CHAPTER TWO

During the last week of August, Danny made his annual visit to the kennels in Odiham.

‘Does he still live in the house opposite the stocks?’ Flora was helping Danny give the hounds their evening meal, and the air was thick with their squeals.

‘Yup.’

‘Down.’ Flora pushed Lady’s paws off her bare leg. ‘You’re in fine fettle, old girl. Did you have any luck getting a new bitch, Danny?’

‘Yup.’

‘Ellen tells me the sole topic of conversation in hospital was how awful it was that the RAF is going to set up a base in Odiham.’

‘Don’t blame ‘em,’ said Danny. ‘More noise.’ He dished up the boiled meat and broth cooked in his cottage, apparently unperturbed by its vile smell.

‘It wasn’t the noise, stupid,’ said Flora. ‘Ellen says they’re worried the girls will be swept off their feet.’ With a grimace, she stirred the slop with a spoon: hounds liked it.

‘Pass me the bowls, Miss Flora.’

Inside their casing of corduroy, Danny’s legs resembled sticks, and the freckles on his face and arms appeared etched onto his pale skin. Danny was a neatly made, wiry man, normally quite healthy-looking and quick of movement. But today he was slow and lethargic and Flora sighed at the whisky signs. She took a deep breath.

‘Danny. Why don’t you go and visit Father? He’d like it. He asks for you all the time and you’ve only been once since the accident.’

Danny shovelled out the last of the meat and slapped down the bowls. A tan and white tank division promptly launched itself towards them and they retreated. Flora let herself out of the pen and waited while Danny fastened the gate.

‘Won’t you?’ she persisted.

‘See ‘ere.’ Danny dropped the keys into his pocket. ‘Your pa doesn’t need me in the sick room. Anyway, that woman stands there checking every breath I take. I don’t ‘appen to like it, that’s all.’ Danny’s jaw assumed a gin-trap look, which it did at times.

‘Robbie’s not that bad.’

Danny opened the gin-trap and released the information, ‘She wants ‘im.’

Flora was not sure she had heard correctly. ‘What a funny thing to say, Danny. What do you mean?’

‘She wants ‘im,’ he repeated, the Cockney exaggerated.

Shocked by what she thought he meant, Flora pushed open the gate into the cottage garden. Danny was implying that Robbie wanted her father like a woman wanted a man... like she wanted Robin. The idea of her sick father as such a target left Flora speechless. Perhaps if she said nothing further the subject would drop. But Danny’s hangover was bad this morning and it pricked him into telling a few home truths.

‘Listen, Miss Flora. ‘As no one ever told you it goes on all the time? She,’ he emphasized the word in a flat, unfriendly way, ‘is entitled to the same wantings as you or me.’

What are your wantings, Danny? she asked herself. And the memory of him naked flashed through her mind.

It had been a revealing speech for Danny, given matter-of-factly and without embarrassment, and it left Flora bewildered. She also felt betrayed. It had never occurred to her that Robbie might put anyone other than her charges first in her affections.

‘Why?’ she asked faintly. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’

‘You’re a big girl now, Miss Flora.’

Out of her depth, she said uneasily, ‘Even if it’s true, what difference does it make to you, Danny?’

Danny’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. ‘She won’t want me there with your father,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t like it and it makes me fidget. Anyway, I don’t belong in the ‘ouse, so I’d rather stay ‘ere with the family.’

‘Ye gods.’ Because she was at a disadvantage, Flora felt rather irritated. Even so, her loyalty to Danny was deep-rooted. ‘Listen, I can make sure that Robbie is out of the way, if that’s what you want.’

Danny watched the whirlpool of tails, claws and tongues inside the cage with professional detachment and a hint – just a hint — of softening. Flora tried again.

‘You’d be doing me a favour, Danny.’

‘Bugger off, Jupiter.’ Danny always pitched his voice a shade higher when talking to the hounds. ‘Let Juno ‘ave some.’ Flora tapped his shoulder lightly. Danny shrugged, but she knew he was not displeased.

Flora raised her voice above the din. ‘Think about it, Danny. Please. You’d do him so much good. I know he gets bored and Robbie does drive him mad. So do his other visitors. You know, the family and neighbours.’

