24

We had arranged to meet Rad and Mr Radley at their usual hotel in Arras. It looked on to the Grande Place, which on the night we arrived was the site of a travelling funfair. Half a dozen dodgem cars parked in a minute arena beneath a row of flashing lights, paint-peeled stalls selling doughnuts and frites cooked in the same fat, and a rifle range offering a selection of grubby cuddly toys as its star prizes were the foremost of its attractions.

‘Oh hell,’ said Lexi, as disco music began to thump from a set of speakers covered with a tarpaulin. ‘We’ll get no sleep tonight.’

I had been looking forward to seeing Rad for the entire holiday, an anticipated pleasure which had to be kept to myself. Although Frances was about as candid as a person could be, and kept me minutely informed of the progress of her infatuations, I had always guarded my secret closely. In spite of her assumption that Rad must be universally admired, she would, I was sure, view my rather more concentrated interest in him as intolerably presumptuous.

From my point of view there was an added poignancy to this meeting: it would be the last time I would see Rad before he went off to university. He would be gone for ten weeks at a time, returning only for vacations or the odd weekend, and in the meantime there would be girls there, girls who had Done It no doubt, and who would be living in the same hall, on the same landing, and dropping in for coffee at any hour of the day or night to discuss Nietzsche. Envisioning this always made me feel slightly giddy and breathless, but I comforted myself with the thought that he would not be there for ever, and that whatever these imagined rivals might enjoy by way of beauty or intelligence, they would not have my patience. It was just a matter of waiting for him to recognise me, and when he did I would be ready and it would all have been worthwhile.

The object of this meticulously planned passivity was sitting at the bar reading an Ordnance Survey map of the Somme when we walked in. He slid off his barstool as soon as he saw us and came to help with our cases. He kissed Lexi and Frances and then sort of twitched in my direction but obviously thought the better of it and just gave me a nod and a smile. Perhaps it was just as well – last time we had had skin to skin contact he had left a scorch mark on my forehead.

‘Where’s your dad?’ said Lexi, looking round.

‘Just getting changed. He tipped a whole plate of oeufs à la neige into his lap at supper.’ He dragged more stools up to the bar.

‘How’s it been?’ asked Lexi sympathetically. ‘I bet you’ve been bearing up marvellously.’

‘We haven’t had any catastrophes,’ Rad said, ‘but he’s been driving me nuts. I’m definitely inter-railing next year. I know he’s a creature of habit, but I swear he’s getting worse with age – he always wants to go to the same places. I tried to tell him that we were hardly any distance from Agincourt, and that the field of Waterloo was only about an hour’s drive, but he flatly refused to go. So we’ve done the same old tour as every other year: Ypres, Beaumont Hamel, Delville Wood, Thiepval.’ He tapped the map in front of him. ‘He must have memorised every name on the Menin Gate by now. The only place we’ve missed out is Vimy Ridge.’

‘Poor Rad,’ said Lexi soothingly.

‘But he’s so obsessive,’ Rad went on. He had one hand in his hair as if driven to tear clumps of it out. ‘There’s this chip van in the square at Cambrai that we always stop at on the way down. I don’t know why; they’re not particularly good chips. But we got held up and when we arrived lunch was over and it was all shut up. And Dad threw the most unbelievable tantrum. I thought he was going to burst into tears and stamp his foot.’

‘At least you could drive this time, Rad,’ said Frances. ‘That must have made it easier.’

‘We shared the driving,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t insist on doing it all. I didn’t want to emasculate him.’

Mr Radley appeared in the doorway of the bar still doing up his shirt. ‘Ah, bonjour,’ he cried, bearing down on us with arms flung out, cuffs flapping.

‘Oh God, that’s another thing,’ Rad whispered to me and Frances as Lexi advanced to meet her husband and kisses were exchanged. ‘He always wants to send me into bars and cafés ahead of him so he can come in a few minutes later and do all this “bonjour, bonjour” stuff and slap me on the back. I used to find it funny when I was about twelve, but it’s just bloody embarrassing now.’

‘Hello girls,’ said Mr Radley. ‘You look brown, Frances, and Blush you look, er, pink.’

‘Rad says you’ve had a successful trip,’ Lexi lied smoothly.

‘Well, we’ve had one or two hitches. That damned chip van in Cambrai. And we haven’t managed to get to Vimy yet – I thought we’d go tomorrow …’

When, some time later, Lexi announced she was ready for bed, Mr Radley slapped two sets of keys on the bar. ‘Rad and I have been sharing, but I booked two rooms for tonight, so what do we want to do? Boys in one, girls in the other? Or are you in with me tonight, Lex?’

