Laura was not flattered. As they sat down, she looked at Mother’s over-made-up face, in which a determined girlishness kept warring with the lines that age and sadness had drawn on it – was that really what she looked like? Or was that her future face? Mother was thinner – she had always wanted to stay slim, disapproving of women who got fat – but there was a slackness now about her slenderness, as though by losing flesh she had lost energy. Tom offered them drinks, and Laura asked for a highball, which was what she knew Tom usually drank, though Mother and Ellen stuck to lemonade.
As she sucked down the first cold gulps, Laura asked about Father; she knew already from Ellen that his chest was worse and he was very sick now. Laura remembered his cough from the past. It had been deep and rasping, though his voice was light for a man’s, and he would try to suppress it over breakfast as he lit his first cigarette.
‘I don’t know why you didn’t insist he come,’ Ellen was saying to Mother, ‘the sea air would have done him good, and Laura hasn’t seen him for so long.’ That was characteristic of Ellen; she was always the one whose self-righteous certainty made others doubt themselves. Mother said little, and Laura found herself unexpectedly in sympathy with her; she seemed almost to quail under Ellen’s critical voice. Laura looked at Tom as she thought about Ellen’s character; how rigid she always was, unable to see anyone else’s point of view. How would it be to fall in love with someone like that?
But from their first meeting Tom had been opaque to Laura. She had learned something from Ellen’s letters during the war about his background, his connection to those envied Bellinghams, and about how he had been excused military service due to a heart murmur. Those facts had led Laura to invest him with some aura of glamour or delicacy; his actual presence, red-faced and inarticulate, was puzzling, as was his attitude to Ellen. He seemed not to notice her complaints, but treated her with a kind of casual dismissiveness.
After a while they stood up to go into dinner and Laura felt the drink weighing down her movements, but when she sat down she asked Tom if she could have a beer along with him. She said it in a light tone, as though she simply wanted to try what he was drinking, but in fact she felt thirsty for the cold bubbles. She did not see how she could get through evening after evening here, already she could feel a needling pain rising up through her shoulders, which were hunched up to her neck as if to protect herself. She looked at Ellen, and saw that her mouth was folded together as if she too was struggling for composure. But then Laura felt rebuked when Ellen caught her eye and smiled, and said something about how wonderful it was that they were all back together again.
‘All except Father,’ said Laura.
‘Yes, things aren’t really very good with him,’ Mother said, but then she was distracted, or chose to be distracted, by the plate that the maid, Ora, was passing her. ‘Not so much for me, and no sauce – my stomach can’t take such rich food, Ellen.’
‘You don’t have to watch your figure, Mother,’ Laura said. Her mother shook her head.
‘You know it isn’t that, Laura, but …’
But yes, God forbid that you should ever relax, Laura thought, drinking the beer Tom had brought her and taking the rejected plate for herself. Already, Ellen was into her usual complaints about how much work this summer was creating for her. Tom’s brother was to arrive that evening; he had been wounded – a shattered wrist – in the Pacific, Tom was explaining, although both Laura and Mother already knew the story. His month’s convalescence leave had just started, and the hope was that he would not have to return to service, that demobilisation would overtake the end of his stay. Ellen was wondering if he would mind that dark room at the end of the corridor, and Laura was saying in a small voice that maybe it would be easier if she went into a hotel. Tom talked over them, enthusiastic about the possibility of more people in the house. He wanted to get the tennis courts rolled. It was a pity the garden here had become such a mess; he remembered it from years back, it had been a great place then.
Laura remembered the garden at Sutton Court, and started to tell them about it – the long formal hedges and the rose garden all turned over to vegetables for the war, the meadow given to grazing. She realised almost as soon as she started speaking that it was as though she was telling a fairy tale, something childish, about a distant and uninteresting land. She had noticed this reaction time and again whenever she started to say something about England and the war. It was natural, she told herself – why would her family want to hear about the wartime deprivations she had known; as if America had not made its sacrifices, was not still making its sacrifices? She stayed almost silent for the rest of the meal, and as they went into the living room she realised that her back was damp with sweat, even in her cotton dress.