Tulips for Augusta

The days resolved themselves into a slow, smooth pattern of doing nothing much. Friends came to tea or coffee, until one afternoon a car was hired and the aunts, incredibly elegant, drove, with her between them to Bergen, a large village on the edge of the sand dunes bordering the North Sea, to visit family friends. Augusta had been a little amused at their sharp-eyed scrutiny of her person before they went. She had put on another dress, the colour of caramel and simply cut, with an important chain belt encircling her slim waist, and offset by the jade earrings her father had given her because they matched her eyes. Apparently her appearance pleased them, for they smiled in unison and nodded their old heads before embarking on the tricky business of getting into the car.

The friends were elderly—a distant cousin and his wife. Augusta sipped sherry and made polite talk in her best Dutch and found herself wishing for a slightly younger companion. Her wish was to be granted, for presently the drawing room door was thrown open and a young man came in. She guessed he was a year or two older than herself, maybe twenty-five or six, and barely had time to wonder who he was before he had greeted everyone in the room and was standing beside her with their hostess. He was, it appeared, the son of another dear old friend. ‘Pieter van Leewijk,’ he murmured as they shook hands, ‘but call me Piet. I’ve heard about you, of course, and I daresay we may have met years ago when we were children.’

He smiled charmingly, first at her, then at his hostess, accepted a glass of sherry, and steered Augusta over to the window. They stood side by side looking out across the broad road to the island of grass and trees in its centre, inhabited by a few small, graceful deer.

‘Such a nice idea,’ she remarked, ‘deer living in the centre of the village.’ She smiled at the young man, who wasn’t looking at the deer but staring at her. He spoke in Dutch. ‘You are fluent in our language—someone said you were a nurse. I always thought nurses were dowdy, worthy girls.’

She raised sable brows. ‘Indeed? Perhaps you don’t get around a great deal.’

He laughed. ‘I was paying you a compliment.’

She decided that he was, but he sounded a little too sure of himself. She asked sweetly, ‘And you—what do you do?’

‘I’m a fashion photographer. You see, it was a compliment.’ He smiled again and took her glass. ‘More sherry?’

She shook her head. ‘Tell me about your work—it sounds interesting.’

It wasn’t. It took only a few minutes for her to realise that he wasn’t interested in anything else but beautiful models and how much money he could make, and how quickly he could make it. They went in to lunch, and inevitably, she found herself sitting beside him, with the older members of the party beaming at her, delighted with themselves that they had produced such a nice young man to entertain her. Only he didn’t; he wasn’t interested in anything she had to say—it was sufficient for her to say Yes and No and look suitably impressed. All the same, she tried her best to like him, for he was probably the only young man she would meet while she was in Alkmaar. He might even ask her out, and being a fair-minded girl, she was quite prepared to admit that she wasn’t quite as groovy as the models. Probably he found her dull—all the same, if he did ask her out, she thought she would go.

He said carelessly, ‘You shouldn’t wear these new long skirts—they’re for tall, slim girls—long legs and…’ His eyes swept over her. They were eating a rich ice pudding with a great deal of cream. Augusta checked a desire to throw her portion into his smiling face.

She said crisply in English, ‘Of all the insufferable, conceited bores that I’ve met, you’re easily the prize specimen! How dare you tell me what to wear, and—and criticize my legs? Keep your shallow-brained remarks for the bird-witted creatures you purport to photograph.’

She smiled at him, her eyes like green ice, and was pleased to see him getting slowly red. She had been rude, but then so had he…and she had enjoyed every word of what she had said.

‘Perhaps you don’t know that I have a very good knowledge of English?’ he queried stiffly.

‘Why, I counted on that,’ she said quietly. She flipped her eyelashes at him, smiled without warmth and said for the benefit of anyone who might have paused to listen to them, ‘How delicious this pudding is—how lucky I am not to have to diet.’

They went back to the drawing room soon afterwards and she allowed herself to be drawn into a conversation on the subject of cheeses with her host, and later, when she took her departure with her two great-aunts and everyone was shaking everyone else by the hand, she allowed hers to rest a bare second in Pieter van Leewijk’s, and under cover of the hum of farewells, murmured, ‘Goodbye, Piet. So interesting meeting you,’ and gave him a naughty smile before turning away.

On the way back to Alkmaar, the old ladies, on either side of her, discussed their outing. ‘Such a pleasant young man,’ remarked Tante Emma guilelessly, ‘perhaps he invited you out, liefje?’

‘No, Tante Emma, Pieter is a busy young man, you know…he’s going back to Utrecht this evening.’ She saw their old faces drop—they had always wanted her to marry a Dutchman. ‘I daresay he’ll be back,’ she added gently. ‘He told me a great deal about his work,’ and was rewarded by their pleased faces.

They were almost home when Tante Marijna complained of feeling a little sick. Augusta thought that the excitement of the day and the rather rich food they had eaten might be the cause; all the same, she asked a few pertinent questions—the aunts were nearly eighty and were of the generation which stoically concealed goodness knows what behind a well-bred reticence—but the old lady would admit to no pain or headache or tingling of the fingers. Nonetheless, she readily agreed to go to bed early, and when Augusta suggested that weak tea and a bischuit would suit a queasy stomach, agreed to that too, and when Augusta went to see her, last thing before she went to her own bed, she looked comfortable enough, and assured her niece that she would sleep all night.

