Ring in a Teacup. Betty Neels

      Mies poured their after supper coffee. ‘Truly? Then we will also speak Dutch and you will learn quickly.’

      They spent the rest of the evening telling each other what they did and whether they liked it or not while the doctor retired to his study to read his post. ‘I shall marry,’ declared Mies, ‘it is nice to work for Papa but not for too long, I think. I have many friends but no one that I wish to marry.’ She paused. ‘At least I think so.’

      Lucy thought how nice it must be; so pretty that one could pick and choose instead of just waiting and hoping that one day some man would come along and want to marry one. True, she was only twenty-three, but the years went fast and there were any number of pretty girls growing up all the time. Probably she would have to settle for someone who had been crossed in love and wanted to make a second choice, or a widower with troublesome children, looking for a sensible woman to mind them; probably no one would ask her at all. A sudden and quite surprising memory flashed through her head of Mr der Linssen and with it a kind of nameless wish that he could have fallen for her—even for a day or two, she conceded; it would have done her ego no end of good.

      ‘You dream?’ enquired Mies.

      Lucy shook her head. ‘What sort of a man are you going to marry?’ she asked.

      The subject kept them happily talking until bedtime.

      Lucy spent the next two days renewing her acquaintance with Amsterdam; the actual city hadn’t changed, she discovered, only the Kalverstraat was full of modern shops now, crowding out the small, expensive ones she remembered, but de Bijenkorf was still there and so was Vroom and Dreesman, and C. & A. The pair of them wandered happily from shop to shop, buying nothing at all and drinking coffee in one of the small coffee bars which were all over the place. They spent a long time in Krause en Vogelzang too, looking at wildly expensive undies and clothes which Mies had made up her mind she would have if she got married. ‘Papa gives me a salary,’ she explained, ‘but it isn’t much,’ she mentioned a sum which was almost twice Lucy’s salary—‘but when I decide to marry then he will give me all the money I want. I shall have beautiful clothes and the finest linen for my house.’ She smiled brilliantly at Lucy. ‘And you, your papa will do that for you also?’

      ‘Oh, rather,’ agreed Lucy promptly, telling herself that it wasn’t really a fib; he would if he had the money. Mies was an only child and it was a little hard for her to understand that not everyone lived in the comfort she had had all her life.

      ‘You shall come to the wedding,’ said Mies, tucking an arm into Lucy’s, ‘and there you will meet a very suitable husband.’ She gave the arm a tug. ‘Let us drink more coffee before we return home.’

      It was during dinner that Doctor de Groot suggested that Lucy might like to see the clinic he had set up in a street off the Haarlemmerdijk. ‘Not my own, of course,’ he explained, ‘but I have the widest support from the Health Service and work closely with the hospital authorities.’

      ‘Every day?’ asked Lucy.

      ‘On four days a week, afternoon and evenings. I have my own surgery each morning—you remember it, close by?’

      ‘That’s where I work,’ interrupted Mies. ‘Papa doesn’t like me to go to the clinic, only to visit. I shall come with you tomorrow. Shall we go with you, Papa, or take a taxi?’

      ‘Supposing you come in the afternoon? I shall be home for lunch and I can drive you both there, then you can take a taxi home when you are ready.’

      The weather had changed in the morning, the bright autumn sunshine had been nudged away by a nippy little wind and billowing clouds. The two girls spent the morning going through Mies’ wardrobe while the daily maid did the housework and made the beds and presently brought them coffee.

      She prepared most of their lunch too; Lucy, used to giving a hand round the house, felt guilty at doing nothing at all, but Mies, when consulted, had looked quite surprised. ‘But of course you do nothing,’ she exclaimed, ‘Anneke is paid for her work and would not like to be helped, but if you wish we will arrange the table.’

      The doctor was a little late for lunch so that they had to hurry over it rather. Lucy, getting into her raincoat and changing her light shoes for her sensible ones, paused only long enough to dab powder on her unpretentious nose, snatch up her shoulder bag, and run back into the hall where he was waiting. They had to wait for Mies, who wasn’t the hurrying sort so that he became a little impatient and Lucy hoped that he wouldn’t try and make up time driving through the city, but perhaps he was careful in Amsterdam.

      He wasn’t; he drove like a demented Jehu, spilling out Dutch oaths through clenched teeth and taking hair’s-breadth risks between trams and buses, but as Mies sat without turning a hair, Lucy concluded that she must do the same. She had never been so pleased to see anything as their destination when he finally scraped to a halt in a narrow street, lined with grey warehouses and old-fashioned blocks of flats. The clinic was old-fashioned enough too on the outside, but once through its door and down the long narrow passage it was transformed into something very modern indeed; a waiting room on the left; a brightly painted apartment with plenty of chairs, coffee machine, papers and magazines on several well-placed tables and a cheerful elderly woman sitting behind a desk in one corner, introduced by the doctor as Mevrouw Valker. And back in the passage again, the end door revealed another wide passage with several doors leading from it; consulting rooms, treatment rooms, an X-ray department, cloakrooms and a small changing room for the staff.

      ‘Very nice,’ declared Lucy, poking her inquisitive nose round every door. ‘Do you specialise or is it general?’

      ‘I suppose one might say general, although we deal largely with Reynaud’s disease and thromboangiitis obliterans—inflammation of the blood vessels—a distressing condition, probably you have never encountered it, Lucy.’

      She said, quite truthfully that no, she hadn’t, and forbore to mention that she had slept through a masterly lecture upon it, and because she still found the memory of it disquieting, changed the subject quickly. The first patients began to arrive presently and she and Mies retired to an empty consulting room, so that Mies could explain exactly how the clinic was run. ‘Of course, Papa receives an honorarium, but it is not very much, you understand, and there are many doctors who come here also to give advice and help him too and they receive nothing at all, for they do not wish it—the experience is great.’ She added in a burst of honesty: ‘Papa is very clever, but not as clever as some of the doctors and surgeons who come here to see the patients.’

      ‘Do they pay?’ Lucy wanted to know.

      ‘There are those who do; those who cannot are treated free. It—how do you say?—evens up.’

      Lucy was peering in the well equipped cupboards. ‘You don’t work here?’

      ‘No—it is not a very nice part of the city and Papa does not like me to walk here alone. When we wish to go we shall telephone for a taxi.’

      Lucy, who had traipsed some pretty grotty streets round St Norbert’s, suggested that as there would be two of them they would be safe enough, but Mies wasn’t going to agree, she could see that, so she contented herself with asking if there was any more to see.

      ‘I think that you have seen all,’ said Mies, and turned round as her father put his head round the door. ‘Tell Mevrouw Valker to keep the boy van Berends back—she can send the patient after him.’ He spoke in English, for he was far too polite to speak Dutch in front of Lucy, and Mies said at once: ‘Certainly, Papa. I’ll go now.’

      The two girls went into the passage together and Mies disappeared into the waiting room, leaving Lucy to dawdle towards the entrance for lack of anything better to do. She was almost at the door when it opened.

      ‘Well, well, the parson’s daughter!’ exclaimed Mr der Linssen as he shut it behind him.

      ‘Well, you’ve no reason to make it sound as though I were exhibit A at an old-tyme exhibition,’ snapped Lucy, her temper fired by the faint