Betty by the Numbers: Emergency!

I once Heimlich-ed the Jonkheer, and he once swatted my goddaughter in the head when her hair caught fire as she blew out her birthday candles.  I have hauled a blind, elderly spaniel out of an artificial pond, and I’ve chased two large purse-snatchers and the young, medium-sized stranger whose purse they were trying to snatch down an alley.  (She hung on, shouting, “That’s all the money I have;” the snatcher gave a vicious jerk, the strap broke, the woman fell to the pavement, clutching her purse.  I jogged after her assailants for a moment, then wondered what I’d do if I caught up to them, and turned round.  I gave her a hand up and a wad of mostly-unused tissues, and opened my arms slightly in a ‘hug-if-you-want-one’ gesture.  She stared at me for a few seconds, gulped, sobbed, grabbed the tissues and then launched herself onto me.  “You were great,” I repeated, over and over, patting her back.  She was fine, the corn chips in my groceries, which had been banging against my knees as we ran, were fine (this is important as they were, at the time, hard to find and expensive in Dublin), and so we strolled south slowly as she recovered, and she told me all about Cowes Week, which isn’t as much fun as my initial hypothesis of Cows Week would be.)

My two earthquakes have been uneventful, and I don’t recall any gas mains or bombs exploding while I’ve been nearby.  I tend to stay clear of political and protest rallies, though did once get an amazingly charismatic grin and a wave from Bill Clinton – one of the perks or hazards of living near Washington, DC, I suppose (shoals! shoals! paddle faster!!).  By great good fortune burning houses haven’t come my way much, nor floods.  Growing up outside Boston in the 70s, blizzards and snowstorms were cause for celebration – no school!  popcorn over the fire!  Pretend to be Laura Ingalls!  I also lived on a steep bend as a child, and would of course offer tea to anyone smashing a car into the rock that helped mark it, but that didn’t happen too often.  The closest I’ve come to amputating a leg was sitting with a stranger who’d broken hers just by stepping off the curb at a bad angle until the ambulance came.  “It’s broken,” the paramedic said; “It can’t be,” the woman replied, and who wouldn’t?  If you ever need a tracheotomy performed with a ball point pen, do not come to me, even though I did once walk a new neighbor up the street to the emergency room after she sliced a chunk out of her finger.  When I sliced a chunk out of my own finger, everyone in Paris generously pitched in to help get it stitched, for free and absolutely beautifully, according to my doctor back home.

If you must experience an earthquake, try to make it the kind that hit the east coast of the US in August 2011, causing minimal injuries, zero deaths, and some cracks in the Washington Monument that a crew of lucky daredevil masons got to repair live on internet TV.

I would not have thought, incidentally, that I could fill two paragraphs with tales of my adventures in courage and kindness to strangers.  Please take a moment to think over your own experiences; I bet you’re more deserving of a Scout badge than you realize.

Thank you.  How many did you get?  I’m not surprised (I hope), but I shall be deeply distressed on your behalf if you’ve ever had as much excitement in any three- or four-month period as poor Julia Pennyfeather, who begins the winter of 1971 with a blizzard at her Scottish patient’s home, where she’s forced to forage for diabetes-friendly provisions and chivvy the sole household attendant into keeping the fires going for several chilly and gastronomically-repetitive days, then heads down the M1 and encounters a multi-car pile-up replete with corpses, then, after making it to the Netherlands without incident, gets lost in a cold, rainy woods and falls asleep on the ground risking exposure, and then gears up for overtime as a polio epidemic sweeps the village.  By The Fifth Day of Christmas, she was past due for some tender words and jewelry.

Or how about the unlucky (in some things) Daisy Gillard, whose RDD keeps Discovering Daisy (1999) covered in water-weeds, scum, dirt, blood and sand as she, again in the course of a very few months, falls into a canal, gets knocked out by muggers, rushes to the aid of an elderly woman hit by a car, and gets caught in a violent windstorm on the beach.  For her, I should think just remaining upright and dry would constitute an HEA.

 

Daisy and Julius's third son, Devon, carrying on a family tradition

In case you haven’t guessed, 79 Nurses: A Neels Database-to-Be includes a column for emergencies.  Here come the caveats:  first, it’s subjective.  One person’s emergency is another person’s heavy cold.  Second, sometimes an emergency takes place deep into the book, when I am comfortably disposed on the couch without a Post-it® note or pen and paper handy, and I’m in no mood to leap up and grab computer, and then I doze off a bit and forget all about it, so maybe an emergency or two never makes it into the spreadsheet.  Finally, maybe on a grey Sunday, Aunt Snooty-Nose’s vicious lies to our hero about his beloved’s abrupt departure from the family home feels like an emergency, while on a sunny Saturday of a long weekend, beanpole-ish stalker Helena von Youwishsister’s vicious lies to our heroine about how soon she’ll be Mrs. Dr. Helena just feel like a minor snooze.  So.  Nothing’s set in stone, gentle readers.

