The Family

Summer, 1943

Having something to look forward to only served to emphasize the featureless desert that she felt her life had become, and having lunch with her brother-in-law which would once have been nothing more than a mild—a very mild—diversion, now assumed the proportions of adventure. She decided that she would catch an early train and go to Mr. Bayley in Brook Street to have her hair cut, then she would go to Liberty’s where Zoë had recently bought a very pretty striped cotton bedspread with which she had made both herself and Juliet frocks. No coupons were required for bed linen or furnishing materials, but it was not easy to find anything suitable. She had decided not to stay the night: ever since that ghastly dinner party with Hermione that Edward had clean forgotten about, she had hated his dreary little flat. She couldn’t think why he kept it. It was a mean, modern, cramped sort of place; its décor reminded her of the captain’s cabin in a battleship (although why on earth she should make that comparison she could not imagine—she had never been in any captain’s cabin anywhere). Anyway, the paint was all sleek greys, the carpets, fitted, were the colour and texture of porridge. The minimal furniture was “modern,” that is to say its designer had been keen on its looking unusual at all costs. The drawers had no handles, but declivities so shallow that it was nearly impossible to get the purchase to open them; the taps, likewise, had no graspable spigot, rather a moulded top that eluded spiral pressure. Although Edward had imported a larger bed in place of the single divan, it still wasn’t large enough for both of them; it meant that they had to sleep touching each other all night, something she had never liked very much. Anyway, Edward was away—on a visit to Southampton where they had recently bought a wharf—so there was not much point in her staying up. None the less, she had been, she was, looking forward to getting away from Home Place just for the inside of a day. Although the house was full of people she felt isolated. She missed Sybil far more than she had thought she would; she missed Rupert, who, like the rest of the family, she privately thought dead; she missed her pre-war London life, even though at the time she had thought it dull; she even missed her sister Jessica and the long summer visits she had made when she had been poorer and somehow more accessible than she ever seemed to be now.

On the whole there was not much time for nostalgia or introspection. McAlpine’s arthritis meant that not only was the garden far too much for him, but also that his temper had become such that no boy recruited from the dwindling supply available stayed longer than a few weeks. Last summer she had taught herself to use a scythe and cut all of the orchard, which had gained his grudging respect. “I’ve seen worse,” he had remarked. After this, she spent at least two afternoons a week on outside maintenance: she had taught herself to prune the fruit trees; she sanded and repainted one of the greenhouses; and, of course, on wet days there was always wood to be sawn and stacked. “You must not exhaust yourself,” the Duchy had said, but that was exactly what she had wanted to do, the whole of last year ever since last spring which now seemed such a very long time ago. But apart from—that (she now never allowed herself to mention his name), last year had been hard in other ways. After the row with Edward about his forgetting Hermoine’s party during which she had heard herself make the classic denunciation of his general lack of concern, he had spent an unusually long time making love to her, and she had been so wrought up and then exhausted by pretending to enjoy it that it was not until the next morning that she remembered she had taken no precautions. So when, the following month, she missed her period she naturally thought herself pregnant, and this time, unlike with Roly, she actually felt glad at the prospect. It would be her last baby, she would be able to share her pregnancy with Louise who was also in the family way. But when she told Edward she sensed that he was not wholly enthusiastic, although he wouldn’t voice any objection. “Good Lord! I don’t know … Do you really think you should …” were some of the things he said. When pressed, he had eventually said that of course he was pleased, it was only that he wondered if perhaps she wasn’t getting on a bit for having another baby. Of course she would be if it was her first, she had answered, but she was perfectly healthy, there was really no reason why she shouldn’t … She toyed with the idea of going to London to see Dr. Ballater, but in the end she went to Dr. Carr. She went to his consulting room in his house, because she didn’t want to tell the family anything until she was absolutely sure, but by now it was the second month and she felt she knew. “I’m sure I am,” she had said to Dr. Carr, “I just wanted to confirm it with you.”

He had given her a sharp look from under his rather shaggy eyebrows and remarked that it was a bit early to be sure …

After he had examined her and asked her a good many questions, he had said that although it might not be to her liking, he thought it far more probable that she was embarking upon the menopause than that she was pregnant. He could be wrong, he added, but it was clear that he did not think so.

“After all, Mrs. Cazalet, you are forty-seven, you have four fine children as it is. Don’t you think, in any case, it’s a wee bit late to start again?”

“Surely it’s too early for all that!” She was aghast at the idea.

“People vary about it. You tell me that you started menstruation late, and the later starters are usually earlier to finish.”

She felt herself flushing; she found it embarrassing even to hear any words connected with the whole revolting business. He mistook her revulsion for disappointment and talked encouragingly about her prospect of becoming a grandmother (Louise had twice been to see him). “You are young enough to get the full benefit of grandchildren,” he had said, but Villy had always regarded comfort as a means of minimizing the authenticity of her distress in the first place and was therefore hostile, or at least impervious to it.

Of course, this visit was shortly followed by incontrovertible evidence that she was not pregnant, and she spent the rest of the winter much depressed. Edward’s relief at the news had irritated her and she had several times said how pleased he must be, but she did not mention the disgusting alternative.

One way and another it was good to have the small excursion to look forward to. She would go and see Louise too, of course, who was still in the nursing home where she had had her baby the previous week. Michael had telephoned the news—he had managed to get a few days’ leave—and she had offered to go up at once, but he had said much better to wait until his leave was up and Louise might be feeling lonely. And then Raymond had rung her. It was a very bad line and he sounded both portentous and faint. He would so very much like to see her, he said twice: she was the only person who, he felt, might be able to give him advice … This remark with its doubled-edged attractions—her vanity was soothed, her curiosity aroused—settled the matter: she had agreed to meet him at the Arts Theatre Club in Great Newport Street at a quarter to one. She put on last year’s blue suit with the chiffon blouse (it was quite sunny and warm) and caught the train.

She was early and he had not arrived, so she sat in the densely populated and very small dusky area that was half passage, half room on the ground floor and watched people booking theatre tickets and meeting each other for lunch, until Raymond suddenly loomed beside her, bending down to present her with his huge pale face that gleamed almost phosphorescent in the gloom.

“My dear! My train was late. Awfully sorry.” His cheek was damp, his moustache like thistles. He took her arm. “Shall we go straight up? Have a drink and all that?”

He led the way to the large pleasant dining room.

“A table for two—name of Castle,” he said in the tone of elaborate courtesy he reserved for what he considered to be his inferiors. It was one of the things she had not noticed before, but now recognized as his habit.

“And we should like to order drinks immediately—if you would be so kind.”

