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  ‘Want your bun?’ she asked, but as soon as she’d finished it, she began biting her handkerchief again, then pulling at the skin of her forefinger. She said suddenly, frantically:

  ‘If she finds out – when she finds out, Lu.’

  I sat quite helpless; I’d never, I realized, been in any situation where Elizabeth really needed me.

  Couldn’t she go to a doctor? Not the family one, of course – not anyone known to Mrs Horsfall; but if she could talk perhaps. And shouldn’t she really try to see George? At least, tell him?

  She shook her head feebly. ‘I’ll not do it. I’ll not go near him, Lu.’ She began to cry again: sitting limply, with dangling arms, her awkwardly bushy hair and her high colour, she looked like a rag doll. I felt desperate for her:

  ‘If I could think of something,’ I said. But she just shrugged her shoulders, and for a while we sat without talking. The café was very crowded now; I saw a few people glancing over at us, and to keep our place I took slow sips at the orange.

  Eventually, as if coming back to life, she said – with a flash of her old self:

  ‘Fancy lady, heck, Lu!’ she said indignantly: ‘Eh, but it’s been a poor do. It has, really. I mean, when I think, how I thought I’d be the real thing. You know – a rented place, Lu; and me in one of those flimsy see-throughs, lying about on the settee eating soft centres, and Mantovani on the radiogram. But know what, Lu? Know all I got out of it?’ She drummed angrily on the table: ‘A ruddy great brooch I’m scared to put on. And a tartan two-piece he’s bought at cost – I’d not be seen dead in it, it’s that awful.’

  Then catching sight of the café clock, she jumped up guiltily: ‘I said I’d be back twelve. Heck.’ She pushed out ahead of me:

  ‘You coming up, Lu?’

  No, I said: I was going to stay by the river for a while; sit around a bit. But I’d do the ride with her if she’d rather?

  She shook her head. At the bottom of the hill, leaning on our bikes, we parted.

  ‘Give us a ring sometime, Lu!’

  I turned my head away; I was nearly in tears and didn’t want her to see it.

  When she’d been gone a few moments, I wheeled my bike over to the river bank on the opposite side of the bridge, and parking it, sat down on the grassy slope leading to the water. It was much quieter here: the wide path, flanked by river and meadow on one side and grassy hillocks on the other, led right through into the country. Elizabeth never wanted to come here: without cafés or souvenir shops, it hadn’t enough life and bustle. Nor did my mother bother with it (not, of course, that she liked the other side either. ‘Vulgar in the summer, Lucy, And dead in the winter!’). But when I was a small child, my father had often brought me here on Sunday mornings. I’d been allowed to climb, and then roll down the hillocks – not once or twice, but again and again, eyes tight shut, rolling and rolling; carefree, trusting, ‘Promise to catch me!’, the grass smelling sometimes damply fresh, or at summer’s height, baked and powdery. ‘Promise to catch me!’ And at the end of the chute, he was always there. Laughing, giving me a little upwards push. ‘Again, lovey? Again?’

  Then one Sunday, buying me an ice cream, he’d said: ‘I’m just off, to see a man about a dog. Wait here and don’t move.’

  But the ice was soon finished; and when I’d waited what seemed an age, I grew bored. I began rolling down the grass by myself. At first it was fun, then the third or fourth time I picked by chance on a nettle-covered chute: standing up at the end, frightened, I could already feel the blisters forming, all over my face, arms, legs, thighs; by the time my father came back I was crying helplessly, an elderly woman comforting me. He smelt of beer and peppermint : fetching wads of dock leaves, pressing them onto the weals, he said angrily, ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay put?’

  I had never seen him cross with me before, and on the way home I cried again; when he asked what was up, I said it was on account of the puppy – I had thought I was going to get a puppy.

  ‘Have I to make it up to you?’ he’d said then, laughing again; and everything had been all right.

  But that was many, many years ago.

  Across on the other bank the cows stood in groups, chewing, staring, chewing; a punt came by, the pole splashing clumsily. The sun had come out now, but it was very close still – little clusters of insects hung above the water. I sat, hands hugging my knees, and thought about Elizabeth; worrying, wondering, trying to think of some practical way to help. A best friend, I felt, should be more than just confidante. But what, really, to do? For a moment, with a nonsense flight of fancy, I thought of confiding in Nell and Quentin: as if somehow, nonchalant, amused, assured as they always seemed, they would, against all reason, be able to deal with the problem.

