Laura didn’t understand how it would be obvious to know and yet not know her. It was only later that she came to see the way Amy sat at the centre of so many circles, how many and various her satellites were. But she was glad of Winifred’s sudden spark of interest, and so she tried to recall everything that she had seen and heard of Amy. In return, Winifred told her about the speculation in the press about her marriage. While the girls’ own lives were still dark to one another, Amy seemed to stand revealed and, in their comments on her, which moved from the admiring to the moralising, they hinted at their own desires.
After that the conversation led on to other things, but they felt more warmly now towards one another. Winifred mentioned how much she liked Laura’s coat, and Laura expressed her interest in shopping with Winifred in London. ‘I have an allowance now,’ she said, almost wonderingly.
‘Mother said that Grandfather’s legacy would make a big difference to Aunt Polly – I’m sorry, that’s an awfully crass thing to say,’ said Winifred, but Laura was rather relieved that the subject had been broached and admitted to her, as if it were a mild joke rather than a humiliating shame, that it was odd for her to have money to spend.
By this time they had walked up a steep hill, and Laura felt she should say something about the view, which was confusingly vast, layer upon layer of buildings laid out under the hazy light, but still and quiet on this Sunday afternoon, and so, with an exclamation, she stopped. Winifred asked her about Boston, and Laura tried to explain that they lived far away from the city – ‘Stairbridge is a small town, way west of Boston’ – but she saw that Winifred, like Aunt Dee, was not really much interested.
The walk had taken a long time and the weather was turning drizzly as they came back into her aunt’s street. Sodden, unswept leaves made the path slippery and Laura felt the shadow of the laurel bush, dark with soot, hanging over them as Winifred put her key into the door. ‘Thank goodness, Gee’s arrived already,’ Winifred said, seeing the coat and hat on the hall table. Laura could hear the rumble of a male voice from the living room. ‘He doesn’t live here then?’ she asked.
‘No, only comes back on Sundays – the prodigal.’
Giles was a big presence, fair like his sister, his voice loud in the quiet, over-furnished room. Even with Winifred supplying repartee as quickly as she could, his performance was too fast and too expansive, Laura thought. The anecdotes he was telling were about work, and although they were difficult to follow in themselves, being about some developments in radio, the main thrust of them was easy enough to understand, about how Old Stevens was standing in his way, unable to get the funding released from air defence, and that the boy Pearson kept making a mess of the data, but how Giles himself was forging ahead.
The burble of his stories was continuing as they sat down to lunch – a meal of heavy roast meat and a sort of spongy pancake and indeterminate boiled vegetables – and Laura was just wondering if this family was always so easy, so reassuringly solid, or if this was a show put on for her. Then the telephone rang in the hall, and Mrs Venn, the maid who had met Laura at Waterloo the day before, put her head around the door. ‘It’s for Miss Laura.’
‘Oh – do you mind?’ Laura was getting up and going towards the door, only thinking that it must be Mother and hoping that Ellen’s appendicitis hadn’t entered some new complication. But down the line came the strong, clear voice from the ship, Florence’s voice, dismissing Laura’s questions about how she was and telling her about a march that was happening the following weekend. Laura felt a sudden sense of disjunction, a gap cracking open between the girl who was listening to Florence’s voice, who would be expected to come to a demonstration in a few days, and the girl who would return to the dining room and pick up her spoon to eat the boiled pudding they had just been served.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said to Florence, and then, as the directions continued, she fell silent. ‘Yes – yes, all right, I’ll see you then.’ Once she had put the receiver back in its cradle, she stood for a while, wondering what to do, before going back into the dining room.
Entering the room, Laura stumbled over a lie that she had been speaking to a girl she had known from home who was visiting London with her parents. But she found that the others were not really paying attention to her. The conversation had shifted while she had been out of the room.
‘You promised!’ Winifred was saying, her voice rising, to Giles, who was spooning pudding into his mouth.
‘Can’t help it – away that week now.’
‘Giles, dear, that is a bit rough – she has been looking forward to it.’
Aunt Dee turned to Laura and started to explain that Winifred had been expecting Giles to take her away to a country-house party next week, although Aunt Dee herself had thought it wasn’t the right time for them to go away, given Laura’s arrival.
Winifred pushed her bowl away. ‘I even bought a new dress, you perfect—’
‘Shall we have coffee in the living room?’ Aunt Dee seemed eager to turn the conversation. ‘It’s rather cold in here.’ Indeed, the room felt damp and chilly, as the rain fell against the curtained windows.