A Quiet Life(80)

Laura knew that Edward would shine, as he always did, with his inside knowledge of the powerful players in British government. But he simply forked up another piece of duck, and said in a rather toneless voice, ‘There’s an inevitability about the way things are moving.’

Kit said something about Halifax’s point of view being moulded by his own career, and when Tom asked him what he meant, he explained that Halifax had once run India.

‘I heard someone say that the Indians are the biggest problem that Britain will face after the war,’ Tom said.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Edward said in his slow manner. ‘You don’t have any problem with your Indians, of course. You killed them all.’

For a moment Laura did not pick up the extraordinary rudeness of his statement, as it was delivered with such diffidence, but when she did she turned to Mother and said, ‘It was so lovely going out sailing today. You should try it before you go. It’s a pity we never learned to sail.’

‘There are so many things we didn’t learn,’ said Ellen. ‘I can’t even play tennis.’

‘I always wish I’d learned to play the piano,’ said Laura, but she was only talking for the sake of it, trying to move the conversation away from her husband.

The next morning the light seemed to have shifted up to a different wattage. Was it just her hangover that made it so ferociously bright, Laura wondered as she drew back the curtains? Over breakfast Tom insisted that everyone should come out to swim that day. The preparations seemed to take so much time and so much discussion about what was needed, from Janet’s hat to bottles of lemonade. It was a little way, just far enough to feel tiresome to walk, to the beach that was good for swimming, and each of them felt as though they were carrying too heavy a load.

This time Laura went into the sea, walking into the great greenish waves until they reached her shoulders, and swam until the cold clamped her chest too fiercely. Even in the sunlight, the ocean water was freezing at depth. She swam back in and walked up the sand, shuddering.

‘Your mouth is blue,’ said Ellen, who was beached in a deckchair. Laura flung herself down on a towel, and looked back into the rinsing sea, and saw Edward swimming further out than all the others, right into the horizon that was too bright to look at. He came out last, when everyone else was already lying on towels and deckchairs under the three big beach umbrellas pushed into the sand. As he came towards them, he seemed transfigured by his swim. There were droplets running all over his shoulders and his hair was slicked back; he was framed in light.

For the first time since leaving London, Laura felt the cloud of war lift from her. Was it going to be all right, would peace inflect their lives again, in a country ready to re-dedicate itself to comfort? The sky was high and silent, and all along the shore they could see families playing in places they had known from childhood.

‘Would you like to build a sandcastle?’ Edward asked little Janet. She was too shy to reply at first, and it surprised Laura, who had never seen him with a child before, when Edward took her spade and started to mark out and dig a moat. Then Janet responded with pleasure, toddling up and down to the water with her bucket. ‘It won’t stay in the moat, wait till the tide comes up,’ Ellen admonished her. Laura began to sort the stones beneath her fingers, picking out white ones for the castle walls. Smooth, rough, small, big, the pebbles fell through her fingers in their uncountable diversity.

The sun began to strike fiercely at their faces, and Laura rummaged in her bag for a hat. It was a big straw hat that she had borrowed from Ellen, having nothing suitable herself, and unexpectedly Edward bent under it and touched her nose. ‘I believe you’re getting freckles,’ he said. As they walked up the beach back to the house for lunch, Janet put her hand into Laura’s: a sudden shock of sweetness, this touch of small fingers.

After lunch, Tom insisted on tennis, and Laura remembered Edward and Giles playing at Sutton, and recognised echoes of the upper class from England to America – serious about their games, honing what they thought was character with boats and bats and rackets. As she sat with Ellen and Mother and Janet, she heard the men laughing as they reached for the balls and argued over points. She walked over to watch them and saw that now Edward seemed to have lost some of the weight he was carrying, he and the others were as full of their physicality as children. But it was not childish, she knew; there was status at stake as they drove the balls to one another, and she was disproportionately glad that her husband was prepared to join in these games that were only superficially trivial.

After the game Edward looked at her, his eyes crinkling around the edges. They went hurriedly upstairs, and before dressing for dinner made hungry love. What did it remind her of, the absolute surrender to his sun-warmed body? Lying there in the aftermath, she remembered. ‘It’s like that summer at Sutton in the phoney war,’ she said.

‘It’s always the phoney war,’ Edward said, and his words were enigmatic to her.

‘Why were you so awful last night?’

Edward looked puzzled. He had got out of bed and was standing naked by the closet, looking for a clean shirt. ‘Was I?’

‘Don’t wear a tie tonight—’

‘You have to wear a tie with a shirt like this.’

‘Please. You sounded so distracted last night.’

‘Was I? I’m sorry if I wasn’t much fun. I’ll be more on top of things tonight. Washington tires you out. It’s the heat, I think, and—’