The arrival of the eleven o’clock snack he’d been recommended to take (small meals at frequent intervals, rather than the large breakfasts and even larger dinners that he’d been used to all his life) made a welcome diversion to Arthur Foley’s thoughts. That said everything about his situation, he thought, when a cup of tea and a bun was a highlight of the morning. But it had become something to look forward to; it broke up the day, especially when it was accompanied by his wife bearing Nella’s good news of the telegram announcing that William was coming home, at last.
‘It’ll be good to see the lad again,’ he said spreading plum and apple jam on to one of Mrs Cherry’s plain scones. The apple, added to make up for a lack of sugar, diluted the rich colour of the jam to an unappetising pale pink, but it tasted rather better than it looked. ‘Liven things up at the rectory, he will.’ For the girls, maybe, but as for the rector…Arthur said nothing, however. His opinion of Francis Wentworth he kept to himself, as always. What sort of faith was it that was lost at the first setback? And seemed to have been found again so easily?
She smiled, ‘Knowing William, I’m sure that’s true.’
He knew that she’d been weeping, and why. Briefly, he touched her hand as he accepted another cup of tea from her, admiring her self-control, wishing, with an almost physical pain, that she would allow him to comfort her. But, close as they were, this was one area where he could not reach her. Poor Sybil. It was hard for anyone, and perhaps even harder for her than for most people, to show delight at the homecoming of returning heroes when one’s own beloved son would never come home again. Missing, believed killed. Perhaps the worst verdict of all, because without proof, it fostered desperate, unrealistic hope: that Grev might after all, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, have survived, having perhaps been taken prisoner, or become shell-shocked and wandered off, wounded, lost his memory…anything at all. That he might still turn up. It was a cruel hope, because just occasionally, such cases were reported.
She walked to the window, her glance sweeping, too quickly, past the silver-framed photograph of her son, not one of him in uniform, just a snapshot caught when he was sitting in characteristic pose, one knee drawn up, pencil and music score in hand, under the old cedar on the lawn. She stood for a moment looking out over the sadly neglected garden, absently fiddling with the forsythia in a pewter vase on the sill, the few branches she had brought in for the warmth to force into bloom. He had been plagued recently by the thought that all was not well with his wife. Not ill – Sybil had a magnificent constitution – but not quite the ticket, a euphemism that disguised the fact that in actual fact he was worried about her…seriously worried. Then she turned to face him again and when she next spoke, it was of something quite other, in the way she had of relegating anything upsetting to a separate compartment of her mind. ‘I’ve just been having a little talk with Eunice, the silly girl. The sooner I get her presented and off our hands, the better.’
‘Eunice?’ he repeated with a smile. ‘You want to get rid of our little Eunice?’
‘Oh, Arthur, you know very well what I mean! She’s so against coming out next year, I’m afraid she’ll do something really silly, like – like, well, I don’t know, I’m sure. Throwing herself away simply out of sympathy on one of those soldiers she’s always talking to, or something – which, incidentally, I wish she wouldn’t do. I know she means well, the dear child, and I’m sure the men do appreciate a little civilised female conversation, but it doesn’t do to give them ideas, you know. That young warrant officer, Shawcross, they tell me he thinks the sun shines out of her. And she…’ She paused. Her face paled. ‘She wouldn’t do that, would she, Arthur?’
‘Of course not, Sybil, she hardly knows the young fellow. Do calm down. Eunice wouldn’t do anything so reckless.’ And had other ideas, anyway, he suspected.
But Sybil was very much afraid she might. Eunice had grown so independent – cut her hair, shortened her skirts, taken up smoking – since she had found herself working with her father during the war, at first just helping out when his office manager enlisted and then gradually taking on more and more responsibility until Arthur declared her indispensable. The hard work seemed to suit her and had overturned everyone’s opinion of her as a girl who was not strong, which now seemed to have been engendered largely by her delicate looks and her ability to catch cold easily.
