I have to admit that I didn't get a chance to re-read Nurse in Holland, Amazon in an Apron OR A Match for Sister Maggy this week. I still have one more set of wedding guests to trundle off to the airport (tomorrow), so I've been a bit, well, busy. I did, however, re-read Betty Keira's excellent review, so here's my (admittedly limited) thoughts:
- In spite of three (3) different titles, I still have a hard time remembering which one this one is. Had it been named Maggie and the Creepy Belgium Family, I would have smiled lazily and said, "Ah yes, the creepy Belgiums, I am familiar with that one."
- The Belgiums. Let's talk about them. I felt like Betty was starting to go a little gothic there - Mary Stewart-ish. Betty Keira wondered (to me) if The Great Betty had had a similar nursing experience. We both agreed that there felt like there might have been some kind of back story.
- Betty Keira mentions that they ate 'twaalf'. I tried to look it up - it looks to me like 'twaalf' means 12. Either Betty Keira made a mistake (possible), Betty Neels made a mistake (also possible), the Dutch like to eat numbers (they do eat chocolate letters...) or it was a restaurant and they ordered '#12'. I'm throwing this one out there for a little help. Anyone??
-Betty Debbie
But, Betty
Keira, this is not the correct book cover! We're reviewing
A Match for Sister Maggy--not
Nurse in Holland or (dons reading glasses)
Amazon in an Apron. Ah, gentle reader, this is because this book was poorly named twice before stumbling onto the genius of the final.
Doctor Paul van Beijen Doelsma (36) didn't intend be called fat, elderly, balding and heavily-accented so early in the morning but when
Sister Maggy MacFergus (24--
Junoesque doesn't begin to cover it) rushes
pell-
mell into the hospital lobby (
Ala
a certain impertinent warrior princess) that's just what happens.
Naturally, she didn't know who that gorgeous giant was, leaning against
the porter's lodge and
liste
ning lazily to her hurried explanations and complaints ('
Nine o'clock for a lecture! The man ought to be shot!'),
but when she scoots into the back of the lecture hall it's a wonder
that the sound of her stomach dropping to her toes isn't heard around
the world. If they shot him for lecturing so early then he makes a
mighty handsome corpse.
Paul gives an excellent lecture, fields a few
questions from the earnest, eager and ugly and then spies Sister Maggy
in whispered conference with a fellow nurse in the last row. The
'other' nurse asks a question--a very intelligent and well-reasoned
question--and Paul knows that it
wa
s
Maggy that really asked it. He sends waves of white-hot passionate
medical flirtation to the back of the hall. Many staff nurses, caught
in the wake of his decisive fervor, lost their sanity that day...
After
decimating hapless nurses, he makes an amendment to his schedule and
decides to head on up to the Women's Medical Ward. He serves up more
uncrushable ardor--thinly disguised by a witty game of 'Is your ward
ready to receive me?'--and she is scrambling to catch up.
After a successful round, his
parthian shot is to corner her in her office and kiss the starch out of her apron.
'I want you to remember me.'
(Are you purring yet?) File a sexual harassment suit? Don't be
ridiculous. He's hot and it's the 60s. She should be thanking her
lucky stars.
Non Sequiter: In the ward we meet a horrible patient, Madame Riveau, and her menfolk who are Belgian. Belgian. In the land of Neels, death and mayhem are the handmaidens of all things Belgian.
The next
Doelsma to enter the picture is
Mevrouw Doelsma--Paul's
mother and recent coronary sufferer. Though Paul is not there, Maggy
lays some important long-term groundwork for her eventual
happiness--impressing her future mother-in-law with important skills
such as life-saving. When Paul does show up, Maggy the Shy Giantess
keeps swapping out her off-duty--not so she can see him (no, no, that
would be too easy!) but to avoid him. He counters her oblique overtures
with
the well-trod (but always welcome) gesture of sending her 6 dozen roses and referencing Robbie Burns.
But
then he asks her to go away with him to Holland. Rockets are firing in
her brain. Her heart takes flight. Rainbows and buttercups rain from
the sky! Four-leaf clovers are popping up all over...(Snap, snap.) He
asks her to go and nurse his mother for a few weeks. (oh.) Hm. That's
not a proposition. Her pride is stung enough to refuse.
