Conversation between herself, Sybil and Toby was going on reasonably well as Edward read a newspaper, and then Mrs Last came in, telling them that everyone would be late for church if they didn’t hurry up. Laura got up with the others, but Edward remained at the table. ‘You don’t have to go, you know,’ he said to her.
His mother heard him. ‘You are such a heathen these days,’ she said, but it seemed like something she had said before and Edward did not react. For a moment his mother stood there, as if she would like to say more, but then she went into the hall with the others.
Laura and Sybil were putting on their hats and pulling on their gloves when Edward came out of the dining room. ‘I’ll go down with you,’ he said, addressing himself to Sybil, but Laura felt he was speaking to her.
The walk was long, first along a path bordered by two straight lines of lime trees, where the light was sifted by their still-bare branches, and then down a lane to the village. It was not sunny, but there was a warmth in the misty air. Sybil and Mrs Last strode ahead together, while the boys and Laura went more slowly, and soon there was a distance between them. Laura was still in her over-sensitive mood, and the turn in the lane that revealed the spire of the little church by the green seemed to her like a revelation of a particularly English picturesque, the possibility of cliché ironed out by the poignancy of seeing such peacefulness during these days of war. ‘Come on in,’ Toby said to Edward. ‘It would mean a lot to Mother.’
‘Hollander is such a ham. How can you stand it?’
‘Would you believe it?’ Toby said to Laura. ‘He was the most devout of us when he was a boy.’
She smiled.
‘Was he? Were you?’
Edward admitted that he had been, and Toby reminisced about how he’d used to harangue the family about correct Christian values, and how he would read the Bible and even correct the vicar over Sunday lunch. ‘You discovered Jesus as some kind of socialist – Mother didn’t think it very funny. It lasted until you went to university, as I remember. Then you seemed to forget the kingdom of heaven.’
Laura felt Edward’s sudden discomfort. He reached out a hand and broke off a thin branch from a bush of white flowers next to them. ‘I’ll see you at lunch,’ he said, turning away. In the church Laura sat in rainbow lozenges of light that fell from the stained-glass window above, and all of a sudden, in the middle of a hymn, she imagined Edward as a little boy in the pew, turning his face to the windows and feeling faith rise in him.
Sunday lunch was another long, tasteless meal, this time with other neighbours to join them. Afterwards a kind of languor descended on everyone. Edward sat down at the piano and began to play something with only the slightest melody; repetitive chains of notes that rose and fell on disciplined lines, but the music seemed to irritate rather than calm the room. Sybil suggested cards and a game of bridge began. Laura, who did not play, got up and wandered around the room, looking at the photographs in tarnished silver frames that sat on the small tables. One she thought was Edward, that arctic blondness and indifferent expression, but when she lifted it up to look, she realised it was not him but a slighter man, older, without the broad shoulders and with a more delicate cast to his mouth and chin.
‘He’s terribly like Edward, isn’t he?’
It was Toby, standing near to Laura, the game of cards having finished.
‘Yes – exactly like, who is—?’
‘My father.’
‘He was a politician like you, wasn’t he?’
‘Not at all like me. He was one of the inner circle. Mother—’
And then Mrs Last spoke. ‘I don’t know why we are all stuffing in here – the sun’s shining at last. Sybil, why don’t you take our American visitor and show her the gardens?’
Sybil rose and opened the French windows, and she and Laura stepped out onto the wide terrace. It was not particularly warm, but feeling that they should go on, they walked down a path towards the pond. Soon it became too muddy. ‘The rose garden was wonderful last year,’ Sybil said, but of course they were just stumps right now, frilled with the beginnings of their new leaves. Laura could see how even this part of the garden was already ragged – the grass unkempt, the borders beginning to spurt with spring weeds – and beyond this formal part were now beds of vegetables. The two of them stood for a while by a large stone fountain, dry now and green with lichen, looking up at the hills. All this weekend Sybil had been absolutely reserved, only polite, and nothing more. Why had she invited Laura if she had not even wanted to talk to her?
‘It was sweet of you to invite me to join you this weekend,’ Laura said, hoping to break through the reserve.