  But this sudden wild thought only added to my own confusion. I didn’t want to think about the Inglesons. The world of Elizabeth had invaded another world already in turmoil; my own half-stirred, half-terrified flesh was living in yesterday still; when she’d told her story, different as it was I had not been able to disentangle it from mine. All was obstinately merged, flailing limbs, panting bodies, a moorland stream, the back seat of a Rover – what follies, real or imagined, had we not both committed?

  In the distance a clock struck twelve. Pushing my bike up the hill to home, a rush of longing came over me: I longed, perversely, for the old simplicity back. For the two of us. Giggling about French kisses, giving the eye to boys on the bus:

  ‘You’re hopeless, Lu. I’ve told you till I’m sick – you have to practise. Look at Hedy Lamarr like. Even she’d to start somewhere – didn’t she?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  That night my mother had a very bad attack of asthma.

  ‘No one can possibly blame poor Pugin and his moulting for this,’ she murmured, propped up on pillows, fighting for breath. Before leaving for work I arranged for Dr Varley to visit her.

  In the evening when I got home, his car was parked outside; and as I walked in I saw him coming down the stairs, my father just behind him.

  On the hall light shade was a cobweb of enormous complexity, but Dr Varley, standing directly underneath, didn’t notice it. He said, almost reprovingly, ‘You’ll have to be some help, Lucy. I’m sending your mother away for a little rest. She’s been overdoing it again.’

  My father said nothing. He looked edgy and embarrassed.

  ‘A really good rest,’ said my mother upstairs plucking agitatedly at the eiderdown. She began to cough; her lips had a queer bluish tinge. ‘It appears that Peter has some insurance that covers a nursing home -I don’t think the General would have been at all restful.’

  She was to go in the morning: as I packed for her, looking around for another bedjacket – the one she was wearing was shrunken and matted – my eyes travelled towards the sewing box; I wondered if I would be able to resist looking while she was gone. What might she not have said to Gervase now?

  Downstairs, my father and I avoided each other’s gaze with an ease born of years of practice.

  ‘Varley seems to fancy she’ll pick up soon enough with some nursing care,’ he said. ‘It’s the change complicating matters. He wants to keep her under observation.’

  We were sitting over supper. I made the mistake of asking him whether he’d enjoyed the extra day in London.

  Pushing his paper aside, he said angrily, ‘Why the hell should you care? You’re not bothered here. Why the sudden interest about there?’

  ‘I only asked,’ I said, retreating behind Woman’s Own.

  He said nothing then, till towards the end of the meal, when flapping the pages of the paper loudly, he remarked, ‘I see Princess Elizabeth’s to visit Harrogate. What about it – hadn’t you and Winifred best start booking front seats?’

  Silent, sullen almost, I was reminded at the same time of my Elizabeth, ashamed that I’d forgotten her all day. But when, straight after the meal, I telephoned her, it was Mrs Horsfall who answered. Elizabeth was on duty she told me.

  Fea
ring one of her little talks – she sounded as worried as always -I excused myself hurriedly.

  The next morning Richard telephoned, during the tea break. Stella, her mouth full of chocolate biscuit called over, surprised, ‘For you, Lucy!’

  Never thinking for a moment that it might be Elizabeth, knowing at once that it was him, I lifted the receiver; Stella winked at one of the younger girls, Maureen, who mouthed back at her, ‘Boy?’

  ‘Hallo,’ I said, nervously.

  Richard sounding nervous too, said, ‘I tried to -I should have rung you on Sunday –’ There was a lot of giggling in the room and I could hardly hear him, ‘Then I was away in Doncaster till late yesterday. But I wondered’ – there was another loud burst of giggling – ‘could you – would you like to come for a drink this evening?’

  By covering up one ear I could just make out the arrangements. We were to meet outside at six. But as soon as I put the phone down, Maureen said to me, ‘Was it a boy then?’ And Stella, cutting in, said, ‘Eh, can’t you tell the difference?’

