The Silver Thaw. Betty Neels

Not at all—so far away.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Tom, you’re not serious, are you?’

      ‘Why not? There are marvellous opportunities out there. We’ll discuss it when you get back.’

      They were in the lounge waiting for her father and Doctor van der Tolck.

      ‘Why not now?’ she asked.

      ‘Oh, plenty of time for that,’ Tom said easily.

      They almost never quarrelled, but now Amelia felt herself on the verge of it.

      ‘But there’s not, Tom—you’re thirty and I’m twenty-seven and we haven’t even made any plans…’

      ‘Oh, come on, old girl—you know I can’t make plans until I’ve got a really good job. Another year or two—that’s not long, especially as we’re both working—no time to brood.’

      ‘I’ll be nudging thirty,’ said Amelia in a voice which held faint despair. She would have said more, only her father came in then, rubbing his hands and declaring that it was getting decidedly chilly and how about coffee before they started out. ‘We’re going down beyond the bridge,’ he told them enthusiastically, ‘they say there’s any amount of cod there.’

      They were joined a moment later by the doctor, who drank his coffee with them but hadn’t much to say for himself, and presently they all trooped out and went down to the boats. It was getting colder, thought Amelia, glad of her quilted jacket and hood, and she prayed for clear skies. Bad weather wouldn’t keep her father indoors, and although he was cheerfully impervious to wind and rain, the idea of sitting in a smallish boat for hours on end in anything less than moderately fine weather daunted her.

      But they were lucky for the moment. The sun came out and the mountains, with the gold and red of the birch trees wreathed around their lower slopes, didn’t look so forbidding, and the sun turned their snowy tops to a glistening fairyland, at least from a distance. The water was calm, dark and cold, but the three men didn’t notice that. They fished with enthusiasm, accepting hot drinks and food when Amelia proffered them, although she had the strong suspicion that they had quite forgotten that she was there. But not quite, apparently; it was the early afternoon when Doctor van der Tolck put his head round the cabin door where she was washing cups in the minute sink to ask her if she was all right. ‘We’ll have to get back fairly soon,’ he told her, ‘the light’s going and it’s getting cold.’

      To which moderate remark she gave polite answer. As far as she was concerned it had got cold hours ago.

      As it was Tom’s last evening, dinner was something of an event. They ate some of the cod they had caught with a rich creamy soup to precede it and reindeer steaks to follow, and rounded off the meal with chocolate mousse and coffee. And the doctor insisted on a bottle of wine, which, on top of the sherry she had had before dinner, warmed her very nicely.

      They went to sit round the square stove afterwards, but not for long, for the doctor had offered to drive Tom to the airport at Ardenes in the morning and they would have to make an early start.

      Amelia went to bed presently with the promise that she would be down in the morning to say goodbye to Tom. She was going to miss him, but two weeks would soon pass. She bade him a rather matter-of-fact goodnight because Doctor van der Tolck was watching them and hoped that he would have the good sense to look the other way when they said goodbye.

      And strangely enough, he did. They breakfasted early and she joined them for a cup of coffee. Almost at once he got to his feet with some remark about the car and went away, leaving her and Tom looking at each other.

      ‘Well, it’s been a lovely week,’ said Amelia.

      ‘I enjoyed it enormously—I had no idea that fishing could be so absorbing.’ Tom caught her eye and added hastily, ‘It was splendid having you here too.’

      ‘I’ll be back in two weeks—I wish I were coming with you, or that you could have stayed for the rest of the time.’

      ‘Well, we knew that before we started, didn’t we?’ Tom got to his feet and went to put on his jacket lying ready. ‘I’d better be off, mustn’t miss the plane.’ He looked around him and then kissed her; there was no one there and there was no need to be so brisk about it, Amelia thought unhappily. She said: ‘Oh, Tom…’ and then at the look of faint unease on his nice face: ‘All right, I’m not going to cry or anything like that.’ She managed a bright smile and saw his relief. She kept it there while he went through the door.