Danny cleared his throat and spat phlegm into the yard. Flora made a hasty detour. He unfastened the back door to his cottage. ‘Don’t you worry, Miss Flora. Your pa will do. So will I. You must learn to let alone. ‘E knows I’ll come when ‘e needs me. Now that’s a promise.’

‘Oh, Danny. You’re infuriating.’ Flora picked up her bicycle and threaded her leg through the frame. ‘I’ll get rid of Robbie. Promise.’

From habit, she looked back over her shoulder when she reached the end of the track. Danny was leaning against the pen smoking, a thin blue trail wreathing above his head.

Flora cycled through the Borough and along Dippenhall Street towards Turnpike Lane. It was watercress time again. Fed by a pipe from the river Hart, the bed had been cleared out after the spring crop and replanted. Tilly Prosser and Ellen’s friend, Madge, were packing dripping bundles into baskets. A couple of harnessed pony carts were waiting on the grass verge to take the cress down to Aldershot and North Camp.

‘Morning, Miss Flora.’ Tilly held up a pair of wet hands, and scratched at the bites on her fingers.

‘Hallo, Tilly.’ Flora spotted a small figure over by the ponies. ‘Hallo, Simon.’ Dirtier and more hopeless-looking than usual, Simon was crooning a monotonous song to the ponies. He turned his blank gaze on Flora. ‘How are you, Simon?’

‘Not very talkative today.’ Madge looked up from her work. ‘His mum went on a blinder up at the Horns last night.’ She plunged her hands into the bed to cut another bunch. ‘Wish I had.’

‘I’ll take six, please.’ Flora helped herself to a sheet of newspaper and lined her bicycle basket. ‘Mrs Dawes wants to make soup.’ She slapped at a gnat that had landed on her cheek and counted out the money. Tilly tossed the coins into an open tin on the wall.

‘Waste of good watercress, Miss Flora,’ said Madge. ‘Soup.’

The fresh, peppery smell of the cress made Flora’s nose tingle. Rogue drops of water splashed onto her knees. On the way back, she cycled past the church with its distinctive avenue of limes: up that avenue sometimes rode the ghost soldier of Nether Hinton. Mrs Dawes had seen him as a girl, a Parliamentarian doomed to endless, unresting re-enactment as he fled from battle through the wall of the church in a flurry of leather and jingling spurs. As a child the story had made the hairs rise on the back of her neck.

Then it was down Church Lane towards the Dysart path. The threshing machines were busy up in the fields – they were threshing early, Kit said, because no one could afford to wait for better prices in the autumn. Sam Prosser and his team were up there, silhouetted against a clump of elms. Flora rang her bicycle bell and Sam gave a thumbs-up.

Soon the hop-pickers would be here from the East End, bringing their noise, their unfamiliar Cockney and their dozens of grimy children. The Hall family had been coming for generations, and Flora wondered if old Ma Hall would make it this year. She’d sworn she would, but who knew?

She cycled across the river by the bridge and over the lawn, leaving wet tyremarks in the grass. Matty was on the terrace talking to Ned and Kit appeared round the side of the house in boots and breeches.

‘Can you wait for me?’ she called. ‘Fifteen minutes?’

Kit lifted his whip in reply. ‘I’ll be in the Exchequer.’

Only then did Flora permit herself to look at the drive. Robin’s car was parked by the stables and he was scrambling out of the awkwardly tilted driver’s seat. Flora let out a sigh, braked and the bike slowed to a wobble while she watched. Robin had a habit of pulling down the back of his jacket and patting his pocket cuffs, which, for some reason, she liked. Sure enough, he patted them and Flora found herself grinning like Alice’s Cheshire cat.

During those rides up on Horsedown and Caesar’s Camp, a sickness had infected Flora. The symptoms were gradual: a wish to be with Robin; a greed to watch him. With an onrush of fever she had succumbed. To what?

One day she had woken up and realized that the old Flora had been cast off and, newly tender, newly awake, she had stepped out of childhood. When she reflected on the change, she supposed it began in France and continued in Miss Glossop’s tea-less lodgings. There — or in the ladies’ powder room watching Matty pull herself together while her husband danced with another woman in the ballroom.

The bicycle scrunched on the gravel, Robin turned and she skidded to a halt by the wall.

