“You are? That’s something, I suppose.” Dorothy was still frowning as she balanced her cigarette between two slim fingers. “But all those Oxford types are the same; I plan to do things a little differently. I’m on the lookout for something”—she tapped her fingernail on the lip of her glass—“though to be honest I’m not sure what yet.” She smiled. “Do you go in much for the occultish things, the séances and all that?”
“Do you?” Georgie had only read about séances. She liked the idea of speaking to the dead, but at the same time she found something embarrassing in the expectation they would answer.
“I’ve been to some, all dull. But I’ve heard about an occult order, a sort of society, one of those secrets everyone’s talking about. Very exclusive. I’m trying to get an invitation. You could come with me, if it was of interest? It will probably be codswallop but maybe entertaining codswallop. I won’t be asking Freddie or Herb to come, I know that much.”
“I’d like that.” Georgie watched Dorothy, who at the mention of Freddie and Herbert looked thoroughly bored—but the bored expression of long-gowned, glamorous Dorothy Shakespear was exquisite. At that moment Georgie had the feeling that if the dead would speak to anyone, it would be Dorothy Shakespear.
“I’ll let you know,” Dorothy said. “Also, some of us are going to Florence next month. A painting trip. Painting and rambling. And drinking. If you want to join.”
Georgie felt a trickle of excitement, before she realised, of course, she couldn’t do anything of the kind.
“I have to go back to school.”
“Surely Italy is a better education than St. James’s?”
“Of course,” Georgie said, putting her drink down on the table, “but . . .” The sentence that had been forming on her lips fell away, and she found herself staring at the lazy trail of smoke from Dorothy’s cigarette as it rose, weaving in and out of itself. There was no way that Nelly would let her quit school. But the longer Georgie sat drinking brandy with Dorothy, as their conversation ambled between the Futurists and Debussy and those new silk dresses which fell straight to your ankle, the more convinced she became that Dorothy’s approach was the right one. Surely Georgie’s life could also be different.
That night she’d gone back with her mother for dinner at Drayton Gardens. It was probably the brandy, but in the car she thought her pulse was so loud that her mother would hear it. When they got home there was a pause while Nelly went to talk to Georgie’s father upstairs, but when Georgie arrived at the dinner table, both her parents were already sitting in their places. Lucy brought in the soup, and both Nelly and Gilbert seemed to pay the soup more attention than usual. Were her parents responding to her? she wondered. Could they sense this change inside her, this determination? They each had a glass of wine, which Georgie pretended not to notice; the presence of alcohol in the house had become a source of anxiety, so that no one looked at or spoke about it. How timid this behaviour seemed to her, almost dishonest. Georgie was filled with bravery and brandy. She glanced over to see Lucy retreat to the other room. She raised her spoon above her bowl and paused.
“I have decided to leave St. James’s,” she said. “Dorothy and the others are going to the Continent, and I plan to go with them.”
Her mother held a crust of bread halfway between her lips and her plate. “Oh, darling. You can’t leave.” It had been Nelly’s idea to commit Georgie to St. James’s School for Girls in West Malvern.
“I spend all day learning nothing of use, and I have hardly any time when I come home to study real things.” Her older brother, Harold, was in his last year at Eton, and he too disliked school, but at least he was studying history and theology. St. James’s taught classes on sewing and cookery and deportment, to a horde of girls who seemed somehow satisfied with this as an education.
“Dorothy loved it there.”
“Maybe so”—and if she had, she certainly hadn’t mentioned it—“but I don’t.” It occurred to Georgie only now that Nelly would have much preferred a daughter like Dorothy: charming, easy, gifted at telling people what they wanted to hear.
Her father had taken a large spoonful of soup and now tore a chunk of bread in his fingers.
“Are you sure you want to leave?”
“I wish I liked it more,” Georgie said, “but I can’t stop criticising it.”
He smiled. “You get that from me.”
“You think she doesn’t get it from me?” Nelly’s smile was tight. “It’s only another year to stay on. And the school is very well regarded.”
“I don’t see the point in staying,” Georgie said. “What’s the use? It would cost less to have me at home.”
Nelly shook her head slowly. “There are different kinds of cost.”
Gilbert reached forward for his glass and took a gulp of wine. “You would have done far better at Eton and Oxford than Harold or I will ever do.” No one contradicted him. The greatest achievement of Gilbert’s education was being part of the winning team in the Oxford Fours boat race. He never took a degree. But no one would consider sending Georgie, a young woman, to Oxford.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Georgie said, gathering momentum, “I’m going to Italy with Dorothy. I’ve decided.”
“All right, pup, we hear you,” Gilbert said. “We can talk about it. But the thing is we have our own news, actually. Your mother is kicking me out of the house again.”
“Gilbert.”
“It’s true. She’s requested I leave for a few weeks. Leave her to her soirées and her lectures.”
“That is not what we discussed,” Nelly said. She put her spoon down and sat very still. The last time Nelly had sent him away, it was to a home for inebriates in Twickenham. It had taken months of Georgie’s pleading before she had let him come back. They hadn’t mentioned it afterwards.
“It is, really,” Gilbert said cheerfully, finishing his glass and looking around casually to see if Lucy might refill it. Georgie delivered soup to her mouth, then spent some seconds coaxing herself to swallow. “But I love your mother, and I give her what she wants, insofar as in my awfully limited capacity I am able. I’ve decided to go down to Suffolk and catch up with an old military chum.”
Georgie swallowed. She knew that there was a lot more to what was being said, but right now she didn’t want to consider it. She tried to glide past these words, past the looks that her parents were exchanging, and said with confidence, “And I will leave St. James’s.”
Her mother glanced at the two of them, placed her spoon back down on the tablecloth, and, like a defeated ruler, rose from her chair.
“Very well,” she said. “You both must do as you like.”
Georgie heard a knock on her door a few hours later, when she was sitting on her bed reading her Latin primer. She was continuing with her translation of Pico della Mirandola; after she’d mentioned it at the soirée, it seemed more urgent than before. Wouldn’t a project like this be worth leaving school for? Or would she find it too lonely? It could take years. The door pushed open, and her father leaned his long frame against the doorway before coming in and sitting beside her on the bed.