Tempestuous April

Sieske came back then, and said, ‘Harry, what is it? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

Harriet turned to walk beside her friend. ‘No, not a ghost.’ She so obviously didn’t want to say any more that Sieske bit off the questions she was going to ask, and started to talk about something quite different.

Aede arrived after tea—which wasn’t a meal at all, Harriet discovered, just a cup of tea with no milk and a plate of delicate little biscuits. He was like his father, tall and broad, and looked younger than his twenty-five years. He had just qualified as a doctor and was at the hospital at Leeuwarden working as a houseman, and it would be at least another six months before he started to specialize; eventually, of course, he would join his father’s practice. He told Harriet these interesting facts in fluent English, sitting beside her on the comfortable sofa near the stove. He drank the decidedly cool tea without apparently minding in the least, and consumed the remainder of the biscuits. Harriet liked him; he wasn’t as placid as Sieske, but he was obviously good-natured and an excellent companion. They sat around happily talking shop until almost supper time, while Mevrouw Van Minnen, looking almost as young as her daughter, sat in a straight-backed chair by her work table, knitting a sock at speed and managing to take a lion’s share in the talk despite the fact that everything had to be said twice in both languages.

They sat down to the evening meal soon after seven, with a great deal of laughing and talking. Dr Van Minnen, who had disappeared soon after tea to take his evening surgery, came back in time to dispense an excellent sherry from a beautiful decanter into crystal glasses.

‘Where’s Friso?’ inquired his wife. ‘He hasn’t called to see Sieske.’

The doctor answered her and then repeated his words, this time in English for Harriet’s benefit. ‘My partner has had to go to Dongjum, a small village a few miles from this town—an extended breech, so he’s likely to be there most of the night.’

Harriet felt a pang of pity for the poor man—she had been told that he didn’t live in Franeker, but in a nearby village close to the sea; he looked after the rural side of the practice while Dr Van Minnen attended his patients in Franeker.

‘Is Dr Eijsinck’s share of the practice a large one?’ she asked Aede.

‘Hemel, yes—and very scattered, but he’s a glutton for work.’

And Harriet added a harassed expression and a permanent stoop to the stained waistcoat, and then forgot all about him in the excitement of discussing Sieske’s and Wierd’s engagement party, when their forthcoming marriage would be announced. It was to be a splendid affair, with the burgemeester and the dominee and various colleagues of the doctor coming, as well as a great many young people. It was fortunate that the sitting-room and the drawing-room were connected by folding doors, which could be pushed back, making one room. Harriet sat back, listening quietly and wondering which of her two party dresses she had had the forethought to bring with her she should wear. Every now and then she thought about the man in the AC 428 Fastback.

The following morning after breakfast, Harriet took the post along to the doctor in his surgery. She hadn’t been there yet, but she had been told the way. She went down the long narrow passage leading to the back of the house and through the little door in the wall opposite the kitchen. She could hear a murmur of sound—shuffling feet, coughs and a baby crying, as she knocked on the surgery door. The doctor was alone, searching through a filing cabinet with concentrated fierceness. His voice was mild enough, however, as he remarked.

‘Mevrouw Van Hoeve’s card is here somewhere—the poor woman is in the waiting room, but how can I give her an injection until I check her notes?’

Harriet put the post down on the desk. It seemed that doctors were all the same the world over.

‘I’ve brought your post,’ she said soothingly. ‘If you’ll spell the name to me I’ll look for the card while you see if there’s anything important …’

Dr Van Minnen gave her a grateful look. ‘I do have an assistant,’ he explained, ‘but she’s on holiday.’

He sat down with a relieved sigh and picked up the first of his letters, and Harriet started to go through the filing cabinet. Mevrouw Van Hoeve was half-way through the second drawer, filed away under P-S; no wonder she couldn’t be found. Harriet took it out and turned round in triumph to find that the door had opened and a man had come in; he spoke briefly to Dr Van Minnen and stood staring at her with the same cool grey eyes that she had been trying so hard to forget. She stood staring back at him in her turn, clutching the folder to her; her pretty mouth agape, while the bright colour flooded her face.

Dr Van Minnen glanced up briefly from his desk. ‘Harriet, this is my partner, Friso Eijsinck.’

