by Betty Neels
‘One of ours?’ hazarded Phoebe, trying to keep up.
He didn’t slacken his pace. ‘One of ours, dear girl. You will forgive me?’
She nodded and stopped trying to keep pace with him. ‘Thank you for a pleasant afternoon,’ she said swiftly, and he turned to smile at her as he went.
Indoors she found the other two sitting close together in the small sitting room which opened into the garden. They had obviously been undisturbed for some time, and when she told them that the doctor had been called away and she would wait in the garden until they were ready to leave, they agreed with such an unflattering readiness that she made haste to go back to the garden. There was someone else there now—Paul, sitting in his boat, doing something or other to one of the oars.
She went and stood close by him and ignoring the scowl on his little face, said coaxingly: ‘You understand English very well, don’t you, Paul, well enough for you to understand me when I say that I should like to be friends? I don’t care a row of buttons about the other afternoon, you know—indeed, I’d forgotten about it. Couldn’t we be friends?’
He didn’t smile, but at least he seemed interested. He was on the point of speaking when his eyes slid past hers, watching someone coming down the garden. Phoebe turned to see who it was—a girl, tall and dark and magnificently eye-catching. She wasn’t hurrying; by the time she reached them Phoebe had the unpleasant feeling that she had been studied from head to toes, assessed, and instantly disliked. Nonetheless, the girl’s manners were charming. ‘You don’t know who I am, so I’ll introduce myself—I should have been home for tea, but I was held up by the traffic. I’m Maureen Felman, Paul’s governess. You’re the English nurse, aren’t you? Lucius told me about you.’
‘Lucius?’ Phoebe forced her voice to friendliness. ‘Do you mean Doctor van Someren?’
The girl laughed. ‘I forgot—I’ve been here so long, we’ve been Lucius and Maureen for years.’
Phoebe let that pass. ‘My name’s Phoebe Brook. Your English is so good you must be …’
‘My mother. I speak both languages fluently.’ And Phoebe, already disliking her, disliked her still more for the smugness of her voice. ‘Paul and I speak English when we’re together—Lucius wants that.’
‘Paul’s English is very good,’ observed Phoebe politely. ‘Do you live here?’
‘Not yet.’ Maureen smiled as she spoke; the smile was smug too and Phoebe’s dislike turned to instant hate. ‘Lucius is a stickler for the conventions—I live here during the day, though, and while Paul’s at school I act as secretary to Lucius and drive him around when he doesn’t want to drive himself.’
Phoebe murmured a casual something; it would never do to let this girl think that she was even faintly interested in the doctor. All the same, she found it strange that he liked to be driven. He had struck her as a man who did his own driving, and what secretarial work was there for her to do? There was a secretary at the hospital, who did the ward rounds with him, she had seen that with her own eyes—was this girl hinting that she was something more to him than a secretary-cum-governess? She glanced at Paul and saw that he was watching her in a speculative way which caused her to say airily: ‘It sounds a nice job. I hope we meet again before I go back to England.’
‘Probably—Delft is small. You must come round one day and Paul shall practise his English on you.’ She gave the little boy a malicious glance as she spoke and Phoebe had the uncomfortable feeling that she didn’t like him—and she must be on very close terms with the doctor if she could invite people to his house … She said sweetly: ‘How nice. I shall look forward to that, and now I must go and find Zuster Witsma.’
That young lady was, in fact, advancing down the garden at that very moment. She spoke coolly to Maureen, with warmth to Paul and swept Phoebe away. ‘Doctor Lagemaat has to be back—we’ll drop you off at St Jacobius as we go,’ she explained.
They paused for a moment before they entered the house and looked back. Paul and his governess were standing watching them, and Maureen was laughing, they could hear the light mocking sound quite clearly.
In the car Mies turned in her seat to say: ‘Not nice, that girl, but clever. Doctor van Someren thinks that she is a splendid governess and of such great help to him.’ She snorted: ‘He is so wrapped up in his work he can see nothing!’
