Tulips for Augusta. Бетти Нилс

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      Augusta smiled and said with genuine pleasure that that would be nice, and how about her going up to her room so that she could unpack the presents which she had brought with her. The old ladies looked pleased and a little excited, and she left them happily engaged in guessing what the presents would be, while she went upstairs to the room in which she always slept when she paid them a visit.

      It was two flights up, and overlooked the street below—a rather small room, plainly whitewashed and furnished simply in the Empire style. The curtains were a faded blue brocade and the coverlet was of patchwork, made by the great-aunts’ mother before she married. There were a variety of samplers upon the walls—Augusta knew them all by heart, as well as the histories of those who had stitched them. She walked slowly round the room, looking at each in turn—it was a little like meeting old friends again—then she unpacked quickly and took her armful of parcels downstairs; pale pastel woollen stoles for the old ladies, warm sheepskin slippers for Maartje, English chocolates and homemade marmalade and tins of chocolate biscuits, and some packets of their favourite tea from Jacksons in Piccadilly. By the time all these delights had been tried on and tasted and admired, it was lunch time. The old ladies had Koffietafel at noon each day—a meal of rolls and different sorts of bread, with cheese and sausage and cold meat and a salad arranged before each place upon a small silver dish—and of course, coffee. Augusta, who was hungry after her journey, ate with a healthy appetite which pleased the aunts, who were, as far as she could remember, the only members of her family who had not, at one time or another, made some reference to her delicate plumpness. She still remembered how, when she was a little girl, she had paid them a visit with her parents from time to time, and they had staunchly maintained that she was exactly as she should be, remarks which had endeared them for always to a small girl sensitive to the word fat, and possessed of a brother who teased.

      The transient excitement of her arrival had died down by the evening, and when she got up the next morning, it was as though she had been integrated into the even tenor of their lives without any change in its placid routine. She went shopping after breakfast, and then, because there was no hurry, strolled down Houtil towards Laat, peering in shop windows until she fetched up in Vroom and Dreesman’s store, wandering happily from one counter to the next, pricing tights and undies and even trying on a few hats. But it was still early, and although the aunts had coffee soon after ten o’clock each morning, she could always get a cup from Maartje later. She turned her steps towards the Weigh House, because it was Friday and May and the cheese market would be in full swing. It was still a little early in the year for tourists, but there was a small crowd watching the cheese porters in their white shirts and trousers and coloured straw hats, going briskly to and fro in pairs, each pair carrying a large curved tray piled with cheeses between them. She had seen it all a dozen times before, but she stood and watched now with as much pleasure as though it was for the first time. The carillon was playing from the Weigh House tower too—she listened to Piet Hein and other Dutch folk songs she had half forgotten and then lingered just a little longer so that she could watch, as the clock struck the hour, the little figures of knights on horseback, high up on the tower, come charging through their doors, lances raised, while the clarion trumpeted over them. It made her a little late getting back, but the excuse that she hadn’t been able to leave the cheese market until the clock had struck was quite sufficient for her aunts. They were proud of their town and its traditions and found it quite proper that she should have wanted to renew acquaintance with one of her childhood’s pleasures.

      The days resolved themselves into a slow, smooth pattern of doing nothing much. Friends came to tea or coffee, until one afternoon a car was hired and the aunts, incredibly elegant, drove, with her between them to Bergen, a large village on the edge of the sand dunes bordering the North Sea, to visit family friends. Augusta had been a little amused at their sharp-eyed scrutiny of her person before they went. She had put on another dress, the colour of caramel and simply cut, with an important chain belt encircling her slim waist, and offset by the jade earrings her father had given her because they matched her eyes. Apparently her appearance pleased them, for they smiled in unison and nodded their old heads before embarking on the tricky business of getting into the car.

      The friends were elderly—a distant cousin and his wife. Augusta sipped sherry and made polite talk in her best Dutch and found herself wishing for a slightly younger companion. Her wish was to be granted, for presently the drawing room door was thrown open and a young man came in. She guessed he was a year or two older than herself, maybe twenty-five or six, and barely had time to wonder who he was before he had greeted everyone in the room and was standing beside her with their hostess. He was, it appeared, the son of another dear old friend. ‘Pieter van Leewijk,’ he murmured as they shook hands, ‘but call me Piet. I’ve heard about you, of course, and I daresay we may have met years ago when we were children.’

      He smiled charmingly, first at her, then at his hostess, accepted a glass of sherry, and steered Augusta over to the window. They stood side by side looking out across the broad road to the island of grass and trees in its centre, inhabited by a few small, graceful deer.

      ‘Such a nice idea,’ she remarked, ‘deer living in the centre of the village.’ She smiled at the young man, who wasn’t looking at the deer but staring at her. He spoke in Dutch. ‘You are fluent in our language—someone said you were a nurse. I always thought nurses were dowdy, worthy girls.’

      She raised sable brows. ‘Indeed? Perhaps you don’t get around a great deal.’

      He laughed. ‘I was paying you a compliment.’

      She decided that he was, but he sounded a little too sure of himself. She asked sweetly, ‘And you—what do you do?’

      ‘I’m a fashion photographer. You see, it was a compliment.’ He smiled again and took her glass. ‘More sherry?’

      She shook her head. ‘Tell me about your work—it sounds interesting.’

      It wasn’t. It took only a few minutes for her to realise that he wasn’t interested in anything else but beautiful models and how much money he could make, and how quickly he could make it. They went in to lunch, and inevitably, she found herself sitting beside him, with the older members of the party beaming at her, delighted with themselves that they had produced such a nice young man to entertain her. Only he didn’t; he wasn’t interested in anything she had to say—it was sufficient for her to say Yes and No and look suitably impressed. All the same, she tried her best to like him, for he was probably the only young man she would meet while she was in Alkmaar. He might even ask her out, and being a fair-minded girl, she was quite prepared to admit that she wasn’t quite as groovy as the models. Probably he found her dull—all the same, if he did ask her out, she thought she would go.

      He said carelessly, ‘You shouldn’t wear these new long skirts—they’re for tall, slim girls—long legs and…’ His eyes swept over her. They were eating a rich ice pudding with a great deal of cream. Augusta checked a desire to throw her portion into his smiling face.

      She said crisply in English, ‘Of all the insufferable, conceited bores that I’ve met, you’re easily the prize specimen! How dare you tell me what to wear, and—and criticize my legs? Keep your shallow-brained remarks for the bird-witted creatures you purport to photograph.’

      She smiled at him, her eyes like green ice, and was pleased to see him getting slowly red. She had been rude, but then so had he…and she had enjoyed every word of what she had said.

      ‘Perhaps you don’t know that I have a very good knowledge of English?’ he queried stiffly.

      ‘Why, I counted on that,’ she said quietly. She flipped her eyelashes at him, smiled without warmth and said for the benefit of anyone who might have paused to listen to them, ‘How delicious this pudding is—how lucky I am not to have to diet.’

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