The Friso she had imagined disintegrated. This elegant waistcoat had never borne a soup stain in its well-cared-for life; indeed, the whole appearance of its wearer was one of a well-dressed man about town. There was no sign of a stoop either; he was a giant among the giantlike people around her and he wore his great height with a careless arrogance; and as for the harassed expression—she tried her best to imagine him presenting anything but a calm, controlled face to the world, and failed utterly.

She said, ‘How do you do, Doctor,’ in a voice which would have done credit to one of Miss Austen’s young ladies, and this time she didn’t smile.

His own, ‘How do you do, Miss Slocombe,’ was uttered in a deep, rather slow voice with a faint impatience in its tones. There was a pause, during which she realized that he was waiting for her to go. She closed the filing cabinet carefully, smiled at Dr Van Minnen, and walked without haste to the door which he was holding open for her, and passed him with no more than a brief glance, her head very high. To her chagrin he wasn’t even looking at her. Outside, with the door closed gently behind her, she stopped and reviewed the brief, disappointing meeting. She doubted if he had looked at her—not to see her, at any rate; he had made her feel in the way, and awkward, and this without saying anything at all. She walked on slowly; perhaps he hated the English, or, she amended honestly, he didn’t like her.

Sieske was calling her from the top of the house and she went upstairs and put on her clove pink raincoat and tugged its matching hat on to her bright hair, then went shopping with Sieske and her mother.

Wierd was coming that evening. Harriet spent the afternoon setting Sieske’s hair, and after their tea combed it out and arranged it for her, then stood back to admire her handiwork. What with a pretty hair-do and the prospect of seeing Wierd again, Sieske looked like a large and a very good-looking angel.

There was no evening surgery that day; they were to meet in the drawing-room for drinks at six-thirty. Harriet went upstairs to change her dress wondering what she was going to do until that time. She suspected that the arrangement had been made so that Sieske and her young man would have some time to themselves before the family assembled. She was just putting the last pin into her hair when there was a knock on the door, and when she called ‘Come in’, Aede put his inquiring head into the room.

‘Harriet? Are you ready? I wondered if you would like to put on a coat and come for a quick run in the car—there’s heaps of time.’

She had already caught up the pink raincoat; it wasn’t raining any more, but it lay handy on a chair and she put it on, saying,

‘I’d love to, Aede. But do we tell someone?’

They were going downstairs. ‘I told Moeder,’ he said. ‘She thought it was a jolly good idea.’

His car was outside—a Volkswagen and rather battered. Harriet got in, remarking knowledgeably that it was a good car and how long had he had it. This remark triggered off a conversation which lasted them out of Franeker and several miles along the main road. When he turned off, however, she asked, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Just round the country so that you can see what it is like,’ Aede replied, and turned the car into a still smaller road. The country looked green and pleasant in the spring evening light. The farms stood well apart from each other, each joined to its own huge barn by a narrow corridor at its back. They looked secure and prosperous and very different from the more picturesque, less compact English farms. They passed through several small villages with unpronounceable names in the Fries language, then circled back and crossed the main road again so that they were going towards the coast. On the outskirts of one village there was a large house, with an important front door and neat windows across its face. It had a curved gabled roof and a large garden alive with daffodils and tulips and hyacinths. Harriet cried out in delight, ‘Oh, Aede, stop—please stop! I simply must stare. Will anyone mind?’

He pulled up obligingly and grinned. ‘No, of course not. It is rather lovely, isn’t it?’

‘And the house,’ she breathed, ‘that’s lovely too. How old is it? Who lives there?’

‘About 1760, I think, but you can ask Friso next time you see him; it’s his.’

Harriet turned an astonished face to her companion. ‘You mean Dr Eijsinck? He lives there? All by himself?’

Aede started the car again. He nodded. ‘Yes, that is, if you don’t count a gardener and a cook and a valet and a housemaid or two. He’s got a great deal of money, you know; he doesn’t need to be a doctor, but his work is the love of his life. That doesn’t mean to say that he doesn’t love girls too,’ he added on a laugh.

‘Why doesn’t he marry, then?’ She waited for Aede’s answer. Perhaps Friso was engaged or at least in love; what about that dark girl in his car?