But now the office manager had returned and claimed his position back, as he had every right to do, and Eunice was at a loose end. There was no telling what she might take it into her head to do. Still the same dear girl, but for all her sweet gentleness, Eunice had always been stubborn, Sybil thought. And self-sacrificing. And the time she spent with young Shawcross…Oh, dear God!
But the possibility, too terrible to envisage, was already being pushed to the back of her mind, another idea having taken its place. ‘I know! We must make some sort of an occasion out of William’s return. Some sort of party, not too big. A dinner party, perhaps, no more than twelve, I don’t believe there will be enough young men otherwise for Eunice to meet. I can think of several who are home by now,’ she added, casting her mind down the list of suitable candidates she had already drawn up for when the London season, as it was sure to do, regained its pre-war splendour, with the nagging reminder, all too often in her mind, that Eunice was already twenty. She refused to think that she might well have a real battle on her hands now, as far as Eunice herself was concerned. ‘It will be something for us all to look forward to. No doubt Mrs Cherry can be persuaded to rise to the occasion and stretch the rations to provide something a little special in the way of food…’
But thinking of Mrs Cherry’s spectacular pre-war prawn soufflé, she shook her head and sighed. So many eggs! A crown of lamb, or a saddle? Impossible to get hold of unless one pocketed one’s principles and bought expensively on the black market. Iced puddings – but all that sugar and cream! Champagne? Well, Arthur probably still had that at least in his cellar. But really, it was too bad. The war over for six months and still everything austerity this and austerity that. Everyone was being told that there could be no return to the indulgent life they had all led before the war, but one might have expected some sort of return to civilisation by now. And we were the ones who had won the war! ‘I expect we shall have to make do with carrot pudding or something equally dreary,’ she said with a sigh.
‘My dear Sybil…aren’t you being a little premature, planning something like that?’
‘Not in the least! If we wait for things to return to normal after this terrible war, we might wait for ever. I’ll see to it right away. Meanwhile, you must speak to Eunice, Arthur – she listens to you where she certainly doesn’t to me.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. But remember,’ he added with a smile, ‘the party’s supposed to be for William, not Eunice.’
‘Dear Arthur, I know I can rely on you.’ She kissed the top of his head, delighted to have found something to busy herself with. He reached up and caught her hand and pressed his lips to her wrist, allowing them to stay there until she met his eyes and curved her lips into an answering smile. He might be sixty-three, with a dicky heart, but he also had a wife who was an ardent and desirable woman. They were still well pleased with each other.
Amy realised her mistake as soon as she saw Miss Aspinall’s closed door. It was almost always, except on Sundays and in the worst weather, propped open by a seven-pound weight that had a ring in the top to lift it. From her front room Miss Aspinall, a neat, tidy little body, sold humbugs, liquorice bootlaces, penny sherbets and pear drops, as well as home-made treacle toffee in a flat tin from which she cracked off a generous ha’porth with a little toffee hammer. A genteel lady come upon hard times, she insisted that it wasn’t a shop she ran, but an establishment for selling confectionery; The Shop was the one on the corner kept by the Eastwolds, where you could buy anything from a quarter pound of boiled ham to a pair of moleskin breeches, a tin bath or a gallon of paraffin, post a parcel
or buy a stamp.
The Shop, in fact, had been Amy’s main objective, with a mission to buy stamps for Nella, and anything nice to eat, if by some miracle any such thing should suddenly have appeared, but that was already closed too – and all the cottage windows in the village had their curtains decently drawn as a mark of respect; it was the funeral, of course, in a couple of hours, the time of which she had entirely forgotten. She should have remembered, she thought, turning back towards Church Lane and the rectory. Neither Florrie nor Grandmama had been around to remind her when she set off, and without doubt, her lapse would have been noticed in the village, despite the closed curtains. She was very sorry, she had liked old Mrs Cromer, and was mortified at her thoughtless blunder, which would do nothing to bolster the impression she was trying to give nowadays of being the grown-up and responsible Miss Aimeé Wentworth, no longer little Amy from the rectory, everyone’s pet.
‘Amy!’
