Brenda was keeping on about how she and Stafford had met for the first time at this very place, at this same time of year, and how she had never slept with any other man and how they’d both been virgins at their wedding and how now, over forty years on, they were proud of it.

Eileen, a smouldering woman, was thinking about where Lily would park the car. There had been no instructions.

Lily, who was driving the car, her cherry-coloured Alfa Romeo, was wondering why she was filled with heaviness: a heaviness unnatural to her, though natural enough for Eileen. It was Eileen’s almost permanent condition and ever had been. Eileen had been silent at college and silent she remained. Eileen looked like a storm. In fact, Eileen’s black brows and suspicious mouth and barrel figure reflected an even greater darkness at sixty-plus than in the student. Though for no obvious reason. Eileen’s life since graduation had been highly respected, diligent and secure. She had been a secretary somewhere at the Foreign Office, never late with a memo; and she was considered rather a splendid institution once you’d become used to the expression of suppressed fury on her face.

The fourth woman, Elizabeth, was edging dreamily towards Alzheimer’s.

Beautiful at nineteen, Elizabeth had left college at the end of her first year to marry someone from Devonshire with horses. All the year she had been in love with a Polish Jew called Ernie, a physicist she’d met at the inter-collegiate Freshers’ hop the first night. And all that year on the college tennis courts the beautiful equality and power of the base-line returns of Elizabeth and Ernie had haunted the evening hours, as other girls sat at desks in their rooms above, trying to keep their windows shut against the laughter.

The year Elizabeth had been with Ernie her looks had lit dark places. She had shone in the rhododendron alley, in the grotto by the lake, in the backstreet café they all used to visit on Wednesdays after lectures on Paradise Lost. She had shone along the dark road back to the college at night after the theatre, several girls together eating chips out of paper—though Elizabeth didn’t eat chips.

“Look at that girl!” you heard said sometimes as Elizabeth passed under a street light. “Did you see that girl?” At a time when women English Literature students were all trying to look like Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth effortlessly did so, but with an unselfconscious happiness Virginia Woolf never managed.

It had been a great surprise to meet Elizabeth again today, for even Brenda had twenty years earlier stopped sending Christmas cards marked “Kindly forward if necessary.” None of them had seen her since the Finals ball at the end of their third year, though Elizabeth, who had left after three terms (with a First in Part One and acrimony from the college), had had no right whatever to be at the Finals ball. She had brought her husband Rupert with her. A genial soul. They had left early.

The other three had danced all night. Then they had walked with their partners—one being Brenda’s Stafford—to the green side-gate that led into the public park. They had walked—Lily entwined—as far as the bridge over the canal, said their goodbyes, walked back again and been checked in by a woman called the Home Tutor, Miss Folly. She had had a notebook and a cape and purple stockings, her habitual garb even at sunrise. Alert Miss Folly had seen them in by the gate like a milkmaid letting through the little heifers soon to be off to the slaughter of the world.

That sleepy, rose-blown morning forty years ago the three girls had drifted back via the grounds, up the stone steps between the Italian urns, across the lawns, in through the glass doors. Long dresses had been soaked with dew. Lily, who had spent most of the night inside the skirts of a large willow, entangled in strong arms, had been barefoot and tipsy, balancing about on her toes. Poor Brenda had been in a daze of love for Stafford. Eileen had been thoughtful and terse. Her partner had been somebody’s faceless brother who hadn’t made much of her.

So that was that. Tomorrow they would be scattered. Six weeks later would come their Finals results. Six weeks after that, up would come to the college the next intake of fledgling schoolgirls, hesitant or bold, plain or pretty, stupid or clever, and one or maybe two “remarkable.” Of these four now elderly women only Elizabeth had been in any way remarkable.

 

And Elizabeth, who could have done anything, had kept her secrets. Why she had left. Where Ernie, the Polish physicist, had gone and why. Nobody knew or felt they could ask; young women then were shy with each other.

 

The four girls had all read English Literature. Brenda had then taught it, Eileen had ditched it, Lily had tried to write it, and Elizabeth had drifted off to Barnstaple, not with Ernie but with Rupert, and had had five children and not much else.

And now Elizabeth sat in the front of Lily’s Alfa Romeo saying “What a lovely car,” while Eileen sat glum in the back with Brenda chatting of chastity.

Lily was turning now through the main gates of the college, the same black-and-gold scroll about them saying Semper Eadem. Now the car was winding down the college drive between much taller trees than they remembered, and Eileen was sighing and grunting and asking why they had come. She hated reunions.