‘Well, that depends on whether Abigail minds sleeping in the same room as Rad.’

‘Oh, she won’t mind,’ said Mr Radley with great confidence. The two of them often discussed me, affectionately, as if I wasn’t there.

‘You can’t just assume that,’ said Lexi. ‘Some girls might find it very intimidating.’

‘I wouldn’t call Rad intimidating – look at him,’ said Mr Radley. Rad was almost asleep at the bar, his head resting on his folded arms.

‘Who says I’m not intimidating?’ Rad protested sleepily, without looking up.

‘I didn’t mean Rad,’ said Lexi. ‘I meant that some girls of Abigail’s age might be uncomfortable at the thought of sharing with a boy.’

‘Well, why don’t you ask her?’ said Frances, a trifle impatiently.

Mr Radley turned to me. ‘Well, Blush?’

‘Who me?’ I said. ‘I’d sort of forgotten I was here.’ And they all laughed at that, even Rad, who had sat up. I was in a predicament now. To agree too hastily would be like a slight to Lexi’s sensitivity on my behalf. ‘I don’t really mind,’ I said. Mr Radley picked up one set of keys and slid the other across the table towards me.

‘I notice no one’s asked if I mind,’ Rad called after his parents’ departing backs.

‘He’s done nothing but moan all week,’ said Mr Radley to Lexi loudly on their way out. ‘I don’t think I’ll invite him next year.’

I didn’t sleep well. To avoid undressing in front of Rad I had stayed behind in the bar alone for a few minutes on the pretext of writing a postcard home – a transparently trumped up excuse: we would be back within thirty-six hours. By the time I went up the other two were both apparently asleep; a tuft of hair on the pillow was all that was visible of Rad above the sheet. Frances, in the double bed, had managed to work herself across the diagonal, and gentle kicks from me failed to stir her, so I had to be content with curling up in the small triangle of unoccupied mattress. It was a hot night and the windows were closed against the pounding music from the square. Throwing off the covers I lay perspiring into the pillow. Frances, still unrousable, had not shifted over – she had, if anything, edged closer to me. I could feel the heat coming off her body against my back. At half-past one, when the noise from the funfair finally stopped, I slipped out of bed to open the window, setting floorboards, loose as piano keys, creaking and banging under my feet.

‘Who’s that?’ whispered a voice from the corner bed.

‘Abigail. I’m just letting some air in.’ There was the crack of fused paintwork separating as the window shuddered open, and warm soupy air, faintly redolent of chip fat and cigarette smoke, wafted through the shutters.

‘I can’t seem to sleep,’ said Rad.

‘Neither can I.’

‘It was that racket out there. And the heat.’

‘This should be better.’ I fanned the window back and forth a few times to cool my face before getting back into bed. ‘We should be able to sleep now,’ I said, but the thought of us both lying in the dark, awake, listening to each other’s breathing, proved too great a distraction and I remained tired but sleepless until the early hours.

‘I don’t know what it is with you young girls nowadays,’ said Mr Radley as we took our places at the breakfast table the following morning. ‘Is the intention to look as ugly as possible? Or is the dowdiness of your clothes meant to be a foil to your beauty?’

Frances and I were at that time disciples of a fashion whose watchword was Sloppy. She was wearing a black T-shirt several sizes too big over a not very clean jersey skirt which reached to her ankles and bagged around the seat and knees when she sat down. I had on a long, shapeless denim tunic, faded almost white by repeated washing, and a green T-shirt which I had attempted to dye black but which had come out the colour of seaweed, and blotchy. Flat shoes and a slouching gait were the necessary accompaniment.

‘It doesn’t occur to you that you’re not the sort of person they’re hoping to attract?’ suggested Lexi.

‘They look all right to me,’ said Rad.

‘Perhaps we’ve just got more important things to worry about than our appearance,’ said Frances indignantly.

‘Such as?’ said Mr Radley.

Furrows of concentration appeared on Frances’ brow as she delved in vain for an answer.

‘I don’t know,’ sighed Mr Radley. ‘It seems such a waste somehow. It won’t be long before you’re hideous old hags of forty and it won’t matter a damn what you wear.’

‘Thank you,’ said Lexi.

Mr Radley drew me aside after breakfast as I waited on the landing for Frances to retrieve her camera from the bedroom. There was a flake of croissant on his chin which I longed to brush away, and a further flurry of crumbs down the front of his shirt. He was the messiest eater I had ever seen: the fallout from a single piece of baguette could reach all four corners of the table.

