Cassandra By Chance

During their dinner Rachel telephoned; they were on the point of catching their flight to Athens, she told them, talking to each of them in turn and then making way for Tom, who promised that they would telephone that evening. Cassandra, who had expected the children to be tearful, was agreeably surprised to find that although they were excited to hear from their parents, they showed no signs of being unhappy. Just in case they were, she promised, rather rashly that they would play cards that evening.

The first few days went quickly and she enjoyed them; she missed the busy hospital life and the urgent work in theatre, on the other hand it was delightful to have time to read and sew and knit. Besides, she enjoyed cooking; she found a cook book and between the three of them, they chose something different each day, very much influenced by the colourful illustrations of dishes with exotic names and an enormous number of ingredients. They made toffee too and went for long rambles, so that it was almost a week before Cassandra had the opportunity of going to the cottage on the hill. The children had been invited to a birthday party in the village, a protracted affair which would last well into the evening. She had walked down with them just after two o’clock on the Saturday afternoon and seen them safely into the cottage where the party was to be held and then, her mind made up, went back through the village. She had almost reached the track leading to her sister’s house, when John Campbell came out of the Manse front door.

She stopped because he had called a greeting as she went past and it would have been rude not to have stopped, and he quite obviously wanted to talk. They stood together, chatting about nothing in particular for five minutes or more until she said: ‘Well, I’ll be getting along…’

‘I wondered if you would care to come to tea—today, perhaps?’ he smiled at her. ‘My sister would like to meet you.’

Cassandra, normally a truthful girl, lied briskly, ‘I’m so sorry, I promised Rachel that I would do some telephoning for her this afternoon—family, you know—she hadn’t time before she went. Besides, I’ve a simply enormous wash waiting in the machine.’ She smiled at him kindly, quite unrepentant about the fibbing, because she was determined that she would climb the hill and take a nearer look at Ogre’s Relish—and nothing was going to stop her.

It was further away than she had thought and the path became steeper as she went. It petered out at length in a small clearing from which several smaller paths wound themselves away into the trees all around her. She could see no sign of the cottage now and it took her a few moments to decide which path to take. The wrong one, as it turned out, for it led to a small enclosed patch of wild grass and thistles and heather, so she went back again and this time chose the path opposite, pausing to look about her as she went. All the same, she was taken completely by surprise when it turned a corner and opened directly into a quite large garden, very tidy and nicely sheltered by the trees. A path led to the cottage front door, set sturdily between two small windows with another two beneath its slate roof. She looked around her; the place seemed to be deserted, so perhaps it wasn’t the right one. She crossed the grass with the idea of peering in through one of its windows and then let out a small gasp when a voice from behind her said:

‘You’re trespassing, my good woman.’

The ogre! She forced herself to turn round slowly, filled with a ridiculous, childish fear which was instantly dispelled when she saw the dark glasses and the stick. For an ogre, she thought idiotically, he was remarkably handsome; tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair greying at the temples, the dark glasses bridging a long straight nose beneath thick brows. His mouth was well shaped and firm too, although at the moment it was drawn down in a faint sneer. Probably, she told herself with her usual good sense, she would sneer too if she had to wear dark glasses and carry a stick… She found her tongue: ‘Good afternoon. I’m sorry if I’m trespassing—I didn’t mean to come into your garden, it was unexpected…’

The dark glasses glared at her. ‘Only to spy out the land, perhaps?’

Cassandra flushed. ‘Well, yes—at least, you see, I knew you lived here—the children told me about you.’

‘Indeed?’ The dark glasses bored a hole through her, the voice was icy. ‘And should I be flattered?’

‘Why?’ she asked matter-of-factly, and went on: ‘The children—my nephew and niece, were telling me.’

‘I’m all agog,’ he said nastily.

‘Well, they’re only small children and imaginative—they call this cottage Ogre’s Relish.’

His lips twitched. ‘So I am an ogre?’

‘No, not really. They’ve heard about you and they made up stories.’

‘Really?’ His voice was cold and she gave him an apprehensive look and said uneasily: ‘You’re not offended?’

‘What does it matter to you?’ he wanted to know coolly. ‘Don’t let me keep you.’

