Second year student nurse Venetia Forbes has had a very nasty accident in the woolies section of Woolworths. The old lady with the missing shoes sitting next to her keeps on patting the glass (embedded in her arm) further into her skin. She faints and then tosses her biscuits while being stitched up by a senior consultant brain surgeon...that's right. We're not even on page 10 and our heroine has committed relationship suicide. I love this book.Our principles:
- She's a plucky and plain (The Araminta) heroine who lives with her granny whenever she manages to escape the nurses' home. Twenty-three (ish) with a handful of A-levels and broken dreams behind her, she is only a second-year student nurse at St. Jude's (in the East End which is code for run-down and bleak). She is actually called a jolie laide and has beautiful gray eyes.
- Professor Duert ter Laan-Luitinga is 35 and has a 17-year-old plot device...er...ward. (Beware the Neels ward. They bode ill.) He alternates between his home in Hampstead and another outside of Delft. He is loaded.
This book really stretches out over a good deal of time He stitches her up. He drives her home. Her granny dies (leaving her utterly without family which begs a demographic question). He helps her out in his cold and aloof way. She visits with the professor's registrar's pregnant wife (which was quite fun to type) which leads to him taking her out a bit. They come across a piece of antique jewelry that she likes, made of amethysts. The store owner tells them a lovely, possibly fabricated--he is a capitalist--story about the original owners and some violets. Violets. This is called foreshadowing.
Her life on the ward is un-fun due to a hectoring staff nurse and when Duert proposes in the ward office we, along with our heroine, are allowed to savor a lovely petty feeling of payback. (Stick that in your sluice room and smoke it!)He needs a babysitter for his plot device until she turns 18 and goes to America. In return she will get a home and family and security in her old age. (Did no one ever hear of IRAs?!)
But it all manages to make sense and before the week is out she's Mervrouw ter Laan-Luitinga. The registrar observes that she will probably run rings around Duert. Her wedding bouquet has violets in it (Foreshadowing!). Duert begins beautifully by dismissing her clothes, is off-hand about the wedding and suggests a stop in Leiden (to visit a patient!) on the way home on what should be their honeymoon. She wisely lets him dig his grave.
Outside of Delft we meet Anneta the Ward (not to be confused with Jabba the Hutt)--a lovely girl that practically has a neon sign situated above her head reading, "I am a plot device and will portend doom." Duert proceeds to neglect his wife terribly as evidenced by her taking up the art of tapestry. Whenever a Neels heroine stitches tapestries I am put in mind of Homer's Penelope--stitching twenty years while her idiot husband wanders back home. So, yeah, Venetia's tapestry is symbolic.
Why is my husband lamely neglecting me?Anneta takes our heroine on a lot of shopping trips (This is not symbolic.) and she "repays dressing". But a fat lot of good it does her as Duert only takes her to parties full of crowds. He had obviously never spoken to our father on the subject of 'date night'. Venetia learns Dutch and how to drive a car without anyone bothering to notice. Anneta makes up a lot of suspicious dental appointments and the like which clearly point to trouble but Venetia would have to actually see a crack pipe and roll of dollar bills to become truly alarmed.
Duert, briefly coming out of his stupor enough to aid his wife, sends Anneta to Paris (no one good ever visits Paris) for a week and takes his wife off to visit Aunt Millicent on the coast in Salcombe. She looks like Miss Marple.
I detect with my Marple-vision that you are perfectly suited.Four months later (yes, four! they potter along like that for four months!), Anneta is getting ready to go to off to America when Venetia discovers Jan the Rat (not to be confused with Jabba the Hutt) in the professor's garden meeting illicitly with the serial liar Anneta the Ward. In walks the professor. Anneta insinuates that Jan the Rat and Venetia the Patient have been "meeting".
Coldness.
Threats of suicide. (And you really wish Anneta would just do it already.)
Flight to Salcombe.
Anneta the Rat...er...Ward confesses her moral bankruptcy...from America.
Violet jewelry is produced.
Kissing!
Themes:
This was published in 1990, when Betty Neels was 80, and she has the cheek to say of the granny, "...she was way behind with modern ways and habits." At one point the professor asks Venetia if she is euphemistically (and I mean euphemistically) living with someone. Also, Venetia is being called upon to curb Anneta for her "wayward lifestyle"--which as far as I can tell includes wearing tight clothes and kissing cads on the street. Conclusion: I love Betty.
Rating:
You get to hear a lot about driving tours through England (take the exit at Oxford, skirt the city, drive toward Buford-upon Tyne...), menus (I'll cover that later) and shopping expeditions (only one of which puzzled me (when Venetia talks Anneta out of a tight black short dress and into a ruched electric blue "suitable" short dress...)). All this would be tedious except that Betty Debbie will be making all the food eventually.
The pacing is flawless and, happily, the emotions make sense. She's mad when she's supposed to be mad, resolute when she's supposed to be...etc., etc. Which all hearkens back to that vomiting in the Casualty room. Venetia is a heroine that makes sense. I love her. She makes this a boeuf en croute. The hero, for all my calling him an idiot, digs his way out of the hole he made quite nicely.
