An Unlikely Romance

by Betty Neels

  He swooped suddenly and kissed her quite roughly and then a second time with a gentleness that set her heart pounding against her ribs. ‘Oh!’ said Trixie, and slipped away from his hands on her shoulders and raced up the stairs, not quite knowing what she was doing or why.

  He watched her go without a word, smiling a little, and then, with the faithful but sleepy Caesar at his heels, went into his study. For a little while at least, he had no desire to sleep.

  She felt shy about seeing him at breakfast the next morning, but she need not have worried; there he sat, looking exactly as he always looked, and his good morning was uttered in a casual friendly voice. With a slightly heightened colour she sat down opposite him and drank her coffee, and almost dropped the cup when he said, ‘You look just as pretty this morning, Beatrice.’

  The pretty colour in her cheeks deepened. ‘But I’m not pretty,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ He cast down the papers he was studying. ‘Shall we have a day out? Shall we go back to the sea and have lunch at the Ship Inn?’

  She stared across the table at him; his sleepy eyes were open and there was a look in them which made her catch her breath. ‘Oh, Krijn, there’s nothing—’ She was interrupted by Gladys, coming into the room burdened by a large basket filled with red roses and extravagantly beribboned.

  ‘These have just come, mevrouw—special messenger—and there’s a note.’

  She put the basket down by Trixie’s chair and went away, casting a coy look at the professor as she went. ‘There’s a husband for you,’ she told Mies. ‘Red roses and all.’

  Trixie cast a smiling look at Krijn and opened the envelope. It was a brief note inside: ‘Remember me? Red roses to remind you, Andre.’

  She looked at Krijn. The lids had drooped over his eyes once more, his face was bland and she was quite sure that he was angry despite the mildness of his expression. ‘It’s from Andre,’ she told him.

  ‘Saying it with flowers?’ He sounded only mildly interested, so that she felt safe in repeating the note’s contents.

  ‘Do you need reminding, Beatrice?’ he enquired still placidly.

  ‘Well, of course not.’ She wasn’t thinking of Andre but of the nice old house and Samson; Wolke bustling around and Rabo smoothing her path for her. ‘How could I forget?’ She looked down at the note on the table, not seeing it, lost for a moment in a daydream where Krijn and Schaakslot and being kissed were all nicely muddled up together, and was startled from it by the professor getting to his feet and pushing back the chair.

  ‘I think that after all we must postpone a day out. I had quite forgotten that Mrs Grey has made a number of appointments for me which cannot be cancelled.’

  She lifted a disappointed face. ‘Perhaps in a day or two—it’s almost Christmas...’

  ‘Ah, yes. I can arrange to go back to Holland a couple of days after Boxing Day. You will like that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, that is, if you want to. But you’ll be home here for Christmas? All day, I mean.’

  ‘I did tell you that I shall go to Timothy’s to carve a turkey and go round the wards?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. May I come too?’

  ‘By all means.’ He went to the door. ‘I shan’t be home until some time after tea.’

  She sat very still after he had gone, not in the least taken in by his bland manner. He was furiously angry and it had to do with the roses. It was silly of Andre to pester her but surely that wouldn’t make Krijn so savagely angry? She surely must have said something... Now, if he had been in love with her she could have understood that. She sat up very straight; could that be it? Could he have fallen in love with her by some miraculous chance, and if he had what could she do about it?

  Nothing for the moment, she decided; for one thing it might be wishful thinking on her part and surely she would know one way or another before long? Perhaps she had imagined his rage; after all, there had been no outward signs of it.

  There were no signs of rage as the professor went on his rounds at Timothy’s, indeed he was remarkably and uncharacteristically alert, so that the ward sisters and students and housemen remarked upon it. It was so unusual to see him without a book tucked under his arm, or to find him coming into a ward exactly on time and that after only a few hours’ sleep.

  Sister Snell, discussing him with Staff Nurse Bennett, remarked waspishly, ‘It must be because he’s married. What he can see in her I can’t think, although I must say she looked stunning last night.’

  The subject of their conversation was wandering through the Brompton Arcade, searching for a present for Krijn; she had left it until the last moment hoping that she might be able to discover what he would like but he had given her no clue, so that she was forced to inspect each shop in turn in the hope of seeing something he might be glad to have. There was plenty to choose from: ties, scarves and cashmere sweaters, cuff-links and leather briefcases. She decided that he was a man who liked to choose his own ties—richly sombre and silk—and he had everything else. She wanted it to be something he would use every day, something to remind him of her. Finally she bought a silver pocket knife, small and light and incorporating every gadget he might be called upon to use. He would most likely never use it.

  She took it home and wrapped it up carefully, hesitating over the card to go with it. In the end she wrote, ‘From Beatrice to Krijn, a happy Christmas,’ and put it away in a drawer in her room.

  Almost everyone who had been invited to the drinks party had accepted the invitation; Trixie spent the rest of the day and the following one in getting ready for it. While Mies saw to the food and Gladys saw to the preparation of the drawing-room, Trixie decorated a Christmas tree and set it in the hall and then saw to the flower arrangements around the house, holly and Christmas roses and hyacinths. She then firmly closed the drawing-room door, and, when Krijn got home that evening, asked him diffidently if he would mind sitting in the small sitting-room behind the dining-room. ‘Because the drawing-room is ready for the party tomorrow.’