Outside the hospital, when Doctor Lagemaat stopped the car, he turned to say to her: ‘We must not bother you with our small differences of opinion, but we are old friends of Doctor van Someren, and I agree with Mies.’ He smiled nicely at her. ‘May I not call you Phoebe?’
‘Oh, please,’ said Phoebe instantly, and Mies chimed in: ‘And you shall call me Mies—not in the hospital, of course, and him,’ she nodded at Doctor Lagemaat, ‘you shall call Arie. Thus we shall be friends!’
Phoebe, standing on the pavement, watching them drive away, felt a pleasant warmth. It was nice to make friends; it was nice, too, to know that Lucius van Someren had good friends too. She had a sudden urge to find out as much as possible about him.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE had her opportunity the very next day, for in the morning, when Doctor van Someren had finished his teaching round, he clove his way through the circle of students to where she was standing behind Mies, and said: ‘I have a few hours to spare this afternoon you will be free, I take it? I should like you to visit the Hortus Botanicus behind the university, and should there be time to spare, another visit to the museum might not come amiss.’
Phoebe thanked him quietly, conscious of a pleasurable glow beneath her starched apron, and when he went on: ‘At the entrance, then, at half past three,’ she had a job not to smile widely with the pleasure she felt; instead she said soberly enough: ‘Very well, sir,’ and received a little grunt in reply as he wandered away. She watched him go down the ward; at the door he stopped to write in his notebook and she wondered what it could be—a reminder perhaps, about the afternoon’s outing.
She was a little late, for it hadn’t been possible to get off duty punctually and she had had to change much too quickly, so that she was totally dissatisfied with her appearance as she hurried to the hospital entrance. Nonetheless, she looked cool and fresh in her blue and white striped dress, and because it was unusually hot for the time of year, she had dispensed with stockings and put on a pair of blue sandals which exactly matched her shoulder bag. But if she had hoped for a word of appreciation from her companion she was to be disappointed; he gave her the briefest of greetings and hardly looked at her. They were free of Delft and well on the way to Leyden when he said: ‘I’m sorry I had to leave you yesterday afternoon.’
‘It didn’t matter at all,’ she assured him, ‘especially as Wil is so much better today—it was for her you went, wasn’t it?’
He nodded and she went on, choosing her words: ‘I went back to the garden after you left, just for a little while—Paul was there, and then his governess came.’
‘Maureen? Ah, yes, she mentioned that she had met you. She organises us—a most efficient girl.’
‘And a very striking one,’ remarked Phoebe, hoping he would go on talking about the wretched creature if she gave him a little encouragement. But she was frustrated by his: ‘You can afford to be generous, Phoebe,’ a remark which pinkened her cheeks with annoyance, because what might have been meant as a compliment had been uttered in a tone of voice which verged on mockery. The vague half thoughts she had had of putting a spoke in Maureen’s wheel withered away under the sudden sideways glance he directed at her—not in the least absent-minded but very intent, as though he knew what was in her mind. The pink deepened and she looked out of the window and made an observation, stiffly, about the weather. She was sorry she had come, she told herself savagely, and how stupid of her to allow her interest to settle upon a man she was unlikely to see again once she had gone back to England and who was already quite satisfied with his life, and anyway, a small stern voice reminded her, was it quite sporting to try and attr
act his attention away from the glamorous Maureen? She had no opportunity of solving this interesting problem, because they had arrived at the Medical School once more and her companion was suggesting, in the mildest of voices, that she should get out of the car.
The next hour was a delight to her. They wandered round slowly, and Phoebe, naming each plant as they inspected it, was quite taken aback when Doctor van Someren exclaimed: ‘Good heavens, girl, your Latin is excellent—are you a botanist as well as a nurse?’
She denied it, suddenly shy. ‘Why, no—my father was, at least it was his hobby. We used to go for walks and he taught me a great deal.’
‘Latin or botany?’ he asked idly.
‘Both, I suppose.’
‘What profession had your father?’
She bent to examine a fine specimen of basil. ‘He was a scientist.’
