Tangled Autumn

‘Oh, yes, Mama, I do, you know. Sometimes you meet someone and it’s as if you’ve known them all your life.’ She appealed to her brother. ‘Rolf, people do feel like that, don’t they?’

He looked up briefly, but not at her. His dark eyes dwelt for a few seconds on Sappha, who felt herself turning slowly red under them. But all he said was: ‘Oh, yes, of course, only it’s more satisfactory if they both feel the same way at the same time.’

‘There, you see?’ Antonia addressed the room at large and smiled widely at Sappha. ‘I know we’re going to be friends.’ She studied Sappha’s heightened colour and went on with devastating candour: ‘You’ve gone very red—it makes you prettier than ever. Rolf…’

He didn’t look up and his voice was bland. ‘I’m sure Nurse wants to take off her coat.’ And Sappha cast him a look of relief mingled with the vexed thought that he had called her nurse again. She said primly:

‘I’ll be back with your supper presently, Baroness,’ and went away.

Hours later, sitting up in bed thinking about the evening, Sappha had to admit that she had enjoyed herself. Antonia had lent a sparkle to the conversation, and so too, surprisingly had Rolf. He was certainly very fond of his sister and she, for her part, was equally devoted to him, and although it was apparent that she could twist him round her little finger, it was also quite clear that she had a wholesome respect for him too. Sappha smiled to herself, thinking about her; she was spoilt and a little wilful but so good-natured and sunny-tempered that she doubted if anyone, even her eldest brother, could be annoyed with her for more than a couple of seconds at a time. And, reflected Sappha, she had been instantly obedient to the suggestion that it was her mother’s bedtime, and afterwards, sitting on the end of Sappha’s bed while the latter rearranged her hair, she had asked some remarkably sensible questions about her mother’s illness and when Sappha had hesitated to answer them, said: ‘I know a great deal about it already—Rolf said it would be better for me and for Mother if I did. And of course he’s right. He always is,’ she added simply.

Sappha thought it wise to say nothing to this; quite obviously, the Baron ruled his family with a rod of iron, albeit a well camouflaged one. She found herself speculating upon the poor girl he would coerce into marrying him and felt fiercely sorry for her. She could imagine what it would be like—’Half a dozen children,’ she muttered to herself, thumping her pillows. ‘The woman’s place is in the home, and all that, however luxurious that home might be.’ She had a sudden vivid mental picture of the Baron sitting at the head of a table lined with little barons and baronesses, all with miniature satyr’s eyebrows and herself at the end. She pulled herself up short, hastily substituting this ridiculous idea with the interesting question as to what a baron’s children were called, but before she could go deeply into the matter she was disturbed by her patient’s voice from the bedroom next door, asking if she might have another sleeping tablet because one hadn’t seemed to be enough. Sappha got out of bed, her unruly thoughts forgotten. She said soothingly: ‘It’s only because you’ve had such an exciting evening—you have been to sleep and you’ll soon drop off again. I’ll read to you, shall I? Are you quite comfy?’

She made a few deft movements amongst the pillows and bedclothes.

‘There, not a wrinkle in sight. Close your eyes—I’ll go on with Jane Eyre.’

She read for several minutes until the Baroness interrupted her to say:

‘What an arrogant man he was—but of course he loved Jane, and she loved him. Was the man you loved—still do perhaps, Sappha—arrogant?’

Sappha looked up from her reading. Her dressing gown was a soft pink, a perfect contrast to the dark hair hanging around her shoulders. She smelled faintly of Roger and Gallet’s Violet soap and she looked as pretty as the proverbial picture. Her patient, studying her closely, thought it a great shame that there was no one other than herself to see her.

Sappha said in a wooden voice: ‘No, not arrogant. It was just that he found someone else—blonde and sexy and willing to give him what I wouldn’t—I’m old-fashioned about marriage…’

‘Me too,’ said the Baroness briskly, ‘and you would be surprised at the number of men who want an old-fashioned girl for a wife—a girl who will love them and run their home with pride. And children—men want children.’ She waved her plastered arm in the air. ‘It’s no good me telling you that you will get over it and meet another man—there aren’t any other men at the moment are there? And you’re sure that you will never get over him, aren’t you?’

She took another look at Sappha, and it was a pity that Sappha, instead of looking at her companion, was looking backwards over the last few disastrous months, for the Baroness’s pretty face wore the look of someone who had just had a brilliant idea. She did, in fact, look very like her young daughter when that young daughter was plotting mischief. There was a little pause until Sappha said quietly: ‘Shall I go on reading?’

The Baroness yawned daintily. ‘I do believe I begin to feel sleepy again, dear. Would it be too much trouble if I asked you to fetch me just a little warm milk?’

