Two
points: A) The cover doesn't match the book hardly at all. Our Lucy has
really, really green eyes--not so our cover girl--and long hair. Still,
don't you just love it to pieces? B) Upon her marriage, our heroine
would take the name of Lucilla Linssen. I vote no.
Lucilla "Lucy" Prendergast,
23, is swimming upstream. She has four distressingly gorgeous siblings,
pleasing (though not pretty) features, and blazing emerald eyes which
she has just managed to prop open when the cold and disapproving stare
of a hospital guest le
cturer
greets her. It serves him right for making the Night Duty Student
Nurses attend a speech about...(rifles through notes, checks
spelling)...I don't care already. A feeling I am sure is echoed in poor
Lucy's modest bosom.
For his part,
Fraam der Linssen,
nudging forty and possessing 'the kind of good looks so often written
about and so seldom seen', has strode into the lecture hall, appraised
the audience and prepared himself to hold forth on a topic near and dear
to his heart when he spots that most insignificant of hospital denizens
(possibly ranking even lower than a good ward maid with rheumatism and a
smoking habit)--a student nurse--nodding off in the center of the front
row. How dare she? Wickedly, he directs a question at her...
I didn't hear what you were saying, sir--I was asleep.
To
hear him tell it later, he had the most difficult time not whisking her
out of her seat then and there and marrying her out of hand.
She has to apologize, naturally.
They
next meet at the scene of an accident. She saves the life of a little
blighter...uh, boy...who has run into traffic. Fraam (which name is
difficult to murmur endearingly, I imagine) scoops her up and (after she
drops off to sleep in the Casualty area) 'examines' her--finding only
bruises and scrapes.
If
there were a sliding scale of things you don't want handsome men to
see/do around you, where holding your hair while you vomit canal water
onto a grassy verge is a 10 and catching you in a minor fib is a 1, then
I'd rate this a solid 7.
Although it doesn't seem like he likes her
very much, she thinks about him from time to time and wishes she'd been
engineered better.
They meet again in Holland.
What?!
An old friend of her father, Doctor de Groot, wants her to stay with him and his only child Mies for a holiday.
(whistle, whistle, blatant plot device, whistle, whistle)
Don't you like each other? says a confused and beautiful Mies when they meet up with Fraam (an old family friend of Mies' too).
That remains to be seen. (Oh Fraam. You're at your best when you're as enigmatic as a Russian arms dealer.)
Lucy
also meets Willem de Vries who I thought was destined to be a
colorless, slope-shouldered suitor until I found out he had money. Then,
naturally, he was better suited to be a young lovelorn fellow meant for
Mies.
While Fraam moonlights as a one man chauffeur service by
offering numerous women of a variety of hair hues rides in his swanky
Panther de Ville, Lucy plots to bring Mies and Willem together. Maybe,
she suggests, Willem could pretend to be interested in her. Waters are
slightly muddied.
At the Dutch hospital ball, Lucy arrives in a
horribly modest emerald number that Fraam just loves. If he could waltz
her into a corner...Alas, she had told everyone that she wasn't dancing
in a bid to not have Mies scrounge a date for her. Willem doesn't take
no for an answer, however, and leads her onto the nearly empty dance
floor...where she shakes her moneymaker in a jaw-dropping fashion. She's
clearly the best dancer there.
Fraam plucks her out of a clutch of young people and claims a dance. But then he's a little insulting about it.
I shall be sadly out of fashion if I can't say that I have danced at least once with you.
Notice, he didn't risk asking her to dance (she might turn him down)
and then he excuses his behavior as duty. Fraam is being very weenie.
Forgive him though. He loves her very much and already thinks she thinks
he's too old for her. He puts things to right by finding a quiet
balcony and praising her dancing and her dress and laughing a little at
the precarious fashions being held up by sticky tape and prayer out
there on the dance floor. Detente.
The rest of Holland comprises a
rescued kitten, Willem doing the psychological equivalent of taking Mies
across his knee and walloping her, Fraam telling Lucy that he does his
utmost not to see her and then a whopping kiss.
Sailing home with an
upgraded stateroom and a massive bunch of flowers, Lucy is unaware of
the palm greasing Fraam engaged in to make it so.
Fraam comes to
England to give another lecture and this time Lucy takes care to sit
well in the back to avoid him noticing her. Skipping down an unused
corridor afterward, she is nevertheless irritated that he gives her
nothing more than a frosty nod in passing. It bugs her all day and she
decides to skip socializing and go to bed.
But she's pulled away by a message. There's a man down there in the waiting room. A real live man. For Lucy.
