On disembarking in Amsterdam, Frederik ordered a carriage to take them to his mother’s apartment. Margriet was filled with excitement and Florrie was apprehensive.
‘You’ll like my mother, Florrie,’ Frederik said. ‘You needn’t be nervous.’
‘What should I call her, sir?’ Florrie asked. ‘Do I say ma’am, like in England?’
‘You say mevrouw – muh-frow. You’ll soon become used to it,’ he added, seeing consternation written on her face. ‘And you can also say alstublieft – alst oo bleeft – for “if you please, ma’am”.’
‘I’ll never get used to it, sir.’ Florrie was beginning to panic.
‘I’ll help you, Florrie,’ Margriet said. ‘Florence, I mean.’ She giggled. ‘We’ll practise together, because I can’t speak Dutch either.’
Gerda swept her granddaughter up in her arms when they arrived, giving her a great squeeze and several kisses and then patting Florrie on the shoulder in welcome so that the girl immediately felt more comfortable but still unsure of what role was expected of her. Gerda too had taken the trouble to improve her English. ‘I will call you Floris,’ she said to Florrie. ‘It means the same.’
Frederik stayed until midday to have lunch with them and was surprised when his mother set a place for Florrie. He saw that Florrie was slightly embarrassed, but she helped to dish up and when they were finished at table she cleared away and washed the dishes, taking it upon herself to become a servant once more. It will be all right, he thought, standing up to leave.
‘I must go,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow or the day after. Will you be all right without your papa, little Daisy?’
‘Of course she will,’ his mother answered. ‘This afternoon, Margriet, we are going to meet your tante Anna, and your cousins are going to show you the flower gardens.’
Margriet beamed with delight and Frederik smiled. He was pleased that he had brought her.
‘I am going into the tulip business, Moeder,’ he said. ‘I’ve been asked about supplying them to growers in England.’
‘How interesting!’ she said. ‘Bulbs or flowers?’
‘Bulbs, probably. It isn’t yet decided.’
He took his leave then, giving Margriet a kiss, and booked in at his usual hotel as there wasn’t enough room for him to stay at his mother’s. Then he called at the Amsterdam office and said he would come in again the following day as he wished to discuss several things; within minutes he was walking away from the building and once round the corner he set off at a run to catch a train to Utrecht. I’m like a lovesick schoolboy, he thought as the train rumbled and chuffed towards its destination. What was the matter with him?
It was not yet a year, he mused as the hired carriage bumped and swayed towards Gouda. Not a year since Nicolaas died – yet what had he said? That he wanted his wife to be loved, so why did he, Frederik, feel as though he was betraying him by having such feelings for her? He put his hands to his forehead. It was too soon to say anything, however desperate he might be to declare his love and affection. He took a sudden breath. But I am a married man and this feeling within me is totally immoral.
Miriam answered the door to his knock. She invited him in, explaining that her mistress had taken Klara to visit friends but wouldn’t be long. She offered to make coffee for Frederik in the meantime.
‘Should I come back?’ he asked, but she shook her head and said that it would be quite all right for him to wait.
‘Mevrouw was very much cheered by your last visit, meneer; please come in.’ She led him into the sitting room and he sat facing the garden, which was full of pots of daffodils, hyacinth and early tulips. It was a very pleasant room, lit today by bright sunshine, and he noticed an upright piano by the back wall that he couldn’t recall from his previous visits.
Miriam brought him coffee and cake, and he was just wiping the last crumbs from his mouth when he heard the front door open and Cornelia and Klara calling to Miriam. The maid answered them with the news that they had a visitor.
Cornelia put her head round the door, a slight apprehension in her expression until she saw who the visitor was, when he was delighted to see her face break into a warm smile. ‘Frederik! How lovely.’ She came towards him, holding out both her hands to clasp his as he rose to greet her. ‘I’m so pleased to see you.’
