One day, watching one she vividly remembered from the time before, because she looked ever so young, Mrs. Jessop had found herself quite overcome, had had to wipe away a tear and fight the urge to get up and go out across the wet road to . . . She wasn’t sure what, maybe offer the girl comfort. And it was made worse because the girl seemed to look right back at her. Mrs. Jessop had raised her hand above the arrangement of plastic carnations, had tried to smile; then the bus came, and as it stood there belching smoke into the drizzle, Mrs. Jessop hoped with a burning passion that when it moved on the girl would still be there, and if she was—if she was still standing there—she would go out to her and offer her something more than either of them knew at that moment. But the bus departed, and the girl with it. And Mrs. Jessop still thought of her, like Michael.
“Not like you to have no appetite,” she said, glancing at her son’s pale face. He had been a loving son, dutiful, kind and ever patient with her husband, and she hoped with all her heart that his recent restlessness wouldn’t take him too far from her.
Stephen felt rotten. He couldn’t remember what time he’d gone to bed, but his alarm had gone off far too bloody soon; that was for sure. It had been a struggle to get himself up and get the car round the front in time. And no sooner had he got back from church and put his head on the pillow than Nancy was at the door, telling him he had to get back down there because Mr. Forbes had had a fall. Now his head pounded and he kept having flashbacks of himself and Tabitha Farley, the barmaid from the Coach and Horses. And though he could remember only some of what had happened the previous night, he had a pretty good idea, and an idea where his missing jacket might be.
“Eat up! You won’t get anything like this in New Zealand, you know,” said Hilda.
“New Zealand?” Nancy repeated. “That’s in Australia, isn’t it? Are you thinking about emigrating, Stephen?”
“Just an idle dream, Nancy.”
“Well, I’d thank you to keep your dreams closer to home. What’s wrong with round here?” his mother asked.
“They don’t have Christmas in Australia,” said Hilda through a mouthful of food.
“Don’t they? Do you hear that, Stephen? They don’t even have Christmas in Australia,” his mother repeated.
“Oh, but they do,” said Mr. Brown. “It’s just that in the Southern Hemisphere it happens to be in the summer.”
“In the summer? Well, that’s plain wrong,” said Nancy. “Christmas is meant to be in December . . . it’s our Lord’s birthday and you can’t go and change that willy-nilly and as you please.”
“Ah, but you see,” Mr. Brown began, putting down his knife and fork and adjusting his paper hat—which kept slipping down his balding head to his bony nose, “the summer is in December down there.” And as the conversation sank to a new level of confusion, Stephen rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He had neither the inclination nor the energy to join in this particular debate.
New Zealand. Would he ever get there? Not if he kept going back to the Coach and Horses, he wouldn’t. Not with Tabitha Farley always finishing when he was and asking him to walk her home and putting his hand down the front of her blouse. Not with all that going on. And Daisy . . . Daisy Forbes?
“Elbows off the table, Stephen!”
He opened his eyes, sat up in his chair and tried to smile back at Hilda. Feeling more lugubrious than ever, he was, he thought, an idiot—a complete idiot—to even for a single beer-soaked minute entertain the thought that someone like Daisy would ever in a million years go with someone like him: a servant, a drunk and another one who couldn’t keep his flies done up.
Chapter Sixteen
There was a choice of turkey or goose, roasted potatoes, endless vegetables and accompaniments, sauces and gravy, all followed by a flickering blue-flamed pudding, carried in by Mrs. Jessop—looking quite different in a navy blue jersey dress and red paper hat. Mabel served the plum pudding, handing the bowls down the table, and seconds later Daisy called out, “It’s me! I have it!” She lifted the sixpence from the soggy mess in her bowl and held it up for everyone to see. A polite hush descended.
“Now, are you going to make a wish—or do you still not believe in them?” asked Margot, smiling.
But as Daisy closed her eyes she heard Margot whisper to Mabel, “You know, I always longed for a daughter . . . and now I’m to have one. For Valentine is engaged to be married, and his fiancée, Aurelia, is the sweetest, kindest creature that ever lived.”
Daisy opened her eyes.
“How wonderful,” said Mabel. She tilted her head toward Valentine. “Many congratulations to you, my dear.”
Val smiled. He glanced from Daisy to his mother, then back to Daisy.
“They haven’t set a date, as it hasn’t been officially announced yet, but we’re thinking of late summer, perhaps September,” Margot went on. “I think it’s the perfect month for a wedding.”
“I like June. We were married in June,” said Lily, turning and smiling at a contrite Miles.
“Mabel and Howard were married in September,” said Iris, staring over the table at Margot. “They celebrate twenty-five years of wedded bliss next year.”
Margot smiled. “Yes, I know. I was there . . . Seems like yesterday.”
“Oh, I say, is there to be a party?” asked Dosia, turning to her brother.
Howard smiled at Mabel. “I rather think there should be . . .”
Mabel said nothing.
“In the meantime,” Howard continued, “I believe a toast is in order . . .” But as he tried to rise to his feet, he grimaced with obvious pain and quickly sat back down. “Forgive me, please, for not standing . . . but a toast is a toast all the same. To Valentine and Aurelia.”
“To Valentine and Aurelia!”
Valentine forced a smile, said a quiet thank-you, then picked up his spoon and stared down at his pudding. And as Mabel and Margot went on discussing weddings, Daisy offered, “Aurelia’s a very pretty name . . .”
Valentine didn’t look at Daisy. He frowned slightly, tilted his head to one side, but said nothing.
Then Margot, overhearing Daisy’s comment, said, “Isn’t it just? And it so suits her. Some people are born to have a certain name, and she was born to be Aurelia. It means golden . . . and she is,” she added, wide-eyed and smiling. “She’s truly a golden girl!”
“She certainly is,” agreed Howard.
“You’ve met her?” asked Iris.
Howard stammered. “Well . . . er, yes, I believe so . . . think I may have done . . .”
“Surely you’d remember whether or not you had met Valentine’s golden girl?” said Iris. “Anyone would remember meeting an Aurelia, I think.”
Howard stared at Mabel.
“Yes, I believe you did meet her, once,” said Margot. “It was when I played Judith Bliss at the Criterion. Hay Fever is such a marvelously funny play . . . Have you seen it, Mabel? Oh, but you must—it’s one of my favorites, but then dear Noel is my absolute favorite playwright and such a darling man.”
At that moment Valentine pushed back his chair, turned to Mabel and said if she didn’t mind he rather needed to take some air.
“Of course, my dear,” said Mabel.
Minutes later, as they all rose to their feet, Daisy saw him through the dining room window, walking away from the house across snow-covered lawns, his collar pulled up, his head down, his hand moving to and from his face as he smoked. It struck her then, at that moment, that he didn’t seem altogether happy, and she assumed it was guilt—because of last night: kissing her when he was in fact betrothed to another. She half thought of going after him, but what could she say? She had no experience of engaged men—of any men at all, come to that. But they all seemed rather confused and tortured to her.
It meant nothing, she thought, watching the camel-hair coat disappear into the wood
land. My first kiss meant nothing, to either one of us.
After lunch, everyone sat about in the hallway inhaling eucalyptus and pine and damp dog as Howard reached down, read out tags and handed over the festooned packages. There were the usual bath salts and soap, mittens and handkerchiefs, calendars and books and new cloth- or leather-bound diaries marked 1927. Daisy had already taken a look and rummaged. Had felt anything marked with the message “To Daisy.” She knew it was there, knew it was coming, but Howard left it until last.
“To our darling Dodo, Happy Christmas from Mummy and Daddy,” he said without looking at the tag and walking toward Daisy with the large wrapped box. He placed it at Daisy’s feet, kissed her forehead. “Happy Christmas, darling.”
