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‘I shall be leaving in a few minutes,’ he told Araminta. ‘I expect you intend to take a walk before lunch, but in the afternoon Bas will drive you to Steijner’s toy shop. They have an exhibition of toys there today and I have tickets. And next door there is a café where you may have your tea. Bas will come for you at about five o’clock. If you want him earlier, telephone the house.’
The boys were delighted, and so was Araminta, although she didn’t allow it to show. The day had been nicely taken care of and the boys were going to enjoy themselves. She had no doubt that she would too.
The doctor stooped to kiss the boys. ‘Have fun,’ he told them, and to Araminta, ‘Enjoy your afternoon, Miss Pomfrey. I leave the boys in your safe hands.’
It was only after he had gone that she realised that she hadn’t much money—perhaps not enough to pay for their tea. She need not have worried. The boys showed her the notes their uncle had given to them to spend and a moment later, Bas, coming to collect the coffee cups, told her quietly that there was an envelope for her in the doctor’s study if she would be good enough to fetch it.
There was, in her opinion, enough money in it to float a ship. She counted it carefully, determined to account for every cent of it, and went back to collect the boys ready for their walk.
They decided against going to one of the parks but instead they walked to one of the squares, the ‘neude’, and so into the Oudegracht, where there was the fourteenth-century house in which the Treaty of Utrecht had been signed. They admired the patrician house at some length, until Araminta said, ‘Are we very far from your uncle’s house? We should be getting back.’
They chorused reassurance. ‘Look, Mintie, we just go back to the neude and Vredeburg Square, and it’s only a little way then.’
She had been there the day before, spending hours looking at the windows of the shopping centre. The doctor’s house was only a short distance from the Singel, the moat which surrounded the old city—much of its length was lined with attractive promenades backed by impressive houses.
‘By the time we go home I shall know quite a lot about Utrecht,’ she told the boys. ‘Now, let’s go back to the house and have lunch; we don’t want to miss one moment of the exhibition…’
Steijner’s toy shop was vast, housed in a narrow building, several storeys high, each floor reached by a narrow, steep staircase. The front shop was large and opened out into another smaller room which extended, long and narrow, as far as a blank wall. Both rooms were lined with shelves packed with toys of every description, and arranged down their centres were the larger exhibits: miniature motor cars, dolls’ houses, minute bicycles, magnificent model boats.
The place was crowded with children, tugging the grown-ups to and fro, and it was some time before Araminta and the boys managed to climb the first flight of stairs to the floor above. The rooms here were mostly given over to dolls, more dolls’ houses and miniature kitchens and furniture, so they stayed only for a few minutes and then, together with a great many other people, made their way to the next floor.
This was very much more to the boy’s liking—more cars and bikes, kites of every kind, skates, trumpets and drums, puppets and toy animals. Araminta, with the beginnings of a headache, suggested hopefully that they might go and have their tea and wait for Bas in the café. More and more people were filling the shop, the narrow stairs were packed, but the children were reluctant to move from the displays they fancied.
‘There’s camping stuff on the next floor,’ said Peter, and he tugged at her hand. ‘Could we just have a look—a quick peep?’ He looked so appealing and since Paul had joined him, raising an excited face to her, she gave in. ‘All right. But we won’t stay too long, mind.’
The last flight of stairs was very narrow and steep, and the room it led to was low-ceilinged and narrow, with a slit window set in the gable. But it was well lit and the array of camping equipment was impressive. There were only a handful of people there and before long they had gone back down the staircase, leaving the boys alone to examine the tents and camping equipment to their hearts’ content.
They must have a tent, they told Araminta excitedly, they would ask Uncle Marcus to buy them one. ‘We could live in it in the garden, Mintie. You’d come too, of course.’
They went round and round, trying to decide which tent was the one they liked best. They were still longing to have one and arguing about it when Araminta looked at her watch.
‘Time for tea, my dears,’ she told them. ‘We mustn’t keep Bas waiting.’
It was another five minutes before she could prise them away and start down the stairs in single file. Peter was in front and he stopped on the last stair.
‘The door’s shut,’ he said.
Araminta reached over. ‘Well, we’ll just turn the handle.’
Only there wasn’t a handle, only an old-fashioned lock with no key. She changed places with Peter and gave the door a good push. Nothing happened; the door could have been rock. She told the boys to sit on the stairs and knocked hard. There was no reply, nor did anyone answer her ‘hello’. The place was quiet, though when she looked at her watch she wondered why. The exhibition was due to close at five o’clock and it was fifteen minutes to that hour. All the same, surely someone would tour the building and make sure that everyone had left. She shouted, uneasily aware of the thickness of the door.