‘You look well, Cornelia,’ he said, his voice husky with nervous emotion; he was overcome at seeing her again. ‘So very well.’
‘I am well,’ she said. ‘My spirits have lifted with the arrival of spring. The trees are in leaf, and my garden is flourishing. It was such a long, long winter – I thought we were never coming to the end of it. Those never-ending dark nights … well, you saw how I was. I was so grateful for your last visit.’
She invited him to sit again, and after opening the doors into the garden she took a chair next to him. ‘Miriam has given you coffee, I see. Can I get you anything else?’
‘Nothing, thank you.’
‘But you will stay the night?’ She lowered her voice. ‘I promise that my behaviour won’t be as foolish as last time.’
He shook his head. ‘You were not foolish,’ he insisted, speaking softly. ‘You were unhappy and distressed and needed a friend and I happened to come along at the right time.’ He was about to say that he would always be there if she needed him when the door opened and Klara came in.
‘Lieveling,’ Cornelia said, ‘come and say hello to Meneer Vandergroene. Tell him what you have been doing, why don’t you?’
Frederik stood up as Klara dipped her knee. ‘Call me Frederik, please,’ he said, putting out his hand. ‘Or Uncle Freddy? Would you prefer that?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said. ‘I would.’ She smiled, and turned round to point at the piano. ‘That was my oma’s piano and she’s given it to me. I’m learning to play.’
‘I used to play when I was young,’ Cornelia remarked. ‘So did my mother, but she no longer does and said that Klara could have the piano. She loves it, don’t you, Klara?’
The little girl nodded. ‘I could play you something if you like, Uncle Freddy. I’m not very good yet but Mama says I will improve, don’t you, Moe?’
‘Of course you will.’ Her mother smiled at Klara as she went to the piano and then at Frederik. Lowering her voice again, she murmured, ‘She has lost her sadness since learning to play. It has made a great difference to her, and Hans too is mixing with his friends again.’
‘They just needed time,’ he said. ‘It is a great healer.’
He broke off as Klara began to play and his eyebrows lifted in delight. He could recall his sister Anna playing the same simple piece when they were young, and remembered too that he and Bartel used to tease her whenever she hit a wrong note. He clapped his hands when she had finished. ‘Well done, Klara,’ he said kindly. ‘That was lovely.’ She got down from the stool and dipped her knee and asked her mother if she might go upstairs.
He told Cornelia that he had brought Margriet with him on this trip, with a maid to accompany her on the voyage.
‘I wish you could have brought her here,’ she said wistfully. ‘I would love to meet her.’
‘Perhaps another time,’ he said. ‘She’s meeting my mother for the first time, and my sister and her children, and maybe my brother and his family too. But I would like to bring her; she and Klara would get on well together I think.’ What would Rosamund make of that, he thought.
‘So do you have to get back to her tonight? Or can you stay for supper?’
‘I don’t have to rush back. I have business to attend to in Gouda tomorrow, and in any case I am staying at a hotel in Amsterdam. My mother doesn’t have enough room for all of us.’
‘Then you must stay with us. There’s no need for you to stay in hotels when we have space. It will be lovely if you can, and you can see Hans too. He needs a man to talk to.’ A shadow fell across her face, and she bent her head. ‘As I do too. I also need grown-up company.’
When Hans came in he seemed very pleased to see Frederik and shook his hand, giving a little bow. He sat down to talk and said that he would soon be going to school in Amsterdam. ‘My father’s old school, and yours too, meneer,’ he said. ‘I shall have to board, as it’s too far to come home every day.’ He looked towards the kitchen, where his mother had gone to supervise supper, and lowered his voice. ‘I shall worry about my mother, though, alone here with Klara, so I will come home every weekend until I am satisfied that she’s all right.’
‘That is most praiseworthy,’ Frederik said approvingly. ‘But your mother is a strong woman and I think she will cope very well.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘And you know that I will call and see her whenever I come over from England.’