Aede thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I asked him once—oh, a long time ago, and he said he was waiting for the girl.’ He shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘It didn’t make much sense …’ He broke off. ‘Here’s Franeker again; we’re a bit late, but I don’t suppose it will matter.’

Harriet smiled at him. ‘It was lovely, Aede. I enjoyed every minute of it.’

He brought the car to a rather abrupt halt in front of the house and they both went inside.

‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ said Harriet, and flew upstairs, to throw down her raincoat, look hastily at herself in the mirror and then race downstairs again. Almost at the bottom of the staircase she checked herself abruptly and continued down to the hall with steps as sedate as the voice with which she greeted Dr Eijsinck, whom she had observed at that very moment standing there. Disconcertingly he didn’t answer, and she stood looking up at him—he was in her way, but his size precluded her from passing him unless she pushed by. It seemed a long time before he said reluctantly,

‘You smiled. Why?’ He gave her a hard, not too friendly stare. ‘You didn’t know me.’

So he had seen her after all. Harriet felt her heart thudding and ignored it. She said in a steady voice,

‘No, I didn’t know who you were, Dr Eijsinck. It was just … I thought that I recognized you.’ Which was, she thought, perfectly true, although she could hardly explain to him that she had dreamed about him so often that she couldn’t help but recognize him.

He nodded, and said, to surprise her, ‘Yes, I thought perhaps it was that. It happens to us all, I suppose, that once or twice in a lifetime we meet someone who should be a stranger, and is not.’

She longed to ask him what he meant and dared not, and instead said in a stiff, conversational voice,

‘What excellent English you speak, Doctor,’ and came to a halt at the amused look on his face. And there was amusement in his voice when he answered.

‘How very kind of you to say so, Miss Slocombe.’

She looked down at her shoes, so that her thick brown lashes curled on to her cheeks. He was making her feel awkward again. She swallowed and tried once more.

‘Should we go into the drawing-room, do you think?’

He stood aside without further preamble, and followed her into the room where she was instantly pounced upon by Sieske so that she could meet Wierd and see for herself that he was everything that her friend had said. He was indeed charming, and exactly right for Sieske. They made a handsome couple and a happy one too. Harriet suppressed a small pang of envy; it must be nice to be loved as Wierd so obviously loved Sieske. She drank the sherry Aede brought her and sat next to him during the meal which followed and joined in the laughter and talk, which was wholly concerned with the engagement party. It was discussed through the excellent soup, the rolpens met rodekool, the poffertjes—delicious morsels of dough fried in butter to an unbelievable lightness—and was only exhausted when an enormous bowl of fruit was put on the table. Harriet sat quietly while Aede peeled a peach for her, and listened to Dr Eijsinck’s deep voice—he was discussing rose grafting with her hostess, who turned to her and said kindly, but in her own language,

‘Harry, you must go and see Friso’s garden, it is such a beautiful one.’

Aede repeated her words in English, and then went on in the same language.

‘We went past your place this evening, Friso. I took Harriet for a run and we stopped while she admired your flowers.’

Harriet looked across the table at him then and smiled, and was puzzled to see his mobile mouth pulled down at the corners by a cynical smile, just as though he didn’t in the least believe that she had a real fondness for flowers and gardens. When he said carelessly, ‘By all means come and look round, Miss Slocombe,’ she knew that he had given the invitation because there was nothing else he could do. She thanked him quietly, gave him a cool glance, and occupied herself with her peach. She took care to avoid him for the rest of the evening, an easy matter as it turned out, for Dr Van Minnen had discovered that she had only the sketchiest knowledge of Friesland’s history, and set himself to rectify this gap in her education. It was only at the end of the evening that Dr Eijsinck spoke to her again and that was to wish her good night, and that a most casual one.

Later, in her pleasant little room, she sat brushing her hair and thinking about the evening. Something had gone wrong with her dream. It had seemed that kindly fate had intervened when she had met him again, but now she wasn’t so sure, for that same fickle fate was showing her that dreams had no place in her workaday world. Harriet ground her even little teeth—even though he had a dozen beautiful girl-friends, he could at least pretend to like her. On reflection, though, she didn’t think that he would bother to pretend about anything. She got into bed and turned out the light and lay in the comfortable darkness, wondering when she would see him again.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE AWOKE EARLY to a sparkling April morning and the sound of church bells, and lay between sleeping and waking listening to them until Sieske came in, to sit on the end of the bed and talk happily about the previous evening.

