The End of the Rainbow

Her aunt helped herself to more steamed pudding. ‘You can telephone her and tell her that you will meet her on another day,’ she said positively. ‘As for the National Gallery, there is always some exhibition or other being held there; you can see something else later on.’

Olympia forbore from commenting upon this remark, for she knew that it would be useless; instead she asked reasonably: ‘Perhaps you could go to Selfridges? Mrs Cooper will be on duty…’

Her aunt eyed her coldly. ‘When I want your advice as to what I should and should not do, Olympia, I will ask for it. You will be good enough to go to Selfridges. And by the way, I have Mr Gibson coming to supper and we shall have a great deal to discuss about the next church bazaar, so be sure that you are back here in good time—not later than six—that will leave me free to entertain him.’

Olympia said: ‘Yes, Aunt,’ in a wooden voice, excused herself, and went upstairs to her patients. It would be very satisfying to throw something at her aunt, she thought fiercely as she busied herself at the medicine cupboard; it would be wonderful, too, to pack her bags and leave the home for ever and never see Aunt Maria again, only if she did that she would break her promise. Besides, the old people she looked after might miss her; they would certainly suffer from the shortage of staff—Aunt Maria would have difficulty in getting anyone to take her place. Two room buzzers sounded together, both from the first floor, Olympia sighed, hastily finished what she was doing, and went to answer them.

Mrs Cooper was nothing if not punctual on the following day. Olympia handed over the keys, gave a brief report and rushed away to change. She hadn’t expected to get away so early, with luck she would be able to spend most of the afternoon as she had planned after all. She put on the tweed suit she had worn now for a couple of years—a dull, brownish garment of a material which refused to wear out—she would be stuck with it for years, she thought resentfully, tying her head-scarf under her chin and snatching up the leather gloves she had saved so long to buy. Aunt Maria had been disgusted with her for her extravagance in purchasing them; gloves, she had argued, did not need to be of leather, there were several good imitations these days; neither did they have to be purchased at Harrods. British Home Stores, she had continued, warming to her theme, had an enormous variety at a very reasonable price, and it was both unkind and thoughtless of Olympia to waste her aunt’s money in such a fashion. That Olympia had worked hard and long for a salary no other girl would have dreamed of accepting seemed to have escaped her mind; when Olympia had reminded her of it, it was to bring down a storm of recrimination on her head. She remembered it now as she let herself out of the door and heaved a sigh of relief at being free once more, even if only for a few hours. She caught the bus going down Primrose Hill, busily planning the hours before her.

Selfridges was crowded. She found her way to the linen department, and uncaring of her aunt’s minute instructions about the careful examination of the sheets before she ordered them, chose the first pair she was shown, had them entered on Miss Randle’s account, and turned her attention to more interesting merchandise. Coloured sheets, she mused, flowered ones, stripes even, would cheer up the clinical austerity of the rooms at the nursing home at very little extra expense. She had suggested it once and her aunt had been horrified, deploring the regrettably extravagant streak in her niece’s character. Olympia wandered along, through the dress department and the coats, feasting her eyes upon the clothes she would like to wear, given the chance, until a glance at the clock caused her to leave the store. It was a pity she had telephoned Sally and cancelled their tea together; she could have fitted it in nicely after all, but she still had several hours to herself. She got on a bus once more, got off at the National Gallery and ran up the steps. On the last step of all she tripped and fell on her face.

The hands which picked her up were large and firm and gentle, they set her on her feet with no fuss, dusted her down, tweaked her head-scarf straight and then dropped lightly on to her shoulders.

Olympia rubbed a sore knee and looked up at her rescuer; a large man, very tall and not so very young; forty, she judged, with pale-coloured hair heavily sprinkled with grey and a handsome face which rather took her breath. Such men seldom came her way, and now, she thought with regret and annoyance, she had to be fool enough to fall down so absurdly—her suit would be a mess too—she glanced down at it and he spoke. He had a nice voice too, slow and deep and faintly accented. ‘Not much harm done, I think—sore knees perhaps, and a bruise or two…’

She answered him shyly. ‘I was really more bothered about my clothes.’