The college was a women’s college, one hundred years old, and it was closing down. Or rather it was amalgamating with a male college and moving to Leicestershire. The wonderful buildings, the great lawns, the avenues of trees, the botanic garden, the science laboratories had been bought by American bankers to train financial moguls from the Pacific Rim in the philosophy of money. Invitations to a final reunion had been sent out long ago by a committee, to such old students as had kept in touch, and there had been wide advertisement about it in the press. So hundreds, maybe thousands, of women were expected.

Coachloads of them from way before the war were arriving from all parts of the country, said Lily, who wrote fiction.

“God help us all,” said Eileen.

 

The day chosen for the reunion had been the day after Finals. The day after the final Finals of the college. The anniversary of the day of the rose-petal skirts in the dew, the strawberries and cream supper and the gentle Bucks Fizz, of the band that had played selections from South Pacific, of the goodbyes upon the little bridge and Miss Folly in purple. The day of the last breakfast together through the glass doors, of baked apples on oak tables, of servants in cap and apron who had served the baked apples at 6 a.m. And there had been silver toast racks.

Still in their long dresses that long-ago morning, some girls had gone trailing away to bed and others had gone outside again holding each other’s hands (you could then) and talking of men (you did then) and of what was going to happen next.

Brenda had lifted her certain face to the sun and said, “He’s asked me,” and Lily, half asleep, had said, “Are you going to?”

“Oh yes. We’ll do it at once I should think. Before next term. We’ll both be at the same teacher-training, after all.”

“Do it?” said Eileen. “Do what?”

“Well, marry,” said Brenda, firm and triumphant. Intolerable.

“Think of him in bed,” Lily whispered sideways (nasty) to Dilys Something, an awful girl wild for power, rich and humourless. She’d been at the ball with someone famous everybody thought they ought to recognise although he’d looked like almost everybody else. Nobody had ever heard of either of them again.

“He’ll have one like a pencil,” said Lily, and Dilys stared.

“Where’s Elizabeth gone?” black-browed Eileen asked.

“Oh, home,” said Lily, “ages ago. Where’ve you been? She said goodbye to us all. You’re slipping.”

For Eileen had been a logbook.

 

And now, today, the last reunion, and here were the directions to the car park, about turn: off down the drive again to the end, out into a huge, roped-off area outside the grounds. It would be a quarter-mile walk back. Eileen looked satisfied. She’d known there’d be trouble parking but nobody ever listened to her. Of course.

Lily said, “Can you walk it, Eileen?”

“No need to be unpleasant.”

“Well, I know you’ve got a knee. We could have dropped you off.”

“I told you,” said Eileen, thumping away. “I’m O.K. You’d better lock the car.”

Lily, who had been about to, said there was no need. Not to fuss. It was all by invite. Old girls. Nobody here would be nicking cars.

“Want to bet?” said Eileen’s square old back.

 

There were vehicles of every kind, and every kind and age of woman. Some were staring about them, some were greeting and exclaiming, some were putting their heads back inside their cars again to bring out picnics and sticks and Zimmers. Some were roaring up on mopeds, unfastening great medieval helmets and looking about sixteen. Some were pacing arm in arm, careful of the paths. Some were undoing pushchairs, humping children about. Lily set off after limping Eileen, and Brenda followed behind until she remembered hesitant Elizabeth and went back for her. The Virginia Woolf dazzle was long gone from Elizabeth now, but there was still a bewildered sweetness.

A surge of talk and laughter met them as they came to the steps behind the urns. Over the lawns above, hundreds of women were scattered like beads. “The noise!” shrieked Brenda joyfully. “The noise!”

And Lily thought, I shouldn’t have come. I cannot bear it. I hate this sort of thing. But I will not let Eileen win. Though God knows, she’s right.

Women sprawled in groups on rugs. Some had brought wine. Others like schoolgirls were in jeans, eating out of plastic bags, with rings in their noses. Others had pearls in their ears. Some wore lipstick and floating skirts, and had had their hair done. Some looked determinedly dirty and ill and scornful and hip. Some carried handbags. Some peered down into cameras. Some carried photograph albums of grandchildren. There paced the present principal, unknown to Lily and co., ready for Leicester, eagle of eye, in a silk suit. There went a white-haired woman in a long tea gown and Doc Martens and a hat.

