A secret smile flashes from Pam and Flora.
“But we’re not there much.” He tilts his face back and blows out a smoke ring, one, two, three, like nooses of rope. “My parents prefer their London house these days.”
“Or that scruffy little dive in the C?te d’Azur,” teases Tom, making me suspect he doesn’t come from such wealth himself.
“The C?te d’Azur.” Pam says longingly, all nonchalance forgotten. “Lucky you.”
Harry nods like he doesn’t quite believe it. “They’ve handed us the keys for one last summer here, anyway.” The word last hangs in the air, making everything feel urgent, soon to be lost. “My last hurrah before I go up to Oxford, Tom here to National Service,” he explains with an easier smile. “Doing rather well on the domestic front, aren’t we, Tom, darling?” Tom laughs. “A perfect married couple. We’ve only flooded one bathroom and smashed two vases so far.”
“We? You.” Tom’s sharpness suggests this is an argument they’ve had before.
Tom and Harry eyeball each other, each refusing to look away, jockeying for position, an old rivalry that the rest of us can only guess at, until Harry bends down and holds up a beer bottle and a stack of battered metal tumblers that make me wonder if they knew we were here. “Shall I be mother?”
We sneak thrilled glances at one another, trying to read the others’ reactions. We might sip half a glass of champagne at a party, but beer in a meadow with strange young men? Unthinkable.
“The local brew. