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  ‘The White Rose Gervase, the name is so pure – she started there today my love and I want to tell you something about her. She has no push – no push at all, what will she do with your gift Gervase? you see shes so quiet and Peter has all this life in him, he could have given her some of that but hes kept it to himself – perhaps he gave it to Michael, he was a great lusty noisy baby wearing me out with his tantrums able to get his way from the beginning. Peter could have given some to Lucy, but he’s so vengeful. Even in his seed you know he’s vengeful Gervase. What shall I do, it doesn’t matter you see what I tell her – shes an exile from Paradise – but she doesn’t know it…’

  ‘This morning darling on the wireless there was a forces request – was it Clarice Mayne used to sing it Gervase? we had that record with the big scratch at the beginning, Let the great big world keep turning never mind if I have you – I sang it inside all day, some of these tunes they knock at my heart darling, You have simply set me yearning, I wept you see, I couldn’t help it – I sang For I only know that I love you so – that there’s no one else will do…’

  ‘I’ve had that nightmare again darling – four times since Christmas now. I never wrote it down for you before – this wood, I’m in this wood looking for you and I call Gervase Gervase everywhere – I know I haven’t married Peter, But I’ve lost you in this wood and I’m searching then I start to lose hope – and the pain starts. Then suddenly I hear your voice Gervase! Oh darling the flood of relief it comes all over me, I shake in my dreams! I can’t move in my happiness – But then I see you – oh its terrible – I see you, You are coming through the trees. A long way away and you come closer and closer, you are a skeleton Gervase – oh I cant write it, your face – and then the rags and bits and shreds of khaki theyre clinging to your bones – but its your face is the worst. I scream and I scream and want to run. But suddenly there’s only Peter to run to. Oh God its so terrible, I wake up and Im fighting for breath I think Im suffocating –’

  A door slammed downstairs. With a guilty start, I jumped upright, then gathering all the bits of paper together I crammed them hastily into my chest of drawers. For a while after that, I sat trembling and listening, but there were no more sounds from below. My legs felt very shaky; the drawer where I’d hidden the letters burned in my vision with the clarity of a cut-out. The room felt like a sprung trap. But I sat on, quite motionless. When I heard my father climbing the stairs to bed, I took hold of my pillow; then clenching it with my teeth, I sat rigidly – terrified, yet hopeful, wondering if he would come in.

  But the steps – remarkably quiet for one who’d slammed the door so heavily – passed by, went on up to the attic room. After about half an hour I went through to the lavatory and was violently sick.

  Chapter Eight

  The next day, I had a row with Miss Lister. She attacked me as I stood beside the stuffed canary, trying to remember selected lines from ‘The Old Vicarage’.

  ‘Ah God!’ she moaned, ‘to see the branches stir

  Across the moon, at Grahnchester!’

  Then, ‘You don’t know it, you haven’t learnt it!’ she exclaimed, tossing her head like an over-reined horse. I mumbled something. ‘And my time,’ she asked hotly, ‘what about my time?’ I said nothing. ‘My time is precious,’ she announced, snapping shut the pages of Rupert Brooke: the Complete Poems, ‘precious like the bronze, the silver, the gold medals for which my real pupils work.’ She flung up her head again. ‘Your heart is not here, I have felt this for some while. And you scarcely improve. Why should I waste my time?’

  Why indeed? I thought.

  Surprisingly however, my mother wasn’t cross about it at all. Just back that evening, not coughing or wheezing and looking rested and well fed, she was prepared to be most gracious and understanding. It was I who was the unhappy one. After” the letters I felt miserable in her presence, feeling – I couldn’t think why – that it was not she who was naked, but I; so that to take refuge in something superficial like Miss Lister, was a relief. We should stop the lessons at once, my mother said: she’d never really thought them very good, or even all that practical. ‘I was falsely informed,’ she said.

  Over the next few days, a great deal of her renewed energy went into enthusiastic plans for my going to London in the autumn. As usual, none of these plans were at all practical, but it worried her that I didn’t seem interested enough: possibly I hadn’t been eating properly while she was away? (‘I can’t believe Peter bothered in the slightest.’) I looked tired – did I think perhaps the White Rose was working me just a little too hard? When I said that it was, she looked sympathetic; and a shade triumphant at the same time.

  But during the next few weeks I realized that I’d spoken truer than I knew, for as the pace accelerated and the end of term came into sight, the sense of hurry which began with the grey early morning run for the bus and was still there when we spilled out into the dark winter afternoon, grew worse; there seemed to be a test of some sort always hanging over us, while Miss Metcalfe, always critical, never satisfied, constantly walked amongst us, urging perfection.

  Only Juliet seemed exempt from all this. Occasionally Miss Laycock, stop-watch in hand, could be seen testing her for typing speed, but otherwise she appeared to do no real work at all and continued to be scarcely in the building; I supposed that at any moment she was about to leave.

  Then late one afternoon I ran into her, coming along the corridor. After saying ‘hello’, she added casually, ‘By the way, darling, I think you’re about to be bidden to a party.’

  ‘Me?’

  But she’d already bent over, and was looking at her stocking. These Italian nylons aren’t a patch on American ones. Poor Juliet! A ladder, and on the outside too. I shall have to change the legs around.’

  She turned towards the cloakroom. I followed her, asking ‘What party? where?’ Trying to sound calm.

  ‘At Richard’s I think, darling. When Nell comes down.’ She reached for her coat: it was new, dark green with a coachman’s cape collar and I’d admired it only a few days before in a shop window. ‘I expect you’ll get a card,’ she said. ‘It’s just that Quentin asked me for your name, darling. “Let’s ask your friend of the flaming hair,” he said – in his silly way.’

  I didn’t mention it to my mother because I didn’t really believe anything would come of it; but two days later an invitation arrived, addressed to me at the White Rose (‘We are not a Poste Restante here, Miss Taylor,’ remarked a disapproving Miss Metcalfe); and in the evening, dreading her excitement, trembling almost, I showed it to her.

  ‘What are you going to wear?’ she asked at once.

  The old problem. And this time, whether it was cocktail or evening length, I was sunk: I’d spent all my coupons and some of my savings on a Jaeger dress, a couple of sweaters and a skirt, in the fervent hope that a sudden invitation to tea wouldn’t catch me shabby again. Elizabeth, I knew from past experience wasn’t a suitable source, and my father I was too proud to ask for coupons or money. Even my mother couldn’t help – she’d surprised me by getting herself a new winter coat and dress in Salisbury last month.

  I was saved in the end by Juliet. Sitting, legs crossed, up on Miss Metcalfe’s dais one lunch hour, eating a bar of chocolate and turning the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, she asked: ‘Shall you come next week, darling?’

  I explained my plight. She said immediately, ‘But have one of mine, darling. You’re about my build.’ When I hesitated, she added, shrugging her shoulders: ‘a little fuller perhaps? Anyway, Juliet will look you one out, darling.’

  ‘Juliet’s lending me a dress,’ I told my mother, ‘I’ve to go and collect it on Tuesday evening.’

  But when I turned up at her home – she lived in the Duchy Road – it was to hear that she’d gone away. Someone obviously her mother answered the door. Small and birdlike, she was a chirping caricature of Juliet, resembling her only in the tiny bones and neat head.

  There was a parcel for me,
she was certain. ‘It is little Lucy, isn’t it?’ Juliet had left a parcel for me in her bedroom; she remembered this definitely: ‘Lucy, with red hair, would call for a dress.’

