‘Fran’ was their shared maternal grandmother, Frances Graham, always called ‘Fran’. Hugh, in extreme youth, had confused ‘Gran’ with ‘Fran’ and a very ungrandmotherly woman had preferred to be ‘Fran’ to all her grandchildren.
‘Fran’s all for our getting married,’ said Corinna. ‘But she favoured an experimental period.’
‘One gathers she had an experimental youth.’
They had never even discussed the possibility of an experiment. Always, always they had been determined to marry. But they’d been in no particular hurry about it. Hugh needed to consolidate his position in his uncle’s business and was pretty sure he could – in fact George, never niggardly with praise, had already made that clear. And Dickon had made it clear that he wouldn’t be joining his father. (To Dickon, the City was a dirty word.) Hugh hoped to end up as his uncle’s partner.
Corinna said, ‘Anyway, nobody can stop us marrying once we’re twenty-one.’
Hugh looked at her quickly. They would be twenty-one in less than a year. Had she then decided she wanted an early marriage? He was relieved when she went on, ‘Not that we’ll get married so soon, will we?’
‘No, indeed,’ said Hugh heartily. ‘I need to make more money and you want to have a bash at the stage.’
‘Oh, that! Sometimes I wonder if I shall even get started. No one ever gives me a word of praise. It all goes to the girls with huge noses and hacked hair.’
‘Well, your hair’s quite a bit hacked, love. Not that you don’t look very pretty.’
‘I don’t want to look pretty. Sir Harry told me that I’m invincibly an ingénue – and nowadays there aren’t any ingénue parts. I think I’ll dye my hair black.’
‘If you do, I’ll divorce you before we marry.’
He had finished unpacking and was setting out a few possessions on the dressing table. She came and stood beside him, looking at herself in the glass, and then at him. ‘Our children will certainly be blonds,’ she said. ‘Or if there’s anything in Mother’s theories, they’ll have snow-white hair.’
‘Very attractive,’ said Hugh. ‘Let’s have supper.’
‘It won’t be hot yet. But we can have a drink – unless Mother’s taken it all down to the country.’
They found some sherry and drank it while Corinna laid the kitchen table and ground coffee beans.
‘Why not Nescafé?’ said Hugh. ‘Saves so much trouble.’
‘Mother says all instant coffee tastes of Bovril. Nonsense, really. I’ll ask Mrs Whatsit to get us some.’
‘Isn’t it time you stopped calling her Mrs Whatsit – after all these years? One day you’ll do it to her face.’
‘Oh, we do – didn’t you know? She likes it. That’s because Father did it once by accident and then made a joke of it. She adores him. Like so many women, one rather fears.’ Corinna’s tone had become worldly-wise.
Hugh made no comment. He couldn’t, with honesty, refute the implied criticism of his uncle and had too much grateful affection for him to endorse it.
The telephone rang.
‘That’ll be Dickon,’ said Corinna, answering the call at the kitchen extension. But she found herself talking to her mother, who sounded extremely cheerful.
‘Darling, are you all right? Has Hugh come?’
‘Yes, of course I’m all right, and he has. We’re just going to have supper.’
‘Put some sherry in that casserole – Mrs Whatsit always forgets. Oh, I wish you were both here. Everything’s marvellous. We’re all celebrating with champagne.’
‘Lucky you.’ Corinna intended to sound politely envious.
‘Well, you must celebrate too. I’ve left plenty of wine for you. – What, George?… Your father says you’re not to get tight.’
‘We won’t,’ Corinna assured her mother.
‘No, of course you won’t. It was a joke, darling.’
Corinna then listened while her mother described the move in full, sent messages to Mrs Whatsit and the Hall Porter at the flats, and ascertained what train Corinna and Hugh would be coming by next day. Considerable laughter could be heard on the telephone and May several times said, ‘What did you say, darling?’ when Corinna hadn’t said a word. May finally ended the conversation by saying, ‘Love to Hugh. And mind you have a good time.’