‘Flora.’ She was still grinning when he joined her and she held out her hand to say hallo. Above them, on the first-floor landing, a curtain twitched back and Robbie looked down on the scene.

‘I like you like this.’ Robin rubbed Flora’s hand, which was flecked with watercress and rubber from the perished handlebars. ‘All tousled and warm.’

‘Drat. That must mean my hair’s terrible.’ Flora attempted to run her hands through it and then recollected how filthy they were.

‘I was paying you a compliment,’ said Robin.

Feeling odd, shivery, and curiously breathless, Flora extracted the cress from her bicycle basket. ‘Mrs Dawes wants this as soon as possible.’

‘Flora.’ Robin repossessed her hand. ‘I want a serious talk with you.’

She moved towards him and their shoulders brushed. For an instant before he stepped away she felt his imprint on her. Upstairs, the curtain at the window dropped.

‘What about?’ Flora thought she knew perfectly well. The eagerness of two seconds ago was replaced by dread that things were going to have to be resolved and, all of a sudden, she was not sure... ‘I was going riding, can it wait?’

Robin paid no attention to her hesitation. ‘I’ve got to do a post-hospital check on Mrs Sheppey after visiting your father. I thought you might like to walk up to Clifton Cottage with me. Please.’

Flora’s heart began to behave in an extraordinary manner, bumping about in her chest.

‘Well?’ Robin took his black bag out of the car. ‘Yes or no?’

Flora looked up at the landing window. ‘I think Robbie’s been watching us,’ she said.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Robin followed her gaze. ‘She’s probably waiting for me – I’m a bit late.’

‘She’s seen us talking.’

‘Well, of course she’s seen us. We’re standing here in full daylight.’

Flora did not answer, but began to walk towards the house. Robin followed her and, as they went through the front door, said, ‘I’ll expect you later.’

He left Flora to drip watercress water over the Persian rug.

Matty waylaid Robin at the top of the stairs. ‘If you have five minutes...’ she asked, and led him into her private drawing room. The Valadon blazed at him from above the fireplace and Robin halted in his tracks.

‘How extraordinary,’ he said, not sure whether he liked it.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Matty seemed pleased that he had noticed.

The room surprised Robin: he would have expected chintz and ruffles and knick-knacks but instead, it was full of cool touches, creamy white and primrose yellow. The chairs were upholstered in Puritan calico, their only concession to frivolity the antique braid with which they were piped, and the cushions looked as if they were made from antique tapestries. (Robin was correct: Matty had taken pains to search out tapestries that were past repair.)

‘How can I help you?’ he asked, and forgot about the room, for Matty’s face, which had been rounding up nicely, wore its old pinched look and a haunted expression in the brown eyes. Disappointment? Anger? Not getting on with her husband? Robin ran over various permutations.

In one hand Matty clutched her handkerchief which she rolled between thumb and finger, pinching out the lace border between alarmingly cracked fingers.

She held out the other hand. ‘The rash has come back,’ she said. ‘I think I need more of that cream.’

In his professional grip, her hand had no substance. He turned it over to examine the palm. Angry and invasive, the condition had worked its way into the cracks.

‘That must hurt,’ he said. ‘Are you washing in soda or anything like that? Anything you don’t normally use?’

Matty used carbolic soap to scrub her hands after gardening which, these days, was frequent. There was also Gentle Dame Nature’s Plant Food, but she was not going to go into all that. ‘Kitchen soap?’

‘Might be the offender if you’re not in the habit of using it. Any special face or hand creams?’

She shook her head and Robin fished in his bag for his notebook. Some patients liked to seek reassurance in their doctor’s face, others required a little privacy while they talked. Judging Matty to be in the latter category, Robin kept his head bent as he asked, ‘Is something bothering you, Mrs Dysart?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sleeping well?’

‘Yes.’ Matty’s tone was one she adopted at afternoon tea parties.

Robin wrote a sentence. Then he looked up at her and tried the direct approach. ‘I am going to ask you again, Mrs Dysart. Is anything bothering you? Very often the sort of condition you have recurs when a patient is anxious.’

The girl is sitting by the statue in the garden, crying. She looks up as Matty approaches... and melts away.

