‘Then may I say, I find the family dunce clever as well as beautiful, and charming. Thank you for answering my question so honestly,’ he added, and he looked around, and seeing no one too terribly near them, took her in his arms, and kissed her quite thoroughly. ‘Jillie Curtis, I adore you. And I admire your mind as well as the rest of you; I find it interesting and contemplative – a rare thing especially in someone as young as you – and original. Now – shall we go and have our tea?’
And so they made their way towards Richmond and the Maids of Honour Restaurant, and it was charming, rebuilt since the war when it had been bombed, with great attention to its past so that it still had a thirties air to it and with wonderfully old-fashioned waitresses and exquisite china.
‘Now,’ he said, as she admired, as she was clearly supposed to do, the cake, ‘I have an invitation for you. To another tea.’
‘With?’
‘My mother.’
‘Your – mother?’
‘Yes. Don’t look so frightened. She really doesn’t deserve that at all.’
‘I’m – I’m not. Just – well. A bit surprised.’ And swiftly restored to happiness, because why else could he wish her to meet his mother if he did not regard her as fairly important in his life?
‘Well, she doesn’t come to London often. She lives in Cornwall, as you know. But she is coming up for a couple of days next week – although not to stay with me for we should murder one another in a very few hours – and she wants to meet you. I’ve told her a bit about you, and she wants to know more.’
‘Oh. Well, that sounds lovely. I’d like that very much.’
She knew little about the legendary Persephone, merely that she had run away from Ned’s father when Ned was just a little boy, and that he had, with what she guessed was fairly extreme understatement, ‘missed her rather’.
‘Good. Well, I thought the Ritz would be nice. Next Saturday. Or are you working?’
She shook her head.
‘No, I’m not. But my parents want me at home that evening for some important politician – only because as usual they’re short of a female guest. I wish I could invite you too.’
‘I wish it too. But I understand these things, and anyway, I should be available to St Peter’s. I will have done a difficult operation the day before.’
‘Which is?’
‘You’re so sweet, the way you’re interested in what I do.’
‘I’m not sweet,’ she said almost irritably. ‘It’s my world too, you so often seem to forget.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, clearly distressed by this. ‘Very sorry. Of course it is. I’m operating on quite a young child, just three, with what is apparently a recurring appendicitis. The symptoms fit, but I feel uneasy about it. You know how one has these hunches? One of the things I love about medicine is its resemblance to a jigsaw puzzle.’
Now he was flattering her, treating her with a knowledge and experience she entirely lacked.
‘So three thirty, shall we say? In the Palm Court.’
Jillie had heard Persephone was very beautiful. It was true. Shining, dark, thick, thick hair, wound into a rather old-fashioned chignon, though she was fashionless and ageless with huge dark eyes just like her son’s, soft, powdery skin, an astonishingly smooth brow, and a curvy, perfect mouth. She wore a dress in purest sky blue, with a skirt that hung almost to her ankles, and a slightly darker blue jacket and the highest of high heels. She was sitting with Ned at a table in the Palm Court and she stood up and held her arms out to Jillie, as if welcoming her, which Jillie rather hoped she was. When she drew her close to her she smelt wonderful. Jillie was told it was the lovely thirties scent of Arpège.
She patted the seat beside her, and told Jillie that her hat was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen, and then asked her endless questions, clearly prompted by the intense curiosity that was her trademark, about her friends, her family and her career. Jillie, charmed beyond all measure, quite forgot her determination to disapprove of Persephone at least a little for making Ned so unhappy as a small boy, and forgot also to ask him about the operation the day before; she fell beneath Persephone’s spell as Ned watched and listened, smiling benignly and ushering in extra tea, cakes and champagne.
When Jillie had left, after a shower of Arpège-scented kisses and hugs, Persephone looked at Ned and said, ‘Well, darling, I can see why you’re thinking of marrying her.’ And then added, summoning more champagne, ‘But I really don’t think you should. It would be awfully wrong.’
Chapter 21
1951
‘Mummy and Daddy have asked you to Sunday lunch. Could you possibly bear that? They really want to meet you. I know it’s not the sort of thing you’d most like, but –’
Mummy and Daddy. Sunday lunch. How that summed it all up. All Tom’s anxieties, all his misgivings. And how he resented them, because really Alice was so lovely, and he was so happy with her. Loneliness banished, despair gone, wounds healed; he felt whole once more. He had told Laura, of course, had gone to see her, begged her forgiveness, asked for her blessing. He had felt, as he knelt by the grave – what? Nothing. He had waited a long time, for some sense of peace, of rightness. It didn’t come and he had left, anxious, almost afraid. How could he do this? he wondered, as he sat on the train back to London. How could he turn his back on what they had had, their perfect, perfect life and love?
For what he felt for Alice was not the same. She irritated him sometimes, she argued with him over his ideals, told him he should move into the real world. She fussed too much over her appearance, as Laura never had. She had always made the most of herself and had disliked her too-short legs, her slightly heavy breasts, her unruly hair, but she could do nothing about them as she would say. To Tom she had been beautiful anyway. Alice, not sure of Tom’s admiration, was always fretting about her hair, her lovely fair curly hair: it was too long, it was too short, it looked silly up, untidy down. Then she would worry about her weight when she was already so slim, turning away things like cake and chocolates. ‘It’s so daft,’ he would say. ‘You’re perfect, eat all the chocolates you want,’ and she would laugh and say that if she did, then he would see the difference in no time. She had a certain fondness for the kind of books Laura would have scorned – romantic novels, historical rubbish by someone called Georgette Heyer – and he would often find her reading the women’s pages in the Daily Mirror, when he had brought a particularly brilliant political article to her notice. In spite of all this he was so extremely, wonderfully fond of her. He didn’t quite dare let the word ‘love’ out, for that surely would have been a final betrayal.