Britannia All at Sea. Бетти Нилс

mounting her rather elderly machine dubiously, almost fell off again because she hadn’t realised that its brakes were operated by putting the pedals into reverse, but after a rather hilarious start they pedalled off, down the drive and out into the lane, to take the cycle path running beside the road. Hoenderloo was their destination, and once there they intended to have coffee, buy stamps and have a look round its shops before going back for lunch. Their surroundings, even on a bleak November morning, were pleasant; the bare trees lining the lane formed an arch over their heads, and the woods behind them held every sort of tree.

      ‘Estates,’ explained Joan. ‘Some of them are quite small, some of them are vast. There are some lovely places tucked away behind these trees, I can tell you, but we shan’t get much chance to see many of them—Mevrouw Veske visits here and there, but only the smaller villas. There’s a gateway along here, look—something or other rampant on brick pillars and the drive curving away so that we can’t see anything at all. It’s a castle or moated house or some such thing, I asked Mevrouw Veske last time I was here.’

      Britannia was balancing precariously with an eye to the brakes. ‘Does anyone live there?’ she asked.

      ‘Oh, yes, but I haven’t a clue who it is.’

      They spent a happy hour or so in Hoenderloo, pottering in and out of its small shops, managing, on the whole, to make themselves understood very well, before having coffee and apple cake and cycling back again. They went with Mevrouw Veske to Apeldoorn in the afternoon, their hostess driving a small Fiat with a good deal of dash and verve and a splendid disregard of speed limits. She took them on a tour of the city’s streets, wide and tree-lined and, she assured them, in the summer a mass of colour, and then bustled them back to the town’s centre to give them tea and rich cream cakes and drive them home again. They played cards after dinner and went quite late to bed, and on the following day the same pleasant pattern was followed, only this time the girls cycled to the Kroller-Mullermuseum to stare at the van Gogh paintings there, and after lunch Mevrouw Veske took them by car again to Loenen so that they might see the Castle ter Horst, and in the evening they played lighthearted bridge. Britannia, who didn’t much care for cards, was glad that neither her host nor her hostess took the game seriously.

      It was raining the next morning and Mevrouw Veske was regretfully forced to postpone her plan to take them to Arnhem for the day, so they settled down to writing postcards and then tossed to see who should go to Hoenderloo and post them. Britannia lost and ten minutes later, rather glad of the little outing, she wheeled her bike out of the garage and set off in the wind and the pouring rain. She had reached the gate and was about to turn on to the cycle path when she saw something in the road, small and black and fluttering. A bird, and hurt. She cast the bike down and ran across to pick it up, the wind tearing the scarf from her head so that her hair, tied back loosely, was instantly wet, flapping round her face and getting in her eyes. It was because of that that she didn’t hear or see the approaching car, a magnificent Rolls-Royce Camargue, its sober grey coachwork gleaming in the downpour. It stopped within a foot of Britannia and she looked over her shoulder to see Professor Luitingh van Thien get out. She had the bird in her hand and said without preamble: ‘I think its wing is broken—what shall I do?’

      ‘Fool,’ said the professor with icy forcefulness, ‘darting into the road in that thoughtless fashion. I might have squashed you flat, or worse, gone into a skid and damaged the car.’ He held out a hand. ‘Give me that bird.’

      She handed it over, for once unable to think of anything to say. So dreams did come true, after all, but he hardly seemed in the mood to share her pleasure in the fact. She stood, the rain washing over her in a relentless curtain, while he examined the small creature with gentle hands. ‘I’ll take it with me,’ he said finally, and nodded briefly before getting back into his car. Britannia, made of stuff worthy of her name, followed him.

      ‘Do you live near here?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes.’ He gave her a cold look which froze the words hovering on her tongue, and drove away.

      She stood in the road and watched him go. ‘I must be mad,’ she cried to the sodden landscape around her. ‘He’s the nastiest man I’ve ever set eyes on!’ She went back to collect her bike and got on to it and rode off towards Hoenderloo. ‘But he took the bird,’ she reminded herself, ‘and he could have wrung its neck.’

      She was almost there and the rain had miraculously ceased when he passed her again, going the other way, and a few moments later had turned and slid to a halt beside her so that she felt bound to get off her bicycle.

      ‘The bird’s wing has been set; it will be cared for until it is fit to fly again.’ He spoke unsmilingly, but she didn’t notice that, she looked at him with delight.

      ‘Isn’t it incredible?’ she declared. ‘I mean, meeting like this after the sluice at St Jude’s and now you here, almost next door, as it were.’

      He looked down his splendid nose. ‘I can see nothing incredible about it,’ he said repressively. ‘It is a coincidence, Britannia, they occur from time to time.’

      He could call it that if he liked. She thought secretly of good fairies and kindly Fate and smiled widely. ‘Well, you don’t need to be so cross about it. I’ve never met such a prickly man. Have you been crossed in love or something?’

      The ferocious expression which passed over the professor’s handsome features might have daunted anyone of lesser spirit than hers. ‘You abominable girl!’ he ground out savagely. ‘I have never met anyone like you…’

      Britannia lifted a hand to tuck back a wet strand of hair. ‘What you need,’ she told him kindly, ‘is a wife and a family.’

      His mouth quivered momentarily. ‘Why?’

      She answered him seriously. ‘Well, you would have them to look after and care for and love, and they’d love you and bring you your slippers in the evening, and…’

      His voice was a well-controlled explosion. ‘For God’s sake, girl,’ he roared, ‘be quiet! Of all the sickly sentimental ideas…!’

      Two tears welled up in Britannia’s fine eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks. The professor muttered strongly in his own language, and with the air of a man goaded beyond endurance, got out of his car.

      ‘Why are you crying? I suppose that you will tell me that it’s my fault.’

      Britannia gave a sniff, wiped her eyes on a delicate scrap of white lawn and then blew her nose. ‘No, of course it’s not your fault, because you can’t help it, can you? It’s just very sad that you should think of a wife and children as being nothing more than s-sickly s-sentiment.’ Two more tears spilled over and she wiped them away impatiently as a child would, with the back of her hand.

      The professor was standing very close to her. When he spoke it was with surprising gentleness. ‘I didn’t mean that. I was angry.’

      She said in a woeful voice, ‘But you’re always losing your temper—every time we meet you rage and roar at me.’

      ‘I neither rage nor roar, Britannia. Possibly I am a little ill-tempered at times.’ The gentleness had a decidedly chilly edge to it now.

      ‘Oh, yes, you do,’ she answered him with spirit. ‘You terrify me.’ She peeped at him, to see him frowning.

      ‘I cannot believe that you are terrified of anyone or anything, certainly not of me. Try that on some other man, my dear girl, I’m not a fool.’

      She sighed. ‘Well, no—I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.’

      He looked at her with cold interest. ‘And were the tears a try-out too?’

      She shook her head slowly; she might have met him again, just as she had dreamed that she might, but it hadn’t done much good. She said quietly: ‘Thank you very much for taking care of the bird,’ and got on to her bike and wobbled off at a great rate, leaving him standing there.

      She tried very hard not to think of him during the rest