Tulips for Augusta

It seemed quiet on PP after Lady Belway had gone home. Augusta missed the old lady’s caustic tongue and the autocratic voice demanding this, that and the other thing. She had been a trying patient, but an interesting person, and something Augusta didn’t quite admit to herself, while she had been in the hospital, there had always been the chance that she would have visitors—which visitors, Augusta took care not to define. She supposed that she could have found out from the Brig the name of the man who had given her the tulips, but each time she was on the point of asking, something had prevented her from doing so. She decided that she wasn’t meant to know anyway. He had been a ship that passed in the night, as Susan Belsize had so tritely put it. All the same, as she got off the bus outside Harrods a few days later, she hoped that Lady Belway might mention him.

Lady Belway lived in a Nash house; one of a terrace of houses making up one side of a quiet square within ten minutes’ walk of Harrods. She rang its old-fashioned door bell and stood back to admire the window boxes decorating the downstairs rooms. The house was in a beautiful state of preservation, as was the elderly butler who presently opened the door, and led her, at his own pace, across the narrow hall and up a handsome staircase to the drawing room—an apartment which took up a major part of the first floor, with windows both back and front and a vast chimneypiece the focal point of its further wall. Lady Belway was lying on a day bed, swathed in a variety of pastel-coloured wraps and stoles, which showed up her white, elegantly dressed hair to perfection. The butler announced Augusta in a sonorous voice, making what he could of her prosaic name, and her hostess said with a good deal of pleasure, ‘How nice to see you, Staff Nurse…no, I cannot possibly call you that—I shall call you Augusta. Come here and sit down beside me and tell me what you have been doing.’

Augusta, privately of the opinion that her activities would be both boring and distasteful to the old lady, took her seat on a Sheraton armchair near enough to her hostess to make conversation easy, and instead of answering her question, asked several of her own, which launched Lady Belway into a happy and somewhat rambling account of the delights of being in her own home once more.

Augusta had expected the nurse to be there, and perhaps Susan Belsize; but it soon transpired that the former was off duty for the afternoon, and the latter had flown over to Paris for a brief period.

‘The dear gal needed a change after dancing attendance on me all the while I was in hospital,’ explained Lady Belway. ‘If it hadn’t been for her and my godson, I should have been a lonely old woman.’

Augusta politely agreed, while she tried to remember a single day while Lady Belway had been in hospital when she had had no visitors at all. There were, she supposed, degrees of loneliness.

They spent an amicable afternoon together, taking tea in some state off Sèvres china and talking about a great many things; indeed, during a discussion on foreign politics, Lady Belway paused to comment that Augusta was a well-informed girl. She said this in some surprise, so that Augusta was moved to remind her that nurses were, on the whole, tolerably well educated and reasonably intelligent, which remark Lady Belway took in good part, saying graciously, ‘And what is your father, Augusta?’

She forbore from making the obvious answer; instead: ‘A veterinary surgeon,’ she added, to save her interrogator from asking the next question. ‘He has a large country practice.’

‘Where?’

‘On the Dorset-Somerset border.’

‘And do you not prefer London?’

Augusta was emphatic. ‘No, I don’t, Lady Belway. But to make a success of nursing I had to train at a first-class hospital and now I have to get all the experience I can.’

‘You wish to take a Sister’s post?’

Augusta hesitated. ‘Well, I suppose that’s what I’ll end up as.’

‘Do you not wish to marry?’

She said evasively, ‘Oh, yes,’ and then because she was becoming annoyed by so many questions, she said, ‘I’m afraid I must go…I’m on duty this evening.’

Lady Belway looked genuinely disappointed. ‘I had hoped that you could have spent a few hours—however, if you must return.’ She brightened. ‘Supposing I were to telephone your Sister Cutts?’

Augusta, suppressing a smile at the thought of Sister Cutts’ face if that were to happen, said seriously, ‘I’m afraid that would be no good. You see, Sister expects to go off duty when I get back.’

‘In that case,’ said her hostess graciously, ‘I must let you go. But I should like you to come again.’

Augusta said that yes, of course she would, and was completely taken aback when the old lady drew her down to kiss her cheek.

‘You’re a very nice gal,’ she stated, and then a little wistfully, ‘it’s good of you to spare time for an old woman.’

