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Miss Randle interrupted her in an irritable manner; she wasn’t used to people riding roughshod over her wishes, but she seemed quite unable to argue with this tiresome giant of a man. ‘I will make an exception, Olympia, you may take your free time this afternoon, but you will, of course, return to evening duty at half past five.’
It was barely half past two; Olympia murmured dutifully and got herself out of the room; her aunt would have to take over until she got back, there were no other trained nurses on duty—she might change her mind, thought Olympia, desperately tearing off her uniform and putting on the tweed suit like lightning. Thank heaven it was a fine day even if cold. She did her hair with a speed which did nothing to improve her appearance, tucked a silk scarf given her by a grateful patient round her neck, snatched up her gloves and bag and raced upstairs. He was still there. He took a leisurely farewell of her aunt, assured her of his gratitude, opened the door for Olympia and closed it with firmness behind him.
‘What do you want to buy?’ asked Olympia at once.
He stood on the pavement outside the house, deep in thought. ‘Well, let me see, something for Ria—my little daughter, you know. She is almost five years old and very precocious, I’m afraid. Her mother died a week or so after she was born.’
Olympia restrained her feet from the impatient dance she felt like executing; any moment Aunt Maria might change her mind and they were still standing just outside the door. Quite shocked at what he had told her, she said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and felt inadequate. Of course he would have been married; men like him didn’t go through life like monks; perhaps he had loved his wife very much, perhaps he was still grieving for her. She tried again. ‘It must be terrible for you.’
He looked taken aback, but only for a moment. ‘Ria is a handful,’ he said blandly. ‘Shall we go?’
They went to Selfridges, this time to the toy department, where, after a prolonged tour of its delights, Olympia, asked to choose a suitable present for a five-year-old girl without worrying too much about the price, picked out a doll’s house. It was a thing which she herself would have loved to possess and never had; it was furnished down to the last miniature saucepan in its magnificent kitchen, and was everything which a little girl could wish for. She spent a long time hanging over it, switching on the lights, opening and shutting the miniature doors, rearranging the furniture. When at last she looked up it was to find her companion’s blue eyes regarding her with a tolerant patience which coloured her cheeks with guilty pink. She said apologetically: ‘I always wanted a doll’s house—your little daughter will love this one.’
She watched while he wrote a cheque for it—a fabulous sum, she considered, and fell to wondering how it was that he was able to write cheques when he was a Dutchman, living, presumably, in Holland. She spoke her thought. ‘You live in Holland, don’t you?’
He smiled. ‘Oh, yes—I have a large practice in the country town called Middelburg. That is my home, but I do a good deal of lecturing, some of it in England.’
So that accounted for the cheque book. ‘Have you been here ever since we—since you helped me that day?’
‘No. I wished to see you again, so I came over three days ago.’
She had nothing to say to that, and anyway the saleslady wanted to talk to him about the packing up of the doll’s house. When he turned to her again it was only to say: ‘I think we have time for tea before you have to be back. Shall we go to Fortnum and Mason again, or would you prefer somewhere else?’
Olympia could not, from her limited experience, think of any place to better it, so she murmured a polite: ‘That would be nice,’ while her sober head buzzed with the effort of guessing why he had wanted to see her. They were in the taxi, travelling in a companionable silence, before a possible reason struck her. He was looking for a governess for his small daughter and had picked on her. The possibility of such a miracle filled her with a warm glow of delight, to be instantly quenched by the recollection of her promise to her aunt—only if she were to marry might she leave, Aunt Maria had said. She clenched the cheap handbag on her lap with suddenly desperate fingers so that her companion, watching her from his corner, asked: ‘Supposing you tell me what’s bothering you?’
Her voice rose several notes in its urgency. ‘Nothing—nothing at all.’
He said, his manner very placid, ‘We haven’t known each other very long, but I hoped you might feel able to confide in me.’
She turned to look at him. ‘Confide…?’ she began, and then: ‘In you?’
