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  ‘It’s got a real look of Tyrone Power, has this one, Maureen,’ said Stella tactfully, holding it up to the light. They all looked like dark-haired Mickey Rooneys to me.

  Suddenly, with a stab of memory – and it was almost as if I’d wilfully forgotten -I realized that I’d still told my father nothing. In the nursing home, he hadn’t even been mentioned: yet a mere nurse had been told. Perhaps, I thought, I could ring him at work? Only how to do it without being overheard? how to do it anyway? Feeling torn, indecisive, the edge of my happiness chipped, I imagined the brisk: ‘Well – what is it then?’ Or, worse: instant mockery. ‘That’s likely – I’ll say!’

  But when I got back to Bratherton there was no sign of him, and no message. My grandmother had no telephone. Tired, and rather flat now, I ate a quick supper and about seven, set off for Elizabeth’s.

  Mrs Horsfall received me coldly. She walked ahead of me along the passage, her uncorseted buttocks in their puce Moygashel seeming to move almost independently of each other. Her presence breathed indignation.

  There was no sign of Elizabeth; Mr Horsfall, his shirt sleeves rolled, was sitting peacefully in an armchair. Mrs Horsfall shooed him out. Then, patting the sofa beside her, her expression grim:

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ she said. I sat down hesitantly next to her. ‘You know Elizabeth’s in Trouble, don’t you?’ She stared at me.

  There was an awkward pause. Foolishly, I hadn’t spent any time beforehand thinking what to say: flustered, playing for safety, I said stupidly,

  ‘Isn’t she very well at the moment?’

  Mrs Horsfall put her hand on my arm: she was shaking with suppressed rage. ‘Poorly? Elizabeth’s not poorly – and that you know.’ She looked away from me, ‘There’s been facts kept back, Lucy – but Nature doesn’t deceive. All this feeling sick and three times not able to go to work, with no proper explanation – it’s not taken me long, I can tell you, to put two and two together.’ Then as if from some immensely fecund past (for which she had certainly been built), almost triumphantly she added: ‘A mother always knows, you know.’

  She leant forward, adjusting the buckle of her open sandal; the action sent up a wave of her characteristic smell, stronger even than usual in the heat. ‘Madam may deny the whole thing,’ she went on, ‘but I’ve not lived with her all these years, Lucy, not to know when there’s something to hide.’ She was still bent over. I could see big white flakes of scurf dotted about the coarse frizz of her hair.

  ‘Lucy – look at me!’ It was the same bright red face, looming nearer, that had held me hemmed in corners for so many confidential talks. ‘Now, Lucy. Tell me. Which boy is it, that’s at the back of this? Which boy?’

  ‘Come on,’ she said angrily, ‘out with it now.’

  She sat there, squarely, her broad thighs slightly apart, straining the already creased Moygashel. ‘That Andrew now?’ She screwed her eyes up suspiciously, ‘That Andrew she was so keen on. What of him?’

  She had me there; if I said it wasn’t Andrew, my ‘no’ would suggest I knew the real truth. Lack of sleep was catching up with me. I floundered: something about being out of touch.

  Getting up suddenly, she went over to the door and shouted up the stairs: ‘Elizabeth!’ As she came back beside me on the sofa, she announced ominously:

  ‘I’ll get that lad’s name, Lucy – if we’re here all night.’

  Elizabeth slipped in quietly. The change in her appearance shocked me. Her high colour had faded, her manner was limp, apologetic; only her hair, fuzzier than ever, stood out nearly horizontally from her face.

  She murmured ‘Hallo, Lu’ without looking at me, then sitting down, she took out a handkerchief and began pulling at it with her teeth.

  ‘Control yourself, Elizabeth!’ said Mrs Horsfall, sharply. Then looking at me, her hands planted firmly on her thighs:

  ‘Lucy won’t help me at all,’ she announced angrily.

  ‘Good old Lu,’ said Elizabeth tearfully; she was still chewing the handkerchief. Enraged, Mrs Horsfall shouted:

  ‘Let me tell you, Madam – we’re sat here, all of us, till something’s out!’

  There was silence. No one moved. The room felt very close; a bluebottle buzzed furiously against the window. There was a bowl of cherries on a small table near me; some had gone mouldy and a winey fermented smell rose from them. I thought, feeling trapped, that we might well sit here all night. I couldn’t imagine Mr Horsfall daring to come back uninvited.

