Britannia All at Sea. Бетти Нилс

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СКАЧАТЬ and tied scarves over their heads. Mijnheer Veske was waiting for them, a tall, quiet man whose English was excellent and whose welcome was sincere. He stowed them into his Citroën and throughout the sixty-mile journey kept up a running commentary on the country they were passing through, but as he travelled fast and the greater part of the journey was a motorway, Britannia at least got a little muddled, but just before Apeldoorn he left the motorway, to take a quiet country road winding through the Veluwe to Hoenderloo, a small town composed largely of charming little villas surrounded by gardens, which even in the winter were a pleasure to the eye. But they didn’t stop here, but took a narrow country road lined with tall trees and well wooded on either side, their density broken here and there by gated lanes or imposing pillars guarding well-kept drives.

      Presently Mijnheer Veske turned the car into one of the lanes, its gate invitingly opened on to a short gravelled drive leading to a fair-sized house. It was elaborately built, with a great many little turrets and tiled eyebrows over its upstairs windows, and small iron balconies dotted here and there. But it looked welcoming, and indeed when the front door was flung open, their welcome was everything they could have wished for; Mevrouw Veske was waiting for them in the hall, a short, stout lady with carefully coiffured hair, a massive bosom and a round cheerful face. She embraced them in turn, declared herself to be enchanted to entertain her goddaughter’s friend, outlined a few of the activities arranged for their entertainment and swept them into a large and cosily furnished sitting room, barely giving them time to shed their outdoor things. The room was warm and a tea tray stood ready; very soon they were all sitting round talking away on the very best of terms.

      Presently the two girls were taken upstairs to their rooms, pleasant apartments overlooking the now bare garden at the back and the woods beyond, and left to unpack. Britannia, happily arranging her clothes in a vast, old-fashioned wardrobe, decided that she was going to enjoy herself. It would of course be marvellous if she were to meet the professor, but during their drive from Schiphol she had come to the conclusion that she had been a little mad to imagine that she might find him again. Holland might be small, but not as small as all that. She changed into the new green dress, piled her hair into a great bun above her neck, did her face and went along to see if Joan was ready to go down.

      The evening had been very pleasant, she decided, lying in her warm bed some hours later. Dinner had been a substantial meal, taken in a rather sombre dining room and served by a hefty young girl who looked at them rather as though they had arrived from outer space and giggled a good deal. Berthe, explained Mevrouw Veske, was learning to be a general help in the house and doing her best. There was an older woman, it seemed, with the astonishing name of Juffrouw Naakdgeboren, who was away at a family wedding. ‘Very important they are, too,’ explained their kindly hostess, ‘in the country at least it’s a very gay affair.’ She smiled at them both. ‘That’s something you have to look forward to, isn’t it?’

      Britannia had smiled back, agreeing fervently if silently, though whether the professor would fit into a gay affair was something she very much doubted. And really, she reminded herself crossly, she must stop behaving as though she were going to marry him; it was one thing to make plans and hope, quite another to take it for granted. She had the feeling that the professor wouldn’t take kindly to being taken for granted.

      It was raining when they got up the next morning, but since they were on holiday they had no intention of letting the weather spoil their days. They put on raincoats again, muffled themselves in scarves, thick gloves and high boots and accompanied Mijnheer Veske to the garage, where there was quite a selection of bicycles. Britannia, mounting her rather elderly machine dubiously, almost fell off again because she hadn’t realised that its brakes were operated by putting the pedals into reverse, but after a rather hilarious start they pedalled off, down the drive and out into the lane, to take the cycle path running beside the road. Hoenderloo was their destination, and once there they intended to have coffee, buy stamps and have a look round its shops before going back for lunch. Their surroundings, even on a bleak November morning, were pleasant; the bare trees lining the lane formed an arch over their heads, and the woods behind them held every sort of tree.

      ‘Estates,’ explained Joan. ‘Some of them are quite small, some of them are vast. There are some lovely places tucked away behind these trees, I can tell you, but we shan’t get much chance to see many of them—Mevrouw Veske visits here and there, but only the smaller villas. There’s a gateway along here, look—something or other rampant on brick pillars and the drive curving away so that we can’t see anything at all. It’s a castle or moated house or some such thing, I asked Mevrouw Veske last time I was here.’

      Britannia was balancing precariously with an eye to the brakes. ‘Does anyone live there?’ she asked.

      ‘Oh, yes, but I haven’t a clue who it is.’

      They spent a happy hour or so in Hoenderloo, pottering in and out of its small shops, managing, on the whole, to make themselves understood very well, before having coffee and apple cake and cycling back again. They went with Mevrouw Veske to Apeldoorn in the afternoon, their hostess driving a small Fiat with a good deal of dash and verve and a splendid disregard of speed limits. She took them on a tour of the city’s streets, wide and tree-lined and, she assured them, in the summer a mass of colour, and then bustled them back to the town’s centre to give them tea and rich cream cakes and drive them home again. They played cards after dinner and went quite late to bed, and on the following day the same pleasant pattern was followed, only this time the girls cycled to the Kroller-Mullermuseum to stare at the van Gogh paintings there, and after lunch Mevrouw Veske took them by car again to Loenen so that they might see the Castle ter Horst, and in the evening they played lighthearted bridge. Britannia, who didn’t much care for cards, was glad that neither her host nor her hostess took the game seriously.

      It was raining the next morning and Mevrouw Veske was regretfully forced to postpone her plan to take them to Arnhem for the day, so they settled down to writing postcards and then tossed to see who should go to Hoenderloo and post them. Britannia lost and ten minutes later, rather glad of the little outing, she wheeled her bike out of the garage and set off in the wind and the pouring rain. She had reached the gate and was about to turn on to the cycle path when she saw something in the road, small and black and fluttering. A bird, and hurt. She cast the bike down and ran across to pick it up, the wind tearing the scarf from her head so that her hair, tied back loosely, was instantly wet, flapping round her face and getting in her eyes. It was because of that that she didn’t hear or see the approaching car, a magnificent Rolls-Royce Camargue, its sober grey coachwork gleaming in the downpour. It stopped within a foot of Britannia and she looked over her shoulder to see Professor Luitingh van Thien get out. She had the bird in her hand and said without preamble: ‘I think its wing is broken—what shall I do?’

      ‘Fool,’ said the professor with icy forcefulness, ‘darting into the road in that thoughtless fashion. I might have squashed you flat, or worse, gone into a skid and damaged the car.’ He held out a hand. ‘Give me that bird.’

      She handed it over, for once unable to think of anything to say. So dreams did come true, after all, but he hardly seemed in the mood to share her pleasure in the fact. She stood, the rain washing over her in a relentless curtain, while he examined the small creature with gentle hands. ‘I’ll take it with me,’ he said finally, and nodded briefly before getting back into his car. Britannia, made of stuff worthy of her name, followed him.

      ‘Do you live near here?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes.’ He gave her a cold look which froze the words hovering on her tongue, and drove away.

      She stood in the road and watched him go. ‘I must be mad,’ she cried to the sodden landscape around her. ‘He’s the nastiest man I’ve ever set eyes on!’ She went back to collect her bike and got on to it and rode off towards Hoenderloo. ‘But he took the bird,’ she reminded herself, ‘and he could have wrung its neck.’

      She СКАЧАТЬ