‘I suppose you girls have spent all your money on knickknacks, eh?’ he said.

I shook my head – apart from my Dutch language Louvre catalogue I had only bought a T-shirt with the word NICE stamped ambiguously across the chest. (It was destined to have only one outing, when it would be deemed cheap and nasty by mother and thereafter consigned to a bottom drawer.) Lexi had refused any contributions towards food and petrol, so my sheaf of notes was still largely intact.

‘Oh, well, in that case you couldn’t lend me a hundred francs, could you? Yes? Oh, that’s splendid. I’ve run out and it’s not worth cashing another cheque for one day. Actually, better make it two hundred.’

As promised we spent the morning at Vimy Ridge. We had decided to squeeze into one car. Lexi, Frances and I were in the back; Rad was driving. Every few miles Mr Radley would point out another cemetery at the roadside – rows and rows of identical gravestones like so many white teeth rising from the turf.

‘Just look, Blush,’ Mr Radley said, turning round the better to catch my expression. ‘Thousands of them, just names on stones. And yet every one was once a living, breathing human being – probably just like Rad here – and most of them volunteers, fresh out of school with everything still to come, the brightest and best of their generation.’ As the only newcomer to the experience I was singled out to be the recipient of Mr Radley’s wisdom and opinions. My ignorance of even the baldest facts about the First World War appalled him. I could just about summon up the dates; Archduke Ferdinand, Haig, Sir John French, Kaiser Wilhelm were just names from the void. They could have been racehorses.

‘You don’t know when the Battle of the Somme was? Dear God in heaven, what do they teach you at that school? I suppose, living with Frances, I ought to be used to ignorance on that level but, honestly, I expected better of you, Abigail.’ I was used to being hectored in this vein by Mr Radley. Anyone who hadn’t managed to acquire precisely the same body of knowledge as himself was an object of pity and derision: to know any less was evidence of imbecility; to know more was pointless, sterile, academic.

‘If they’ve never been taught it, how can they know it?’ said Lexi reasonably.

‘I know, I know, it’s their education. If that’s not too strong a word for it. Have you read Goodbye to All That? No, of course you haven’t. It’s a great book. I reread it every year. I’ll lend you my copy.’

I apologised for my stupidity and said I would certainly read Goodbye to All That. ‘But I won’t borrow it. I’ll buy my own copy. If I’m going to take the trouble to read a book, I like to be able to keep it.’ I could well imagine what sort of condition Mr Radley’s copy would be in. Only that morning at breakfast he had picked Lexi’s new hardback biography of Jackie Onassis out of her bag, and finding several of the back pages still uncut had seized his buttery knife and tried to hack them apart.

‘You don’t want to take too much notice of Dad’s version of the war,’ said Rad, glancing at me in the driver’s mirror. ‘He likes to romanticise. He thinks everyone who died at the Front was a poet.’

‘It was a romantic war. It was about innocence and sacrifice – concepts which I wouldn’t expect your heartless generation to understand. Can you imagine any eighteen-year-olds today rushing off to enlist?’

‘Well, that’s an advance, surely?’ said Rad.

‘Look, there’s Vimy,’ said Mr Radley, glad to duck out of an argument in which he was in danger of being worsted. In the distance in a chiselled-out clearing on the wooded ridge stood a monument like a great white tuning fork against the sky.

The sun was just emerging from behind the only cloud in the sky as Rad pulled into the car-park. Behind barbed-wire fencing I could see shallow snaking trenches, eroded now and smothered in closely cropped grass. Slender fir trees striped the sky. Entrée interdite: munitions non éclatées, read the signs.

‘They’re still finding unexploded shells even now,’ said Mr Radley. ‘It happens all over here – every year you hear that some poor kid has wandered into the woods and got himself blown up.’ He appointed himself my personal tour guide and led me down into the Canadian trenches, preserved with concrete sandbags and duckboards, and made me stand at one of the machine-gun turrets and peer through the hole in the rusty metal at the giant craters which divided us from the German front line not forty yards away.

‘Why did they make the trenches zigzag like this?’ I asked.

‘To stop the Germans firing along the length of the trench if it was captured. Of course it also made carrying stretchers rather difficult.’

It didn’t seem possible that we were standing on the site of such carnage. The sun was warm; a gentle breeze was stirring the leaves; the trenches, clean and dry and empty, looked almost cosy; a golden cloud of midges shimmered above our heads; two young boys were rolling down the steep sides of the largest crater shrieking with laughter.