He might not be an ogre, but certainly he had the disposition of one! Cassandra retreated down the path and paused to ask: ‘Can you see at all?’ knowing that it was unpardonable of her to ask, but wanting very much to know. He didn’t bother to answer her and she took another step away from him, then stopped again because another man, elderly this time and as dark as the ogre, had come round the corner of the cottage. He had his sweater sleeves rolled up and the first thing Cassandra’s sharp eyes saw were the numbers tattooed on his arm, between his wrist and his elbow. She knew what they meant—he had been in a concentration camp. He had the face of an old hawk and looked decidedly surly, but all the same she wished him a good afternoon and he gave a surprised, reluctant reply. Still more surprising, however, was the fact that the man in the dark glasses spoke. ‘This is Jan, my good friend—he can do everything except make cakes.’ He smiled a little. ‘He speaks excellent English and Polish, if you should have a knowledge of that language, but don’t on any account address him in German; he dislikes that, for his own very good reasons.’

Cassandra said briefly: ‘I can’t speak anything but English and school French.’ She put out her hand. ‘How do you do, Jan?’ and shook his hand, careful not to look at the tattooed numbers. ‘I daresay I shall see you some time in the shop, shan’t I?’ She smiled and saw the faint reflection in his own face. She wished the ogre would smile too—he would look very nice then—if he ever did, but he seemed a bitter man, which was natural enough. She wondered how he had come to lose his sight in the first place and longed to ask him, although she knew that to be impossible. She wished him a pleasant goodbye which he answered with the briefest of nods in her direction, and started back down the path. She was almost home when she remembered that he had never answered her question as to whether he could see at all.

The next day being Sunday, she took the children to church, a bare whitewashed building, filled to capacity, and after the service, when she paused at the door to wish Mr Campbell a good morning, she was bidden to wait a few moments so that she might meet Miss Campbell, a treat she wasn’t particularly anxious to experience. The lady, when she came, was exactly as Cassandra had pictured her, only more so; she was younger than her brother, with a determined chin and cold blue eyes which examined Cassandra’s London-bought hat with suspicion and then raked her face, looking for signs of the frivolity the owner of such a hat would be sure to possess. But there was nothing frivolous about Cassandra’s face; Miss Campbell sighed with vexation—she had already heard far too much about this young woman from London from her brother, who, at his age, should know better, and now she had seen for herself that there were none of the more regrettable aspects of the modern world visible in the girl—only the hat. She would have her to tea, she decided, and show her up, with her usual skill, before her brother, and Cassandra, while unaware of these thoughts, sensed that she wasn’t liked—well, she didn’t like Miss Campbell either. She murmured noncommittally over the invitation to tea and made a polite escape with the murmured excuse that she had the Sunday dinner to see to.

Out of hearing, she was immediately attacked by her two small companions.

‘But you got the dinner ready before we came out, Aunt Cassandra,’ Andrew pointed out.

‘You said…’ began Penny.

‘Yes, my dears, I know. I told a fib, didn’t I? I’m very sorry, but you see I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and I didn’t want to go back to the Manse, and I believe Mr Campbell was on the point of asking us.’

This sensible way out of an awkward situation was immediately sanctioned, although Andrew asked doubtfully, ‘But you don’t usually fib, Aunt Cassandra, do you?’

And she, in some ways as young as her companions, crossed her fingers as she assured him that no, she did her best not to.

She thought about the ogre quite a lot during the next few days, and when she met Jan in the village shop and saw the meagre groceries he was buying, she went home, baked a large fruit cake and that same afternoon, after the children had gone back to school, climbed the path behind the house once more.

Probably she would get the cake thrown at her, but at least she had to try; the thought of the two men living in a kind of exile without enough to eat and with no hope of a home-made cake for their teas touched her heart—and perhaps this time the ogre would be more friendly. She had no wish to pry, she knew how difficult it was for anyone to reconcile themselves to blindness, especially when they were young—and he was still young, she guessed about thirty-five.

This time she walked boldly up the path and knocked on the door, and was rewarded by the ogre’s voice bidding her to go in and shut the door behind her. It led directly into the sitting-room, small and cosy and extremely untidy, but none the less clean. Cassandra paused just inside the door and before she could speak, the man in the dark glasses said: ‘It’s you again.’

