Michelle Douglas - Rags To Riches - Her Duty To Please

When Bas came for the tea tray and gave her the message from the doctor she thanked him and said that she would be down presently. When he had gone she went to the gilt edged triple mirror on the dressing table and took a good look. Viewed from all sides, her face looked much as usual. Slightly puffy eyelids could be due to the headache. Perhaps another light dusting of powder on her nose, which was still pink at its tip… She practised one or two calm and dignified expressions and rehearsed several likely answers to the cross questioning she expected, and, thus fortified, went down to the study.

The doctor was sitting at his desk, but he got up as she went in.

He said at once, ‘Please sit down, Miss Pomfrey, I owe you an apology. It was unpardonable of me to speak to you in such a fashion, to give you no chance to explain—’

Araminta chipped in, ‘It’s quite all right, doctor, I quite understand. You must have been very worried.’

‘Were you not worried, Mintie?’

He so seldom called her that that she stared at him. His face was as impassive as it always was; he was looking at her over his spectacles, his brows lifted in enquiry.

‘Me? Yes, of course I was. I was scared out of my wits, if you must know—so afraid that the boys would suddenly realise that we might be shut up for hours and it wasn’t an adventure, after all.’ She added matter-of-factly, ‘Of course, I knew you’d come sooner or later.’

‘Oh, and why should you be so sure of that?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know—at least, I suppose… I don’t know.’

‘I hope you accept my apology, and if there is anything—’

‘Of course I accept it,’ she interrupted him again. ‘And there isn’t anything. Thank you.’

‘You are happy here? You do not find it too dull?’

‘I don’t see how anyone could feel dull with Peter and Paul as companions.’

She looked at him and smiled.

‘You have been crying, Miss Pomfrey?’

So she was Miss Pomfrey again. ‘Certainly not. What have I got to cry about?’

‘I can think of several things, and you may be a splendid governess, Miss Pomfrey, but you are a poor liar.’

She went rather red in the face. ‘What a nasty thing to say about me,’ she snapped, quite forgetting that he was her employer, who expected politeness at all times, no doubt, ‘I never tell lies, not the kind which harm people. Besides, my father has always told me that a weeping woman is a thorn in the flesh of any man.’

The doctor kept a straight face. ‘A very sensible opinion,’ he murmured. ‘All the same, if it was I who caused your tears, I’m sorry. I have no wish to upset you or make you unhappy.’

She sought for an answer, but since she couldn’t think of one, she stayed silent.

‘You behaved with commendable good sense.’ He smiled then. ‘Dr Jenkell assured me that you were the most level-headed young woman he had ever known. I must be sure and tell him how right he was.’

If that’s a compliment, thought Araminta, I’d as soon do without it. She wondered what would have happened if she had been pretty and empty-headed and screamed her head off. Men being men, they would have rushed to her rescue, poured brandy down her throat and offered a shoulder for her to cry into. They would probably have called her poor little girl and made sure that she went to her bed for the rest of the day. And the doctor was very much a man, wasn’t he? Being plain had its drawbacks, thought Araminta.

The doctor, watching her expressive face, wondered what she was thinking. How fortunate it was that she was such a sensible girl. The whole episode would be forgotten, but he must remember to make sure that her next free day was a success.

He said now, ‘I expect you want to go to the boys. I told them that they might have supper with us this evening, but that they must have their baths and be ready for bed first.’

Dismissed, but with her evening’s work already planned, Araminta went in search of the boys and spent the next hour supervising the cleaning of teeth, the brushing of hair and the riotous bath. With the boys looking like two small angels, she led them downstairs presently. There had been little time to do anything to her own person; she had dabbed her nose with powder, brushed her own hair, and sighed into the mirror, aware that the doctor wouldn’t notice if she wore a blonde wig and false eyelashes.

‘Not that I mind in the least,’ she had told her reflection.

Her supposition was regrettably true, he barely glanced at her throughout the meal, and when he did he didn’t see anyone other than the dependable Miss Pomfrey, suitably merging into the background of his life.

The next days were uneventful, a pleasant pattern of mornings at school, afternoons spent exploring and evenings playing some game or other. When their uncle was at home, the boys spent their short evenings with him, leaving her free to do whatever she wanted.

She supposed that she could have gone and sat in the little room behind the drawing room and watched the TV, but no one had suggested it and she didn’t like to go there uninvited. So she stayed in her room, doing her nails, sewing on buttons and mending holes in small garments. It was a pleasant room, warm and nicely furnished, but it didn’t stop her feeling lonely.

It was towards the end of the week that Paul got up one morning and didn’t want his breakfast. Probably a cold, thought Araminta, and kept an eye on him.

He seemed quite his usual self when she fetched them both from school, but by the evening he was feverish, peevish and thoroughly out of sorts. It was a pity that the doctor had gone to the Hague and wouldn’t be back until late that evening. Araminta put him to bed and, since the twins didn’t like to be separated, Peter had his bath and got ready for bed, too. With Bas’s help she carried up their light supper.

But Paul didn’t want his; his throat was sore and his head ached and when she took his temperature it was alarmingly high. She sat him on her lap, persuaded him to drink the cold drinks Bas brought and, while Peter finished his supper, embarked on a story. She made it up as she went along, and it was about nothing in particular, but the boys listened and presently Paul went to sleep, his hot little head pressed against her shoulder.

Peter had come to sit beside her, and she put an arm around him, carrying on a cheerful whispered conversation until he, reassured about his brother, slept too.

It was some time later when Bas came in quietly to remind her that dinner was waiting for her.

‘I’m sorry, Bas, but I can’t come. They’re both sound asleep and Paul isn’t well. They’re bound to wake presently, then I can put them in their beds… Will you apologize to Jet for me? I’m not hungry; I can have some soup later.’

Bas went reluctantly and she was left, her insides rumbling, while she tried not to think of food. Just like the doctor, she thought testily, to be away just when he was wanted. She wouldn’t allow herself to panic. She had coped with childish ailments at the children’s convalescent home and knew how resilient they were and how quickly they got well once whatever it was which had afflicted them had been diagnosed and dealt with. All the same, she wished that the doctor would come home soon.

Minutes ticked themselves slowly into an hour, but she managed a cheerful smile when Bas put a concerned head round the door.

‘They’ll wake soon,’ she assured him in a whisper. But they slept on: Peter sleeping the deep sleep of a healthy child, Paul deeply asleep too but with a mounting fever, his tousled head still against her shoulder. She longed to changed her position; she longed even more for a cup of tea. It did no good to dwell on that, so she allowed her thoughts free rein and wondered what the doctor was doing and who he was with. She hoped that whoever it was wasn’t distracting him from returning home at a reasonable hour.