‘What an adventure!’ she said bracingly. ‘Let’s all shout…’
Which brought no result whatever.
‘Well, we’d better go back to the room. Someone will come presently; it’s not quite time for people to have to leave yet.’ She spoke in a matter-of-fact voice and hoped that the boys would believe her.
Back upstairs again, she went to the narrow window. The glass was thick and, although it had once opened, it had been long since sealed up. She looked around for something suitable to break it, picked up a tent peg and, urged on by the boys, who were revelling in the whole thing, began to bash the glass.
It didn’t break easily, and only some of it fell into the street below, but anyone passing or standing nearby could have seen it. She shouted hopefully, unaware that there was no one there. The doctor’s second car, another Jaguar, was standing close by, but Bas had gone into the café to see if they were there.
Of course, they weren’t; he went to the toy shop, where the doors were being locked.
‘Everyone has left,’ he was told, and when he asked why they had closed a quarter of an hour sooner than expected, he was told that an electrical fault had been found and it was necessary to turn off the current.
‘But no one’s inside,’ he was assured by the owner, who was unaware that the assistant who had checked the place hadn’t bothered to go to the top room but had locked the door and gone home.
They could have gone back to the house, thought Bas. Miss Pomfrey was a sensible young woman, and instead of lingering about waiting for him she would have taken the boys home to let him know that they had left earlier than they had planned.
He got into the car and drove back, to find the Bentley parked by the canal and the doctor in his study. He looked up as Bas went in, but before he could speak Bas said urgently, ‘You’re just this minute back, mijnheer? You do not know about the exhibition closing early? I thought Miss Pomfrey and the boys would be here.’
The doctor was out of his chair. ‘At the toy shop? It is closed? Why? You’re sure? They were not in the café?’
‘No one had seen them. I spoke to the man closing the place—there’s been an electrical fault, that’s why they shut early. He was sure that there was no one left inside.’
The doctor was already at the door. ‘They can’t be far, and Miss Pomfrey isn’t a girl to lose her head. Come along. We’ll find them. You stay in the car, Bas, in case they turn up.’
With Bas beside him he drove to Steijner’s shop. There were few people about—the proprietor and his assistants had gone home—but there was a van parked outside and men unloading equipment.
The doctor parked the car and walked over to them. ‘You have keys? I believe there are two boys and a young woman still inside. I’m not sure of it, but I must check.’
He looked up as a small splattering of glass fell between them. He looked up again and saw what appeared to be a stocking waving from the gabled window.
The man looked up, too. ‘Best get them down, mijnheer. I’ll open up—you won’t need help? I’ve quite a bit of work here…’
He opened the door, taking his time over its bolts and chains, giving the doctor time to allow for his relief, mingled, for some reason which he didn’t understand, with rising rage. The silly girl. Why didn’t she leave the place with everyone else? There must have been some other people there, and the boys would have understood what was said—everyone would have been warned in good time.
He raced up the stairs, turned the key in the lock of the last door and went up the staircase two at a time. The boys rushed to meet him, bubbling about their adventure, delighted to see him, and he put his great arms around their small shoulders.
He said, very softly, ‘I hope you have a good explanation for this, Miss Pomfrey.’ The look he gave her shrivelled her bones.
Araminta, ready and eager to explain, bit back the words. He was furiously angry with her. No doubt any other man would have sworn at her and called her names, but he had spoken with an icy civility which sent shivers down her spine. A pity he hadn’t shouted, she reflected, then she could have shouted back. Instead she said nothing at all, and after a moment he turned to the boys.
‘Bas is below with the car. If you haven’t had tea we will have it together.’
‘Shall we tell you about it, Uncle Marcus?’ began Peter.
‘Later, Peter, after tea.’ He crossed the room and took Araminta’s stocking off the glass window. It was hopelessly torn and laddered, but he handed it to her very politely. Her ‘thank you’ was equally polite, but she didn’t look at him. She felt a fool with only one stocking, and he had contrived to make her feel guilty about something which hadn’t been her fault. Nor had he asked what had happened, but had condemned her unheard.
At the bottom of the staircase she paused; she would show him that there was no handle on the door. But he was already going down the next stairs with the boys.
She was going to call him back, but his impatient, ‘Come along, Miss Pomfrey,’ gave her no chance. She followed the three of them out to the car and got in wordlessly. Once back at the house, she tidied up the boys ready for tea, excused herself on account of a headache and went to her room.