They had reached a fine old mulberry tree with a bench built around it. ‘Let us sit,’ suggested the doctor. ‘The museum can wait until another day—you shall tell me about your father and something of yourself too, and I shall discover even more facets to your character.’
She was taken aback. ‘Facets? Whatever for—I didn’t know I had any.’
They were sitting side by side and the sunlight dribbled through the leaves on to her bright hair. He answered her quietly: ‘Oh, you have a great many—you are intelligent for a start, you have a quick brain, you are kind, impulsive—you like your own way.’ He went on, ignoring her gasp: ‘I think you may have a nasty temper when you are roused. You are intensely curious …,
‘What about?’ she demanded.
‘Me,’ he answered simply.
‘I’m not,’ she began, and he said sharply, ‘and do I have to add another facet—a slight twisting of the truth?’
‘Well, what if I am?’ she snapped crossly. ‘It’s natural, and at least I haven’t turned you into facets like a specimen under your microscope, sir.’
‘Ah, yes—something I had forgotten to mention. Would you refrain from addressing me as sir? My name is Lucius; I do not propose that you should address me so in hospital, but surely when we are away from our work we might assume that we are friends. I am not so very much older than you, Phoebe.’ And at her look of surprise: ‘Thirty-four, and you are twenty-seven.’
‘How you do harp on my age,’ she protested. ‘It’s not nice to remind a woman how old she is.’
He lifted colourless eyebrows. ‘Indeed? Have I offended you? I’m sorry.’ He didn’t look in the least sorry; he was laughing at her. After a moment she smiled reluctantly and he said instantly: ‘That’s better—don’t you want to ask me any questions?’
She said without hesitation: ‘Yes, of course I do, but it wouldn’t be polite.’
His blue eyes twinkled. ‘Try me, or shall I answer the first one for you? You wonder about Paul, do you not? He calls me Papa and you have been told that I have a son, and where, you ask yourself, is his wife—dead, divorced, run away with some other man who has no work to fill his days and more money than he knows what to do with?’ He paused. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Phoebe, thinking how very good-looking he was.
‘I have no wife—Paul is my adopted son. His parents—my friends—died in that Italian plane crash four or five years ago—perhaps you remember it? I am his godfather, he has no grandparents; it was right and natural that he should make his home with me.’
The flood of relief she felt quite shocked her. Not stopping to think, she said: ‘Oh, I thought—that is, I …’
‘I have no doubt you did,’ he agreed suavely. ‘I should have mentioned it to you before, but it slipped my memory.’
She disagreed quite fiercely. ‘Oh, no, why should you? It’s none of my business,’ and felt irrationally disappointed at the casual shrug he gave in answer. They sat in silence then, the breeze stirring the tree above them, the air full of the varied hum of insects.
‘All the live murmur of a summer’s day,’ uttered the doctor suddenly.
‘Matthew Arnold,’ Phoebe gave the information automatically and then laughed when he said: ‘You are a difficult girl to impress—your knowledge of botany is more than satisfactory, so is your Latin, and now, when I quote an apt phrase, you cap it with its author.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t trying to impress you or anything.’ She added earnestly: ‘As a matter of fact, I hardly know any.’
‘No? I shall have to try and catch you out.’ He gave her a long considering look which so disconcerted her that she suggested that they should finish their tour of the garden.
‘You’ll come back with me to tea?’ he asked her as they got into the car later.
She hadn’t expected that and it flustered her. ‘Me? Well—I came yesterday.’
He shot the car with heart-stopping precision between a slow-moving lorry and a stationary baker’s cart. ‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ he told her mildly. ‘I thought it would be pleasant for you to further your acquaintance with Maureen, and it’s good for Paul to speak English as much as possible.’
‘Why?’
‘He wants to go to Oxford. His father and I were there, you see.’
Paul and Maureen were in the garden, sitting on the grass and although the boy ran to greet the doctor and give a hand to Phoebe, his governess made no effort to rise. Only when they had reached her she lifted her head and smiled at them with a casual hello and an offer to fetch the tea into the garden. ‘It’s so warm,’ she explained. ‘When Paul came out of school we decided that the garden was the only place to be. I hope you agree, Lucius?’ She looked at the doctor, who said vaguely: ‘Oh, yes—do whatever is fun for Paul,’ and then to the small boy hanging on his arm: ‘The rowlock is loose in the boat. Have you seen it? We’ll fix it now.’