I believe that this is the first Neels I read. However I have apparently completely repressed the ward. I will have to go back and reread with my many years of Neeldom under my belt now.
ReplyDeleteI come back to this read often and always enjoy it. Now I know why, thanks for an insightful and review
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the review/link.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to re-read this to see what kind of "good wife" our heroine turned out to be...as an example to passively rebellious ward.
Hi Again. Just finished re-reading most of it and have a much greater appreciation for what a greatwife Venetia has become. Shewas doubtful, and was going to say "no", but boy am I glad she said yes.
ReplyDeleteI have come to the realization that Venetia is a great example of a great wife. But also, a great example of a conveniently marriedBN wife. Did you guys notice that allBN conveniently married heroines behave exactly
the same????!!!!! Perhaps there is a blog post on this already?
Just wanted to say how impressed I am with Venetia's handling the everyday stuff/problems that come up. And her attitude through it all. She does a magnificent job, yay Betty! And might I add, that I think, secretly, BN was "showing" us how to be a great wife!
Betty Barbara here--
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading this and loved it! Venetia is too cool for words. I thought she was great. And when she finally loses her cool--fabulous!!
However! I am at a loss to figure out just when Duert fell in love with her--when was his Dawning Realization? Was it during the Salcombe vacation? If so, then how could he completely forget her at the hospital on the way home? (Less dire shades of people who forget their children in the car). Was it when he confronted Jan at Rat-Ward's party? I am just not clear on this.
Rat-ward is just too awful and slithery for words--what she needed was Venetia to take her down and paddle her bottom!! Or else give her some really plain speaking--along the lines of 'you spoiled rotten child'. (At least when she gets to the US, she will be considered a legal adult. American aunt can wash her hands of her--and let Anneta go to her doom.)
I think Betty spread it out over too much time (Christmas to September), but if that's the way she wanted to do it..
Oh did y'all notice? A good word about Italian food!! Duert takes Venetia out for Italian--she's reluctant-doesn't like pizza. He says-no pizza, try the lasagne! She's impressed! And this reader just about dropped her jaw!!
I have often wondered about the MOC. Is it common practice in the Netherlands for a husband and wife NOT to share a room? It seems that the household staff does not bat an eye at such an arrangement.
ReplyDeleteAgain, sorry if this has already been addressed.
Betty Barbara here--
ReplyDeleteBetty Marcia, I don't believed we have ever discussed the 2 bedrooms/no surprises part of the MOC. But you are right--the hotel staffs and the home staffs never, ever even blink an eye! You don't often encounter the newlyweds/separate bedrooms in real life.--Now separate beds, separate rooms after you've been married a good, long while (and things like snoring, sleep apnea oxygen machines, etc, etc rear their ugly heads)--that I'm familiar with from friends and family.
For wealthy couples of Betty's era (she came of age in the late 20s/early 30s), separate bedrooms were the norm. I suspect that for some super-wealthy types, they still are. I've been steeping myself (tea reference!) in Mitford-iana lately, and would cite Diana Mitford Mosley (b. 1910, one year after Betty) and Oswald Mosley as a couple who kept separate bedrooms throughout their 40+ year marriage despite being famously devoted and passionate in their love for each other. Vile Nazis, of course, but still.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, the Mitford sisters' mother, Sydney, was shocked in visiting her daughter Jessica in America to learn that most Americans (in the late 40s or early 50s) prioritized cars above servants in their budgets.
-Betty van den Betsy
Re: cars over servants...Europeans who've never traveled by car in the US can have no comprehension of how necessary cars are to our way of life. And I think it's safe to say that because we nixed our servants earlier, we were more than ready to accept and adopt the use of electronic conveniences than the rest of the world.
ReplyDeleteAnd, since this is my first post since your arrival, Betty van der Betsy, Welcome! :)
me<>< (aka Betty Cindy)
I just read this book for the first time. Here is a couple in Neelsdom who went to Brighton without "going to Brighton."
ReplyDeleteOh, I really like this book. This is the only Neels I have on tape, the only one because listening to it was a dreadful experience.Luckily, I bought it after having read the book or I would not have enjoyed the story. I didn't mind Venetia speaking with an American accent but the accent forced on our RDD was simply atrocius. When you remember that our Rdds usually have only the faintest bit of a Dutch accent, if any, then you will understand my outrage at this, at least you would if you had heard him. The way I remember it it was a heavy German/Slavic/Latin mix which "he" had problems uttering because his nasal passages seemed to be constanly blocked. It was evident that the reader had prepared herself for her task by studying Dutch phonetics but I guess she was a little overwhelmed. Duert ter Laan-Luitinga is quite a mouthful. She always pronounced Luitinga "Loutnhach" (ch as in Loch Ness). I didn't dare buy another Neels audiobook after that. I have a number of audiobooks which are quite lovely. My favourite being Jane Austen's Emma read by Fiona Shaw.
ReplyDeleteBetty Anonymous