His blue eyes studied her without haste. ‘Nothing a clothes brush can’t tackle.’ He dropped his hands from her shoulders and went on with casual friendliness. ‘Were you going to the exhibition? If so, I daresay an attendant could find a brush for you.’

She nodded once more. ‘But I think I’d better go home.’

He gave her another long, considered look. ‘Surely no need for that? I suggest that you go and tidy yourself, and be sure and wash your grazes with soap and water. I’ll wait and we’ll walk round together.’

His cool command of the situation should have nettled her, but it didn’t. ‘But…’ began Olympia.

He interrupted her crisply. ‘We will introduce ourselves,’ his voice became mild, ‘and then all will be most proper, will it not? I’m Waldo van der Graaf,’ he held out a large hand and she put hers into it and he wrung it gently.

‘Mine’s Randle—O-Olympia.’

He showed no signs of amusement but queried: ‘You are not married?’

It was more of a statement than a question, and she winced a little that he should have taken it for granted, though heaven knew by the look of her he had no reason to suppose otherwise. She said, ‘No,’ rather defiantly.

They went inside then and she found herself, after her companion had murmured briefly to one of the attendants, being led away to a cloakroom, where mindful of the large man’s words, she washed the dirt from her knees and then stood patiently while the attendant got to work on the stains. She looked a little better then, but still woefully inadequate to be a companion to such a handsome and distinguished-looking man. She went back into the entrance hall, half expecting him to be gone, but he was still standing where she had left him, studying a catalogue in an unconcerned way, as though he had all the time in the world before him. He looked up as she reached him and smiled, and then without speaking took her arm and ushered her into the first room.

They didn’t hurry, and she was so absorbed that she didn’t notice the time; it was delightful to be with someone who actually listened to her, and even shared her tastes, and when he didn’t, refrained from ramming his own down her throat. They were still lingering in the last room when she happened to see a clock.

‘I must go,’ she declared, appalled. ‘It’s almost half past four, the bus queues will be packed if I don’t hurry—I’ll never get back in time.’

He gave her a quick side-glance. ‘You have to return at a certain time?’

She told him, guardedly, about Aunt Maria and Mr Gibson coming to supper. ‘So you see, I must…’ she smiled at him, feeling as though he were an old friend. ‘It’s been a lovely afternoon, thank you.’

She held out a hand, but instead of shaking it he took it between his own. ‘You have to be back by six o’clock? Time enough for a cup of tea together, and it just so happens that I have to go to—er— Hampstead this evening. I should be delighted to offer you a lift in my taxi.’

She eyed him uncertainly. ‘But won’t it be…? That is, you won’t mind? And you’ll be sure and get me there by six?’

He smiled down at her, kind and reassuring and yet casual. ‘Cross my heart—is that not what you say in English?’

They had walked slowly out of the entrance and down the steps as they were talking. ‘You’re not English?’ Olympia wanted to know.

‘Dutch, but I come often to England—I have English relations.’ He lifted a hand at a passing taxi and settled her into it, then got in beside her. She heard him say: ‘Fortnum and Mason, please,’ with a sudden childish excitement; she had never been there in her life, not inside at any rate. She said now a little anxiously: ‘I’m not dressed for a super place like that,’ and was instantly and ridiculously reassured by his quiet: ‘You are very nicely dressed, Miss Randle.’

All the same, she was a little apprehensive as they seated themselves in the elegant tea-room; the place seemed to her excited mind to be full of fur coats and what the fashion magazines always referred to as little dresses, which cost the earth, she had no doubt. She took off her headscarf and smoothed her neat head with a nervous hand and met his eyes, twinkling nicely, across the table. ‘Tea?’ he inquired. ‘Earl Grey, I think—and buttered toast and little cakes.’ His firm mouth turned its corners up briefly. ‘I enjoy your English tea.’