  ‘Not with their clothes on, I can’t,’ said Maureen, stacking up the tea cups, ‘ta very much.’ They bent over, giggling.

  Mr Jowett coming into the room just then, said disgustedly, ‘I’ve not heard myself think this half hour. Lunch! Playtime in the Infants more like.’ He blew his nose very hard. ‘If you must giggle – do it in your stockinged feet can’t you?’ Then he glared at me: ‘And I’ll have you in, lass. Now.’

  Late in the afternoon, he sent for me again, keeping me in till the last minute. As if sensing my tense anticipation he went over every sentence with painful deliberateness. ‘And I’ll have a semicolon there. No. A comma, a comma –’

  In the end I was nearly late. Richard was already waiting outside, and Maureen and another girl running down just ahead of me, cast curious backward glances, before giving their heels that little flick that meant running for the bus.

  I said at once, ‘I’ve kept you waiting.’ I was surprised that any words came out at all.

  ‘But no,’ he looked awkward and hot. ‘It’s awfully nice of you to come.’

  We crossed the road to where the car was parked, under the lime trees; the roofs of the cars which had been standing all day were stickily spattered with yellow blossom. As we drove off, we made stiff formal conversation. I told him about my mother; concerned, he asked, ‘Is it serious?’

  I explained about the asthma. ‘She’s had it for years. Ever since I can remember.’

  ‘Phil had it,’ Richard said. ‘But only as a boy – he’d grown out of it by nine or ten.’ In the heat, the sweat was running down his forehead.

  ‘It’s very hot,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. It’s going to be a wonderful summer.’

  We had run out of topics. I tucked my feet in their worn sandals under the seat, and wondered in the silence if I wasn’t being taken out from a sense of duty: a peace offering perhaps to cancel out Saturday? The picnic was with us in the car; I couldn’t look at his hands on the wheel without wanting to touch them.

  We sat with our drinks on a window-seat looking out on to a stretch of garden. The hotel was one I’d often passed but never been into; I remember now that there was a great show of roses and that the lawn needed cutting.

  ‘I shouldn’t drink,’ I said impulsively, ‘I’m not accustomed to it. On Saturday –’ I took a big gulp of unwisely chosen gin, choking on the smell: ‘My grandfather, my mother’s father, you see, died of drink.’

  When I’d said it, I was afraid he might laugh. But he only said, very seriously, ‘How tragic, Lucy.’ So I explained that my mother wasn’t really sure what she thought; and it was all complicated, I said, by her feeling that teetotallers were somehow not quite gentlemen.

  He laughed at that. We finished our drinks, and then he said:

  ‘I’ve just thought – if it’s all right without any notice, if you’re not expected at home that is – may I give you dinner here? It’s not the heights gastronomically, but I believe the salmon’s not bad.’

  We sat once again by a window, the evening sky yellow now. There was some white wine with the meal and I drank freely of this.

  ‘Tell me more about Patmore,’ he said, filling my glass, adding: ‘I did in fact mention it at home, and apparently your uncle was much swooned over at one stage – not by Mother, who’s frightfully unromantic – but one girl they knew was always angling hopefully to meet him. She’d bought a copy of his poems, I think it was?’

  I told him about the Memory Box; and the privately published poems. I felt very relaxed and peaceful.

  ‘Shall you stay with old Jowett?’ he asked, later in the meal. ‘I can’t imagine, you know, that he’s awfully good for you.’

  I wasn’t sure whether to tell him about London: wondering hypersensitively if mention of it might remind him of Juliet. I thought rarely of her now, and when I did so it was to see her that last time, sitting in our house – Richard comfortably jilted -smiling to herself, while my father strummed on the piano and sang and my mother looked annoyed. ‘When I try to sing,’ Juliet was saying, ‘just a horrid, thin little sound comes out. Poor Juliet!’

  ‘Miss Metcalfe’s piece of paper hasn’t exactly been a wow,’ I said. ‘And Mr Jowett did at least take me on. So –’ I pulled a face. Then, deciding to tell him all, I described my mother’s London plans.

  ‘Do you want to go?’ he asked, looking suddenly concerned.