It was in the small hours of the morning that Augusta was wakened by Tante Emma, wrapped untidily in a voluminous dressing gown and looking quite distraught. ‘Your dear aunt,’ she said, a little wildly. ‘She’s ill—dying, I believe.’

Augusta got out of bed. She said in an instinctively soothing voice:

‘All right, Tante Emma,’ her mind already busy. That sickness—but there hadn’t been any other symptoms unless Tante Marijna had been holding out on her. She flung her pale pink housecoat over its matching nightie, pushed her feet into heelless slippers, said a trifle breathlessly to her aunt, ‘Don’t hurry, darling—I’ll go down,’ and was off down the stairs, her bright hair flying, her feet making no sound on the thick carpet. Outside Tante Marijna’s door she stopped and then went in with deliberate, calm steps and no trace of worry upon her face.

The old lady lay against her pillows, very pale. Her blue eyes were resolutely open while the sweat trickled slowly down her drawn face. Augusta went to the bedside, possessed herself of her aunt’s hand and took her pulse, saying at the same time, ‘Hullo, Tante Marijna—is there a pain in your chest?’

The lids dropped over the anxious blue eyes, giving her the answer she had expected. She said gently, ‘Keep very still, darling—you’re going to be all right, but I have to fetch the doctor.’ She smiled reassuringly and turned to Tante Emma who had just come into the room.

‘Will you stay here while I telephone him—is the number in the book on the hall table?’

Tante Emma nodded and Augusta flew down another flight of stairs and picked up the receiver. Dr van Lindemann—she noted the name and dialled the number.

The voice that answered her sounded alert and calm and merely stated its name and didn’t interrupt at all while she gave her brief details, being careful to get the Dutch as correct as she could, although she fancied, thinking about it afterwards, that she might have muddled a few verbs. However, she must have made sense, for the voice said crisply that yes, he would be round in ten minutes.

She ran back upstairs and found Tante Marijna just the same and Tante Emma in quiet tears. She wiped the sweat from the former’s face and the tears from Tante Emma’s woebegone countenance, breathed a few words of reassurance once more, and took flight once again, this time to the top of the house, to Maartje’s room. Maartje was a little deaf; it took a minute or two to make her understand, but once she did, she was at once her sensible quick-witted self. She listened carefully to what Augusta had to tell her and was already throwing back the bed-clothes as Augusta left the room. She had barely reached her aunt’s room again when the front door bell pealed—just once and gently. The doctor. Once more she sped down the narrow staircase and flung open the door. He came into the hall, and the old-fashioned lamp, hanging from its high ceiling, shone on his straw-coloured hair, so that it appeared white. He stared at her from the pale blue eyes which had occupied her thoughts more often than she cared to think. He said, softly, ‘Hullo, Miss Augusta Brown,’ and she, speechless, led him upstairs, aware of a sudden delight despite her anxiety for her aunt.

It seemed he was no stranger to her aunts. Tante Emma greeted him tearfully. ‘Constantijn, I am so glad to see you—my sister…’

He smiled at her with great kindness. ‘Why not go back to your room with Maartje—I’ll come and see you presently.’

While he was talking he had been standing by the bed, looking at his patient, who stared back at him and presently smiled very faintly at him. He smiled back warmly, and gently pressed the hand he was holding. He said quietly and with great calmness, ‘I’m going to have a look at you—I believe I know what is wrong, but I must be sure, then you shall have something to take away the pain and allow you to sleep. When you wake up you will feel better.’

He set about his examination and Augusta helped him, because it was the natural thing to do, even without her cap and apron, and he seemed to expect it anyway. When he had finished, he opened his bag and took out a phial of morphia and presently slid a needle gently into Tante Marijna’s arm. The old lady’s eyes slid from his impassive face to Augusta’s and back again.

‘I absolutely refuse to go to hospital,’ she said in a clear thready voice.

‘I hadn’t thought of it,’ said Dr van Lindemann. ‘Why should you when you’ve a perfectly good nurse here?’

His glance flickered across the bed. ‘Stay here a moment, will you, while I talk to your aunt?’ He didn’t wait for her nod, but disappeared through the door, to reappear presently with Maartje.

‘Maartje will sit here for a short while…there are a few things… I’ve given Juffrouw van den Pol some trichloral; I think she’ll settle.’ He glanced at the bed. ‘Your aunt will be all right, I think. Maartje tells me there’s coffee in the kitchen—come down and have a cup while we decide what to do.’

Augusta followed him meekly, and found the coffee pot warm on top of the stove; there was milk in a double saucepan too, hot enough to have a creamy coat wrinkling its surface. The doctor strolled around the kitchen collecting cups and saucers and a sugar pot, talking as he did so.

‘Your aunt’s had an attack of angina—just as you thought—nasty enough, but she’ll recover. She’s as fit as a woman of half her age and has great determination. Five days’ complete bed rest and then gradual convalescence.’

Augusta nodded, the coffee pot in one hand, the milk in the other.

‘Do you like the skin?’ she inquired.

He looked as though he was going to laugh. ‘Yes—do you?’

She began to pour. ‘Yes. You’d better have it as you’re the guest.’

‘How nicely you put it,’ he said smoothly. ‘We’ll share.’

They sat down opposite each other on the rush-seated wooden chairs that any museum would have been glad to possess. ‘How long are you staying?’ He was the doctor again, deliberate and detached.