Saturday's Child. Betty Neels
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said comfortably:
‘There you are, Miss Abby, the kettle’s on and I treated us to some crumpets. Nothing like a nice hot crumpet.’ He went back to the gas stove. ‘How did it go?’
‘I’ve got a job, Bolly—twenty pounds a week, in Amsterdam, nursing an American woman. I’m to go tomorrow, and isn’t it lucky I’ve still got my passport from that trip we had to Ostend? So everything’s going to be OK.’ She cast her coat and hat over the back of one of the wooden chairs at the table and went to get the teapot from the dresser. ‘Now, about you—did you manage to find anything?’
‘I did—the woman at the paper shop, remember her? She’s got a daughter with a house just round the corner from here. I can have a room and me meals with her and her husband. Four pounds and fifty pence a week—leaves me plenty, so don’t you worry your pretty head about me.’
She looked at him with deep affection, loving him for the cheerful lie. He was almost seventy, she knew, and he had worked very hard around the flat since they had moved into it, shopping and cooking and repairing fuses and waiting on her mother hand and foot. It was impossible to repay him, but at least she would see that he got the money which they owed him and then a small weekly pension after that so that he could find a proper home and not some small back room where he would be lonely. Years ago he had been her father’s gardener and odd job man, and when her father had died he had somehow stayed on with them, smoothing her mother’s path, offering practical advice when it was discovered that there was no money at all, and Abigail had never quite discovered how it was that he had persuaded her mother to keep him on at such a ridiculous wage.
She made the tea and they sat down together with the plate of crumpets between them. ‘I’m glad you’ve got somewhere to go for the present,’ began Abigail. She opened her handbag. ‘They gave me five pounds in advance on my salary,’ she went on mendaciously. ‘I’ve got more than enough and this’ll help you to get started, then each week, once I get my pay, I shall send you some money,’ and when he began to protest, ‘No, Bolly dear, you’re my friend and you were Mother’s and Father’s friend too—I can well afford to pay you back the wages we owe you and then pay you a little each week. It won’t take me long, you see, for I get my room and my food for free, don’t I? And in a little while I’ll get a hospital job again and perhaps we can find a small place and you can come and run it for me while I work.’
She smiled at him, trying not to see that he was getting quite elderly now and wouldn’t be fit to do much for many more years—something she would worry about when the time came, she told herself vigorously. She poured more tea and said cheerfully: ‘How funny Uncle Sedgeley was yesterday. I wonder what he and Aunt Miriam would have done if I’d accepted their invitation to go to Gore Park and stay with them? They hated Father, didn’t they, because he was a Methodist parson and hadn’t any worldly ideas and they hadn’t been near …’ She paused, unable to bear talking of her mother. ‘Aunt Miriam told me how fortunate I was that I had a vocation, for all the world as though I’d taken a vow not to marry.’
‘Of course you’ll marry, Miss Abby,’ said Bollinger, quite shocked.
‘That’s nice of you to say so, Bolly, but I’m afraid she may be right, you know. I’m twenty-four and I’ve never had a proposal—nothing even approaching one. I’m a sort of universal sister, you know, because I’m plain.’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Miss Abby. You just haven’t met the right man, that’s all. He’ll come, don’t you fret.’
‘Yes? Well, when he does I shan’t marry him unless he lets you come along too,’ she said firmly. ‘Now let’s go and see this room of yours and then I’ll treat us to the pictures.’
A remark which would have shocked Uncle Sedgeley if he could have heard it; to go to the cinema barely a week after her mother’s funeral—unthinkable! She could just hear him saying it, but it didn’t matter what he thought; her mother would have been the first one to suggest it. Life went on and you didn’t forget someone just because you sat in the stalls and watched some film or other without seeing any of it, and at least it would be warm there and infinitely better than sitting in the little flat talking, inevitably, of old times with Bolly, something she couldn’t bear to do.
She said goodbye to him the next morning and started her journey. She had booked her flight when she had left the agency, obedient to the severe woman’s instructions, and had packed her case with the sort of clothes she considered she might need, adding the blue uniform dresses and caps and aprons she had been forced to buy, and now on the plane at last, she got out her little notebook again and did some anxious arithmetic. With luck she wouldn’t have to spend more than the equivalent of a few shillings; stamps for her letters to Bollinger, small odds and ends for herself. She hoped that her patient might need her for more than two weeks—three, or even four weeks at twenty pounds a week would mount up nicely, and they were going to pay her fare too. She closed the little book, opened the newspaper the air hostess had handed her and read it with grave attention, fearful of allowing her thoughts to wander, and was surprised when far below she saw the flat coast of Holland, glimpsed through the layers of cloud.
Schiphol, she discovered, was large, efficient and pleasantly welcoming. With hundreds like her, she was passed along the human conveyor belt which eventually spilled her into the open air once more, only to be whisked up once more into the waiting bus which would take her to Amsterdam. It covered the ten miles to the capital with a speed which hardly gave her time to look around her and she got out at the bus terminus, still not quite believing that she was in Holland. It seemed such a very short time ago since she had said goodbye to Bollinger, as indeed it was.
Mindful of her instructions, she took a taxi to the address in the Apollolaan. It was, she quickly discovered, away from the centre of the city, for they quickly left the bustling, older part behind, to drive through modern streets lined with blocks of flats and shops. When they stopped half way down the Apollolaan, she got out, paid the driver from her small stock of money and crossed the pavement to enter the important-looking doorway of the building he had pointed out to her. It was of a substantial size, and from the cars parked before it, inhabited by the well-to-do, and inside the thickly carpeted foyer and neatly uniformed porter bore out her first impression. He greeted her civilly, and when she mentioned her name, ushered her into the lift, took her case from her and escorted her to the fourth floor. Here he abandoned her, her case parked beside her, outside the door of number twenty-one—occupied, according to the neat little plate at the side of the door, by Mr and Mrs E. Goldberg. Abigail drew a heartening breath and rang the beautifully polished bell.
The door was opened by a maid who, in answer to Abigail’s announcement of her name, invited her to enter, waved her to a chair, and disappeared. Abigail looked at the chair, a slender trifle which she felt sure would never bear the weight of her nicely rounded person, and stood looking around her. The hall was carpeted even more lushly than the foyer; the walls were hung with what she considered to be a truly hideous wallpaper, embossed and gilded, and as well as the little chair she had prudently ignored, there was a small settee, buttoned fatly into red velvet, and another chair with a straight back and a cane seat which looked decidedly uncomfortable. A wall table of gold and marble occupied the space between two doors, burdened with a French clock and matching vases. Abigail, who had a nice taste, shuddered delicately and wished that her mother could have been with her and share her feelings. For a moment her opulent surroundings faded to give place to the little flat in the Cromwell Road, but she resolutely closed her mind to her memories; self-pity helped no one, she told herself firmly, and turned to see who was coming through the door on the other side of the hall.
It had to be Mrs Goldberg, for she looked exactly like her name. She was middle-aged, with determinedly blonde hair, blue eyes which were still pretty and a baby doll face, nicely made up, which, while still attractive, had lost its youthful contours. She smiled now, holding out her hand, and when she spoke her voice was warm even though its accent was decidedly American.
‘Well, so you’re the nurse, my dear. I can’t tell you how glad we are to have you.’ She added dramatically, ‘I am exhausted, absolutely exhausted! Night and day have I been caring for our