Just at that moment the two girls had entered the park between the high street and Aunt Dee’s house, and Laura stopped in surprise. On the way up, a morning fog had covered it, but now the air had cleared. For the first time she saw London revealed as a place of potential beauty, in this park full of its layers and layers of different greens, both deep and transparent, opening onto that now almost familiar view of a secretive city down below. She said how lovely it was, and Winifred casually agreed. As they walked on, Laura kept looking out at the city, its promise of energy, its distant song of movement, and she wished that she were able to go into it that afternoon rather than do what they were expected to do – go home and be idle in the over-upholstered living room, reading and playing cards. She knew that Florence and Elsa were preparing for a big concert for aid for Spain, and she longed to be with them. Even if in practice the preparation only meant the repetitive business of stuffing envelopes and typing out address labels, still it might hold purpose within it, and on this day full of the brimming hope of spring she longed for a sense of purpose.
As soon as they got into the house, Laura realised she was not the only one who was feeling out of step with the Highgate house. Winifred had seemed good-humoured while they were walking outside, but when her mother told her she had got her the wrong novel she slammed it down on the table and insisted that this had been the title they had discussed. Although Laura had seen Winifred irritated before, this was the first time that her voice had crackled into real anger. Perhaps, Laura thought as Winifred ran upstairs to her room, shouting about her mother’s unreasonableness, the decorum of the household had been partly a response to her presence, as if everyone had been determined to put on a good show for the new onlooker. But now she was no longer new, nobody could be bothered to keep up the fa?ade. The bitter atmosphere continued over supper, when Aunt Dee complained about the amount that Winifred was spending on dresses and Winifred countered by telling her that it wasn’t her fault she wasn’t allowed to earn any money.
The following Saturday, the day that Winifred was going to the big dinner party, Laura came down to breakfast to find the atmosphere between mother and daughter had curdled completely. ‘I can’t believe that you’d try to stop me again …’ Winifred was saying.
‘It isn’t me, dear; it’s the way that the world is. Laura, we should really talk about this too … Polly’s last letter was definitely concerned, and I think she’s right, that we should think about booking you a passage back quite soon. There’s no hope of visiting the Continent while things are as they are, and I really think that—’
‘Just because we can’t go to France in the summer doesn’t mean that I have to give up my place at university.’
‘Do you mean you’d like me to go back?’ Laura was, to her surprise, horrified at the thought. Suddenly she realised how she had got used to the pleasures of this life – on the one hand, the comfortable round of shopping and gossip, social engagements and visits, in which the expectations on her were easy and undemanding; and on the other hand, all the time there was the possibility of her next meeting with Florence, the sporadic crossings into a world where the future was being made and her growing familiarity with their discussions of the new world to come. But her horror was silent, confined inside her head, while Winifred was openly furious, the words tumbling out of her.
‘I know, you say it’s the war coming, and before it was because of your chest pains, but don’t you see, Mother, it can’t always be about other things – it has to be about me too. I can’t stop living, I can’t just sit here my whole life because you sat at home all of yours …’
Laura stood at the table, unable to sit down, riveted by Winifred’s sudden honesty. How brave she seemed, in her green jersey, her hair pinned into curls in readiness for the evening’s party, arguing with her mother while coffee cooled in their cups. Laura was not surprised, however, when Dee said nothing at all in response. It was as though Winifred had not spoken, as she turned to Laura and asked if she would like a boiled egg with her toast. Even when Winifred stood up and, throwing down her napkin, stamped out of the room, Dee simply folded her lips together and told Laura she was probably over-excited about the evening. To her shame, Laura colluded in pretending that Winifred did not know what she was saying. She sat down and ate her breakfast, and listened to Aunt Dee talking about whether the gardener had been right to plant the lilies right up against the house like that – how would they get enough sunshine? Aunt Dee wondered.
After breakfast Laura went to find Winifred, who was sitting in the garden in the thin sunshine, pretending to read a book. She listened to Winifred’s complaints about her mother for a long while, and then reminded her that Dee had said it was time for Laura to go back. ‘I don’t want to,’ Laura said. ‘I really don’t want to.’
She wanted Winifred to say, I don’t want you to go either, but Winifred looked puzzled.
‘Don’t you? Is it about this man?’
‘I don’t know.’ Laura wished she could tell Winifred about Florence and all she meant to her, but she still held back. It would seem ridiculous now to confess that she had not been meeting some dashing man from the boat, and also she was afraid that Winifred would find Florence and Elsa and their politics absurd and would never understand the importance of what Florence had offered her. ‘Do you think I should go back?’
‘God knows. Mother thinks – like your mother I suppose – that it’s going to be 1914 and worse. Father was almost an old man, so he didn’t have to go, but the men they had danced with … I don’t have to explain, I’m sure you’ve heard enough stories from Aunt Polly.’