She’d been so absorbed she hadn’t heard the bicycle behind her, though it made enough noise, a ramshackle old piece of machinery that was typical of Steven Rafferty. He braked to a halt, flung a long leg over the crossbar and began to walk beside her, pulling off his tweed cap so that his springing black hair leapt up in a crest. ‘Well, Amy, aren’t you pleased to see me, or even a bit surprised?’
‘Of course I’m pleased, but not surprised. Your mother told us she was expecting you.’
The occasions on which Amy had seen Steven lately had been few. Getting from Cambridge to Broughton had never been easy, and what with half the trains being commandeered as troop trains, it had been a desperate undertaking during the war, hazardous as to its duration and unpredictable in the way of timetables. She was suddenly struck now by the change in him from the bespectacled, gangling, ill-clad youth he’d been before the war. He was wearing a soft collar and a tweed suit and a college scarf flung casually around his neck, that somehow suited the typical academic air there had always been about Steven, even as a boy: slightly absent-minded, serious. Already by now he was a little stoop-shouldered, quietly spoken, but with an added air of confidence. True, he still towered above her (even though she was an inch or two taller than Nella, now), still wore thick spectacles, but when he took them off to polish them with his handkerchief – the same old habit – she noticed for the first time what very nice brown eyes he had. ‘How are you?’ she asked belatedly.
‘I’m very well, thank you. There’s no need to ask how you are, Amy. You look blooming, my dear. You’ve put your hair up. Quite the grown up young lady, now,’ he added in a sober, elderly sort of way.
‘Oh, Steven!’ She burst out laughing but he didn’t look abashed, as he would have done once, just watched her with a slightly quizzical smile. He had meant the remark as a compliment, she knew, really, but that pedantic way of putting it was so typical of Steven. ‘My old hair, it’s such a bother. I think I’ll cut it off, like Nella.’
‘Don’t!’ he said, quite sharply, then added, with a smile, ‘It won’t be Amy, without that lovely hair.’
She dimpled, and wished she had on a prettier hat than the old grey tam she had jammed onto her curls, and the cape with the tatty rabbit-fur collar. As he went on polishing his spectacle lenses, she observed him with further interest. Really, without his glasses, he’d actually become – well, not good-looking, he would never be that, he was altogether too bony, but not bad. ‘How long are you here for this time?’
‘I’m not entirely sure. The Institute’s closing down, since there’s no need for it any longer. I’m trying to arrange to go back to college – lecturing or some such – if they can find a place for me,’ he added, somewhat diffidently.
Desperate to get into the army like everyone else of his generation, he had been turned down, as he had predicted, because of his poor eyesight. But, though filled with shame at being left at home when all his contemporaries were fighting, he had made the best of it, used his brilliant physics degree to get himself employed on scientific research, and for the rest of the war he had been one of the boffins working on various highly secret and sensitive projects at a scientific institute in Cambridge, set up for what precise purposes Amy had never known.
‘Yes, your mother told us what you were hoping for,’ she said with a smile. ‘We all wish you success, but I don’t suppose there’s much doubt they’ll want you, is there?’
‘Oh, I don’t know!’ he replied, cautiously. ‘I don’t count chickens.’ He was still as unassuming about his achievements, as modest about other people’s good opinion of him as he always had been.
‘I would have thought they might welcome you with open arms, in the circumstances.’
He flushed slightly and Amy bit her lip, regretting the last few words. Did he think she was referring to the vacancies left by all those clever young men, students and dons alike, who had jettisoned their studies and their careers to fight for their country and would never return to finish them, and that they’d have to make do with what was left to replace them? That wasn’t what she had meant at all – rather that it appeared to be just the sort of career that seemed expressly designed for Steven, the Prof, as they always used to call him. To make up for her mistake, she told him about William coming home and saw his face light up.
For a moment he seemed quite overcome, at a loss for words. ‘William? Really? Well. Quite like old times.’ He stopped, rather abruptly. Poor Steven, it was his turn now to feel he’d put his foot in it. He was thinking of the other two in their little group, Amy could tell, who would not come back. Their group, she emphasised to herself, not me. I wasn’t one of them, I was still too young. A pest who tagged along, a baby, they thought me. But I wasn’t a baby. I knew what was going on.