“There are some really old ones over there; best keep away,” said Lily. “I remember those basket chairs. They’ve brought them out of the bursar’s room. It was all basket chairs and hyacinths. She wore paisley shawls. There was an ivory cigarette box. She’ll be dead now.”

“She was dead then,” said Eileen, “and they can’t be the same chairs.”

“There’s no organisation,” said Brenda. “They haven’t even tried. Talk about the last day in the old home. You can hear the removal vans revving up round the corner. There’s not even tea. What’s that banner doing? There are all sorts of banners, it’s like a rally.”

“That one says Social Studies,” said Lily. “Whatever are Social Studies?”

“What the thick ones did,” said Eileen, “the spotty ones with the dirty hair. You could always tell the sociologists.”

“Thanks a bunch,” said a skeleton with glinting ringlets of Afro gold lying about at Lily’s feet on the grass. “That’s what I am.”

She looked about ten. Beside her was hunched a bored and venerable man with massive shoulders, who hung his head and clasped his hands about his knees.

Brenda inspected him with surprise. “I didn’t know we could bring husbands. Well, I do think that should have been made clear. I met my husband, Stafford, here, you know. More than forty years ago and at exactly this time of year.” She sat down on the grass. “You go on,” she said to the other three. “I’ll stay with these younger ones for a moment.”

Brenda was a year younger than the others, having been precocious at school. “They’re older than me,” she told the sociologist and the thinker. “I came up early. I should really have stayed and tried for Oxford but I was impatient. Thank goodness or I would never have met Stafford. When did you come down? You look almost young enough not to have come up yet.”

“In 1970,” said the girl. “I’ve been with my husband twenty years in the Third World.”

“Well, my goodness! I must say it suits you. I do apologise. I’m hopeless at ages, I suppose because I simply can’t believe in my own. Between ourselves, I feel about twenty-seven.”

But the ancient husband had climbed to his feet and given his hand to the girl. They walked away.

“Well, their manners are not ours even if they have been married twenty years and she doesn’t call him partner,” said Brenda. “Sociologists were always short on manners. I suppose they have to be like the clients.”

 

In the circle of basket chairs about a dozen cobwebby people were sitting under the English Literature banner. One appeared to be asleep. You could see it was an exclusive circle set apart from the mêlée, for conversation was nominal and the champagne was Grand Cru. It was the English Faculty.

Eileen, Brenda and Lily stood, feeling younger but sad. “D’you recognise anyone? There can’t be any of ours left.”

“I think the sleeping one’s drunk,” said Eileen.

Suddenly Elizabeth spoke. “It’s Dr. Blatt,” she said and went across all smiles, and knelt on the grass. “Dr. Blatt? It’s Elizabeth.”

“Hello,” said Dr. Blatt, opening an eye. “Oh, hello, Elizabeth. I never see anyone these days. I’m always in Bodley.”

Others in the circle of dons looked up at the quartet of their long-ago students, but without significant interest. Lily and glowering Eileen hovered. Brenda would have liked to speak, but found herself a bit uncertain of how to bring in Stafford.

“I think that one’s Folly,” Lily said to Brenda, and Miss Folly looked up brightly and raised her glass. She had not changed until you looked again and saw the map of the years, the purple hands and fat ankles. Her black braids were scanty and grey but she was still wearing coloured stockings.

“This must be a sad day for you,” said Lily.

“No, no. Not at all. We must move on. We were always leasehold, you know. It is time to be out of the ivory tower. I, of course, retired years ago. To become a nun.”

“You made it a very beautiful ivory tower,” said Lily, remembering red leaves and dahlias in a gold jug, and a blue velvet chair, and six or seven Lear etchings pinned haphazardly down the side of a rosewood bookcase in the tutor’s old rooms. “I remember your Lears,” she said, and got a strange look.

“There was a suicide on her floor,” whispered Eileen. “While she was entertaining a drip of a priest on a mandolin.”

Elizabeth asked Dr. Blatt if she would come to tea with her yesterday and old Professor Alice Grimwade—once her junior tutor—watched them go off together, Elizabeth pushing the chair. “That girl with Alzheimer’s,” she said. “I remember her. She knew her Tragedies. There are so few intellectuals coming up now. They all want to go into the City.”

“She’s side-stepped tragedies,” said Eileen.

“That is the remark of a fool, Miss Belling.”

And Eileen blushed. Miss Grimwade had even remembered her name.