Corinna, hanging up, said, ‘Mother seems to have gone terribly young. And she was using her talking-to-America voice like when she talked to Fran last week. Fran told her not to shout.’
‘When’s Fran coming back?’
‘Not till May.’ Corinna got the casserole from the oven and dutifully put some sherry in it, then said, ‘Do you want to bother with wine?’
‘Might as well. Though I believe I like the idea of wine better than the wine itself.’
Corinna, not wishing to put him off, refrained from saying it didn’t mean a thing to her, either way. It was one of the occasions when she was reminded of how much more luxurious her upbringing had been than his had. As children they had called their respective families the Clares and the Poor Clares – but had had the tact to keep this from their parents.
They settled down to supper at last and greatly enjoyed it. Corinna, over their second glass of wine, said, ‘It is fun that I can have you here at the flat. It’s almost as if we were married, isn’t it?’
She had mentioned marriage again and now he felt sure she wasn’t speaking casually. She was looking at him intently. Was it that she already knew she’d no chance as an actress and therefore wanted an early marriage? If so, of course he would agree – he couldn’t conceivably deny her anything he was able to give her. He looked at her with love and said, ‘Darling, are you sure you wouldn’t like to be married soon? It could be managed. Uncle George could persuade Aunt May – or we could elope to Gretna Green.’
She laughed delightedly. ‘Would Mother come chasing after us? No; I’m sure we’re wise to wait quite a while before we marry. But if you should ever find the waiting difficult…’
She gave him a blue-eyed, questioning stare which he found disturbing. Never before had she even hinted… and it was now more than a hint surely, more like an invitation. And that nightgown… Good God, he’d been bloody simple, imagining it was early marriage she wanted. And he mustn’t, he simply mustn’t humiliate her.
He said, untruthfully, ‘Darling Corinna, of course I find it hard to wait. I thought you wanted us to – and I thought you were right. But if you ever change your mind, we needn’t wait – not even another minute.’
She was instantly happy, now she knew he was willing.
‘Well, at least let’s have coffee first,’ she said gaily, springing up to clear away the plates. Then she added seriously, ‘I was only thinking of you, darling, truly.’
‘Then you want things to go on as they are?’
She brought the percolator and some peppermint creams to the table. ‘I do, if you do.’
‘And I do, if you do.’
‘But if we change our minds – either of us – it’s all right?’
‘Fully understood.’ He now thought he had misinterpreted her look of invitation – and the nightgown. Anyway, all he could actually see was the negligée.
‘But let’s try to go on being idealists – if that’s what we are.’
‘Most people these days would call us freaks,’ said Hugh. ‘Anyway, good luck to us.’
Happy though he was that she required neither early marriage nor instant seduction, he was a little sad that they had merely talked round the subject, not discussed it frankly. People who loved each other as they did ought to be able to share their thoughts fully. He hadn’t fully shared his with her and he doubted if she’d fully shared hers with him. Why not? Embarrassment, fear of hurting each other…Well, at least she was looking happy.
As indeed she was, having made sure of his availability. She hadn’t dared count on it because, much as he disliked being called Little St Hugh, he always had been very good. Darling Hugh, to put his feelings fo
r her before his principles. And she didn’t really want him to seduce her. It was just that if Sir Harry and her fellow students kept putting ideas into her head, one never quite knew… and sometimes one did get a bit worked up. Well, she wasn’t worked up now. She was happy and peaceful, as she always was with darling Hugh.
They drank their coffee and ate expensive peppermint creams, radiating love and cherishing inner secrecy. Soon the telephone rang.
Corinna said, ‘This’ll be Dickon.’
Dickon was telephoning from his headmaster’s study which could be borrowed in the evenings by pupils who wished to telephone their families. Prudence, perched on the desk, was amusing herself by switching the desk light off and on. When it was off, she could see, through the wide picture-window, the moon rising over Buckinghamshire countryside. When she switched on, the room became cosily intimate. There was a smell of pipe smoke, tweed, and pine soap which Prudence found pleasant. At ten years old she had been in love with Brian Foster. Now, a mature fifteen, she sniffed his room nostalgically.