This remark struck Augusta as rather pathetic; she said with perfect truth, ‘But it’s not like that at all. I enjoyed coming, and I should like to come again. I’m going home on holiday tomorrow, but I shall be back in a fortnight.’

Lady Belway smiled. ‘I shall send you a note, and perhaps you will telephone me.’

They parted in mutual friendliness, and on the way downstairs, through the quiet house, Augusta reflected that quite possibly Lady Belway was lonely, despite her numerous acquaintances; probably her sharp tongue, and her distressing habit of saying exactly what she thought, precluded her from having many close friends.

The next day she got out of the train at Sherborne to find her mother waiting for her. They greeted each other with the warm casualness of deep affection, and went out to the car.

‘Throw your luggage in the back, Roly,’ her mother commanded, ‘and I’d much rather you drove…your father had to go over to Bagger’s Farm and Charles was just getting ready to fetch you when they sent a message for him to go to Windhayes—one of the Jersey herd, you know. So I went with him and brought the car on up here. He’ll give us a ring at home when he’s ready, and perhaps you’ll fetch him.’

While she was talking, Mrs Brown had settled herself beside her daughter. Augusta was fidgeting around with the ignition key and the starter; she hadn’t driven for almost three months; it was to get the feel of it again. The car was a Morris Traveller 1300, elderly and a little battered by reason of the fact that it was sometimes used for the transport of smaller animals. Augusta, as she got into gear, had a sudden vivid memory of the immaculate Rolls the man with the straw-coloured hair had been driving, and went faintly pink when her mother remarked observantly:

‘What were you remembering, darling? It must have been something nice.’ But she had taken care not to make it sound like a question, so that Augusta was able to say, ‘Oh, nothing really—it’s lovely to see you again. Tell me all the news.’

She eased the car neatly away from the vehicles around them, and drove through the little town, and presently, free of its compact and bustling heart, took the road through North Wooton and Bishops Caundle and then turned away to pass through Kingstag. She knew the way blindfold, but she didn’t hurry, preferring to trundle along the quiet road while her mother obediently gave her all the news.

Her home lay on one side of a small valley between the hills around them, midway between two small villages, and well back from the road. The house was of stone, with narrow latticed windows with stone lintels and a front door which still retained its Tudor arch. A long, long time ago, local history had it that it had been a small manor house, unimportant compared with some of the mighty houses in that part of Dorset, but nevertheless a gem of a building. Augusta drove through the gate, which was never closed for convenience’ sake, and stopped with nice precision before the door. ‘I’ll leave the car here,’ she said, as they got out. ‘It’ll save time when Charles telephones.’

They went indoors, and presently, after she had unpacked in her own pretty bedroom, she went down to the kitchen, and carried the tea tray through to the sitting room on the other side of the flagstoned hall. There were flowers everywhere, and the furniture shone with well cherished age—it was a warm afternoon, but there was a small wood fire burning in the stone fireplace. She sighed contentedly. It was nice to be home again.

After tea, she wandered outside with Stanley, the spaniel, walking sedately at her heels and the two Jack Russell terriers, Polly and Skipper, running in circles before her. She crossed the garden and went through the wicket gate at its end into a small paddock, used for convalescing horses and ponies, and permanently inhabited by Bottom, the family donkey. He wandered towards her now, nosed out the carrot she had thoughtfully brought with her, and allowed her to pull his rough furry ears and throw an affectionate arm about his neck. After a while, she wandered back again and in through the kitchen door, to sit down at the kitchen table and peel apples and talk to her mother, with Maudie the persian cat on her knee, and Fred, the battered old outcast tomcat who had latched himself on to them years ago, sitting beside her. They gossiped quietly until she bestirred herself to answer the telephone and fetch Charles.

She spent the evening getting her things ready to go to Holland, but only after helping her father with his evening visits. Quite a few calls had come in during the afternoon. She drove him from one farm to the other and then back to the small surgery near the house, enjoying the unhurried routine. They sat a long time over supper that evening, for there was a lot to talk about. She hadn’t been home for several months; there was a lot of local news to catch up on, and she had plenty to talk about too, and presently, when the talk turned to herself, her father asked, as he usually did when she went home:

‘Well, Augusta, think of getting married yet?’ Her mother said gently, ‘How’s Archie?’