‘There can hardly be anyone left alive who remembers all this,’ said Mr Radley, pressing himself against the side of the trench to avoid being stampeded by giggling, panting children. ‘And when my generation is dead there won’t be anyone left who cares.’

‘There’ll be me,’ said Rad, who had caught us up. ‘I care. I’m just not morbidly sentimental like you.’ By now I was thoroughly used to the adversarial style with which Mr Radley was often addressed by his wife and children and it no longer took me by surprise. I wouldn’t be trying it out at home, though.

Frances and Lexi had walked ahead towards the memorial. Frances was cooing and clicking her fingers at a group of skinny sheep which were cropping the hummocks of grass on the ridge. One stopped chewing for a moment and fixed us with a blank stare as we approached.

‘Ah, sheep!’ cried Mr Radley warmly. ‘Symbol of innocence.’

‘And stupidity,’ said Rad.

The wind was stronger on the ridge, snapping at the French and Canadian flags which stood at the approach to the monument, and whipping my hair into my watering eyes.

‘You can see why this was such an important strategic gain,’ said Mr Radley, gesturing with his arm. Below and beyond us the plain stretched away, strings of tiny houses dwarfed by volcanic-looking slag heaps. Plumes of white smoke rose from chimney stacks thin as pencils.

‘Did any of our family fight in the war?’ asked Frances, who had been inspecting the carved names of the dead around the base of the monument.

‘No, my dear, you come from a long line of cowards,’ said Mr Radley, patting her on the shoulder.

‘I can’t believe so many people died,’ I said, indicating the lists of names that Frances was scrutinising for fallen Radleys.

‘That’s nothing,’ said Rad. ‘You should see the Menin Gate. Vimy doesn’t really give you any idea of what it would have been like – it’s all been smartened up. It looks more like a crazy-golf course than a battlefield. If you want to see some real trenches you should go to Hill 62. There’s a fantastic old museum there too.’

‘Is it near?’ I asked.

‘It’s in Belgium. Ypres. Do you want to see it? We could get there and back in an afternoon on the motorway.’ He seemed suddenly excited at the prospect.

‘Well, I don’t want to sit in the car for hours just to see another lot of graves and stuff,’ said Frances.

‘I bet Abigail has had to fit in with what you want to do all holiday,’ said Rad. Before I could protest that I wasn’t bothered one way or another, Rad was herding everyone back to the car-park, issuing orders. It was all arranged: Frances and Lexi would be dropped back in Arras and the two men and I would drive to Ypres. The fact that they had already visited the place once this week was no deterrent, apparently. Afterwards I would remember this incident as being the first time Rad had ever shown me special consideration that went beyond mere politeness.

Some ten miles the wrong side of Ypres, Mr Radley, who was driving, suddenly leaned across Rad and started rummaging in the glove compartment, sending an avalanche of sweet wrappers on to the floor. ‘God, don’t you girls ever throw anything in the bin?’ he demanded, as the car swerved towards the central reservation. Rad grabbed the wheel. ‘That’s right – you steer for a minute.’ At last he found what he was looking for – a cassette, which he flipped out of its box with one hand while retaking the wheel with the other. ‘I thought we’d have some appropriate music – I got Bill to tape this on his fancy machine. Do you know Britten’s War Requiem? No, of course you don’t.’ He snapped it into the tape machine and turned the volume up high. After a few minutes of punishing noise, Rad ventured to turn the sound down a fraction.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Mr Radley. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘No,’ said Rad.

‘It sounds a bit slow and dirge-like,’ I said.

‘Well of course it is, it’s a bloody requiem. You don’t expect the dance of the sugar-plum fairy. You are a pair of philistines, really. I admit Britten’s an acquired taste,’ he went on. ‘Takes a lot of listening to.’

We endured the booming without further comment until the entrance of the tenor singing ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ made it apparent even to Mr Radley that Bill’s fancy machine had been taping at half speed. He jabbed the eject button smartly. ‘Hmm, seems to be something wrong with the tape,’ he muttered, pocketing it. ‘I thought it sounded funny.’

We stopped briefly to have a look at Ypres itself. In the cathedral a couple of elderly nuns were having trouble rigging up a new public address system. A length of electric flex was caught on the ledge at the top of a pillar and no amount of twitching would free it. I could see them eyeing their ladder with misgivings. It was propped unsteadily against the pillar, and wobbled when given an experimental push. I suddenly had an image of one of the nuns on top of the ladder like a pirate in a crow’s nest, and gave Rad a nudge to share the joke. ‘Look,’ I said, pointing in their direction. He must have mistaken my motive because he said ‘Oh,’ and immediately hurried over to help. A moment later he was scrambling up the ladder while the two nuns stood holding the base and looking up fearfully. I felt slightly humbled by this incident, though I wasn’t quite sure why.

