Tangled Autumn

By Betty Neels ©1971 

When her romance with Andrew went wrong, Sappha had jumped at the chance of a job in Scotland to make a complete break. The change of background, not to mention the “Demon King,” in the person of the Dutch doctor, Rolf van Duyren, soon began to take her mind off the past—but then Andrew came back.

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:
“I do believe you would feel compelled to offer any burglar foolish enough to enter a cup of tea before you laid him out with a poker.” 

“Don’t bother to think of anything to say—I’m sure it’ll come to you later. You can always write it down and commit it to memory and shoot it at me when next we meet.”

REVIEW
This is the third Betty Neels book I’ve read (I forgot to write the review of the second one, so I’ll have to re-read it before I write its review) and so far her books are proving fairly formulaic: Strong, capable woman meets enormous, dark, masterful Dutch man, travels to Holland and tames him. From what I have read of Betty Neels, I am not the first person to make this observation, but if you are unfamiliar with Betty Neels as I was, it’s news to you. She does pretty well with it in my limited experience—perhaps not surprising, as she is one of the Grandes Dames of romance writing. 

Anyway, here we have Nurse Sappha Devenish, who has left her London hospital after catching her fiancé several times—she’s a trusting gal—in the arms of another nurse, “a lush, blonde beauty.” She’s taken a post in Scotland, caring for a Dutch baroness—I’m suddenly realizing I don’t think we ever learned the patient’s first name—who is recovering from surgery for parathyroid osteodystrophy and also a broken arm and hip after she fell (I guess that’s the “osteodystrophy” part of her disease at work there) during a trip to visit old friends in Scotland.

En route to the house in Scotland where the baroness is recuperating, Sappha runs out of “petrol” and stalls her Mini in the middle of the road. She’s finally saved by “a very tall man with broad shoulders, a dark fierce face, haughty and hawk-nosed above a straight mouth; dark hair brushed back from a wide forehead.” He’s condescending, and she’s insulted, and she tells her patient, “he looked like the Demon King. You never saw such eyebrows.” The door opens, and guess who comes in? Dr. Rolf van Duyren, her patient’s son! Naturally they start off like oil and water, as he is always teasing her, she is always convinced that he is mocking her and so is constantly insulted by every little gesture or burp out of him. Soon she decides, on page 24, to tell him, “Some people don’t get on very well—I think perhaps we are like that.”

Naturally, on page 39, guess who turns up in the village? It’s Andrew! He proceeds to tell Sappha how he misses having her around and wants her back—though he never bothers to tell her he loves her. He takes her out for tea, aided and abetted by Rolf, who runs into the two coincidentally and paves the way for her to have the rest of the day off to spend with Andrew. The pair heads out for a long drive through a terrible rainstorm to see a view obscured by clouds and fog, and he talks about his plans for his bright, lucrative future in a posh city practice while disparaging Rolf’s work (he mistakenly thinks Rolf is “just” a country doctor, when in fact he is an important chief physician in a major teaching hospital back in Holland). Sappha is, much to my relief, left totally cold—even icy when a local woman requires an urgent C-section for a breech birth, and Rolf calls on the pair during their supper at the town inn to ask for their help, and Andrew urges Sappha not to go and refuses to go himself. (Naturally Rolf and Sappha save both woman and baby!)

Andrew leaves a letter for Sappha at the house, and she mails it back to him unopened, realizing suddenly that she is in fact in love with Rolf! And this is just on page 54! Now for 130 pages of a plot I’m not overly fond of—the hero frequently asking her about her boyfriend but she never tells him that she’d dumped him. This makes for a lot of tension and arguing and hostilities that admittedly can make for spicy scenes but just feels so unnecessary. I keep asking myself, Why doesn’t she just tell him the truth?

Rolf is actually kind of hot, attentive and caring—and he washes dishes! Though it is the 1970s, so he buttons her coat and buckles her seatbelt and literally picks her up and gets bossy from time to time, she even “meekly” obeying fairly often but also more often arguing back, which, it is hinted, is part of his attraction to her. “You’ll be the first woman under ninety who hasn’t been bowled over” by his stunning good looks, Sappha is told, and Rolf’s sister tells him, “You’re an old bear, and the trouble is no one ever tells you so or answers you back.” (She then goes on to point out that “Sappha does,” in case we hadn’t noticed.

The writing is pretty good, with occasional gems such as “She swallowed her heart back to where it belonged,” and the scene in which Sappha runs into Andrew and Rolf is particularly cute—she had just popped a large toffee into her mouth and then must manage it and the two young men to humorous effect. The story is smooth but not especially exciting, and the final scene a little confusing—she runs off and he waits about five minutes for no reason that is explained before going after her—but overall it is a decent book worth reading. And so my opinion of Betty Neels neatly aligns with the general consensus: She’s pretty good!a