‘Oh, you can see—I’m so glad!’ said Cassandra, her plain face illuminated by delight.

‘We don’t have so many visitors that I can’t make a shrewd guess as to who it is. Besides, Dioressence isn’t so difficult to recognize—I don’t imagine that there are many women in the village who wear it.’ The dark glasses were turned in her direction. ‘Why have you come? Did I invite you?’

A bad beginning, she had to admit. ‘No—but I was in the shop this morning and Jan was there and—and…’ She paused, not knowing how to say it without hurting his pride, of which she had no doubt he had far too much. ‘Well, I thought you might like a cake, as you said Jan couldn’t make cakes—it’s only a fruit one, but if you put it into a tin it will keep for days.’

She was still standing by the door and she couldn’t see his face very well, for he was sitting by the fire in a large armchair, half turned from her. He said quietly: ‘Will you sit down? I’m afraid we aren’t very tidy, but move anything you have to,’ and when she had done so, still clutching the cake, he went on: ‘You’re kind. We don’t encourage visitors, you know—there’s no point. I’m only here for a few weeks and they are almost over.’

‘You’ll go home?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think you’re English—or Scottish—and you can’t be German because if you were Jan wouldn’t be with you.’

His smile mocked her. ‘Intelligent as well as beautiful,’ he remarked silkily.

‘If you didn’t have to wear those glasses you would see that I am rather a plain girl.’

‘Indeed? In which case we must allow my dark glasses to have some advantage after all.’

She went a painful scarlet. In a voice throbbing with self-restraint, she said: ‘That was really rather rude.’

The mouth beneath the dark glasses sneered. ‘Yes, but you asked for it, young woman.’

She got to her feet, laid the cake carefully down on the table and said in a sensible voice: ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? I shall know better next time, if ever there is a next time. I came because I thought you might be lonely, but I see now that I’ve been officious and I expect you find me a prig as well. I’m sorry.’ She was at the door, she opened it, said goodbye and was through it and away down the path with such speed that she didn’t hear his sharp exclamation.

She had put the children to bed and was sitting with her gros-point in her lap, thinking about her afternoon visit and its awful failure, when there was a knock on the door. It was Jan, and when she invited him in, he shook his head and said: ‘I’m not to stop, miss. Mr van Manfeld sent me to ask if you would go and see him again—tomorrow, perhaps? He wishes to talk to you.’

Cassandra felt an instant pleasure, which in the face of her recent reception at the cottage, was ridiculous. She said cautiously, ‘Oh, I can’t possibly come tomorrow, or the day after that—let me see…’ she frowned over mythical engagements, ‘perhaps Friday afternoon.’

‘Not tomorrow?’ inquired Jan, disappointed.

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid it’s quite impossible. I’ll come on Friday. Would you like a cup of coffee before you go?’

He gave her a suspicious look. ‘No—no, thank you, miss. I was to say that the cake was very good. I’ll be going.’

They wished each other good-night and she shut the door upon him and stood leaning against it, wondering why the ogre should want to see her again. He hadn’t liked her, had he? he had said so, not in so many words, perhaps—all the same…perhaps it was the cake. She went back to her embroidery, her mind already busy with the making of another cake, and possibly an apple pie. Her pastry was excellent, and men liked pies.

CHAPTER TWO

CASSANDRA climbed the hill path on Friday afternoon, carrying a basket this time and wrapped against the fine rain and boisterous wind in an elderly anorak of Rachel’s, and this time when she knocked on the door, Jan opened it for her and ushered her inside as Mr van Manfeld rose from his seat by the fire to greet her. She hadn’t quite expected that, and although he didn’t smile at least his face wore a look of polite welcome. She stared at the dark glasses and wondered what colour the eyes they concealed would be, then, rather belatedly, wished him a good after noon. ‘I’ve brought another cake, a chocolate one, and an apple pie—I was making one for us and it seemed silly not to…’

She stopped because it was a stupid sort of speech anyway, but someone had to say something. Jan had nodded at her and disappeared through a door leading presumably to the kitchen, and Mr van Manfeld took so long to say anything that she had to quell a desire to put her basket on the table and go away again.

‘I didn’t think that you would come,’ said her host at length. ‘Why did you?’

