They trooped down to their high tea and joined the other members of the coach party in the basement dining-room; they were mostly elderly couples with a sprinkling of middle-aged ladies on their own who treated the six of them with a guarded friendliness and greeted them now with looks of mild reproof.
“We spent a delightful afternoon doing the canal trip,” one of the single middle-aged ladies told them. “It’s something you shouldn’t have missed. Most instructive.” She began to enumerate the various sights they had seen, and they, making formidable inroads into the cold meat and ham on the table, murmured and muttered in reply.
“And what did you do?” asked a cosy matron kindly.
“Went to the shops—they are super.” Alice took another slice of bread and buttered it lavishly. “But Rose and Sadie went for a walk and got caught in the storm. They came back in a Rolls-Royce…”
Sadie looked daggers at her but Rose answered composedly enough, “Yes, we were lucky enough to be offered shelter by someone who kindly drove us back here.”
“But you didn’t know him?” one of the single ladies, a wispy faded blonde, asked with faint excitement.
“Not then, we didn’t,” explained Rose in her sensible way, “but we do now. We were lost you see and had to take shelter.”
An old man with glasses pronounced it his opinion, that foreign parts, while interesting, were unreliable. A remark which closed the conversation for the simple reason that it was difficult to answer.
They weren’t to leave until directly after lunch on the following day and since there was enough money over after Rose had paid their bill, the six of them voted to take a trip along the city’s canals. They prudently packed their bags before going to their beds; there would be ample time in the morning for sight-seeing, but much as they had enjoyed their brief stay they had no wish to be left behind with almost no money in their pockets.
They got themselves up early, had the coffee and rolls and cheese the hotel provided and made a brisk beeline for the Central Station from which the boats left.
There weren’t too many people about at nine o’clock in the morning; they got on to one of the first boats to leave and settled down to enjoy themselves.
It was a splendid morning and the old houses, viewed from the water, looked at their very best. They viewed the smallest house in the city, the Munt, and the patrician houses lining the canals, with suitable interest while the guide, switching from English to German to French with enviable ease, pointed out the highlights of the trip. They were back again soon after ten o’clock and trooped down Damrak to the Dam Square, intent on coffee before they went back to the hotel. They were waiting to cross the square, thick with traffic and noisy little trams when Sadie caught Rose by the arm.
“Look,” she cried loudly. “There he is, over there…”
Too far away for him to see them, Rose judged, watching the Rolls slide between two trams with Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane at the wheel. Besides, what would be the point, even if he did? They weren’t going to meet again.
They lunched at the hotel, cheese rolls and coffee because the hotel didn’t cater for cooked meals at midday, and then they boarded their coach. Rose felt a twinge of regret as they were driven through the city’s heart and its suburbs; streets of neat houses and flats, all exactly alike and not in the least resembling the lovely old houses in the centre of the city. At least she had investigated the inside of one of them, and very nice it was too. She allowed her thoughts to dwell on the pleasures of living in such a house, lapped around with comfort, no, not comfort, luxury. She said out loud, “I wonder if he was married?”
Sadie, sitting beside her, chuckled. “Well, of course he would be—I daresay he had a handful of children too, on the top floor with Nanny.”
Rose was surprised to find that the idea quite upset her.
The coach kept to the motorway, giving her little time to do more than glimpse the villages to be seen on either side of it. “Next time I come, if I ever do,” she told Sadie, “I shan’t go on a single motorway; I’m sure there is heaps to see.”
“Well, I don’t suppose you’ll come again,” said Sadie comfortably; she sounded faintly smug; more or less engaged to a solid young man with his feet firmly on the first rung of banking, her own future was already cut out for her. She added, “I mean, you are sure to get offered a sister’s post—there’s Sister Coutts on children’s medical due to retire, and the junior night sister leaving to get married at Christmas.”
Rose resolutely brushed away the vague daydreams floating around inside her head. She didn’t much care for medical nursing and nor did she like night duty; she would like to work on the children’s surgical ward, but chance was a fine thing; the ward sister there was young enough to be there for another twenty years, and certainly had no intention of marrying. Rose consoled herself with the thought that she might be going there as a staff nurse. Perhaps when she had more experience she would look for a sister’s post at another hospital, as far away from her home as possible. Not that it was home any more. Even after two years it hurt to think of her father; they had lived so happily together after her mother died until quite out of the blue, just after she had started training, he had told her that he was going to marry again.
Her stepmother was still quite young, a well preserved forty, with a pretty face and a charm which she lavished on Rose when there was anyone there to see it. They had disliked each other on sight, but Rose had done her best to understand her father’s remarriage and had tried hard to like her stepmother. It wasn’t until her father died suddenly and her stepmother married again within six months of his death, that Rose admitted to herself that she didn’t like her and never would. She couldn’t stand Mr Fletcher, a tall thin man, who doted on her stepmother but treated Rose with cold severity. It was like having two strangers in her home and during the following year she had gradually stopped spending her days off and holidays there, feeling an interloper each time she went to the village near Tunbridge Wells. Instead she had answered her mother’s elder sister’s invitation to visit her and now she felt more at home there in Northamptonshire. Her aunt lived at Ashby St Ledgers, in a comfortable little house, a rather sterner version of Rose’s mother, but kind and affectionate and ready to welcome her niece. She was an enthusiastic gardener, a staunch supporter of the church and had a finger in every village pie and was looked after by a little dumpling of a woman Rose remembered from her childhood when she had been taken on a visit to Aunt Millicent. Both ladies, in their way, made much of her, her aunt in an off-hand manner which didn’t quite conceal her very real affection, and Maggie with a cosy warmth made apparent by the nourishing meals she dished up and the hot milk she insisted Rose should take to bed each night.
“I’d like to see more flesh on your bones,” she would mutter, pressing the nourishing drink into Rose’s hands when she went to bed, and each time Rose went to stay, she would return with a large cake in her case; devoured with gratitude by Rose and her friends the moment it was unpacked.
She thought of her aunt now; she would be going to see her in a few weeks’ time but first she would have to settle down on whichever ward she was sent to. Hopefully back on children’s surgical, she had been there for three months as a student nurse and loved it. She turned to say something to Sadie but that young lady was asleep, her pretty mouth slightly open, her curls, rather untidy now, framing her charming face. No wonder the Dutchman had been so taken with her, thought Rose, quite without envy.
The bus stopped just before they reached Zeebrugge and they all got out and had tea and a biscuit; the tea—a teabag in a saucer with a glass of almost boiling water, and no milk, was refreshing but not at all like the dark strong brew they