A Girl Named Rose

“Dammit, there’s something I want to say to you—something I must explain before you go back to England,” he said quite angrily.

“The trouble with you,” he continued, “is that I thought that I knew what you were thinking. Now that I’ve gotten to know you better I’m not sure anymore. I’m not even sure if you like me.”

Rose looked at him then and smiled a little and said steadily, “Oh, yes, I like you. I didn’t mean to, though.”

“Good, Rose. What would you say if I were to tell you that I want to get married?” He paused. “Do you know me well enough, I wonder?

“Rose…” he began.

She held her breath, not sure what was going to happen next, aware her insides were turning over and wondering what he was going to say.

Only he didn’t say it; the telephone rang.

Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of Betty Neels in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality, and her spirit and genuine talent live on in all her stories.

A Girl Named Rose

Betty Neels

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

THE EARLY summer sky, so vividly blue until now, was rapidly being swallowed up by black clouds, turning the water of the narrow canal to a steely grey and draining the colour from the old gabled houses on either side of it. The two girls on the narrow arched bridge spanning the water glanced up from the map they were studying and frowned at the darkening sky. The taller of the two had a pretty face, framed by dark curly hair, her blue eyes wide with apprehension; the smaller of the two, with unassuming features, straight pale brown hair piled into a too severe topknot and a pair of fine brown eyes, merely looked annoyed.

“It’s going to rain,” she observed, stating the obvious as the first slow, heavy drops began to fall. “Shall we go back if we can, go on, or find shelter?” She added in a matter-of-fact way, “I haven’t the faintest idea where we are.” She began to fold the map, already wet, but before she had done so the rain came down in earnest, soaking them in moments. Worse, there was a sudden flash of lightning and a great rumble of thunder.

The pretty girl gave a scared yelp. “Rose, what shall we do? I’m soaked.”

Her companion took her arm and hurried her off the bridge. “I’ll knock on a door,” she said, “perhaps there’s a porch…”

The brick road they were on was narrow and the houses lining it were solid seventeenth and eighteenth century town mansions built by wealthy Dutch merchants, their doors massive, their windows symmetrical, presenting an ageless calm in this backwater of Amsterdam, and not one of them had a porch. A second flash of lightning sent the smaller girl up the steps of the nearest house, to bang resoundingly on the great brass door knocker.

“You can’t,” objected her companion; she didn’t answer, only knocked again.

The door opened and she found herself staring into an elderly bewhiskered face; it belonged to a stout man, almost bald except for a fringe of hair with a stern expression and pale blue eyes. She swallowed and drew a breath.

“Please may we stand in your doorway?” she began. “We’re wet and lost.”

Before the man could answer a door behind him opened and shut and a voice asked, “English, and lost?” and said something in Dutch so that the man opened the door wider and stood aside for them to go in.

The hall they entered was very impressive; its black-and-white tiled floor partly covered with thin silky rugs, its white plastered walls hung with paintings in heavy frames; the man who stood in its centre was impressive too, well over six feet tall, with great shoulders and the good looks to turn any girl’s head. Any age between thirty and forty, Rose guessed, wondering if his fair hair was actually silver.

She hung back a little; this was the kind of situation Sadie could cope with admirably; her pretty face and charming smile had smoothed her path through three years of training at the children’s hospital where they both worked; they could certainly turn things to her own advantage now.

“Come in, come in.” The blue eyes studied them sleepily. “Very wet, aren’t you? Give your cardigans to Hans, he’ll get them dried for you and come into the sitting-room while I explain where you are.”

He smiled at them both, but his eyes lingered on Sadie’s glowing face, damp with rain, her curls no less attractive for being wet, whereas Rose’s hair hung in damp tendrils, doing nothing to aid her looks.

He held out a large hand and shook their proffered ones firmly. “Sybren Werdmer ter Sane,” he said briskly. It was Sadie who answered him. “I’m Sadie Gordon and this is Rose Comely.” She smiled bewitchingly at him as he opened a big double door and ushered them into the room beyond.