‘Next time, perhaps,’ he replied casually as the taxi stopped, and for the rest of their afternoon together, he talked about nothing in particular. Only as he walked up to the front door of the nursing home with her and she put out her hand did he say, ‘I’m coming in—I wish to see your aunt.’
Olympia allowed her hand to drop back to her side, pausing before she opened the door. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘I should like her to understand quite clearly that I wish to get to know you,’ he said to astonish her.
She stared up at him for a long moment and spoke wistfully: ‘It won’t be any good, you know, she won’t let me go…’ And she was unaware of what she had said.
He smiled, but his voice was firm. ‘I think that she will.’
Olympia opened the door. She had never known anyone get the better of Aunt Maria, but presumably there had to be a first time for everything. She wished him success from the bottom of her heart. ‘I’ll see if she’s in her office,’ she offered, and left him standing in the chill of the hall.
She was back within a minute. ‘Aunt will be pleased to see you,’ she told him, and shivered. He paused beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘This damned cold hall,’ he remarked feelingly, then astonished her by asking, ‘Why are you called Olympia?’
She smiled then and her eyes widened and twinkled at him so that she looked pretty. ‘Father was an archaeologist, he met Mother during a dig in Greece. I—I like it.’
‘So do I.’ He went through the door behind her as he spoke, leaving her to run downstairs and change back into uniform.
She had no moment of time in which to think about him after that; her aunt had done none of the things the nurses did towards easing the evening’s work. There were beds to turn down, medicines to give, supper trays to lay, the old people to help with their preparations for bed, and Miss Snow, if she were to be believed, had been left to cope with the patients’ teas all by herself and was so incensed in consequence that Olympia took ten minutes of her precious time to soothe her down and persuade her not to give in her notice then and there. Perhaps, she thought, as she dished out the light supper at a great rate, it would be as well if Aunt Maria told Doctor van der Graaf not to call again.
But she hadn’t, or if she had, he had taken no notice of her, for he came again the very next day, this time in the morning just as Olympia was going off duty for the split her aunt insisted was necessary for her to take twice a week—that meant that she went on duty at half past seven in the morning, was free from half past ten until one o’clock, and then worked through the remainder of the day until the night staff came on, a wretched arrangement which no hospital nurse would have tolerated unless circumstances made it vital. She found him standing in the hall on the way down to her room and had given him a rather surprised good morning, followed by an inquiry as to whether he wished to see her aunt again.
‘God forbid,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve come for you. Your aunt gave me the times of your off duty—I thought we might go somewhere and have coffee—lunch is out of the question, I take it.’
He stood looking at her, his head on one side. ‘I thought that the modern nurse had improved her lot to a certain extent; it seems that doesn’t apply to this place.’
‘My aunt hasn’t many nurses—only me and Mrs Cooper, and she’s part-time. Miss Snow and Mrs Drew aren’t trained—they’re very good, though.’
‘You do not complain. I suspect that the writer of that poem—I can’t remember much of it—had you in mind when she wrote: “While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.”’
She was quite shocked. ‘Oh, you mustn’t think that; I’m not kind at all. Sometimes I could leave everything just as it is, and run through the door—if you knew how I want to escape…’
‘But you don’t?’
‘I promised… I explained to you…’
He didn’t answer, only smiled at her and told her to go and put on something warm; the March wind was cold, as though it were making a last effort to keep April at bay. Olympia put on the suit again and tied a scarf over her hair because the only hat she had was a dreary affair reserved for church. They were going to have coffee, he had said—there were plenty of small cafés not too far away, and none of them had a smart clientele. She sighed unconsciously as she ran upstairs to join him; perhaps today, if he had got his way with Aunt Maria, he would offer her a job. Her heart leapt at the prospect and she beamed at him as she reached the hall.
There was a taxi waiting and she looked at him questioningly as she got in. ‘A wretched day,’ he offered. ‘I thought we might go somewhere warm and cheerful.’
They went to a small Viennese café near Bond Street and over their delicious coffee and creamy cakes, Olympia found herself talking to her companion as though she had known him all her life. Indeed, afterwards, when she was back in the home, once more at work, she chided herself for talking too much. She would have to guard her tongue, for he had a way of asking questions…she frowned, not that that mattered; he had said nothing about seeing her again.
