by Betty Neels
‘Maureen told them they could have the day off. She does that when Papa’s away—she tells them that he has said so, but he hasn’t.’
She could well believe that. ‘Any ideas?’ she asked.
‘Could we rescue Rex and run away, just till Papa comes home?’
She considered the idea. ‘Is Maureen in the house?’
‘Yes, she has friends in when Papa is away.’
She would! thought Phoebe savagely; there were a number of questions she was going to ask, but not now. ‘So she wouldn’t notice if we slipped into the garden?’
He was quick. ‘From the canal. Oh, Phoebe, how clever you are! I can borrow Jan Schipper’s boat, he lives a little further along—no one will see us, they’ll be in the sitting room.’
‘Good, though we must be careful. We’ll go now, just as soon as I’ve changed.’ She paused, struck by a thought. ‘Where can we go to?’
Paul put a hand to his mouth, his eyes huge above it. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘Oom Domus—but he’s going to den Haag.’
‘Think of someone!’ Phoebe besought him. ‘Aunts, uncles, friends, an old nanny …’ He wouldn’t know what an old nanny was—but he did.
He said at once: ‘Papa’s old nanny, Anna, she lives in Amsterdam, I know where. She loves him, she told me so.’ He smiled. ‘She’ll help.’
Phoebe released a held breath. ‘Good boy! Sit here and don’t move. I’ll be ten minutes.’
She was back in seven exactly, not perhaps looking her best, for she had flung on a cotton dress, belted her raincoat over it, concealed her untidy head under a scarf, caught up her shoulder bag, stuffed with a few necessities for the night and all the money she possessed, and raced downstairs again, full of false energy, her sapphire eyes blazing in a washed-out face.
‘What about school?’ she asked as they raced through the small back streets. When he told her simply that he hadn’t been she forbore to say anything. Probably later on she would regret this whole business, but she could think of nothing else and she felt partly to blame because she hadn’t told Lucius about the beating Rex had had. She thanked heaven silently that she had nights off and was free to do what she liked.
They came out into the street where Lucius lived, but at its other end, and Paul led her down a narrow dark path between two houses, opened the wooden door at its end and entered a garden. Phoebe hesitated.
‘Paul,’ she whispered, looking apprehensively over her shoulder at the house beyond the well-kept lawn, ‘isn’t this private?’
‘It’s Jan’s home, and he’s at school. No one will see us, and he won’t mind.’
They had reached a small jetty, just like the one in Lucius’ garden, and Paul got into the small boat tied to its side. Phoebe got in too; she wasn’t sure about Dutch law, but she had a nasty feeling that they could be accused of stealing. ‘Undo the rope,’ Paul told her. He had the oars out and was already swinging the boat outwards. She did as she was bidden, recognising that he was leading the expedition for the moment, not she. She crouched opposite him, averting her eyes from the houses they were passing. Any moment now, she thought guiltily, some worthy citizen would fling open a window and cry the Dutch equivalent of ‘Stop, thief!’ But no one saw them. Paul shipped an oar and gentled the boat into the bank. They were there; Lucius’ garden, bright with flowers, its beautifully tended lawn shining wetly in the rain, lay before them, and from the shed close at hand came a soft, hopeless whimper.
‘I’ll get him,’ said Phoebe. ‘Keep the boat close in, so we can run for it. If anyone comes you’re to go on your own with Rex.’ She pulled some notes from her bag. ‘There, I expect this is enough to get you to Amsterdam.’ She gave him a cheerful wink and stepped on to the jetty.
The shed door was fastened from the outside but not locked, which was a good thing because she had no idea what she would have done if that had been the case. Rex was tied up inside and whimpered joyfully when he saw her, but she said ‘Hush!’ in such an urgent voice that he kept quiet while she sawed through the rope with a pair of blunt garden shears. The simple task took an age. With her heart in her mouth Phoebe picked him up and made for the boat, and once there she had to put a hand over the puppy’s muzzle to stop his ecstatic greeting of his young master. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ she said, very much on edge, ‘row—you can say hullo to each other presently.’