‘You enjoyed it too, Harry?’ she asked anxiously.

Harriet sat up in bed—she was wearing a pink nightgown, a frivolous garment, all lace and ribbons. Her hair fell, straight and gold and shining, almost to her waist; she looked delightful.

‘It was lovely,’ she said warmly. ‘I think your Wierd is a dear—you’re going to be very happy.’

Sieske blushed. ‘Yes, I know. You like Aede?’

Harriet nodded. ‘Oh, yes. He’s just like you, Sieske.’

‘And Friso?’

Harriet said lightly, ‘Well, we only said hullo and good-bye, you know. He’s not quite what I expected.’ She explained about the gravy stains and the permanent stoop, and Sieske giggled.

‘Harry, how could you, and he is so handsome, don’t you think?’

Harriet said ‘Very,’ with a magnificent nonchalance.

‘And so very rich,’ Sieske went on.

‘So I heard,’ said Harriet, maintaining the nonchalance. ‘How nice for him.’

Sieske curled her legs up under her and settled herself more comfortably. ‘Also nice for his wife,’ she remarked.

Harriet felt a sudden chill. ‘Oh? Is he going to marry, then?’ she asked, and wondered why the answer mattered so much.

Sieske laughed.

‘Well, he will one day, I expect, but I think he enjoys being a … vrijgezel. I don’t know the English—it is a man who is not yet married.’

‘Bachelor,’ said Harriet.

‘Yes—well, he has many girl-friends, you see, but he does not love any of them.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Harriet in a deceptively calm voice.

‘I asked him,’ said Sieske simply, ‘and he told me. I should like him to be happy as Wierd is happy; and I would like you to be happy too, Harry,’ she added disarmingly.

Harriet felt herself getting red in the face. ‘But I am happy,’ she cried. ‘I’ve got what I wanted, haven’t I? A sister’s post, and—and—’ The thought struck her that probably in twenty years’ time she would still have that same sister’s post. She shuddered. ‘I’ll get up,’ she said, briskly cheerful to dispel the gloomy thought. But this she wasn’t allowed to do; the family, it seemed, were going to church at nine o’clock, and had decided that the unfamiliar service and the long sermon wouldn’t be of the least benefit to her. She was to stay in bed and go down to breakfast when she felt like it.

Sieske got up from the bed and stretched herself. ‘We are back soon after ten, and Wierd comes to lunch. We will plan something nice to do.’ She turned round as she reached the door. ‘Go to sleep again, Harry.’

Harriet, however, had no desire for sleep. She lay staring at the roses on the wallpaper, contemplating her future with a complete lack of enthusiasm, and was suddenly struck by the fact that this was entirely due to the knowledge that Dr Eijsinck would have no part of it. The front door banged and she got out of bed to watch the Van Minnen family make their way down the street towards church, glad of the interruption of thoughts she didn’t care to think. It wasn’t quite nine o’clock; she slipped on the nightgown’s matching peignoir and the rather ridiculous slippers which went with it, and made her way downstairs through the quiet old house to the dining-room.

Someone had thoughtfully drawn a small table up to the soft warmth of the stove and laid it with care, for cup, saucer and plate of a bright brown earthenware, flanked by butter in a Delft blue dish, stood invitingly ready. There was coffee too, and a small basket full of an assortment of bread, and grouped together, jam and sausage and cheese. Harriet poured coffee, buttered a crusty slice of bread with a lavish hand and took a large satisfying bite. She had lifted her coffee cup half-way to her lips when the door opened.

‘Where’s everybody?’ asked Dr Eijsinck, without bothering to say good morning. ‘Church?’

Harriet put down her cup. ‘Yes,’ she said, with her mouth full. His glance flickered over her and she went pink under it.

‘Are you ill?’ he asked politely, although his look denied his words.

‘Me? Ill? No.’ If he chose to think of her as a useless lazy creature, she thought furiously, she for one would not enlighten him.

‘Well, if you’re not ill, you’d better come to the surgery and hold down a brat with a bead up his nose.’