Matty cleared her throat and repressed the urge to spread out her fingers until they cracked. ‘You remember our last conversation, Dr Lofts? About something you called the unconscious?’ Robin nodded and she continued, ‘Well, I was wondering. A friend of mine is... longing to see someone who is dear to her. But this person is far away. The strange thing is that she keeps seeing this person, usually in a particular place, but not always. Like a ghost.’

‘What are you asking me?’

Matty kept her hands flat on her thighs. ‘I don’t know, really.’

Robin wrote ‘Hysteria?’ in his notebook. ‘I would have to read up on the subject to be absolutely sure, Mrs Dysart, but from what you tell me it appears that your friend is projecting her dearly held wish outside herself and that it’s taking a physical form. So she... I take it she is a she?... she is seeing what she wants to see.’

‘I see.’ Matty looked at Robin and laughed awkwardly. ‘Sorry that’s the wrong word to use. I think I understand.’

She gave Robin the impression of being huddled up inside.

‘Does anyone else see what your friend sees?’

There was a long pause. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well. That’s not necessarily significant.’

‘Doesn’t it seem very odd to you?’ asked Matty painfully. ‘Mad, even?’

Robin wrote ‘Delusion?’ beside ‘Hysteria?’. He searched in his mind to possible clues as to Matty’s condition and wrote ‘Childless at present. Wish for a child?’ He looked up.

‘Unusual, yes. But I don’t think, unless your friend is displaying notably antisocial tendencies, that she could be called mad. I think it is quite possible that a deep, unfulfilled longing can manifest itself physically.’

And the misery, Matty asked herself silently, the misery that comes with the sightings. Is it all mine? Or someone else’s?

‘Has your friend suffered a loss?’

Matty hesitated. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘It’s an odd thing, but well documented.’ Robin thought aloud and addressed the Valadon. ‘Sometimes when someone has lost something or someone very important the grief only comes out later, after a second loss perhaps, or a period of great tension.’

‘I see.’ And Matty did see. A long, sloping line of desert dune and the child waiting by the window.

Robin transferred his gaze back to Matty and closed his notebook. ‘The more I practise, Mrs Dysart, the less surprised I am by what I see and hear. It’s important to keep one’s mind open.’

‘May I tell my friend what you said?’ Matty seemed less pinched and huddled. ‘I know she’ll be grateful.’

‘Please do. If she would ever like to come and see me, I’m always available.’

The black bag was another useful prop in stage-managing consultations. Robin hunted through its compartments for nothing in particular while he waited to see if anything else was forthcoming. Nothing was, and he fastened it up.

‘Do you mind if I ask how old you are?’ said Matty.

Robin’s eyebrows shot up, and then he grinned. ‘Patients often ask me that. Not much older than I imagine your husband is. I’m twenty-nine. Why?’

‘I just wondered. I apologize if that was a rude question.’

‘Not at all.’ Robin made for the door and turned to face Matty. ‘Mrs Dysart. I’m going to be rude. Are you very unhappy?’

The pinched look was replaced by one of acute embarrassment. Matty fluttered her hands.

‘Goodness no,’ she said. ‘I’m awfully happy.’

Predictably, Robbie offended Miss Binns and no apology would mend the situation. Miss Binns therefore departed, leaving Robbie to reign undisputed.

Outwardly, nothing changed. A hoist had been installed to help Rupert change position, but papers still lay in heaps on the table and dust blanketed his war memorabilia. A strange odour also lingered and, once, Matty and Flora horrified each other by asking if it was Rupert’s flesh rotting?

Appearances are deceptive. The balance in the sick room lay in Robbie’s favour and she, experienced by years of ruling a nursery, took control. She knew – the family knew – that the family needed Robbie. Who else would cajole, bully, and care for Rupert with a devotion that no one else could give?

She was not a subtle person, her tactics were often crude, but they were effective. Along with the dust, Robbie’s imprimatur now lay on the room; unmistakable, almost stifling and, as Danny had so shrewdly concluded, designed to beat off the intruder.