Dickon, having been assured by Corinna that he and Prue could have the flat for the next night, said, ‘Though if you’d rather not clear out we could all doss down together. You and Prue could share the parents’ bed and Hugh could have your room.’
Corinna said, ‘Thanks, but I’m not wild to share a double bed, even with Prue.’
Prue, her ear now close to the telephone, interpolated loudly, ‘Me, neither. Nasty things, double beds.’
‘The parents have got new twin beds at the Dower House,’ said Corinna.
‘Marriage breaking up, no doubt,’ said Dickon. ‘We must beg them not to make us children of a broken home.’
‘Ha, ha,’ said Corinna satirically. ‘I wonder why so many boys get facetious when they turn fifteen.’
‘Quite true,’ said Dickon. ‘I have a sort of nervous itch to be funny. But I’m on to it.’
‘Good for you. Any exciting school news?’
‘Well, exciting for some. We’re having a tiny sex-wave.’
‘Oh, dear. Does Brian know?’
‘Yes, indeed. He’s torn between notifying parents and doling out contraceptives. Actually, there have only been two cases but it may be catching.’
‘I never heard of anything like that in our time. Just a minute… Hugh says neither did he.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t, either of you. To the pure, all things are pure.’
‘Who are you calling pure?’ said Corinna indignantly.
‘You, love – and Hugh. Ever so, both of you. Well, shall we catch a glimpse of you tomorrow?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Corinna. ‘I’ll leave the key with the Hall Porter. Hope you enjoy the National Theatre.’
‘I shall enjoy it more when you’re its leading lady.’
‘Facetious again,’ said Corinna coldly. ‘Well, goodbye.’
Dickon, hanging up, said, ‘She sounded peeved by my last remark.’
‘I don’t wonder. She thought you were making fun of her.’
‘I suppose I was, really. Well, we both know she can’t act.’
‘We don’t know anything of the sort. The fact that she wants to so much may mean something.’
‘Only that she got taken to a good many theatres when she was young and impressionable.’
‘So did you and you don’t want to act.’
‘Ah, but I’m not impressionable,’ said Dickon. ‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind doing something on television, documentaries or the like. I’d try if I had Hugh’s looks.’
Dickon resembled his father, without as yet enough personality to make an ordinary face interesting.
‘I wouldn’t want to act even if I turned into a raving beauty.’
‘Which one doubts if you will,’ said Dickon judicially. ‘But you won’t be too bad when you’ve slimmed down a bit. I don’t actually dislike red hair. We’d better go. Brian, in his new, suspicious mood will think we’re up to something.’
‘Not us, surely. He’s always saying we’re like brother and sister.’
‘He said that about Hugh and Corinna – lulling Mother into a state of false security. Whereas even before they left here they were mooning around looking like star-crossed lovers.’
‘Why star-crossed?’
‘Because they were so good and so beautiful. You know it’s pretty ironic that Mother chose a co-educational school for us four to stop us falling in love with each other. She told me that.’
‘Well, it’s a sound idea on the whole,’ said Prudence. ‘You can’t count Hugh and Corinna, because they’ve loved each other from birth. Oh, I know there are flukes like our mini-sex wave but, for the average child, co-education’s wildly unromantic. I haven’t felt a spasm of attraction for anyone since my first term, and then it was for Brian.’
‘Good God, how repulsive,’ said Dickon. ‘Well, let’s get back to your ex-heart-throb.’
Prudence switched the desk light off and took one last nostalgic sniff at the room. Then they rejoined their Headmaster, who was presiding over a debate on ‘We can preserve law and order while preserving the complete liberty of the individual’. Dickon intended to speak against the motion. Prudence intended to consider Brian carefully, in case any spark lingered in the ashes. She didn’t feel hopeful.