  She went upstairs ahead of me. Where Juliet would have glided, she bustled. Opening the bedroom door, turning on the light:

  ‘It’s somewhere in this mess,’ she announced helplessly. I looked around. The disorder was terrible: scattered shoes, pants, petticoats, an enormous wardrobe open and crammed with dresses and coats; on the dressing-table lumps of dirty cotton wool beside open and spilt bottles, broken lipsticks, pancake make-up without a lid; on the roughly made bed more piles of clothes.

  Mrs Hirst flitted about attempting a little order here, a little order there. ‘You wouldn’t think the naughty girl had been in the Services, would you?’

  She picked up a nylon nightdress, one of its lace straps broken. I wasn’t sure whether to help or not. Looking around, I could see nothing like a parcel anywhere.

  ‘Juliet rushed off up to Town. One of these sudden invitations, you know. A first night, Gertrude Lawrence at the Aldwych. She loves first nights! It’s with some old friends. Naval, you know.’

  By now she’d stopped tidying; as she stood in the middle of the room she fiddled nervously with her rings – two or three on each hand:

  ‘I’m afraid Juliet’s not the teeniest bit serious about this shorthand-typing – you’ll have noticed that. Of course, she doesn’t need to work – she comes into her money when she’s twenty-five you know. But her Daddy says she must do something, until. Not that she won’t be able to get round him, she always has.’ She looked over at some of the clothes: ‘She gets all the money she wants now.’

  I stood awkwardly, while she began tidying up again. I felt a remote sort of envy for someone who could so obviously buy unlimited coupons, as well as filling her wardrobe on her travels.

  ‘It was the War did the damage,’ went on Mrs Hirst, ‘I blame the War – she’ll settle to nothing now. Of course what her Daddy and I would really like is to see her married. There was someone – in the Navy, in the last year of the War. But it came to nothing.’ She leant over, adjusting the bed cover, ‘And now there’s Richard Ingleson – most suitable. She could marry Richard tomorrow. Do you know Richard? He’s quite devoted to her –’

  She lifted a couple of sweaters off the bed, revealing a brown paper parcel: it had my name on; and a scrawled message: ‘Please keep – don’t want.’

  ‘The naughty girl!’ Wouldn’t I like to try it on now, at once?

  But it was getting late, and I made some excuse. I felt unaccountably trapped in the scented untidy room; I didn’t think either that I could stand her chirping comments.

  ‘Well,’ she said, showing me out, ‘I don’t know when Juliet will be back, dear. But if it doesn’t fit, just give us a tinkle, and we’ll try again. The naughty girl’s got far too many dresses …’

  Home again, the carelessly tied bundle unwrapped, I stared in amazement: I’d imagined some quite adequate cast-off, but for this careless luxury I’d been quite unprepared. My mother, fingering the soft folds ecstatically, cried that it was of course real silk. The label, from a shop in Rome’s Via Veneto, excited her even further.

  ‘She hasn’t given you this, Lucy – surely?’ It didn’t fit, I explained. Juliet was thinner than me.

  ‘But it’s lovely, darling! Exquisite!’ Almost tearful, she kept lifting it up, fingering the lavish tiny pleats at the waist, exclaiming at its expensive simplicity. ‘And such a lovely shade of beige. Try it on now, darling!’

  Amazingly, it seemed to me, it fitted perfectly, and its length gave me all I desired of the New Look. I came downstairs to show it to her – she gave me one surprised glance, then rushing up from her chair she flung her arms round me. She seemed barely to notice my stiff resistance. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Darling.’

  Shy and angry and confused as I had felt since the letters I could not bear now to be a witness to her emotion. For a moment I feared that she was going to cry; but then, holding me away from her, gazing at me intently, ‘Oh darling this party, if only –’ she began; then breaking off, putting her head on one side, she said almost coyly, pleadingly:

  ‘You won’t spoil it all by being shy, will you? Promise Mummy you won’t be mousey, darling?’

