Annelies полностью

“Anne, please,” Miep corrects, obviously trying to contain her alarm. “This is not how we behave in the office.” It’s a sensible warning, Anne knows, but one that she feels suddenly compelled to ignore.

“It’s true,” she says. “I’m not making that up.”

“And neither are you being helpful,” Miep can only point out. “Now, I’m sure Bep is not frightened of a stickpin. Just as I’m sure you have plenty of work to occupy you.”

“It’s all right, Anne,” Bep tells her lightly. Bep’s eyes are bright behind her eyeglasses, but something about her makes Anne wonder if she’s forcing it a bit. Bep frets. They all know that. And today her smile strikes Anne as rehearsed. Anne, in fact, has made Bep a sometime project of hers. Trying to boost cheerful, sunny Bep to the surface more often. So what else can she do but investigate?

The telephone rings, and Miep picks it up. Anne surrenders to her desk work, but not for very long. As soon as she’s convinced that Miep is deeply enough involved in her call, she makes her escape.

In the kitchen Bep and she often gossip together, mostly concerning the male of the species, Anne gabbing away on the subject of her many beaux and Bep on her up-and-down relationship with her boyfriend, Maurits. But now as she enters, she finds Bep with her back to the door, head down, and bracing herself against the counter.

“Hello again,” says Anne.

Bep turns. A flicker of alarm is quickly overlaid by the smile she pushes up. “Oh. Hello again yourself,” she says, opening the cabinet and bringing down the surrogate. But her eyes are slightly panicked.

“Mummy taught Margot and me how to brew perfect coffee. You must start with cold water, else it’ll taste flat.”

Bep nods but does not reply.

“Bep, is something the matter?”

Bep glares at the spoonful of peaty surrogate she is leveling off from the tin. “What makes you ask that?” she wonders.

“I have instincts for that sort of thing.” This is what Anne likes to believe. “There’s something on your mind, I can just tell.”

A swallow, and then Bep drops a bomb in a whisper. “I think Maurits is going to ask to marry me.”

Anne’s eyes pop wide open. “Are you serious, Bep? Maurits?”

“Yes. That’s the one.” Bep’s glance is shy as she replaces the lid on the tin of Hotel Koffiesurrogaat. Her eyes are cool lakes.

Anne feels a giddy grin on her face. “Oh, Bep. You must be beside yourself.”

“Yes. I know I should be,” Bep agrees.

And now Anne feels a tiny secret thrill. Bep getting a proposal of marriage is one thing. Bep refusing a proposal of marriage? That’s something else again. She tries to trim the eager curiosity from her voice. “Are you thinking of telling him no?”

Bep plugs the percolator into the electric socket. “Maybe,” she says, and then she stops and looks at Anne with blunt trepidation. “Would that be such a terrible thing?”

“Terrible? I—” Anne shivers. “I don’t know. Are you sure he’s going to ask?”

“Pretty sure.” Bep nods. “I mean, I think he’s hinting at it. He’s saying things like at our age his parents were married with two children.”

“Do you love him?”

“That’s a complicated question.”

“Is it?” Anne wonders. “I wouldn’t think so.” In Anne’s mind this is the only question that truly matters. She suspects that her parents married less for love than for the requirements of society, and look what happened. Pim stuck in an arrangement for the rest of his life with Mummy. A respectful arrangement maybe, but still Anne can never imagine settling for something like that. She knows that love is waiting for her out there somewhere. A heart that will match her own in every detail. And she doesn’t want Bep to settle for anything less either.

Bep, however, shakes her head. “He always tries to be good to me. Do I wish he had a little more ambition? That maybe he would want more than just a job as a laborer for a concrete company? I don’t know. My father thinks he’s perfect material for a husband.”

“And certainly it’s good that your father approves.”

“And he does. Very much so.”

“Though, on the other hand, your father is not the one who’s going to be married to him,” Anne points out. “You are.”

“Funny,” Bep says with her lips in a straight line. “That is exactly what I said, too. Though Papa didn’t think it was so amusing. He says Maurits is honest and a hard worker and if he wants to marry me, shouldn’t that be enough?”

“Yet I still can’t help but return to the most important question: Do you love him, Bep?” Anne asks again.

This time Bep expels a heavy breath as the percolator begins to pop. “I don’t know. Yes. In a way. Of course I do, in a way.”

“But. Not in the way you want to,” Anne suggests. “Not in the way you want to love someone you’re going to marry.”

Bep loops her hair behind her ears. “I’m twenty-three, Anne. I know you’re only thirteen. You’re probably still much too young to really understand the sort of pressure that puts on me. My mother is continually making her ‘jokes’ about her eldest daughter, the ‘Old Maid.’”