With that understanding-of-sorts, I count a total of 211 emergencies over 135 books, or 1.6 per book – per heroine, really, because bar Gijs van der Eekerk’s succor of some offstage drunks with severed arteries, which Beatrice sadly misinterprets as a night out with an imaginary strumpet (Wedding Bells for Beatrice, 1994), our heroine gets involved every time.  Unless, that is, she’s one of the lucky seven who experience no catastrophes on the road to true love.  Betty ran out of natural disasters, muggers and car crashes intermittently in the 1980s, with one heroine getting off scot-free in each year from 1980 to 1983, and then in 1987 Rachel Downing makes it through a novel unscathed – unless you want to count as an emergency having one’s presumed boyfriend show up in a hotel lobby with a floozy, take one look at one’s thunderstruck face and declaim a blithe, “Oh, well – Off with the Old Love.”  Then, in her last five books, all copyright 2001, Betty imagined just three emergencies, with Emma’s Wedding and The Doctor’s Girl relatively unscathed.

Of those who are subject to adrenaline rushes, four of our heroines, or 3%, including the Misses Pennyfeather and Gillard above, suffer four calls to battle stations; 13, or 10%, engage in three pulse-pounding adventures; 45, or 33%, get through two sticky situations; and 66, or 49%, are distressed by a single disaster.  But what disasters they are!  Car crashes, bus crashes, bicycle crashes, plane crashes, whatever the boating equivalent of a crash is, measles, whooping cough, flu, stroke, coronary, diabetic coma, runaways, fire, flood, war...  Jiminy!  There’s not a single famine, actually, except maybe way offstage when Julius mistakenly decides Daisy can stay out of trouble for a few weeks and hies himself off to Africa to set up a feeding station (Discovering Daisy).  And, of course, lots of grimacing into the increasingly-empty larder whenever we get stranded in the snow.

The most common emergency is what I’ve called an “endangered individual.”  They’re not necessarily sick or injured, but they’re at risk in some way.  Of our 211 stat situations, 23%, or 49, involve abandoned or neglected babies; runaway brides, wards and sisters; evil kidnapping step-relatives; people trapped in toy stores or creaky cottages; lost grannies, kiddies or heroine-ies and their ilk.  Next most common is illness and injury, at 20%, or 41, of our incidents, although only one of laburnum-seed eating.  Then come vehicle crashes of one sort and another, at 17%, or 36 pile-ups.  Criminal assault accounts for 11%, or 23, of misfortunes.

 

‘Nuff said, people

I was taken aback by that number, actually.  In her first 21 books, Betty had only one assault, perpetrated by a patient overdosed on cannabis trying to choke Staff Nurse Parsons.  Chalk up a Victory for Victoria (1972), however, as Alexander van Schuylen arrives to save the day.  In the next 35 books, I count six assaults, but three are against animals and one is by an animal, so they’re not quite the same as when Sister Loveday Pearce gets threatened by three youngsters – three easily-quelled youngsters, it transpires – on the street, or Louisa Seymour overdoses her infant niece and nephew (Cruise to a Wedding in 1974 and Winter Wedding in 1979).  In the last 79 books, from All Else Confusion in 1982, when tinkers kidnap little sister, through Daisy’s mugging, we have 16 assaults, which accounts for 20% of the books and 15% of the incidents in that period.  Phoebe, Charity, Emily, Beatrice, both Sarahs, both Daisys, Mary Jane, Julie, Henrietta, Bertha, Ermentrude and Claudia are all involved somehow or other in muggings, or injured whilst thwarting burglaries.

“Medical events” differ from illnesses and injuries in that they’re wider-spread or more chronic.  Hence, I get a category with 9%, or 18, of the emergencies, including ’flu, polio, whooping cough and measles epidemics, as well as angina attacks, stroke, heart conditions, a diabetic coma and a bizarrely threatening Belgian woman with a filthy home.  I did not count every patient in extremis as an emergency, since they’re mostly just part of Mary Jane Julie’s professional responsibilities.  Nor did I count as separate incidents each of the many, many ailments from which Valentijn van Bertes’s nephew and godson suffers, as they are nearly innumerable.  Thank goodness Hannah (1980) is unrelenting in her care and optimism, or the poor little plot device would not have made it out of NICU.