So Phoebe was left alone to sit on the grass and admire the view and the flowers and watch the two of them absorbed in their work, their lint-fair heads close together. But not for long, for the doctor looked up, said something to Paul and got out of the boat to cast himself down beside her.
‘Forgive me, I thought Maureen was here.’
‘If you remember she went into the house to fetch the tea tray.’
He looked surprised. ‘Did she? Well, why not—it’s just the day to have tea out here.’
Phoebe suppressed a smile. ‘Don’t let me hinder you from mending whatever it is,’ she reminded him.
‘Paul can manage on his own now, I showed him what to do.’ He rolled over to look at her. ‘What do you intend to do with your evening?’
She was aware of intense pleasure, although she kept her voice carefully casual. ‘Why …’ she began, but was interrupted by Maureen, calling gaily for the doctor to go and carry the tray. He got to his feet with no sign of disappointment at not having had an answer, and by the time he had returned and they had settled to their tea, she could see that he had forgotten all about it.
Getting ready for bed that night, she decided that, from her point of view, the tea party had been a failure. Maureen had been charming, she had also been possessive towards the doctor—no, bossy, Phoebe corrected herself as she brushed her hair with unnecessary vigour. She had also managed, with diabolical sweetness, to put Phoebe in the wrong on several minor points during their conversation, and worse, made her out to be a little stupid as well. ‘I hate her!’ declared Phoebe a trifle wildly, and flung the brush across the room, which did it no good at all, but certainly relieved her pent-up feelings. And Paul had enjoyed her discomfiture too, staring at her with his sharp dark eyes. Only the doctor had been unaware, sitting there, making gentle talk and seeing to their wants. He was an exasperating man!
She went to the mirror and peered at her face without conceit; she was a very pretty girl, accustomed to being looked at at least twice, her voice was quiet and low, she neither giggled or laughed brassily. If she was a little shy, she took care to conceal it. There was nothing, she told her reflection, to which Doctor van Someren could take exception,
if indeed he had ever taken the trouble to really look at her.
She got into bed. ‘It’s a pity nothing ever happens to me,’ she told the ceiling, then closed her eyes and went to sleep, and Fate, who had overheard the remark, grinned impishly and went off to make her own arrangements.
* * *
It was a glorious morning and Phoebe was free until two o’clock. There was a great deal of the small city she hadn’t seen and she took herself off to the Convent of St Agatha, where William the Silent had met his death, and this expedition over, and with time to spare, she decided to wander round one or two of the narrow streets leading away from the prescribed route to the hospital. The houses here were small, their walls uneven with age, their windows small too and filled with flowerpots so that Phoebe was unable to catch a glimpse of their interiors. They were neatly kept, with fresh paint and sparkling windows and here and there a canary bird singing in its cage hung outside an upstairs window. She wandered on, knowing herself to be lost but not worried, because Delft wasn’t large enough for her to remain so; she would soon find her way again. She was on the point of doing this when her eye was caught by a cul-de-sac, lined with very small houses indeed, its cobbled centre ornamented by a plane tree. It was very quiet there and although the houses looked well tended, she had the strong impression that the place was empty. She had walked down one side of it and was about to cross over to the other when the door of a house she was passing opened, revealing a very old lady.
Phoebe paused in her walk, smiled, essayed the ‘Dag, mevrouw’, she had learned to say and prepared to move on, but a timid hand was laid on her arm and the old lady started to unburden herself at such length and with so much agitation that there was no use in Phoebe trying to stop her. When she at last came to an end they stood looking at each other in a puzzled way, Phoebe because she had no idea what the old lady wanted, the old lady because she was getting no response.
At length Phoebe said regretfully with a strong English accent: ‘Niet verstaan,’ and then with a flash of inspiration asked: ‘Help?’