The Hidden Force Read Free Page A

Mama you would, no?” said Doddy angrily. “I know that very well. You always go to band with Mama.”
    “What do you know… you little madam!”
    “What do I know?” she laughed. “What do I know? I know what I know.”
    “Eh?” he said teasingly, with a crude attempt to catch her on the rebound. “You and Addy, eh?”
    “Well, and what about you and Mama…”
    He shrugged his shoulders.
    “You’re crazy,” he said.
    “No need hide from me! Anyway, everyone says.”
    “Let them say.”
    “It’s really bad of you, though!”
    “Oh, go to hell…”
    He threw down his cue angrily and marched off. She followed him.
    “Look, Theo… don’t be angry. Do come with me to band.”
    “No.”
    “I won’t say any more,” she cajoled sweetly.
    She was frightened that he would stay angry, and then she would have no one at all; then she would be bored to death.
    “I promised Addy, and I can’t go alone…”
    “Well, if you don’t say such stupid things again…”
    “Yes, I promise. Theo dear, come on then…”
    She was already in the garden.
    Van Oudijck appeared on the threshold of his office, the door of which was always open, but which was cut off from the inner gallery by a large screen.
    “Doddy!” he called out.
    “Yes, Papa?”
    “Would you make sure there are some flowers in Mama’s room tomorrow?”
    His voice was almost embarrassed and he was blushing.
    Doddy suppressed her giggles.
    “All right, Papa… I’ll make sure.”
    “Where are you off to?”
    “With Theo… to hear band.”
    Van Oudijck flushed with anger.
    “To the band? You might ask me first!” he cried in sudden fury.
    Doddy pouted.
    “I don’t like your going out without my knowing where. This afternoon, too, you had gone out when I wanted to go for a walk with you.”
    “Well,
suda
, that’s that then,” said Doddy, crying.
    “You can go,” said Van Oudijck, “but I want you to ask me first.”
    “No, I don’t feel like going any more!” Doddy wept. “That’s the end of it. No band.”
    In the distance, in the garden of the Concordia club, they could already hear the first sounds.
    Van Oudijck had go back to work. Doddy and Theo threw themselves into two rocking chairs in the front garden and rocked madly, gliding across the smooth marble in the chairs.
    “Come on,” said Theo. “Let’s get going. Addy’s waiting for you.”
    “No,” she sulked. “Don’t care two hoots. Tomorrow I shall tell Addy. Papa so horrid. He’s spoiling my fun. And… I’m not putting any flowers in Mama’s room.”
    Theo sniggered.
    “Say,” whispered Doddy. “That Papa… hey? So in love, always. He was blushing when he asked me about those flowers.”
    Theo sniggered again, and hummed along to the distant music.

3
    T HE NEXT MORNING at eleven-thirty Theo went to collect his stepmother from the station in the landau. Van Oudijck, who at that time usually dealt with police business, had not said anything to his son, but when, from his office, he saw Theo getting into the landau and driving off, he thought it was nice of the lad. He had adored Theo as a child, had continued to spoil him as a boy, and had often clashed with him as a young man, but still the old paternal passion often flared up. At this moment he loved his son more than Doddy, who was still sulking that morning and had not put any flowers in his wife’s room, so he’d had to instruct Kario to provide some. He was now sorry that he hadn’t spoken a kind word to Theo for days and resolved to do so in the very near future. The lad was volatile: in three years he had been employed by at least five coffee companies; at present he was again out of work and was hanging around at home looking for something to occupy him.
    At the station, Theo waited only a few minutes before the train from Surabaya arrived. He saw Mrs Van Oudijck at once, with her personal maid Urip and the two little boys, René and Ricus, who unlike himself were dark-skinned,and whom she