Georgia Giacopazzi, whose now famous name had come to her in 1945 by way of a pencil stabbed at a newspaper, descended the narrow stairs of Markham’s foremost hotel. Compared to the unstarred, luxurious and exclusive places she was booked into by her publishers, The Coach House was far down market: here the rooms were inconvenient and small, and the smells of tobacco, beer and cooking seeped and wafted and grew stale in the low-beamed narrow passageways. Today, dull and humid after the long, hot summer, the place seemed smaller and darker than she remembered it. But then it was a long time ago.
It was to The Coach House that Hugh had brought her on her first date with him. It was in those days the only licensed premises where middle-class Markhambrians might gather without brushing shoulders with hoi polloi darts players. Its original use had still been discernible then in its yard and stables, which were now all conversions with white clapboard, white-painted tables.
The receptionist, aware of the kudos of so famous a guest as the novelist Giacopazzi, leaned eagerly across the desk-flap. ‘Good morning, ma’am, is everything satisfactory?’
Georgia smiled and nodded. ‘Is there a member of staff on duty to show my guests where to go when they arrive?’
‘All arranged, ma’am.’
Georgia went to the small reception room she had reserved and looked out across Markham’s town square. On the face of it, the square was very little different from fifty years ago. None of the buildings she used to pass on her way to work all through the war was much changed, though many of them had changed use. The old Post Office depot was a new estate agents’, the old estate agents were still there, the air-raid shelters-cum-toilets under the Town Hall were entirely gone, the greengrocer–fishmonger’s had become yet another estate agents’ and a pet supplies shop. The Congregational Church, the banks and chemists were there, but what had been the bus waiting-room was now an olde shoppe with olde windows. Where do sweethearts go these days?
Lord Palmerston was back in his place of dominance. Beyond the statue, Georgia could see the beautifully restored Georgian cottage that used to be her office, and the archway leading to Mrs Farr’s old house and the Town Restaurant.
Forty-five years to the day since Harry Partridge, with hundreds of other parachuted men, had jumped to defeat in battle from an aeroplane above Arnhem. Of all the men in her life, Harry had been the most fun. Good-time Harry. She had often wondered whether, that weekend at the Metropole in Brighton, he had known that his regiment was preparing for that impossible battle. He had been the perfect carefree partner for a day and the perfect lover for a night.