.
There was no one in the drawing room when she went down, nor in the little sitting room behind it, and she sat down by the open window and leafed through a Dutch newspaper to no purpose at all and feeling lonely. Reilof’s quiet, ‘Hullo, so there you are,’ from the open door took her by surprise, so that she dropped the paper all over the floor and uttered a feeble, ‘I wasn’t sure where to go…’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Anywhere you wish, Laura. I usually work in my study for an hour before dinner and again afterwards. I’m afraid I keep late hours, but that shouldn’t bother you.’ He added surprisingly, ‘You’ve put your hair up.’
She decided to ignore that. ‘It won’t bother me in the least,’ she assured him cheerfully as she accepted a glass of sherry. ‘At what time do you have breakfast?’
‘Half-past seven. If that is too early for you, one of the maids will bring it to your room, or you can come down later.’
She felt like an unwelcome guest being treated with the minimum of good manners. ‘I shouldn’t dream of putting anyone to the trouble,’ she told him, a thought snappish. ‘Breakfast at half-past seven suits me very well. You won’t need to talk to me, you know.’