The return journey wasn’t as bad as she had expected it would be; perhaps she was becoming inured to crime. She chuckled at the idea and Paul turned round to say: ‘You are what Papa calls a good sport, I think, Phoebe.’ Well, he wouldn’t think that of her now. She handed the puppy to her companion and he asked: ‘What do we do now?’
‘The station,’ she told him, ‘and let’s keep off the main streets.’
It was still early as they boarded an Amsterdam train, but the morning rush was over. They sat opposite each other, drinking coffee and eating the rolls Phoebe had bought and sharing them with the puppy. Finally, the last of the crumbs tidied away, Phoebe leaned forward.
‘Now, Paul,’ she said urgently, ‘there are some things I must know.’ And when he nodded, she went on: ‘Tell me about Maureen, my dear.’ She searched his solemn little face. ‘There’s something … you have always been so careful to be obedient to her and yet I have the idea that you are afraid of her, but if that is so, why didn’t you tell your papa?’
He took a deep breath. ‘She said that if I did everything she said and—and liked her, she would buy me a puppy; she said it all depended on me whether I had him or not, because she would have to marry Papa before she could get him and if she went away and he had another governess for me she would be old and horrid and I’d never get a puppy of my own; she said,’ he gulped, ‘that if I said anything to Papa I’d never have anything, not as long as I lived.’
‘Is that why you shut me up, Paul?’
He nodded. ‘She said that you were a—a menace—that you wanted to marry Papa. Do you?’
Phoebe stared back into his questioning eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘I do, but you need not worry, your Papa doesn’t want to marry me.’
‘She said you’d make him.’
She gave a lop-sided smile. ‘How, I wonder? Even if I knew, I wouldn’t do that, Paul.’
‘She said you were a—a—canting hypocrite and a scheming old maid.’ He smiled suddenly and endearingly. ‘But she’s wrong, you’re not—I like you. She said I was to hate you, but I don’t.’ He looked, for a brief moment, forlorn. ‘You’re a little like my mama.’
She said steadily: ‘Am I, dear? I think that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.’ She smiled warmly at him. ‘So now we know why Maureen was so angry that you have been given Rex—she has no hold on you any more.’
He didn’t quite understand her. ‘She said that Rex would die anyway because he was only a street dog, and when he did, she would buy me another, but only if she married Papa.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ cried Phoebe, ‘I often wondered—most people have cats and dogs and a few tame mice or a hamster …’
His eyes sparkled. ‘I like kittens too, but Maureen said they’re not healthy.’
‘Oh, pooh,’ said Phoebe roundly. ‘We’ve got cats and dogs and they’re a great deal more healthy than some people I know.’
‘Have you any mice?’
‘Well, no—girls don’t like mice, you know, but I can see that they make splendid pets for boys.’
She glanced out of the window and suddenly remembered where they were and what they were doing. ‘We’re almost in Amsterdam; you take Rex, and I’ll get a taxi.’
Anna lived in a long street called Overtoom. It was neither picturesque nor in a particularly good part of the city and in the rain any charm it might possess had been obliterated by the grey-ness of the sky and the dampness of its pavements, but to Phoebe it represented a solution, temporary at any rate, of their most pressing problems. She followed Paul down a flight of stone steps to Ann
a’s front door, just below street level, and waited while he rang the bell.
There was no mistaking Anna when she opened the door, for she was exactly what anyone would imagine an old nanny to be, with bright blue eyes, extremely neat hair parted in the centre and gathered into a bun, and a small round person clothed in a black dress almost completely covered in an old-fashioned print pinny. At the sight of Paul she broke at once into delighted speech and after a minute Paul, remembering his manners, introduced them and said: ‘Anna says we’re to go inside.’
The rooms were very small and crowded with furniture, all very highly polished, and there was a lovely smell of coffee in the kitchen where Anna bade them sit down at the table. Over their elevenses Paul told his tale, and Phoebe, watching anxiously, was vastly relieved when at the end of it and after a few brisk remarks from Anna, Paul told her:
‘Anna says we are to stay here until Papa comes back, and she’s glad we came. You’re to sleep on the landing, if you don’t mind, because there’s only one bedroom and I’m to sleep on the floor—I’ll like that, and I’ll have Rex.’