The drinks arrived, he offered her a cigarette and began laboriously enquiring after the health of everyone in the family, receiving her answers as though they were exactly what he expected, and she began to see that he was nervous.

“I suppose it is no use asking you anything about your work,” she said.

“Fraid not. Of course one likes to feel useful—to have found some sort of niche. And I do feel that it is up to somebody in my family to make some contribution to the war effort.”

“Oh, Raymond! Christopher is working for a farmer and, goodness knows, we need food grown here, and Nora, they say, is a simply wonderful nurse, and hasn’t Angela moved from the BBC to the Ministry of Information? And, after all, Judy is just a child. And—” But here she came to an end. She could not honestly think of anything useful that Jessica was doing, or ever had done, and this was when she realized that she was not being mentioned.

“And as for Jessica,” he said as though he had heard her thoughts, “her contribution seems to be adultery.” There was a short silence: the word lay like a scorpion on the table between them.

Then he said, “For one awful moment I thought that perhaps you might have known. That everyone knew excepting me. But you didn’t, did you?”

No, she said, she didn’t. She was so shocked—she had always assumed that she and Jessica felt the same about things like that—that although her mind seethed with questions, each one on its own seemed too trivial to voice.

“Are you sure?” she eventually managed to ask.

“Dead sure.” And then he began answering the questions without her having to ask a single one.

He’d known for nearly a month now. When he’d first found out, his instinct had been to go and confront her at once, but he’d not dared to do that. “I wanted to kill her,” he said, “I was honestly afraid of what I might do. She’s been lying to me so much, you see. I felt such a fool. Also, there were some things I didn’t want to know. Supposing she thought she was in love with the bastard, for instance, or supposing she wasn’t—it had just been a roll in the hay—I didn’t know which would make me feel worse. Then I discovered that it had been going on for quite a long time—”

“How long?”

“Oh, well over a year. I don’t know—it could be much longer. She got to know him when we were still at Frensham. Of course, you know who it is by now, don’t you?”

She began to say no, she didn’t, but before the words were out of her mouth a horrible thought assailed her, a doubt, suspicion that in a second congealed to sickening certainty.

“Oh, no!”

“My dear! I’m sorry if I’ve shocked you, although I quite understand your feelings. It is shocking. A decently brought-up woman who has been married for twenty-seven years—happily married I always thought …”

She drank some water while he droned on and his face, which had briefly obscured to a dizzy blur, slipped jerkily back into focus. So, too, did all kinds of small matters—things said, or not said, the way Jessica never asked her to stay, did not seem to want to come to Home Place, had not wanted Louise to stay with her and then that curious time when she had dropped in at St. John’s Wood and Jessica had behaved so oddly …

He was on to what he thought of Clutterworth now—suddenly he seemed unable to stop repeating his name. “If Mr. Clutterworth thinks that being a musician entitles him to behave in this manner … and, what is more, if Mr. Clutterworth thinks he can get away with it, Mr. Laurence Clutterworth is in for a serious shock. I’ve half a mind to get in touch with that wretched wife of his to see if she knows what is going on …”

If it has been going on for over a year, I was not even his first choice, she thought, as the humiliation she had thought buried from that ghastly evening in Soho came flooding back. Oh, God! Supposing he told her about it afterwards!

But there was worse to come.

“Tell me,” he said, leaning over the table towards her. “Tell me, how on earth can any decent woman—I nearly said lady—think for a moment of falling in love with a greasy little worm like that? Let alone …” Here his complexion became suffused with embarrassment. “Let alone contemplating getting—physically involved with such a creature? Can you at all understand it? I mean, am I being obtuse, or what?”

Fortunately, he did not seem to expect an answer, was so immersed in angry rumination that any question was rhetorical: all she had to do, she thought, was sit and endure the floodgates of his rage and shock—for beyond all his clumsy, cliché-ridden language she could sense, as her Red Cross experience had taught her, that he was in shock—until somehow lunch would be over. She stopped trying to eat, lit a cigarette, stared at her plate and tried to let the ultimate humiliation of hearing somebody who she at least thought she had loved being described in terms that were compounded of coarseness and brutal reality wash over her. This numb, mindless reverie came abruptly to an end because he seemed to be asking something …

“… what you think I should do?”

“Do? What do you mean?”

“I mean, about talking to her. I must confess that I really don’t know what would be the best way to tackle it.”

She looked at him in astonishment. His anger seemed to have evaporated; he had now a nervously furtive, conciliatory air. Before she could reply, he exclaimed, with wholly unconvincing spontaneity: “I know! Well, that is, if you feel you could … Have a word with her?”

He stuck at it throughout all protestations: what should she say? What did he want her to say? What, in fact, did he want? He thought she might find out what Jessica really felt—perhaps she might even talk to the feller’s wife—get her to remove him from the scene or something. Beneath all the earlier bombast of which there was now no sign, she recognized that he was anxious, craven, and very much afraid. In the end, and in order to escape, she said she would have to think about it, and he wrote out his address and telephone number at Woodstock so that she could get in touch with him. By the time they parted outside the Arts Theatre Club it was four o’clock and she had to run to Charing Cross to catch her train.

Neville and Lydia, who had most mistakenly complained of not having anything to do, had been sent to fill up the drinking trough for the horses in the field. This entailed filling two buckets, one each, from the hose outside the stables and staggering through the arch in the wall, along the narrow cinder path past the potting shed, the compost heap and the broken-down kennel, along a grassy track that had huge sunbaked ruts in it to the trough just inside the gate that led to the horses’ field: it was a long walk. They had done four journeys and the trough was still only half full.

“It’s partly because Marigold is drinking it all up behind our backs,” Neville complained.

They had had their usual, almost mechanical grumble about the task immediately after they had been told to do it—gone through the unfairness of being made to work in their holidays, especially on such a hot afternoon when nobody else was, they bet. They went contemptuously through the grown-ups’ indolent and paltry activities: the Duchy machining, Aunt Zoë reading to ill people at the nursing home, Aunt Rachel sewing, Aunt Dolly (Bully) having a rest—they rolled their eyes at each other in a paroxysm of sarcastic amusement—Aunt Villy off in the car somewhere to fetch something or other … “They’re all sitting down,” Neville said.

“Hardly exhausting, my dear,” Lydia agreed. “Why doesn’t Mr. Wren do this? Wait for me, I’ve got to change arms.”

“He doesn’t do anything except chop a tiny bit of wood and go to the pub in the evenings. Tonbridge has to fetch him home sometimes because he can’t walk properly.”

“He’s intoxicated with drink,” Lydia said.

“But what does he do all day? I think we ought to find out.”

