Broken Music (12 page)

‘Oh, yes,' replied Amy uncomfortably. She had a vague idea clever Mrs Rafferty disapproved of her.

He turned his bicycle round and prepared to ride off. For a moment he said nothing, then suddenly, he smiled at her. ‘Poor Amy. You haven't had much fun these last years, have you?'

His unexpected sympathy brought a warmth to her face. Funny old Steven. He was being very nice to her – but then, he always had been kind, waiting for her when she fell behind the older ones, unable to keep up, on the occasions they'd been compelled to have her in their company, sticking up for her when she said something silly or childish that made the others laugh. She gave him one of her most dazzling smiles. ‘Well, Steven, it's all going to be different now, isn't it?'

‘I hope so. Goodbye, Amy.' With a ring of his bell, he was off.

‘A party! Oh, a dinner party, and I've nothing to wear!' Amy wailed.

‘Nonsense, Amy, you have your pretty blue muslin.'

‘Which I've had since I was
thirteen,
Grandy! Besides, it's far too cold, yet, for muslin. If I have to wear that, the dress won't be the only thing that's blue.'

‘Amy, Amy,' her grandmother remonstrated.

‘We can't
go
, we've nothing to wear, any of us!'

‘Don't exaggerate,' said Nella, ‘of course we have.'

Amy spun round to her sister. ‘All right, then, what do
you
intend wearing?'

‘Me? Oh, I don't know – anything. I suppose it will be my dark blue. It's suitable, and I shall be quite warm and comfortable into the bargain.'

‘It might be suitable, but it's frightful. You should never wear dark blue, it doesn't become your colouring. And besides, I should think you'd be sick of it, by now. It's exactly the same colour as your uniform.'

Nella paused. ‘Well, I haven't anything better. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Nobody will notice what I'm wearing.'

‘Oh yes, they will! Everybody always notices what everyone else is wearing. And you know Aunt Sybil's and Eunice's dresses will be the last word.'

‘A new dress isn't the be all and end all,' Nella said impatiently, suppressing the thought of how long it was since she'd had anything new.

Amy didn't answer. An idea had popped into her head, and she wondered if she dare…

‘We could all do with something new to wear, child,' put in their grandmother crisply. ‘But we shall just have to make the best of what we have.'

Amy took a deep breath. ‘Why should we, with all those beautiful things in Mama's trunk? What good are they doing, all shut up?'

Speculation passed between them, each of them thinking of Dorothea's clothes and other possessions, lying for years between folds of tissue paper in a chest in the attic. Mrs Villiers, especially, was thoughtful. ‘Oh, very well, I'll ask your father,' she said at last, without the least hope of success. It would be tantamount to asking permission to violate a shrine.

Amy braced herself. ‘No, let me. He's more likely to say yes if I ask.'

Another silence. Nella thought yes, he might. Mrs Villiers pursed her lips. There was no denying that Francis would do more for Amy than anyone – if Amy would let him. But the truth was, she had grown to avoid her father whenever she could, for what reason Eleanor had never been able to fathom, almost as if she were embarrassed, or even a little scared, in his presence, though it had to be admitted that his dark silences could intimidate anyone. That Amy was willing now to beard him in his den said a great deal about the poor child's longing for a few new clothes, although, young and self-absorbed as Amy could still sometimes be, compared with Nella, their grandmother did not believe this was mere vanity – just that she hadn't been thrown into maturity, as her sister had, by the terrible experiences of the war. She could not wait to grow up, of course – but who could blame any young girl for that?

And when Amy emerged from the study ten minutes later, she was beaming. ‘I knew it would be all right. We can go ahead,' she said, relief at having faced her father making her dance up the stairs, light as a leaf.

Mrs Villiers lifted her eyes as they followed her. ‘I do believe you could charm the birds off the trees, miss.' She did not know what it had cost Amy to approach her father.

Most of Dorothea's clothes were impractical, since she had had no need of any that were not, never having been one of the world's labourers. Amy pulled out the dresses greedily, stroked the silks and velvets with sensuous fingers while wrinkling her nose at the smell of camphor, pouncing on a sophisticated emerald and black shot satin gown with black lace sleeves and a fall of the same lace round the low neck – though more in hope than expectation – and which indeed Mrs Villiers was immediately compelled to veto, not only on the grounds of its unsuitability for a young girl, but also because it was one Dorothea had worn on an unusually grand occasion at the bishop's palace, and Francis would be sure to remember it.

