‘No. He came home in September to rest his nerves. He was serving in Northern Ireland and the tank he was in was blown up.’
‘How awful! Was he badly hurt?’ I opened my eyes just as we were yawing towards a tree picked out in hideous detail by the single headlight. I screwed up my face and waited for the crunch of metal and the somersaulting of my stomach as we flew into the abyss.
‘Only a few cracked ribs and a broken jaw.’ Dimpsie wrestled with the steering wheel and changed down. The engine screamed in protest but somehow we remained in contact with the road.
‘Only?’
‘Almost everyone else in the tank was killed. Though it might have caught fire at any minute, Rafe waited inside until the rescue team could get to them and made a tourniquet of his socks to stop the other survivor bleeding to death. He was given a medal for conspicuous gallantry.’
I imagined Rafe as a war hero with a troubled mind. It added a piquancy to my idea of him, which until now had been too smooth, too bland, to keep the flame of memory burning.
‘Evelyn’s delighted to have him home, of course. Not only for his own sake – she’s always adored him, as you know, but Kingsley’s become something of a problem.’
Kingsley Preston was much older than his wife. I remembered him as a sort of caricature of a country squire. He had not been much interested in children, preferring horses and dogs. We had had the same conversation each holidays.
‘Hello, Marigold.’ He would smile and shake my hand. ‘It’s good to see you back. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, thank you, sir.’
‘Good, good.’
Then he’d walk quickly away, calling his spaniels to heel. At the end of the holidays, he’d say, ‘Well, well, so you’re off again.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Going to make Margot Fonteyn shake in her shoes, eh?’
Polite laughter from me. ‘Not yet.’
‘Jolly good.’ The smile and handshake again. ‘Keep it up.’
‘What’s the matter with Kingsley?’ I asked.
‘He’s terribly forgetful. He was eighty last birthday, so perhaps it’s not surprising. Evelyn’s marvellous with him, so patient. She never complains, you know how strong she is, but it must get her down all the same.’
It seemed to me a little forgetfulness in an old man was not much to put up with. But then, in my mother’s eyes, everything Evelyn did, from organizing balls to raise funds for more camels in Africa, to getting poor Mrs Stopes into an old people’s home despite her wish to remain independent, were feats of the highest order. My mother kept on her desk a framed photograph of Evelyn in evening dress and tiara, which had appeared fifteen years ago in the Tatler above the caption The Beautiful Mrs Kingsley Preston, Indefatigable Society Hostess of the North. I was pretty sure the rest of Evelyn’s friends had consigned the offending image to the dustbin before returning indoors to dose themselves with bile beans.
‘Could we have the heater on?’
‘Sorry, it’s broken. I keep meaning to get the garage to fix it.’
‘Will Rafe be there tomorrow, do you know?’
‘Yes. And –’ Dimpsie’s voice took on a slightly anxious tone – ‘so will Isobel. She’s come home to be with Rafe, to help him get over it. You know how devoted to him she’s always been. Darling, I do hope you’ll be pleased to see her.’
Isobel. The rush of memories were a welcome distraction from being cold and frightened. From babyhood to the age of ten she had been my best friend. She was a year and a half older than me, a significant age gap then. Probably she would have preferred an older companion but there were no other girls nearby whom Evelyn considered convenable. My family was not well off but my father was a doctor and my mother had been privately educated, which made me acceptable.
Naturally Isobel had been the dominant one. She had taught me how to ride a bicycle and how to swim, how to serve overarm, how to make a camp, how to waltz, tie knots and mix invisible inks. Sometimes she had been friendly, sometimes patronizing and sometimes beastly. There had been spats, naturally but most of the time we accepted that we were yoked together, an ill-matched team, seemingly in perpetuity.
We had started dancing lessons together at Evelyn’s instigation: ‘So good for their deportment, Dimpsie, and the car’s taking Isobel anyway so Marigold may as well go, too.’
We had attended Miss Fisher’s ballet classes in Haltwhistle. I had adored it from the moment my fingers made contact with the barre and my pink leather pumps with the splintery floor. After three terms we took our first ballet exam. When I had been awarded a distinction and Isobel a pass, there had been indignation and tears. Evelyn had been cross with her.
‘You can’t expect to excel in everything, darling. Marigold is so tiny that she can hop about easily. You should be glad for her that she has done so well, even if it is only in dancing.’
When Miss Fisher sent letters home with us to say she thought Isobel was ready for grade two but I was to move up several classes and try for my intermediate certificate, Isobel had wanted to give up ballet altogether. Evelyn had told her not to be silly.
‘You must learn not to make a fuss about trivial things. It’s very nice for Marigold that she has a little accomplishment. It may come in useful later for balls and dances.’
After I had passed my intermediate certificate with the highest possible mark, Miss Fisher asked to see my mother and told her she should think seriously about sending me to ballet school. Dimpsie went to Evelyn for advice. I remember Evelyn’s face became rather long as she read the letter the examiner had sent privately to Miss Fisher, commending my physical attributes and technical promise. She was silent for a while as Dimpsie and I stared anxiously at her pinched nostrils and compressed lips, waiting for the oracle to pronounce. Young and unsophisticated though I was, I dimly understood that, because of the Preston supremacy in birth and upbringing, for a child of Evelyn’s to be surpassed in anything was something of a facer. An inward struggle was evidently taking place as she folded the letter into small sections.
Then her better self got the upper hand. Talent must never be wasted. She had heard of a ballet school in Manchester that had an excellent reputation. She would ring at once and ask them to send a prospectus. She congratulated me very kindly and asked us both to stay to tea. There was no more talk about ‘little accomplishments’ and ‘hopping about’.
When Isobel heard about the letter she went down to the beck that races through the valley of Gaythwaite and threw in her ballet pumps. Then she put a note through our letterbox. Unless I dropped the whole idea of ballet school she would never speak to me again. Furthermore she would put a curse on me so that my nose would be permanently covered with blackheads.
After a terrifying audition at Brackenbury House Ballet School, I was awarded a place for the following term. This meant I had only a few weeks mooning about Dumbola Lodge in a state of excommunication, shut out from the paradisial delights of Shottestone Manor – the pony, the swimming pool, the tennis court, the garden, the dogs and Mrs Capstick’s celebrated orange cake, which, being a greedy child, I regretted perhaps most of all.
The curse had been lifted by Christmas, much to my relief. I had spent anxious moments, in my precious free time at Brackenbury, examining my face for blackheads. Isobel had been sent to a smart boarding school in Berkshire, and she needed an audience during the holidays for tales of her new life and her new friends. It was about then that Isobel