“Oh, Nev! He can be quite frightening—especially if you wake him when he’s asleep.”

“Well, he can’t run as fast as we can on his little spindly legs.”

They had reached the field again. The old chestnut was drinking from the trough. She put up her head suddenly and knocked Lydia’s bucket over so that the water ran into the hard-backed ground and disappeared at once.

“Oh, God!”

“You should have got her head out of the way first. We shall have to do this practically the whole afternoon and you’ll have to do an extra one.”

“I might not have to.”

“We’ll see,” Neville said in Ellen’s voice.

They had begun trailing back, easier with empty buckets, and they were free to notice other things; the old buddleia by the kitchen garden gate, for instance, that was swarming with butterflies; Flossy, asleep on a most unsuitably narrow piece of wall with her tail hanging down, “like the Speckled Band,” Neville said—he had become very keen on Sherlock Holmes. When, at last, they got back to the stable door with the hose that had been wired onto the tap beside it, they both simply went and sat on the mounting block for a rest.

“Well, this afternoon settles one thing. When I’m grown-up I shall be a freelance.”

“What’s that?”

“It means you don’t have to do anything you don’t like.”

“But what does it mean?”

He hadn’t the slightest idea, but he was damned if he would let her know that.

“There is a South American snake,” he began in his lecture voice, “extremely poisonous called a Fer de Lance. It comes from that. The snake only bites people if he feels like it, you see.”

She knew that he was extremely interested in snakes and read everything he could find about them, so she accepted this at once. “I expect in France a freelance would actually be fer de lance,” she said. “I shall ask Miss Milliment.”

“I shouldn’t, if I were you. Miss Milliment’s knowledge of reptiles has always struck me as rudimentary.” He was using another voice now—a master at his school, probably. She wanted to point out to him that to copy unknown people’s voices wasn’t very funny, but she wanted to keep on the right side of him because then he might waive her doing the extra bucket.

“What do you think of Mussolini?”

“I hardly ever think of him and, anyway, now he’s deposed he doesn’t count any more. Listen, I’ve got an idea.”

Her heart sank. She knew it would be to do with Mr. Wren. It was.

“I’m going to creep up the ladder into the hayloft, and if he’s asleep, I’m going to give him a little squirt from the hose and ask him why he isn’t carrying water to the horses. You can watch.”

“Supposing he isn’t asleep? He might …” She mouthed the rest of the sentence, “he might be listening to us.” She imagined him listening, smiling his grim, tight little smile and getting ready to pounce on Neville as he reached the top of the ladder … “He might topple you off,” she said.

“I’ll be careful. I’ll call out to him first. If he answers, I won’t go right up the ladder.”

“Let’s finish our job first.” Perhaps by then it would be tea-time, and Neville was always hungry so he wouldn’t miss that.

“You can go on, if you want to.” He got off the block and picked up the hose. The stable door was ajar. He pushed it open and disappeared into the gloom.

“Mr. Wren! I say, Mr. Wren!”

She heard him calling. There was a silence. She got off the block and followed him.

“Unwind the hose for me, I’m going up.”

She did as she was told, and then her fear prompted her to look in the loose-boxes in case Mr. Wren was hiding in one of them. But they were bare except for an old nest in one of the iron mangers bracketed to the wall. The walls were whitewashed and laced with ambitious cobwebs, as big as fishing nets at Hastings; they had not been repainted for a long time. She looked into all four boxes. Each had a small round window placed high in the wall—no good for a horse to look out—and most of the glass was cracked and dirty; a dusty twilight prevailed. She could hear that Neville had reached the top of the ladder: his footsteps were loud on the boards of the loft above.

“He’s not here,” he called. “He must be out. Take the hose, could you?”

Going back to the foot of the ladder, she noticed the tack room door. It was shut: he might easily be there. As he took the hose she pointed silently to the tack room and then moved towards the stable door so that she could escape if Mr. Wren suddenly pounced out at them. But he didn’t.

When Neville was down again, he regained the hose. “I bet that’s where he is all the time,” he said.

The latch on the door was stiff and creaked as he lifted it.

“Yes! He’s asleep, as usual.”

She joined him, staying in the doorway. The tack room had a brick floor. There was a small iron grate with a mantelpiece on which was propped a cracked mirror. The walls beside it had faded rosettes pinned to them that Louise would have won in her gymkhana days. The window had a piece of sacking nailed over it, but some of it had rotted so that it only made half of a curtain. The room had a different smell from the rest of the stables: damp leather and musty old clothes. Mr. Wren lay on a camp bed in the far corner. He was partly covered by a horse blanket, but his legs, covered in brown leather gaiters and dark toffee-coloured boots, stuck out.

“Mr. Wren!” Neville said in a teasing voice.

“Neville, don’t—” she began to say, but it was too late. He gave her one of his bland, gleaming looks that she knew meant total defiance, squeezed the trigger on the hose and played it lightly over the reclining figure. It did not move.

“He is fast asleep,” Neville said, but he let her take the hose from him.

But she had gone right up to the bed.

“He isn’t,” she said. “His eyes are wide open. Do you think he’s possibly—you know—dead?”

“Gosh! I don’t know. He doesn’t look pale enough. Feel him.”

“You do it.”

He leaned over and put his hand gingerly on the old man’s forehead. There were drops of water on it, but the skin felt cold. “I’d better try and feel his pulse,” he said, trying to sound calm, but his voice was shaking. He pulled the blanket back: Wren lay in his dirty striped collarless shirt, his braces hitched to his breeches; his right hand was clutching a yellowing piece of paper. When Neville picked up his wrist, the piece of paper slipped sideways and they saw it was an old photograph out of a newspaper of their grandfather on a horse whose bridle was held by a young man in a tweed cap. “Mr. William Cazalet on Ebony with his groom,” it said. His wrist, just bones with skin round them, was cold as well. When he let go, it dropped back onto the bed so quickly that it almost made him start. Tears rushed to his eyes.

“He must be dead,” he said.

“Oh, poor Mr. Wren! He must have died awfully suddenly if he didn’t even have time to shut his eyes.” Lydia was crying, which he was glad of because it stopped him.

“We must go and tell them,” he said.

“I think we ought to say a prayer for him first. I think the people who find people who are dead ought to do something like that.”

“Well, you can stay and pray if you like, I’m going to find Aunt Rach.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think I will,” she said hastily. “I’ll come with you and pray on the way.”

They found Aunt Rach and told her and she and Villy went to see him and then Dr. Carr came and then a black van from Hastings took Mr. Wren away, and during all this Neville and Lydia were told to keep out of the way, “have a nice game of tennis or squash or something.” This infuriated both of them. “When will they stop treating us as though we were children?” Lydia exclaimed in her most die-away grown-up’s voice.