‘Well, you asked me, and I said I would—and besides, I thought you might be glad of another cake.’

He smiled then and his whole face changed. ‘I have a vile temper,’ he informed her, ‘and I have allowed it to get out of hand—I hope you will forgive me for my rudeness.’

Cassandra, ever practical, was taking off her anorak and went to hang it behind the door. ‘Yes, of course, and you’re not as rude as all that. The village…’

‘Discuss me? Naturally. But I came here to get away from people. Will you sit down?’

She took the chair opposite his and tried not to stare at the glasses; instead she picked up a small ginger kitten sitting before the fire, and put it on her lap. ‘You said you were going home soon—so I suppose you came here to convalesce or wait for results.’

The eyebrows rose. ‘Is that a guess?’ and when she said yes, he went on:

‘I’m awaiting results. There is a good chance that my blindness isn’t permanent, what sight I have has already much improved, but I depend on my eyes for my work—I’m a surgeon.’ He added impatiently, ‘But I can’t expect you to understand.’

‘Yes, you can. I’m a nurse, you see, and I’ve just done six months in theatre and I’ve watched the surgeons at work. Is it an optic nerve injury?’

‘Yes. A paralysis which is slowly righting itself, I hope.’ He spoke curtly and without any wish to continue the subject, something which became apparent when he went on: ‘I asked you to come so that I might apologize to you. I was abominably rude and you were most forbearing. I should warn you that I frequently lose my temper.’

The silence after this frank statement became rather long. Cassandra sat, wondering if she was supposed to go, or was she to stay a little while, even have tea? She was on the point of making some remark about getting back when Jan came in from the kitchen. To her disappointment he was empty-handed; she had, after all, come quite a long way and at Mr van Manfeld’s request. Whatever better feeling had caused him to invite her had cooled. She got up and offered Jan the basket. ‘If you wouldn’t mind putting these in the kitchen,’ she asked, and he nodded without looking at her and put out a stringy arm upon which the hideous tattoo stood out sharply.

She was normally a composed girl, not given to impulsive actions, but now she put out her hand and touched his arm gently and said: ‘Jan, I’m so sorry about this—I wanted to tell you.’

Jan looked at her then; his eyes were black and she thought for a moment that he was very angry, but he wasn’t. He smiled and patted her hand and said: ‘Thank you, miss.’ He might have said more, but Mr van Manfeld gave a short mocking laugh.

‘Spare me a mawkish scene!’ he begged nastily. ‘And should you not be going back to your charges, Miss…?’

‘Darling,’ Cassandra told him crisply, ‘and don’t dare to be funny about it!’

‘I’m never funny,’ he assured her, ‘and if it is your inappropriate name to which you refer, I can think of nothing more unsuitable. There is nothing darling about you—you invade my privacy without so much as a by-your-leave, you subject me to your quite unnecessary sentiment, and you assure me that you are not pretty. I really think you should go.’ His voice was cool, faintly amused, and mocking.

Cassandra stared at the dark glasses. The mouth below them was pulled down into a half smile which was fast becoming a sneer—and he had smiled so nicely. She sighed. ‘I’m not surprised that the children call you an ogre,’ she informed him tartly, ‘because you are a most ill-mannered man, which is a pity, because I expect you’re quite nice really.’

The glasses glared. ‘Oh, go away!’ he snapped, and got up from his chair. He looked very large and almost menacing. ‘God’s teeth,’ he ground out savagely, ‘what have…’

Cassandra’s firm chin went up in the air. ‘What a shocking remark to make!’ but he didn’t allow her to finish.

‘Don’t be so prissy,’ he advised her sourly, ‘I’m no mealy-mouthed parson.’

She allowed herself a moment’s comparison of Mr Campbell and the man before her and was surprised to find that Mr Campbell came off second best. ‘I’m sure he’s a very good man and kind.’

‘Meaning that I’m not? As though I care a damn what you think, my pious Miss Darling—going to church in your best hat and probably making the reverend’s heart flutter to boot. You sound just his sort.’

‘I’m not anyone’s sort, Mr van Manfeld.’ She picked up her empty basket and went to the door, her voice coming loud and rather wobbly. ‘It’s a good thing you can’t see me, because I’m extremely angry.’