They fell a little silent. He was walking with her up Church Lane, though it was not on his way home. I’ll bet he hasn’t realised, she thought. ‘Will you come in and say hello to the others, Steven? Have some tea?’
‘Oh, er, no thank you.’ He looked around, blinking at finding himself where he was, and she laughed. ‘I’ll pop in later. Do bring William down to see us. My mother will be so glad to see him again – and you, of course.’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Amy uncomfortably. She had a vague idea clever Mrs Rafferty disapproved of her.
He turned his bicycle round and prepared to ride off. For a moment he said nothing, then suddenly, he smiled at her. ‘Poor Amy. You haven’t had much fun these last years, have you?’
His unexpected sympathy brought a warmth to her face. Funny old Steven. He was being very nice to her – but then, he always had been kind, waiting for her when she fell behind the older ones, unable to keep up, on the occasions they’d been compelled to have her in their company, sticking up for her when she said something silly or childish that made the others laugh. She gave him one of her most dazzling smiles. ‘Well, Steven, it’s all going to be different now, isn’t it?’
‘I hope so. Goodbye, Amy.’ With a ring of his bell, he was off.
Chapter Twelve
‘A party! Oh, a dinner party, and I’ve nothing to wear!’ Amy wailed.
‘Nonsense, Amy, you have your pretty blue muslin.’
‘Which I’ve had since I was thirteen, Grandy! Besides, it’s far too cold, yet, for muslin. If I have to wear that, the dress won’t be the only thing that’s blue.’
‘Amy, Amy,’ her grandmother remonstrated.
‘We can’t go, we’ve nothing to wear, any of us!’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ said Nella, ‘of course we have.’
Amy spun round to her sister. ‘All right, then, what do you intend wearing?’
‘Me? Oh, I don’t know – anything. I suppose it will be my dark blue. It’s suitable, and I shall be quite warm and comfortable into the bargain.’
‘It might be suitable, but it’s frightful. You should never wear dark blue, it doesn’t become your colouring. And besides, I should think you’d be sick of it, by now. It’s exactly the same colour as your uniform.’
&n
bsp; Nella paused. ‘Well, I haven’t anything better. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Nobody will notice what I’m wearing.’
‘Oh yes, they will! Everybody always notices what everyone else is wearing. And you know Aunt Sybil’s and Eunice’s dresses will be the last word.’
‘A new dress isn’t the be all and end all,’ Nella said impatiently, suppressing the thought of how long it was since she’d had anything new.
Amy didn’t answer. An idea had popped into her head, and she wondered if she dare…
‘We could all do with something new to wear, child,’ put in their grandmother crisply. ‘But we shall just have to make the best of what we have.’
Amy took a deep breath. ‘Why should we, with all those beautiful things in Mama’s trunk? What good are they doing, all shut up?’
Speculation passed between them, each of them thinking of Dorothea’s clothes and other possessions, lying for years between folds of tissue paper in a chest in the attic. Mrs Villiers, especially, was thoughtful. ‘Oh, very well, I’ll ask your father,’ she said at last, without the least hope of success. It would be tantamount to asking permission to violate a shrine.
Amy braced herself. ‘No, let me. He’s more likely to say yes if I ask.’
Another silence. Nella thought yes, he might. Mrs Villiers pursed her lips. There was no denying that Francis would do more for Amy than anyone – if Amy would let him. But the truth was, she had grown to avoid her father whenever she could, for what reason Eleanor had never been able to fathom, almost as if she were embarrassed, or even a little scared, in his presence, though it had to be admitted that his dark silences could intimidate anyone. That Amy was willing now to beard him in his den said a great deal about the poor child’s longing for a few new clothes, although, young and self-absorbed as Amy could still sometimes be, compared with Nella, their grandmother did not believe this was mere vanity – just that she hadn’t been thrown into maturity, as her sister had, by the terrible experiences of the war. She could not wait to grow up, of course – but who could blame any young girl for that?
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