MARY SAT WITH HER mother and they read the morning’s post while they waited for lunch. The manager at the Lyceum had replied: Zachary was in good heath and being provided for, and Mary wasn’t to concern herself. She frowned and folded the letter back into its envelope.
“What is it?’ ” said her mother.
“Just Hilda,” said Mary. “The men she favors, the shops she doesn’t.”
“How dreary.”
“But it’s Hilda so she makes it fun, of course.”
“Then why the long face?”
“I worry for her. I wish she could meet someone nice.”
“Well, click your heels together three times when you wish.”
Mary wondered if the manager had meant it kindly when he wrote that she wasn’t to concern herself. There would be a natural wariness, she supposed, of whites. Perhaps she hadn’t made it clear in her own letter that she was one of the helpful kind.
Palmer’s footsteps were so delicate as to be barely audible when he brought in lunch at one. Cook had set a mixed shoal of shrimp and whitebait into clear aspic, using a mold in the form of a wave. The wave was encircled on its salver by a salad of fruits de mer, the whole resting on a bed of toasted golden seeds that made convincing sand.
Mary’s mother put on her spectacles to examine the production, then had Palmer hold it up to the window so that daylight shone through the wave.
“And the beauty is that none of it is on the ration. People make such a fuss about the hardships, but one need only be inventive. What do you think, dear?”
“I’m astonished the poor haven’t thought of it,” said Mary.
Her mother ignored her. “ ‘Of course it’s only a practice for the real thing.”
For a moment, before she understood that the dish was a prototype for the fully operational version of itself, Mary couldn’t think what her mother meant. She stared at the tiny creatures as they flashed in the afternoon light, and wondered what could be the real experience for which this was practice. (Drowning, perhaps? Quite close to the beach? In a well-stocked corner of the ocean?) She had stopped paying attention to the tireless campaign of dinners and cocktails through which her mother hoped to fight Father into Cabinet.
“Are you quite with us?” said her mother.
“Sorry,” said Mary. “I hardly slept.”
“Oh, who does? But you might at least have an opinion.”
Mary squinted into the wave. “The shrimp are rather sweet. Look at their little faces.”
“But darling, don’t you notice something?”
Mary noticed that Palmer was trembling with the strain of holding up the salver to the light. The vibration caused a pulsation in the wave, as if it might crest at any moment and break into streaks of mannered foam.
“I think Cook has dyed the aspic, hasn’t she? It’s a very subtle green.”
Her mother made an exasperated sound. “Yes, but the shrimp—don’t you see? Half of them are swimming upside down. And they would hardly be scattered throughout the wave like that, willy-nilly. Shrimp would be down near the seabed, feeding.”
“It’s almost as if Cook has forgotten her marine biology.”
“You mock me, but this is why we have a practice run. Oh Palmer, you may put the damned thing down now, and let’s see how it slices.”
While Palmer set to with a serving knife, Mary’s mother briefed her on the next evening’s table plan.
“Father will be here on the left, giving the Minister the head of the table. Anderson will sit here with you on his right to make him laugh, which you are awfully good at. And you must try to show off your figure a little. You have worn nothing but sackcloth since . . . well, since you know when.”
“I am not entirely clear on my role. Am I to seduce Anderson, or to render him well disposed toward Father?”
“Would a little of both be beyond you? Anyway, you mustn’t look at me like that. I have invited Henry Hunter-Hall just for you, and he will be sitting here, directly opposite. You may bother each other with your toes, or whatever it is that young people do since the art of conversation was lost.”
“It is too soon. I was in love with Tom—I think you know that I was.”
“Dear, you are twenty years old. We all have our practice runs.”
“You are relieved that Tom died.”
“Oh, not at all. I am dreadfully sorry when anyone is killed, doubly so if it is someone you were fond of.”
Mary smiled.
“What?” said her mother.
“ ‘Well you make him sound like a pony, or a Labrador.”
“It’s only that he was never someone I thought of as a grown-up match for you.”
“He was killed trying to save one of my pupils. I thought it grown-up.”
“It is heartbreaking, I know, but one advances through such trials.’