The End of the Rainbow

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?’