It was a Remington typewriter, the one she’d asked for, in a dark gray mottled leather case and with large round buttons no finger could miss. She turned to her mother: “Thank you . . . thank you so much.”
“You really should be thanking your father. I had no part in it.”
Daisy looked at her father, who remained a few feet in front of her, staring back at her and smiling. “Thank you, Howard,” she said. He could never again be Daddy.
“Yes, I see what you mean . . . ,” said Stephen, taking a cigarette from the proffered packet. “To be honest, I’m in a bit of a similar situation myself.”
The two of them were sitting in the armchairs on either side of the fire in the sitting room of Stephen’s flat. They had bumped into each other out in the yard, where Stephen had been chopping a few more logs, to save his father doing it, and Valentine had been—well, loitering about, Stephen thought.
They had met many times before, and it was nice, Stephen thought now, to be able to return a bit of hospitality, because Val had always been good to him. Anytime he’d sat outside in the motor—reading the newspaper, waiting for his nibs—Val had emerged on the doorstep, invited him in, taken him to the basement kitchen and offered him a cuppa. Nice chap, he’d thought. Of course, they didn’t have a lot in common—other than a mutual distrust of Benedict Gifford, who had always talked down to Stephen. But during the course of the preceding year he and Val had become friendly and had talked about this and that: the weather, the floods, the strike, cricket. They had never really talked much about girls, women, though Stephen had mentioned Daisy, how many times he wasn’t altogether sure. But now that Val had shared something of his own intimate affairs, Stephen had felt it not unwrong and maybe even sympathetic to mention his own dilemma.
“Bit like you,” Stephen said, “in love with one, probably—most definitely—the wrong one, and stuck on a track with a bit of a fast one.”
“But you’re not engaged to be married?” asked Val.
“No, thank God, I’m not. Not to her anyway, not to the fast one . . . but I wish I was to the other.”
Neither one of them used any names. This—to both—kept the conversation entirely aboveboard and confidential. Val had simply said that while he was engaged to one girl—someone his mother had introduced him to and liked, someone he’d thought he loved—he’d recently fallen for another. And quite out of the blue, quite unexpectedly. But it had thrown him, made him question everything.
“And I’ve suddenly realized how little I know about her—my fiancée. How little we know about each other. You see, we haven’t known each other very long.”
Stephen explained that his situation was different: he was in love with someone he’d known for years. When Val said to Stephen, “So what’s the problem?” Stephen wasn’t sure what to say, how to explain. Then he said, “Class . . . background, that sort of thing.”
Val stared at him, narrowing eyes for a moment. “It’s not Daisy . . . not Daisy Forbes, is it? Because I know you liked her. I remember you talking about her quite often, and telling me . . .”
Stephen sucked hard on his cigarette. He wondered, thought for a minute about coming clean, telling Val the truth, but then he decided it was probably best to follow Val’s example and keep names out of it. “No, not Daisy,” he replied.
“So . . . what’s she like?” said Val, leaning forward, stubbing out his cigarette. “Pretty?” he asked, glancing up.
Stephen nodded, his lips sealed. He wanted to describe her, was desperate to describe her, because after watching her for the best part of ten years, he knew it was something he could do, and do very well. He knew that he could describe her in such extraordinary detail it would reveal her identity. Daisy . . . how that name quickened his heart.
“And the other, Miss Fast Track?”
Stephen laughed. He looked away for a moment, remembering the previous night. “That’s a sorry tale,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
Stephen shook his head. “She has this way . . . when I’m a bit owled, of getting me to . . . you know, walk her home and so on.”
“And so on?”
“Yes, and so on.”
“And does the other one know—the one you’re in love with?”
Stephen shuddered. “No, she does not, thank God. But it’s got to stop, got to,” he said, refreshing their glasses with the malt whiskey Howard had given him. “I don’t even want to . . . but when I’ve had a few, when she . . . you know, asks me to walk her home, and then . . .” He looked up at Val, and Val nodded.
“Hard when it’s on offer, eh?”