It was a large lofty apartment, its ceiling was plaster with pendant bosses, and a central recessed oval with a border of fruit and flowers. The windows were large and draped with heavy swathes of plum-coloured velvet, and the same rich colour predominated in the needlework carpets strewn on the polished wood floor. The furniture was a thoughtful mixture of the old and the new. Vast display cupboards flanked the steel fireplace with its rococo chimney-piece and mirror, a pair of magnificent seventeenth-century armchairs, elaborately carved and velvet-cushioned, stood on either side of a small table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A pair of William and Mary winged settees were on either side of the fireplace and there were a number of lamp tables and small comfortable easy chairs.

A delightful room, Rose thought, but Sadie said at once, “I say, what a simply heavenly room—you’d never guess from the outside…”

“Er—no, I suppose not. Do sit down; I’ve asked Hans to bring you some tea and in the meantime tell me how I can help you.”

“Oh, Rose will explain; we’re hopelessly lost—my fault, I wouldn’t stop to look at the map.”

“Where are you staying?”

Rose answered him in her quiet sensible voice. “At a small hotel called ‘De Zwaan’, it’s close to the Amstel Hotel, down a narrow side street. We got here yesterday, quite late in the evening, and we’re leaving again in the morning. We’re on a package tour; six of us, but the other four didn’t want to explore. We were all right to start with, but these small streets are all alike, aren’t they? Besides, they are so picturesque we just walked on and on…”

“It is so very easy to get lost!” commented their host. “But you aren’t too far out of your way. Will your friends worry?”

“They went shopping and they won’t be back at the hotel until the shops close. We have a kind of high tea at half past six.”

“Ah yes, of course,” murmured Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane; he had never eaten high tea in his life and indeed was a little vague as to what it was, but there was no need for him to comment further for Sadie, who had been frankly staring around her, wanted to know if the large painting of a family group wearing the stiff clothes of a couple of hundred years earlier were any relation to him. He led her over to take a closer look and when Hans came in a few minutes later with the tea tray, paused only long enough to ask Rose to pour out. “What is it you say in England? ‘Be Mother’.”

She poured the tea from a silver teapot into paperthin china cups, reflecting that no one had ever called her motherly before; homely, plump, dull, uninteresting—all these, repeated so often that they no longer hurt; indeed anything her stepmother said to her now had no effect at all, and even though she was aware that there was truth in what she said, she enjoyed the friendship of a large number of people who didn’t seem to notice her unassuming looks. The others sat down presently and she handed cups and as she did so admired her host’s good manners, and when he turned to her and asked her what she thought of Holland, she answered him unselfconsciously in her pleasant voice. After a few moments she noticed that he was asking apparently casual questions, all of which she answered with polite vagueness, completely wasted from her point of view for Sadie broke in to give him chapter and verse about St Bride’s, with a wealth of unnecessary detail about their training and how they had passed their exams not six months previously and now held Staff Nurses’ posts. “Rose is the gold medallist,” she informed him, “she’s the only one of us with any brains; anyway she studied and we didn’t. There were always other things to do in the evenings when we were off duty.” She added ingenuously, “You know, housemen and the senior medical students.”

Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane’s blue eyes rested fleetingly on Rose’s face; what he saw there caused him to say kindly, “I imagine that a gold medal is worth at least half a dozen housemen, your family must be very proud of you.”

This tactful remark didn’t have the effect he expected; Rose’s face flooded with colour and then went pale and she mumbled something, luckily lost in Sadie’s chatter. “That’s why we’re here,” she explained, “we’ve been saving up for months to have a holiday—to celebrate, you know. Only a week.” She sighed dramatically. “Back to work in two days’ time.”

She turned blue eyes to him. “You speak perfect English. Have you been in England?”

His voice was smooth. “Yes, from time to time. We are, of course, taught it in school; Dutch is a difficult language so we need to be proficient in the more widely used tongues.”

