Winter of Change

And when he had stationed himself by the bed: ‘Mary Jane, this is Fabian van der Blocq, the nephew of my old friend. He is to be your guardian after my death.’

Her eyes widened. ‘My guardian? But I don’t need a guardian, Grandfather! I’m twenty-two and I’ve never met Mr—Mr van der Blocq in my life before, and—and…’

‘You’re not sure if you like me?’ His voice was bland, the smile he gave her mocking.

‘Since you put the words into my mouth, I’m not sure that I do,’ Mary Jane said composedly. ‘And what do you have to be the guardian of?’

‘This house will be yours, my dear,’ explained her grandfather, ‘and a considerable sum of money. You will be by no means penniless and there must be someone whom I can trust to keep an eye on you and manage your business affairs.’

‘But I—’ She paused and glanced across the bed to the elegant figure opposite her. ‘Oh, you’re a lawyer,’ she declared. ‘I wondered if you might be.’

Mr van der Blocq corrected her, still bland. ‘You wondered wrongly. I’m a surgeon.’

She was bewildered. ‘Are you? Then why…?’ she went on vigorously, ‘Anyway, Grandfather isn’t going to die.’

The old gentleman in the bed made a derisive sound and Mr van der Blocq curled his lip. ‘I am surprised that you, a nurse, should talk in such a fashion—you surely don’t think that the Colonel wishes us to smother the truth in a froth of sickly sentiment?’

Mary Jane drew her delicate pale eyebrows together. ‘You’re horrible!’ she told him in her gentle voice. It shook a little with the intensity of her feelings and she gave him the briefest of glances before turning back to her grandfather, whom she discovered to be laughing weakly.

‘Don’t you mind,’ she demanded, ‘the way this—this Mr van der Blocq talks?’

Her grandfather stopped laughing. ‘Not in the least, my dear, and I daresay that when you know him better you won’t mind either.’

She tossed her untidy head. ‘That’s highly unlikely. And now you’re tired, Grandfather—you’re going to have another nap before lunch.’

To her surprise he agreed quite meekly. ‘But I want you back in the afternoon, Mary Jane—and Fabian.’

She agreed, ignoring the man staring at her while she rearranged blankets, shook up pillows and made her grandfather comfortable. This done to her satisfaction, she made for the door. Mr van der Blocq, beating her to it by a short head, opened it with an ironic little nod of his handsome head, and without looking at him she went through it and down the stairs to where Doctor Morris was waiting.

They drank their coffee in an atmosphere which was a little tense, and when the doctor got up to go, Mary Jane got up too, saying, ‘I’ll see you to your car, Uncle Bob,’ and although he protested, did so. Out of their companion’s hearing, however, she stopped.

‘Look,’ she said urgently, ‘I don’t understand—why is he to be my guardian? He doesn’t even live in England, does he? and I don’t know him—besides, guardians are old…’

The doctor’s eyes twinkled. ‘At a rough guess I should say he was nudging forty.’

‘Yes? But he doesn’t look…’ She didn’t finish the sentence. ‘Well, it all seems very silly to me, and Grandfather…’ She lifted her eyes to her companion. ‘He’s really not going to get any better? Not even if we do everything we possibly can?’

‘No, my dear, and it will be quite soon now. I’ll be back this evening. You know where to find me if you want me.’

She went back slowly to the sitting room and Mr Van der Blocq, lounging by the window, turned round to say: ‘I don’t suppose you got much help from Doctor Morris, did you?’ He went on conversationally, ‘If it is of any comfort to you, I dislike the idea of being your guardian just as much—probably more—than you dislike being my ward.’

Mary Jane sat down and poured more coffee for them both. ‘Then don’t. I mean, don’t be my guardian, there’s no need.’

‘You heard your grandfather. You will be the owner of this house and sufficient money to make you an attractive target for any man who wants them.’ He came across the room and sat down opposite her. ‘I shall find my duties irksome, I dare say, but you can depend upon me not to shirk them.’ He sat back comfortably. ‘Do you mind if I smoke my pipe?’

She shook her head, and suddenly mindful of her duties as a hostess, asked, ‘Where are you staying? Or are you perhaps only here for an hour or two?’ She added hastily, ‘You’ll stay to lunch?’

A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘Thank you, I will—and I’m not staying anywhere,’ his dark eyes twinkled. ‘I believe the Colonel expected that I would stay here, but if it’s too much trouble I can easily go to a hotel.’

‘Oh no, not if Grandfather invited you. I’ll go and see about lunch and get a room ready.’ She got to her feet. ‘There’s sherry on the sofa table, please help yourself.’

Lily, she discovered when she got to the kitchen, had surpassed herself with Duchesse potatoes to eke out the cold chicken and salad, and there was a soup to start with; Mary Jane, feverishly opening tins to make a fruit salad, hoped that their guest wouldn’t stay too long; she found him oddly disquieting and she wasn’t even sure if she liked him, not that that would matter overmuch, for she supposed that she would see very little of him. She wasn’t sure what the duties of a guardian were, but if he lived in Holland he was hardly likely to take them too seriously.

Ten minutes later, making up the bed in one of the guest rooms, she began to wonder for how long she was to have a guardian—surely not for the rest of her life? The idea of Mr van der Blocq poking his arrogant nose into her affairs, even from a distance, caused her to shudder strongly. She went downstairs, determined to find out all she could as soon as possible.