Sappha padded downstairs and presently, with the milk in her hand, went back again through the quiet old house, to stop in the bedroom doorway at the sight of Rolf, still dressed, lounging over the end of his mother’s bed. He said nothing at all, but his gaze swept Sappha from head to foot. It was the Baroness who said in her soft voice:

‘Sappha, Rolf heard us talking and came to see if anything was the matter.’ She smiled at them in turn, giving her son a bright glance which dared him to imagine otherwise. He stared back at her, his eyes snapping with laughter. ‘And now that I see you are in such excellent hands, I’ll leave you to settle, dear Mother.’

He bent and kissed her, said a brief goodnight to Sappha without apparently seeing her, and went back to his room.

The Baroness accepted her milk with the blameless air of a good child.

‘You poor girl,’ she said contritely, ‘I’ve kept you from your bed, but I’m sure that I shall sleep very well now.’ She finished the milk, allowed Sappha to settle her once more, said goodnight in a grateful voice and closed her eyes, leaving Sappha to go back to bed, but not at once to sleep. It was a pity that her patient had asked her those questions—answering them had made Andrew very clear in her mind once more, and she wanted so much to forget him.

CHAPTER THREE

THERE was no sign of the Baron the next morning. Sappha busied herself with her patient, helped and sometimes hindered by the well-meaning efforts of Antonia, who, after lunch, declared her intention of sitting with her parent while Sappha went for a walk.

Sappha, who was feeling moody and restless, felt more inclined to sit and brood in her room, but she had some letters to post; she would go down to the post office and take a look at the sea at the same time, so she put on her raincoat and tied a scarf over her hair and went out into the rather wild afternoon. It was raining; not very hard, but the wind was boisterous and the mountains behind the little town stood head and shoulders in dark cloud. She walked around the harbour, shivering a little because the wind was keen as well as strong, eyeing the angry waves beyond the harbour’s mouth, they were battering the causeway too. A solitary fishing boat was battling its way in and she stopped to watch it, thankful that she wasn’t called upon to leave dry land.

It was after she had been to the post office and was on her way back to the Manse that she came face to face with Andrew. She stopped short, her eyes like saucers, her mouth, bulging with a wedge of the toffee she had purchased along with the stamps, slightly open. Andrew however didn’t look in the least surprised, nor for that matter did he look awkward or ashamed of himself, but then, some small detached part of her mind reminded her, Andrew never did. But this thought was swamped by the rush of excitement inside her, emotion caught her by the throat so that, what with her heart in her mouth as well as the lump of toffee, she was quite unable to speak.

Andrew, unhindered by either the one or the other of these encumbrances, stopped in front of her and said with all his well-remembered charm, ‘Sappha—darling, how marvellous to see you again! I had a couple of free days—it seemed a good chance to come and look you up.’

Sappha, once more in control of both her breath and the toffee, gave him what she hoped was a cool, unflustered look. She said:

‘Oh, indeed. How did you know that I was here?’

‘I wormed it out of old Mother Martin.’ Mother Martin was Home Sister at Greggs’ and a notorious passer-on of gossip. Andrew’s good-looking face broke into a smile as he caught one of Sappha’s hands in his. ‘I thought you would be glad to see me—you are, aren’t you, Sappha?’

She caught her breath. Of course she was glad, she was on the point of saying so when she felt the weight of a great arm on her shoulders and heard the Baron’s voice, mildly, amused, say: ‘Hullo, Sappha, taking an hour or two off?’ She felt the arm tighten. ‘Andrew Glover, isn’t it? Thought you’d show up—the landlord of the pub at Torridon mentioned on the telephone that you were heading this way. My name’s van Duyren, by the way.’

Sappha watched Andrew’s face as he tried to make up his mind how to treat the Baron, who, she noted, was looking ruffianly enough in a thick sweater and terrible old trousers stuffed into rubber boots—he was swinging a string of fish in one hand too. She choked down a sudden desire to laugh because Andrew had no idea who the Baron was and the Baron had equally no intention of telling him. She looked sideways up into his dark face, changing the toffee lump from one cheek to the other as she did so, a childish action which caused him to blink rapidly while the nostrils of his commanding nose quivered ever so slightly. He said carelessly: ‘Why not take the afternoon off, Sappha—or for that matter, the rest of the day? Antonia and Mrs MacFee will cope.’

Sappha frowned. For one thing Andrew had said nothing about taking her out—he’d had no time—and for another, it made her sound too eager. She was eager, she told herself, but Andrew mustn’t know that. She said icily: ‘How kind of you, Doctor, but I’ve had my off-duty for today and I see no reason for giving myself any more.’ And went pink under his mocking gaze. It was maddening that he should spoil this unexpected meeting with Andrew—it could have been something exciting and even more than that, though Andrew, at the moment, didn’t appear to be exactly carried away… He said now: ‘Are you a doctor—I had no idea…’

The Baron waved the fish and said mildly: ‘Oh, I’ve a practice—a small country town in Friesland.’