“You sound like a professor,” declared Sadie.

“Oh, I do hope not. Now shall I explain your street map to you?”

A nicely worded hint that they should think of leaving; Rose got to her feet at once and followed him to the table between the windows and handed him her map, and he took a pen from his pocket, marked a cross on it and then inked in their return route. “So that you will know exactly where you had got to,” he pointed out, “but I hope you will allow me to drive you back to your hotel—there’s always the chance that you will get lost again.” He handed Rose the map and tugged an embroidered bell-rope by the fireplace and when Hans came, spoke to him in his own language.

Hans came back almost at once with their cardigans and their host said easily, “It’s a bare ten minutes drive; Hans will fetch the car round.”

He helped Sadie into her cardigan and answered her light-hearted chatter good naturedly and then turned to Rose. But she was already buttoned neatly into hers, standing quietly with the map in her hand.

“We are very grateful,” she told him gravely. “It’s quite frightening, being lost—and then the storm…but there’s no need for you to drive us back, now we know how to follow the map we can walk quite easily.”

“I am sure that you could, you seem to be, if you will forgive me for saying so, a very practical young lady, but I should prefer to take you back; besides I have enjoyed the company of both of you—the gratitude should be mine for helping me to pass a dull afternoon in my own company.”

Oh, very polished, thought Rose, even if he doesn’t mean a word of it.

They went out into the hall and before Hans opened the front door, she had time to have another quick look round. The staircase was at the back of the hall, thickly carpeted, with barley sugar balusters, curving up gracefully to the floor above; there was a massive chandelier above their heads and a great carved oak table against one wall. It was tantalising to have a glimpse of such a fine house before they were out on the narrow pavement and being ushered into the dignified dark grey Rolls-Royce motor car standing there.

Sadie slid into the front seat, exclaiming prettily that it had always been her ambition to travel in a Rolls, and Rose got into the back, quite content to do so, only half listening to her friend rattling on about one thing and another while she looked out of the window, trying to see both sides at once; she wasn’t likely to come to Amsterdam again for some time, indeed if ever, and she wanted to see as much as could be crowded into their brief stay.

At their hotel they bade their host goodbye, thanked him once more, and Sadie said, “I hope you come to London and we see you again; don’t forget where we are—St Bride’s.” She gave him a beguiling smile as they shook hands. “I think you’d be much more fun to go out with than any of the housemen I know!”

He made some laughing reply and opened the hotel door for them.

Inside Rose said doubtfully, “Sadie, weren’t you a bit—you know…? After all he is a complete stranger…”

Sadie laughed. “Look who is talking—who knocked on his door, then?”

“Well, we had to get in out of the rain and I didn’t know he was living there, did I?” They began to climb the steep stairs to their rooms on the top floor. “The others will be back and I’m famished.”

The rest of the party were milling around the small, plainly furnished rooms gossiping about their day. As Rose and Sadie reached the top landing they surged out of doors, full of questions.

“Where have you been?” demanded a lanky girl with a long face. “We’ve been getting worried; after all, Rose, you’ve got all the plans for tomorrow and the money for the hotel…”

Rose began mildly and was cut short by Sadie’s exuberant voice. “We walked miles and got lost and then there was that awful storm so Rose knocked on the door of a simply huge house and we had tea there and came back in a Rolls-Royce.”

The lanky girl goggled at her. “You’re making it up.”

“It’s quite true,” said Rose composedly. “We did get lost, Alice. Did you have a good time shopping?”

“I’ll say,” a girl with red hair interpolated, “a good thing you’ve got the money to pay the bill here, Rose, I’m skint.”

“I’ll pay this evening, we don’t leave until after lunch, so if there’s any money over we’ll share it out.”