  Elizabeth had begun to sob.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ said Mrs Horsfall.

  Then, without warning, she leant over suddenly towards her. ‘Dirty girl!’ she said. Elizabeth put her hand to her mouth. ‘Boy mad,’ she said, ‘you’re boy mad.’

  ‘Give over!’ shouted Elizabeth, ‘you just give over.’ There was a second’s silence; then in an angry, hissing voice:

  ‘George,’ she burst out, ‘George rotten Turnbull. There’s your name for you,’ she was pulling the handkerchief this way and that. ‘With a wife and a great grown son and daughter, and a business selling gents coms and underpants. He drives a dirty great Rover and all,’ she shouted, ‘and he took me for a ride – that’s what. Took me for a ride!’

  She stood up quickly, and with a sort of strangled sob she rushed past us and out of the room; I could hear her banging up the stairs; but when I got up to go after her, Mrs Horsfall, obviously shaken, clutched my arm. ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘You’d best go home now, Lucy,’ she said stiffly as, still holding on to me, she propelled me towards the door:

  ‘I’d counted on you,’ she said sadly, almost pushing me from the porch. Her smell was overpowering. I thought that perhaps if I waited she would go, and I could nip upstairs to Elizabeth; but she stood on in the doorway. ‘You’ve let me down. I’ll not deny it, Lucy.’ Her whole body seemed to be shaking now.

  I was more upset than I realized: my legs quivering, my head pounding, I walked the short distance up the hill, back home. There was still no sign of my father. I tidied up a little; then in the sitting-room, wrote to Elizabeth, addressing it to the hotel. I’d never written to her before and it felt strange; she’d never needed my help before either, so that felt odd too. My own news I didn’t mention.

  Richard rang about ten. I was waiting up, I told him. And yes, I was sure my father would come in any moment. I sat on in a sort of waking dream, the wireless on, the curtains not drawn and moths fluttering and banging against the panes. I listened through Jack Jackson – sometimes hearing, sometimes not.

  When the wireless closed down I gave up the wait. Fatigue hit me suddenly, and climbing into bed I fell asleep at once.

  I could hear sounds below, when I woke. I thought, I’ll get the revelation over quickly, and came down in my dressing-gown. My father was already sitting at the table, reading the paper and pulling at a cigarette. I sat down opposite him and poured myself a glass of milk. But when I tried to speak, nothing happened.

  He looked up suddenly. ‘It’s out,’ he said. ‘Your secret’s out.’

  I glanced over; he was staring straight at me. ‘What secret?’ I said foolishly. My face was flaming; the feeling was one I knew well. Trapped, very much in the wrong, a mere nurse had been told first.

  ‘I couldn’t get hold of you yesterday. I did try –’

  ‘Oh – so.’ He whistled. ‘Well, don’t kid yourself that I think you or Winifred give a damn whether I know what’s going on or not. Do you?’

  I bent my face over the glass of milk.

  ‘And sudden,’ he said, ‘it’s that all right. Not a hint of a courtship.’ He raised his eyebrows: ‘I thought then you’d spurned our local lads?’

  I didn’t, couldn’t answer; I pressed my legs hard against the chair, wishing desperately that the talk would soon be over.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said, ‘I’m – pleased enough. I’ve given my permission. I’m all for romance, you know.’ He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘And fro
m what I could make out last evening, you’ve nearly given your mother a seizure with joy. Her legacy yielding a hundred per cent, the White Rose in full bloom. Patmore Regained. Or as good as.’

  His voice had said that he was pleased; his manner told me that he was angry.

  ‘And I hear it’s to be quite soon,’ he went on, ‘not for the usual reasons I take it?’ Then before I could reply, ‘I doubt it’, he said heavily. ‘They’re very safe, are Patmore circles. All pressed flowers and purity.’

  He took out a fresh packet of cigarettes. ‘No doubt I’ll be meeting him?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course.’ I’d thought I might be going to cry so I’d pulled my face into a sullen, tight expression. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if he’s like his dad, he’s a ruddy bore.’ He lit a cigarette, then he looked at me slyly: ‘I note he wasn’t able to keep your friend Juliet amused?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  He stared at me. ‘Who do you think?’ he said casually; going out of the room, throwing the newspaper across to me as he went.