  He had forgotten about it. For a brief moment she felt deep sympathy with the women who had wanted to marry him; she could imagine any number of engagements he must have forgotten or overlooked during his years of being a bachelor and the well-meaning ladies would have been only too glad to take him in hand. Something she wanted to do very badly herself, but the whole idea of his marrying her was to make sure that he wouldn’t be bothered with a social life. This party, she supposed, arranging a miniature Father Christmas on a sleigh in the centre of the table which would hold the food, was to be the one and only social occasion, save for the ball which had been absolutely unavoidable anyway, before they returned to Holland. So it must be a success...

  As it turned out, it didn’t matter about not sitting in the drawing-room, for the professor went straight to his study until dinner and went back again once the meal was finished, excusing himself on the grounds of some case-notes he wished to study.

  So Trixie sat with Gumbie, making great play with her needle and thinking about Krijn. She was on the point of going to bed when he came in and sat down. She put down her work in the hope that he wanted to talk but his eye had lighted on the roses which she had put in a corner of the room, out of the way of her carefully arranged vases. She caught his look, and, anxious to please, observed, ‘I brought them in here out of the way,’ and was rewarded by a growl which could have meant anything and which annoyed her so that she added tartly, ‘I couldn’t bear to throw them away...’

  That was a silly thing to say, she reflected. His, ‘Naturally not,’ was uttered in a voice of such coldness that she stabbed her needle quite viciously into her work, bundled it up anyhow, and bade him goodnight.

  He got up to open the door for her; temper or no temper, his good manners were as natural to him as breathing. She thanked him sweetl
y and sailed across the hall and upstairs, aware that he was standing in the doorway watching her. Perhaps that made her nervous for she stumbled and fell in an untidy heap before she was halfway up the staircase. He was there, picking her up with the careless ease he might have used for a child, setting her back on her feet with a courteous disinterest. She might indeed have been a child fallen in the street outside, or an old lady needing a helping hand. She felt the childish tears crowding into her throat and without a word flew up the rest of the staircase and into her room where she sat down on her bed and cried her eyes out.

  He had left the house when she got down the next morning and Mies told her that he had left a message to say that he would be home in the late afternoon and if he was needed he would be at his rooms.

  ‘Well,’ said Trixie brightly, ‘how splendid; that means we have the whole day to get everything ready. I’ll have my lunch on a tray—an omelette will do. Is everything going well? Do you need anything more? I can go to the shops...’

  However, everything was going smoothly; she spent the morning checking all the details, anxious that there should be no hitch that evening, and after her lunch went to her room to put her dress ready for the evening. Olive-green velvet with long tight sleeves and a cream silk waterfall of a collar falling in soft revers, and she would wear the high-heeled slippers which went with it. She went back downstairs; it was almost four o’clock but she thought she would wait for a little in case Krijn got back so that they could have tea together. By half-past four there was no sign of him. She had her own tea and went upstairs to dress, warning Mies to give the professor tea if he wanted it when he returned. He still wasn’t back when she got downstairs again and it was now going on for six o’clock and the guests had been asked for seven.

  She rang his rooms and caught Mrs Grey as she was on the point of leaving.

  ‘The professor left here just after four o’clock—he was going to see the pathologist at Timothy’s about a patient. Would you like me to try and get him for you, Mrs van der Brink-Schaaksma?’

  ‘No, no, don’t do that, it might be something important. There’s still plenty of time. You’re coming, aren’t you, Mrs Grey?’

  ‘I’m looking forward to it. I’ll give you my phone number at home, shall I? Just on the chance that he doesn’t turn up. You could let me know and I’ll see if I can find him. He might have gone to a ward.’

  Trixie thanked her and put down the receiver. She looked at the clock again and wandered round the house, fidgeting with things and shaking up the cushions which were quite all right as they were. Then she went to the kitchen to be consoled by Mies’s comfortable, ‘He’s a quick dresser, mevrouw; give him ten minutes and he’ll be looking as though he has done not a thing all day.’

  She was quite right; he got home twenty minutes before the first guest arrived and greeted her, freshly shaved and showered, immaculate in one of his dark grey suits, looking as though he had never done a day’s work in his life. There was a steady stream of people after that and Trixie, moving around the room, exchanging the kind of talk expected of her, saw little of him. He was a good host; there were no solitary souls shyly propping up the walls or trying to look as though they belonged to a group of people they hardly knew. The shy ones were introduced, then mingled nicely with everyone else, filtered in with a word here and a word there.

  No wonder, reflected Trixie, watching him whenever she had the chance, he had been so sought after. She was a good hostess herself; years of helping out at Aunt Alice’s social occasions had been an excellent training. The party was a success; the food was just right and the drinks were lavish, and Gladys and her helpers were very good at their jobs. Trixie, listening with that air of interest which so endeared her to those talking to her, glanced around her and was satisfied.