In the end, Eleanor chose for her a simple deep ivory crêpe de Chine to which Amy, seizing the advantage, added a coffee-coloured georgette which she declared she must combine with it. ‘Because of course it will mean a complete remake,' she said, scooping up an armful of pretty underwear while she had the chance, and adding some flesh-coloured silk stockings and a pair of bronze satin, high-heeled slippers with two delicate straps over the instep to her booty. ‘Everything's hopelessly out of date.'

Nella sighed. ‘Don't bank on it. It might be a party that never was.'

‘How can you be such a wet blanket!'

Because this invitation, for one thing, had been an unofficial one until William arrived home – and there was as yet no indication when exactly this would be. For another, even Sybil was aware that many of the homecoming soldiers were regarding the price they had paid for victory as too high to warrant the blowing of trumpets.

‘There's no guarantee William will be in the mood for social occasions, Amy.'

‘Yes, I do know, Grandy, I haven't forgotten,' Amy replied, sobering. ‘But it's not going to help anybody if we all go around in sackcloth and ashes, is it?'

Nella felt contrite. ‘You're right, Amy, dear, of course. Help me to choose something, too. We don't want to be seen as the church mice at this feast.'

She hoped Amy would not be disappointed, but very much feared she might. Not altogether because William might not wish for such a celebration: she did not really think even the war would have changed his amenable good nature, and whatever his private thoughts, he would go along with it, she was sure. It was more likely to be Eunice who would be the one to put a spoke in the wheel. No one, knowing Sybil, could believe that this affair she hoped to arrange for William's homecoming was entirely altruistic. It was a typically impulsive and generous gesture on her part, but it would also provide an opportunity for Eunice to become reacquainted with those who had been marked down for her by her mother before the war. But the war had changed everybody. Eunice was not the biddable girl she had been then.

And especially don't expect William to be the same boy who left home, Nella wanted to warn everyone. She had seen the change in him, the last and only time they had met in the wartime years, just after her arrival in France. Knowing which hospital she was attached to, he had sought her out when he had an unexpected two-day leave pass. By then he was already, at twenty-one, a captain, though this was not so unusual. Promotion came quickly at the front: officers, leading their men, were prime targets for the enemy guns.

Accustomed as she was by then to seeing men in every stage of battle fatigue, she had been shocked by his appearance. ‘It's nothing,' he said. ‘We were entrenched in a place they call Bellyache Wood, with a so-called medicinal spring. The name speaks for itself.' He had laughed, but there was more to it than that. His big frame was wasted, his hands shook from time to time, his face was gaunt, his eyes haunted, as all their eyes were – boys who had seen and lived through horrors that no human being should have to witness. Neither she nor William had any idea that was to be their last meeting during the fighting, that he would soon be sent out on the Gallipoli campaign, suffer dysentery and fever, and after the huge and humiliating Allied defeat there, be sent back to France again.

Just a few hours they'd had together. ‘What will you do when all this is over? Go back to Oxford?'

No, he would not go back. He had been destined for the law, and politics thereafter, but now he was totally disillusioned; it was the politicians who had got them into this mess. After the war, it was practical and useful people who were going to be needed, people like their uncle, Arthur Foley. ‘And women like Eunice,' he finished with a laugh. ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard what she was doing, helping to keep his business going. Surprising girl. She writes to me every week, you know.'

‘To me, too – though not every week,' Nella smiled.

But perhaps I have been wrong about that, she thought now.

The responsible work Eunice had done helping her father had brought about a huge change in her. Who would ever have predicted what she would become? She had taken the load from Arthur's shoulders, become his prop and mainstay, running the affairs of the works so capably and efficiently. She had always been ready to help lame ducks, take other people's burdens to heart – but Nella was rather afraid that she had now become prone to arranging their affairs, too.

What was Aunt Sybil going to think when she learnt of the plans Eunice was making? To spend some time in Paris, perhaps to find some work there! A scheme Nella had only learnt of by chance, when she and Eunice had been having a cup of tea together before Nella went home after finishing her shift.

‘Paris? Work? Are you mad, Eunice? It must be worse over there than here in the aftermath of the war!'