On the way out I stopped beneath the marble-white figure of Christ with his golden halo of thorns and lit a candle.

‘I didn’t know you were religious,’ said Rad, as I impaled the candle on one of the few unoccupied spikes on the rack which was spattered with molten wax like bird droppings.

‘Well, I believe in the crucifixion,’ I said.

Rad looked thoughtful. ‘Yes, it’s just what would happen.’

‘You’re an atheist, aren’t you?’ I said – a daring word to utter given the surroundings.

‘No, I wouldn’t say that,’ he replied, holding the door open for me. ‘I’m just a Nice Person. Non-practising.’

As we drove through the Menin Gate Mr Radley slowed down to point out the names carved over every surface. ‘See all those, Blush. Those are just the ones they couldn’t find to bury.’

‘Why couldn’t they find them? How could so many people go missing?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘Well, for instance, if you were hit by a shell the … er … pieces might not be all that large,’ he said.

The museum at Hill 62 turned out to be a couple of damp and draughty rooms at the back of a bar. Glass cabinets containing German helmets, guns, swords, badges, and pocket watches, none of them labelled, ran along one wall. On the floor beneath were heaped rusty shell cases, field glasses, fragments of barbed wire, bottles and a collection of single boots, crushed, rotten and still caked in dried mud. A dressmaker’s dummy with a mannequin’s head on top stood in the middle of the room dressed in a green overcoat and gas mask and chipped helmet. On a trestle table was arranged a collection of wooden contraptions containing sepia transparencies. Rad immediately sat down at one of the boxes and started to crank the handle round. He beckoned me over and I took his place, peering through the lens and watching the pictures rise into focus and then into 3D. There was a group of soldiers leaning against the side of a trench, holding tin mugs and staring out at me with unsmiling faces and glazed, bulbous eyes; a partly decomposed corpse sitting propped in a dugout as if having a rest. The next picture was of a dead horse in a tree.

Rad had wandered into the back room which contained still more unclassified militaria: guns, shell casings and more single boots. In the passage connecting the two rooms was, of all things, a plastic bubble-gum machine. Mr Radley appeared at my elbow, waiting until Rad was out of earshot before saying, ‘I might as well wait for you in the bar. No hurry – take your time.’

In the woods just outside was an area of preserved trenches. These looked altogether less cosy than the grass and concrete recreations at Vimy. The soil was clay here, and was sticky and wet, even on a warm summer’s day. Sheets of rusty corrugated iron were propped against the walls, and there was a smell of damp earth and rotting vegetation in the air. Rad was walking along the trench, biting his nails with an air of concentration. He and Frances were inveterate nail-biters; Frances sometimes bit hers so severely that they bled and then she would appear at school with plasters on each stump like a victim of frostbite.

At my feet was a perfect circle of large coffee-coloured mushrooms with skin like suede. I knelt down to feel one, and as I stroked the surface a tiny puff of spores exploded from the gills.

‘Abigail,’ said an urgent voice and as I looked up sharply there was a click and Rad lowered his camera, smiling. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘I had my mouth open,’ I protested, flattered and pleased even so.

‘Ah, but you looked so natural. And the light was falling really nicely on those toadstools.’

‘Oh, well, I’m glad the fungus was showing its best side,’ I said, standing up and brushing mud from the hem of my dress.

Rad wound the film back and flipped the roll out of the back of the camera. ‘It was the last shot anyway,’ he said. ‘It probably won’t come out.’

So he had just taken it to use up the last exposure; not as a memento to take up to Durham and pine over: well, that would teach me to be vain. ‘Are you looking forward to university?’ I said, idly decapitating one of the mushrooms with the toe of one shoe.

‘Yes and no. The course looks good, and the hall of residence is a sort of castle, but it’s the thought of Fresher’s Week and having to be sociable that’s a bit intimidating.’ He paused. ‘And there’s things about home I’ll miss. I mean people, not things. In a way I wish I’d chosen London, like Nicky. But I suppose it will be good to get away from Mum and Dad. Dad especially.’ He looked around in some alarm. ‘That’s a point – where is Dad?’ I pointed towards the bar and was surprised to see his face fall. ‘Oh God. How long has he been in there?’ he asked.

