‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to discomfort you.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ She dared her eyes to remain on his face. His expression was friendly, but there was a wariness there too, something kept back. She swallowed. ‘It’s good to see you. And I really am very grateful—’
‘My pleasure.’ He bowed his head. Then, ‘It’s good to see you too.’
She blushed. Were they – surely he couldn’t expect to have the whole conversation now? He couldn’t – not with James there? Could he?
‘Are you – I was sorry to hear you were ill. I hope you’re quite recovered?’
Now she was doing it too!
‘Oh yes, quite.’
A small pause. They were at the edge of the green.
‘And who’s this? A new brother?’
So he definitely didn’t know. She wasn’t sure how well-kept a secret it was, if at all. Her parents knew, of course, and her friend Mary, and Jos and Stephen. But what about the servants? Had her parents told any of their friends? Surely, surely they must have done?
Sometimes Margot thought that nobody knew – other times that half the village was maintaining a polite fiction of ignorance. Was this a test? But Harry’s face betrayed nothing but mild interest.
He’s your son.
She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. She stared at him, gaping, then said, all in a rush, ‘Oh – yes – I mean. This is James. He’s – yes. James.’
‘Hullo, James.’
He’d always been good with small children, better than she was, really. Ruth and Ernest had adored him.
She should just tell him.
‘And you? Are you keeping well?’
No, they were just going to talk as though they were in a drawing room. He was going to ask about the weather in a minute.
‘Oh! Very well, thank you. I’m a typist now, if you can believe that.’
He made a polite noise that began as agreement, then reversed as he realised his mistake, and ended as a sort of amused confusion.
‘Mmm... aaahhmm... Mh.’
She giggled. He flashed her a sudden, wonderful smile, bright as poppies in a cornfield.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just... it’s good to see you.’
‘You already said that.’
‘Well. Well, so it is.’
They were turning onto the road which led to the vicarage. She could see curious eyes watching them from the front garden. Ruth and Ernest, halfway up the apple tree. Curse them! What were they doing outside in this rain? She slowed, instinctively trying to prolong the walk. If only she hadn’t hurried so at the beginning! Except... with Ruth’s frankly curious gaze upon her, she found she could think of nothing to say. At least... nothing you could ask with those awful infants there.
Damn him! Damn them!
‘It’s awful really,’ she said quickly, desperate to say something that was real at least, something that didn’t belong in a drawing room. ‘I work in a foul school full of dreadful girls. I abhor it.’
They were at the gate. Ruth and Ernest came sliding down the tree and surged down the path like puppies.
‘Harry!’
‘Harry Singer!’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Are you coming in?’
‘Goodness, it’s wet!’
‘Do come in – we’re about to have luncheon.’
‘Do come, Harry, and tell us all about being a captive.’
‘Was it ghastly?’
She could strangle them.
James was tugging on her sleeve.
‘Too wet, Margot. Too wet!’
Harry was detaching himself from the infants with apologies and sixpences and an armful of brown-paper parcels each. James was wriggling out of her arms, his furious little head shaking hair into her eyes. Her mother appeared at the doorway and his face collapsed again, into that perfect, mouth-open picture of infant grief. Margot’s mother scooped him up and shhed him, the expression on her face at comical odds with the gentle motion of her hands.
‘There you are! Goodness, Margot, I thought you’d kidnapped him! Where on earth did you go? I sent Ruth and Ernest down to the duckpond, they said you were nowhere in sight.’
‘We just – I just – and then...’
She turned to Harry, hoping to salvage something of the situation.
But he was gone.
Glory Days
Mummy! Margot and Harry were talking and she won’t tell us what he said!’
The children burst into luncheon more-than-usually full of energy. Really, how did Mother cope with them?
‘He didn’t say anything beyond the usual pleasantries,’ said Margot stiffly. ‘And you two should keep your noses out of other people’s businesses.’
‘I’m going to be a lady detective when I grow up,’ said Ruth. ‘So I have to put my nose in people’s business. Are you still engaged? Are you going to get married? Oh goody, cottage pie! My favourite! Didn’t he look dashing? Don’t you think he’s dashing, Margot?’
‘I think little girls should eat their dinner and stop talking such nonsense,’ said their mother.
Ruth looked indignant.
‘It isn’t—’
‘And I’ve got some news that will interest you big girls,’ their mother continued. ‘The Hendersons are having a ball at New Year.’
Immediate, rapturous attention from Ruth. Pleasant surprise, despite herself, from Margot, and an expression of vague horror from Jocelyn. Only Ernest continued chewing his green beans with an air of indifference. (James was eating upstairs with Doris.) The Hendersons lived in the big house in the village. They were nominally part of her father’s parish, though in practice they only appeared in church on feast days. The vicar sat on several local committees with Mr Henderson, and Basil Henderson had been married in his church, in a great rush two weeks before the Battle of the Somme. ‘Their first ball since the War. I expect you older children will be invited.’
‘Heavens,’ said Margot. ‘What on earth will we wear?’
Clothes were always a problem in the vicarage. Their father might be nominally a gentleman, and expected to send his sons to public school, but he earned comparatively little. Margot and her sisters had spent their childhoods in hand-me-downs from various relations, and party dresses made of their mother’s cut-down ballgowns. Their mother was the youngest daughter of a country squire, and had led what always seemed like a wonderfully glamorous late-Victorian adolescence, attending hunt balls and country house parties, before settling tamely for their father and a draughty vicarage, and a life of missionary teas and Sunday School catechisms and leaking oil-stoves and rising damp.
She studied Margot now with cool appraisal.
‘You might fit into my blue taffeta. It would be worth a try. I expect Jocelyn will get away with your old grey velvet, she’s just about young enough to pull it off.’