Margot had always thought that vanity was her weakness, but in those months in the home, cleaning the floors and tending the garden with the other girls, she’d realised that actually it was how much she cared about how others saw her. How much she wanted to be liked. If she kept this baby, she would lose everything, it had seemed to her, aged sixteen. A place in society. A marriage and a home of her own. Because who would marry her, knowing she had a child?
Really, she was lucky that her parents had given her this way out.
But then she’d met him. Held him. This tiny warm body, lying close and safe against her skin.
Then she’d known with absolute certainty that she wasn’t lucky at all.
She had not wanted a child. Not even Harry’s child. She had wanted nothing to do with the very idea of it.
But she had wanted James.
Two O’Clock
Harry rang the doorbell at two o’clock precisely. Margot was helping her mother write out laundry lists, and she flinched. Her mother looked at her.
‘All right?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Now she was going crimson, she could feel it.
James, who was sitting on her mother’s knee, dropped his lead soldier and cried, ‘Dimmy!’
‘He thinks it’s the grocer’s boy,’ said Margot’s mother. She kissed his blond hair. ‘No, darling, it’s not Jimmy. It’s someone for Margot.’
Ernest and Ruth, sprawled on their bellies on the floor with a copy of The Magnet between them, looked up with interest.
Edith appeared in the doorway.
‘Mr Harry Singer, ma’am.’
‘Golly!’ said Ruth, sitting up.
‘All right,’ their mother said. She stood up, lifting James onto her hip. He wriggled and put out his hands for the soldier. ‘Come on, Jamie, let’s go upstairs. Don’t fuss, silly boy, here he is. Ruth, I think Edith wanted some help making mince pies for the Girls’ Friendly Society Christmas party.’
‘What? Oh, Mother, no! Let me stay!’
‘Ernest, you may stay here and read quietly. Margot, I hope I can trust you and Harry.’
I hope . . . Margot’s face flared. She didn’t think... she couldn’t...
And how... how could she possibly say what she had to say with Ernest there?
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it.
‘Yes, Mother,’ she said.
Her mother nodded. ‘Come along, Ruth.’
They got to their feet as Edith showed Harry in. He was wearing a brown tweed suit, and suddenly seemed very adult. He was twenty-two. A grown-up. Of course she’d always known that, but looking at him now she had to face the truth of it. The adolescent awkwardness was gone; he was a grown person now, calm and content in his own body.
‘Hullo,’ he said, and she found herself smiling. She had forgotten what it was like to be in the same room as him. To be the focus of his attention. Not that she deserved any of that today... But he was smiling at her, and she was sure his pleasure was genuine. It made her feel truly happy for the first time all holiday.
But that was foolish, wasn’t it? Perhaps he had a new girl now. It would be surprising if he didn’t. There were so few young men nowadays, a man as whole and handsome as Harry must be in demand. Could she really expect him to have stayed faithful for the three years they’d been apart?
Perhaps this was what this meeting was about.
His letter hadn’t said fiancée after all. It had said friend.
‘Hullo,’ she said. She came forward – should they shake hands? Embrace? She hovered, hesitating, and Harry laughed. ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said, and then blushed. ‘Oh, I’ve done it again! But it is, you know.’
‘And you.’ He was pleased to see her, she was certain. But there was a hesitancy there as well, a holding-back. He wasn’t sure of her.
Her smile widened, spreading across her face like sunshine. He smiled too – and there they were, smiling at each other.
She turned away first, saying confusedly, ‘Would you like tea? I could ring for Edith...’
‘No, thank you. Hullo, Ernest, old chap, how’s tricks?’
Oh, goodness, what were they going to talk about? He was going to ask her why she hadn’t replied to his letter – of course he was – and there was Ernest, fair, stolid Ernest, his blond head studiously bent over his paper.
‘How are you?’ she said quickly.
‘Well. I’m well. I’m going to be a farmer – did you know?’
‘Yes! Your mother told me. How splendid!’
‘Well, I think it is. My uncle farms, you know. He was always sorry none of his children wanted to go into it, so he’s terribly pleased about me. The plan is to study Agriculture next year – the doctor-sahibs thought I wouldn’t quite be fit enough this year, and I must say I’m rather glad. There are a fearful lot of army chaps going this year, and I think it would be nicer to do it properly. I’ve been living with uncle in the dales, helping out with the animals, and I feel rather as though it’s all my childhood holidays come at once.’
‘I was so sorry to hear you were ill.’
Oh, surely that was the wrong thing to say! Surely his next question would be why she hadn’t answered his letter?
‘Yes, it was rather beastly. I was on a farm in Germany – that’s what gave me the taste for it, you know. Actually, I think that probably saved my life, because the family I was working for were rather decent to me. Some people had a simply frightful time – in camps and so forth, but our family was – well, they were just ordinary people, you know, in wartime. Only we all had to work terribly hard, and there was never very much food – we were luckier than most, because there’s always food on a farm, isn’t there? – but Germany was fearfully hungry, at the end of the War.’
‘I suppose it must have been,’ said Margot. She thought back to last year. Margarine and no cake and rationing and queues at the fishmonger’s. ‘I mean, we were blockading them, weren’t we? That was the point.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Harry. ‘But if you’d been there... I mean, people were starving. And of course, no one wants to give food to prisoners of war when children are dying. I don’t suppose I would either, if it were Prissy and Mabel...’
‘No,’ said Margot thoughtfully.
‘So I was in pretty bad shape when I came home. Better than many people were, but still... the doctor chappie said I was run-down, and packed me off to the Isle of Wight to a convalescent home with a whole lot of soldiers. That was rather grim.’
He pulled a face. Margot said, ‘Oh, why?’
‘Well... You know what soldiers are like – or maybe you don’t? It’s all jaw jaw jaw about the War, and people they know, and campaigns they were in and how fearful it all was. One feels rather a fool when one spent the whole War at school or starving on a dairy farm in Bavaria.’
‘That does sound rather beastly.’ Margot smiled at him. She was remembering all the things she liked about him. She knew exactly what he meant about the soldiers – all Stephen’s subaltern friends, talking endlessly about the War.