A Quiet Life(53)
They walked through to that dim, high-ceilinged dining room, where even without Mrs Last their behaviour became rather formal. The sunlight did not penetrate the room, but after they had eaten they went to get their bathing costumes and the warmth of the day came back with a shock as soon as they stepped onto the bright terrace. Sybil walked beside Laura through what had been the formal garden; the box hedges were ragged now but the elegant gestures of their lines were still apparent, holding the blown borders in a hopeful frame. Beyond a final hedge the ground suddenly dipped and gave way to a meadow with cows grazing at the further edge, which in turn gave way, under willows and long grasses, to the brown, slow-moving water of a river. Sybil threw a couple of blankets onto the grass and the three of them lay there, Sybil and Laura talking and Edward reading, the sun dappling through the willow leaves, spots shimmering in their eyes and then flicking away. They had been there for some hours when someone hallooed from the top of the meadow.
‘Giles! Thought you wouldn’t be here until tomorrow.’ Edward put down his book and sat up.
‘There was nothing doing at work today, the aeroplane we were meant to be running the new tests with got smashed up over the Channel last night. Pretty poor show.’ Giles sat down, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘Old Bales didn’t know where you’d got to, but I thought you’d be down here.’ He pulled off his undershirt and started unlacing his shoes. ‘I feel like I could sleep for a week and never look at a cathode ray again. You can’t imagine the way we have to work out there – in a bloody field, really. Hardly any time to develop the new stuff either, they’re trying to get us to fit as many planes as we can with what we’ve got. Sybil, you look like Titania in this sunshine.’
Laura couldn’t help noticing that other than a nod towards her, Giles didn’t greet her. She knew that Edward must have told him that she would be there, but he was behaving as though she was no more interesting to him than the manservant, Bales. Edward told him that they didn’t know what he was talking about, since he was always so secretive about what he was doing, but he said it in an affectionate way, looking at Giles with pleasure.
‘And even if I explained you would be too stupid to understand. It’s not Pindar, my dear Edward, it’s what our American friends call radar. I must swim – is the water freezing?’
‘Absolutely. I’ll go in with you.’
The water was not really deep enough, but both men managed to swim a bit. Laura found it odd seeing her cousin here, so comfortable in Edward’s territory. She remembered how Mrs Last had spoken of how Giles used to come here in the school vacations. She imagined them as boys, slipping down from the big house to their spot by the river, tasting the freedom from the grown-ups. It was as if even now, as adults, they felt the return of childish freedoms as they entered the river. Sybil splashed into the water too. She was built on a larger, firmer scale than Laura, her white body in its blue costume statuesque as she sat on a boulder, shaking back her hair. Laura looked at her tall, deep-breasted figure admiringly.
Afterwards they all lay again on the grass, lighting cigarettes to drive away the midges that were now rising from the water. Edward’s gaze rested as often on Giles as it did on Laura.
‘You’re getting quite a paunch there. Food good in – where did you say you were?’
Giles groaned. ‘Malvern – it’s not the food, it’s the lack of exercise. I’m just sitting on a bench all day, tabulating the bloody results. Sometimes I get into one of the aircraft and do the same in the air. You’re right, I’m turning into a pudding. I’ll be as fat as Quentin soon. Though I hear he has slimmed down – all that square-bashing.’
Laura told him he looked fine. ‘Let me take a photograph,’ she said. ‘A record of the perfect day,’ Giles said in a voice that seemed to be mocking her with its light, girlish tone. Laura had brought her camera with her, and she picked it up and set the shutter speed low for the light that was now falling more obliquely over the meadow. Even though she had only used the Leica a few times, she had beginner’s luck that day. The photographs stayed with her through all the roaming years. From time to time, in Washington, in Patsfield, in Geneva, she would come across them: there was Sybil, her upright posture, her blonde hair almost white; there were the boys lounging beside her on the grass, the willow tree a blurred frame in the background. Edward’s looks did not transfer as well as Laura had expected onto celluloid, but there he was, pale hair falling across his forehead, showing off the legacy that school sports had bequeathed him in his broad shoulders and muscular arms. The shutter fell, their glances froze.
That night Toby and Mrs Last were there for supper, and the table seemed to fall naturally into two halves: at one end Laura, Edward and Giles; at the other Toby, his mother and Sybil. Giles and Toby were easy talkers, and their burbling conversation needed little stimulus. It was about food, and then it was about Churchill’s character, and then it was about the weather, and then it was about Toby’s chances of promotion: topics ranged from the large to the small, but always continued with ease. Mrs Last joined in too, handing down her judgements, but the other women and Edward said little.
Laura was quite content to concentrate on what she was eating. She liked the solid, English food: boiled gammon, peas and potatoes in buttter, followed by berry crumble and thick cream. Out here, there was no sign of the privations that affected wartime London, and Mrs Last was pleased to discuss at length with Toby how well the home farm was doing that summer. Once the dinner was finished and they went through to the drawing room, Laura made an effort to join the conversation, but at one point she said something about how bright the stars were tonight – the curtains were open and they could see the studded sky over the hills – and Giles said, again in that breathy tone, that they made him feel so small. She realised she was being mocked again, although she wasn’t sure why, and after that she lapsed into silence.