Lady Nollard looked up from the Obituaries in The Times.
‘Lavinia, Viscountess Hinge,’ she read aloud. ‘Of course she had been ill for a very long time so it was not unexpected.’
Mandy looked up from her simple boiled egg. It was really splendid how economical they were now. Every time she came to breakfast and noted that the lavish dishes of kidneys and bacon and fish were no longer on the hotplate she felt quite a thrill of pleasure and satisfaction. It was only one of the many small but meaningful differences that the war had made in her life.
‘I see that Lord Calyx’s sister has died as well,’ said Lady Nollard with gloomy relish. Eleanor’s friends, thought Mandy, all had two things in common; they were all of aristocratic families and were all either dead or dying.
‘I think I shall give a party,’ said Mandy suddenly.
‘A party!’ Eleanor looked startled, as if she had suggested something disgraceful, or at least unsuitable.
‘Yes, people need cheering up – all of them: Miss Grote and her cousin, Canon Palfrey and his family – Flora is a sweet girl – that nice curate … ’
Eleanor’s expression softened when she heard that the clergy were to be invited.
‘I’ll have it at the weekend when Lyall’s down here. People would find it more interesting and he will like telling people all about the war. We’ll have bridge and sell tickets for comforts for the troops.’
Eleanor marvelled, as she often did, that her brilliant brother should have married someone as silly as Mandy.
‘Oh, I can hear the children,’ said Mandy, her face lighting up. ‘Eleanor, can you hear?’
‘I could hardly fail to,’ replied Eleanor with a shudder.
‘I love Saturday morning when they don’t go to school. I like to hear them laughing and singing about the house.’
‘I doubt whether you would be quite so enthusiastic if you had to look after them yourself,’ observed Eleanor drily.
‘But I do help to look after them. I take them for walks and give them their tea and bath them and put them to bed. And I always say goodnight to them. They are so sweet – it’s almost like having Edward a baby again. Better, really, because Nanny never let me do anything for him.’
‘All this evacuation will only make them dissatisfied with their own homes,’ said Eleanor severely. ‘There was certainly no obligation on your part to purchase clothing for them.’
‘It wasn’t an obligation!’ Mandy said. How could she convey to Eleanor that one of the happiest mornings of her life had been the one when she had taken the children shopping in the nearest large town. She had bought coats and shoes and trousers and dresses and berets and all the other clothes they needed, and even some that they didn’t need – just for fun.
‘Do you realize,’ she said, ‘that Jenny had never had a new coat before. Always something handed down or from a rummage sale! Imagine!’
But, of course, Eleanor could not imagine and Mandy was only just beginning to do so. She sprang to her feet.
‘I must go and see the children,’ she said. ‘I promised to show them how to play Snakes and Ladders.’ She went out of the room humming what anyone but Lady Nollard would have recognized as a rather silly song about the Siegfried Line.
Sir Lyall Wraye got out of the train, looking back into the first-class carriage to make sure he had all his belongings – his despatch case, his umbrella and his gas mask in a brown leatherette case. He wished now that he had telephoned for the car to meet him, as he seemed to have several things to carry and it was beginning to rain. It was dark, too, so that it was unlikely that anybody would see him setting a good example to his constituents – saving petrol and carrying his gas mask.
As he passed along the High Street, he noticed several chinks of light through the curtains. Really, things down here were very slack.
Oh, how marvellous! thought Connie Aspinall, hurrying along to the wool shop to get another ounce of wool for Agnes to finish her seaboot stockings. I shall meet him if he doesn’t cross the road.
‘Good evening, Sir Lyall,’ she called out, shouting a little in her anxiety not to be ignored. ‘It seems to have stopped raining, doesn’t it? I was afraid it was going to be a nasty evening.’
Lyall switched on his politician’s smile, even though she couldn’t really see it in the darkness. The voice was familiar, though he couldn’t put a name to it. Doubtless one of the many admirable women who had helped at the last Conservative Tea.
‘It was raining in London,’ he said. ‘There was quite a heavy shower as I walked from my Club to the House this afternoon.’
‘Oh … ’ Connie was almost speechless at being given this glimpse of life at the highest level.
‘Everyone will be so glad that you will be back for the party,’ she ventured.
‘The party?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes, Lady Wraye has very kindly asked some of us to a party at Malories tomorrow evening. It is in aid of comforts for the soldiers,’ she explained, in case he thought it was simply a frivolous occasion.
Suppressing a feeling of irritation with his wife, Lyall said smoothly that he hoped he would have the pleasure of seeing Miss Aspinall – he brought out her name triumphantly from the recesses of his memory – among the company.
‘Oh, yes!’ Connie breathed, hardly able to contain her rapture.
He raised his hat and murmured good night, striding on in the darkness. She realized that she had turned round and, trotting along beside him, had come right out of her way. Now the wool shop would be shut. Whatever would Agnes say? But after the joy of her conversation with Sir Lyall she didn’t care. Agnes ought to have got it herself, she thought. I don’t care – I don’t give a damn! she told herself defiantly.
A party, thought Lyall as he trudged up the drive; whatever was Mandy thinking of.
‘Why, Lyall, I didn’t expect you until tomorrow,’ said Mandy, who was standing aimlessly in the hall. ‘I hope there will be enough for dinner.’
‘What on earth are you wearing?’ he asked crossly.
She was dressed in the navy uniform of a Red Cross Commandant, but her black-stockinged legs ended, unexpectedly, in frivolous pink mules trimmed with ostrich feathers.
‘They wanted me to be in this Red Cross affair,’ she said, ‘and I couldn’t very well refuse. Not that they will let me do anything. Agnes Grote and Nurse Stebbings run the whole thing. But it means that they can have meetings here and things,’ she said vaguely. She looked down at her feet. ‘I had to get some horrid heavy black shoes to go with the uniform, but they were so uncomfortable that as soon as I got home I took them off.’
She slip-slopped up the stairs in front of him, humming. ‘“South of the Border,”’ she sang softly, ‘“down Mexico way.”’ She would change out of this drab uniform and put on her coral red dinner dress, something bright and cheerful for when she went to say good night to the children.