The little group dispersed to tidy for the evening and Rose went into her own room and changed her damp dress for a cotton jersey and did her hair again. Which done she made up her face and then stood peering into the very small looking-glass which hung on the wall. She was undoubtedly a plain girl; not, she conceded, hopelessly so, her skin was good, she had nice eyebrows and her eyes were passable, only her nose was too short and turned up very slightly and her mouth was too wide, and as for her hair…fine and silky reaching to her waist but most uninterestingly pale brown. She pinned it severely to the top of her head and went to join the others. There was no point in her being sorry for herself and indeed she seldom was, but today it had struck her forcibly that no man, certainly not one as handsome as Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane, would bother to look at her twice. Not that he had ignored her; his manners had been beautiful but she thought that they would have been just as beautiful if she had been an elderly aunt or a chance acquaintance he wasn’t likely to see again.

They trooped down to their high tea and joined the other members of the coach party in the basement dining-room; they were mostly elderly couples with a sprinkling of middle-aged ladies on their own who treated the six of them with a guarded friendliness and greeted them now with looks of mild reproof.

“We spent a delightful afternoon doing the canal trip,” one of the single middle-aged ladies told them. “It’s something you shouldn’t have missed. Most instructive.” She began to enumerate the various sights they had seen, and they, making formidable inroads into the cold meat and ham on the table, murmured and muttered in reply.

“And what did you do?” asked a cosy matron kindly.

“Went to the shops—they are super.” Alice took another slice of bread and buttered it lavishly. “But Rose and Sadie went for a walk and got caught in the storm. They came back in a Rolls-Royce…”

Sadie looked daggers at her but Rose answered composedly enough, “Yes, we were lucky enough to be offered shelter by someone who kindly drove us back here.”

“But you didn’t know him?” one of the single ladies, a wispy faded blonde, asked with faint excitement.

“Not then, we didn’t,” explained Rose in her sensible way, “but we do now. We were lost you see and had to take shelter.”

An old man with glasses pronounced it his opinion, that foreign parts, while interesting, were unreliable. A remark which closed the conversation for the simple reason that it was difficult to answer.

They weren’t to leave until directly after lunch on the following day and since there was enough money over after Rose had paid their bill, the six of them voted to take a trip along the city’s canals. They prudently packed their bags before going to their beds; there would be ample time in the morning for sight-seeing, but much as they had enjoyed their brief stay they had no wish to be left behind with almost no money in their pockets.

They got themselves up early, had the coffee and rolls and cheese the hotel provided and made a brisk beeline for the Central Station from which the boats left.

There weren’t too many people about at nine o’clock in the morning; they got on to one of the first boats to leave and settled down to enjoy themselves.

It was a splendid morning and the old houses, viewed from the water, looked at their very best. They viewed the smallest house in the city, the Munt, and the patrician houses lining the canals, with suitable interest while the guide, switching from English to German to French with enviable ease, pointed out the highlights of the trip. They were back again soon after ten o’clock and trooped down Damrak to the Dam Square, intent on coffee before they went back to the hotel. They were waiting to cross the square, thick with traffic and noisy little trams when Sadie caught Rose by the arm.

“Look,” she cried loudly. “There he is, over there…”

Too far away for him to see them, Rose judged, watching the Rolls slide between two trams with Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane at the wheel. Besides, what would be the point, even if he did? They weren’t going to meet again.

They lunched at the hotel, cheese rolls and coffee because the hotel didn’t cater for cooked meals at midday, and then they boarded their coach. Rose felt a twinge of regret as they were driven through the city’s heart and its suburbs; streets of neat houses and flats, all exactly alike and not in the least resembling the lovely old houses in the centre of the city. At least she had investigated the inside of one of them, and very nice it was too. She allowed her thoughts to dwell on the pleasures of living in such a house, lapped around with comfort, no, not comfort, luxury. She said out loud, “I wonder if he was married?”

Sadie, sitting beside her, chuckled. “Well, of course he would be—I daresay he had a handful of children too, on the top floor with Nanny.”

Rose was surprised to find that the idea quite upset her.

