‘I wish. But, sadly, I don’t know any Nancys.’
‘No?’
‘Sorry I can’t help.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m just being foolish.’
‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’ Hugh chuckles. ‘How about a game of tennis to distract you?’
‘Tennis would be great.’
‘Tomorrow at eleven?’
‘Perfect.’ Martin puts down the receiver and stares out into the garden, thinking of the girl with the auburn hair.
That night, he dreams he’s back in Egypt, in the Khan el-Khalili souk, in Cairo, where his father was posted for many years as a high court judge. The air smells of spice and sweat. Crowds throng the narrow passageways. He’s jostled from side to side. Up ahead of him, he spots the girl from the post office, pushes his way through the crowds. He can see her chestnut hair up ahead of him. He starts to run. But his feet won’t move. It’s like running in quicksand.
Martin is an orphan of the Empire. His father, Arthur Sansome Preston, was a tall, flamboyant man with a long, angular face, silver moustache, and a taste for expensive clothes. He died a year ago. But even when he was alive, he was mostly absent from Martin’s life. Apart from trips together with his parents in the summer, usually to hotels in the Swiss Alps, they spent little time in each other’s company. His father’s life revolved around his work as a judge in Cairo, his racehorses, and the never-ending round of diplomatic parties. On the rare occasions they were together, they didn’t get along.
Since he was a schoolboy, Whichert House and Aunt Dorothy, his father’s sister-in-law and as unlike him in her warmth and cosy domesticity as it is possible to be, have been the fixed points of his childhood: the only place in the world he thinks of as ‘home’. Tucked away down a shady lane, with gable ends and brick chimneys, it’s a family house in the true meaning of the word, built around the turn of the century, by Aunt D.’s husband, Charles Preston, a successful lawyer with a practice in London.
Whichert – ‘white earth’ — is the name for the mixture of lime and straw used in the construction of the outer walls, a method unique to Buckinghamshire, which gives it the feeling of being, literally, part of the landscape. In the summer, the garden is a riot of flowers as bees drunk on pollen move among the blooms and the cries of ‘Roquet!’ mix with the clink of crystal goblets filled with champagne or Aunt D.’s legendary elderflower cordial.
Martin is roused from his dream by a scratching at the door. He opens his eyes, looks at his watch, then clambers out of bed, pulls on his shorts and shirt, slides his toes into the sandals then opens his bedroom door. Scamp hurls himself across the room. ‘No jumping, Scamp! Down!’
Still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Martin goes downstairs to the kitchen and fishes a stale loaf out of the bread bin in the pantry. He is home alone. Even Aunt D.’s termagant cook, Frances, is on holiday. He takes a knife and scrapes off a spot of blue mould, cuts a slice of bread, makes coffee. Black. Lots of sugar. Then he grills the bread on the Rayburn, slathers it with butter and Aunt D.’s home-made damson jam, then switches on the wireless.
The Foreign Minister, Lord Halifax, is talking about the Sudetenland. Chamberlain has just agreed to Hitler’s demand for a union with all regions in Czechoslovakia with more than a fifty per cent German population. But many people believe the crisis won’t end there. Martin listens attentively, then downs his coffee, fishes a packet of Senior Service cigarettes out of his shorts’ pocket, taps it with his finger, turns it upside down, peers into it, pulls a face.
‘Fancy a walk, old boy?’ Martin asks the dog.
Scamp races along beside the bicycle, his stubby legs working frantically to keep up. At the tobacconist, Martin buys three packs of cigarettes and the Sunday paper. He puts the paper in the basket on the front of the bicycle, unties the Jack Russell and prepares to get in the saddle. But the dog stops abruptly, spreads his back legs and squats. Martin drags him onto the street. ‘Good boy.’
A bicycle passes. Martin swivels. It’s the girl with the chestnut hair. Serene in the saddle as a paddling swan. Martin yanks Scamp’s leash, starts to run after her, but the dog is still doing his business. The girl smirks. Martin sets off in pursuit, dragging the long-suffering pooch along on his backside. Up ahead, he watches as she dismounts in front of a bookshop.
Martin sprints along the pavement and stops beside her, panting. ‘Hallo . . . ’
She turns round. Fixes him with those limpid, blue eyes. ‘Oh. It’s you.’
‘Che bella fortuna di coincidenza. What a wonderful—’
‘I know what it means.’ She looks back into the window of the bookshop.
‘It’s Petrarch.’
‘Really?’ Her voice is mocking, mischievous. ‘So you speak Italian, Martin Preston?’
She remembers his name! But he pulls his face back from the brink of a far too excited smile, points into the shop window. ‘Poetry? Or prose?’
‘Poetry.’ She starts to go inside the bookshop. ‘And prose.’
‘Do you like Robert Graves?’ His voice is almost pleading.
‘He’s one of our finest.’
‘He’s my uncle.’
Her eyes flicker with curiosity. ‘Do you write, too?’
‘Badly.’ He grins. ‘Mostly overdue essays. You?’
‘Notebooks full, I’m afraid.’ She laughs self-consciously and holds out her hand. ‘Nancy. Nancy Claire Whelan.’
‘Can I, er, buy you that cup of tea, Nancy Claire Whelan?’ he stammers.
She studies him for a moment. ‘I think I’d like that.’ She smiles. ‘The books can wait.’
They find a tearoom in the Old Town, packed with elderly matrons eating scones and cucumber sandwiches. Martin and Nancy install themselves at a table by the window, so Martin can keep an eye on Scamp, who he has tied up outside. They order a pot of tea.
‘Shall we have some scones as well?’
‘Tea is fine.’ Nancy unties her hair and lets it fall over her shoulders. Martin watches, mesmerized. ‘Thank you.’
A waitress in a black and white pinafore sets the tea on the table. Martin pours.
‘It’s so amazing . . . ’ He checks himself, tries to sound less jejune. ‘Meeting you like this. Again.’
Nancy takes some milk. ‘Was it a coincidence?’
‘Well, sort of.’ Martin blushes. ‘I suppose I was . . . looking for you.’
Nancy smiles. ‘How old are you?’
Martin is caught off-guard by her directness. ‘Nineteen,’ he says, flustered. ‘Almost twenty.’
Nancy sips her tea. He notices how she talks with her eyes almost as much as her lips. If she is amused, her eyes narrow, like a cat’s. Surprise is communicated by a subtle raising of her eyebrows. When she laughs, her eyes flicker with pleasure. Each mood, the tiniest oscillation of emotion, is registered in those eyes, an entire semaphore of signals and reactions, which he is learning to decode.
‘How old are . . . ?’ Martin checks himself. Never ask a woman her age.
She glances over the top of her cup. ‘Twenty-two.’
‘Do you live here?’
‘Yes. My father is a civil servant. Inland Revenue.’ She puts her cup down. ‘How about you?’
‘My