Augusta bit into an apple with her excellent teeth. ‘Fine—but don’t get romantic about him, Mother. We like going out together, but he’s got years and years of work ahead of him and he’s ambitious, which means he’ll probably marry a girl with lots of money. I think I’m destined to be an old maid!’

Which remark called forth a good deal of amused comment from her brother, a quiet. ‘Yes, dear’ from her mother and a grunt from her father.

The next day went very quickly—too quickly, she thought, as she put the final touches to her packing in the evening. It was surprising how delightfully occupied it was possible to be, with no clock to watch and no reports to write, and feverish planning of off duty. She had, indeed, strolled down to the village stores and made a few purchases for her mother—an undertaking enlivened by a long chat over the counter with the grocer and any customers who had chanced to come into the shop—and in the afternoon she had got out the car and driven her mother down to the vicarage to join the committee organising the annual jumble sale. She had helped the vicar’s wife hand round the tea, and passed the time of day with the ladies present, most of whom had known her since she was a baby. And occasionally, much against her will, she had thought about the man who had sent her tulips because the sun had been shining.

She thought about him again as she was going to sleep that night; wondering where he was and what he was doing. She wished she knew if he and Miss Belsize were…she sought for the right expression, and decided that ’emotionally involved’ would do very well. It was difficult to tell with those sort of people. She didn’t go too deeply into what sort of people they were—the subject was unrewarding; she pulled the blankets over her ears to shut out his too well-remembered voice, and went to sleep.

Charles took her up to London the next day and put her on the Harwich train and rather unexpectedly kissed her goodbye. ‘Have fun,’ he said and they both laughed, for staying with the great-aunts, pleasant though it was, held few excitements. ‘Good for your Dutch,’ he added, as the train gave a preliminary shudder. ‘I’ll pick you up when you get back. ‘Bye.’

She settled back in her seat and picked up Vogue, which Charles had thoughtfully provided for her.

CHAPTER THREE

AUGUSTA, getting out of the train at Alkmaar, thought how nice it was to be in Holland again. She had forgotten how wide the sky could be, and how incredibly flat and peaceful the countryside was. And she was delighted too, that her Dutch, although a little rusty and slow, was still adequate. The station was a little way out of the centre of the small water-encircled town; she got herself a taxi, and spent the short ride rediscovering landmarks she had almost forgotten. Her great-aunts lived in a seventeenth-century house with a stepped gable in the heart of the bustling town; it was awkward by modern standards, with steep stairs, high ceilings and quantities of heavy furniture which needed constant polishing. But the bathroom and kitchen, though they might look old-world, were remarkably well equipped, and the house had the cosy air of having been built for comfort hundreds of years earlier, and having, through thick and thin, retained that comfort. Augusta loved it, and when, on occasion, she heard some sightseer or other remark upon its picturesque appearance, she was apt to swell with pride, even though her connections with it were extraneous.

Maartje opened the door—she had been cooking and cleaning and housekeeping for the aunts for as long as Augusta could remember, and excepting for her hair, which had faded from pale corn to silver, she hadn’t changed at all. They greeted each other like the old friends they were.

‘Your aunts are in the little sitting room,’ said Maartje, ‘go straight in, Augusta, and I will bring the coffee.’

Augusta made her way down the passage, narrow and panelled and hung with china plates and dim portraits; and knocked on the door at its end, and obedient to the quiet voice which bade her enter, went in. Her aunts were sitting as they always sat. At the round table in the middle of the room, both very upright in their straight, overstuffed chairs. The table had a finely woven rug thrown across it, upon which rested a Delft blue bowl filled with fruit. The windows, small and narrow, were hung with thick dark red curtains, and the wooden floor, worn and polished with its age, was partly covered with hand-pulled rugs. It looked exactly the same as when she had last seen it, three years ago…so did her great-aunts. Probably their clothes were different, for they were sufficiently well provided for to indulge in varied wardrobes, but as they invariably had their new dresses made exactly as those they were wearing, it was difficult to know this. They wore a great deal of black, the material being always of the finest and they each wore a quantity of gold jewellery, inherited from their mother, who had inherited it from her mother, and so on back over several generations, so that their rings and brooches and delicate dangling earrings were quite valuable. Both ladies were tall—a good deal taller than their great-niece, and they wore their hair in identical buns, perched high on their heads.