 

Quick!  Line up the kiddies and the white coats; there's polio in the village!

Ready, Betty Keira?  There are 12 incidents (just 6% of all emergencies, and only 9% of the books, dear) of people or animals being thrust somehow into canals, ponds, one loch and one gully.  They make for exciting scenes, though, beginning with poor George Rodman and the littlest van den Berg Eyffert falling into the deadly-cold water whilst skating on unsafe ice due to the criminal scheming of beanpole-thin yet big, fat liar Therese LeFabre.  That’s in Damsel in Green (1970).  In Tangled Autumn (1971), we get our first animal thrown overboard:  Sappha finds a puppy tied up in a brick-bound sack and thrown into a canal to drown.  She falls in effecting rescue, and is in turn rescued by Rolf.  After that, there are only another three critters sacrificed to the exigencies of dawning love – plus a few kids, a Norwegian or four, and an overweight Londoner.

Eleven storms, ten fires, seven blizzard/snowstorms, six bombs and six births (five humans, one horse), three demonstrations turned rowdy, and two each of floods, wild winds, non-bomb explosions and earthquakes.  One roof caves in, and one armed conflict breaks out in Bosnia, requiring surgical aid.  Add them all up, and you get quite enough excitement for any literary career.

And who suffers from all these catastrophes?  He does – just three ruddy times, for heaven’s sake.  Gerard gets lost in a Scottish mist, and meets up with Deborah and a clutch of schoolgirls in Stars Through the Mist (1973).  Deborah’s one of the four-emergency ladies; she also gets a tractor rollover, a retainer cutting her hand, and a Fiat-crunching auto accident.)  Jake breaks a leg rescuing a fjord-faller in Midnight Sun’s Magic (1979), and Lauris and Julia are both caught up in a brief but violent passing demonstration in At the End of the Day (1985).  He doesn’t count as a victim, incidentally, if he only strode through the rubble to pluck her out, or launched himself into the icy pond to retrieve her and the neighbor child.

And he need do so quite frightfully often, as our heroine is the victim in 52, or 25%, of emergencies.  Mostly just once in the course of a book, but five of the ladies suffer two horrific fates, and that poor, dear Daisy Gillard counts as victim in the canal-fall, the mugging, and the windstorm.  (Incidentally, Julius saves her from none of these!)

I’m sending Daisy one of these shirts, and expect Dr. de Huizma to write the appropriate prescriptions.

Betty also has it in for kids, who are the victims of some 17%, 35, of her imagined horror shows.  His family members are put at risk 19 times (9%), and hers 16 times (8%), with considerable overlap with the children category.  Animals are made to suffer in 14 incidents, including an especially tricky spate during the Carter administration – in 15 books from 1977’s The Hasty Marriage to 1980’s Caroline’s Waterloo, we have six incidents of animal abuse, including a dog hit by a car, a cat tortured by youths, a kitten stuck in a tree, a dog lost in a storm and found in a canal, a rabbit caught in a snare, and a pregnant donkey abused by tinkers.

By contrast, the elderly are roughed up only 11 times (5%), and faithful retainers only five (2%).  This says something about career choice, I believe.  Or lifestyle choice.  Or something.

The big wrap-up:  I count 119 emergencies where dramatic rescue by hero or heroine is warranted.  This does not include little brothers with rheumatic fever – they need patient nursing and holidays abroad, not drama – or fires in Northern estates in which the firefighters are on their own to haul those needlewomen out of the attic, and Gerard only arrives in time to take Julia south in his Rolls.  However, in those cases where she, he or they must effect a rescue:  she starts 49 of the rescues, for 45% of the time.  He joins in on 40 of them, since she’s gotten wrapped up in weeds, or her arms aren’t powerful enough to lift the old lady from the well, or her fear of heights overcomes her, etc.  He gets full credit for the rescue in 39% of cases, or 43 incidents, since she’s the victim, for silly’s sake.  They work together, more or less equally, over 27 situations – that’s 25%, and really the best way to show high likelihood of their H actually being EA.  Think of George and Phoebe laboring together over those laburnum-seed afflicted youngsters, or Tishy and Jason making sure the bull doesn’t get to Georgina and the baby.  Teamwork!  The essence of marriage!