“You have kept in touch with Elizabeth Vaughan then, have you Miss Belling? Miss Dodds?”

“We haven’t seen her from her last day to this last day,” said Brenda. “It was Lily who heard from her. Elizabeth wrote to Lily’s publisher. Elizabeth asked us to meet her off the train. When we saw her—well, we saw—”

“Tragedy, I fear. Well, it was our tragedy that she left. Why didn’t you stop her, Lily Strang? You were always timid. But you’ve kept your maiden name for your books, I see.”

“I’m not exactly Mrs. Gaskell.”

“No,” said Professor Grimwade.

Two younger women standing waiting for audience nearby, one holding a baby, the other struggling with a two-year old, looked jolted and tried to remember Mrs. Gaskell. At the same moment they realised that Lily Strang must be “Lily Strang,” whose novels sold all over the world in twenty-seven languages and were in every supermarket beside the sweets. When you looked, you could see the earrings could be Hermès. They turned hastily to the professor.

“I just wanted to say, Professor Grimwade, after all this time—to thank you for your lectures on Eliot.”

“We were here in 1984,” said the other, grabbing her child who had begun to crawl about among the academic legs. “It was after one of your lectures that I had almost a mystical experience—I really discovered Eliot. Under that tree.”

“I wonder what he was doing?” said the professor and held Lily’s gaze as if daring her to say: Maybe he was spread out like a patient etherised upon a—

Lily didn’t.

“You really, honestly, so inspired us,” said the first woman hitching up her baby against her chest in his harness.

“Dear child,” said the professor, and became thoughtful. “Have you read Miss Strang’s novels? They are very entertaining.”

“Which,” she said after the two mothers had gone, “is more than they are. I often wonder how we managed to choose such dull girls. And such ugly ones. We once chose a girl because she was pretty. No brains, but she did just as well as anyone else.”

Lily felt certain it was her and felt wretched.

“It wasn’t you, Miss Strang.”

Then she felt worse.

“Do you remember many of us, Dr. Grimwade?”

“No. None. Not at first. Then you say your names and sometimes I see the face through the face. Some of you of course change hardly at all, like poor Eileen Belling. Formed in the cradle.”

“Have I changed?”

“Still changing, Lilian. You were very unformed. I have waited a long time for your fame.”

“I thought I was academic. You might have told me I wasn’t. I gather it was pretty obvious.”

“It would have been cruel. You had to find out for yourself,” said the stark old crow.

 

Brenda had discovered some tea inside the college, through the glass doors, and came back to tell the others. She found Lily, head down and walking very quickly away from the circle of elders.

Eileen was over by the lupin border, sitting staring up at the rows of residential windows. “I was third along the front,” she said. “You were seventh along, Brenda.”

“I was sixth,” said Lily.

“No, fifth,” said Eileen, who forgot nothing.

“You forget nothing,” said Lily. “It must be hard having total recall when all it does is make you so miserable. You ought to see someone about it. Have you thought of it?”

“No,” said Eileen.

She shambled off with Lily towards tea. Elizabeth and Dr. Blatt in her wheelchair were nowhere to be seen. Brenda had gone on ahead and was seated at one of the long oak tables of the baked-apple breakfast. They were covered in white heat marks, now, and unpolished. Brenda was talking to a fiftyish-looking woman with a baby on her knees.

“This is Ms. Beech,” said Brenda, “a single parent. How much braver she is than us, though I don’t think I could ever have gone along with the idea myself, morally—I’d better be honest. I’ve been telling her that the last time we sat at these tables was after our Finals ball when my husband Stafford proposed to me. We have been happily married for over forty years.”

The baby, who had a runny eye but glorious red hair, suddenly reached across Brenda to Eileen’s finger and, without taking his eyes off her glowering face, stuck it in his mouth and began to chew it.

“Hey!” said brooding Eileen, and the baby opened his mouth round the finger to laugh. Eileen made a sound like a laugh, too.

“Unfortunately, Stafford and I never had children,” said Brenda, “though we both adore them and have many godchildren. We were both virgins when we married, you know. It was not unusual then. I’m not sorry about it. And we’ve never, either of us, ever slept with anyone else, which I expect you must find droll.”

“Well, I’ve got a baby, thank God,” said Ms. Beech.

“I’m not so sure about God,” said Brenda. “Stafford and I have always been humanists.”

“I’m a woman priest,” said Ms. Beech. “My dead husband was the Bishop of Axminster.”