‘Certainly,’ said Harriet, ‘since you ask me so nicely; but I must dress first.’

‘Why? There’s no one around who’s interested in seeing you like that. The child’s about three; his mother’s in the waiting room because she’s too frightened to hold him herself; and as for me, I assure you that I am quite unaffected.’

She didn’t like the note of mockery—he was being deliberately tiresome! She put her cup back in its saucer, got up without a word and followed him down the passage to the surgery where she waited while he fetched the child from its mother. She took the little boy in capable arms and said, ‘There, there,’ in the soft, kind voice she used to anyone ill or afraid. He sniffed and gulped, and under her approving, ‘There’s a big man, then!’ subsided into quietness punctuated by heaving breaths, so that she was able to lay him on the examination table without further ado, and steady his round head between her small firm hands. Dr Eijsinck, standing with speculum, probe and curved forceps ready to hand, grunted something she couldn’t understand and switched on his head lamp.

‘Will you be able to hold him with one arm?’ she asked matter-of-factly.

He looked as though he was going to laugh, but his voice was mild enough as he replied. ‘I believe I can manage, Miss Slocombe. He’s quite small, and my arm is—er—large enough to suffice.’

He sprayed the tiny nostril carefully and got to work, his big hand manipulating the instruments with a surprising delicacy. While he worked he talked softly to his small patient; a meaningless jumble of words Harriet could make nothing of.

‘Are you speaking Fries?’ she wanted to know.

He didn’t look up. ‘Yes … I don’t mean to be rude, but Atse here doesn’t understand anything else at present.’ He withdrew a bright blue bead from the small nose and Atse at once burst into tearful roars, the while his face was mopped up. Harriet scooped him up into her arms.

‘Silly boy, it’s all over.’ She gave him a hug and he stopped his sobbing to look at her and say something. She returned his look in her turn. ‘It’s no good, Atse, I can’t understand.’

Dr Eijsinck looked up from the sink where he was washing his hands.

‘Allow me to translate. He is observing—as I daresay many other members of his sex have done before him—that you and your—er—dress are very beautiful.’

Harriet felt her cheeks grow hot, but she answered in a composed voice, ‘What a lovely compliment—something to remember when I get home.’

The doctor had come to stand close to her and she handed him the little boy. ‘Good-bye, Atse, I hope I see you again.’ She shook the fat little hand, straightened the examination table, thumped up its pillow with a few brisk movements, and made for the door. She had opened it before Dr Eijsinck said quietly, ‘Thank you for your help, Miss Slocombe.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ she said airily, as she went through.

The breakfast table still looked very attractive; she plugged in the coffee pot and took another bite from her bread and butter. She was spreading a second slice with a generous wafer of cheese when the door opened again. Dr Eijsinck said from the doorway, ‘I’m sorry I disturbed your breakfast.’ And then, ‘Is the coffee hot?’

She wiped a few crumbs away from her mouth, using a finger.

‘Don’t apologize, Doctor … and yes, thank you, the coffee is hot.’

There was a pause during which she remembered how unpleasant he had been. The look she cast him was undoubtedly a reflection of her thoughts, for he gave a sudden quizzical smile, said good-bye abruptly, and went.

They were having morning coffee when he arrived for the second time. He took the cup Mevrouw Van Minnen handed him and sat down unhurriedly; it seemed to Harriet, sitting by the window with Sieske, that he was very much one of the family. He was answering a great number of questions which Dr Van Minnen was putting to him, and Harriet thought what a pity it was she couldn’t understand Dutch. Sieske must have read her thoughts, for she called across the room.

‘Friso, were you called out?’ and she spoke in English.

He replied in the same tongue. ‘Yes, for my sins … an impacted fractured femur and premature twins.’

Sieske said quickly with a sideways look at Harriet, ‘Don’t forget Atse. Weren’t you glad that Harry was here to help you?’

‘Delighted,’ he said in a dry voice, ‘and so was Atse.’

Harriet, studying her coffee cup with a downbent head, was nonetheless aware that he was looking at her.

‘So you didn’t get to bed at all?’ asked Aede.

‘Er—no. I was on my way home when I encountered Atse and his mother; I was nearer here than my own place—it seemed logical to bring them with me. I’d forgotten that you would all be in church.’