But it was the first of a succession of similar outings. Olympia, longing to ask him what he had said to her aunt so that lady had raised no objections to his continued visits, made wild, unsatisfying guesses as to his reasons for wishing to seek her company; surely if he had wanted her for a job he would have mentioned it by now. But his visits continued, sometimes with Doctor Ross, but more often his arrival was timed to coincide with her off-duty. It was at the end of a second week of afternoon walks and leisurely coffee drinking that she ventured to ask him if he was on holiday. They were strolling round the Zoo at the time, taking advantage of the thin April sunshine and watching the antics of the monkeys.
He turned to look at her. ‘No,’ he told her with deliberation, ‘I have been attending a seminar—it finishes tomorrow. I am also visiting an aunt—an Englishwoman, the widow of my father’s elder brother.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘I should like you to meet her. You are free tomorrow afternoon, are you not?’
She nodded.
‘Good—I will call for you about two o’clock.’
‘Then you will be going back to Middleburg?’
‘Yes.’ They strolled on in silence while she thought that this was the end—well, almost the end, of their friendship. She was going to miss him very much, there was no denying that fact; what to him had been a small interlude had been for her a delightful few weeks in her dull life. Of course, she knew very little about him and nothing at all of his life—just as well perhaps, since she was unlikely to have a place in it after tomorrow. These rather unhappy thoughts were interrupted by his cheerful: ‘How about tea? There’s time enough before you have to go back.’
She dressed with extra care the following afternoon; the same tweed suit, of course, but having received her miserable salary a day or so earlier, she had bought a new woolly from Marks and Spencer—a pale apricot which gave her face a pleasant glow and cheered up the suit enormously; she had bought a brown velvet bow to set in front of her bun of hair, too; studying herself in the long looking glass at the back of the hall, she decided that she was at least presentable although woefully dowdy. It was to be hoped that the aunt wasn’t a fashionable old lady who would despise her.
It seemed at first that her forebodings might prove true. They had walked, she and the doctor, for it was a fine day and his aunt lived in Little Venice, in one of the terraces facing the Grand Union Canal. They had entered the park through the Gloucester Gate and crossed it diagonally to arrive within a stone’s throw of a row of substantial houses.
‘A flat?’ hazarded Olympia, gazing up at their solid fronts, with their well-painted doors and window boxes. Her companion took her arm and guided her through a solid gate set between equally solid walls.
‘No—the whole house.’ He pealed the bell and the door was opened with alacrity by a neat elderly woman who smiled at them as they went in. In the hall he helped Olympia out of her jacket, divested himself of his own coat and threw it on a chair in what she considered to be a rather careless manner, and upon the elderly woman begging them to go upstairs, did so, taking Olympia with him.
The room they entered was very fine; large, and filled with large furniture too, covered with silver photo frames enclosing a variety of out-of-date photographs, an astonishing assortment of china and silver and the whole shrouded with heavy dark blue curtains half drawn over the old-fashioned Nottingham lace which screened the windows. And the lady who came across the room to meet them matched it very nicely for size; she was tall and stout, with a straight back and a proudly held head crowned with iron-grey hair, dressed smoothly. She might have been any age from the lightness of her step and the elegant timelessness of her clothes. Olympia’s heart sank; she had no idea why Doctor van der Graaf had brought her here with him, but she felt sure that it had been a mistake. Only his firm hand under her arm, propelling her gently forward, prevented her from turning tail and racing away from someone she felt instinctively would make her feel dowdier than she already was.
She couldn’t have been more mistaken; her companion’s, ‘Hullo, Aunt Betsy,’ changed everything. The majestic, elegant woman surging towards her wasn’t anyone to be nervous of after all; her exquisitely made up face wore a beaming smile and her voice when she spoke could only be described as cosy.
‘Waldo, dear boy—and this is Olympia.’ She turned her beam upon her. ‘Dear child, how accurately he described you to me. Come and sit down and tell me all about yourself.’