She enjoyed it too; her companion had the gift of making her feel at ease, even amongst the Givenchy scarves and crocodile handbags. She found herself telling him about Aunt Maria and the nursing home and then stopped rather suddenly because she was being disloyal to her aunt and he was, after all, a stranger. He didn’t appear to notice her discomfiture, however, but talked on, filling awkward pauses with an easy blandness, so that by the time she got up to go she was a little hazy as to what she had actually said.

He talked nothings in the taxi too, so that by the time they arrived outside the nursing home she had quite forgotten, for the time being at least, a good deal of what they had talked about during tea.

He got out with her and walked to the door and when she had bidden him good-bye and opened it, he gave the cold, austere hall the same shrewd look as he had given her, but he made no remark, merely said that he had enjoyed his afternoon without evincing any wish to see her again, as indeed, she had expected. She was not, she reminded herself sadly, the kind of girl men wanted to take out a second time; she had no sparkle, no looks above the ordinary, and living for years with Aunt Maria, who liked to do all the talking, had hardly improved her conversation. She wished him good-bye in a quiet little voice, thanked him again, and went into the house.

If she was more subdued than ever that evening, her aunt was far too absorbed in her conversation with Mr Gibson to notice; certainly she had no time to question her niece as to how she had spent her afternoon, something for which Olympia was thankful. She got the supper and cleared it away again, then went to her room with the perfectly legitimate excuse that she was on duty early the next morning. But she didn’t go to bed immediately; she sat and thought about Mr van der Graaf; she thought about their tea together and then, a little uneasily, of the things she had told him; she was still hazy as to exactly what she had said, but as she would never see him again, she consoled herself with the fact that it wouldn’t really matter, he would have forgotten her already; he had whisked in and out of her life, large and elegant and very sure of himself. Olympia sighed, frowned at her reflection in the old-fashioned dressing-table mirror, and went to bed.

CHAPTER TWO

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WENT QUIETLY BY. The local doctors made their visits and relations made their infrequent appearance, and Olympia went about her duties with her usual quiet competence, and very much against the counsel of her common sense, found herself thinking far too much about the man she had met so unexpectedly. It took her several days to discipline her thoughts into more workaday channels, and she had just achieved this laudable object when she went to open the street door because the daily maid hadn’t come that day, and found him on the doorstep. Not alone—he was with old Doctor Sims. Doctor Sims was an old dear, kind and wise, and despite his advanced years, still clever. He was untidy, too, and rotund and addicted to smoking cigars. He had one in his mouth now; the ash from it fell on to his coat and he flicked it on one side with an impatient finger which scattered it disastrously.

He said cheerfully: ‘Morning, Olympia—don’t stare so, girl, you’ve seen me a hundred times, anyone would think that you were seeing a pair of ghosts.’ He waved a careless hand at his companion. ‘This is Doctor van der Graaf, son of an old friend of mine, now alas, dead. I’ve brought him along to see Mrs Parsons.’

Olympia stood aside to allow them to pass her into the hall, said: ‘How do you do?’ to the Dutchman’s sober tie and shut the door carefully behind them. He answered her with a casual friendliness which took away her awkwardness immediately. ‘Hullo again—have the bruises gone?’

She nodded, on the point of finding her surprised tongue, when Doctor Sims asked testily: ‘Where’s the girl who opens the door? Why are you doing it?’

‘She’s taken a day off—she does sometimes, and nobody says anything because daily maids are hard to get. My aunt’s out. I’ll take you up to Mrs Parsons, shall I?’

The old gentleman grunted, flicked ash on to the pristine floor and took off his overcoat.

‘Well run place,’ he mumbled to no one in particular. ‘Clean—food’s quite good too. Warm enough, plenty of bed linen, but it’s all too stark, not enough nurses either. Your aunt’s a woman to make a success of a place like this though—gets a packet out of it, I don’t doubt. But you do the work, don’t you, Olympia?’

