Tempestuous April. Betty Neels

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