It's Fraam. Looking about him at the unwelcome surroundings he comments,
'I
wonder how many young men survive a visit here? She answered him
seriously. 'Well, if they're really keen, it doesn't seem to matter,'
she told him, and wondered why he smiled.
And then he has time to be either a weenie again or a strategist.
Mies made me promise to take you out for a meal while I was over here. Will you come now?
(Oh Fraam! You'll never defeat the Nazis if you don't charge out of the foxhole!)
At
the end of a very nice night he catches her close. 'I almost forgot,'
his hand came up and lifted her chin gently: 'I had to give you this
from Mies.' She had never been kissed like that before.
(Chaaaaaaaarrrrrge!)
They
next meet during a blizzard in her home village. Fraam just happened to
be in the area...He goes out in the teeth of the storm to assist her in
the at-home delivery she's had the misfortune to get roped into.
Oopsie. The baby's breech. Double oopsie. The baby is twins. In a
blizzard. Way out in the country.
This is one of those moments that underscores my deep and heartfelt affection for the easy charms of suburbia...
But
I digress. Lucy is so glad to see Fraam. She is just a student nurse
after all and another pair of hands is more than welcome. Attach those
hands to the body of a hot, hot RDD and then I think we've got the
makings of a triple word score.
Fraam cooks and holds the babies and shovels snow. Lucy collects the eggs and milks the goat
and makes hot mash for the chickens. They wait for the sound of a helicopter or snow-plow to rescue them. It's like
Little House on the Prairie meets the Rebel Alliance on the ice-planet Hoth.
And
when they finally do make it back to her parent's house Lucy nods off
from exhaustion. Fraam scoops her up and carries her to bed.
Mrs. Prendergast tucked her in. 'The darling's absolutely out cold.' 'The darling's absolutely darling,' remarked Mr. der Linssen at his most suave.
Putting aside the fact that I think 'suave' is a perfectly horrid word
choice at a time like that, we've got some very telling signs.
When Lucy is shoveling snow with Fraam the next morning her dawning realization hits her over the head with a snow shovel.
Eureka! I love him! What now?
Fraam
asks Lucy to come to Holland to nurse Doctor de Groot who happens to
need surgery for the very complaint that Fraam lectured on (and Lucy
slept through). No matter. He'll fill her in.
She arrives after a
long and weary day of travel dressed in the most utilitarian clothes
possible when he stops at his house and invites her in to meet his
family. If he'd tried that with me I'd feel legally bound to tell him
that for his own safety and for the safety of others he'd better get
used to wearing protective shin guards. But Lucy doesn't kick him under
the table. They have a lovely dinner and she thinks how lucky some girl
would be to get those in-laws.
When
Lucy finally (after some very light nursing) gets another free day
Fraam kisses her gently and then bundles her into a car. (THE Panther de
Ville?)
I'm going to marry you. You can think about it on the way to the house.
Now before we get all judge-y about his delivery I'd like to make a couple of points:
- Sure
those three little words weren't said ("Account at Harrods.') but he
has been kissing her pretty steadily. Oughtn't she to have known?
- As
soon as he read her brainwaves and angry Japanese snowmen as a token of
her undying love for him, he proposed just as soon as he could. He's
been waiting to ask her for months and it's as though he's a contractor
who didn't let his foundation properly cure before slapping a house on
top of it. The cracks from all that unseemly haste will soon begin to
show.
She accepts and very sweetly tells him she loves him
(which is his cue for...?) but wants to work out her notice at the
hospital--so that he can be extra sure. Mies, who heretofore had been
kind of a dim-witted and fairly kind parallel character, at this point
gets under my skin.
Wow. You're,
like, totally engaged. You are so not his type. He's liked a ton of
other girls before. Let's sit down and make a list of them. No, no,
we're going to need the thick pad of paper... Alright, now first the blonds...
Mies
mentions a name Lucy hadn't heard before--Adilia. (Pity that I have not
the time to find a font with daggers and dripping blood because Adilia
looks a little innocuous in the default blogger font.)
To her credit,
Lucy asks him about it and though he is cold (Framm-speak for uncertain
and worried) he answers her well enough. He even invites Adilia to
lunch and tells Lucy 'Now you know what she's like' which settles it as
far as he's concerned.
And then Aunt Sophie gets to Lucy at a family function. (
Marvelous that you young things know how to look the other way when your husbands play the field...)
Fraam manages to say that he loves Lucy (to his aunt! which is nearly
unforgivable as Lucy hasn't heard the words herself yet) so feathers are
smoothed.