The coach kept to the motorway, giving her little time to do more than glimpse the villages to be seen on either side of it. “Next time I come, if I ever do,” she told Sadie, “I shan’t go on a single motorway; I’m sure there is heaps to see.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you’ll come again,” said Sadie comfortably; she sounded faintly smug; more or less engaged to a solid young man with his feet firmly on the first rung of banking, her own future was already cut out for her. She added, “I mean, you are sure to get offered a sister’s post—there’s Sister Coutts on children’s medical due to retire, and the junior night sister leaving to get married at Christmas.”

Rose resolutely brushed away the vague daydreams floating around inside her head. She didn’t much care for medical nursing and nor did she like night duty; she would like to work on the children’s surgical ward, but chance was a fine thing; the ward sister there was young enough to be there for another twenty years, and certainly had no intention of marrying. Rose consoled herself with the thought that she might be going there as a staff nurse. Perhaps when she had more experience she would look for a sister’s post at another hospital, as far away from her home as possible. Not that it was home any more. Even after two years it hurt to think of her father; they had lived so happily together after her mother died until quite out of the blue, just after she had started training, he had told her that he was going to marry again.

Her stepmother was still quite young, a well preserved forty, with a pretty face and a charm which she lavished on Rose when there was anyone there to see it. They had disliked each other on sight, but Rose had done her best to understand her father’s remarriage and had tried hard to like her stepmother. It wasn’t until her father died suddenly and her stepmother married again within six months of his death, that Rose admitted to herself that she didn’t like her and never would. She couldn’t stand Mr Fletcher, a tall thin man, who doted on her stepmother but treated Rose with cold severity. It was like having two strangers in her home and during the following year she had gradually stopped spending her days off and holidays there, feeling an interloper each time she went to the village near Tunbridge Wells. Instead she had answered her mother’s elder sister’s invitation to visit her and now she felt more at home there in Northamptonshire. Her aunt lived at Ashby St Ledgers, in a comfortable little house, a rather sterner version of Rose’s mother, but kind and affectionate and ready to welcome her niece. She was an enthusiastic gardener, a staunch supporter of the church and had a finger in every village pie and was looked after by a little dumpling of a woman Rose remembered from her childhood when she had been taken on a visit to Aunt Millicent. Both ladies, in their way, made much of her, her aunt in an off-hand manner which didn’t quite conceal her very real affection, and Maggie with a cosy warmth made apparent by the nourishing meals she dished up and the hot milk she insisted Rose should take to bed each night.

“I’d like to see more flesh on your bones,” she would mutter, pressing the nourishing drink into Rose’s hands when she went to bed, and each time Rose went to stay, she would return with a large cake in her case; devoured with gratitude by Rose and her friends the moment it was unpacked.

She thought of her aunt now; she would be going to see her in a few weeks’ time but first she would have to settle down on whichever ward she was sent to. Hopefully back on children’s surgical, she had been there for three months as a student nurse and loved it. She turned to say something to Sadie but that young lady was asleep, her pretty mouth slightly open, her curls, rather untidy now, framing her charming face. No wonder the Dutchman had been so taken with her, thought Rose, quite without envy.

The bus stopped just before they reached Zeebrugge and they all got out and had tea and a biscuit; the tea—a teabag in a saucer with a glass of almost boiling water, and no milk, was refreshing but not at all like the dark strong brew they shared in each other’s rooms when they came off duty. They were off again within fifteen minutes and shortly after went on board, where they left everything in the bus and climbed the stairs to the upper decks. They knew the journey would take four hours and there was still the drive to London from Dover; they wouldn’t be at the hospital until midnight at least. Luckily none of them were on duty until one o’clock the next day. Their main thoughts were now centred on food. Lunch had been light and hours ago; Rose counted what was left of the money and then shared it out between the six of them. There wasn’t a great deal, not enough to go to the restaurant with the other travellers in the coach, but there was a cafeteria on board. They trooped along its counter, getting value for their money, spending it on rolls and butter, cheese, hardboiled eggs and cups of tea.