The doctor’s curled lip at her excuse boded ill for any further conversation he might wish to have with her. And she had no doubt that he would have more to say about feather-brained women who got left behind and locked up while in charge of small boys….
Bas brought in the tea. ‘Miss Pomfrey will be with you presently?’ he wanted to know. He had seen her pale face and his master’s inscrutable features in the car. ‘You could have cut the air between them with a pair of scissors,’ he had told Jet.
‘Miss Pomfrey has a headache. Perhaps you would take her a tray of tea,’ suggested the doctor.
‘Mintie never has a headache,’ declared Peter. ‘She said so; she said she’s never ill…’
‘In that case, I dare say she will be with us again in a short time,’ observed his uncle. ‘I see that Jet has baked a boterkeok, and there are krentenbollejes…’
‘Currant buns,’ said Paul. ‘Shall we save one for Mintie?’
‘Why not? Now, tell me, did you enjoy the exhibition? Was there anything that you both liked?’
‘A tent—that’s why we were in the room at the very top. It was full of tents and things for camping. We though we’d like a tent. Mintie said she’d come and live in it with us in the garden. She made us laugh, ’specially when we tried to open the door…’
The doctor put down his tea cup. ‘And it wouldn’t open?’
‘It was a real adventure. Mintie supposed that the people who went downstairs before us forgot and shut the door, and of course there wasn’t a handle. You would have enjoyed it, too, Uncle. We banged on the door and shouted, and then Mintie broke the glass in the window and took off a stocking and hung it through the hole she’d made. She said it was what those five children in the Enid Blyton books would have done and we were having an adventure. It was real fun, wasn’t it, Peter?’
His uncle said, ‘It sounds a splendid adventure.’
‘I ’spect that’s why Mintie’s got a headache,’ said Peter.
‘I believe you may be right, Peter. Have we finished tea? Would you both like to take Humphrey into the garden? He likes company. I have something to do, so if I’m not here presently, go to Jet in the kitchen, will you?’
The boys ran off, shouting and laughing, throwing a ball for the good-natured Humphrey, and when Bas came to clear away the tea things, the doctor said, ‘Bas, would you be good enough to ask Miss Pomfrey to come to my study as soon as she feels better?’
He crossed the hall and shut the study door behind him, and Bas went back to the kitchen. Jet, told of this, pooh-poohed the idea that the doctor was about to send Miss Pomfrey packing. ‘More like he’s got the wrong end of the stick about what happened this afternoon and wants to know what did happen. You don’t know?’
Bas shook his head. ‘No idea. But it wasn’t anything to upset the boys; they were full of their adventure.’
Araminta had drunk her tea, had a good cry, washed her face and applied powder and lipstick once more, tidied her hair and sat down to think. She had no intention of telling the doctor anything; he was arrogant, ill-tempered and she couldn’t bear the sight of him. Anyone else would have asked her what had happened, given her a chance to explain. He had taken it for granted that she had been careless and unreliable. ‘I hate him,’ said Araminta, not meaning it, but it relieved her feelings.
When Bas came for the tea tray and gave her the message from the doctor she thanked him and said that she would be down presently. When he had gone she went to the gilt edged triple mirror on the dressing table and took a good look. Viewed from all sides, her face looked much as usual. Slightly puffy eyelids could be due to the headache. Perhaps another light dusting of powder on her nose, which was still pink at its tip… She practised one or two calm and dignified expressions and rehearsed several likely answers to the cross questioning she expected, and, thus fortified, went down to the study.
The doctor was sitting at his desk, but he got up as she went in.
He said at once, ‘Please sit down, Miss Pomfrey, I owe you an apology. It was unpardonable of me to speak to you in such a fashion, to give you no chance to explain—’
Araminta chipped in, ‘It’s quite all right, doctor, I quite understand. You must have been very worried.’
‘Were you not worried, Mintie?’
He so seldom called her that that she stared at him. His face was as impassive as it always was; he was looking at her over his spectacles, his brows lifted in enquiry.
‘Me? Yes, of course I was. I was scared out of my wits, if you must know—so afraid that the boys would suddenly realise that we might be shut up for hours and it wasn’t an adventure, after all.’ She added matter-of-factly, ‘Of course, I knew you’d come sooner or later.’
‘Oh, and why should you be so sure of that?’
She frowned. ‘I don’t know—at least, I suppose… I don’t know.’
‘I hope you accept my apology, and if there is anything—’
‘Of course I accept it,’ she interrupted him again. ‘And there isn’t anything. Thank you.’
‘You are happy here? You do not find it too dull?’
‘I don’t see how anyone could feel dull with Peter and Paul as companions.’