Andrew smiled with a hint of patronage. ‘Oh, a GP.’ He was contemptuous and faintly pitying. ‘I’ve rooms in Wimpole Street—consultant you know—a nice little private practice.’

‘You are to be congratulated upon your success.’ The Baron’s voice was silky, and Sapphia stirred uneasily under his confining arm, remembering dimly that the Baroness or someone had mentioned that he lectured in Groningen and hadn’t she said something about examining? With feminine unfairness she was instantly up in arms against him—he was taking the mickey out of Andrew. She said positively: ‘I really must go—there are things to do.’

If she had hoped to get rid of the Baron she was sadly mistaken, for he remarked immediately: ‘We’ll all go. Come up to the Manse for tea, my dear fellow—Mrs MacFee will love to see a new face and you and Sappha can sort out her time off.’

He turned up the lane leading to the Manse, and Sappha perforce turned with him. Andrew fell into step beside her. ‘A pity you can’t manage today,’ he remarked smoothly. ‘What about tomorrow—afternoon or evening perhaps, old girl?’

Sappha quivered with temper; not only had she been called old girl, her free time was being discussed and arranged for her without so much as a by your leave. She opened her mouth to say so, but the Baron spoke first.

‘Of course, tomorrow, why not? And I must insist that you take both the afternoon and evening, Sappha. It’s not quite the weather for a drive, but there are some splendid walks—I can lend you a pair of boots—’ he flung a friendly aside to Andrew. ‘I suppose you’re at the pub here. They make you very comfortable and Mrs MacGregor is a good cook—she’ll turn out an excellent dinner for the pair of you.’

‘I’m not sure—’ began Sappha looking at the Baron with frustrated rage, to be met with a look of such limpid friendliness that she was struck dumb; if she hadn’t been prepared to think the worst of him, she could have supposed that he was trying to make things as easy as possible for her and Andrew.

They turned in at the Manse gate and walked slowly up the short drive to the front door, and any idea Sappha may have had about keeping Andrew’s visit from her patient’s ears was scotched by the Baron, who paused and waved at the Baroness’s window. Sappha felt sure that even if she didn’t happen to be looking out at that moment, Antonia would have seen them. She excused herself in the hall and flew upstairs to change back into uniform. It was foolish, but she felt better able to cope with the situation once she had clasped the silver buckled belt round her slim waist and tucked her hair tidily under her cap.

The Baroness and Antonia were sitting by the window when she went in and although Antonia said nothing, Sappha gained the strong impression that this was because she had been told not to. The Baroness turned her still beautiful eyes upon Sappha and asked merely: ‘A pleasant walk, I hope, dear?’ Sappha, repeating her impressions of the sea and relaying the little bits of gossip she had gleaned from the post office, wondered why her patient didn’t ask about Andrew, for it was obvious from their faces that they had seen him. She hadn’t long to wait to find out, however, for very soon the Baroness told Antonia to go down to tea and tell Mrs MacFee that Sappha would be down directly, and that young lady had barely closed the door when her mother said:

‘So he came after you, Sappha. I hope he doesn’t intend to take you back with him—not,’ she added earnestly, ‘that I should dream of stopping you.’

Sappha paused in the clearing up of the bed table in preparation for the tea tray. She said a little wildly: ‘But he hasn’t asked me. I don’t even know why he’s here—I’ve had no chance…we’d only just met when Dr van Duyren joined us.’ She added bitterly: ‘He insisted on bringing Andrew back for tea and he’s kindly arranged for me to be free tomorrow afternoon and evening.’

Her patient seemed to miss the sarcasm in her attendant’s voice, for she said kindly: ‘Now, isn’t that nice? How thoughtful of Rolf. I expect they took to each other at once.’

Sappha, who had her own opinion about this, muttered: ‘Oh, well—they’re both doctors,’ and remembered the Baron’s modest admission to being a GP.

‘Exactly what does Dr van Duyren do?’ she asked.

The Baroness closed her eyes the better to think. ‘Let me see now—he has a large practice in Dokkum, but of course he has two partners, then he has consultant’s chambers in Groningen as well as being a professor at the Medical School—he has a teaching round and so on and he’s an examiner—he specialises in stomachs and I never have understood why, my dear.’

Sappha said weakly: ‘He’s busy.’

‘Too busy,’ agreed his mother, ‘I sometimes think. But he seems to like it, though I have warned him that if he’s not careful he’ll have neither the time nor the inclination to marry. When he does, of course, his wife will come before everything else,’ she sighed, ‘just as I did with his father.’ Two tears rolled down her cheeks and Sappha hurried across to her to put her arms around her and say: ‘There there—and how proud you must be to remember that, and I’ve no doubt that you were worth every second of his time.’