  Saturday came, and although a clear night it was piercingly cold, so that I wasn’t relishing the idea of the journey with its two or three different buses. The Inglesons lived in Harrogate, in the Cornwall Road, and we’d decided I should make my own way there and hope for a lift back: my father, who didn’t know about the party, had said earlier he’d be spending the day with my grandmother fixing some things in the house before going on to a ‘Messiah’ rehearsal in the evening.

  But at seven o’clock I was standing ready in the doorway of the sitting-room, my coat over my arm, self-conscious in the new dress, when suddenly he walked in. For a moment he stood quite still, looking me up and down.

  ‘What’s all this, Winifred?’ He banged his cold hands together, stamped his feet. He’d brought the night air in with him so that he looked frosty even to the moustache. ‘What’s up, then?’

  ‘A party,’ my mother said coldly. He paid no attention to her: ‘The singing’s cancelled,’ he said to me briefly, ‘I’ll run you to wherever it is.’

  It was the last thing I wanted: already nervous; that’s all I need, I thought. My mother, heavy-faced, made no comment. I realized that at least I would be spared a dramatic send-off: lumpish with irritation now, she’d obviously been planning an evening alone, dreaming of my possible successes.

  It was cold in the car and I shivered with chill as well as apprehension. At first my father didn’t talk; he whistled most of the time, a tune I didn’t recognize; then when we stopped for the level crossing halfway between Bratherton and Harrogate, he said suddenly,

  ‘That’s a nice dress.’ His tone was friendly. ‘Who’s the fairy godmother?’

  He lit a cigarette. Juliet, I told him.

  ‘You’ve not one of your own then?’

  I shook my head. For one wild moment I thought he was going to make some offer, express regret, say something like ‘you’ve only to ask.’ But his tone of voice had deceived me.

  ‘Any idea why the Inglesons asked you?’ he said. I didn’t answer – nothing I thought of sounded quite right, so I merely shrugged my shoulders; then wished immediately that I hadn’t. He said rudely, switching off the ignition and looking straight ahead, ‘I hope you’ll not forget to talk loudly. Value for your mother’s legacy – How now, brown cow. The rain in Spain – all that ruddy crap.’

  A goods train, its wagons rattling, was being shunted towards the crossing. In the street light I saw that his hands were clenched white on the steering wheel.

  ‘And don’t bloody well answer me either,’ he said angrily. ‘Just sit there!’ Lifting his hands off the wheel he brought them down again smartly, then laid his forehead against them. I thought for the hundredth time that perhaps there was some magic formula by which I could speak, or be silent, at the right moment and in the right way. Once, I had known it. Now, I just wanted to get out of the car and walk away: I had my hand on the door, when the train clanked back again and the crossing gates opened. Tightthroated and silent I sat beside him, till just as we passed the White Rose he said casually, but not unkindly,

  ‘How are you making out in the Chamber of Horrors?’

  ‘All right,’ I said guardedly.

  We turned up past the Valley Gardens. ‘It’s a racket right enough – you’d have done better at the North of England.’ I thought then, he was going to make another remark about the legacy; but after a pause he added, in an amused voice,

  ‘Ah well – if it tastes so nasty, it must be doing you good. What do you think?’

  But after he’d left me at the Inglesons’ gate – I hadn’t encouraged him to take me up the drive – I realized that I was still upset. All my usual fears about par
ties had come over me as well, and any confidence I’d felt from the dress had been lost on the journey. The house looked enormous, a light shining from the open front door as I walked up to it; behind me a car flashed its lamps and I pressed myself hurriedly against a hedge. Three men were getting noisily out of a car, and as they went in I joined on behind.

  A tall elderly woman, an air of brisk efficiency about her, greeted us in the hall. Her large beaky face reminded me of Richard – I supposed her to be Mrs Ingleson; dressed in plum satin, she gave the impression of having been thrust into it unwillingly at the last moment. The party seemed already well under way: voices, laughter, clinking of glasses. I wondered if Juliet was there? The dress seemed wrong already – Mrs Ingleson was in full length, and so was a girl crossing the hall.