“If it hadn’t been for us he might have stayed there for days and weeks and months. Even possibly years. Until he was just a skeleton in his clothes,” Neville said, and immediately wondered where the rest of him went.

“Actually, they would have found out because Edie takes him a plate of dinner with a lid on it every day. She would have noticed the plates piling up,” Lydia said. She was wondering what happened to the body part of people. But I shan’t ask Neville, she thought. She bet he wouldn’t know, and would simply make something horrible up. By mutual consent, they went through the green baize door to the kitchen, where they regaled the servants—a most satisfactory audience—with an extremely dramatic account of the affair.

“… and what we were both wondering,” Neville said when eventually they could think of nothing more to tell, “is how do you shut a dead person’s eyes?”

Mrs. Cripps said that she didn’t think that was a very nice question, but Lizzie, in her rather hoarse whisper, used when she (rarely) conversed in front of Mrs. Cripps, said that you put pennies on their eyelids.

A really useful thing to know, Lydia said, when they were washing their hands for supper, but Neville said not awfully, because they didn’t come across dead people very often.

“I’m thirteen,” he said, “nearly, and this is the first one I’ve ever met. And Clary hasn’t ever. She will be mad with jealousy.”

Lydia, who had been feeling it for some time, said that she was shocked by how heartless he was being about poor Mr. Wren.

“I’m not actually heartless, but I have to admit that I don’t feel very heartful about him. I’m sorry for him he’s dead, but I don’t feel sorry for me, that is.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Lydia said. “He did go about in a sort of silent bad temper most of the time. But Mummy says that he was awfully sad about the Brig having a car instead of horses to go about on. Especially when the Brig got too blind to go riding. I can see that those sort of things blighted his life.”

His funeral happened a week later, and the Brig and the Duchy and Rachel and Villy all went to it.

In September, it was time for Zoë to make the visit to her mother in the Isle of Wight again. She went every three months, stayed three or four days, or a week if she could bear it. In the spring and summer, she took Juliet, but as Juliet grew older, taking her became more of a problem. Her mother could not deal with a small active child for more than about half an hour, and Jules, at three, was far too young to be left to herself, so Zoë found it increasingly difficult to divide her time between them to the satisfaction of either.

This time, Ellen had agreed to look after her, and Villy was going to be there to keep an eye on things.

“I’ll only stay three days,” Zoë said.

The Duchy had once suggested that Zoë might like to have her mother stay at Home Place, but Zoë—appalled at the idea—had quickly said that her mother couldn’t travel so far alone, and that if she, Zoë, was going to fetch her, she might as well stay with her, and the Duchy, who understood perfectly that for some reason Zoë did not want her mother to come, and also knew that the older one got the less one wanted to move from familiar surroundings, had immediately desisted.

Now she had packed—winter nightdress because Cotter’s End, the cottage that she was going to owned by Mummy’s friend Mrs. Witting, was always cold, hot water bottle because the bed she slept in there seemed most of the year to be damp—she had never got over her first visit when steam had risen from it after she had put her bottle into it—a packet of ginger biscuits (meals were dainty in the extreme) and a mac in case any of the windy walks she went for when she felt the need to escape were wet. She had also a box of marshmallows for her mother whose favourite sweet they had always been. She took sewing and knitting and Anna Karenina, a novel that Rupert had introduced her to just before he had been called up and that she had, to her surprise, enjoyed very much. She always took some such book with her on these occasions to absorb her during the long evenings after her mother and Maud had gone to bed. She took a bottle of sherry for Maud, as every time she went a small sherry party was arranged so that she could be shown off to neighbours and friends. This occasion entailed a dress and a precious pair of stockings—she only had two unworn pairs left.

The case, when full, was horribly heavy and, with the war, there were hardly any porters, but Tonbridge carried it for her onto the train to London.

It was a relief to be on her way. Leaving Jules was always hard; when she had been smaller, Jules had hardly noticed, it was she who had suffered. Now, in fact all of this year, Jules minded if she even went to London for the day, although Ellen said that she settled down very quickly afterwards. And with Wills and Roly, she really wasn’t an only child. Although she will be my only child, I suppose, she thought. The prospect of being on her own for several uninterrupted hours on end, practically the only aspect of these journeys that she looked forward to, had begun: she could afford the luxury of thinking only of herself, in terms that various members of the Cazalet family would brand either selfish, or morbid, or both. What was to become of her? She was twenty-eight: she could not spend the rest of her life at Home Place, working as a part-time amateur nurse, looking after Jules, helping the Duchy, making and mending clothes, washing, ironing, looking after the invalids of the house—the Brig and Aunt Dolly—listening to interminable bulletins of news about the war on the wireless. The war, which everyone said was likely to be over in a year or two, would finish some time after the Second Front was launched, although nobody expected that to be before next spring; however, the end, which had once seemed unimaginable, was definitely in sight. What should she do then? Years of adapting herself to the continuous warm throb of family life that her in-laws seemed to find so natural and necessary, had sapped her initiative: the thought of going back to the house in Brook Green on her own with Jules seemed bleak. For she no longer expected that Rupert would come back, and in the train, she felt free to acknowledge this. At home, she was surrounded by people who, even if they secretly agreed with her, could not admit it; if by nothing else, they were all in thrall to Clary’s unwavering faith that he was alive. This could only stop with the end of the war, when he did not come back and even Clary would have to believe that he was dead. She had, of course, felt a wonderful relief when that Frenchman had brought the news of him, and the messages for her and Clary. She had wept with excitement and joy. But that was two years ago—two years without a sign that he was still alive. This summer the head of the French Resistance had been tortured to death by the Gestapo. It had been on the nine o’clock news; nobody had said a word, but the room became full of unnameable anxieties. She remembered wondering how long anyone would continue to hide him if being found out meant that they risked torture before death. Clary had not been present on this occasion.