  Oh Juliet, Juliet who had dared to talk like that in a chance railway conversation. I got up to go, pushing the newspaper aside. As I turned, I saw my father standing in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He seemed embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said the half of that.’ He paused. I glanced at him: the expression on his face was part friendly, part mocking.

  ‘Any road,’ he said, ‘I wish you great happiness.’ He ran a finger over his moustache: ‘And no regrets, either. I’m not sure I don’t wish you that most of all,’ he said, going out. ‘No regrets.’

  Trying to conjure up a memory of Alice Ingleson, I’d managed only a blurred picture: in plum satin, standing in the doorway at the dance. Now, in the flesh, she was more angular, business-like than I’d remembered. Greeting us at the door, dressed this time in button-through, faded green linen, she kissed me briskly, then after saying a couple of times that she’d been very surprised ‘and of course delighted, my dear, (Richard tells us nothing)’ she, amazingly to me, changed the subject altogether. As we sat, waiting for Richard’s father, she chatted in a matter of fact way, of this, that, the other – as if I’d been asked over as the most casual of social acquaintances.

  Once, she said: ‘Has anyone told Nell?’ Richard nodded. ‘Good,’ she said briskly, going on immediately to remark that there were black weevils in the greenhouse. Some one would have to turn the place out – Richard pulled a face.

  Then the telephone rang, the third time already, and while she was dealing with it Richard’s father came in. A tall, quiet, dusty man, he reminded me of Nell in the fullness of his features only. His manner was dry: in explanation of the telephone,

  ‘My wife’s got this big do on, next month,’ he said. ‘She’s landed herself with organizing the teas and organizing the organizers of all the stalls.’ After that, except for saying: ‘We’re all very happy for you,’ and of the wedding, ‘Christmas. I hear it’s to be Christmas,’ he treated my presence there with mild astonishment while managing to suggest at the same time that I was already an old accepted member of the family.

  ‘Remind me sometime,’ he said, ‘remind me sometime to tell you of a few certain methods of discomfiting old Jowett.’

  Beforehand, Richard had said, ‘We shan’t need to stay very long.’ Now, nervous, rather restless, he’d already looked at his watch a couple of times.

  Juliet had been mentioned only once: ‘As Richard knows, I didn’t care for her,’ Alice Ingleson said, in the tone of voice of someone discussing an item of food. Towards the end of the visit, Richard reminded her about the Foxton-Tukes and Patmore. (It seemed to be the first Bernard Ingleson had heard about the connection.)

  ‘I must look out a few old photographs – when I have a moment. There are a great many, somewhere. Nell may know more about them – she went off to Cambridge with several last summer. A game of spot the relative, I think. Some undergraduate nonsense, at any rate.’

  ‘Well – that’s over. And I think, really, it went awfully well.’

  Hand in hand, we walked over to Harlow Moor. I was exhausted, shivering as we passed the dreaded reservoirs, the wate-gleaming darkly in the afternoon sun.

  We sat down, on the same bench as two days ago. Richard said ‘I’ve got something for you. Stupid, and bloody sentimental of me, but I wanted to give it to you up here.’

  He took a small box out of his pocket; then watched my face as I opened it. Inside was a ring, antique, a pale ruby set in heavy gold. He said anxiously:

  ‘I feel rather awful. I should have asked –’

  ‘But it’s lovely!’

  He placed it on my finger. ‘It was my aunt’s – Mother’s sister, Frances. She died just before the War. Her fiancé had been killed at Suvla Bay – she’d wanted it to go to the eldest child. But, you know – if you’d rather choose something yourself?’

  I shook my head vigorously. I could hardly speak for happiness.

  The weight of the ring on my finger was odd, unaccustomed. Sitting very still now, my head on Richard’s shoulder, I could just glimpse the stone. I fancied I had never seen anything more beautiful.

  How my mother will love it, I thought suddenly; and as I did so there came over me such a feeling of security as never before or since. Surrounded, enclosed. Richard, Richard’s love; Uncle Gervase, Patmore, my mother; Richard’s love, Richard. This tight, safe circle.

  ‘Darling, you’re quite sure?’