For his sins, Rupert was forbidden wine, pork and sticky suet puddings, and made to eat cabbage, fresh fruit and to keep the whisky down to a tot a day. To give Robbie credit, he looked better. She insisted also that the family only visit him at agreed times in the morning and afternoon. Fair enough, conceded Flora to her brother, it gave Robbie time to manage the complicated business of washing, dressing and feeding an immobilized patient.

‘Now, now, Sir Rupert, you know you get tired so don’t go on about the rules.’

‘Bloody hell, Robbie. Do you have to cut a chap’s balls off?’

‘Tsk, Sir Rupert.’ Robbie thrust her face over his as she brushed the greying fair hair. ‘So vulgar.’

‘You haven’t heard anything yet.’

‘Well, sir, I shall have to ask you to make sure I don’t.’

‘I want Danny to come and see me, Robbie. Send him up.’

‘That man is not setting foot in this place again, sir. Not until you are better.’

‘If I order you, Robbie.’

‘Well, you can, sir, but that is the day I leave this house and settle with Miss Polly.’

Rupert’s tongue, his only weapon, was no match for Robbie’s cast-iron devotion. In the end, faute de mieux, he grew to rely on it.

For her part, Robbie grew thin and exhausted as a result of vigils kept over Rupert during his bad phases. Wrapped in a shawl, she sat enfolded by stillness, broken only by the rustle of trees outside or the high, startling call of a fox, and watched all night over the dreaming, twitching form in the bed. Every so often she administered medicine, or patted the pillow and her hand lingered on Rupert’s forehead or held the thick wrist and its increasingly unpredictable pulse. At last, she knew what it was to possess.

When Robin knocked on the door after leaving Matty, Robbie was standing by the bed talking to Rupert. Propped on his pillows, Rupert’s skin matched the linen and his eyes were angry and inflamed. One hand was raised as if to make a point, and Robbie was listening with her just-leave-it-to-me expression. Between them stretched intimacy.

At the doctor’s entrance, Robbie looked up and it was quite obvious that the subject of their conversation had been Robin. Liberated blue serge wrinkled at Robbie’s waist as she advanced towards Robin.

‘Sir Rupert wishes to speak with you and I’ll thank you not to upset him. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’ She departed with a click of her lace-up leather shoes.

The interview granted by Rupert to Robin proved a revelation to the latter. Too shrewd not to perceive that he was part of an upward progression in a society where antecedents mattered, Robin had grown a thick skin as far as his background was concerned. It did not matter to him that his brother-in-law was the blacksmith and that his father had been a village schoolteacher; that his ancestors had dug in the chalk pits and banded together in tithings to farm the land. It may be that the chasms presented by the English class system were impossible to ignore, but as far as he was concerned they could be negotiated around.

Nevertheless, by the time Rupert, savage with frustration and discomfort, had finished, Robin’s thick skin had been well and truly flayed.

If Dr Lofts wished to transgress his professional ethics, went Rupert’s message, then it was Lofts’s own affair. Rupert neither minded nor cared. However, when the doctor took it upon himself to trifle with Rupert’s daughter, then the doctor should watch out. Rupert pronounced the word ‘doctor’ as if it levelled with ‘Piccadilly pimp’. Either Dr Lofts cut off all contact with Sir Rupert’s daughter from this moment forthwith, or his services would no longer be required. There was no discussion.

For a man who was seriously ill, it was an impressive performance.

White to the lips, Robin took refuge in professionalism. ‘Sir. I need to check your pulse.’ And it took an effort of will not to grip the thick wrist and squeeze it until it bruised.

The sound of raised voices floated in from the passage outside and the door burst open. Flora thrust herself into the room. She pushed the door shut and leant back on it, ignoring Robin’s signals to go away. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘I gather Robbie has been talking to you.’

Robin released Rupert’s wrist. ‘A little raised,’ he noted on the chart that hung at the end of the bed. ‘Have you been doing the exercises I recommended, sir?’

‘Father!’

Rupert ignored Flora. ‘If you mean that damned toe-wriggling and wrist-waving, no, I have not. I don’t believe in it.’

‘Father.’ Flora went up to the bed and looked at Robin’s set expression. ‘What’s Robbie been telling you?’

Rupert made a sawing movement with his head, and the loose flesh subsided into his neck. ‘My dear Flora, Robbie has only your best interests at heart...’ No, Flora contradicted silently. She has yours. ‘Robbie was perfectly correct to come and tell me if she saw you carrying on with someone unsuitable.’