Hans nodded. ‘Thank you, meneer. I hoped you would say that. She looks forward to your visits.’
Frederik suggested that Hans too might like to call him Frederik or Freddy. He didn’t mention uncle as the boy would soon be twelve and probably thought of himself too grown up for that, but Hans grinned and asked if he could call him Uncle Freddy anyway. He added that he would like to speak only in English, and Frederik said he could do that.
The four of them ate supper together. Frederik hadn’t brought a change of clothing but only the razor blade and shaving brush that he kept in a small cardboard box in his travelling case; he hadn’t wanted Cornelia to think that he assumed he would be staying. Cornelia had come down in a dark blue full-skirted silk gown patterned with small flowers, with a pointed waistline and a low neckline that emphasized her creamy skin, which was bare of jewellery.
Afterwards, Hans and Frederik began a game of chess and Klara played the piano whilst Cornelia sat and watched them. Presently Klara went up to bed, and Cornelia got up and poured two glasses of wine.
‘I’m going up now, Moe,’ Hans said as they reached stalemate and declared the game a draw. ‘I’ve to be up early in the morning. I have an exam tomorrow.’ He turned to Frederik. ‘I might see you in the morning, sir, or perhaps tomorrow evening?’
‘I have to be in Amsterdam tomorrow, but perhaps before I return to England I might call again. But in any case I will be back before the end of the month to collect Margriet, and I will see you then.’
Hans nodded. ‘Good. I’ll look forward to it. Goodnight, Uncle Freddy.’
‘What a splendid young man he is,’ Frederik said after he had gone. ‘I would have loved to have had such a son.’
‘He is quite special.’ Cornelia smiled. ‘But then I am very biased.’
‘And quite rightly so. We should be proud of our children, and yours are a credit to you.’
‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘And to Nicolaas too.’
‘Of course.’ He sighed. ‘What a good fellow he was.’
She nodded but didn’t say anything, and they sat quietly drinking their wine. Then he asked, ‘Won’t you play me something?’
She shrugged and laughed. ‘I’m rather rusty.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Please do – I never hear music. We have a piano, but Rosamund is too shy to play in front of anyone.’
‘All right,’ she said reluctantly, rising from her chair. ‘Will you turn the pages?’
He laughed. ‘You’ll have to tell me when.’
He took his glass with him and stood slightly behind her as she began, taking sips of the full-bodied red wine. Cornelia faltered a little at first but as her confidence grew she began to play more fluently. Frederik didn’t really care if she made mistakes; he was happy just to stand near her, watching her fingers on the keys and the movement of her head and shoulders as she gently swayed to the melody.
He reached across to the nearby dresser and put his glass down as she indicated that he should turn the page, and leaned over her to do so. He was mesmerized by the wisps of hair that had escaped from the braids around her head and were touching the back of her neck, quivering as an aspen leaf might. I’m drunk, he thought, on one glass of wine. He gently touched the nape of her neck and his fingers trembled as he teased the wisps of hair between them. Cornelia stirred slightly but wavered only briefly in her playing as he ran his hands down the smooth slope of her bare shoulders to the narrow silk piping of her neckline.
Her hands paused in their movement and she slowly turned round to face him. Her lips were parted as his were too.
‘Forgive me, Lia,’ he whispered. ‘It’s more than I can bear.’
She stood up, and with the piano stool between them she gazed at him. Then, with barely a second’s pause, she leaned towards him and kissed him tenderly on his lips.
Upstairs in his room, Hans lay sleepless, waiting as he always had since his father’s death for the click of the latch on his mother’s door. Once he heard her he could relax, knowing she was safely in bed, although he often heard her weeping. He had heard the faint notes of the piano and was pleased that she was playing again, and now he heard footsteps on the stair. Two pairs of feet, the quiet tread along the corridor to her room and the click of the latch to open the door and close it. Only one door.
He gave a huge sigh and slid down beneath the sheets. He was glad. At last, his mother would be happy again. He was sure of it.