  ‘I do. I do love it. I love you.’

  So secure within: why look without?

  Chapter Seventeen

  The engagement was to be announced the next week. The evening before it came out, my father, Richard and I all had dinner together.

  It seemed that nowadays, I had only to dread an occasion for all to go well. My father was jaunty, his colour high; at first I’d been wary, watchful. But ‘Grand,’ he said about everything, about all our plans, ‘that’ll do grand.’ Amused, yet pleased, possibly even slightly proud of me.

  He talked a lot – although he hardly spoke directly to me at all; but Richard didn’t seem to notice this, and I was used to it. That they seemed on the surface anyway, to be getting along well together was good enough for me. After dinner, Richard getting my father onto one of his favourite topics, music halls, said he’d heard how good a mimic he was.

  ‘Well a bit more to drink,’ my father said, ‘and I’ll give you George Formby senior.’

  He had another brandy. We were warm, laughing, relaxed.

  Afterwards we went back to Bratherton, to the house, and he sang ‘Oh Flo’, and ‘A dark girl dressed in blue’ and ‘When we went to Brighton on our famous motor car.’

  It was a good evening.

  My mother had been mentioned only once:

  ‘How do you find her?’ my father asked.

  ‘Excited,’ I said.

  She’d told me yesterday that her breathing was easier, that she felt much better, but ‘excited’ still described her best. Rapture succeeding rapture. Today, it had been photographs brought by Alice Ingleson (one, oh happy miracle, had been of Patmore).

  ‘And do you know, Lucy,’ she’d said incredulously, ‘Alice hadn’t even looked at these photographs, for over twenty years! Can you imagine?’

  The ring of course had enchanted her, and she was sure, immediately, that she remembered Frances.

  ‘A rather gawky, dreamy girl, Lucy.’ Then, fingering the ring: ‘Burmese. That’s a Burmese stone, Lucy,’ she said authoritatively. ‘Pigeon’s blood. The best, of course.’

  I hadn’t worn the ring to the office, but the day the announcement appeared I put it on boldly. Stella was delighted: ‘I knew there was something up – I said to Maureen, didn’t I, Maureen?’

  Mr Jowett was unimpressed. I’d already had to ask him for two days’ leave: Richard and I were to go up to tea at Gunter’s, in place of my mother. Now, he blamed the White Rose.
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br />   ‘Fancy training,’ he said, again. ‘Fancy. Just as I thought -good for getting yourself wed, and nowt else.’

  I’d been dreading the announcement, sensing it as the beginning of a complicated ritual which would take me farther and farther away from Richard. He tried to reassure me:

  ‘The sooner everyone’s told – the sooner all the fuss is over…’

  For my mother, however, the fuss couldn’t go on long enough. Sitting up in bed with The Times, Telegraph and Yorkshire Post, she read and re-read the insert. The Yorkshire Post had carried a small paragraph about Richard – his war service, family, and so on: ‘Of course, I regret a little, Lucy, that we weren’t able to work in anything about the Tinsdales – after all, darling, these are the things people want to know. And surely, someone, Lucy, could have told the editor of the Foxton-Tuke connection?’

  But these were mere pinpricks; she was soon distracted by pleasure at the pile of post which the announcement brought me. Most of it I handed to her unread, and she sat up, entranced, surrounded by envelopes. It was as if her own drab, defiant wedding had left her with a great hunger for all the trappings.

  ‘All these exciting, generous offers, Lucy!’ Half a dozen London photographers wanting to attend the wedding, a dozen makers of this and that wanting to offer discount: she took everything as a personal favour.

  ‘Old Nell’s are all still sitting in her room – not opened,’ Richard told her.

  ‘Quite incredible,’ my mother remarked to me, afterwards. ‘To be so casual.’

  Nell and Quentin came back. There’d been a joint card from them a couple of days before: a ‘really?’ from Nell and a ‘really!’ underneath, from Quentin. I’d dreaded their return. But as soon as Nell saw me:

  ‘Love, we’re absolutely thrilled – honestly. God, the excitement. And Richard looks all soft and happy.’ She hugged me carelessly. ‘Sweetie, it must have been coup de foudre. Really. When I think of Q and me, our sober carry on – half a bloody century, and you two take only days …’