Betty Neels: A Dream Came True

“Your clothes are rather dull, but then of course you have to buy things which will wear well, but I must admit that you make the most of them.” She got up from the dinner table. “I shall read this evening and you shall play to me.”

Jemima played Ravel, Bach, My Fair Lady, Bitter Sweet and then back to Ravel and finally Delius.

“That’s very sad,” observed her listener as she finished and sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap. “Do you feel sad, Jemima?” It was so unexpected a question coming from Lady Manderly, who had never expressed any interest in her before, that Jemima couldn’t think of a ready answer. “You are in love, perhaps?”

Jemima looked down at her hands and willed herself not to blush. “That would hardly fit into my life at present, Lady Manderly. Would you like me to continue playing?”

Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of Betty Neels in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality. She was a wonderful writer, and she will be greatly missed. Her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

THE ROOM WAS small and shabby, but comfortable enough, with the firelight flickering on the unimaginative furniture and the small table with the remains of a meal upon it. Two people were sitting there, a young man with a thin, spectacled face and a girl somewhat older, with straight shoulder-length mousy fair hair and a face which just missed being pretty by reason of a slightly turned up nose and a too wide mouth. But the mouth curved gently and her eyes, hazel and thickly fringed, were quite beautiful. She sat very quietly, her hands, small and capable and a little roughened from housework, clasped loosely on the table before her. When she spoke her voice was brisk but pleasantly soft.

‘Well, love, that’s settled, then. We’ll give up this flat—I never liked it much, did you? You go off to Boston and I’ll find a job to keep me going until you come home again,’ and when her brother made an impatient gesture: ‘No, Dick, it’s no good arguing any more, it’s a heavensent chance for you and you simply must take it, and what’s two years? You’ll only be twenty-three…’ she ignored his muttered ‘And you’ll be twenty-eight,’ and went on firmly: ‘You’ll probably be a famous scientist by then and we’ll live in a nice house in the country and I’ll keep hens…’

‘But that’s years away, Jemima—what’s going to happen to you in the meantime?’ He sighed heavily. ‘You’re not trained for anything, are you?’

Rather like a magician she produced a folded newspaper and passed it to him. ‘Read that,’ she begged him, and tapped the advertisements column. ‘I’m cut out for it—I shall go there tomorrow.’

Her brother read it, frowning. ‘But this wouldn’t do—it’s drudgery!’

‘Rubbish.’ If her voice faltered a little he didn’t notice it. ‘I’ve walked dogs all my life, haven’t I, and read aloud to Mother and Father every day for years, I can answer the phone intelligently and write letters and play cards. I shall do very nicely. It’ll be an old dame with a Peke and a hearing aid—and the money is good.’

She got up, a girl not much above middle height and rather on the plump side, and began to clear the table.

‘I’ve got to get your suit from the cleaners and fetch your shoes. Will you have enough money until they pay you?’

‘I’ll manage; I shan’t know anyone to start with, shall I? Besides, I plan to work.’

‘Yes, love, but you can’t work all the time. I wonder what Boston is like? America for that matter—mind you write at least once a month.’ She grinned at him. ‘And take most of what’s left in the bank just to be on the safe side.’

‘What about you?’

‘Oh, I’ll do fine. I’ve enough clothes and there’ll be enough to keep me going until I get my wages. It says “Good salary” and if I live in I’ll not have a care in the world.’ Jemima spoke cheerfully and inwardly contemplated the future with some doubt; she was a practical girl, not given to moaning or wanting the moon, but she did wish that she had been trained to do something. But there had been no need—her parents had assured her of that each time she had brought the subject up. Her father was a Professor of History at one of the colleges at Oxford, living in a delightful old house which went with the job, and her mother had been only too delighted to leave more and more of the housekeeping to her. And she hadn’t complained; she had a small allowance, a number of friends and no prospect of marrying; she was neither clever enough nor pretty enough to catch the eye of younger men, and the older ones were all married. She hoped that one day she would marry, but here she was, twenty-six last birthday and apart from a middle-aged don, a widower with three teenage children, no proposals. And for the last four years she hadn’t minded at all. When her father died her mother had somehow lost her zest for living too, and Jemima had taken over the running of the house, the paying of the bills and the shopping, not thinking too much about the future. Authority had allowed them to stay on in the house which had been their home for so long and Dick had finished his studies and done brilliantly and somehow she had managed very well on the pension which they now lived on. But when her mother died suddenly, life changed drastically. They had to leave their home; there was no more pension and only a very little money left in the bank. They had sold the furniture and moved into a poky little flat so that Dick could continue his studies while he waited to see if he had won a place at Boston University, where he would have a grant sufficient to keep him while he worked for still another degree. He had done even better; he had been offered a place there with the prospect of a good job at the end of it, and Jemima had urged him to snap it up, brushing aside his doubts about her own future.

All the same, she had scoured the advertisements for several weeks now trying to find something which would suit her few talents, and at last something had turned up and she had every intention of applying for it. The advertisement stipulated an interview, in the first instance at an address in Bloomsbury. She had looked it up and found it to be a street close to the British Museum, a fairly familiar ground to her, for she had been there on several occasions with her father. It sounded very respectable.