He started up the stairs with her behind him, trying to think of some suitable reply to make to this remark, and behind her came Doctor van der Graaf, silent but for his few words of greeting. Despite his silence, though, she was intensely aware of him, and as they reached the first floor she was annoyingly sure that her appearance could have been improved upon; her hair had escaped from the severely pinned bun and was bobbing around her ears in wispy curls. She put up a tentative hand and arrested it in mid-air when he said quietly: ‘It looks nice like that, leave it alone.’

She didn’t turn round, though she put her hand down again as she led the way up the next flight of stairs and then pausing to allow Doctor Sims to regain his breath, started up the last narrow staircase.

Mrs Parsons shared a room on the top floor with three other old ladies because the pension she received as a rather obscure Civil Servant’s widow didn’t stretch to anything else. She was very old now, afflicted with a variety of minor ailments and quite alone save for a nephew who came to see her at Christmas, who criticized the treatment she was receiving, presenting her with a box of rather inferior handkerchiefs when he had done so, before returning to some obscure country retreat. No one, certainly not his aunt, took much notice of him, and Olympia, backed up by Doctor Sims, had done her best to act as substitute for the family she no longer had.

She was a garrulous old lady, given to repeating herself continually and forgetting what she had said as soon as she had said it, but the two doctors sat down beside her chair and talked pleasantly about the small things which might amuse her, and listened with patient kindness to her jumbled answers. She had accepted Doctor Sims’ companion without surprise, merely stopping to ask him every few minutes what his name might be, and each time he answered with no sign of impatience. Olympia, straightening beds nearby, decided that he was the nicest man she had ever met and certainly the handsomest, and when he looked up suddenly and smiled at her, she smiled back, the whole of her quiet little face lighting up.

The two men went away presently and Olympia stifled disappointment because Doctor van der Graaf said nothing more than a brief good-bye. Making beds after they had gone, she told herself that she had no reason to be disappointed; he had asked after her bruises, hadn’t he? and said hullo and good-bye. What more could she expect? Distinguished and good-looking men who wore gold cuff links and silk shirts and exquisitely tailored suits wouldn’t be likely to look twice at a rather colourless girl who, even if she had had warning of a meeting, would still have looked unremarkable despite all her best efforts. He had been nice about taking her to tea at Fortnum and Mason, though, and he had told her to leave her hair alone and it had somehow sounded like a compliment.

She dropped the blanket she was spreading and went to the mirror over the washbasin. Her face was faintly flushed with the excitement of the visitors and the exertion of bed-making, so that her hair was still curling in little tendrils round her ears. She gave one an experimental tug and then let it go; the front door below had closed with the decisive snap which was the hallmark of Aunt Maria’s comings and goings. Olympia turned away from the mirror, finished the bed and went soberly downstairs; her aunt would expect her to go immediately to her office and render an account of what had happened during her absence.

Aunt Maria dismissed the visitor with a shrug; Doctor Sims had a habit of bringing friends with him from time to time; they seldom returned, she didn’t even inquire closely about him, so that Olympia was saved the trouble of saying much about him, something she had felt curiously unwilling to do; he was a secret, a rather nice one and the only one she had. Her aunt dismissed her with a curt nod and sent her back to her duties without any further questions.

Doctor van der Graaf came exactly two days later, although Olympia was unaware of his visit until Miss Snow came fluttering upstairs with a message that she was to go to her aunt’s office immediately. Olympia consigned old Mr Ross, tottering to slow recovery after a stroke, to Miss Snow’s care and went slowly downstairs, wondering what she had done wrong now.

She was quite unprepared for the sight of the Dutchman sitting calmly in the chair opposite her aunt’s desk, the very picture of a man who was confident that he would get his own way. He got up as she went in, smiling a little at her surprise, and said easily: ‘Good afternoon, Miss Randle. I have been persuading your aunt to allow you to act as guide; there are things I wish to purchase and I am woefully ignorant as to how to set about my shopping. I remembered you and I wondered if you would be so kind?’

‘Oh, that would…’ She paused and began again. ‘You’re very kind to think of me, but I’m working until eight o’clock.’