Caroline's Waterloo. Бетти Нилс

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE NARROW brick road wound itself along narrow canals, through wide stretches of water meadows and small clumps of trees and, here and there, a larger copse. Standing well away from the road there were big farmhouses, each backed by a great barn, their mellow red brick glistening in the last rays of the October sun. Save for the cows, already in their winter coats, and one or two great horses, there was little to be seen and the only other movement was made by the four girls cycling briskly along the road. They had come quite a distance that day and now they were flagging a little; the camping equipment each carried made it heavy going, and besides, they had lost their way.

      It had been easy enough leaving Alkmaar that morning, going over the Afsluitdijk and into Friesland, pedalling cheerfully towards the camping ground they had decided upon, but now, with no village in sight and the dusk beginning to creep over the wide Friesian sky, they were getting uneasy.

      Presently they came to a halt, to look at the map and wonder where they had gone wrong. ‘This doesn’t go anywhere,’ grumbled the obvious leader, a tall, very pretty girl. ‘What shall we do? Go back—and that’s miles—or press on?’

      They all peered at the map again, one fair head, two dark ones and an unspectacular mouse-brown. The owner of the mouse-brown hair spoke:

      ‘Well, the road must go somewhere, they wouldn’t have built it just for fun, and we’ve been on it now for quite a while—I daresay we’re nearer the end than the beginning.’ She had a pretty voice, soft and slightly hesitant, perhaps as compensation for her very ordinary face.

      Her three companions peered at the map again. ‘You’re right, Caro—let’s go on before it’s quite dark.’ The speaker, one of the dark-haired girls, glanced around her at the empty landscape. ‘It’s lonely, isn’t it? I mean, after all the towns and villages we’ve been through just lately.’

      ‘Friesland and Groningen are sparsely populated,’ said Caro, ‘they’re mostly agricultural.’

      The three of them gave her a tolerant look. Caro was small and quiet and unassuming, but she was a fount of information about a great many things, because she read a lot, they imagined with a trace of pity; unlike the other nurses at Oliver’s, she was seldom invited to go out by any of the young doctors and she lived alone in a small bedsitter in a horrid shabby little street convenient to the hospital. She had any number of friends, because she could be relied upon to change off-duty at a moment’s notice, lend anything needed without fuss, and fill in last-minute gaps. As she was doing now; the nurse who should have been in her place had developed an appendix and because four was a much better number with which to go camping and biking, she had been roped in at the last minute. She hadn’t particularly wanted to go; she had planned to spend her two weeks’holiday redecorating her room and visiting art galleries. She knew almost nothing about art, but she had discovered long ago that art galleries were restful and pleasant and there were always other people strolling around for company, even though no one ever spoke to her. Not that she minded being alone; she had grown up in a lonely way. An orphan from childhood, the aunt she had lived with had married while Caro was still at school and her new uncle had never taken to her; indeed, over the years, he had let it be known that she must find a home for herself; her aunt’s was too small to house all three of them. If she had been pretty he might have thought differently, and if she had tried to conciliate him he might have had second thoughts. As it was, Caroline hadn’t seen her aunt for two years or more.

      ‘Well, let’s get on,’ suggested Stacey. She tossed her blonde hair back over her shoulders and got on to her bike once more, followed by Clare and Miriam with Caro bringing up the rear.

      The sun seemed to set very rapidly and once it had disappeared behind them, the sky darkened even more rapidly. But the road appeared to run ahead of them, clearly to be seen until it disappeared into a large clump of trees on the horizon. There were distant lights from the farmhouse now, a long way off, but they dispelled the loneliness so that they all became cheerful again, calling to and fro to each other, discussing what they would eat for their supper and whose turn it was to cook. They reached the trees a few minutes later, and Stacey, still in front, called out excitedly: ‘I say, look there, on the left—those lights—there must be a house!’ She braked to take a better look and Clare and Miriam, who hadn’t braked fast enough, went into her, joined seconds later by Caro, quite unable to stop herself in time. She ploughed into the struggling heap in front of her, felt a sharp pain in her leg and then nothing more, because she had hit her head on an old-fashioned milestone beside the cycle path.

      She came to with a simply shocking headache, a strange feeling that she was in a nightmare, and the pain in her leg rather worse. What was more, she was being carried, very awkwardly too, with someone supporting her legs and her head cradled against what felt like an alpaca jacket—but men didn’t wear alpaca jackets any more. She tried to say so, but the words didn’t come out right and she was further mystified by a man’s cockney voice close to her ear, warning someone to go easy. She wanted to say, ‘My leg hurts,’ but talking had become difficult and when she made her eyes open, she could see nothing much; a small strip of sky between tall trees and somewhere ahead lights shining. She gave up and passed out again, unaware that the awkward little party had reached the house, that Stacey, obedient to the cockney voice, had opened the door and held it wide while the others carried her inside. She was unaware too of the size and magnificence of the hall or of its many doors, one of which was flung open with some force by a large man with a sheaf of papers in his hand and a scowl on his handsome features. But she was brought back to consciousness by his commanding voice, demanding harshly why he was forced to suffer such a commotion in his own house.

      It seemed to Caro that someone should speak up and explain, but her head was still in a muddle although she knew what she wanted to say; it