Phoebe eyed him tiredly. How resilient little boys were! She felt exhausted herself and said a little desperately: ‘Will you tell Anna that I’ll telephone your papa as soon as he gets back—in the afternoon. You’ll be all right once he’s home again, and Paul, do you think Anna would mind if I went to sleep for a little while? I can’t keep my eyes open.’
‘Oh, Phoebe, I forgot, you’ve been awake all night.’ He addressed himself to the old lady, who peered across the table at Phoebe and nodded her head.
‘You’re to go to bed now,’ Paul told her. ‘Anna says you are a sensible girl but that you must have your sleep. You won’t be too long?’ He sounded wistful.
She shook her head, resolutely ignoring the longing to sleep the clock round. ‘An hour or two. Paul, stay indoors, won’t you? Is there a yard or something for Rex?’
‘A little garden with a high wall,’ he told her. She went up three or four steps leading out of the kitchen, guided by Anna, on to a small landing, bare save for a folding bed in one corner and a chair. She smiled sleepily at her kind hostess, tossed her things on to the chair, kicked off her shoes and curled up on the bed. She was asleep within seconds.
It was Paul who wakened her a few hours later, Rex still tucked under his arm. ‘It’s teatime,’ he informed her. ‘Didn’t you undress? You must have been sleepy.’
Phoebe yawned, feeling heavy-eyed and hollow, fighting a desire to fall back on the bed again and sleep for ever. ‘I was. I say, Paul, I want to wash—is there a bathroom?’
He shook his head. ‘You use the kitchen sink. We won’t look,’ he added kindly as he went away. He was whistling cheerfully and a little off key and Phoebe smiled to herself. At least one of them was enjoying himself!
The remainder of the day passed surprisingly quickly. She tried out a little of her Dutch on Anna, and with Paul’s help, they had quite a conversation, and even if they didn’t understand each other very well, it didn’t seem to matter. Anna, Phoebe could tell, was most definitely on their side, and Phoebe, waking in the night because the mattress wasn’t all that comfortable, at least had the satisfaction of knowing that Anna approved of what she had done, she only hoped that Lucius would be of the same opinion.
CHAPTER NINE
THE rain had eased up in the morning and over their simple breakfast Phoebe discovered that there was a park behind Anna’s flat—Vondel Park. It would be a good place to go, she decided as she helped Anna with the washing up. They had to spend the day somewhere until it was time for her to telephone Lucius, and it wasn’t fair on Anna to fill her little home to overflowing with a high-spirited small boy and a puppy. They set off presently, with a ball Anna had found from somewhere or other, and strict instructions to be back for their dinner at midday.
The park was pleasant, well laid out and almost empty of people. They walked for a little while, Rex lying snugly in Paul’s arms, because, as Phoebe pointed out in her sensible way, they would play ball presently and he would want to join in and he ought not to get too tired.
They had been tossing the ball to and fro for perhaps ten minutes when Paul gave a sudden shout, hurled the ball wildly in the air and started to run towards Phoebe, yelling as he came, his whole face alight with happiness. She spun round, certain who it was she would see—and she was right. Lucius, the ball in his hand, was coming towards them over the grass. He paused to put a hand briefly on Paul’s shoulder as they met and then came to a halt before her.
‘Don’t dare to be angry with him,’ she said impulsively, then wished she hadn’t spoken, because he was indeed angry, but with her, not Paul. His words bore this out, for when he spoke it was in a silky voice which menaced her far more than a shout.
‘I should like to wring your pretty neck,’ he gritted. ‘How dare you, Phoebe? Such a petty act, it wasn’t worthy of you.’
She steadied her shaking mouth. ‘But you’re back a day too soon …’
His eyes blazed. ‘And how fortunate that I am—you had overlooked that possibility.’ He smiled, not at all nicely. ‘I am at a loss to discover why you should have done this—why should you wish to set Paul against Maureen? She telephoned me in great distress—she imagined that you were friendly towards her, so naturally she feels deeply hurt.’
Phoebe found her voice, keeping it low so that Paul, playing with Rex close by, shouldn’t hear. ‘Is that what she said?’ She was surprised at the mildness of her tone; she felt as though she would blow sky-high with rage.
