The Fifth Day of Christmas by Betty Neels

Author:Betty Neels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1971-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

The shopping expedition the next day was, on the whole, a success. Marcia, well wrapped against the cold, was as excited as she would allow herself to be and even though it turned out that most of the shopping was for herself, it was pleasant to spend most of the afternoon in the bigger stores, even though her insistence on being treated as an invalid became a little irksome towards the end. Only once did she show any desire to do anything for herself and that was to post a handful of letters, something in which she was frustrated by Ivo, despite her protests. Julia, watching him putting them into the letter box, saw that he was looking at each of them in turn; she knew when he saw the one addressed to Mijnheer de Winter because of his quick frown. He said nothing, however, and nothing in his manner indicated that he was annoyed, although she caught Marcia’s faintly worried look. Possibly Ivo had asked her not to continue her friendship with de Winter, but they weren’t likely to discuss it before her. They had tea presently and Ivo was at his most amusing and if anything, kinder and more considerate of Marcia than he had been before. Julia, sitting in the back of the car on their way home, watched him in the gloom, bending his head to hear what Marcia had to say, and when Marcia laughed, which was often, Julia clenched her hands tightly in her lap, hurting them, as if by doing so she could ease the hurt in her heart.

She avoided him for the next day or two, and although they saw each other at meals and in the sitting room there was always someone else there. And on the third day, when she was free after one o’clock, she walked into Oisterwijk and did her Christmas shopping; a quite handsome coffret of eau de Cologne for Marcia, a tobacco pouch for Doctor van den Werff, handkerchiefs—fine linen ones—for Ivo and for Jorina some French soap as well as the teacloth she had embroidered. For Bep she found a scarf and for the girl who came up from the village every day to work, a box of chocolates. She went straight to her room when she got back, did up her parcels and put them away at the back of the big cupboard in her bedroom, then went down to dinner. It was during that meal that Doctor van den Werff remarked,

‘It seems to me that Julia has a very bad bargain for her half day; it is in fact no half day at all. Here she is, back here with us, whether she likes it or not, because there’s nothing for her to do.’ He looked across the table at her, smiling. ‘Do you mind, Julia?’

She smiled back, ‘No, not at all. I’ve letters to write and those will take me all the evening. I had a nice afternoon in Oisterwijk too. One day when it’s fine, I shall go for a long walk.

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