A Quiet Life(17)

Fire


London, 1939–1945


1


The first time Laura really spoke to her aunt was at breakfast the next morning. She was too tired when she got in to do much more than accept a cup of horribly strong tea and go early to bed. She woke with a jump, in a room heavily curtained against any light. Sitting up in bed and switching on the lamp beside her, she noted, as she had the previous evening, the solidity of her surroundings. Nothing here seemed new, or bright, or flimsy. Everything was covered in a patina of soft browns and greens, and as she pulled back the drapes the cloudy light falling through the window hardly seemed to illuminate the room.

Her watch had stopped in the night, and she found it hard to tell whether it was time to get up or not. After waiting a while she got dressed and made her way downstairs, and was relieved to find her aunt in the living room, reading a letter. Over breakfast they continued the conversation they had started the previous night, in which Aunt Dee seemed to be trying to build up a picture of their life in the States, and yet was hardly listening to Laura’s replies. Laura felt throughout that she was rather a puzzle to her aunt and thought how much easier it would all be if Ellen were with her. ‘I must send a telegram,’ she said suddenly, remembering. ‘I promised Mother that I would – to say I’d arrived safely.’

‘I did that last night, dear, don’t worry,’ said Aunt Dee. ‘I knew how Polly would worry. Sending you off on your own like this.’ Laura caught a disapproving tone in her voice and was glad when she heard the quick step on the stairs that meant her cousin Winifred had got up. She came in with a citrus scent of cologne and a demand for more coffee. A tall, angular girl with fair hair and red lipstick, she seemed to jar against that room of sombre tones.

‘Now,’ she said as she drank her coffee. ‘What to do this morning?’

Aunt Dee started to say that she hoped the girls would stay in quietly and do some reading, but Winifred shrugged her off, suggesting a walk and telling her with some impatience that of course they wouldn’t be late back for lunch. ‘Ten to one, we’ll be back before Giles gets here. We’re not going on an expedition, you know. Tomorrow, we can go into town, but now – I’ll get my coat.’

Laura was glad that Winifred was so insistent they should go out; she had seen nothing of Highgate on arrival the previous day. But as they walked down the streets, Laura only thought how subdued the edge of this city was, how the brick houses with their many-paned windows, set back behind their hedges, drew away from your gaze, closing in on themselves. They soon came to a large park, almost monochrome in this dim January light, which Winifred called the Heath. It stretched uninvitingly into the distance. Laura suddenly realised that a question was hanging in the air. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Just wondered if it was like that – the crossing?’

Laura had missed the comparison that Winifred had made, but did her best to describe the journey. She had not until that point decided to keep Florence and her conversations a secret, but something in her held back; the effect that Florence had had on her perhaps reached too deeply into experiences that she had never spoken about, feelings that she was nervous of exposing to Winifred’s quick questions. And so she found herself mentioning Maisie instead, and the trip into first class, and Joe Segal, and how they had danced together on the last evening, and then she remembered the woman in the white swimming costume, the woman in the scarlet hat – what had her name been? ‘I think she was called Lady Reynolds,’ she remembered.

‘Amy Parker?’ Winifred said with interest. ‘Giles knows her – or, well, doesn’t know her exactly, obviously.’

Laura didn’t understand how it would be obvious to know and yet not know her. It was only later that she came to see the way Amy sat at the centre of so many circles, how many and various her satellites were. But she was glad of Winifred’s sudden spark of interest, and so she tried to recall everything that she had seen and heard of Amy. In return, Winifred told her about the speculation in the press about her marriage. While the girls’ own lives were still dark to one another, Amy seemed to stand revealed and, in their comments on her, which moved from the admiring to the moralising, they hinted at their own desires.

After that the conversation led on to other things, but they felt more warmly now towards one another. Winifred mentioned how much she liked Laura’s coat, and Laura expressed her interest in shopping with Winifred in London. ‘I have an allowance now,’ she said, almost wonderingly.

‘Mother said that Grandfather’s legacy would make a big difference to Aunt Polly – I’m sorry, that’s an awfully crass thing to say,’ said Winifred, but Laura was rather relieved that the subject had been broached and admitted to her, as if it were a mild joke rather than a humiliating shame, that it was odd for her to have money to spend.

By this time they had walked up a steep hill, and Laura felt she should say something about the view, which was confusingly vast, layer upon layer of buildings laid out under the hazy light, but still and quiet on this Sunday afternoon, and so, with an exclamation, she stopped. Winifred asked her about Boston, and Laura tried to explain that they lived far away from the city – ‘Stairbridge is a small town, way west of Boston’ – but she saw that Winifred, like Aunt Dee, was not really much interested.