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought -I haven’t thought,’ I said. I finished off my wine, then cutting up some Wensleydale into little pieces I piled them onto a biscuit; when they toppled off, this seemed to me very amusing.

  ‘Couldn’t you –’ Richard began; he hesitated, his forehead wrinkled, ‘I mean, as you say your mother’s plans aren’t awfully realistic – but that’s easily enough remedied. It’s just that – the thing is, there’s no actual hurry, is there?’

  ‘No, no there’s no hurry,’ I said with a leap of my heart.

  The waiter came over. We arranged to have coffee in the lounge, and in a haze of alcoholic contentment I floated to the Ladies. It was all done in pink and looked like I felt, powdery, cloudy. A woman was bending over one of the washbasins, her rings laid out on the sill in front of her; when she turned, I saw it was Juliet’s mother.

  I hoped she’d forgotten me, but she said at once, ‘Don’t I know you, dear?’ Screwing up her eyes a little, ‘It’s Lucy, isn’t it?’

  She reached for the towel, and dried each finger carefully. ‘Are you in the bar, dear? We didn’t see you there? Ronald and I just dropped in for a quickie – we’re on our way back from a party.’

  I thought I ought to ask about Juliet. But before I could do so: ‘Juliet’s doing very well in London,’ she said, pushing on her rings, ‘but naughty, you know – never writes to us, unless it’s to ask her Daddy for more money.’ She gathered up her handbag and gloves: all her movements quick, birdlike. ‘I wish Mr Right would come along,’ she told me, frowning, at the door.

  ‘Mrs Hirst was in the Ladies,’ I said to Richard; I feared very much that he’d seen, or been seen. ‘I think they’ve gone now.’

  ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘I have been lucky –’ He was smiling, but he’d coloured too.

  I poured out the coffee: ‘She’s rather incredible, you know,’ he said, ‘she has this fixation almost, about Juliet and the money. Juliet comes into a jolly big inheritance at twenty-five and Doris is convinced every man must be after it. We’re very old acquaintances, and comfortably off and so on, and we’re excused – but there was some naval chap during the War – She remains convinced he was on the make. The money’s due in August – so God help any worthy but poor suitor after me.’

  He’d spoken about her quite easily. The evening wasn’t spoilt. The curious feeling of rightness which in the last few hours had been growing, settled. Later, as we came back into Bratherton, he said how much he’d enjoyed it all. He couldn’t remember for a long time, he said, anythi
ng so pleasant. Please, could we do it again?

  Yes, yes of course.

  Well then, there was this concert tomorrow evening. The organizers were something to do with one of his mother’s committees, he could get tickets very easily. Would I like that? Did I enjoy music?

  Before we got out of the car, he kissed me goodnight, very gently. The scent of the lime tree on the corner as we walked up the path together was honeysuckle sweet, overwhelming, heady in the warm June dark.

  ‘That was too bad of Peter,’ said my mother, putting to one side a letter I’d brought her from Gervase, ‘you should know whether he’s going to be in or not. Any excuse of course to sleep over at Harrogate. If that’s where he was –’

  I was frightened that she might ask something about Richard. I imagined that written all over my face was my quiet unquestioning joy: fragile and not to be examined. I had sat with it over an hour in the empty house last night.

  Fortunately she noticed nothing. ‘I would hardly call this a rest,’ she was saying. ‘I feel more agitated than at home, just being here makes one feel like an invalid.’ She sipped some orange squash from the bedside table. ‘If you can get in tomorrow, Lucy, would you bring the Memory Box, darling? And that reminds me,’ she added, pulling the taggy bedjacket together, ‘I wish now, you know, that I’d taken up that friendship with Alice Ingleson, really done something about it. I thought that, perhaps, when I’m better, we could have a small party? A theatre perhaps – then a small supper. Just Alice – and Bernard. And Richard, of course.’

  I’d like to be able to remember more about the concert that evening; Saint-Saëns’ second piano concerto was the main item, I think: I have a memory of strong rhythms, of tumbling sound and excitement, of audience appreciation; but the crescendos, the diminuendos were for me backgrounds only to my deep joy, as taut but happy I sat beside Richard, so near that I could by moving my head catch the scent of his skin.