‘Are you for Grace?’
And that, thought Lally, rolling over and reaching out for a basin, was Claudia. And there, behind her cousin, was Vee, looking faintly surprised. There was no question in her mind as to whose the car was. Elegant, expensively-dressed Claudia, in that cloud of scent she always wore, was clearly at home in the sleek Daimler. Whereas Vee, all eyes and her hair caught in a scrawny bun at the back of her unflattering felt hat, looked rather as though she’d been kidnapped. With English Oxfords on her feet, brogues, very well polished, you could tell she came from a good home; such sensible shoes, so worthy and practical compared to Claudia’s crocodile high heels.
Even then, Vee gave nothing away. She watched, and listened, but what was going on behind those intelligent eyes? That was for Vee to know, although Lally had come to wonder just how well Vee did know herself. Did any of them? Did anyone, ever? Probably not, which might be one of God’s mercies when you came to think about it. Yet she’d got to know Claudia and Vee, and they her, better than she could possibly have imagined at that first meeting.
The workings of fate, that had brought them together, at that place, at that time. There they were, the three Graces.
She slept for a while, then woke feeling more seasick than ever. She could feel her hair damp and clammy at the side of her face; would this dreadful rolling and plunging never stop?
It was worse with her eyes open, and she closed them again. The stewardess came in, and persuaded her to sip more ginger cordial. Lally hated the taste of ginger, but Pigeon was right, it did soothe her stomach, if only a little.
Why were those early days at Grace so much on her mind?
She was back in the quad, the biggest open space inside the college. There was a single tree, in the centre, a plane tree, and the square grassed area, in which the tree was set, was intersected by diagonal tarmac paths.
Claudia was there, on her bicycle. Or, more accurately, off her bicycle. She’d decided to buy a bicycle and learn to ride it that very afternoon.
‘It’ll take more time than that,’ Miss Harbottle said, in her most authoritative voice. ‘Your sort always thinks you can do anything at once.’
‘My sort usually can,’ said Claudia, picking herself up and launching herself off again.
‘And the quad isn’t the place to learn,’ Harbottle shouted after her. ‘Bicycles aren’t allowed, as you very well know.’
‘It’s the perfect place to learn,’ Vee said. ‘Only think of the chaos she’d cause if she went on a road.’
Alfred Gore appeared through the arch at the south side of the quad, tall and lanky and amused. You could tell, even then, that he had eyes for no one but Vee, until a loud yell from Claudia, who had ridden with wild abandon into the tree, distracted him. He sauntered over and hauled her to her feet, then righted the cycle.
‘Good thing you hadn’t got up any speed,’ he said. ‘I’ll hold on to the back of the saddle, and you concentrate on getting your balance. OK?’
Claudia nodded, and they were off, Alfred running beside her, holding the bicycle steady.
Claudia was right, her sort usually could. Instinct, balance and confidence were what made her so different from Miss Harbottle. And Vee, watching and laughing? Observant, self-controlled, quite different from her cousin.
Lally half opened her eyes. Were they so different, after all? Hadn’t they both thrown themselves, heart and soul, into causes? In both cases, with disastrous results, and with who knew what repercussions to come?
Vee was blessed with a clear mind, but hadn’t used it. Claudia had the gift of intuition, but was blind about herself.
Moderation in all things, Lally said aloud.
‘You’re fretting,’ said Miss Tyrell. ‘I have a sleeping draught for you. You will feel better for a sleep.’
‘I’ve been dreaming. Of the past,’ Lally said, not wanting to swallow what Miss Tyrell was holding to her mouth.
‘This will put a stop to that,’ Miss Tyrell said, with unassailable nursery authority.
Lally doubted if the draught would stay down long enough to do any good, but she was too weak to resist.
‘I remember the last Commem,’ she said in a thread of a voice. ‘At Christ Church. The grandest of all the balls that summer. I didn’t know what a Commem Ball was when I started at Oxford. It has a language all its own. They have May Balls in Cambridge and Commemoration Balls at Oxford. Only they don’t hold them in May, I always thought that was kind of strange.’
She stopped talking, holding her breath so that her stomach would settle. Keep talking, don’t think about the boat or the queasiness. ‘That was where I met my husband. At a ball. No, at a dinner party before the ball. At the Oronsays. Do you know the Oronsays, Miss Tyrell? They have a big house in Oxford, set in spectacular grounds. It was June, you know, and the French windows were open, and the scents and sounds of summer came drifting in above the smoke and the talk. The smell of newly mown grass and jasmine, and bees, buzzing in a tub of snapdragons just outside the windows. And a woodpecker, tap, tap, tap. Midsummer, with a huge full moon. Magic in the air, and music, and love. Just like a movie.
‘They were all there, all my Oxford friends. I was going back to America, as soon as term was over. My passage was already booked. On the Normandie. So I wanted a chance to say goodbye to the friends I’d made while I was at Oxford.
‘I didn’t tell Vee or Claudia, but just set about persuading the ones who had gone down to come back for the ball. Alfred, have you come across the Gores?’
‘That’ll be Almeric Gore’s younger son. He was at Eton with one of Claudia’s brothers, always stirring up trouble, a hothead, but no harm in him. He writes for the papers, now.’
‘Yes, so there was Alfred, and Giles and Hugh, Verity’s brother, who’d gone down the previous year. He was the tricky one to get hold of, given that he was wandering about Europe, but friends at the American Embassy tracked him down for me and delivered the invitation. People who were still at Oxford, like Joel and Marcus, weren’t a problem. And I asked Sarah Blumenthal, from Grace, for although she and Claudia didn’t get along too well, I liked her, and we’d played a lot of music together.’
Another silence. ‘I wonder where Sarah is now. We’ve rather lost touch, she married and went to Germany. I don’t think Germany is a good place for her.’
‘Not with a name like that, not these days, not with the way those Nazis are carrying on,’ Miss Tyrell said. She pronounced it ‘Nasties.’
‘Sarah married, I don’t remember her married name. Then Ruth Oronsay got wind of my plans, and invited my party to dinner before the ball at their Oxford house. Sir Iain had been at the House, you see. That’s another one of those Oxford things you have to learn, like Brasenose being BNC, and Teddy Hall, not St Edmund Hall. Aedes Christi, Christ’s House, that’s why they call Christ Church college the House. Sir Iain had made up a party of his own contemporaries, so Ruth said, Let’s all dine and go to the ball together.’
The memories flashed before Lally’s eyes, like stills from a film.
Vee’s face full of delight when she saw Alfred was there. What was it with the two of them? Everyone else could see they were crazy about each other, but seemingly they couldn’t.
Alfred in tails, looking completely at ease in the Oronsays’ magnificent drawing room, Vee teasing him about it: ‘Where did you get those, do you own a set, now you’ve joined the world of the grownups? They’re hardly the ones you borrowed from your tutor, he wouldn’t be so unwise as to lend them again, surely.’
Alfred looking down at himself without enthusiasm: ‘They belong to my elder brother. I always forget how damned uncomfortable