Winter of Change. Betty Neels
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Pettigrew.’ He didn’t smile as he spoke, but looked her up and down in a casual uninterested fashion.
She ignored the look. ‘Well, I’m not sure that you should,’ she offered calmly. ‘He’s ill, and at the moment he’s asleep. Doctor Morris will be here presently, and I think he should be asked first, but if you like to come in and wait—you’ll have to be quiet.’
The eyebrows rose. ‘My dear good young woman, you talk as though I were a pop group or a party of schoolchildren! I’m not noisy by nature and I don’t take kindly to being told what I may and may not do.’
‘Oh, pooh,’ said Mary Jane, a little out of patience, ‘don’t be so touchy! Come in, do.’ She added, ‘Quietly.’
The car whispered past her and came to a silent halt at the door, and the man got out. There was a great deal of him; more than six foot, she guessed, and largely built too. She wondered who he was, and was on the point of asking when she heard the bell from her grandfather’s room. ‘There,’ she shot at her companion, a little unfairly, ‘you’ve woken him up,’ and flew upstairs.
The Colonel looked refreshed after his nap. He said at once, ‘I heard a car and voices. I’m expecting someone, but there’s hardly been time…’
Mary Jane shook up a pillow and slipped it behind his head. ‘It’s a man,’ she explained unhurriedly. ‘He’s got beetling eyebrows and he’s got rather a super Rolls. He says he wants to see you, but I told him he couldn’t until Uncle Bob comes.’
A faint smile lighted up her grandfather’s face. ‘Did you, now? And did he mind?’
‘I didn’t ask him.’
Her grandfather chuckled. ‘Well, my dear, if it won’t undermine your authority too much, I should like to see him—now. We have important business. Morris knows he’s coming and I don’t suppose he’ll object. Tell him to come up.’
‘All right, Grandfather, if you say so.’
She found the stranger in the sitting room, sitting in one of the comfortable old-fashioned chairs. He got to his feet as she went in and before she could speak, said: ‘All right, I know my way,’ and was gone, taking the stairs two at a time. She followed him into the hall just in time to hear the Colonel’s door shut quietly on the old man’s pleased voice. After a moment she went slowly into the garden again.
She was still there when Doctor Morris arrived, parked his elderly Rover beside the Rolls, greeted her cheerfully and added in a tone of satisfaction, ‘Ah, good, so he’s arrived—with your grandfather, I suppose?’
Mary Jane pulled a weed with deliberation. ‘Yes, he is—and very high-handed, whoever he is, too. I asked him to wait until you came, but Grandfather heard us talking and wanted to see him at once—he said it was business. He seems better this morning, so I hope you don’t mind?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘No, I’m pleased. You’re both here now—your grandfather was worrying. I’ll go up now.’
He left her standing there. She stared after him; he hadn’t told her who the stranger was, but he obviously knew him. She went indoors, tidied herself and went along to get a tray of coffee ready, to find that Lily had already done so. ‘And lunch, miss—I suppose the gentleman will be staying like last time. I’d better do some extra potatoes, hadn’t I?’
Mary Jane agreed, desiring at the same time to question Lily about the probable guest, but if her grandfather had wanted to tell her, he could have done so, so too could Uncle Bob. If they wanted to have their little secrets, she told herself a trifle huffily, she for one didn’t care. Probably the visitor was a junior partner to her grandfather’s solicitor, but surely he wouldn’t be able to afford a Rolls-Royce? She went outside again and had a good look at the car—it had a foreign number plate and it came from Holland, a clue which she immediately seized upon; the man was someone from her grandfather’s oldest friend, Jonkheer van der Blocq, an elderly gentleman whom she had never met but about whom she knew quite a bit, for her grandfather had often mentioned him. Relieved that she had solved the mystery, she went back indoors in time to meet the doctor coming downstairs.
‘There you are,’ he remarked for all the world as though he had spent the last hour looking for her. ‘Your grandfather wants you upstairs.’ He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘He’s better, but you know what I mean by that, don’t you? For the time being. Now run up, like a good girl. I’ll be in the sitting room.’
She started up the stairs, remembering to call over her shoulder:
‘There’s coffee ready for you—would you ask Lily?’ and sped on to tap on the Colonel’s door and be bidden to enter.
The stranger was standing with his back to the window, his hands in his pockets, and the look he cast her was disconcerting in its speculation; there was faint amusement too and something else which she couldn’t place. Mary Jane turned her attention to her elderly relative.
‘Yes, Grandfather?’ she asked, going up to the bed.
He eyed her lovingly and with some amusement on his tired old face.
‘You’re not a pretty girl,’ he observed, and waited for her to answer.
‘No, I know that as well as you—you didn’t want me up here just to remind me, did you?’ She grinned engagingly. ‘I take after you,’ she told him.
He smiled faintly. ‘Come here, Fabian,’ he commanded the man by the window.
And when he had stationed himself by the bed: ‘Mary Jane, this is Fabian van der Blocq, the nephew of my old friend. He is to be your guardian after my death.’
Her eyes widened. ‘My guardian? But I don’t need a guardian, Grandfather! I’m twenty-two and I’ve never met Mr—Mr van der Blocq in my life before, and—and…’
‘You’re not sure if you like me?’ His voice was bland, the smile he gave her mocking.
‘Since you put the words into my mouth, I’m not sure that I do,’ Mary Jane said composedly. ‘And what do you have to be the guardian of?’
‘This house will be yours, my dear,’ explained her grandfather, ‘and a considerable sum of money. You will be by no means penniless and there must be someone whom I can trust to keep an eye on you and manage your business affairs.’
‘But I—’ She paused and glanced across the bed to the elegant figure opposite her. ‘Oh, you’re a lawyer,’ she declared. ‘I wondered if you might be.’
Mr van der Blocq corrected her, still bland. ‘You wondered wrongly. I’m a surgeon.’
She was bewildered. ‘Are you? Then why…?’ she went on vigorously, ‘Anyway, Grandfather isn’t going to die.’
The old gentleman in the bed made a derisive sound and Mr van der Blocq curled his lip. ‘I am surprised that you, a nurse, should talk in such a fashion—you surely don’t think that the Colonel wishes us to smother the truth in a froth of sickly sentiment?’
Mary Jane drew her delicate pale eyebrows together. ‘You’re horrible!’ she told him in her gentle voice. It shook a little with the intensity of her feelings and she gave him the briefest of glances before turning back to her grandfather, whom she discovered to be laughing weakly.
‘Don’t you mind,’ she demanded, ‘the way this—this Mr van der Blocq talks?’
Her grandfather stopped laughing. ‘Not in the least, my dear, and I daresay that when you know him better you won’t mind either.’
She tossed her untidy head. ‘That’s highly unlikely. And now you’re tired, Grandfather—you’re going to have another nap before lunch.’
To her surprise he agreed quite meekly. ‘But I want you back in the afternoon, Mary Jane—and Fabian.’
She agreed, ignoring the man staring at her while she