 

Beautiful but deadly: a laburnum tree in flower

Looking at the full list, I'm inclined to shake my head a bit at Betty's penchant for shoving young women, nephews, stepdaughters, grannies and absent-minded dads into the path of onrushing disasters.  One must admit that it works, though.  Love is, after all, a matter of hormones, and nothing gets the hormones flowing like a farmhouse on fire.

PS:  I am sure we all have some truly dreadful stories we could tell of crashes, medical disasters and the like.  I don't mean to downplay the horror of of those in any way.  My lighthearted tone is not intended to offend, and if the subject or style of this essay causes you any distress, I do most sincerely apologize.

The Gemel Ring - 1974

Like Grasp a Nettle, which Betty Keira reviewed earlier in the week, The Gemel Ring was not high on our list of faves. While Grasp a Nettle grew on us quite a bit, The Gemel Ring did not fare quite as well. Was it as bad as I remembered? No. Did I like it? Hmmm...I'll tell you later.

Charity Dawson. Nurse - Sister on Men's Medical. An "Olivia" (tall, well-built, red brown hair, green eyes). She drives her own car - an MG Midget which was a gift from her godmother. Not only does she drive, but she also carries an Advanced Drivers Certificate. Besides English, she speaks French and "passable German" (depending on who's asking), she is described as "brainy", she swims like a fish and is also a first class tennis player. You'd think a girl like that wouldn't have any self-esteem issues. You'd think. We first meet her on a driving holiday with sister Lucy and her parents, Lieutenant-Colonel Dawson and wife. They are passing through Holland after touring around Germany.

Enter Mr. Arthur C. Boekerchek. No, of course he's not the hero - but our main characters meet over his unconscious body. Mr. Boekerchek is an American from Pennsylvania...he's quite a friendly guy when he's not passed out. We'll catch up with him later.

Our real hero is Professor Everard van Tijlen, almost 41. Yup, he's as old a Neels guy as we're going to find. As Charity is assessing Mr. Boekerchek's condition, up saunters The Professor. The first words out of his mouth are insulting to Charity. She has been doing her best to communicate with the local policeman - who doesn't speak English or French - but does understand her German. Everard: "It will be better if we speak English...You have a very marked English accent, you know." ?? Why be rude about it?

Mr. Boekerchek wakes up and thanks them, then gets their names and the hospital where Charity works. He's going to need this info later. Charity notices the doctor passing them as they get off the ferry. He's driving a white Lamborghini Espada. Fast. Charity's father comments on the price of such a car and guesses that it is driven by some "pop singer". After a brief visit to the family home in Budleigh Salterton, Charity heads back to St. Simon's Hospital and Surgical Registrar Clive Barton. He may be a pleasant man, but his hair is receding a little. This does not bode well. He takes Charity out to dinner where she refuses a marriage proposal but that's okay. On the way out of the restaurant he meets a small delicate blonde, "a wisp of a thing", who literally falls at his feet. The Clives of this world were born to marry wispy little blondes...so let it be written, so let it be done. We're done with Clive.

Two weeks go by and then Charity is called into the Hospital Matron's office and is bidden to go to Holland and nurse Mr. Arthur C. Boekerchek, who it turns out is really quite ill. He has a rare condition - and guess who's the leading authority? Naturally it's Prof. van Tijlen. Mr. Boekerchek needs an operation - so Mr. B. requests Charity come and nurse him through it. After some hesitation she goes (after a little genial strong-arming by the American Ambassador - or someone). She is quite surprised to see Prof. van Tijlen...and to find out that he is the doctor (or should I say surgeon?). His next words are just about as rude as the first words he spoke, "Ah, the English Miss Dawson, come to stay with us for a little while. An opportunity for you to demonstrate your talent for languages; you should acquire a smattering of Dutch during that period." Umm...why antagonize the nurse? Could it be that he's attracted? She wants to shout something rude at him, but manages to say, in a cool voice, "I think there will be no need of that, Professor, for my Dutch would probably turn out to be as bad as your manners." Yea!!! She shoots. She scores....but then she gets all gushy and girly and wished to see more of him. Why? Could it be that she is so superficial and shallow as to be attracted to him purely based on looks?? (not that I blame her too much - see book cover. He. Is. Some. Kind. Of. Wonderful.) Aargh. Come on girl...show some backbone. Mr. B. lets slip how much the doctor's bill for his surgery was, Charity is shocked and appalled and lets Prof. van Tijlen know it. He allows her to think the worst of him (that he spends his money on fancy cars and pretty girls). Before leaving to go back home, the Boekerchek's invite Charity to a party at the Embassy - giving her a chance to go buy a long white dress. Not a wedding dress - you can tell, because it has an aquamarine sash. Of course the Professor is there. Of course he insults her. Again. "Don't let me interrupt you in your exercise of the German tongue, Miss Dawson. I can't say that you have made much progress, but enthusiasm is the great thing, is it not?" At this point I could enthusiastically punch Professor van T. She just about bursts into tears...so he says, "You look as though you're going to cry". I feel Charity is fully justified in replying, "I hope you will believe me when I say that I dislike you more than anyone else I know." Too bad she doesn't mean it.