  No one hurried away; the party went on for a good deal longer than they had expected, and it was nine o’clock before they sat down to dinner in the little sitting-room. She had prudently decided on a casserole—something which wouldn’t spoil and needed the smallest attention from Mies, and its delicious aroma set her small nose quivering.

  ‘It’s casserole, I’m afraid,’ she observed as they sat down. ‘You see it doesn’t need much attention and Mies has been so busy...’

  ‘It smells delightful—those appetising bits and pieces looked tempting, but I have always found that at one’s own party one never gets around to eating any of them. I’m hungry.’

  She beamed at him. ‘I’m so glad—so am I. Was the party all right? Are you pleased?’

  ‘I think it was most successful. I must thank you for your efforts.’ His eyes rested on her briefly and although he spoke kindly she sensed the coolness. He was still annoyed. You would think, she mused silently, that after three days he would have forgotten about it. She would have to write to Andre and tell him not to send any more flowers. She ate her casserole but no longer with an appetite.

  In two days’ time it would be Christmas Eve. She spent the rest of the evening making lists of things still to be done, sitting at the table after Gladys had cleared it. Krijn had gone to his study with the request that he shouldn’t be disturbed, and wishing her a placid goodnight as he went, and since it would get her nowhere to sit and think about him she soon busied herself with the last-minute details. There were still a few presents to be packed up: the dressing-gown for Mies, and the bag for Gladys; envelopes to be written for the Christmas boxes; flowers to be sent to Matron in both their names. While she was there she might as well write to Andre.

  It was a stiff little note, thanking him for the flowers and suggesting that he must have any number of girlfriends who would be delighted to receive such gifts, ‘for,’ she ended, ‘they are wasted on a happily married woman.’ She read it through, rather pleased with it, addressed it and took the envelope through to the hall and left it on the console table, ready to post in the morning. He should get it before they got back to Holland. Pleased with herself for writing such a tactful letter, she took herself off to bed. Tomorrow she would go shopping for last-minute odds and ends and hopefully she and Krijn would be friends again. She had quite forgotten the letter in the hall.

  Two hours later it caught the professor’s eye on his way to bed. He picked it up and studied Trixie’s handwriting for a long minute and then put it back on the tray. Presently he went up the staircase, his face an expressionless mask; all the same anyone coming face to face with him then and seeing the blazing rage in his eyes would have been wise to beat a retreat.

  Only when he reached his room did Krijn, standing by his open window looking out on to the winter night, observe in a quiet voice, ‘I have been a fool—and blind with it.’

  At breakfast he behaved as he always did, commenting upon the weather, the party, the Christmas cards they were receiving, and, finally, his doubts as to whether he would be back before the evening.

  Trixie, her eyes on his face, murmured suitable replies and he thought savagely that she looked like a child, sitting there, staring at him. She was a child compared with him; he should have thought of that when he had decided to marry her. She might be a levelheaded girl capable of organising life around him so that it didn’t interfere with his work and his writing but he had overlooked the fact that she was young—so very much younger than he. Of course it was inevitable that she would respond to a younger man’s attentions. He wished suddenly to go to the nearest florist and buy up a shopful of flowers and give them all to her, only if he did that she would think that he was trying to outdo Andre.

  He bade her goodbye, expressing the hope that she would enjoy her day, and took himself off to Timothy’s where all those who came into contact with him agreed that he had never been so absent-minded. ‘It must be that book of his,’ commented Sister Snell after he had wandered in and out of the ward several times. ‘He is so brilliantly clever but I don’t suppose he ever thinks of anything else.�
��

  She was wrong, of course. She was quite wrong! He was thinking of Beatrice.

  She was bustling around the house, redoing the flowers, arranging their Christmas cards on one wall of the sitting-room, and putting out fresh candles, and when that was done she got into her outdoor things and took herself off to buy the last-minute things that Mies needed, and since it was Christmas she bought quite a few things that weren’t needed and then took herself off to have coffee. There was still a lot of the morning left. She went to St Martin-in-the-Fields, and sat for some time studying the crib and the Christmas tree, uttering wordless prayers and then stuffing almost all the money she had with her into the appeal-for-the-homeless box.

  Back at home, she picked at her lunch, something which worried the goodhearted Mies, and then she settled down to an afternoon of tapestry work, interrupted before long by the unexpected arrival of several of the girls she had been friendly with at Timothy’s.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ they wanted to know. ‘But we were off duty and someone suggested that we should come and see you.’ Jill, plump and easygoing, beamed at her. ‘There wasn’t much chance to talk to you properly at the ball and we’re all dying to know how you are getting on.’

  She admired Trixie’s elegance and added, ‘I must say you look quite different...’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ said Trixie, ‘and it’s lovely to see you all. We’ll have tea presently, but first we’ll go round the house if you would like that.’

  They had tea round the fire: muffins and fruitcake and little chocolate cakes and all the tea that they could drink, all talking at once about the lovely house. Jill said without envy, ‘It must be heavenly to be married to the professor—what wouldn’t I give to have someone like him fall in love with me and sweep me off my feet! You looked quite perfect dancing together.’

  Trixie said hastily, ‘It was a lovely ball, wasn’t it? And everyone looked so nice. I liked that dress you were wearing, Jill...’