Flora made a huge effort to keep calm. ‘May I remind you that you rely for your health on this so-called unsuitable person with whom I am supposed to be carrying on, Father.’ Robin looked up from his position by the medicine bottles and smiled his sweet smile. The charge between them leapt across the room, inescapable and provoking. Flora’s hands clenched and she thought how unfair her father was – unfair and unbelievably hurtful. She took a deep breath and made the most daring statement of her life.

‘You’re friends with Danny, Father. You spend more time with him than you have with us. Always have done. What’s the difference? Why can’t I be friendly with Dr Lofts?’

‘Flora don’t—’ Robin sounded sharp.

For a second or two, Flora thought she had won. Then Rupert replied, ‘You are more ignorant than I thought, Flora. I don’t carry on with Danny. That’s the difference. Do you wish me to spell out what I mean?’

‘Father...’ Flora made the mistake of glancing in the direction of the pier glass and was confronted by her own reflection: unbrushed hair, lumpy skirt, a wrinkled stocking. Suddenly her bravado drained away, leaving her unfocused and unsure. How could she take on her father? The entire family?

‘I had thought, Flora,’ Rupert sounded so like the cold, angry man who had dominated her childhood that she wanted to run out of the room, ‘that out of a pair of witless daughters you were the one with common sense and a sense of fitness.’

The tips of Robin’s ears had gone red and the sight dug a hollow somewhere in Flora’s middle which churned with panicky fear at the scene. In the bed, Rupert moved restlessly.

‘Are you listening to me, Flora?’

The temper note was strengthening in his voice. Flora looked at Robin for help but he shook his head. In that second, Flora understood the power that the sick exert over the well.

Robin wrote directions on the label of a new bottle of pills and placed it on the tray with the other medications. ‘I will leave you now, sir,’ he said. ‘Please take the pills as directed. I will remind Miss Robson.’

‘Get out,’ said Rupert.

Panic turned into desperation and spurred Flora. ‘Father, please stop.’

A flush stained Rupert’s pallor. ‘Dr Lofts is leaving now.’

At certain points in her childhood, Flora had been conscious of a muddle of anger and guilt in the house, no less punishing for not being understood. Perhaps it was something to do with growing up? Or with her mother, whose death had bequeathed bitterness to her children? Less so to Flora than to Kit and Polly who had been older. But however Flora ducked, wove and ran, the muddle always claimed her at crucial moments.

She gazed down at the man who had ruled her life and to whom she was bound, a solid, injury-raddled and, she realized, wounded man. Rupert stared back at his daughter and Flora was appalled to see that lurking in the depths of his eyes was a plea. Then she looked at the man she loved, quietly folding up his stethoscope and stowing it in his bag. Only the tips of his ears and the hunch of his shoulder indicated just how barely he was containing his rage.

The battle was too big for Flora to fight.

‘Get out, Lofts,’ repeated Rupert. ‘Flora, I’m cold. I want the fire lit.’

To her eternal shame, Flora let Robin go.

Kit discovered her first. Flora was crunched up on the window seat overlooking the garden. She had cried until her eyelids felt as if they had peeled away from her eyeballs.

‘Budge up.’ He pushed Flora’s legs aside and sat down. Then he reached over and took one of her hands in his. ‘Can I help?’

She turned her face towards him and Kit was shocked by her unhappiness. ‘I’m so angry,’ she said, pulling at her ungovernable hair.

‘You look awful. Who are you angry with?’

‘With Father. With you. With everyone in this – this family. With myself,’ she added.

Kit sighed. ‘Robbie told me about it.’

‘Did she also tell you that she sneaked on me to Father?’ Flora spoke through gritted teeth.

‘Sooner or later,’ said Kit practically, ‘something would have come out. The question is, old girl, has it forced you into action you didn’t want to take?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Try and see it from that angle, won’t you? If you want to do something, make sure you want to do it.’

Flora concentrated on her face. Everything was sore. Her eyes, her mouth, her skin. ‘Bloody, bloody hell.’

Kit’s eyebrow shot up. ‘We’re two of a kind. Rotten love affairs...’

