The Gown(58)

“No, thank you. I had better be on my way.”

“I don’t like the idea of your walking on your own.”

“There’s a cab rank on Shaftesbury Avenue. Would you mind walking me there?”

“Not one whit, but only if you first promise to have dinner with me next week.” He reached across the table and set his hand atop hers, and if he noticed how short her nails were, or how rough her skin felt, he was kind enough not to comment on it. “Please?”

“I would like that,” she answered, her heart racing, and it was true.

He pulled out a little gilt-edged pocket diary, its cover embossed with the monogram JMT, and leafed through its pages. “I’m away for a bit, but I’ll be back by the twenty-first. Perhaps the twenty-fourth? It’s a Wednesday. And will you let me take you somewhere smart? I don’t mean a dinner-jacket-and-gown sort of smart. Just a proper restaurant with menus and bottles of claret that don’t taste like bilge water. Quaglino’s would be perfect. I’d take you to my club, but the ladies’ dining room isn’t terribly nice. And of course the food at Quag’s is second to none. I could collect you—”

Quaglino’s. Even she had heard of the place. “No. It would be easier for me to meet you. What time should I be there?”

“Say eight o’clock? Or is that too late?”

“No, that’s fine.”

He paid their bill, ignoring her when she asked if she might contribute, and walked her down to the line of waiting cabs. Turning to face him, she held out her hand so he’d have to shake it. She wasn’t ready for anything more, not yet, and certainly not in public.

“I had a lovely time,” he said. “You still have my card? Just in case anything comes up? If you get my sister again, please don’t mind. Just ring again a bit later, and with any luck I’ll be there to answer.”

“I will. Thank you for supper.”

She got into the car, and waited until Jeremy had shut the door and stepped away before she confessed the truth of her destination to the driver. “I only need to go to the Tube station at Tottenham Court Road. I’m sorry it’s not farther.”

“No trouble at all, luv.”

She was home by half-past eight. Miriam walked through the door a half hour later, and rather than go up to bed they sat in the kitchen with cups of tea and discussed their respective evenings out.

“We went to a public house near Walter’s office. He had to go back to work, so it was easiest to meet nearby. We had something called a Lancashire hotpot.” Miriam wrinkled her nose at the memory. “I think that was the name. It tasted of nothing. I hope your supper was better.”

“Yes. We went to an Italian café, and the food was good, and he was lovely. Only . . . I’m not sure what to think. Why me? I asked him, and he said all sorts of nice things, and I mostly believed him.”

“You said he was a soldier in the war?”

“An officer, yes.”

“Could it have changed him?” Miriam asked. “Could he have decided to change?”

“Perhaps. He did get rather upset when our conversation turned to the war. And then we started talking about films and Danny Kaye. And I did get to taste spaghetti for the first time.”

They smiled at one another, and Ann sipped at her tea, and Miriam frowned over a hangnail on her thumb, then a loose thread on her sleeve, then a spot of tarnish on her teaspoon. Miriam, who never fidgeted.

“What’s wrong?” Ann asked.

“Nothing. Only . . . I have an idea for something, and I am not sure how to go about it.”

“Another dish of your grandmother’s? That chicken you made was wonderful. I wouldn’t mind if—”

“No. Nothing like that,” Miriam said, her gaze focused on the empty table between them. “I want to paint a picture, only I don’t know how to paint, or draw, or even properly describe what I see. But when I close my eyes it is there . . .”

“I never learned how to draw properly, but I still like to scribble in my sketchbook when I’ve a few minutes to spare. You can have some of the paper from it, and I’ve got a set of colored pencils. We could sit here and draw and listen to the Light Programme.”

“Are you certain? I do not wish to waste your paper.”

“It’s not a waste if it’s something you enjoy.”

Her worries over Jeremy melting away, Ann fetched her sketchbook and pencils and the two women settled down to their pastime. Soon she was so absorbed by the gown she was imagining, a variation on Doris’s wedding dress, only with short sleeves and garlands of pastel embroidery at the hem and neckline, that she was surprised to hear the familiar introduction to the news.

“I can’t believe it—ten o’clock already. We ought to—”

Miriam had set down her pencil; she, too, had been working steadily for the past hour. But she hadn’t drawn a gown, nor a design for embroidery, nor anything Ann might have expected.

A group of people stood around a table, their faces indistinct, though the details of the room about them were rendered with some care. A man at the head of the table held a cup, his hands raised high. The men were all wearing hats, which was strange as they were indoors.

No—not hats. Caps. Small, round caps on the crowns of their heads. She stared at the picture Miriam had created, and somewhere in the background she could still hear the news on the wireless, and then she knew. How had she not known, before?