When he asks again, he gently explains how concerned he is for his ailing mother--which is a little rat-
finky
of him if you think about it...using his mother to advance his romantic
ambitions. But Maggy consents and in the mean time has her dawning
realization.
Paul loves his mother and Maggy loves him and I'm not
sure why the roses have to be given away at this point or tears indulged
in but perhaps Maggy realizes that she's just a cog in his machine.
He'll do whatever it takes to get
Mevrouw
back on her feet--even sweet-talking an Amazon in an Apron. (See what I
just did there?) Maybe this is what it felt like to be press-ganged by
the British Navy...
Non Sequiter: Madame Riveau, meanwhile, has escaped from the hospital and has tooth pain.
In Holland Maggy meets
Stien who is cute and small and everything the large, strong Maggy is not.
Editorial Note:
As a reader, we wonder, 'Has Paul cleared his decks for action or is
there a bilge rat running amok among the ammunition?' (Oh, you
weren't?) We see
Stien
twice more--once on horseback going for an early morning ride with Paul
and another time enjoying a late-night drink in the kitchens. Poor
Maggy, her dressing gown bunched up anyhow, peers around the door with a
poker and loses her dignity. I want to smack Paul around
a
little as it never occurs to him that running around with a girl small
enough for Maggy to bench-press might throw a wrench in the wheel.
Also, she lives in Utrecht (an important and muddying detail).
Maggy
is pretty much ignored for a while as she nurses Paul's mother so she
amuses herself...by taking his massive horse out for vigorous gallops.
When Paul discovers it he erupts with the timeliness and precision of
Old Faithful. Maggy, treating him tolerantly--like a fussy little boy
who isn't getting his way--only enrages him further. Off he goes to
tattle to his mother!
Oh dear, says the old woman,
don't be mad at Maggy. I told her she should drive the Daimler...What!!! She's driving his luxury cars too?
His apology for blowing his top leaves something to be desired and another row is kicked up.
But they aren't going to be
that couple--the ones bickering up the aisle to the alter--so a cease-fire is proposed.
Him: Do you like me? I like you. Let's be friends.
That's good enough to shake on.
We remove to Leiden while
Mevrouw gets some medical tests...
Maggy and Paul have done more hanging out (riding together, driving in the car, etc.) in
Friesland
(did I not mention that his ancestral home is in the land of large
women and over-sized cows?) but upon his arrival in Leiden, he takes her
on
The Home Tour of Smoldering Passions.
(Because you don't let people you don't care a fig about to peek into
your attic nurseries.) But he doesn't let her see his room (fearing
that just seeing where he sleeps will send her into a frenzy) or The
Master Suite. See, it's closed up because he's just a bachelor and,
oh...by the way, there's a family tradition about not letting the future
Mrs.
Doelsma see it before the big night.
He
also takes her on a tour of the hospital (giving her a little kiss in
the children's ward). But as he's still haring off to Utrecht at the
drop of a hat and
Stien lives there and
Mevrouw Doelsma grouches that in Utrecht is 'the love of his life'..., Maggy throttles any growing expectations in their pram.
While doing some shopping, she comes upon the mysterious Madame
Riveau
(Who prefers to export her Belgian evil to distant lands like England
and Holland.). They agree to meet again the next day for reasons
totally unrelated to rational thought. But when Maggy does meet her,
Madame is deeply sick and gets her to take her home to the fetid swamp
she lives in. Madame promptly falls asleep and Maggy (doing her nurse-
ly due diligence) can't leave her in this condition without any help. (Belgian though she be.)
Maggy,
wearing a brand new dress, rolls up her sleeves and begins to clean.
Boiling soapy water, hauling around furniture--the lot. And when the
Riveau menfolk appear she orders them about and sends for a doctor.
Hey. I know a doctor.
Paul
shows up in a rage--barely cloaking his desperate concern (She missed
her train!) and when he tells her that she's wearing a pretty dress
(bunchy and spattered as it now is) she is hurt.
Are you being beastly? Genuinely surprised, he answers honestly.
No--you would look--nice-- in a potato sack.
Back in
Friesland he invites her to dinner.