5
Whenever June looked back on their early days in the country she remembered sunshine, vividly green grass, budding trees, wonderful meals and much laughter – even when things went wrong, they went wrong amusingly. All this, in retrospect, was jumbled together in a vague blur of happiness; she found she could not recall very many actual days, they merged into each other. But there was one day – or rather, night – which she could recapture in detail and often did, thinking of it as a trend-setter for the weeks that followed.
That particular night was their first. She would always remember George and Robert and Baggy coming out of the spring evening into the white panelled hall of the Dower House. George had kissed her and admired her dress, and Robert – not always so tactful – had admired May’s. Then they had all escorted Baggy to see his bed-sitting-room which he had said was very impressive; after which, having taken the cushion-piled divan for a sofa, he had asked where the bed was. May had whipped off the divan cover to show him, and George had bounced on the divan to demonstrate its softness, and then they had left Baggy to have a wash in his very own bathroom, and trooped off to the Long Room.
George had called for champagne which, of course, May had ready. (She’d said to June, ‘He’s sure to want to celebrate – and whether he does or not, I do.’) And they had toasted each other and their new homes, and George and Robert had been given a full account of the whole day. Then there had been a telephone call to Hugh and Corinna, followed by conversation about what those two might be up to, the general impression being that they wouldn’t be up to anything, in spite of May’s half-hopes to the contrary – ‘Well, there’s a chance that it might stop them marrying.’ June said she was shocked by May’s attitude and they all discussed present-day permissiveness. June said she was as permissive as anyone about other people’s children but not about her own – ‘or perhaps it’s just that I feel it’s awful to talk about it, somehow it’s an invasion of their privacy’. She was then given more champagne by George who said, ‘I bet the four of us would have been permissive all right, if there had been anything to stop us getting married as soon as we wanted to.’ But it turned out that George was alone in thinking this.
After that, someone had remembered that Baggy was all alone and George went to get him. He drank very little of his champagne and June told May that cocoa was his evening drink. Cocoa was one of the things May had not brought with her, but she had some cooking chocolate and was able not only to make Baggy a cup of it but also supply him with a Thermosful to see him through the night. She also cut foie gras sandwiches for everyone. June disapproved of these because of the poor tortured geese but, for once, swallowed her scruples along with the foie gras.
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May chivvied them all to bed fairly soon because George would have to catch an early morning train; he had booked the taxi that had brought them from the station. Torches were found – trust May to have a special torch drawer, already equipped – and then George and May insisted on escorting Robert and June through the lilac grove; May had by now learned her way about this. In the torchlight, the grassy paths were brilliantly green, here and there sprinkled with lingering snowdrops. And out on the little lawn in front of the cottage, the daffodil shoots were already thick.
‘How marvellous everything’s going to be,’ said May.
‘How marvellous everything is now,’ said June.
George told Robert he ought to carry June over the threshold of the cottage.
‘What nonsense,’ said June, ‘I weigh a ton.’
‘Let’s see,’ said George, and himself carried her into the little hall.
Much laughter, much kissing goodnight. May kissed June, George kissed June, Robert kissed May – to June’s relief; Robert, unlike George, was not a natural kisser and, though fond of May, did not always pay her as much attention as June felt he should. But tonight he behaved with so much warmth that she almost expected him to kiss George.
Robert hadn’t wished to go over the cottage that night – ‘We should start shifting furniture around’ – so they’d gone straight upstairs; from the landing window they’d seen flashes of light where May and George were making their way back through the lilac grove. June was glad that the beds were made up and turned down invitingly, and she had put out Robert’s pyjamas and dressing gown.
He said, ‘How good of you to find time to unpack for me.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t have time to unpack all our clothes.’
‘Plenty of time for that tomorrow. Plenty of time for everything.’
‘Bliss, sheer bliss. Oh, Robert!’ In sudden exuberance she flung herself on him.