prayed so fervently that we might be blessed,” Agnes Helderik said to her niece, “but we had both given up hope.”
“Why did you not tell us before we left, Aunt Agnes?”
Her aunt had smiled.
“If I had done so, Pieter would have postponed our departure and they might well have cancelled his permit.”
“Why should they do that?”
“The Dutch made it dear that they would not allow Missionaries with young children to go to Bali. They did not consider it safe.”
“Aunt Agnes!” Roxana exclaimed in consternation. “What will they say now?”
Her aunt smiled.
“Perhaps we can keep them from finding out.”
This was something Roxana had never envisaged and she foresaw from the very moment her aunt told her the truth that there were a great many difficulties ahead of them.
First and most important was to keep Pieter Helderik himself from realising what was happening until they had actually landed on the Island.
This was not difficult! He was in an ecstatic state of excitement about his new life and he would, Roxana thought with a smile, not have noticed if she and his wife had turned black in the night.
All he could think about, and it filled every waking hour of his day, was the work he had dedicated himself to do amongst the people of Bali.
He had already, Roxana discovered, a wide knowledge of the Balinese and their customs.
He would sit on deck, whatever the weather was like, poring over one of the books he had brought with him, making notes and then instructing his wife and his niece on dozens, if not hundreds, of things they must do or not do to avoid causing offence to the people among whom they were now to live.
“My head is whirling with so many different taboos and restrictions,” Roxana said to her aunt.
“One of our friends in Holland told us it was ‘a land of taboos’,” Mrs. Helderik replied, “but I expect they exaggerated as people always do and we shall find once we reach there it is very like any other place and no more difficult.”
She spoke a little wearily as if she was finding it hard to echo her husband’s enthusiasm and not to let him realise that she often felt ill and was at all times very lethargic.
Roxana helped her and it was only after they had reached Bali and had settled down in the village where they were to live that Pieter Helderik learnt the truth.
He was then torn in two by elation that after so many prayers he was to have a child and his terror that because of it he might be sent back to Holland.
It was Geertruida, Mrs. Helderik’s maid, who had been with her all her married life and treated her Mistress as if she was a child who needed her care, who solved everything.
“You can leave everything to me, Juffrouw,” she said to Roxana. “I have delivered many babies in the village where I was born. My mother was the midwife and when she could not attend an expectant mother I went in her place.”
“But after the child is born?” Roxana questioned.
Geertruida smiled.
“There are children everywhere,” she said. “Who would notice one more?”
That was certainly true.
Roxana had never seen so many children or such attractive ones, but she could not help feeling that amongst the Balinese children with their honey-gold skins, a fair-haired Dutch child, if he resembled his father, would stand out like a sore thumb.
But, when Karel was born, she found him so entrancing and so attractive that she knew she would fight for him if it took every ounce of her strength and will!
That she discovered was exactly what she had to do.
Geertruida delivered Karel secretly and apparently efficiently, although she confessed that it was a difficult birth and depleted Agnes Helderik of her strength.
It was, however, Roxana thought, worth all the suffering in the world for that exquisite moment when her aunt gave her son into her husband’s arms.
There was something so reverent and so rapturous in his face that it was as if he knew himself blessed above all mortals and the wonder of his gift from God was beyond words.
As Roxana had gone from the room leaving the husband and wife and their new-born child together, she felt for a moment as if she had been present at the Nativity and half-expected to see the Star of Bethlehem shining in the sky above them.
But their happiness was short-lived.
Mrs. Helderik developed a tropical fever for which Geertruida had no cure and she grew weaker day by day.
Even so Roxana was not really alarmed until one morning she learnt that her aunt had died quietly in the night while they had all been asleep.
There was a smile on her lips and she could not have suffered.
She had in fact slipped away and left Geertruida and Roxana with the month-old Karel on their hands and a husband who was completely broken-hearted.
What made things so difficult was that, while the funeral took place and quite a number of people came to express their condolences, Karel had to be hidden away.
It was not for some months that Roxana realised that in dying her aunt had left a void in the life of her husband that could never be filled.
Because she was so quiet, so gentle and unassuming it had been easy for Roxana, like many other people they knew, to consider Agnes Helderik of little account and certainly of no consequence.
When, against her father’s wishes, she married the man she loved and adored him in a manner that made her completely subservient to his every wish, Agnes had cut herself off completely from the life that she had lived as a girl in England.
She was the daughter of a landowner with a considerable estate, who was well respected in his own County and had a great number of friends in London and her father had expected that both his daughters would make advantageous marriages.
Roxana’s mother had certainly done so in marrying Lord Barclay who, although much older than his wife, was an important figure in the Social world.
That Agnes should have preferred a penniless Dutch Missionary was beyond her father’s comprehension and that of her relatives.
“God knows where she met the man!” her father had expostulated over and over again.
But they had met and fallen in love in a way, Roxana was to learn later, that made it impossible for either of them to be aware that there was anyone else in the whole world.
Agnes had run away with her Dutch Missionary and even her elder sister had thought it regrettable and decided that in future, as they had nothing in common, there would be little point in keeping in close touch with each other.