Since then, she had tried, and usually succeeded, to put all thoughts of him out of her mind. She would never, never have admitted this to any of the family, as she knew they would either not believe her, or would think that she was unnaturally cold and selfish. Perhaps she was, she now thought. But the fact remained that she was in what seemed to her an interminable limbo: she was not a widow, nor what the family, satirizing the Brig, called a splendid little woman whose husband was a prisoner of war. She might be any of these, indeed, must by the nature of things be one of them, but what could she do or feel when she did not know which? So she had taken refuge in the present, the minutiae of daily wartime life that was full enough of mundane problems to occupy and fatigue her. Her escape had become reading novels—preferably long, old ones. There were a number of them to be found in the house, carelessly stuffed into shelves all over the place; they had never been arranged and nobody knew where any particular book might be, except the girls who had their own bookshelves in their room, so each novel she read was a discovery, sometimes deeply enjoyable, sometimes almost unreadably dull. As, to begin with, she had the simple idea that all these books, being classics, must therefore be good, she was confounded by the struggle she had to get through some of them. A conversation with Miss Milliment, however, altered this sweeping view: through her she discovered that the nineteenth century had its crop of pot boilers, books that Miss Milliment described as being like the curate’s egg (did she not know that saying? it meant good in parts), novels that had been admired for their sociological significance, as well as some masterpieces, “although, sometimes, masterpieces, as I’m sure you know, can also be boring.” After that, she would ask Miss Milliment about the books she found, before she embarked upon them. “One has also to remember,” she had remarked in her gentle, diffident voice, “that even very good writers will produce work of varying quality, so you may admire one novel very much and feel nothing for another.” She wondered whether, if there had not been a war, and if Rupert had not gone away, she would ever have found out that she enjoyed reading novels—probably not.

Archie had asked her to lunch with him on her way through London, but she had some shopping to do for her mother and it had been arranged that she should lunch with him on her homeward journey instead. It would be nice to have Archie to herself, she thought, and really exciting to lunch in a restaurant. She had packed her new green tweed skirt and the jumper she had made to match it for the occasion. She liked Archie, although she did not find him attractive—thank goodness, she thought now, because falling in love with one’s husband’s best friend would obviously be a very stupid thing to do and ever since the ghastly incident (it had shrunk, with time, to that) with Philip Sherlock, she had shied away from the very idea of flirting with anyone. No, Archie was almost family now; he knew all about everybody because they all confided in him: he alone knew that she thought Rupert was dead and did not make her feel either guilty or heartless about it.

In order to buy the particular bust bodices and camisoles that her mother wanted, she had to go either to Ponting’s in Kensington High Street, or to Gaylor and Pope in Marylebone. Her mother had said that if one shop did not have what she wanted, the other was almost certain to, presenting the alternative as though this would make the task easier. In fact, the shops were so far apart that without a car she would not have time to visit both: she chose Ponting’s because she could go all the way there on a number nine bus, a long ride that cost fourpence. She left her luggage at Charing Cross. Kensington Gardens looked far larger and more like a country park with all its iron railings gone. She remembered the boring walks that she had occasionally been taken on by a collection of people whose names she could hardly remember who looked after her when her mother was at work, and then wondered whether she would take Jules there—to sail a boat, perhaps, on the Round Pond, or to feed birds at the Serpentine. But I expect I’ll have to have a job of some kind, she thought. The parallel between her mother’s life and her own struck her now with a sudden force. There had been glancing blows before, but she had managed to ward them off: now her own life seemed horribly to imitate her mother’s in every respect. Her mother had been widowed in the last war. She, Zoë, had been the only child. When her mother had finally retired from the cosmetics firm for which she had worked for nearly twenty years, she had received three hundred pounds and a silver tray meant for the use of calling cards. She remembered her mother’s pathetic attempts at finding some male companionship (no doubt, with the hope of marriage), and her own stony sabotage of them. Ever since Zoë could remember, her mother had always, as she used to call it, “fussed” over her, making her clothes, brushing her hair a hundred times every night, teaching her to look after her appearance, sending her to schools that, looking back on it, she must have found it a struggle to afford, and then, when Zoë had married Rupert, selling the small mansion flat which had been their home and moving to an even smaller one. And she, who had grown up taking everything her mother gave her for granted, had also grown up as much in love with her own appearance as her mother could ever have been with it. Her mother had brought her up to feel that she was the important one, the beauty who would go far. At school, it had been much the same. The other girls had envied her her lovely clear skin, her shining hair that curled naturally, her long legs and her green eyes; they had envied her but she had also been adored—spoiled—given the best parts in the plays at the end of term, introduced to parents visiting the school; some besotted girls had even offered to do her maths homework. She must not bring Jules up like that, she thought. Jules must go to a school where she would learn things. Four years of living with the Cazalet family had taught her that they counted appearance as nothing at all; it was never referred to, and with the Duchy, at least, there was the inference that vanity about one’s looks or indeed anything else, was out of the question. She thought of Jules, who had the same thick, shining dark hair, the same creamy skin, the same slanting, moth-like eyebrows. Only her eyes were different as they were blue, like Rupert’s, like most of the Cazalets’. She had been, and was now, the prettiest baby Zoë had ever seen, but that made no difference in the family. Ellen called her a little madam when she had her tempers; she was treated exactly the same as Wills and Roly. “How would you like it if someone took your teddy and threw it out of the window?” she had heard Ellen saying one day. “You’d be cross, wouldn’t you, and it would make you cry. Well, you mustn’t do things to other people that you know you would not like them to do to you.” Nobody had ever said anything like that to her. If I hadn’t met Rupert and all his family, I might never have grown up at all, she thought. She felt so different from the spoiled, vain, shallow nineteen-year-old who had married Rupert. Now, in two years, she would be thirty, her youth would be gone and nobody would want to marry a middle-aged woman with a child—thirty had always seemed to her the beginning of middle age.

Ponting’s had the bust bodices, but not the camisoles. As this meant that there were a few clothes coupons left in her mother’s book, and remembering the dank chill of Cotter’s End, she bought her mother a pale pink woollen spencer instead. It was half past twelve—time to return to Charing Cross, find something to eat for lunch, collect her luggage and make for Waterloo to catch the train to Southampton.

She had lunch in Fuller’s in the Strand: two grey sausages encased in what felt like mackintosh, a scoop of a paler grey mashed potato and carrots. Her glass of water tasted strongly of chlorine. For pudding there was steamed treacle roll or jelly. She was not used to lunching alone in public, and wished she had brought her book. But this isn’t meant to be a treat, she thought. It is me doing the least I can do for Mummy. For now as on other occasions, the thought struck her that another kind of daughter would have left her in-laws’ house, and made a wartime home for her mother. Even the faintest idea of this made her shrink with horror. Her mother’s passive, humble attitude to life, and particularly to Zoë, irritated her beyond bearing. Her expectations, both drab and genteel, were confined to things being marginally better than she had thought that they would be: the milk turning out not to be off for her early morning tea would be a fair example, or the girl in the local hairdresser having enough solution to perm her hair. When Zoë brought Jules with her, her mother ceaselessly exclaimed at her prettiness—in front of her—and kept telling Zoë how much she should brush the child’s hair or put Vaseline on her eyelashes at night: “You want to grow into a pretty lady, don’t you, Juliet?” But even without Jules, the situation was irritating enough, as Mummy and her friend Maud had settled together by evolving a mutual admiration society, bickering gently as each disclaimed the qualities attributed to her by the other, and each appealing to Zoë to uphold their views. Exasperation was succeeded by guilt, and after twenty-four hours in Cotter’s End, Zoë always found herself counting the hours until her release.

