cards. You play also?’
‘Well, yes, though I’m not very good, I’m afraid, but I don’t expect…that is, I daresay your uncle would like to have you to himself.’
They all nodded agreement so cheerfully that she felt quite disappointed.
It was evident that they were on their best behaviour; they took Beth over the house, much larger than it looked from the outside, showing her everything, even the cupboards and attics. They would have shown her their mother’s room as well as their uncle’s if she had given them the smallest encouragement. She declined a conducted tour of the kitchen too, merely asking where it was, just in case she should need to go there, though that seemed unlikely because Mrs Silver, stopping for a chat when she came to call the children to their supper, informed her in a kindly way that she was expected to do nothing at all save be with the children. ‘And a great relief that will be to us all, miss, if I might say so—dear little things though they are and quite unnaturally quiet this evening, but that’s because you’re here. It will be nice to be able to get on with our work knowing they’re in good hands.’ With which heartening words, she nodded and smiled and went off to the kitchen.
Supper was in a small room at the back of the house, given up to the children’s use while they were staying there. It was a pleasant place, furnished comfortably and obviously well lived in. Beth, presiding over the supper table, pouring hot chocolate and cutting up Alberdina’s scrambled egg on toast into small pieces, found herself enjoying the children’s company; it was a nice change to talk about fast cars, the dressing of dolls and the star footballers instead of the everlasting shop which was talked at the hospital, and even when she was home, William liked to tell her about his cases; many a meal she had eaten to the accompaniment of a blow-by-blow account of the appendix which had ruptured, the ulcer which had perforated on the way to theatre, the stitching he had been allowed to do…it was pleasant to forget all that and listen to the children’s chatter. To sit at such a table with children such as these, but her own, watching them gobble with healthy appetites, hearing their high, clear voices, would be wonderful, she thought wistfully. She was deep in a daydream when she was roused by Hubert’s asking why her eyes were a different colour from everyone else’s.
‘I don’t really know,’ she told him. ‘It’s just that they’re mauve—everyone has different coloured eyes…’
‘We all have blue eyes,’ said Dirk, ‘not Alberdina, of course, hers are brown, but Mama and Papa have blue eyes too and so has Uncle Alexander.’
‘My doll, Jane, has brown eyes,’ Marineka tossed her fair hair over her shoulder. ‘It is to do with genes,’ she announced importantly.
Beth looked at the little girl with something like awe. She hadn’t known anything about genes until she was in the sixth form of the rather old-fashioned school her father had sent her to, but then of course she hadn’t a doctor for an uncle and her father, moreover, hadn’t held with girls knowing too much. She said hastily, before she became involved in a conversation concerning genetics in which she felt reasonably sure she would make but a poor show: ‘Have you any pets at home?’
It was a successful red herring; there were several cats, all with outlandish Dutch names, and a dog called Rufus, as well as a tame rabbit or so, goldfish in a pond in the garden and a canary, although the latter belonged to someone called Mies whose function in their home was not explained to her. It was an easy step from that for Dirk to describe his uncle’s two dogs, Gem and Mini, black labradors, and when Beth commented on their names, he gave her a sharp look. ‘They’re twins,’ he told her, and waited.
‘Oh, I see—Gemini, the heavenly twins! Very clever of someone to have thought of that.’
Her worth had obviously increased in his eyes. ‘Not many people think of that. Uncle Alexander has a cat too, called Mops and two horses as well as a donkey, and there’s a pond with ducks. We feed them when we go to stay with him.’
It would have been nice to have heard more, but what would be the good? It would only stir up a vague feeling which she supposed was envy. She suggested mildly that it was about time Alberdina went to her bed, and offered to help her take a bath, a suggestion which was received with such a lack of surprise that she concluded that the children were quite in the habit of having someone to look after them; no wonder the professor had been so anxious to find a substitute for their mother.
By half past eight they were tucked up, the two boys sharing a large room next to her own, the little girls across the landing. Beth, a little untidy after her exertions, retired to her room to change her sweater for a blouse and do her hair and face before going downstairs. Mrs Silver had said dinner at half past eight, and she was hungry.
It was lonely, though, after the bustle and noise of the hospital canteen, sitting at the oval table in the quiet dining room, with only Mrs Silver popping in and out with a succession of delicious foods, accompanying each dish with the strong encouragement to eat as much as she could. ‘For I do hear that those hospitals don’t feed their nurses all that well. Stodge, I daresay, miss—I don’t hold with all that starch; here’s a nice little soufflé, as light as a feather even though I do say it myself, you just eat it up.’
She trotted off again, with the advice that she would bring coffee to the sitting room in ten minutes’ time, and left Beth to eat up the soufflé and then dash upstairs to make sure that all the children were asleep. They were; she went down to the sitting room and drank her coffee, and then, feeling guiltily idle, went to examine the book shelves which filled one wall. Early bed, she decided, and a book; there was a splendid selection for her to choose from.
She was trying to decide between the newest Alistair Maclean and Ira Morris’s Troika Belle, which she had read several times already, when she heard steps in the hall and turned, a book in each hand, as the door opened and the professor came in.
He looked magnificent; a black tie did something for a man—it certainly did something for him. Not that he needed it, for he had the kind of looks which could get away with an old sweater and shapeless slacks, though Beth very much doubted if he ever allowed himself to be seen in such gear.
‘Presumably the sight of me has rendered you speechless,’ he commented dryly. ‘I’ve wished you good evening twice and all I get is a blank purple stare.’
She put the books down and came into the centre of the room. ‘I’m sorry…I was thinking. Is this your special room? Would you like me to go?’
‘My dear good girl, of course not. My study is at the back of the hall—out of bounds to the children, but consider yourself invited to make use of it whenever you wish—only don’t touch my desk.’
She smiled widely. ‘Is it a mess? Doctors seem to like them that way. I was going up to bed, actually. The children have been splendid—and how good they are at their English, even Alberdina.’ She made her way to the door. ‘I rather think they wake early in the morning and I want to be ready for them.’
He had taken up a position before the empty fireplace, his eyes on her face. ‘I’ve some messages from Martina about the children, could you sit down for a minute while I pass them on?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She perched on the edge of a large chair and folded her hands in her lap. ‘I hope Mevrouw Thorbecke is getting on well?’
‘Excellently.’ He pressed the old-fashioned bell by the fireplace and took a chair opposite hers. ‘I’ve been to a very dull dinner party, do you mind if I have some coffee and something to eat?’ He broke off as Mrs Silver came into the room.
They were obviously
