Бетти Нильс – A Matter of Chance (страница 3)

She got out at Leeuwarden station with much the same feeling as she experienced when she entered a dentist’s surgery; her future employer might be bad-tempered, impatient, a slave-driver… She stood under the clock on the platform as she had been told to do, and looked around her, and a great many people looked back at her, for she was quite eye-catching, her beautiful face pale with excitement and apprehension, her nicely cut tweed coat showing off her slenderness to perfection, the brown fur hat perched on top of her shining bun of hair highlighting its vivid darkness.

She didn’t have to wait long; from the people around her there emerged a short, stout man in his late middle years. He came straight at her, beaming all over his nice round face, beginning to talk to her long before he reached her. ‘Miss Bingley—Miss Cressida Bingley—what a charming name! I am delighted to welcome you; you see that I knew you at once.’ He was pumping her arm up and down as he spoke. ‘My old friend Doctor Mills described you so well…you have luggage with you? This case only? Then we will go to the car at once and return to my home as quickly as possible. We will drink coffee together and talk of my book which I am so anxious to complete.’

He walked as he talked, his hand on her arm, edging her towards the station entrance where a splendidly kept dark blue Chevrolet stood. He ushered her into the front seat, put her luggage in the boot and got into the driving seat. ‘Fifteen of your English miles,’ he observed, ‘we shall be there very shortly.’

But not as shortly as all that, Cressida discovered. They drove very slowly through the city, a busy, bustling place she wanted to explore, and she wondered if there was something about Dutch motoring laws she didn’t know—a twenty-mile speed limit in towns, for instance, and yet everyone else was travelling twice as fast. Perhaps her new employer was just a very cautious driver. On the outskirts of Leeuwarden he achieved a steady thirty, while cars flashed past at thrice that speed and Cressida, who in happier times had driven her father’s car rather well, longed to stretch out a neatly booted foot and slam it down on the accelerator, for it seemed to her a crying shame to own such a powerful car and not make use of it. She kept her itching foot still and watched the slowly passing scenery while she answered her companion’s stream of questions. Even if he was a shocking driver, he was rather an old dear.

They turned off the main road presently and trickled cautiously down a narrow lane. ‘Eestrum,’ the doctor informed her as they approached and passed through a smallish village. ‘We go to Augustinusga, that is where I live, so well placed between Leeuwarden and Groningen. It is convenient for me—and my partners—to travel to either place.’

‘Partners?’ asked Cressida. No one had mentioned them.

‘Doctor Herrima—we share a house and a housekeeper—and Doctor van der Teile, who is the senior partner and does not live in the village. We consult him, you understand; all the more difficult cases, but for the most of the time he is either at Leeuwarden or Groningen, for he has beds in both hospitals as well as consulting rooms. He is a distinguished physician and travels a good deal.’

Cressida murmured politely; he would be a very elderly man, she imagined, for Doctor van Blom was certainly in his sixties and this other partner was the senior…the third partner would be the youngest and the junior. The three bears; she suppressed a giggle.

Her companion had dropped the car’s speed to a smart walking pace and began pointing out local landmarks. A windmill, standing lonely in the wintry fields by a canal, a little wood on the other side of the water, bare and dull in the morning’s grey bleakness, but, she was assured, a charming place in the spring. An austere red brick church with plain glass windows came into view and a cosy little house beside it. ‘The dominee and his wife live there,’ explained Doctor van Blom. ‘A good friend of ours, and here, at the beginning of the village, is an excellent example of our Friesian farms.’