So it was this time. After the train, and then the ferry and then the little local train, she was met by Maud in her Baby Austin.

“Just wait until I’m in, my dear. The passenger door only opens from the inside.

“Your mother is so excited about you coming that I made her take a little rest after tea. Yes, she’s as well as can be expected, but of course one never knows because, as you know, she never complains. Only last week, she slipped getting out of the bath and bruised herself black and blue, but I would never have known if I hadn’t found her hunting for the Pommade Divine.”

She pressed the starter, and the Baby Austin gave a startled lurch before the engine died.

“Oh dear! I left her in gear. Silly me. I expect you’re exhausted after your long journey. I won’t ask you for all your news, because I know Cicely will be dying to hear it. Here we go.”

By the end of the journey, a mere mile and a half, she had been given all the local news. Commander Lawrence had broken his arm, his right arm, which had made his bridge-playing very difficult; there had been a severe shortage of potatoes—the shop had been rationing them; Lady Harkness had been so rude to the vicar’s wife that the vicar had felt unable to call at the Hall although subscriptions towards repairing the church hall were desperately needed and Lady Harkness had always been a very good source; Prim, the tabby cat that they had thought was a male and had called Patrick, had suddenly had four kittens, “so now it’s Primrose, Prim for short,” she had explained. “She had them on Cicely’s bed which was a terrible shock for her, but, of course, she was wonderful about it. I think that that is all our news,” she finished. “You know that the Italians have surrendered, of course.”

Zoë had seen it on a placard at Waterloo.

They arrived, eventually, at Cotter’s End; the car was manoeuvred into the incredibly small lean-to built onto the end of the cottage that served as its garage, after Zoë had got out and her luggage had been wrested from the back.

Her mother came out of the sitting room to greet them. She was wearing her woollen dress of a dusty pink, with her graduated cultured pearls. She was carefully made-up, with blue eye shadow and mascara, bright lipstick and a peachy powder that came off on Zoë when she kissed her. It was like kissing a moth.

“How nice that you have got here,” she said wanly, so that Zoë felt like a drab surprise.

She was expected to want to take her things upstairs, to unpack and “wash” before joining them in the sitting room, so this she did. “You are in your usual room,” Maud called up the stairs—as though there was a choice. But with three bedrooms, there couldn’t be, Zoë thought, as she lifted the stiff latch of the door that always stuck the first time you tried to open it and was assailed by a blast of cold damp salty air. The window was wide open: when she went downstairs they would tell her that they had been airing the room, and each would think that the other had closed the window. She would not mention it. The room was small and narrow with just room for the bed, a chest of drawers and a chair. It had dark blue curtains which she now drew, after shutting the window, and a further curtain arranged across a corner of the room behind which clothes could be precariously hung. There was a large coloured print of When Did You Last See Your Father? on the wall over the bed, and the same small pottery jar of crumbling everlasting flowers on the chest of drawers. She went to the lavatory, hung up her clothes, and with presents in hand went down to join them.

They all had a glass of sherry in front of the very small unwilling fire and Zoë answered questions about the health of Juliet and the Cazalet family, and her mother told her about the cat having kittens on her bed. Eventually, Maud said she must just go and see to their dinner, and had a brief argument with Zoë’s mother about not needing any help. “You two enjoy each other’s company. I am perfectly happy in the kitchen.” She shut the door upon them and there was a silence while both thought furiously about how to break it.

“Maud is wonderful.” Her mother announced this before Zoë had thought of anything.

“She does seem kind.”

“She has always been kind. I don’t know what I should have done without her.” And then, as though she realized that this could be taken as some sort of reproof, she added: “Of course I would have managed.”

“I’m afraid it will be very quiet for you here,” she began again. “Commander Lawrence has broken his arm, so I’m afraid our bridge evening won’t be as lively as usual. He broke it trying to get into his loft.”

“You know, Mummy, I’m not very good at bridge.”

“But I thought with all that large family, you would have had a lot of practice by now.”

“They don’t play much.”

“Oh dear.” There was a pause: a piece of wood fell out of the fire basket and Zoë went to retrieve it.

“Zoë, dear, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but of course I’ve been very worried for you—”

“There is no news of Rupert,” she said quickly. “None at all.” Every time she came, her mother asked the same question, in exactly the same way, and it was one of the things that she could bear least. “I’d have told you if there was any news. I promised to ring you up if there ever was, don’t you remember?” In trying not to sound exasperated she sounded hysterical.

“Darling, don’t be angry. I didn’t meant to upset you. It’s only that—”

“I’m sorry, Mummy. I’d just rather not talk about it.”

“Of course. I quite understand.”

There was another silence, and then she said, “You remember Lady Harkness? She came once to sherry when you were here about a year ago, I think it was. A very tall woman with very good skin? Well—she has been rather outspoken with our vicar, I’m sorry to say; he hasn’t taken it quite the right way which has made things rather awkward. Socially, I mean.”

At this point, Maud put her weatherbeaten face round the door and said that supper was ready.

This took place in a tiny room next to the kitchen at a rocky little gate-legged table and consisted of rissoles about the size of a trussed mouse—one each—with mashed potato and chopped cabbage. While they ate, Maud described in detail how the rissoles were made, using a mere four ounces of sausagemeat, breadcrumbs and herbs, and her mother said how clever Maud was with the rations. This was followed by stewed plums arranged in little glass dishes; there was nowhere to put the stones. Zoë had brought her ration book with her, having consulted with Mrs. Cripps about the appropriate contribution for three days. She thought gratefully of the packet of ginger biscuits in her room. The dining room had no fire and its whitewashed walls were blistered with damp. After dinner, there was a faint squabble about the washing up, which resulted in all three of them crowding into the small dark kitchen, bumping into one another as each carried supper things out, and breakfast things in—Maud said she liked to have everything on the table for the morning as it was so much easier. By the time they got back to the sitting room, the fire had gone out. Bed began to be discussed—the question of who would or might have a bath: the hot water would only run to one and both of her hosts seemed anxious to accord this to Zoë. There was also the question of whether anyone wanted a hot drink and, of course, there were the hot water bottles to be filled. The kettle was so old and full of scale that it took an age to boil and was not large enough to fill more than one bottle at a time. All in all, the preparations for bed took up the rest of the evening and it was well after ten before Zoë was able to shut herself into her room. And this was only Wednesday, she thought; there is the whole of Thursday and Friday and half of Saturday, and she counted the hours involved as she chewed biscuits with her hot water bottle clasped to her stomach.