Lily looked around at the room, the tables, the panelling, all scuffed and sticky. Tea was being dispensed from a machine on the wall into paper cups with optional lids. The paper cups were adding more to the pattern of white rings on the table tops. A few last notices curled from sticky tape on the panelling. The parquet floor was dirty.

“They’ve been admitting men the last few years,” said Eileen, “and it shows.”

“I was all against it,” said Brenda. “I wrote to the governing body. In our time no men were allowed in the building after ten o’clock at night,” she told Ms. Beech, “and they had to be out of our rooms by a quarter to. We worked all the better for it, I’m sure.”

“Why were they more dangerous after nine forty-five?” asked the widowed Reverend Beech.

“We often had to smuggle them out,” said Brenda, and the Rev. Beech called upon her God.

“It’s true,” said Lily Strang.

“In our year there were some who’d been in the war,” said Brenda. “They’d been in prison camps and fighting in Africa, and they still had to have their boyfriends out by ten o’clock.”

“There was one who was married,” said Lily, “and Folly only let her husband in on her birthday.”

“You made that up,” said Brenda.

“She could never tell the truth,” said Eileen. “Novels were a godsend to her. Kept her out of the courts.”

“Are you Lily Strang?” asked Ms. Beech, but said no more when Lily answered yes.

“Stafford loved coming to visit me here,” said Brenda. “I used to like going with him to the gate. He was so graceful. He’d been in the Army Education Corps. Once it was almost eleven o’clock and anyone could have seen us going to the gate—it was summertime—Folly or anyone. ‘Don’t scuttle,’ he said. ‘Don’t be ashamed.’ I was in the sixth room along the front.”

“Seventh,” said Eileen.

Ms. Beech closed her eyes and the baby was sick.

 

After tea they walked about until Brenda said that she must think about leaving. Stafford would be waiting to hear all about it. And she was really annoyed. She was fed up. She had had no idea that he could have come with her. “And he’s got diabetes now,” she said.

“We can’t go yet,” said Lily, “I have to get Elizabeth back to the station. Really someone ought to see her all the way home—don’t you think?”

Nobody answered.

Sour old Eileen said, “I ought to be getting home myself.”

“Why?”

“Well, I rather want to.”

“You always do. You always want things to be over.”

“I like to think about them afterwards.”

“My God! Are you old!”

“I’m depressed,” said Eileen. “It’s my temperament. I can’t help it. I knew it would be dreadful and it is. I like being at home. You know me.”

“I do. It is insulting. Why can’t we go out to dinner somewhere?”

“There’s a programme I want to watch. And I have to read a holiday brochure.”

“When are you going away?”

“Next spring.”

“Far away?”

“Yes. The Isle of Man.”

“Oh, to hell, go home then,” said Lily. “Go with Brenda. If you’re lucky you might get a peep at graceful Stafford waiting at the bus stop. With the dog. Guess the dog? I guess a pug. With filthy breath. Well, I’m glad you can still laugh now and then.”

“You’re still infantile, Lily.”

They smiled at each other. They had always been friends.

“Room three,” said Eileen. “That was my room. I was deflowered in that room the night of the ball.”

“What? Eileen! You? No! When?”

“During the supper interval. It was quite a long supper interval. I was famished by morning and only ate baked apples.”

“However did you get him there? There were ropes on the stairs—I’ve just remembered that. Didn’t anyone see you? Folly in her stockings? Eileen!”

“He was quite cunning. Quite ... inventive.”

“Who was he?”

“I’ll tell you one day.”

“It wasn’t—? Eileen—no! Oh, Eileen! Oh, poor old Brenda! It was Stafford.”

“Bye, Lily. Don’t put it in a book.”

 

When Eileen had found Brenda, they went off together towards the bus, through the green gate, and Lily went searching for Elizabeth. The starling chatter on the lawns was still loud but spaces were beginning to appear. The flocks were flying. The banners looked lonelier. The Eng. Lit. circle of basket chairs was empty. Dr. Blatt could be seen being wheeled off briskly by Miss Folly. Professor Grimwade was gone.

Lily wandered round the science blocks and past the library. One year Queen Mary had paid the college a visit and as she left had stood outside the library beside her great black car, saying goodbye, in the wind. The wind had not disturbed a hair of her head or the toque that was sculpted on to it. Ropes of fat pearls on a ski-slope of bosom, feathers, diamonds. Historic as the czar. Two long lines of students had stood clapping and the sound of the clapping had been like washing blowing on a blustery day. Black washing. Their gowns had fluttered about. Smuts flying from a chimney. “How nice they all look in their little gowns.”