Cressida was still craning her neck to see the last of it as they entered the village itself, circled the square lined with houses and stopped cautiously outside one of them, a red brick house with its door exactly in the centre and its windows arranged across its face in mathematical rows. She hoped it wasn’t as plain inside as it was out, and had her hope realised; the front door opened on to a long, narrow hall, lofty-ceilinged and a little dark and from which numerous doors opened. Doctor van Blom threw open the first of these and ushered her in, at the same time raising his voice in a mild bellow. This was instantly answered in person by his housekeeper, a tall, thin woman, no longer young but with such a forceful air about her that one could have imagined her barely in her prime. She smiled at the doctor, smiled at Cressida, shook her hand and followed them into what was obviously the sitting-room, comfortably furnished, the leather chairs a little shabby perhaps, but there was some beautiful china and silver lying around on shelves and tables, rather as though someone had just been admiring the objects and set them down haphazardly. There were shelves of books, too, and an old-fashioned stove giving off a most welcome heat.

Cressida took the chair she was offered and surrendered her coat to the housekeeper, her unhappy heart much cheered by her kindly reception, and when Juffrouw Naald went away and came back a moment later with a tray laden with coffee-cups and biscuits, she partook of these refreshments with more pleasure than she had felt for some time.

They had been sitting for perhaps ten minutes when the door opened and a tall, thin man, about the same age as Doctor van Blom, came in. ‘My partner, Doctor Herrima,’ her employer told her, and after introductions had been made, Cressida found herself sitting between the two of them, filling their coffee-cups and answering their gentle questions.

‘A pretty girl,’ observed Doctor Herrima to no one in particular, ‘a very pretty girl.’ He looked keenly at her. ‘And you can type, I understand?’

She assured him that she could.

‘You are also a nurse?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she told him, ‘I’ve been trained for more than four years.’

He looked across at his partner. ‘A splendid choice.’ And when his partner nodded happily, ‘What do you think of our country, Miss Bingley?’

Cressida put down her cup. ‘Well, I haven’t seen a great deal of it. Two days in Amsterdam and then coming here by train…’

‘You must see Leeuwarden and Groningen—now there are two magnificent centuries-old cities. Do you drive?’ It was Doctor van Blom who spoke.

‘Yes—we had a rather elderly Morris.’

‘Ah.’ He pondered this for a minute. ‘My car is a powerful one, as you may have noticed, and Doctor Herrima runs a BMW. I do not know if you feel competent to drive either of them?’ He sounded doubtful.

Cressida thought of the snail-like pace at which they had driven from Leeuwarden and replied soberly that she thought she would be capable of driving either of the cars. Indeed, the idea of driving the Chev on one of the excellent motorways appealed to her very much: to drive and drive and drive, away from her grief and loneliness.

She shut her mind to the idea and made a suitably admiring remark about the car, to which Doctor van Blom responded with instant eagerness. They were two dears, she decided; unworldly and content in their rather cluttered, pleasant sitting-room.

She asked diffidently about their practice and was told at some length and sometimes twice over that it was a large one, covering a great number of outlying villages and farms; that they had a baby clinic once a week, a small surgery for emergencies, and dealt with a wide variety of patients.

‘There are quite a number of accidents,’ explained Doctor van Blom, ‘farms, you know—they have these modern machines, some of them are complicated and if a farm worker doesn’t understand what he is doing…’ He gave a little shrug. ‘And then of course there are those who live some way away, and they tend to delay sending for us or coming to the surgery, and sometimes the injury or illness is made much worse in consequence. We have splendid hospitals, of course, and our senior partner is always available for consultation.’ He wagged his balding head. ‘A very clever man,’ he stated, ‘as well as our great friend. He had an English godfather, and you will find his English excellent.’

Cressida dismissed this paragon with a nice smile and asked about the book. ‘When would you like me to start?’ she wanted to know.

‘You feel that you could start today? Splendid, Miss Bingley—perhaps after lunch?’

‘That would be fine, and please will you call me Cressida?’

They both beamed at her. ‘With pleasure. And now you would like to go to your room and unpack. We have lunch at noon—is that time enough for you to settle in?’

They escorted her to the door, cried in unison for Juffrouw Naald, and stood watching her as she trod up the steep, uncarpeted stairs to the floor above, with the housekeeper leading the way.