The visit, like all of them, was only different because she didn’t have Jules with her; it was easier, but considerably more dull. They went for what her mother described as little strolls; they had Commander Lawrence and his wife and Labrador to tea. The Labrador stood politely if spoken to and wagged his weighty tail so that rock cakes were knocked off occasional tables and swallowed instantly by him as though they had never been. The Commander said he was a naughty boy who was not usually like that, but that there was nothing like the loyalty you got from a dog. His arm was in a sling, which made him feel, he said, after he had thoroughly described to Zoë the circumstances of it breaking, like Nelson.

Her mother was pleased with the bust bodices, but doubtful about the spencer. “I should really need two of them,” she said, “to get the benefit. Otherwise, I might catch cold while it was being washed.”

The paid the usual visit to Miss Fenwick and her mother, who Maud repeatedly said was marvellous for her age. She was ninety-two. It took Miss Fenwick the best part of the morning to wash and dress her and cram her into an enormous armchair which she filled like a vast sandbag. She was practically bald and always wore a red hat with a diamante arrow stuck through one side of it. Below her ample jersey skirt her feet rested on a stool, encased in bedroom slippers, which were, as the family at home would say, the shape of old broad beans. Conversation with her was difficult, as she was stone deaf and did not remember who anyone was, although occasionally she would interrupt other people with a rather peevish enquiry about the next meal. “Mother does enjoy her food,” Miss Fenwick always said on those occasions.

Conversation, on this occasion, when it was not concentrated on the marvel of Mrs. Fenwick’s antiquity, was about what they most missed from peacetime, which mostly turned out to be food. Fresh cream, Maud declared, she did so love fresh cream cakes—not to mention strawberries and cream. Lemons, Zoë suggested, but nobody took much notice of her. Speaking of cream cakes, her mother said, she really missed a Fuller’s walnut cake, and Mother, Miss Fenwick informed them, really did miss her bananas.

Eventually, this visit came to an end because Miss Fenwick said that Mother didn’t like to be late with lunch. Goodness, Zoë thought, how awful it is to be old. I’d rather be dead than like Mrs. Fenwick, but she did not voice this view.

The sherry party was held, to which the Lawrences came, and the vicar, with his niece. Zoë’s bottle of sherry was opened, and Maud made little pieces of toast with chicken and ham paste on them. They went shopping with Zoë’s ration book and a tin of Spam was bought “as a standby” and Mrs. Cripps had also sanctioned the use of her cheese ration, and three ounces of cheese, Maud said, was a godsend and would make three meals if stretched. This occupied Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow I shall go home, she thought, and have the lunch with Archie on the way. She had said that she could not stay longer because of Juliet, who, they said, she must bring next time. The last evening, tiny pieces of cod in a sauce made with Carnation milk and mashed swede, they kept saying how sad it was that she had to go; Maud, in particular, kept saying how much her mother loved her visits, although Zoë could see no sign of it as they seemed to have nothing to say to one another. “I’ll leave you two together while I just pop into the village for some bread,” Maud said, after the early breakfast.

“She is so thoughtful,” her mother said as they both heard the front door shut. Maud’s kindness had become a kind of conversational walking frame.

“Is there anything you want me to do for you in London, Mummy?” she said desperately.

“Oh, I don’t think so, dear. Unless you were to get me another spencer. Oh—and I did forget before, but I should be very grateful for another hairnet. For night, you know. Lady Jayne is the make I prefer. I’m sure Ponting’s or Gaylor and Pope would have one. But only if you are going that way. I know how busy you are.”

“Well, I shan’t be able to do that this time, but next time I go to London, I’ll remember. I could post them to you.”

“But you’ll be back soon, won’t you?”

“Well … probably not until after Christmas. I do have my job at the nursing home, you see.”

“Well, dear, do look after your hands. Nursing is not good for hands. And you used to have such pretty ones. Still have,” she added hurriedly.

“You are quite happy here, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes. Quite happy. Maud is kindness itself, as you know. And, of course, I contribute to the housekeeping. I don’t want to be a burden.”

“Money is all right, isn’t it, Mummy?” She knew that Rupert had arranged for the proceeds of the London flat to be safely invested, although that could not bring in much, but her mother also had her widow’s pension.

But her mother, who considered money to be a vulgar subject, said hurriedly, “There is nothing to worry about. We lead a quiet life and manage very well. But that reminds me, I must pay you for the underclothes.”

“Don’t. They are a present.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She was fumbling in her worn leather bag for her purse.

“Please don’t, Mummy, really.”

“I would much rather pay you. Can you remember how much it was?”

This unrewarding argument and fuss about the whole thing, Zoë thought as she became more and more helplessly irritated—her mother wanted to know exactly what the things had cost, and she couldn’t remember, and then her mother didn’t believe her when she made it up, and then she only had a five pound note—persisted until Maud’s return. Maud had change: her mother said that perhaps the bust bodices had a price ticket still on them if someone would just pop up to her room and look, and Maud, who knew where things were, offered to do this. By now her mother had become stubborn and Zoë felt sulky. The bust bodices turned out to be eight and sixpence each, so then her mother wanted a pencil and paper so that she could do the sum—“I’ve never been good at figures”—and then there was the question of the spencer. “That is twenty-five and six and?”

“Thirty shillings,” Zoë said.

“So that will be—” She wrote and her lips moved as she counted and Zoë noticed the little lines of lipstick that ran upwards into her top lip, while Maud said in an operatic aside that they really ought to be off.

“Two pounds fifteen and sixpence! Maud! Can you manage the change for that?”

“Mummy, I’ll have to go. I really mustn’t miss the ferry.”

“I’ll give it to her at the station, Cicely.”

“But I’m coming with you. I’ll just change my shoes.”

“We’ve got to go,” Zoë cried. “There isn’t time to change your shoes.”

So in the end she stayed behind, and Zoë kissed the resigned powdery face.

“I shall have, as they say at the cinema, to step on it,” Maud remarked, as she manoeuvred the Austin out of the shed. “Perhaps you had better take the money out of my purse. Cicely will never forgive me if I don’t give it to you.”

“I didn’t want it, you know.”

“I don’t suppose you did, my dear. But we mustn’t upset her—her heart’s a bit dicky, you know.”

“Why didn’t she tell us earlier that she wanted to come?”