Sycophantic faces framed by half a mile of books had looked down from the tall library windows. What would the bankers do with the library? Make it into a canteen.

Lily walked towards the lake, beside the botanic gardens, into the grotto with the dry fountain. She found a winding path she had forgotten and coming along it towards her was a trim woman of about her own age, who went by, looking down and sideways, with a reserved smile. After she’d gone, Lily realised it was someone called Ellie Simmonds who’d read French and had always had a reserved smile.

Suddenly she was overcome with affection for Ellie Simmonds who had lived with her parents at Potters Bar in a house all mock-Tudor beams and arty latches. She’d invited Lily to stay there for a weekend several years after they’d left college.

Why ever?

They’d played ping-pong with her brothers and made noisy jokes. And into the pillow Lily had sobbed at night, broken-hearted about the one inside the willow, who had left her, and about this terrible step backwards: ping-pong with schoolboys. How on earth had she come to be staying with Ellie Simmonds? Could Ellie Simmonds possibly have guessed?

Think. Think of the one under the willow. Think, Lilian—can you even remember his name? And all that agony. Didn’t happen now, presumably. It was the girl who made the running these days. Oh, we were so bottled up and costive and feeble. Oh, we were so good!

God—and I wore pink taffeta and sweated under my arms.

She watched the departing back of kind, shy Ellie Simmonds who would still be embarrassed to discuss a broken spirit.

And—God!—long, grey gloves, thought Lily. And a silk rose. A grey silk rose! At twenty-one I was wearing a grey silk rose. It was a nice dress, though. A Vogue pattern. He had the most wonderful, gentle hands.

 

Over towards the tennis courts she found Elizabeth, who was standing beside the posts that had already been dragged out of the ground like teeth and tossed on top of the heaps of black tennis nets piled up like fishing gear on a quay. The tennis courts were to be rebuilt in the new sports complex that was to cover all the lawns.

“We lost you, Elizabeth. Eileen and Brenda had to go.”

Elizabeth came over to her and stood smiling.

“Elizabeth—will you be all right? I’ll come all the way home with you on the train if you like. I mean it. I’d like to go to Devon.”

Elizabeth said, “Train?”

“Train home. I’m Lily. Dear Elizabeth.”

“I know you’re Lily. I was thinking. Yes. No—it’s all right. Rupert got me a return ticket. He’ll meet me. I’m fine. It’s very early days, you know. At present. Quite happy. I’m busy packing. Do you remember Ernie? He was a physicist. A Pole.”

“Yes, of course I do.”

Lily took Elizabeth’s arm and they started off towards the car park. “Elizabeth—you don’t know how jealous we all were. You were so fearless. So positive. And getting the hell out ... out of all this college stuff. Getting your life right. Knowing exactly what to do. Even at nineteen. And not coming back—”

“I wasn’t fearless,” she said. “I was a romantic fool. You should all have stopped me.”

“We should?”

“Well, you could have, Lily. You could have made me come back.”

“But you were unapproachable. Olympian. We were scared stiff of you. You were so sure. So wonderful and beautiful.”

“I was a mess.”

 

Lily said, looking up at the scroll of Latin over the gates, “You know, it’s the place I remember. The atmosphere. The Eng. Lit.’s all pretty hazy. All those lectures. All that reading. When I try to remember Keats now, it turns into Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s all quotations. All that Anglo-Saxon, I’ve forgotten the lot.”

“Glad it’s not just me,” said Elizabeth. At the car park she said, “What a wonderful car. Is it yours?”

 

At Paddington station Lily went with her on to the platform to find the reserved first-class seat and several men, some quite young, looked at Elizabeth with admiration and she smiled at them. Then she walked back with Lily, to see her off the platform.

“Bye, Elizabeth,” said Lily. “It’s lovely you came. We’d none of us forgotten you, you know. We never will.”

“Don’t count on it,” said Elizabeth, then her face looked blank. Over Lily’s head she said, “I don’t suppose you ever see him?”

“Never. For goodness sake, Elizabeth—he was all yours. Utterly yours.”

“Who? Who was?”

“Well, Ernie of course.”

“Yes, Ernie,” she said. “Ernie. You see—I had some notion that Ernie might turn up today.”