isn’t there?’
‘Indeed. How about marinated aubergine to start with? And would you like sea bass to follow?’
She agreed; she wasn’t shy, and she was too much her parents’ daughter to feel awkward. She had never been in a restaurant such as this one, but she wasn’t going to let it intimidate her. When the food came she ate with pleasure and, mindful of manners, made polite conversation. The doctor was at first secretly amused and then found himself interested. Miss Pomfrey might be nothing out of the ordinary, but she had self-assurance and a way of looking him in the eye which he found disquieting. Not a conceited man, but aware of his worth, he wasn’t used to being studied in such a manner.
For a moment he regretted his spoilt evening, but told himself that he was being unjust and then suggested that she might like a pudding from the trolley.
She chose sticky toffee pudding and ate it with enjoyment, and he, watching her over his biscuits and cheese, found himself reluctantly liking her.
They had talked in a guarded fashion over their meal—the weather, the boys, her opinion of Utrecht, all safe subjects. It was when they got back to the house and she had thanked him and started for the stairs that he stopped her.
‘Miss Pomfrey, we do not need to refer again to the regrettable waste of your free day. Rest assured that I shall see to it that any other free time you have will be well spent.’
‘Thank you, but I am quite capable of looking after myself.’
He smiled thinly. ‘Allow me to be the best judge of that, Miss Pomfrey.’ He turned away. ‘Goodnight.’
She paused on the stairs. ‘Goodnight, doctor.’ And then she added, ‘I bought the chips because I was hungry. I dare say you would have done the same,’ she told him in a matter-of-fact voice.
The doctor watched her small retreating back and went into his study. Presently he began to laugh.
ARAMINTA woke early on Sunday morning and remembered that the doctor had said that he would be away all day—moreover, he had remarked that he had no doubt that she and the boys would enjoy their day. Doing what? she wondered, and sat up and worried about it until Jet came in with her morning tea, a concession to her English habit.
They smiled and nodded at each other and exchanged a ‘Goeden Morgen’, and the boys, hearing Jet’s voice, came into the room and got onto Araminta’s bed to eat the little biscuits which had come with the tea.
‘We have to get up and dress,’ they told her. ‘We go to church with Uncle Marcus at half past nine.’
‘Oh, do you? Then back to your room, boys, I’ll be along in ten minutes or so.’
Church would last about an hour, she supposed, which meant that a good deal of the morning would be gone; they could go to one of the parks and feed the ducks, then come back for lunch, and by then surely she would have thought of something to fill the afternoon hours. A pity it wasn’t raining, then they could have stayed indoors.
Jet had told her that breakfast would be at half past eight—at least, Araminta was almost sure that was what she had said; she knew the word for breakfast by now, and the time of day wasn’t too hard to guess at. She dressed and went to help the boys. Not that they needed much help, for they dressed themselves, even if a bit haphazardly. But she brushed hair, tied miniature ties and made sure that their teeth were brushed and their hands clean. She did it without fuss; at the children’s convalescent home there had been no time to linger over such tasks.
The doctor wasn’t at breakfast, and they had almost finished when he came in with Humphrey. He had been for a walk, he told them. Humphrey had needed to stretch his legs. He sat down and had a cup of coffee, explaining that he had already breakfasted. ‘Church at half past nine,’ he reminded them, and asked Araminta if she would care to go with them. ‘The church is close by—a short walk—you might find it interesting.’
She sensed that he expected her to accept. ‘Thank you, I would like to come,’ she told him. ‘At what time are we to be ready?’
‘Ten past nine. The service lasts about an hour.’
They each had a child’s hand as they walked to the church, which was small and old, smelling of damp, flowers and age and, to Araminta’s mind, rather bleak. They sat right at the front in a high-backed pew with narrow seats and hassocks. The boys sat between them, standing on the hassocks to sing the hymns and then sitting through a lengthy sermon.
Of course, Araminta understood very little of the service, although some of the hymn tunes were the same, but the sermon, preached by an elderly dominee with a flowing beard, sounded as though it was threatening them with severe punishments in the hereafter; she was relieved when it ended with a splendid rolling period of unintelligible words and they all sang a hymn.
It was a tune she knew, but the words in the hymn book the doctor had thoughtfully provided her with were beyond her understanding. The boys sang lustily, as did the doctor, in a deep rumbling voice, and since they were singing so loudly, she hummed the tune to herself. It was the next best thing.
Back at the house, the doctor asked Bas to bring coffee into the drawing room.
‘I shall be leaving in a few minutes,’ he told Araminta. ‘I expect you intend to take a walk before lunch, but in the afternoon Bas will drive you to Steijner’s toy shop. They have an exhibition of toys there today and I have tickets. And next door there is a café where you may have your tea. Bas will come for you at about five o’clock. If you want him earlier, telephone the house.’
The boys were delighted, and so was Araminta, although she didn’t allow it to show. The day had been nicely taken care of and the boys were going to enjoy themselves. She had no doubt that she would too.
The doctor stooped to kiss the boys. ‘Have fun,’ he told them, and to Araminta, ‘Enjoy your afternoon, Miss Pomfrey. I leave the boys in your safe hands.’
It was only after he had gone that she realised that she hadn’t much money—perhaps not enough to pay for their tea. She need not have worried. The boys showed her the notes their uncle had given to them to spend and a moment later, Bas, coming to collect the coffee cups, told her quietly that there was an envelope for her in the doctor’s study if she would be good enough to fetch it.
There was, in her opinion, enough money in it to float a ship. She counted it carefully, determined to account for every cent of it, and went back to collect the boys ready for their walk.
They decided against going to one of the parks but instead they walked to one of the squares, the ‘neude’, and so into the Oudegracht, where there was the fourteenth-century house in which the Treaty of Utrecht had been signed. They admired the patrician house at some length, until Araminta said, ‘Are we very far from your uncle’s house? We should be getting back.’
They chorused reassurance. ‘Look, Mintie, we just go back to the neude and Vredeburg Square, and it’s only a little way then.’
She had been there the day before, spending hours looking at the windows of the shopping centre. The doctor’s house was only a short distance from the Singel, the moat which surrounded the old city—much of its length was lined with attractive promenades backed by impressive