His voice followed her, still sour. ‘But I can see you after a fashion. It’s true you’re dark blue and very fuzzy round the edges, but since you assure me that you’re a plain girl, I don’t really see that it matters, do you?’

Cassandra ground her teeth without answering this piece of rudeness and banged the door regrettably hard as she went out.

There was a note the next day, presumably delivered by hand while she had been out. It was typed and signed rather crookedly with the initials B. van M. It begged her pardon and asked her to go to the cottage and stay for tea. She read it several times, then tore it up. There was another note the following day; it was waiting for her when she got back from church with the children, and she tore that one up too and hurried to get their dinner because, having run out of excuses, she had accepted Miss Campbell’s invitation to tea that afternoon, and she was to take Andrew and Penny with her. She had, she told herself firmly, no intention of going anywhere near the ogre ever again. She found the idea distressing.

Tea at the Manse was run on strictly conventional lines. Everyone sat round the drawing-room eating slippery sandwiches and crumbling cake from plates which weren’t quite big enough. The children, coaxed into exemplary behaviour, sat like two small statues, making despairing efforts to catch the crumbs before they reached the floor, and Cassandra, seated with her hostess on a remarkably hard sofa, watched them with sympathy. It was a relief when the clock struck five and she was able to say that they should be going home before the dusk descended. ‘And anyway,’ she went on politely, ‘you will want to get ready for church, I expect.’

She had no ready reply when her host, despite the speaking look his sister gave him, professed himself ready to accompany them to their door.

‘There’s no need,’ cried Cassandra, who even if he hadn’t, had seen the look and didn’t want his company anyway. ‘It’s only ten minutes’ walk, and it’s not dark yet.’

Which made it worse, because the pastor pointed out that he couldn’t possibly allow a young and pretty woman to go that distance, especially with the children, he added. It made it sound as though the village were some vice-ridden haunt full of desperate characters with flick-knives waiting at every corner. Cassandra suppressed a giggle and they set off sedately, each with a child holding a hand. At the door she felt bound to ask him in, and was quite downcast when he accepted.

He didn’t stay long, although she had the impression that he would have done so if time hadn’t been pressing. She saw him to the door, murmuring politely about the tea-party, and suggesting vaguely that he and his sister might care to take tea with them at some future date. When he had gone, Andrew rounded on her. ‘Aunt Cassandra, how could you? Ask him to tea, I mean. He’s all right, I suppose, but Miss Campbell’s always so cross. Did you hear her telling Penny off because she made crumbs, and she couldn’t help it.’

Cassandra led the way to the kitchen. ‘Darlings, I know. I made crumbs too, but you see it would be so rude not to invite them back. But if they come on a Sunday they have to be back by six o’clock—earlier—so it wouldn’t be too bad.’

She opened the fridge and took out some milk, and Andrew, standing beside her, said: ‘He fancies you, Aunt Cassandra.’

She gave him a look of horror. ‘Andrew, you’re making it up! He couldn’t—you mustn’t make remarks like that,’ she rebuked him. ‘You’re only repeating something you’ve heard.’

He mistook her meaning. ‘That’s right. I heard someone in the shop yesterday—that’s what they said.’ He was speaking the truth; Cassandra said lightly: ‘Oh, gossip, darling, you shouldn’t listen to that, no one ever means it. Now, supper—I planned a rather nice one.’

The pastor wasn’t mentioned again, for after supper they played Monopoly until bedtime, which left no time to talk. It was later, when she was sitting in the quiet house, writing to Rachel, that Cassandra paused to worry about Andrew’s remark. Mr Campbell was a very nice man, she had no doubt, but definitely not her cup of tea. Besides, she didn’t like his sister. She would do her best to avoid him as much as possible, though how to do that in a village of such a small size was going to be a problem. She brightened at the thought that it was only just over a month until she would be gone and the problem would solve itself, but her relief was tempered by a very real regret that she would never see Mr van Manfeld again; even in a rage he was interesting company, and surely, sometimes he was good-tempered. It would be nice to know, but she doubted if she ever would.

She had the opportunity of doing so the very next day. She had taken the children back to school after their dinner and was sitting on the floor before the fire with the animals, doing nothing, when the front doorbell rang.