LITMIR.BIZ

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is fourteen.’

      There were a dozen questions on Lavinia’s tongue, but it wasn’t really her business. All the same, she did want to know what had happened to his wife. The brown-haired girl must have read her thoughts, for she went on: ‘His wife died ten years ago, more than that perhaps, she was, how do you say? not a good wife. She was not liked, but the professor, now he is much liked, although he talks to no one, that is to say, he talks but he tells nothing, you understand? Perhaps he is unhappy, but he would not allow anyone to see that and never has he spoken of his wife.’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps he loved her, who knows? His daughter is very nice, her name is Sibendina.’

      ‘That’s pretty,’ said Lavinia, still thinking about the professor. ‘Is that a Friesian name?’

      ‘Yes, although it is unusual.’ Neeltje swallowed the last of her coffee. ‘Let us go to the sitting-room and watch the televisie.’

      Lavinia met the professor two days later. She had been to her first Dutch lesson in her off duty, arranged for her by someone on the administrative staff and whom probably she would never meet but who had nonetheless given her careful instruction as to her ten-minute walk to reach her teacher’s flat. This lady turned out to be a retired schoolmistress with stern features and a command of the English language which quite deflated Lavinia. However, at the end of an hour, Juffrouw de Waal was kind enough to say that her pupil, provided she applied herself to her work, should prove to be a satisfactory pupil, worthy of her teaching powers.

      Lavinia wandered back in the warmth of the summer afternoon, and with time on her hands, turned off the main street she had been instructed to follow, to stroll down a narrow alley lined with charming little houses. It opened on to a square, lined with trees and old, thin houses leaning against each other for support. They were three or four stories high, with a variety of roofs, and here and there they had been crowded out by much larger double-fronted town mansions, with steps leading up to their imposing doors. She inspected them all, liking their unassuming façades and trying to guess what they would be like on the other side of their sober fronts. Probably quite splendid and magnificently furnished; the curtains, from what she could see from the pavement, were lavishly draped and of brocade or velvet. She had completed her walk around three sides of the square when she was addressed from behind.

      ‘I hardly expected to find you here, Miss Hawkins—not lost, I hope?’

      She turned round to confront Professor ter Bavinck. ‘No—at least…’ She paused to look around her; she wasn’t exactly lost, but now she had no idea which lane she had come from. ‘I’ve been for an English lesson,’ she explained defensively, ‘and I had some time to spare, and it looked so delightful…’ She gave another quick look around her. ‘I only have to walk along that little lane,’ she assured him.

      He laughed gently. ‘No, not that one—the people who live in this square have their garages there and it’s a cul-de-sac. I’m going to the hospital, you had better come along with me.’

      ‘Oh, no—that is, it’s quite all right.’ She had answered very fast, anxious not to be a nuisance and at the same time aware that this large quiet man had a strange effect upon her.

      ‘You don’t like me, Miss Hawkins?’

      She gave him a shocked look, and it was on the tip of her tongue to assure him that she was quite sure, if she allowed herself to think about it, that she liked him very much, but all she said was: ‘I don’t know you, Professor, do I? But I’ve no reason not to like you. I only said that because you might not want my company.’

      ‘Don’t beg the question; we both have our work to do there this afternoon, and that is surely a good enough reason to bear each other company.’ He didn’t wait to hear her answer. ‘We go this way.’

      He started to walk back the way she had come, past the tall houses squeezed even narrower and taller by the great house in their centre—it took up at least half of that side of the square, and moreover there was a handsome Bentley convertible standing before its door.

      Lavinia slowed down to look at it. ‘A Bentley!’ she exclaimed, rather superfluously. ‘I thought everybody who could afford to do so drove Mercedes on the continent. I wonder whose it is—it must take a good deal of cunning to get through that lane I walked down.’

      ‘This one’s wider,’ her companion remarked carelessly, and turned into a short, quite broad street leading away from the square. It ran into another main street she didn’t recognize, crowded with traffic, but beyond advising her to keep her eyes and ears open the professor had no conversation. True, when they had to cross the street, he took her arm and saw her safely to the other side, but with very much the tolerant air of someone giving a helping hand to an old lady or a small child. It was quite a relief when he plunged down a narrow passage between high brick walls which ended unexpectedly at the very gates of the hospital.

      ‘Don’t try and come that way by yourself,’ he cautioned her, lifted a hand in salute and strode away across the forecourt. Lavinia went to her room to change, feeling somehow disappointed, although she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps, she told herself, it was because she had been wearing a rather plain dress; adequate enough for Juffrouw de Waal, but lacking in eye-catching qualities. Not that it would have mattered; the professor hadn’t bothered to look at her once—and why should he? Rather plain girls were just as likely two a penny in Holland as they were in England. She screwed her hair into a shining bun, jammed her cap on top of it, and went on duty, pretending to herself that she didn’t care in the least whether she saw him again or not.

      She saw him just one hour later. There had been an emergency appendix just after she had got back to theatre, and she had been sent back to the ward with the patient. She and one of the ward nurses were tucking the patient into her bed, when she glanced up and saw him, sitting on a nearby bed, listening attentively to its occupant. The ward nurse leaned across the bed. ‘Professor ter Bavinck,’ she breathed, ‘so good a man and so kind—he visits…’ she frowned, seeking words. ‘Mevrouw Vliet, the mastectomy—you were at the operation and you know what was discovered? When that is so, he visits the patient and explains and listens and helps if he can.’ She paused to smile. ‘My English—it is not so bad, I hope?’

      ‘It’s jolly good. I wish I knew even a few words of Dutch.’ Lavinia meant that; it would be nice to understand what the professor was saying—not that she was likely to get much chance of that.

      She handed over the patient’s notes, and without looking at the professor, went back to theatre. Zuster Smid had gone off duty, taking most of her staff with her, there were only Neeltje and herself working until nine o’clock. She had been sorting instruments while her companion saw to the theatre linen, when the door opened and Professor ter Bavinck walked in. He walked over to say something to Neeltje before he came across the theatre to Lavinia.

      ‘Off at nine o’clock?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      His mouth twitched faintly. ‘Could you stop calling me sir? Just long enough for me to invite you out to supper.’

      ‘Me? Supper?’ Her eyes were round with surprise. ‘Oh, but I…’

      ‘Scared of being chatted up? Forget it, dear girl; think of me as a Dutch uncle anxious to make you feel at home in Amsterdam.’

      She found herself smiling. ‘I don’t know what a Dutch uncle is.’

      ‘I’m vague about it myself, but it sounds respectable enough to establish a respectable relationship, don’t you agree?’

      A warning, perhaps? Letting her know in the nicest way that he was merely taking pity on a stranger who might be feeling lonely?

      ‘Somewhere quiet,’ he went on, just as if she had already said that she would go with him, ‘where we can get a quick snack—I’ll be at the front entrance.’

      ‘I haven’t said that I’ll go yet,’ she reminded him coldly, and wished that she hadn’t said it, for the look he bent on her was surprised and baffled too, so that she rushed

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