‘Since we arrived,’ I said. Through the doorway I could see Mr Radley sitting at one of the furthermost tables, three empty beer bottles in front of him, in an attitude of deep contentment. He caught my eye and beckoned us over.

‘Oh shit,’ I heard Rad say under his breath. He looked furious.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, but he just shook his head.

‘Hello, all finished in there? Have a drink – I’m paying,’ said Mr Radley waving my two-hundred franc note.

‘I’ll just have a coffee as I’ll be driving back,’ said Rad venomously.

‘Oh, yes, good idea. That means I can have another beer. This Belgian stuff’s marvellous,’ his father said, summoning the waiter.

When the bill arrived and Mr Radley settled up there was only a couple of francs change which he left on the table. ‘Terrible exchange rate,’ he said, catching Rad’s expression. ‘They’ve got you over a barrel.’

‘Inside a barrel in your case,’ said Rad, and stalked out to the car.

Mr Radley smiled at me sheepishly. ‘I think I’ll stretch out in the back on the way home if that’s all right with you. All this bright sunlight makes me drowsy.’

So Rad and I sat in the front, and he drove and I read the map and got us lost at a diversion near Armentières, and Rad got impatient – just like a proper married couple. Finally, when gentle snores from the back seat indicated that Mr Radley was asleep, Rad said, ‘Sorry I got annoyed back there. It wasn’t you. I’m all wound up because of Dad. I promised Mum I wouldn’t let him drink, and the minute my back’s turned …’

My God, I thought. So that’s it. He’s an alcoholic.

‘He’s not an alcoholic,’ said Rad, and I blushed to have such a legible mind. ‘He doesn’t often drink, but when he starts he just keeps on until …’ he trailed off. ‘Mum’s going to be furious. The thing is, I don’t know where he got the money: I’ve been looking after all the cash.’ I blushed again and looked down at my knees.

‘He borrowed it from me,’ I confessed. ‘I didn’t know …’

‘Oh, he’s such a furtive little bastard,’ said Rad, a trifle loudly, for the figure in the back grunted and stirred in his sleep. ‘Here,’ he continued in a lower voice, easing his wallet from the pocket of his jeans and tossing it across to me. ‘You’d better take it out of there. He’ll never remember to pay you back, and I know you’ll be too polite to remind him.’

Mr Radley woke up just outside Béthune, greatly refreshed and thoroughly pleased with our afternoon’s jaunt. Once awake, though, he found he didn’t like sitting in the back as it made him feel excluded, but insisted on leaning as far forward as possible, with his arms draped around the backs of our seats and his head jammed between us.

‘Have I missed anything while I’ve been asleep?’ he asked. ‘What have you been talking about?’

‘You,’ said Rad.

Mr Radley gave me a beery smile. ‘You don’t want to take too much notice of Rad,’ he said in a confidential tone. ‘He’s all right at abstract things, like trigonometry, but when it comes to finer feelings he’s a bit deficient.’

‘You sad old man,’ said Rad mildly.

Lexi and Frances were already dressed for dinner, painted and scented and sitting in the bar when we arrived back at the hotel. Frances was writing her journal and Lexi was reading her buttered biography of Jackie Onassis. They had been shopping for shoes but had returned disappointed. Determined not to come back empty-handed Lexi had bought Rad a shirt.

‘You didn’t need to buy me any clothes, Mum. I’ve got plenty,’ he said, looking at the new acquisition with dismay. It was orange.

‘Yes, and look at the state of them,’ she said, pointing to his leached grey T-shirt which had been washed so often it was now impossible to guess what colour it might once have been.

‘There’s nothing wrong with this. I can’t just chuck things out because they’re old.’

‘Don’t try and make a virtue of your slovenliness,’ said his father. ‘Your lack of vanity is a form of vanity. We’re not fooled.’

While I was changing for dinner there was a knock at the door and Mr Radley walked in. ‘Sorry,’ he said, putting one hand over his eyes as I dived for a towel. ‘Here’s that book I promised to lend you,’ and he slung an old Penguin copy of Goodbye to All That on the bed. Closer inspection confirmed my misgivings – an elastic band held it together, and when I tried to open it the pages sprang out and the whole thing collapsed like a deck of cards.

The atmosphere at dinner was strained. Lexi shot her husband a surprised look as he beckoned the wine waiter over, then raised her eyebrows to Rad, who shrugged back. Frances broke the silence as two bottles of red wine were brought to the table, the waiter uncorking them briskly as though wringing chickens’ necks.

‘Who are these for?’ she demanded, glaring at her father.