Olympia sat, not sure if her hostess really wanted the details of her rather prosaic life, but she was saved from answering because Aunt Betsy went on almost without pause: ‘That is a charming colour—one of Marks and Spencer’s, of course. You should wear it often—I always buy my woollies there.’
This reassuringly homely remark got them well launched into a comfortable chat about clothes, with her hostess sustaining a monologue which needed nothing added save a nod and a smile from time to time, which gave Olympia the opportunity to think that she liked Mrs van der Graaf very much and how nice it would have been if Aunt Maria had been like her.
‘Pink, with marabou round the hem,’ said her hostess, cutting into her thoughts, and followed that with: ‘Yes, yes, Waldo, you are a patient man, I know, but I can see that you wish to be alone with Olympia. I shall go and see if Mary has the tea ready, but in half an hour I shall return, I warn you—I like my tea at four o’clock and it is now precisely half past three.’ She sailed majestically to the door, smiling at them in turn and stopped to peck the doctor’s cheek when he opened the door for her.
Olympia, sitting on the edge of a large brocade covered chair, watched her departure with some surprise. When the doctor had shut the door behind his aunt, she asked: ‘Whatever did she mean? Why do you want to be alone…’ She stopped; of course it was about the job he was going to offer her—he had brought her along to be vetted by his aunt before offering it to her and presumably she was satisfactory. She sighed with relief. ‘Oh, so you are going to offer me the job after all.’
He looked astonished, but only for a moment; the astonishment was replaced by amusement. ‘With my little daughter in mind?’
‘Well, of course.’ Olympia hesitated. ‘You did say that she was badly in need of someone to mother her.’ She went a little pink. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything—it was only a guess because that’s why I thought you wanted to get to know me, and anyway, even if…’ She looked down at her clenched hands in her lap. ‘Aunt Maria wouldn’t allow it.’
He strolled across the room and sat down facing her. ‘I asked you to come here with me because I wanted to talk to you and I dislike holding private conversations in taxis or some tea-shop or other, not because I wanted Aunt Betsy to look you over.’ He smiled nicely at her. ‘She knows that I am quite capable of doing my own looking over. And you made no mistake, it does concern you and Ria, but not, I think, in quite the manner you have assumed. I have no intention of offering you a job, Olympia. I should like you to marry me.’
She had the peculiar sensation that she wasn’t sitting on the enormous chair at all, but floating in nothing. The room came and went in a rather alarming manner and the silence which followed his words seemed to go on for ever. Presently she found her voice to say: ‘You did say marry you?’
‘Yes.’ He was sitting back, quite at ease.
There were a great many things she could have said, but she discarded them all in favour of a bald: ‘Why?’
‘Because it is obviously such a suitable arrangement for both of us…’
She didn’t let him finish. ‘You can’t really mean that!’ and knew as she said it that he most certainly did.
He continued just as though she had said nothing at all. ‘You see, Olympia, I need someone to care for Ria, to love her, if possible, and check her tantrums and, as you so aptly put it, mother her. I need someone to run my house too—I have an admirable housekeeper, but she cannot play hostess to my friends or arrange dinner parties or make a home of it. And you—you want to get away from that domineering… I beg your pardon—from your aunt and that dreary home. You told me yourself that you had promised to remain there unless someone asked you to marry him. Well, I am that someone; we shall both be helping each other, and I think we have seen sufficient of each other now to know that we shall get along very well. You won’t see a great deal of me, but being a nurse, you are already aware of the kind of life I lead, and we neither of us complicate the situation by our emotions.’
Olympia received this dry-as-dust speech in silence and took her time in answering it. ‘I don’t quite understand why you haven’t just asked me to be a governess—I mean you don’t really want a wife, do you?’
He considered gravely before he replied. ‘A wife in the accepted sense, no. But as I told you, I need someone to run my home and act as hostess and of course, care for Ria, someone who is a good friend, who will fit into my way of living.’ His smile was kind; he was quite unaware of her poor trampled feelings. ‘Besides, I enjoy your company, Olympia. You are restful and sensible and even-tempered.’