‘Don’t.’ Flora moved restlessly. ‘Rotten love affairs for bad eggs.’

Kit squeezed her hand. ‘You’re not rotten.’

She looked sceptical and then relaxed a trifle. ‘Scrambled, rather,’ she said and blew her nose.

‘Rotten joke, though.’ Kit dropped a kiss on her cheek. ‘Poor old girl. Are you going to tell me about it?’

‘There isn’t much to tell.’

That was true, Kit thought. When you boiled down into words the feelings and sensations, probings, speculations and dreamings of a love affair, they did not add up to anything much. That was the paradox. Or was it tragedy?

They sat in silence for a minute or two. The sun cast a shadow over the house. Beyond it, exposed in the full sunlight was the circular lawn with the river beyond. As they watched, Matty came into view pushing a wheelbarrow. She stopped to adjust the load and bent to retrieve something from the ground. Then she lifted her face to the sun for a moment before hefting up the wheelbarrow and turning in the direction of the old rose garden. A few seconds later Ned came round the side of the house, dressed in the corduroy suit which never varied from summer to winter. His trowel was stuck into his belt and he carried a pair of shears. Matty saw Ned, stopped and they fell into conversation. Both seemed interested in the path on which they were standing. Eventually, Ned went down on one knee and began to scrape at the ground with his trowel.

Flora turned to Kit. ‘What are they doing?’

‘I imagine,’ said Kit, ‘they’re trying to trace where an old path crossed that one.’ He pointed to the path which led from the old rose garden. ‘I found a map of the garden as it was in Mother’s time and showed it to Matty this morning.’

‘Really,’ said Flora. ‘Why? And what on earth is Matty doing with a wheelbarrow?’

‘Well,’ said Kit, ‘Matty wants to be let loose on the garden. She seems to have made a conquest of Ned and they spend hours discussing it.’

‘Matty’s clever,’ said Flora. ‘She’s found something to do.’ Flora’s bottom lip began to quiver again.

‘So have you,’ said Kit pointedly. ‘Family planning?’

‘Oh, that,’ said Flora. ‘That’s over now.’

‘Matty’s right,’ said Kit. ‘We will have to tackle the garden some time.’

Flora shot her brother a look. The habit of reticence between them was ingrained, but they understood each other well enough. Flora suspected that Kit still thought about Daisy – although it had not occurred to her that he had been adulterous. With unconscious irony, she said, ‘Eases the conscience, Kit?’

By this time, Matty had joined Ned on the ground and their heads were close together.

‘If only it was so easy,’ said Kit bleakly, but Flora was too busy contemplating her own predicament to take note.

She blew her nose. ‘Kit, I’m not angry with you.’

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve been through it all myself.’

It was Flora’s turn to take Kit’s hand. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it all up again.’ She pinched the tanned fingers. ‘But you’re quite happy now, aren’t you? I mean, Matty’s all right. I like her.’

‘Good. So do I.’

‘Then it is all right?’ She searched her brother’s face for reassurance. ‘Do you suppose all children are in hock to their parents’ wishes?’ she asked.

‘Listen, old girl,’ said Kit. ‘Only you can make the decisions, don’t forget that.’

Flora thought that she had never felt so alone. ‘Not if you are an unmarried daughter you can’t,’ she came back tartly.

‘True. I’ll not deny that.’ Kit took her chin in his hand and swivelled her face close to his. ‘Remember, you don’t have to accept what Father says. You can fight. If you wish to marry this man, I will back you. Don’t make the mistake I did.’

‘But... you said Matty and you...’ said Flora.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

She broke in again. ‘You don’t understand, Kit. What I hate most of all, what I can’t bear about myself, is that I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure if I was brave enough to stand up to Father if Robin asked me to marry him and I just let him go when Father was so rude. Really rude and abominable to him.’

‘I know,’ said Kit.

‘No, you don’t know,’ she said, rearing up from the seat and staring wild-eyed through the window. ‘There is something worse about it which makes me feel awful. It’s been bothering me for a long time. You see, I wasn’t sure if I could give all this up to become a doctor’s wife in a tumbledown cottage. That is what was awful about it. Don’t you see?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Kit from behind her. ‘Oh, yes, Flora, I do see.’