‘Yes. When I returned last night I found a note from her asking me to telephone. She told me then that Paul had disappeared.’
‘How did she know that I was with Paul?’
‘She had the good sense to telephone the hospital and put two and two together.’
‘And how,’ went on Phoebe stubbornly, ‘did you know where we were?’
‘Van Vliet suggested I should try Anna—he remembered that Paul had been talking about her.’ He added wearily, ‘I tried everywhere else last night.’
‘Is Maureen at your house?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘No—why do you ask? She will be there by the time we get back, I imagine. But don’t worry, I have no intention of reproving you until we have got to the bottom of this in a rational manner, I’m sure that the three of us can discuss …’
‘I won’t,’ said Phoebe, in far too loud a voice. ‘I’ll discuss nothing. You can think what you like, what do I care? You’re so completely under that woman’s thumb …’ She stopped, choked and walked away very fast. By the time Lucius, with Paul and Rex, had arrived at Anna’s house, she had dried her angry tears, composed her face and was ready with a polite refusal when he offered her a lift back to Delft. And when Paul, aware that something was not right in his little world, began his own muddled explanation, she bade him urgently to be quiet.
‘Wait, my dear,’ she besought him. ‘It won’t help now, and it doesn’t matter any more, because your Papa is back home, don’t you see? Besides, explaining things is so tedious.’
He eyed her. ‘You’ve been crying. I’m sorry I shut you in that house.’
She bent and kissed him. ‘I’m going to have a lovely day shopping,’ she told him. ‘If I see anything for Rex, I shall buy it.’
‘The Bijenkorf has some tartan collars with a silver plate on them, for his name, you know they put it on while you wait …’
She smiled at him. ‘Then that’s what I’ll get. Now go back to your father, Paul, he’ll be waiting for you.’
He lingered by her. ‘You’ll come back, won’t you? Won’t you come with me to the door? You haven’t said goodbye to Rex.’
Phoebe couldn’t refuse him, so she tickled Rex under his chin, wished Paul a warm farewell and Lucius a glacial one, and went back to the landing, where she sat down on the bed, doing nothing until she heard the door close and knew that they had gone.
She waited a little while, try
ing to suppress the ridiculous hope that Lucius would come back, and when a half hour had gone by, and she knew that he wasn’t going to, she tidied herself, stuffed her bag with her bits and pieces once more and went down to the kitchen to wish Anna goodbye.
The old lady was sitting at the table, knitting, but she got up when she saw Phoebe and without saying a word, drew her through a door into what must have been the parlour, seldom used and so stiffly furnished that it reminded Phoebe of a child’s drawing. There was an old-fashioned sideboard against one wall, dominating the room and loaded with photos in heavy frames. Anna picked one up and handed it to Phoebe. It was Lucius as a small boy, leaning against his father’s knee, a hand on his mother’s arm. There was a baby too, invisible in a lacy shawl, and another small boy, younger than Lucius, sitting on the floor. She looked at Anna, who smiled and nodded and handed her a quite small photograph—Lucius in a student’s gown, looking vaguely at the camera as though his thoughts were far away, and the last one, Lucius, older still, standing with a group of earnest-looking men outside the hospital. Phoebe gave that one back too and her companion put them carefully in their places and led her out again. At the door she took Phoebe’s hand in her own and patted it, nodding her head in a satisfied way and murmuring to herself with an air of great content. Phoebe, not having the least idea what she was saying, could only nod and smile, and finally wish her goodbye.
The day stretched before her and she would have to fill it somehow. She would stay in Amsterdam until the evening and then go straight back to the Nurses’ Home and to bed. She was on duty early the following morning, and in four days she would be able to go back home. She need not see Lucius again—there were ways of avoiding him on the ward. This firm resolution was instantly followed by a variety of reasons requiring her to seek him out. She could explain, she told herself, walking briskly along Ovetoom, and knew she never would. He had believed Maureen—he hadn’t even asked her why they had come to Anna’s, although to be fair, she hadn’t given him much opportunity. She scowled fiercely and a meek-looking man coming towards her sidled past, looking quite apprehensive. ‘Fool!’ she said aloud, meaning herself, and found that she had arrived at the Leidseplein.