Back at St. Simon's she finds that Clive has gotten engaged to Little Miss Wispy Blonde. That's okay - Charity didn't love him. She realizes she's really in love with Professor van Tijlen. Again, why???? No sooner does she have her dawning realization than she hands in her resignation. Charity heads home to Budleigh Salterton to convalesce. Convalesce?? Yes, she needs to mend her broken heart. Sniff. Her recovery plan includes tramping for miles with the dogs, gardening with her peppery father and driving her mother to town to shop and visit her friends. Instead of blooming in the air and sun, she becomes thinner and paler. Sounds like the heart condition is getting to her. I love that her dad tries to help...he gives her a glass of his best port each morning (it's medicinal, right?). Her dad comes down with "a touch of lumbago" (I believe Dr. van der Stevejinck was suffering from a touch of lumbago last week - I'm now going to use the term "lumbago" whenever he has a sore back...because I can). Lt. Colonel Dawson and the rest of Charity's family will now exit, stage right. Except for a paragraph or two near the end of the book, they are now relegated to shadow status. Which is really unfortunate - because a peppery Lt. Col. who plies his daughter with his best port could have so much scope. Ah, well. Enter the Rude Professor again. What? At her house? Yes. It seems that Mr. Arthur C. Boekerchek has had a relapse and wants Charity to special him. Everard has driven over from Holland, with a stop at St. Simon's first to arm-wrestle Charity's address from the "hatchet-faced virago" who wasn't inclined to give out personal information. Up until this point I had little liking for Everard...but then he gives us a teeny tiny, itsy bitsy little glimpse into what might possibly be a soul...and not a deep-freeze. What does he do? He allows Charity to drive his Lamborghini Espada for a couple of hours. After a brief nap, he is back at her again..."I've yet to meet a pretty girl who didn't expect a large slice of attention from her men companions - and turned sour when she didn't get it." Charity comes back with, "You are a very rude man, the rudest I have ever had the misfortune to know..." All it takes is a tiny little compliment in the next paragraph..."I'll give you full marks for being such a good driver..." and she gets all gushy/girly, "Oh, do you really mean that?" He smacks her down again..."If only your accent were as faultless as your driving." Really? Really?

After four days of intensively nursing Mr. B., Charity goes for a walk. As she stands admiring some old houses by the canal who should drive up? Yup. The Professor (in a Daimler Sovereign this time). He all but accuses Charity of stalking him - and while she stands there gobsmacked, mouth open, he takes the opportunity to insult her again. "Close your mouth, my good girl, you appear half-witted." He grabs her arm and hauls her inside - where she gets to meet his Grandmother. The grandmother takes a shine to Charity - and invites her to look around the place. I cringe at the next part, I really do. Charity is standing in the home of the man she loves, and asks him about a ring she sees in a little red box. A ring? Hint, hint. Everard doesn't tell her anything. Why? Because he is The Lord of the Gemel Ring. She then (cringe, cringe) spouts off some love poetry: "but I return a ring of Jimmals to imply thy love had one knot, mine a triple tye." (cringe x 3).

Back on nursing duty Mr. B. surprises everyone by having a coronary...which is but: A Prelude to a Hospital Fire. Charity does not desert her post, though all around her flee...Everard finds her by Mr. B. and tells her it's time to go. She suggests the further lifts. They hear a noise as of rushing wind and Everard says irritably to Charity (as though it were all her fault): "There's your precious lift...going up like a torch". Evidently the coronary and the hospital fire don't have any detrimental effects on Mr. Boekercheck. He is released from hospital a week later and Charity goes with Mr. and Mrs. Boekercheck to a cottage in the country to recuperate.