‘Oh, I don't know, there must be something I could do,' Eunice said, sitting on the edge of the table, swinging her pretty little foot. She looked sideways at Nella. ‘Why don't you come, too? It's what you need.'

‘I've had enough of France, thank you. Whatever made you think of
Paris
?'

‘Oh, nothing special.' She looked evasive, and somehow troubled. For a moment, Nella thought she was going to give her reasons for this extraordinary decision, but then she smiled, and shrugged. ‘I was talking to that doctor of yours, Geddes…he spent some time there before he came to England, didn't he?'

‘Did he?,' Nella asked, wondering just what Eunice meant by ‘that doctor of yours'. Yours, the hospital's, or yours, Nella's? She had evidently lost no time since his arrival in getting to know him. The hospital's, of course. Eunice never made double-tongued remarks.

 

Amy had a good eye, and quick, clever fingers, and seams were soon unpicked, the pieces carefully aired, pressed and recut into what she considered more fashionable styles. For the next few days she treadled away so furiously on the old Singer that the dresses were finished at least a good two or three weeks before they were likely to be needed – assuming they ever were.

Her own dress was disappointingly not the one she had envisaged, sliding seductively around her hips, but a compromise. At least it gave her the slender silhouette she longed for: a long, short-sleeved V-neckline tunic from the coffee-coloured georgette, worn over a long, narrow shift cut from the ivory crêpe de Chine, with a creamy silk rose she was told must be tucked demurely into the neckline. Compromises are rarely entirely satisfactory, however, and when she tried it on, she twisted this way and that to see herself in the mirror. It felt homemade, she declared, tugging at the seams, and still smelt, a little, of mothballs, though anyone could see she was secretly delighted with herself, as well she might be, thought Nella.

‘It looks neither home-made, nor smells in the least of mothballs. You look absolutely sweet, Amy!'

Amy glowed. She decided that if she put her hair up in a Grecian knot, it might not be so bad. And there was in the trunk a gold bracelet she might be allowed to wear, high on her arm…‘Well, you look lovely, yourself – and much more elegant than I ever could,' she replied generously.

Nella had once thought the time would never again come when clothes, when looking and feeling one's best and generally being a woman again, would matter, but yes, she did like the look of herself in the simple, bronze-gold heavy silk Amy had unerringly selected. It had scarcely needed any altering for Nella, not much more than a few inches off the hem, but its rich colour was lovely, and the burnt orange bandeau Amy wound around her hair did add a glow to her pale skin. It needed only the long rope of dark ambers Mrs Villiers slid over her head. But she mentally consigned it to the back of her wardrobe; she could not envisage wearing this finery in the foreseeable future.

Amy said, ‘What will you wear, Grandy?'

Mrs Villiers replied dryly that there would be enough with two belles of the ball and her pearls and her black velvet would suffice very well, thank you.

 

Sybil was similarly preoccupied with the party, addressing envelopes ready for posting when William came home and she had judged his reaction to the idea. She frowned as the gold nib of her fountain pen spluttered slightly over the address she had just written. Oh, bother! How too tiresome. She wiped the nib carefully on her flannel penwiper in its shagreen case and looked again at the envelope. Would it pass muster? She did not want to waste any of the last of her best pre-war stationery, creamy and thick as card, by rewriting it. There was no indication when supplies would be resumed.

Tapping the pen against her teeth, she glanced across to the big chair in the corner, where Eunice was daintily curled with her feet up and her softly waved head against a cushion, ostensibly reading, but with that small, secret, puzzling smile which hovered around her mouth whenever she thought herself unobserved, and which told her mother she was paying no attention to what she read and was thinking of something else entirely.

She frowned and turned back to her list. It was not promising.

There were all the Wentworths, of course, including the guest of honour, William; herself, Arthur and Eunice, which made eight. She considered the remaining names and reluctantly decided against very rich, handsome and immensely tall Henry Summers-Gently; though at the top of her list, pre-war, he had never at the best of times been the most amusing conversationalist, and now that he'd returned home from France he hardly spoke at all, stared into the distance and sometimes looked as though he might be going mad. It was the duty of every responsible mama to see her daughter settled, and he was a good match, but one didn't want to marry off poor Eunice at any cost; what she really wanted for her child was a good man like Arthur who would look after her in case – her thoughts faltered – in case anything should happen to her, or to Arthur. For a moment she stared blindly out of the window. Then, determinedly, she took up her pen again.