CHAPTER TWO

HER INTENTION MET with no success however. At lunch, her questions, put, she imagined, with suitable subtlety, were parried with a faint amusement which annoyed her very much, and when in desperation she tried the direct approach and asked him if, in the event of his becoming her guardian, it was to last a lifetime, he laughed and said with an infuriating calm:

‘Now, why couldn’t you have asked that in the first place? I have no intention of telling you, however. I imagine that your grandfather will explain everything to you presently.’

Mary Jane looked down her unassuming little nose. ‘How long are you staying?’ she asked with the icy politeness of an unwilling hostess. A question which met with an instant crack of laughter on the part of her companion. ‘That depends entirely upon your grandfather’s wishes, and—er—circumstances.’

She eyed him levelly across the table. ‘You don’t care tuppence, do you?’ she declared fiercely. ‘If Grandfather dies…’

She was unprepared for the way in which his face changed, and the quietness of his voice. ‘Not if, when. And why pretend? Your grandfather knows that he is dying. He told me this morning that his one dread as he got older was that he would be stricken with some lingering complaint which would compel him to lie for months, dependent on other people. We should be glad that he is getting his wish, as he is.’ His eyes swept over her. ‘Go and do your face up, and look cheerful, he expects us in a short while, and don’t waste time arguing that he must have another nap; I happen to know that he won’t be happy until he has had the talk he has planned.’

Mary Jane got to her feet. ‘You’ve no right to talk to me like this,’ she said crossly, ‘and I have every intention of tidying myself.’

She walked out of the room, and presently, having redone her face and brushed her hair until it shone, she put it up as severely as possible, under the impression that it made her look a good deal older, and went back downstairs, having first peeped in on the Colonel, to find him dozing. So she cleared away the lunch dishes and was very surprised when Mr van der Blocq carried them out to the kitchen, and because Lily had gone home, washed up, looking quite incongruous standing at the sink in his beautifully cut suit.

The Colonel was awake when they went upstairs; Mary Jane sat him up in his bed, arranging him comfortably with deft hands and no fuss while Mr van der Blocq looked on, his hands in his pockets, whistling softly under his breath.

‘And now,’ said the Colonel with some of his old authority, ‘you will both listen to me, but first I must thank you, Fabian, for coming at once without asking a lot of silly questions—it must have caused you some inconvenience, though I suppose you are now of sufficient consequence in your profession to be able to do very much as you wish. Still, the journey is a considerable one—did you stop at all?’

His visitor smiled faintly. ‘Once or twice, but I enjoy long journeys and the roads are quiet at night.’

Mary Jane cast him a surprised look. ‘You’ve been travelling all night?’ she wanted to know. ‘You haven’t slept?’

He gave her an impatient glance, his ‘no’ was nonchalant as he turned back to the old man in the bed. ‘Enough that I’m here, I’m sure that Doctor Morris wouldn’t wish us to waste your strength in idle chatter.’ A remark which sent the colour flaming into Mary Jane’s cheeks, for it had been so obviously directed against herself.

Her grandfather closed his eyes for a moment. ‘You’re quite right. Mary Jane, listen to me—this house and land will be yours when I die, and there is also a considerable amount of money which you will inherit—that surprises you, doesn’t it? Well, my girl, your mother and father wouldn’t have thanked me if I had reared a feather-brained useless creature, depending upon me for every penny. As it is, you’ve done very well for yourself, and as far as I’m concerned you can go on with your nursing if you’ve set your mind on it, though I would rather that you lived here and made it home,’ he paused, a little short of breath, ‘You’re not a very worldly young woman, my dear, and I’ve decided that you should have a guardian to give you help if you should need it and see to your affairs, and cast an eye over any man who should want to marry you—you will not, in fact, be able to marry without Fabian’s consent.’ He paused again to look at her. ‘You don’t like that, do you? but there it is—until you’re thirty.’

Mary Jane swallowed the feelings which could easily have choked her. She said, keeping her voice calm and avoiding Mr van der Blocq’s eye, ‘And your cousin in Canada, Grandfather? I always thought that he was—that he would come and live—I didn’t know about the money.’

Her grandparent received this muddled speech with a frown and said with some asperity, ‘Dead. His son’s dead too, I believe—there was a grandson, I believe, but no one bothered to let me know. Besides, you love the place, don’t you, Mary Jane?’

She swallowed the lump in her throat. If he was going to be coolly practical about his death, she would try her best to be the same.

‘Yes, Grandfather, you know I do, but I don’t need the money—I’ve my salary…’

‘Have you any idea what a house like this costs in upkeep? Mrs Body, Lily, the rates, the lot—besides, you deserve to have some spending money after these last three years living on the pittance you earn.’

He closed his eyes and then opened them again, remembering something.

‘You witness what I’ve said, Fabian? You understand your part in the business, eh? And you’re still willing? I would have asked your uncle, but that’s not possible any more, is it?’

Mr van der Blocq agreed tranquilly that he was perfectly willing and that no, it was not possible for his uncle to fulfil the duties of a guardian. ‘And,’ he concluded, and his voice now held a ring of authority and firmness, ‘if you have said all you wished to say, may I suggest that you have a rest? We shall remain within call. Rest assured that your wishes shall be carried out when the time comes.’