‘Last night of the holiday. I thought we should celebrate,’ he wheedled, splashing wine into Lexi’s glass before turning the bottle on me like a loaded gun. I wavered. Rad and Frances both had their hands palms down over their glasses. ‘Don’t take any notice of those two wowsers,’ he said. After what Rad had told me I didn’t want to give Mr Radley any encouragement, but then I reasoned that if I said yes there would be less left for him. So I let him pour me a glassful, but resolved not to drink it.

Lexi was dithering over the menu. During the holiday I had noticed that she was incapable of ordering a meal without interrogating the waiter as to its likely condition. ‘Does that come with a sauce? Is it a coarse pâté? Is it very rich/ sweet/salty?’ Likewise hardly a dish was ordered that was not sent back to the kitchen for some emendation: it was too rare, or overdone; too cold, or not cold enough. It wasn’t that Lexi was a fussy eater: it was simply a demonstration of self-confidence – a refusal to be meek and accommodating and British. My upbringing had taught me to view this behaviour as anti-social: on the rare occasions my parents went out for a meal they would sooner choke back raw liver than resort to such an extremity. Finally her decision was made. She had opted for the cheapest menu, perhaps as a rebuke to her husband who had not only chosen the menu gastronomique, but had selected only those dishes which carried supplements.

Mr Radley was a great believer in shared eating and would shamelessly lean over and spear interesting morsels from everyone else’s plates, and force us in turn to sample his own dinner.

‘Get off,’ said Frances irritably, flicking a snail back on to his plate with a clatter. ‘Lawrence has already tried to make me eat those disgusting things once this holiday.’ There was a moment’s pause.

‘Oh, he turned up again, did he?’ said Mr Radley. He laughed indulgently. ‘Faithful old Lawrence.’ For a minute or two there was nothing but the sound of cutlery on china. Oh ho, I thought. Tension. Eventually Mr Radley broke the silence.

‘And how did you like Paris, Blush? Your first time, wasn’t it?’ And before I had a chance to reply he had already started telling me how he liked it instead. ‘It’s a wonderful city. Second only to Rome, in my view. I’ll show you Rome one day,’ he promised. ‘How old are you?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘It’s taken you fifteen years to get to Paris. Let’s say it takes another fifteen to get to Rome.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll meet you at eight o’clock on 23 August 1996 on the Spanish Steps, under Keats’s window.’

This seemed unlikely. ‘All right,’ I said.

‘She doesn’t believe me!’ he exclaimed to the rest of the table.

‘Well, she’s not stupid,’ said Lexi.

As Mr Radley was having more courses than the rest of us we had to sit and watch him tackling his moules, which he did noisily and with great enthusiasm, as though he would have liked to cram in the whole lot, shells and all.

Frances started to explain to Rad the rules of a game called Ten Questions which we had devised on the journey down, to which he kept throwing up objections, while Mr Radley was swabbing out the bottom of his bowl with a piece of baguette. He made such a mess that the waiter, with his handheld table sweeper, proved quite unequal to the task of clearing up and had to retire, defeated. Mr Radley thanked him effusively for his efforts. He always grovelled to waiters, perhaps in the hope of bigger portions or better treatment. Lexi, on the other hand, treated functionaries of all kinds as though invisible – unless she was complaining about something, when she would become overpoweringly civil.

‘So you have to think of ten questions you would ask which would help you decide who to marry,’ Frances was saying. ‘My first one would be “Do you like dogs?” Blush’s was “Who is the greatest composer?” and yours might be something like “Who is the greatest philosopher?”’

‘But I don’t want to get married,’ Rad objected.

‘No,’ said Frances patiently, ‘you just have to imagine the sort of questions which might be helpful in discovering your ideal partner.’

‘I don’t believe in the concept of an ideal partner. It’s just a romantic myth.’

‘It’s just a game, Rad,’ said Frances. ‘Can’t you play along?’

‘You mean suspend my intelligence?’ asked Rad.

Mr Radley choked on his wine. ‘So pompous!’ he spluttered, wiping his eyes. ‘Do you think that’s a Radley trait, or is that down to your side?’ he asked Lexi. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, wagging a finger at Rad, ‘I don’t see why you should be so cynical about marriage with our example before you.’ And he put an arm around Lexi’s shoulder and gave her a blokeish squeeze which she shrugged away irritably.

‘If Nicky doesn’t notice me soon,’ said Frances, oblivious to the deteriorating atmosphere at the table, ‘I’m going to give up and marry for money.’