She felt almost insulted; there were surely other adjectives he might have used. Who wanted to be any of these worthy things? And he was wrong about her even temper; she was aware that beneath her serene front she was nicely on the boil.
‘You might come to dislike me in a month or so—even after a number of years.’
He shook his head and declared positively: ‘No, my opinions do not change easily. I like you, Olympia, and shall always do so, whatever happens.’
He had an answer for everything and she knew nothing at all about him, only the few bare facts he had told her, and yet she trusted him, and he had said that he would like her for his wife—an unusual kind of wife, she thought ruefully, but half a loaf was better than no bread. She was unhappy in the house on Primrose Hill and as far as she could see into the future, she had no hope of leaving it unless she married. Aunt Maria was barely middle-aged and likely to live for many years to come. She had an unhappy little picture of herself in ten, twenty years’ time, with not even youth to give her ordinary face an edge of attractiveness. Undoubtedly this was her chance—she frowned as she remembered the old people she looked after. ‘There’s no one to do my work if I go,’ she told him in a small voice. ‘Mrs Cooper’s only part-time, there has to be a trained nurse…besides, there will be no one at night to get up…’
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. ‘You get up at night as well as working during the day?’
‘Well, I have to.’ She spoke almost defensively. ‘If something happens that needs a trained nurse.’
‘So that is why you have shadows under your eyes—you are also too thin.’
She brushed this aside almost impatiently; what did it matter if she was thin and plain with it? He wasn’t marrying her for her looks, was he? She spoke suddenly. ‘It’s not because you pity me, is it?’
His lips twitched a little at the fierceness of her look. ‘No, I don’t pity you, Olympia.’ He had got up and was standing by one of the windows, looking at her. ‘I think you mustn’t hunt around in your head for reasons which aren’t reasons at all. I have told you why I should like to marry you; there are no other reasons—none at all. But I have taken you by surprise, haven’t I? Perhaps you would like a little time to decide?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I’ll call and see you tomorrow. You are off duty in the morning, aren’t you?’ He added kindly: ‘And if it will help you in any way, I will undertake to find a nurse to replace you, immediately.’
‘Oh, will you really? I…’ She stopped because the door had been thrown open and Mrs van der Graaf, followed by Mary carrying the tea-tray, came in.
She began to talk the moment she was in the room, but not about them; every other subject under the sun, Olympia couldn’t fail to notice, but not one question, not even a look of inquiry. They ate their tea, borne along on a tide of cheerful conversation which Olympia found soothing after her rather surprising talk with the doctor. And when she went back with him presently, by taxi this time, the subject lying so heavily on her mind wasn’t mentioned. Indeed, back in her little basement room, she wondered if she had dreamed the whole thing. An observation of her aunt’s came into her head. ‘Sleep on it,’ she would say. Olympia slept on it.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE SLEPT SOUNDLY, WITH NO half-hoped-for dreams to offer her their guidance, and the pleased old faces which welcomed her as she began her morning’s work offered her a mute but sound reason for refusing the doctor’s offer, although he had said—no, promised—that he would find someone to take her place. But her mind was made up for her in quite another manner; she had been getting the old people on the top floor out of their beds when her aunt had walked in. She had nodded briefly to the patients, for this wasn’t her usual mid-morning round when she stopped and spoke briefly to each one of them, careful never to give them a chance to say much themselves, but now her interest was centred upon her niece.
‘Come outside, Nurse Randle,’ she invited in a voice which boded no good for Olympia, and once they were outside on the little landing, ‘I have been considering the matter, Olympia, and I have decided that there is no point in seeing any more of Doctor van der Graaf.’ She frowned. ‘Indeed, I cannot imagine how I ever allowed myself to be persuaded in the first place—however, I feel sure that by now he will be only too glad to have a decision made for him. I feel sure too that he must be heartily sick of you by now; probably he is too kind a man to say so. When he comes again I shall tell him that you have decided not to see him again.’
