Going down, she paused on the staircase, looking over at the gathering. ‘We’ll never see the like again,’ someone said, going past her, and although the person’s interlocutor quickly made clear – ‘Oh no, I think they are breeding in Shipston’ – that the comment was about horses, the words hung in the air as she looked down at the loud party.
Two women were just coming through the door from the street, one in a white satin coat, the other in grey. Laura recognised the one in white immediately. The face from the boat – unselfconscious, self-sufficient. She wore satin the same way she had worn a swimming costume, her shoulders well back and her movements quick as she shrugged her coat off into the hands of a waiting servant. Her companion was as pretty as she was, if not prettier, but it was Amy who held one’s gaze. Laura saw Sybil making her way through the guests to greet the two new arrivals.
‘Nina, you made it,’ she said to Amy’s friend. Next to her new guests Sybil looked dumpy, planted solidly on the carpet, but somehow it did not matter that she did not share their physical glamour, there was still some connection between them. The three women bent their heads together, whispering something, and then stepped back, laughing, looking at one another. They were the centre of the gathering, and as they moved through into the other room Laura saw many groups shuddering and re-forming, as people turned to greet them.
Walking down the stairs and entering the room behind them, Laura saw Quentin rushing forward to Nina, and bending almost double as he caught up her hand in an over-polite gesture. She stood irresolutely, watching them, and then walked on. She saw the RAF officer she had danced with earlier, now dancing with another woman, and she saw Nick and Giles in an entirely masculine group further on.
‘Would you like to get an ice?’ It was Winifred, taking pity on her, seeing her drifting through the party alone. Laura was glad of her company. She went with her and Alistair to eat a lemon sorbet from a silver dish and listen to them chatter. The evening dragged on like that until, very late, Winifred persuaded Giles to drive them back to Highgate. Winifred seemed to be riding high on the energy of the evening, talking over the gossip she had heard and pushing Giles for more stories about Alistair.
As she laid her cheek on the cold window of the motor car, watching the dark streets fall away as they drove, Laura felt rather ashamed of how awkward she had been all evening. What would it be like, she wondered, to feel that you belonged inside a party like that, inside the little group around Amy and Nina and Sybil, admired and envied, rather than uncomfortably wandering through the crowds in a too tight, too bright dress? Then she thought of Florence, and how scornful she would be of such a desire. Florence – she must ask her what that conversation about Halifax meant. And then she found herself remembering the odd exchange she had had with Edward Last. The struggle, why had she mentioned the struggle, so pointlessly? She had seen him again, late in the party, but he was sitting with Sybil and Amy. He had looked up at her as she walked past but had not made any move towards her. Was it his arctic blondness that seemed to set him apart from others, or that quiet manner? As she remembered their conversation, she pressed a finger on her lip, as if she could stop herself blurting out words that had already been spoken.
5
Looking back on that summer, Laura sometimes let herself think that the inertia which gripped both her and Winifred was down to the fact that, along with the whole country, they were holding their breath for the great shift in September. But really, she knew it was not that. Despite their frustration with their lives, neither of them was ready to take flight from Highgate.
Winifred’s life changed after the party. Lunch with Alistair and his publisher, tea with Alistair and his mother, theatre with Alistair and his friends; she would come in from each excursion with her energy high and the colour glowing in her face. As soon as she had spent some time with her mother, however, her energy would fade and she would recede into irritation and argument. If she wasn’t set on taking up her university place in September, she told Laura, she would move out right away. But for now, she said, she would stay.
Laura’s inertia was less explicable. She resisted all the attempts of her aunt and her mother to persuade her to book the passage home, and yet she could not take wing and leave her aunt’s house. She saw Florence as infrequently as ever, and each time she saw her she felt it like a loss rather than a gain: Florence had been the only person who had ever recognised her, who had ever shown her anything about herself and her own desires. But since they had arrived in London, Laura felt that she was losing sight of Florence, watching her drift away down a road of new struggle and activity. She was always waiting for the moment when Florence would turn to her again, as she had on the boat, and paint for her the new world. But somehow each meeting always ended with the right words unsaid, with intimacy avoided.
And so the long, slow months faded away through the turgid heat of summer. Even though Laura had been told so often by Florence and Elsa that war was inevitable and desirable, when the announcement came through on the wireless on the third day of September, the concrete fact fell like an unexpected blow.
The scream of the air raid siren that rent the air sent them all, with Mrs Venn, out to the little shelter in the garden. Sitting there, Laura became aware that she was sweating: she could smell an acrid scent from under her arms. She had started her period the day before and in the enclosed space she was also sure that she smelt of blood. When you think of war, she thought, you think of action, but this is where it is beginning for us, stuck in this closed, bad-smelling space with four females.
Aunt Dee was talking to her about the need to book a passage back as soon as possible. She could not, she said, be responsible for Laura any longer. Laura put her head in her hands, feeling unwell. ‘I was thinking of moving out …’ she said in a small voice. Winifred pushed her hard in the ribs, and Laura realised that she was trying to silence her.
When the all-clear sounded and they could emerge, they realised that the telephone was ringing and ringing in the hall. Winifred ran ahead to answer it, while Aunt Dee stayed in the garden talking to Mrs Venn. Laura hung back, listening to their conversation. Mrs Venn wanted to go down to her sister’s house, she was saying, as her own son, who lived with her sister, would now be evacuated and she needed to say goodbye.
Laura was startled. In all this time she had not imagined Mrs Venn’s own life; she was guilty – as Florence said all the rich were guilty – of seeing servants purely as instruments. She had only seen Mrs Venn as an anonymous presence in the house, and now she looked at her properly for the first time. She was standing next to the straggling bush of late white roses, and as she spoke to Aunt Dee she reached out a hand and shook one of the flowers, which spattered its petals onto the lawn. It seemed to be an angry gesture, even though her voice was soft as she explained the urgency of her situation. She was a widow, Laura knew that, but she had never heard about the son who lived with her sister before. ‘Well, I don’t know, Vennie – must you go right now?’ Aunt Dee was dithering. ‘I suppose the girls can help get the lunch and there will be enough over for tomorrow.’
Winifred came back out of the house. ‘It was Giles on the telephone,’ she said in a high voice. ‘He won’t come to lunch today; they’ve been called into work. I might go and meet him later – will you come with me, Laura?’
‘No rushing about today, Winifred.’ In Aunt Dee’s mind, it was clearly the first crisis of the war, the desire on the part of her housekeeper to take a few days off. As Mrs Venn stood waiting for her decision, Laura tried to persuade her aunt that they could easily manage without help for a few days. Mrs Venn did not express gratitude when Aunt Dee finally agreed that she could leave for a while. Instead, she frowned and then nodded at Laura in a way that Laura found puzzling.
Laura