Her: Oh but I don't have a dress. Him: They have a Big and Tall store here.
Important points about their date:
- He underlines that this is not a farewell, thanks for nursing my mother back to health date.
- He does this by pulling into a lay-by...where nobody gets kissed.
- He
tries to get information out of her about where she lives. She gently
snubs him which feels wonderful after all those other times Neels heroines have been the snub-ee instead of the snub-er.
- He
tells her, at the end of the date, that he must have taken every other
girl that he ever knew to that restaurant at one time or another.
- He says, "Hey remember that time you came down with a poker and felt horribly awkward? Let's reminisce about that. Oh, and Stien would make a decorative wife."
He kisses her and s
he retaliates by standing him up on their morning ride.
She
is provided a way to leave Holland by her hospital matron who wonders
(in a letter) when Maggy will be back as there is a shortage of nurses.
She takes off to the airport the next day (while Paul's airplane from Germany is landing--yes, he had to go to
Deutschland
for two days and he rushes back when he finds out she's leaving). By
skipping to the head of the queue (rather sneakily) she is able to avoid
him.
Paul, at his wit's end, does the only thing a sensible man could do in a similar situation:
- Take the family engagement ring and pearls out of the wall safe.
- Notify Customs that they will be leaving the country.
- Contacts his relative who can expedite a Special License with The Archbishop.
- Murder his insane wife that he's kept walled up behind the doors of The Master Suite.
Oh,
and then he wangles Maggy's address out of her hospital matron's hands.
Kissing in Scotland and a wedding while they're at it--no need to
travel to a remote cottage for implied conjugal relations.
The End
P.S. But I'm still worried about how matron will solve her nurse shortage.
Rating: What a pity that I remembered the end differently (My memory played tricks on me and I had patched the end of the not great
Pineapple Girl
onto it) because it was really rather lovely. I don't know how I feel
about the Scots accent--it all seems a little as though La
Neels
had upended her purse, shaken out all the Scots vernacular and pasted
them into dialog. Still, Maggy is a darling and has a formidable
backbone so I don't mind the '
ach's and '
wee's and '
dinna's too terribly. Her eyebrows are practically an
auxillary
character of their own and I wish The Great Betty had not been so
liberal with her 'large hands' and 'thick, glowering eyebrows'. A
little delicacy, please. Paul is a little more difficult to understand
(he doesn't off-load Stein soon enough to indicate a man decisively in
love) but I like to think he's playing a long game--instant dawning
realization and all else following. To sum up: Though I had remembered
this poorly, it has earned a
boeuf en croute--just think what it would have earned if I'd not had to take notes!
Food: Mevrouw Doelsma barfs up lobster. They eat
boterkoek,
twaalf,
Rolpens met Rodekool (did you say 'roadkill'? It's actually spiced and
pickled minced beef and tripe and apples and red cabbage.
Gah.),
caneton a' la Rouennaise (a 'famous' duckling dish).
Fashion: Paul
has the 'loveliest waistcoat'. Maggy sports her blue uniform, a
sweater and slacks to go riding in, a raincoat and scarf tied under her
chin, a navy blue and white checked
tricot dress, her utterly ruined vivid coral pink jersey, and a what is supposed to be a lovely cream
guipure lace knee-skimming gown to go dancing in (though she is a strapping lass and
I'm worried that that's rather a lot of lace to be looking at).
ning lazily to her hurried explanations and complaints ('Nine o'clock for a lecture! The man ought to be shot!'),
but when she scoots into the back of the lecture hall it's a wonder
that the sound of her stomach dropping to her toes isn't heard around
the world. If they shot him for lecturing so early then he makes a
mighty handsome corpse.
s
Maggy that really asked it. He sends waves of white-hot passionate
medical flirtation to the back of the hall. Many staff nurses, caught
in the wake of his decisive fervor, lost their sanity that day...
the well-trod (but always welcome) gesture of sending her 6 dozen roses and referencing Robbie Burns.
a
little as it never occurs to him that running around with a girl small
enough for Maggy to bench-press might throw a wrench in the wheel.
Also, she lives in Utrecht (an important and muddying detail).
he retaliates by standing him up on their morning ride.