Augusta greeted them warmly, for she was fond of them both—and they, she knew, were fond of her. She stood patiently so that they might take a good look at her and comment on her looks and clothes, and she was pleased and not a little relieved when they approved of her new green coat and matching dress. Then, at their invitation, she took the coat off, and sat down between them as Maartje brought in the coffee and little biscuits called Alkmaarse Jongens. She sipped the delicious coffee and ate the Alkmaar boys, wondering, as she always did, why the Dutch had such picturesque names for their biscuits. She must remember to take some home with her…the thought put her in mind of all the messages she had been charged to deliver. She gave them now, stopping to search for a forgotten word from time to time, and occasionally muddling her verbs. When she had finished, Tante Marijna observed in a gentle voice that it was a good thing that she had come to pay them a visit, for, although her Dutch was fluent enough, her grammar was, at times, quite regrettable. Tante Emma, who was the younger of the two old ladies, echoed this in a voice even more gentle, adding the rider that her English accent was fortunately very slight.

‘You shall do the shopping, Augusta, while you are with us—there is no better way of improving your knowledge of our language—and we will have a few friends in, so that you will have an opportunity to converse.’

Augusta smiled and said with genuine pleasure that that would be nice, and how about her going up to her room so that she could unpack the presents which she had brought with her. The old ladies looked pleased and a little excited, and she left them happily engaged in guessing what the presents would be, while she went upstairs to the room in which she always slept when she paid them a visit.

It was two flights up, and overlooked the street below—a rather small room, plainly whitewashed and furnished simply in the Empire style. The curtains were a faded blue brocade and the coverlet was of patchwork, made by the great-aunts’ mother before she married. There were a variety of samplers upon the walls—Augusta knew them all by heart, as well as the histories of those who had stitched them. She walked slowly round the room, looking at each in turn—it was a little like meeting old friends again—then she unpacked quickly and took her armful of parcels downstairs; pale pastel woollen stoles for the old ladies, warm sheepskin slippers for Maartje, English chocolates and homemade marmalade and tins of chocolate biscuits, and some packets of their favourite tea from Jacksons in Piccadilly. By the time all these delights had been tried on and tasted and admired, it was lunch time. The old ladies had Koffietafel at noon each day—a meal of rolls and different sorts of bread, with cheese and sausage and cold meat and a salad arranged before each place upon a small silver dish—and of course, coffee. Augusta, who was hungry after her journey, ate with a healthy appetite which pleased the aunts, who were, as far as she could remember, the only members of her family who had not, at one time or another, made some reference to her delicate plumpness. She still remembered how, when she was a little girl, she had paid them a visit with her parents from time to time, and they had staunchly maintained that she was exactly as she should be, remarks which had endeared them for always to a small girl sensitive to the word fat, and possessed of a brother who teased.

The transient excitement of her arrival had died down by the evening, and when she got up the next morning, it was as though she had been integrated into the even tenor of their lives without any change in its placid routine. She went shopping after breakfast, and then, because there was no hurry, strolled down Houtil towards Laat, peering in shop windows until she fetched up in Vroom and Dreesman’s store, wandering happily from one counter to the next, pricing tights and undies and even trying on a few hats. But it was still early, and although the aunts had coffee soon after ten o’clock each morning, she could always get a cup from Maartje later. She turned her steps towards the Weigh House, because it was Friday and May and the cheese market would be in full swing. It was still a little early in the year for tourists, but there was a small crowd watching the cheese porters in their white shirts and trousers and coloured straw hats, going briskly to and fro in pairs, each pair carrying a large curved tray piled with cheeses between them. She had seen it all a dozen times before, but she stood and watched now with as much pleasure as though it was for the first time. The carillon was playing from the Weigh House tower too—she listened to Piet Hein and other Dutch folk songs she had half forgotten and then lingered just a little longer so that she could watch, as the clock struck the hour, the little figures of knights on horseback, high up on the tower, come charging through their doors, lances raised, while the clarion trumpeted over them. It made her a little late getting back, but the excuse that she hadn’t been able to leave the cheese market until the clock had struck was quite sufficient for her aunts. They were proud of their town and its traditions and found it quite proper that she should have wanted to renew acquaintance with one of her childhood’s pleasures.