This is but a brief respite. Just before heading back to den Haag (and from there, home), Charity spends a day off exploring Utrecht...the Professor's home town (this is faintly stalkerish of her). She doesn't go near his house this time, but while walking around she sees a little old man fall down in the street. She picks him up (wow!) and carries him into the dreary building across the street, where, much to her surprise (and his), she runs into The Rude Professor. Turns out, Mr. Cranky Pants is a Secret Benefactor to the elderly. It is his rest home. He spends much time and money (thus the steep fees he charges for taking care of rich Americans - Charity feels a bit of a chump about that now) taking care of the old folks. Juffrouw Corrie Blom is the woman who oversees the home for him. She is a large woman with a massive bosom, who dresses in dark grey. Charity worms information out of Juffrouw Blom, and then feels guilty about it and goes to the Cranky Professor to apologize. He hauls her off to Tea with Granny again. After tea, Granny cryptically remarks, "...you would have done very well..." Everard then gives her a speech...which is a little awesome and more than a bit mortifying at the same time. He admits to being attracted to her - she is pretty but also disturbing. He says that he does not intend to become "disturbed", so he shall forget her and marry someone who will not take his mind off of his work (sounds like he's in the market for an Araminta). Ouch. All very high-minded. Or do I mean high-handed? To round it all off, after Charity manages to say goodbye, he grabs her and kisses her hard. She then gives her best lines in the book, "I hope you will find some girl to be your doormat..someone who can't say boo to a goose and who will always agree with you...and have dozens of simply horrid little doormats who have to wear glasses and won't know how to be naughty...Goodbye!" It is now time for Charity to ride off into the sunset of Budleigh Salterton...or is it?


She gets a phone call from Everard asking her not to leave until he can see her. Charity's fancy begins to take flight, only to be shot down by Everard when he asks her to step into Juffrouw Blom's capacious clogs. Corrie Blom has sprained her ankle and Everard wants to use Charity to fill in. She rather reluctantly agrees, and as she is walking past him to go pack, he catches her and kisses her with, and I quote, "a kind of controlled savagery." We can now add "savage" to the list of Neels Kisses. This is definitely an outlier - I'm not sure it ever appears in the canon again. His next step is to go on a date with the doormat.

Charity has no problem taking over for Corrie. She even convinces Corrie to let her get her a pretty nightie (instead of the voluminous tent she wears). Charity finishes the rest home job and then goes home because the Gemel Ring is not in the display case anymore! Everard MUST have given it to the doormat.

Granny shows herself to be quite the con artist...she gets Charity to come back to nurse her (Granny is in no need of nursing). She sends Charity down to Everard's office to get her reading glasses out of his desk...and instead of reading glasses she finds.......THE GEMEL RING! It hadn't been given to the doormat after all. In walks Everard: Kiss kiss, you were snooping in my desk, no I wasn't, kiss kiss, the end. Finally - and pretty darn abruptly.

Food: Sandwiches, scrambled eggs, tiny iced cakes, Kaas broodje (there was a serious lack of food in this book!)

Fashion: Lime green wild silk dress and matching jacket, neat cream shirtwaister, long white-not a wedding dress-with aquamarine sash, green and blue organza, green jersey, blue nightie (Corrie)

Rating: I honestly don't know what rating to give this book. I could never work up any liking or sympathy for Everard. He was rude, insulting, hyper-critical, irritable and cranky...when he wasn't being mocking and supercilious. The best things about him are things (cars, Gemel Rings, good looks)...but none of those really add up to any kind of real reason to fall in love with him. His one redeeming feature is that he operates a rest home (which is all well and good, but Charity didn't know that when she fell in love) The character of Charity was lovely - as long as we ignore the 600 pound gorilla in the room. Why would a smart, talented, good looking Olivia fall for such a putz? There was no saucy flippancy to her remarks...she comes off sounding a wee bit desperate. I did love Mr. and Mrs. Boekercheck (very awesome) and Corrie Blom was a brief, but fun, interlude. Granny was also fun, she's got one of the best lines in Neeldom (speaking of a girl that Everard had dated)..."she's only half alive and the live half isn't at all to my liking."

I think I will have to resort to doing maths again. Mr. and Mrs. Boekerchek get a queen of puddings, Corrie - boeuf en croute, Granny - lashings of whipped cream, Charity - treacle tart (I would have rated her higher if I thought she would be happy with Everard) and Everard - a great big "tinned soup". Overall it lands somewhere between digestive biscuits and beans on toast (for me...).

If you really do want to read this book try whistling the Colonel Bogey March while you read. It seemed to cheer up the ill-fated prisoners in The Bridge On the River Kwai.

Cross Over Characters: Dominic and Abigail from Saturday's Child (which I like a lot better!) and Max and Sophy from Surgeon from Holland.