‘You could do worse,’ said Lexi. ‘After all, one in three couples who marry for love discover their mistake.’

‘You make yourself too available, Frances,’ said her father. ‘Everyone likes the taste of chocolate, but you wouldn’t want to be force-fed boxes of the stuff.’

‘I would,’ said Frances. ‘I sometimes dream about it.’

‘That’s another thing – you eat too much chocolate. Nicky might prefer skinny girls like Blush – have you thought of that?’

Frances and I were indignant and mortified in our turn. Lexi, champion of the female form in all its varieties, pitched in: ‘That sort of remark is extremely offensive,’ she said as if ticking off a naughty schoolboy.

‘I didn’t mean to be offensive,’ said Mr Radley in an injured tone. ‘A lot of men like a girl with a bit of meat on her. I was just saying Nicky might not.’

The meal proceeded in uneasy silence, punctuated by the occasional breezy remark from Mr Radley. These attempts to restart conversation were met by a deathly hush from the rest of the table. I kept my head down and concentrated on the food, as far as my diminished appetite would allow: my parents did not do this sort of thing. Politeness was everything to them.

When the dessert trolley rolled up Frances chose the richest, creamiest pudding available, a gesture whose defiance was easy to miss. Lexi and I followed suit with proper disregard for our figures. Mr Radley was languishing over his supplementary cheese course. He drained the dregs of the last wine bottle and then, seeing my still full glass, seized it and said, ‘You’re not going to drink this, are you?’ and tipped it into his own.

‘I think we should get an early night as we’ve a long journey tomorrow,’ said Lexi firmly, as the last plates were cleared away to reveal a stencilled pattern of crumbs and debris around Mr Radley’s plate.

‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘You go on up to bed. I think I’ll have a quick dégustif in one of those bars in the square.’ And, to Lexi’s fury, he sauntered out into the darkness, humming cheerfully.

At midnight I was woken by a tap on the door. It opened a chink, sending a wand of light across my face, and Lexi’s voice whispered, ‘Rad, can you come here? I need help.’ I waited until he had slipped out before creeping after him. At the end of the passage he and Lexi were trying to push open the loo door far enough for Rad to be able to squeeze himself through the gap. Mr Radley had fallen off the seat and was now either asleep or unconscious, wedged between the pedestal and the door. After a few minutes Rad reappeared half supporting, half dragging his father. I shrank back into the doorway as they passed and found Frances at my shoulder. ‘Go back to bed,’ she said coldly. ‘They don’t need you.’ And I realised that what I had witnessed that evening was not an isolated incident, but had happened before, was perhaps as much a part of family ritual as the visit to the trenches.

I returned to an enthusiastic welcome from my parents: my presence would serve as a welcome diversion from my grandmother’s attentions. Both of them sought me out separately to tell me how much I’d been missed. I suppose my holiday had given them a foretaste of what life would be like when I left home in a few years’ time. Endless days of unrewarded servitude beckoned. Since her arrival Granny had applied herself to becoming as helpless and dependent as possible in case the arrangement should prove only temporary.

The morning after my return I was in the front room searching through the bureau for her missing address book. It contained barely half a dozen names that were not scored through and annotated with a chilling ‘D’, and she could not read it anyway, but her agitation on mislaying it was such that the house was in the process of being ransacked, room by room, in order to find it. I had just turned up an old Post Office account book in my name which still had two pounds in and was practising my seven-year-old signature, in the hope of cashing it in one day, when I heard the jaws of the letter box clang shut and a parcel fall on to the mat. The parcel was addressed to me and contained a new paperback Goodbye to All That, inscribed with admirable economy: To Abigail from Rad. I had not even attempted to read Mr Radley’s tatty copy, but I began this immediately and within a couple of paragraphs had decided it was the best book ever written.

I never got round to thanking Rad for this present: the next time I went round to the Radleys’ he had gone up to Durham. Mr Radley had insisted on driving him up there, even though Rad had tried to dissuade him, and the issue had threatened to become grounds for disinheritance. Privately, I couldn’t help thinking it was a matter of bloody-mindedness rather than paternal pride on Mr Radley’s part. As a self-taught man his attitude to universities had always been ambivalent: a combination of envy and disdain. Finally, it was the question of how many more books Rad would be able to take by car than by train that swung things in his father’s favour. I later heard that Mr Radley had shown a rather cavalier disregard for the petrol warning light on the last leg of the journey and that the car had ground to a halt just short of their destination. They had been forced to push it the last two hundred yards to Rad’s hall of residence, a humiliation which it would take him all term to live down.