‘No reason. Except that I’m happy.’
I realized it was true. And so was he. I looked into his eyes for anything veiled, troubled, guarded, but there was nothing except a transported blue gaze. Not innocent, like Edward’s: these eyes were older, and they had seen the Great War. I could tell that, by their sharpness. He was a man who, before looking at me, had looked at many dreadful things. But he was delighted now.
We were visited by a sudden moment of delicious serenity.
‘I can’t believe we’ve only met twice,’ I found myself saying, and just as I did so his eyes left mine, and then he rose to his feet as I heard a middle-aged female voice, slightly hoarse, cut of solid lead-crystal.
‘Selwyn! I thought it was you!’
I got up out of my chair and turned to face her. She had a large, long, red mouth, and she was seemingly incapable of hiding her feelings, because it dropped open in astonishment. The long red mouth had an unusually fat and featureless top lip, which reminded me of one of those large tropical fish that graze on coral – wrasse, I thought.
‘Heavens, it’s Miss—’
‘Calvert, Ellen Calvert.’ I saved her from pronouncing the soiled name. I put out my hand. ‘How do you do.’ Feeling the new hair slide bite at my nape. So glad that it was dependable.
‘Althea Brock,’ she said. ‘A pleasure.’
‘I love Bishop’s. The scones are quite gargantuan. Look at that.’ Lady Brock held up the remaining scone between thumb and forefinger. ‘You could feed a family of four on it. You don’t mind if I pinch your plate, dear, do you?’ She took my plate and knife and slathered the remaining butter over the scone, divided each half into half again and set about dispatching the resulting four sections into her maw of a mouth. I met Selwyn’s eyes. They were keen with amused embarrassment. He lifted his shoulders in the slightest shrug.
‘Any tea in that pot?’ Lady Brock said through crumbs.
Selwyn laughed. ‘At least let me get you a cup, Althea.’ He signalled to the waitress, was ignored in the crowd, rose to his feet and left the table.
Lady Brock turned to me, chewing. ‘I’m absolutely famished. I’ve been up at the farms all day. Nothing like a silage clamp for dulling your appetite. One never wants lunch as a result, so by mid-afternoon one’s ready to boil up one’s own shoes and eat the soles with brown sauce. I’m on my way to Mrs Pettit for a fitting. She used to come to me, but last year she told me there are too many calls on her time now, if you please, so I have to get out the motor and flog into Waltham. But there we are. Everything changes, doesn’t it, Miss Calvert. You in particular, I think.’
She had brown eyes the colour of coffee, mobile, rather liquid, rather close-set. The span of her mouth almost exceeded that of her eyes. While she was eating, they had been sliding all over my face, my hands, my clothes. Now they looked directly into mine.
I folded my napkin, edge to edge. I’d expected constraint, anxiety, but after the initial surprise of her arrival – and of her consumption of the scone – I realized she held no fear for me. ‘I’ve had the greatest good fortune, Lady Brock. I have a job at the town hall, in the typing pool. I live in the hostel with some jolly girls. Our meals are nourishing. My room’s very warm.’
I had kept the room with the boiler pipe. The first time Lucy came to Waltham to see me, we had spent a deal of time standing on the bed in stockinged feet, caressing the pipe in awe.
‘Oh, yes. Evie Norris helped train you, isn’t that right? My farm manager’s daughter. That girl is a terrific horticulturalist, you know.’
‘Really?’ I was confused as much by Lady Brock’s pointed tone as by the news itself.
‘Indeed. There was quite a traffic in slips and scions that year – the year you had your lessons, I mean. From my greenhouses to her little cloches and propagation beds. Some of the plants were really quite rare.’
I searched her long, sardonic, deeply amused face. I was utterly bewildered, and then, a second later, bewildered no more.
‘Mr Kennet,’ I said slowly. ‘He paid Evie in cuttings—’
Lady Brock held a gloved finger to her lips. ‘It’s a huge secret. William hates his good deeds to be bruited abroad.’
‘Surely I should know, as the recipient!’
‘Perhaps. Thank him in private, dear, and make it brief. He would hate fuss.’
A waitress came with a cup and saucer and a fresh pot of tea. Selwyn followed her. He was holding a brown paper bag, folded at the top and grease-specked, which he placed without comment on the table between us.
‘Mr Parr and I collided in the street a fortnight ago,’ I said. ‘Now he’s giving me tea, by way of apology.’
‘I wasn’t looking where I was going,’ Selwyn told her.
Lady Brock rummaged in the pocket of her mackintosh and produced a battered packet of cigarettes. She offered them to me: I shook my head. Selwyn, suddenly, was holding out a cigarette lighter with a small flame dancing on top. Lady Brock inhaled deeply.
‘Selwyn’s always been rather distracted.’ She emitted a blue jet of smoke. ‘Even as a child. He’d go out for a stag beetle and come back with a slow-worm.’
‘Simply because the slow-worm was more interesting. Not because I’d forgotten about the stag beetle.’ He was smiling broadly, fanning the smoke away from his face. ‘Althea, kindly direct your fumes elsewhere. I’ve got Compline in Barrow End tonight.’
She ignored him. ‘He and I have known each other since he was small enough to hide among the gooseberry bushes. I was like a much larger teenage sister. Never mind. I should be on my way. Mrs Pettit will be having a seizure.’ She got up from the table, and so did Selwyn, and I. Lady Brock shook my hand. ‘A pleasure,’ she said, and then, still holding my gaze, ‘Selwyn, darling. Do look out. Do look where you’re going.’
He nodded, smiling. ‘I will, Althea. Good afternoon.’
We watched her stride past the window, mackintosh flapping. Selwyn handed the brown paper bag to me. ‘Another scone.’
‘You shouldn’t have.’
‘But you might like it, later.’
‘No. I mean that she should have replaced it. She was the one who ate it.’
He sighed. ‘She knows no better.’
We walked back to the hostel, agreeing that we would meet in church at Upton on Sunday and perhaps visit Lady Brock for a cup of tea in the afternoon, after my luncheon date at the Hornes’. ‘I’d have to take the late bus, though. The last time I did that, I squeaked in a minute before curfew …’
‘Ellen, I have a motor car. I can drive you.’
The street outside the hostel was empty, and there was a dusty breeze that tugged at my hat. ‘Yes, but should you?’ I blinked, my eyes suddenly gritty. ‘You heard what Lady Brock said. You should look—’
He laughed in a forced way. ‘I’m hardly going to bump into you again, am I!’
Could he really be so stupid? I stared up at him. There was a faint flush at the top of his cheeks. He was pretending he hadn’t grasped Lady Brock’s meaning. He and she had stood there, imagining they were speaking in code, as if in front of a child. ‘You needn’t fear on my account, Mr Parr. I’ve become quite resilient, what with one thing and another.’
That evening I wrote a letter to William, care of Lady Brock at Upton Hall, thanking him for his great kindness in the matter of the cuttings. I shall always, always be in your debt. If in the future I can render you any service, Mr Kennet, please let me know.