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 to offer her—he had brought her along to be vetted by his aunt before offering it to her and presumably she was satisfactory. She sighed with relief. ‘Oh, so you are going to offer me the job after all.’
He looked astonished, but only for a moment; the astonishment was replaced by amusement. ‘With my little daughter in mind?’
‘Well, of course.’ Olympia hesitated. ‘You did say that she was badly in need of someone to mother her.’ She went a little pink. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything—it was only a guess because that’s why I thought you wanted to get to know me, and anyway, even if…’ She looked down at her clenched hands in her lap. ‘Aunt Maria wouldn’t allow it.’
He strolled across the room and sat down facing her. ‘I asked you to come here with me because I wanted to talk to you and I dislike holding private conversations in taxis or some tea-shop or other, not because I wanted Aunt Betsy to look you over.’ He smiled nicely at her. ‘She knows that I am quite capable of doing my own looking over. And you made no mistake, it does concern you and Ria, but not, I think, in quite the manner you have assumed. I have no intention of offering you a job, Olympia. I should like you to marry me.’
She had the peculiar sensation that she wasn’t sitting on the enormous chair at all, but floating in nothing. The room came and went in a rather alarming manner and the silence which followed his words seemed to go on for ever. Presently she found her voice to say: ‘You did say marry you?’
‘Yes.’ He was sitting back, quite at ease.
There were a great many things she could have said, but she discarded them all in favour of a bald: ‘Why?’
‘Because it is obviously such a suitable arrangement for both of us…’
She didn’t let him finish. ‘You can’t really mean that!’ and knew as she said it that he most certainly did.
He continued just as though she had said nothing at all. ‘You see, Olympia, I need someone to care for Ria, to love her, if possible, and check her tantrums and, as you so aptly put it, mother her. I need someone to run my house too—I have an admirable housekeeper, but she cannot play hostess to my friends or arrange dinner parties or make a home of it. And you—you want to get away from that domineering… I beg your pardon—from your aunt and that dreary home. You told me yourself that you had promised to remain there unless someone asked you to marry him. Well, I am that someone; we shall both be helping each other, and I think we have seen sufficient of each other now to know that we shall get along very well. You won’t see a great deal of me, but being a nurse, you are already aware of the kind of life I lead, and we neither of us complicate the situation by our emotions.’
Olympia received this dry-as-dust speech in silence and took her time in answering it. ‘I don’t quite understand why you haven’t just asked me to be a governess—I mean you don’t really want a wife, do you?’
He considered gravely before he replied. ‘A wife in the accepted sense, no. But as I told you, I need someone to run my home and act as hostess and of course, care for Ria, someone who is a good friend, who will fit into my way of living.’ His smile was kind; he was quite unaware of her poor trampled feelings. ‘Besides, I enjoy your company, Olympia. You are restful and sensible and even-tempered.’
She felt almost insulted; there were surely other adjectives he might have used. Who wanted to be any of these worthy things? And he was wrong about her even temper; she was aware that beneath her serene front she was nicely on the boil.
‘You might come to dislike me in a month or so—even after a number of years.’
He shook his head and declared positively: ‘No, my opinions do not change easily. I like you, Olympia, and shall always do so, whatever happens.’
He had an answer for everything and she knew nothing at all about him, only the few bare facts he had told her, and yet she trusted him, and he had said that he would like her for his wife—an unusual kind of wife, she thought ruefully, but half a loaf was better than no bread. She was unhappy in the house on Primrose Hill and as far as she could see into the future, she had no hope of leaving it unless she married. Aunt Maria was barely middle-aged and likely to live for many years to come. She had an unhappy little picture of herself in ten, twenty years’ time, with not even youth to give her ordinary face an edge of attractiveness. Undoubtedly this was her chance—she frowned as she remembered the old people she looked after. ‘There’s no one to do my work if I go,’ she told him in a small voice. ‘Mrs Cooper’s only part-time, there has to be a trained nurse…besides, there will be no one at night to get up…’
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. ‘You get up at night as well as working during the day?’
‘Well, I have to.’ She spoke almost defensively. ‘If something happens that needs a trained nurse.’
‘So that is why you have shadows under your eyes—you are also too thin.’
She brushed this aside almost impatiently; what did it matter if she was thin and plain with it? He wasn’t marrying her for her looks, was he? She spoke suddenly. ‘It’s not because you pity me, is it?’
His lips twitched a little at the fierceness of her look. ‘No, I don’t pity you, Olympia.’ He had got up and was standing by one of the windows, looking at her. ‘I think you mustn’t hunt around in your head for reasons which aren’t reasons at all. I have told you why I should like to marry you; there are no other reasons—none at all. But I have taken you by surprise, haven’t I? Perhaps you would like a little time to decide?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I’ll call and see
