my love,’ and smiled at her in such a way that a pang smote Cressida’s heart. It would be wonderful to be loved like that…
‘The first meal Harry ever cooked for me was a stew,’ Friso told her. ‘We ate it in a flooded house under the dyke while the tide came in; it had everything in it and it smelled like heaven.’ He put a spoon into Toby’s small fist and smiled again at his wife before he went on to talk of something else.
They didn’t stay long after lunch, which was a pity because Cressida, robbed of a cosy chat with Harriet, hadn’t been able to discover anything about Doctor van der Teile. True, there had been frequent references to mutual friends, but she was still in the dark as to where he lived and what exactly he did. A consultant—well, she knew that, but in which branch of the profession? and had he a practice beside the one he shared—if you could call it sharing—with his partners? And what was his home like and where was it? She wondered if the girl he was going to marry approved of it. She made her farewells with real regret and got into the Bentley.
‘Nice people,’ commented the doctor as he took the road to the Afsluitdijk and Alkmaar. ‘I’ve known Friso for years, of course—Harry came to Franeker to spend a holiday with a friend and they met there and married in no time.’
They were on the Afsluitdijk now, tearing along its length in the gloom of the afternoon, but Cressida didn’t notice the gloom; just for a little while she felt happy and blissfully content; somehow her companion had, in a few hours, lightened her grief. Probably when they next met they would fall out, but for the moment they were enjoying each other’s company.
She found Alkmaar enchanting. They parked the car and walked through its narrow streets, looking at the cheese market and the Weigh House, and waiting for the figures on the topmost gable to ride out and encircle the clock when it struck the hour. If it hadn’t been so cold, Cressida would have gone back and had another look, but a mean little rain was falling now and the suggestion of tea was welcome. They went to a small tea-room in the main street, almost empty of customers but cosily warm and pretty, with its pink lampshades and small tables. A tiny jug of milk was brought with their miniature teapots, and Cressida, just beginning to get used to the weak, milkless tea the doctors drank, was delighted. Nor did the cake trolley fail in its delights. She chose an elaborate confection of nuts and chocolate and whipped cream and ate it with the gusto of a schoolgirl on a half-term treat, something which caused her companion a good deal of hidden amusement.
It was getting dark as they went into the street again and walked back to the car, and it was as they started back in the direction of Groningen that Cressida inquired artlessly: ‘Do you have far to go after you drop me off?’
‘No great distance.’ And that was all he said, and that in a cool voice which didn’t invite any more questions. Probably he thought that she was being curious, but he need not have sounded so snubbing. In a polite, wooden voice she remarked: ‘What a pity it is dark so quickly, but I have enjoyed my day—it was so kind…’
‘It’s not over yet, and I’m not kind. I felt like company.’
Her pleasure in the day evaporated and gave way to temper, so that she said tartly: ‘How convenient for you that I accepted your invitation, although now that I come to think about it, you didn’t invite me—you took it for granted that I’d come.’ She added sweetly, ‘Pray don’t expect that a second time.’
‘Who said anything about a second time?’ he wanted to know silkily, and put his foot down hard, so that the Bentley shot forward at a pace to make her catch her breath. Nothing would have made her ask him to drive more slowly, so she sat as still as a mouse and as stiff as a poker until he remarked carelessly: ‘It’s all right, you don’t need to be frightened.’
If it had been physically possible, she would have liked to box his ears for him.
They left Afsluitdijk behind them and he slowed the car through Franeker and Leeuwarden and slowed it still more as they neared the village. Cressida, mindful of her manners, had sustained a conversation throughout the latter part of their journey; she would dearly have loved to sulk, but that would have been childish and got her nowhere; dignity was the thing. It made her sit up very straight beside him and talk nothings in a high voice, hurrying from one harmless topic to the next, giving him no time to do more than answer briefly to each well-tried platitude which passed her lips. Dignity, too, helped her to mount the steps to the front door beside him, still talking, to pause at the door and plunge into stilted thanks which he ruthlessly interrupted.
‘I’m not coming in,’ he told her. ‘I had thought that we might have dined together, but at the rate you are going, you would have had no social conversation left, and by the time we had finished the soup you would have been hoarse.’
Cressida’s mouth was open to speak her mind, but she didn’t get the chance. ‘My fault,’ he said, and didn’t tell her why, and when Juffrouw Naald opened the door he turned without a word and went back to the car. Cressida went indoors feeling as though she had been dropped from a great height and had the breath knocked out of her. It wasn’t a nice sensation and she didn’t go too deeply into it. She had her supper with the two doctors and went to bed early, expecting to lie awake with her disturbing thoughts, but surprisingly she didn’t; she was conscious of only one vivid memory; Doctor van der Teile’s lonely back as he had walked away from her on the doorstep.
CHAPTER THREE
THE FIRST THING she thought of when she woke up the next morning was Doctor van der Teile, and the second that he had made no mention of the Royal General, nor asked her a single question about herself. She got up and dressed rapidly, telling herself rather peevishly that quite likely he wasn’t in the least interested in her—and why should she mind that? She wasn’t interested in him. She scowled horribly at her lovely reflection and went downstairs to thump her typewriter with such speed and energy that Doctor van Blom, when he joined her presently, begged her not to tire herself out so early in the day.
They made good progress during the next few days; the book was taking shape, and Doctor van Blom, now that there was someone to sort out his muddle of notes and reduce his flowery prose to matter-of-fact English, was happier than ever. He worked too hard, of course; he and Doctor Herrima had scant leisure and quite often not enough sleep, and Cressida found herself wondering if their senior partner realised just how busy they were. And he? Most likely leading the well-ordered life of a top consultant, with only urgent cases disturbing his nights; junior doctors to do the spadework for him in hospital and almost certainly a nurse and secretary to help him in his consulting rooms. She worried away about it while it nagged the back of her mind, and when one morning, just as she was putting the finishing touches to a chapter before her coffee break, she heard the Bentley slide to a standstill outside the house, she got to her feet with the half-formed resolve to speak to him about it eddying around her head.
But half way to the door she paused. Mingled with the doctor’s deep voice, addressing Juffrouw Naald at the door, was a woman’s voice, light and laughing, saying something which made the doctor laugh in his turn. Cressida went back to her desk and put a clean sheet of paper in her machine and began on the next chapter. She would give coffee a miss; she had plenty of work to get on with and it would be a frightful waste of time to go to the sitting-room…the door opened and Doctor van Blom put his elderly head round it. ‘Cressida, coffee is ready—why do you not come?’
‘Well, I thought I’d get on with the next chapter—it’s going so well…’
‘All the more reason for you to take a little break.’ He smiled and held the door wide so that she had no choice but to go with him.
The moment she entered the sitting-room she wished