She looked at him and smiled.
‘You have been crying, Miss Pomfrey?’
So she was Miss Pomfrey again. ‘Certainly not. What have I got to cry about?’
‘I can think of several things, and you may be a splendid governess, Miss Pomfrey, but you are a poor liar.’
She went rather red in the face. ‘What a nasty thing to say about me,’ she snapped, quite forgetting that he was her employer, who expected politeness at all times, no doubt, ‘I never tell lies, not the kind which harm people. Besides, my father has always told me that a weeping woman is a thorn in the flesh of any man.’
The doctor kept a straight face. ‘A very sensible opinion,’ he murmured. ‘All the same, if it was I who caused your tears, I’m sorry. I have no wish to upset you or make you unhappy.’
She sought for an answer, but since she couldn’t think of one, she stayed silent.
‘You behaved with commendable good sense.’ He smiled then. ‘Dr Jenkell assured me that you were the most level-headed young woman he had ever known. I must be sure and tell him how right he was.’
If that’s a compliment, thought Araminta, I’d as soon do without it. She wondered what would have happened if she had been pretty and empty-headed and screamed her head off. Men being men, they would have rushed to her rescue, poured brandy down her throat and offered a shoulder for her to cry into. They would probably have called her poor little girl and made sure that she went to her bed for the rest of the day. And the doctor was very much a man, wasn’t he? Being plain had its drawbacks, thought Araminta.
The doctor, watching her expressive face, wondered what she was thinking. How fortunate it was that she was such a sensible girl. The whole episode would be forgotten, but he must remember to make sure that her next free day was a success.
He said now, ‘I expect you want to go to the boys. I told them that they might have supper with us this evening, but that they must have their baths and be ready for bed first.’
Dismissed, but with her evening’s work already planned, Araminta went in search of the boys and spent the next hour supervising the cleaning of teeth, the brushing of hair and the riotous bath. With the boys looking like two small angels, she led them downstairs presently. There had been little time to do anything to her own person; she had dabbed her nose with powder, brushed her own hair, and sighed into the mirror, aware that the doctor wouldn’t notice if she wore a blonde wig and false eyelashes.
‘Not that I mind in the least,’ she had told her reflection.
Her supposition was regrettably true, he barely glanced at her throughout the meal, and when he did he didn’t see anyone other than the dependable Miss Pomfrey, suitably merging into the background of his life.
The next days were uneventful, a pleasant pattern of mornings at school, afternoons spent exploring and evenings playing some game or other. When their uncle was at home, the boys spent their short evenings with him, leaving her free to do whatever she wanted.
She supposed that she could have gone and sat in the little room behind the drawing room and watched the TV, but no one had suggested it and she didn’t like to go there uninvited. So she stayed in her room, doing her nails, sewing on buttons and mending holes in small garments. It was a pleasant room, warm and nicely furnished, but it didn’t stop her feeling lonely.
It was towards the end of the week that Paul got up one morning and didn’t want his breakfast. Probably a cold, thought Araminta, and kept an eye on him.
He seemed quite his usual self when she fetched them both from school, but by the evening he was feverish, peevish and thoroughly out of sorts. It was a pity that the doctor had gone to the Hague and wouldn’t be back until late that evening. Araminta put him to bed and, since the twins didn’t like to be separated, Peter had his bath and got ready for bed, too. With Bas’s help she carried up their light supper.
But Paul didn’t want his; his throat was sore and his head ached and when she took his temperature it was alarmingly high. She sat him on her lap, persuaded him to drink the cold drinks Bas brought and, while Peter finished his supper, embarked on a story. She made it up as she went along, and it was about nothing in particular, but the boys listened and presently Paul went to sleep, his hot little head pressed against her shoulder.
Peter had come to sit beside her, and she put an arm around him, carrying on a cheerful whispered conversation until he, reassured about his brother, slept too.
It was some time later when Bas came in quietly to remind her that dinner was waiting for her.
‘I’m sorry, Bas, but I can’t come. They’re both sound asleep and Paul isn’t well. They’re bound to wake presently, then I can put them in their beds… Will you apologize to Jet for me? I’m not hungry; I can have some soup later.’
Bas went reluctantly and she was left, her insides rumbling, while she tried not to think of food. Just like the doctor, she thought testily, to be away just when he was wanted. She wouldn’t allow herself to panic. She had coped with childish ailments at the children’s convalescent home and knew how resilient they were and how quickly they got well once whatever it was which had afflicted them had been diagnosed and dealt with. All the same, she wished that the doctor would come home soon.