And then Lucy sees Fraam driving Adilia in his Panther de
Ville (What is he a taxi service?!) at a time when he is supposed to be
'at work'. They begin to have a tearing row but Fraam doesn't waste time
being icy and aloof.
'Now, now, my
love,' he said soothingly, 'what is all this?' He kissed the top of her
head. 'I believe Tante Sophie's hints and spite did their work, after
all.' And then he explains. The reader begins to wonder if this
will be the whole of their married life--jealous rages and solicitation
all the way into the grave.
So she is calmed again.
And then he says he has to go to
Brussels which got my Disaster-o-meter ringing bells like crazy. Shall we recite, class, the First Commandment of Betty:
Danger lies in Belgium.
There, be pirates and death rays and all manner of villainy.
(I'm going to get a cease and desist letter from the Belgium Chamber of Commerce--you see if I don't.)
Lucy
is in the front parlor of Fraam's (they're living together, didn't I
say? Properly chaperoned!) when Adilia (imaging the gore and daggers)
walks in.
I have come to suck your blood!
No,
she does something worse than suck the life out of her dooming her to
an eternity of pallid skin and a monotonous diet. She uses little truths
to make a gigantic lie.
Fraam is in
London! I vill soon be there! Ah, Ah, Ah! Let's ask Fraam's faithful
butler vere he is. London! Ah, ah, ah! You can have his ugly babies and I
vill have his heart!
Lucy, having the grottiest day ever,
keeps it together until Adilia leaves and then, flinging her ring into a
teacup, dashes upstairs for her coat and gloves. All she knows for sure
is that Fraam said he was going to Brussels when he actually went to
London.
She
walks all day and checks into a nice hotel when she can't walk any
more. But she doesn't have her purse/money/passport. Blast. And when she
tries to explain to the check-in clerk that she's Doctor Linssen's
fiancee and that she doesn't have it, the glorified pencil pusher's eyes
dart to her ringless hand.
They ask her to wait in her room...and
then lock her in. Before she has a chance to fashion a make-shift rope
out of bedsheets or stage a prison riot (No justice, no peace!), Fraam
walks in. His rage (which I sympathize with) evaporates when she
explains. Tears and kisses. He went to London to get her released from
having to work out her remaining time at the hospital so they could get
married sooner. Brussels was a head-fake. (Whew.)
He'll give her a week to get her wedding dress and in the mean time that ring is to stay put.
The End
Rating:
I remember liking this book but I also remember being irritated at the
end. Why doesn't she trust him more? Why does she take off so fast? But
upon re-reading I noticed some things that helped me like this waaaaay
more.
1) Adilia called Lucy's
future children plain. This is a super big deal--the bony brat found
Lucy's insecurities like Luke Skywalker hunting womp rats and imploded
them faster than the Death Star.
2)
Though this Betty is not a fan of weekending in Brighton, she is an
enormous fan of pre-marital snogging in the vicinity of Southern
England. (Keep your hands to yourself!) Much of Fraam's problems would
have been evaporated the second he decided to use that William and Mary
settee in the front parlor for more than tea-sipping.
3)
What guarantee do we have that Lucy's doubts are finally banished? On
the final page Lucy flings her arms about Fraam's neck and kisses him.
Heretofore, she had been cheerfully accepting his kisses but worried
about invading his personal space on her own bat. This all changes when
she finally (finally!) realizes that he's been waiting for her as long
(longer, actually) as she was waiting for him.
Still, it would have been nice had there been a few fewer Adilia's waiting to shank Lucy when Fraam's back is turned.
No matter. I give it a
Queen of Puddings!
Also,
there are really wonderful bits with her family and as a nurse on the
ward that I didn't cover very thoroughly in the review but which are
well worth the read.
Food:
Roast beef, fish and chips, currant buns, Sole Picasso (Cubed Sole?),
vanilla ice cream, milk pudding, Poussin en Cocotte, carpet-bag steak
(This sounds as tough as old boots.), cheese straws, bubble and squeak,
and fried bread.
Fashion: She
wears a jersey dress and jacket, a tweed skirt that she hates, a full
rose-patterned skirt and (to the hospital ball) a green silk jersey gown
with a modest neckline that she'd like to take some shears to and slash
the bosom of. Tourists make themselves conspicuous with clothes made of
'uncrushable man-made fibers'. Fraam has a trendy waistcoat and a
beautifully cut suit with the pant legs stuffed into wellies. Lucy meets
her future in-laws in her traveling clothes--a tweed skirt, a shirt
blouse (?) and sweater.