They sat for a while in silence, their eyes fixed on the small fire. Then Stephen sat back and said, “So what about you and this young miss, the one you’ve fallen for? What’s she like?”
Val stared back at Stephen with a strange smile.
“Well?” said Stephen, smiling back at him.
Val took a sip of his whiskey. “You know what? I’m going to tell you . . . but you must keep it in confidence, yes?”
Stephen nodded. “Of course.”
“It’s Daisy.”
Stephen barely heard what came after, but when Valentine said, “And then I kissed her,” Stephen’s glass of malt whiskey slipped from his fingers to the floor.
Chapter Seventeen
It was a fine day with a clear sky and soft breeze, and Stephen had been up early. For lack of anything better to do—or rather, for something to do, to distract him—he’d decided to wash the Rolls. But even as he worked, a sequence of images flooded his mind. And one in particular took him back, to a midsummer evening some three years before.
He had been in the greenhouse with his father, potting up geraniums for Mrs. Forbes, watching the man’s shaky hands as he carefully tended the plants, listening as his father intermittently hummed some half-forgotten tune that had surfaced in his memory. Stephen had loved those moments, when there had been just the two of them, working in warm security, in virtual silence; his father from time to time glancing up to smile in sheer, undiluted pleasure at the sight of a tiny bud or newly opened petal. Simple stuff.
But this night, as his father went off to fetch more compost, Daisy had appeared in the doorway. And that image of her standing in the doorway of the greenhouse was seared in his memory. She had been wearing a pale blue cotton dress and a broad-brimmed straw hat, and the westerly light, still bright and golden, had shone through the thin fabric of her dress, revealing the shape of her legs. She had stood there for some time, picking at the peeling paint and saying something about something not being fair.
“They’re all against me,” she’d said, and then screamed.
He’d moved quickly, seen the sting and not thought for a second of what was needed: had simply lifted her wrist to his mouth. A few days later, when he was painting the garage doors, she had come up to him—quite calmly—telling him that she thought she had been stung again, this time on the other wrist. But there had been no sting, none that he could find. He could have pretended, could have put her skin to his mouth again, and he’d wanted to. But somehow it seemed wrong. And he could not lie: not to her. She was�
��had always been—worth more than that.
Later, he had wondered whether she had been playing with him, whether she had known all along that there was no sting. This in itself had fascinated him, excited him and given him endless hours of pleasure—imagining the machinations of her desire and intent; but, ultimately, it seemed too much to hope. And yet there had been other times when she had sought him out—to ask him the name of something or to help her find a particular leaf or plant or nest, to draw or paint. And though he loved that she came to him, loved that he could help her and cherished the times, as he always had, when they were together and alone, he wondered if his love—so undiluted and luminous—was as obvious to her as it was to him.
And so for a while, in order to counteract this, to somehow dim and diminish and cloud it, he had adopted a more dismissive approach. Had been studiedly offhand with her and avoided any eye contact, because that was the worst, when she looked at him—directly at him—and he looked back at her. He knew then that he was lost and that she would surely see. But this indifferent approach hadn’t lasted very long, simply because he found it so difficult to be like that with her, and because to not look at her was one of the hardest things he’d ever done and had meant he’d made up for it by staring when he thought she wasn’t looking and had then been caught out, which was possibly worse, and more embarrassing.
Once, when they were younger, there had been an easy and uninhibited camaraderie between them, with no consciousness of any division in their station, what they should or should not do, how they should or should not be, what they could or could not say. They had been friends, equal in everything other than their age and sex, and sometimes—because he was older—their knowledge. But as the years passed, as they’d grown older, this had changed—on his part, at least. Daisy the girl became Daisy the woman, and there was nothing Stephen could do to stop the love he’d first felt—when he’d wished she had been his sister. Sisterly love turned to something altogether different, and by the time Stephen carved their initials on the trunk of the great beech by the gate to the woods he was already dreaming of his future with her.
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