The End of the Rainbow. Betty Neels
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he wished to see her aunt again.
‘God forbid,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve come for you. Your aunt gave me the times of your off duty—I thought we might go somewhere and have coffee—lunch is out of the question, I take it.’
He stood looking at her, his head on one side. ‘I thought that the modern nurse had improved her lot to a certain extent; it seems that doesn’t apply to this place.’
‘My aunt hasn’t many nurses—only me and Mrs Cooper, and she’s part-time. Miss Snow and Mrs Drew aren’t trained—they’re very good, though.’
‘You do not complain. I suspect that the writer of that poem—I can’t remember much of it—had you in mind when she wrote: “While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.”’
She was quite shocked. ‘Oh, you mustn’t think that; I’m not kind at all. Sometimes I could leave everything just as it is, and run through the door—if you knew how I want to escape…’
‘But you don’t?’
‘I promised… I explained to you…’
He didn’t answer, only smiled at her and told her to go and put on something warm; the March wind was cold, as though it were making a last effort to keep April at bay. Olympia put on the suit again and tied a scarf over her hair because the only hat she had was a dreary affair reserved for church. They were going to have coffee, he had said—there were plenty of small cafés not too far away, and none of them had a smart clientele. She sighed unconsciously as she ran upstairs to join him; perhaps today, if he had got his way with Aunt Maria, he would offer her a job. Her heart leapt at the prospect and she beamed at him as she reached the hall.
There was a taxi waiting and she looked at him questioningly as she got in. ‘A wretched day,’ he offered. ‘I thought we might go somewhere warm and cheerful.’
They went to a small Viennese café near Bond Street and over their delicious coffee and creamy cakes, Olympia found herself talking to her companion as though she had known him all her life. Indeed, afterwards, when she was back in the home, once more at work, she chided herself for talking too much. She would have to guard her tongue, for he had a way of asking questions…she frowned, not that that mattered; he had said nothing about seeing her again.
But it was the first of a succession of similar outings. Olympia, longing to ask him what he had said to her aunt so that lady had raised no objections to his continued visits, made wild, unsatisfying guesses as to his reasons for wishing to seek her company; surely if he had wanted her for a job he would have mentioned it by now. But his visits continued, sometimes with Doctor Ross, but more often his arrival was timed to coincide with her off-duty. It was at the end of a second week of afternoon walks and leisurely coffee drinking that she ventured to ask him if he was on holiday. They were strolling round the Zoo at the time, taking advantage of the thin April sunshine and watching the antics of the monkeys.
He turned to look at her. ‘No,’ he told her with deliberation, ‘I have been attending a seminar—it finishes tomorrow. I am also visiting an aunt—an Englishwoman, the widow of my father’s elder brother.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘I should like you to meet her. You are free tomorrow afternoon, are you not?’
She nodded.
‘Good—I will call for you about two o’clock.’
‘Then you will be going back to Middleburg?’
‘Yes.’ They strolled on in silence while she thought that this was the end—well, almost the end, of their friendship. She was going to miss him very much, there was no denying that fact; what to him had been a small interlude had been for her a delightful few weeks in her dull life. Of course, she knew very little about him and nothing at all of his life—just as well perhaps, since she was unlikely to have a place in it after tomorrow. These rather unhappy thoughts were interrupted by his cheerful: ‘How about tea? There’s time enough before you have to go back.’
She dressed with extra care the following afternoon; the same tweed suit, of course, but having received her miserable salary a day or so earlier, she had bought a new woolly from Marks and Spencer—a pale apricot which gave her face a pleasant glow and cheered up the suit enormously; she had bought a brown velvet bow to set in front of her bun of hair, too; studying herself in the long looking glass at the back of the hall, she decided that she was at least presentable although woefully dowdy. It was to be hoped that the aunt wasn’t a fashionable old lady who would despise her.
It seemed at first that her forebodings might prove true. They had walked, she and the doctor, for it was a fine day and his aunt lived in Little Venice, in one of the terraces facing the Grand Union Canal. They had entered the park through the Gloucester Gate and crossed it diagonally to arrive within a stone’s throw of a row of substantial houses.
‘A flat?’ hazarded Olympia, gazing up at their solid fronts, with their well-painted doors and window boxes. Her companion took her arm and guided her through a solid gate set between equally solid walls.
‘No—the whole house.’ He pealed the bell and the door was opened with alacrity by a neat elderly woman who smiled at them as they went in. In the hall he helped Olympia out of her jacket, divested himself of his own coat and threw it on a chair in what she considered to be a rather careless manner, and upon the elderly woman begging them to go upstairs, did so, taking Olympia with him.
The room they entered was very fine; large, and filled with large furniture too, covered with silver photo frames enclosing a variety of out-of-date photographs, an astonishing assortment of china and silver and the whole shrouded with heavy dark blue curtains half drawn over the old-fashioned Nottingham lace which screened the windows. And the lady who came across the room to meet them matched it very nicely for size; she was tall and stout, with a straight back and a proudly held head crowned with iron-grey hair, dressed smoothly. She might have been any age from the lightness of her step and the elegant timelessness of her clothes. Olympia’s heart sank; she had no idea why Doctor van der Graaf had brought her here with him, but she felt sure that it had been a mistake. Only his firm hand under her arm, propelling her gently forward, prevented her from turning tail and racing away from someone she felt instinctively would make her feel dowdier than she already was.
She couldn’t have been more mistaken; her companion’s, ‘Hullo, Aunt Betsy,’ changed everything. The majestic, elegant woman surging towards her wasn’t anyone to be nervous of after all; her exquisitely made up face wore a beaming smile and her voice when she spoke could only be described as cosy.
‘Waldo, dear boy—and this is Olympia.’ She turned her beam upon her. ‘Dear child, how accurately he described you to me. Come and sit down and tell me all about yourself.’
Olympia sat, not sure if her hostess really wanted the details of her rather prosaic life, but she was saved from answering because Aunt Betsy went on almost without pause: ‘That is a charming colour—one of Marks and Spencer’s, of course. You should wear it often—I always buy my woollies there.’
This reassuringly homely remark got them well launched into a comfortable chat about clothes, with her hostess sustaining a monologue which needed nothing added save a nod and a smile from time to time, which gave Olympia the opportunity to think that she liked Mrs van der Graaf very much and how nice it would have been if Aunt Maria had been like her.
‘Pink, with marabou round the hem,’ said her hostess, cutting into her thoughts, and followed that with: ‘Yes, yes, Waldo, you are a patient man, I know, but I can see that you wish to be alone with Olympia. I shall go and see if Mary has the tea ready, but in half an hour I shall return, I warn you—I like my tea at four o’clock and it is now precisely half past three.’ She sailed majestically to the door, smiling at them in turn and stopped to peck the doctor’s cheek when he opened the door for her.
Olympia, sitting on the edge of a large brocade covered chair, watched her departure with some surprise. When the doctor had shut the door behind his aunt, she asked: ‘Whatever did she mean? Why do you want to be alone…’ She stopped; of course it was about the job he was going