Status Updates From Caroline's Waterloo

Caro’s soft heart was wrung, but she went on ruining her knitting in what she hoped was a cool manner. ‘I didn’t mean you to be upset,’ she explained gruffly. ‘You see, I had to know…well, I thought that if you m-minded about me at all, you would look for me, but if you didn’t then I’d know I had to go away.’ She dropped three stitches one after the other and added mournfully: ‘I haven’t put it very clearly.’

She hesitated, suddenly feeling unwanted and longing for a reassuring word. He had spoken briskly, as he might have spoken to a casual stranger who had stopped to give a hand, only she felt sure that he would have added his thanks.
‘Do as I say, Caroline!’ and this time he sounded urgent and coldly angry.

You must know that I have a great regard for you Radinck.’ She looked across at him her loving heart in her eyes and unaware of it. ‘You have no need to reproach yourself; you made it very clear before we married that you didn’t want to change your life and I agreed to that. I’m very content.’
His eyes were searching. ‘Are you? Perhaps I have done wrong in marrying you Caroline—you might have found some younger man.’

He said seriously ‘You have no need to—you have a quite violent virus infection of the respiratory system.’
It was silly to get upset but somehow he had made her feel like a patient in a hospital bed; someone to be cured of an ailment with a completely impersonal care. Her eyes filled with tears until they dripped down her cheeks and although she put up an impatient hand to rub them away, there seemed no end to them.

‘I wish you would refrain from this continuous “Yes, Radinck”, as though I were a tyrant!’
‘Oh, but you’re not,’ Caro assured him warmly. ‘That’s the last thing you are; it’s just that you’ve lived so long alone that you’ve forgotten how to talk. Never mind, you’ll soon get into the habit again now that I’m here.’ .. he said something in a subdued roar, something nasty in his own language, she judged, watched him go.

Radinck crumpled up the letter in his hand and hurled it at the wastepaper basket.
‘What an abominable girl you are, Caroline! As I said some time ago, you have this gift of putting me in the wrong.’

Radinck maintained a steady flow of casual talk as they drove home. Caro listened when it seemed necessary and, once in the house, bade him a quiet goodnight and started up the staircase. She was halted halfway up by his query as to whether she wouldn’t like a cup of coffee with him, but she paused only long enough to shake her head, glad that he was too far away to see the tears in her eyes.

At the top of the stairs she wished him goodnight and was quite unprepared for his sudden swoop and his hard, quick kiss. She turned without a word and fled into her room, aware that any other girl with her wits about her would have known how to deal with the situation.

‘What exactly do you do?’ she asked carefully. ‘That’s if you don’t mind telling me.’
He didn’t answer her at once but remarked testily: ‘Why is it that so many remarks you make appear to put me in the wrong, Caroline?’ and before she could deny this: ‘I am a physician, specialising in heart conditions, and the various diseases consequent to them.’

His leave taking was casual. No one looking at the two of them, thought Caro, would have guessed that they were going to be married within a week. She watched him get into his car and drive away, her eyes filled with tears. She knew nothing about him; where he was staying, what he was doing in London, if he had friends…the only thing she was sure of was that she loved him enough to bear with his ways.

‘You can of course buy anything you want when we return, but I presume you will want something for the wedding.’ His voice held a faint sneer.
‘I won’t disgrace you,’ she told him quietly and was pleased to see him look a little taken aback. If she hadn’t loved him so much she would have been furious.
He begged her pardon stiffly and she said kindly: ‘Oh, that’s all right—it’ll be super to have some decent clothes.'

‘You understand then; I have no need to explain myself further. And above all, no romantic nonsense!’ He gave her a bleak look which wrung her soft heart. ‘You will have a pleasant life; the servants are already devoted to you and you will have my friends and sufficient money. And in return I ask for companionship when I need it, someone to sit at my table and play hostess to my guests and run my home as I like it.’

‘You are an extraordinary girl,’ he declared irritably, ‘you have no looks, no witty conversation, quite deplorable clothes—and yet I find that I am able to talk to you—indeed, I find myself wishing to discuss the various happenings of my day with you. I am not in love with you and I have no wish to be; ’

‘What I have to say will take five minutes—less.’
Caroline folded her small, nicely cared for hands in her lap and gave him her full attention. He didn’t move from the door. ‘Will you marry me, Caroline?’
She stayed very still. After a moment she asked: ‘Me? Is this a joke or something, Professor?’

‘I’ve upset your household: I can quite see that I’ve been a perfect nuisance to you. I’m very grateful for all you’ve done for me—and your kindness—but I’m quite able to go back now and… Well, thank you again.’
His harsh laugh made her jump. Quite forgetting to be meek, she said severely: ‘And there’s no need to laugh when someone thanks you!’

His voice was silky and his voice cold. ‘Miss Tripp, you have disrupted my household—when one considers that I have done my best to help you and I find your behaviour intolerable.’
She stared back at him, her lip caught between her teeth, because it was beginning to tremble. After a long moment she said: ‘I’m sorry, Professor.’
He turned on his heel. ‘I’m glad to hear it—I hope you will mend your ways.

How rude he is, thought Caro, and then: poor man, he must be very unhappy.

‘This is never your car?’ she asked too surprised to be polite.
He turned his head and gave her an unfriendly look. ‘Is there any reason why it shouldn’t be?’ he wanted to know, coldly.
She said kindly ‘You don’t need to get annoyed. It’s only that you don’t look the kind of man to drive a fast car.’ She added vaguely ‘A professor…’
‘And no longer young,’ he snapped. ‘I have no interest in your opinions, Miss Tripp.'

Underneath all that pedantic talk there was a quite ordinary man; for some reason, the professor was concealing him. After he had gone she lay back on her pillows, suddenly sleepy, but before she closed her eyes she decided that she would discover what had happened to make him like that. She must make friends with Noakes…

Caro had listened to this precise speech with astonishment; she hadn’t met anyone who talked like that before—it was like reading the instructions on the front of a medicine bottle

He talked like a professor, but he didn’t look like one; he was enormous and she had always thought of professors as small bent gentlemen with bald heads and untidy moustaches, but Professor Thoe van Erckelens had plenty of hair, light brown, going grey, and cut short. Caro thought wistfully that he was exactly the kind of man every girl hoped to meet one day and marry

‘This girl’s concussed and that leg needs attention. Noakes, carry her into the surgery.’ She heard his sigh. ‘I suppose I must attend to it.’
Just for a moment her addled brain cleared. She said quite clearly: ‘You have no need to be quite so unfeeling. Give me a needle and thread and I’ll do it myself.’
She heard his crack of laughter before she went back into limbo again.