“I think it was just a sudden notion she had. She always hates it when you go, you know. She’ll be all right after I get back. We’ll have a nice cup of Horlick’s for a treat, and play Pegotty, and go over all the events of your visit, and then I’ll make her have a little rest—the last few days have been quite exciting for her. She’s so proud of you, you know.”

In the train, practically empty, and the ferry, which was only half full, these words came back to her, replayed themselves over and over in her mind. She had thought that a weight would be lifted once she had got into the train with the visit behind her, but the pall of boredom and irritation was quenched now only by guilt, as she thought of all the ways in which she might have given her mother more pleasure, been kinder, nicer, more patient. Why was it that, in spite of all these years during which she felt that she had grown from being a spoiled and selfish girl into a thoroughly grown-up wife and mother and responsible member of a large family, she had only to be with her mother for a few minutes to revert to her earlier, disagreeable self? It was her behaviour, after all, that made her mother so timid and conciliatory, made her, in fact, everything that she, Zoë, found most exasperating. Waiting in her empty carriage for the train to start for London she suddenly thought, Supposing Jules when she is grownup feels like that about me? The idea brought tears to her eyes. She opened Anna Karenina, but she had reached the scene where Anna sees her son after he has stolen a peach and decides to take him away with her to Moscow. But she knew that Anna was not going to be allowed to have Vronsky and her son, and the mere thought of such a choice filled her eyes again and one splashed onto her book. She searched for and found a handkerchief in her bag. The train began to move, and as it did so, the carriage door was wrenched open and an army officer got in. He seated himself diagonally opposite to her having put one small, very smart bag with his cap on the rack. Now she wouldn’t even be able to finish her cry in peace, she thought. A second later, he had taken out a packet of cigarettes and was offering one to her.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Do you mind if I do?”

She shook her head. “Not at all.”

“You sound as though you have a cold coming,” he said with a kind of sympathetic familiarity that confounded her. But he was American, she knew that—not only from his voice but from his uniform which was a much prettier, palish green, version of English khaki.

“I haven’t. I just read a rather sad bit in my book, that’s all.” This excuse, which she had thought would sound lofty, sounded nothing of the kind when she said it.

“Is that so?”

“Not really.”

“Perhaps you read a bit that reminded you of something in your own life and that’s what did it.”

She looked up from her handkerchief to find him regarding her. He had very dark, almost black eyes. He lit his cigarette with a large, rather battered metal lighter. Then he said: “Do you see yourself as a Russian heroine? As Anna?”

“How did you know—”

“I’m so well educated, I can read upside down.”

She was not sure whether he was laughing at her, and said quickly, “Have you read it?”

“A long time ago. When I was at college. I remember enough to warn you that Anna comes to a sad end.”

“I know that. I’ve read it before.”

“Is that so? What is it like to read a novel when you know what is going to happen?”

“Once you know the story, you can notice other things.”

A short silence. Then he said, “My name’s Jack, Jack Greenfeldt. I was wondering whether you would have lunch with me when we get to London?”

“I’m afraid I’m already lunching with someone.”

“Your husband?”

“Oh, no. A friend.” She looked at her wedding ring. He asks a lot of questions, she thought, but that was probably because he was American—she had never met one before. If he does, I can.

“Are you married?”

“I have been … I’m divorced. How many children do you have?”

“How do you know I have any?”

“Well, if you’ll pardon me, I can see that you are over eighteen and you’re not wearing uniform: the chances are that you have children. Of course, you might also be some very senior or rare kind of civil servant as you call them here, but somehow you don’t look the type to me.”

“I have one child; a daughter.”

“Show me a picture of her.”

It seemed odd to her that he wanted to see a picture of the child of a total stranger, but why not? She took the leather folder out of her bag that contained her two favourite pictures: Juliet standing on the mounting block in the courtyard wearing one of the Duchy’s garden hats (she adored hats) and Juliet sitting in the long grass beside the tennis court in her best white muslin summer frock. In the first picture she was laughing, in the second she looked very serious.

He looked at them intently for quite a long time. Then, shutting the folder and handing it back, he said; “She’s very like you. I appreciate you showing me. Where is she?”

“In the country.”

“So you don’t live in London?” His disappointment was transparent. It made her feel kindly and old.

“No. Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“I don’t think I’m in a position to mind. What do you want to know?”

“Well, is it because you are American that you ask so many questions of a total stranger?”

He thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. I’ve always been inquisitive—more curious, about people, anyway. As you can see, I have the kind of nose that fits very easily into other people’s business.” This made her glance at his face. He smiled: his teeth looked very white against his sallow complexion. “I was hoping that you’d ask something more personal,” he said.

There was a nervous silence. Once, she would have thought that he was flirting with her, and she would have known exactly what to do, or not do, could have chosen the next move. Now she felt utterly unsure—she had no idea what game it was, she had only the uneasy feeling that he knew more than she about whatever it might be.

“It is very difficult to be happy in a war.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I sense that you are guilty about not being happy. Why on earth should you be? With people being killed all the time, slaughtered, murdered and sometimes tortured first, and then families being broken up, everybody without their partner, shortages of everything that makes life easier, a monotonous routine and a general absence of anything resembling a good time, why should you—or anyone else in this island—be happy? You may endure—the British seem to me to have gotten very good at that—but why should you enjoy it? I know the stiff upper lip is deeply embedded in the British creed, but you try and smile with one!”

He was generalizing; she felt safer.

“We’ve trained our lips,” she said. “We’re used to it now.”

“I’ve found that it is very dangerous to get used to things.”

“Anything?”

“Yes—anything. You cease to notice whatever it is, and, worse, you get the illusion that you’ve arrived somewhere.”

“I don’t feel that at all,” she said, discovering this.

“Don’t you?”

“Well, I suppose it depends what you mean by not noticing things or getting used to them—”

“Nothing about your life depends upon what I mean,” he said, but it was not a harsh interruption.

“I think one can get used to some things and still notice it,” she said. She was thinking of Rupert.

“That would make it a very serious thing.”

“Yes. It would. It does.” She was immediately afraid that he would ask her what would—would press her past that involuntary confidence—but he didn’t. He got up and moved to sit in the seat immediately opposite her.

“I still don’t know your name.”

She told him.

“Zoë Cazalet. Would you have dinner with me tonight? I can see you’re about to turn me down. Don’t. This is a very serious invitation.”

Reasons why she shouldn’t do this crowded in. What should she tell the family? “I am having dinner with an American I met on the train”? Where should she stay in London, since she would be unlikely to get a train late enough afterwards? Where could she go between lunch and dinner? Why on earth was she even considering it?

“I’ve nothing to wear,” she said.