A Quiet Life(39)

She opened the door of the bedroom, and there was a young girl on the other side. ‘Sorry—’ they both said automatically. ‘Mrs Last asked me to come and help you,’ said the girl, and Laura realised that this must be the maid. She was either absurdly young or tiny for her age, so that her dress looked too big for her. She showed Laura to the bathroom and when Laura came back, there she was, standing by the fireplace, looking as lost as Laura felt.

Laura asked the girl, Edna, what she should wear that evening and together they looked at her clothes. ‘I’d wear that,’ the maid said at last, pointing at a rayon jersey dress in deep crimson. ‘Do you really think it’s all right?’ Laura asked, but Edna could not bring herself to say yes. ‘I think it’s the best one of these,’ she said. Young and untried as she was, even Edna could obviously see Laura was not really part of this milieu. Her presence made Laura feel even more ill at ease, and she was glad when the girl went away to run her a bath.

The low spirits persisted as she went back downstairs to join Sybil and Mrs Last. They had been joined by another couple, whose names Laura did not catch in her confusion. ‘The boys have just come in, they’ll be down soon,’ she heard Mrs Last say to the others, and just as she said that the door opened and Laura was caught by the gaze that she now saw when she was falling asleep at night, every night.

Over dinner Laura was separated from Edward, sitting between Toby and the other man, and the conversation of the table was dominated by local gossip. There was a great deal of discussion about what would happen to the house for the duration of the war. Apparently this was part of a conversation that had been going on for months: whether Mrs Last would have to take in evacuees, whether the house would be requisitioned for a hospital or training camp, and what effect this would have on Sutton Court itself. Laura was struck by the tone of the conversation, which disguised bitter complaint under a pretence of being game for anything. It was a tone she had already heard a great deal of in London. ‘Of course we are prepared to do anything …’ Mrs Last kept saying, ‘but it does seem a pity if …’ And everyone kept agreeing with her, telling her that it was an awful shame that Sutton might be spoilt, and how sad it was that the garden was already being ploughed up, and how the evacuees in the village didn’t appreciate anything at all that was done for them.

The dinner was served by the elderly man who had driven Laura to the house, and Edna, the very young girl who had helped her in her bedroom. Their presence threw the complaints of the diners into sharper relief, Laura thought – though she was aware that it might only be her consciousness of what Florence would say if she were there that made her think that. Laura knew about the custom of the women leaving the dining table before the men, but after dinner everyone moved back into the drawing room together, and Mrs Last clicked on the wireless, as everyone always did nowadays, evening after evening after evening.

There was little to add to the previous day’s news of the capitulation of Finland, and as the light died in the garden and the little maid drew the curtains across the French windows, the wireless was turned off. For a moment Laura saw them as a huddled, scared group, gathered on the faded sofas, intent on one another as the world collapsed outside, but then her vision cleared and she saw the youth and beauty of Sybil and Toby and Edward, the confidence of the older people and the solidity of the room’s gracious lines. The double vision that was induced by news of the war often took her like that, bringing on a transitory clouding of her mind.

‘You’ll play?’ A game had been suggested, the kind of thing that Laura was not very familiar with but had played a couple of times with Winifred and Aunt Dee. Everyone had to think of a character to be, real or fictional, and then others would ask them questions that could only be answered with yes or no. Laura was at a great disadvantage in such games, not sharing any of the literature and lore that the others took for granted. But when Alice’s cat, Peter Pan, Antigone, Demosthenes and Pitt the Younger had been unmasked, there was only Laura and Edward left in the game. ‘He’s a he, a real person, dead, foreign, not a king or queen, has written books, not a book that is in this house, books that we are unlikely to have read, books we are certain to have heard of,’ said Toby, counting off on his fingers the answers to the questions that had been asked of Edward.

‘Are you Karl Marx?’ Laura asked, surprising no one as much as herself, and Edward nodded.

‘Jolly well done, Laura,’ Toby said in a hearty voice, obviously trying to encourage her. ‘Now your turn, come on, what do we know about you? A woman, fictional, not in a book, not played by a famous movie star, never seen on stage.’

‘We give up,’ Sybil said, and Laura felt a kind of rebuke that she had not chosen something more knowable.

‘Betty Boop,’ she said, and was not surprised to see a look of bemusement cross Mrs Last’s face. After that, Mrs Last said she didn’t feel like more games and the conversation became stilted, until Sybil stood up, yawning, and said she would go to bed. She was wearing a strangely cut dress in green and yellow, with long sleeves and a wide skirt; not quite an evening dress, but nothing Laura could imagine wearing during the day either. The other couple stood up too, saying something about seeing everyone at church tomorrow, and the good nights were all general. Laura felt the cue too, and stood, but she noticed that Toby and Edward were not leaving the room. Rooted, holding their drinks, it was as though they felt called to an audience with their mother, who was still sitting on one of the sofas, her knees and ankles pressed together, one finger moving up and down her pearl necklace as she said good night to everyone.