Olympia choked back rage, humiliation and sheer fright that what her aunt had said might be true—but how could it be? She said in a quiet little voice which gave no hint of her strong feelings, ‘You are mistaken, Aunt, and I can’t see why I shouldn’t go out with Doctor van der Graaf if I want to. He’s coming to see me this morning…’
‘He’s here,’ interposed the doctor from the stairs behind them, and before either of the ladies could say a word: ‘Good morning, and before you say anything further, Miss Randle, I have asked Olympia to be my wife…’ He paused for a second and shot a glance at her and something in her white face must have given him his answer, for he went on smoothly: ‘And she has consented.’ He crossed the landing and took Olympia’s hand in his and smiled down at her, and she, feeling that events were moving of their own accord without any help from her, smiled nervously back.
‘I shall not allow…’ began Miss Randle, much incensed.
‘Oh, but I think you will. Has not Olympia honoured her promise to you for a number of years? Now it is your turn to do the same, Miss Randle.’ His voice was bland enough, but he didn’t smile and his eyes were cool.
‘I…’ began Olympia, wishing to put her oar in, and was hushed before she could say another word by the doctor who went on in a conversational manner, ‘A quiet wedding, I think, if Olympia agrees. We neither of us have many friends in London, and no family. You will, of course, have no objection to her leaving at once, Miss Randle? I have been fortunate enough to find someone who will take her place immediately.’
‘Now?’ They spoke together, staring at him, Miss Randle with a furious face suffused with wrath, Olympia with delight and relief and a kind of wonder. Any minute now, she thought, I shall open my eyes and find I’ve been dreaming.
‘Now,’ said Doctor van der Graaf in a gentle voice which nevertheless invited obedience, ‘if you will pack what you need, dear girl, I will wait for you.’
Aunt Maria looked to be on the point of apoplexy. ‘There is no one to do her work—I cannot possibly manage—this is most unethical!’
He agreed cheerfully and went on smoothly: ‘The nurse I have secured will arrive this afternoon, Miss Randle. She will, of course, expect to be paid the salary agreed by the General Nursing Council, and since you have mentioned the word unethical, I wonder what salary you have been paying Olympia? Not, I fancy, the amount to which she has been entitled.’ He gave her a bland smile and pushed Olympia gently towards the stairs. ‘Go along,’ he told her, ‘though perhaps you had better say goodbye to your patients first.’
She looked at him; it was like a dream still. ‘I feel very mean leaving them.’
‘You shall come back and visit them, that’s a promise. Besides, they will be delighted to know that you are going to be married. Everyone likes a wedding, you know.’
It took her half an hour to pack her things, and barely five minutes in which to say good-bye to Aunt Maria, who washed her hands of her in no uncertain terms, predicted that no good would come of it and that Olympia would live to rue the day. ‘And don’t come running back to me, my girl, for I’ll not lift a finger to help you, just you remember that.’
‘I’m sorry you’re angry,’ said Olympia, anxious to part friends even though she was glad to be going.
‘Angry?’ her aunt snapped back. ‘Of course I’m angry; the years I’ve devoted to you, given you a home, educated and clothed you…’
‘And the years I’ve worked for you for little more than pocket money!’ retaliated Olympia, stung to sudden indignation. ‘And I would have gone on for the rest of my life if Doctor van der Graaf hadn’t come along.’
‘And may you never live to regret the day,’ was her aunt’s parting shot.
There was obviously no more to be said; Olympia, with a murmured good-bye, left her sitting at her desk, her head already bowed over the papers before her.
Doctor van der Graaf was waiting in the hall, pacing up and down, his hands behind his back, deep in thought. He shot her a penetrating look as she went towards him and said on a half laugh: ‘Don’t stop to have second thoughts. I know exactly what is in your mind; regrets and a half-formed resolution to make a martyr of yourself—and how will your aunt manage and what about the old people.’ He caught her hand in his. ‘Olympia, I promise you that everything will be all right. Will you trust me?’
She studied his kind blue eyes. ‘Yes.’ She even achieved some sort of a smile, because no man wanted a watering pot for a wife. ‘Where am I to go?’
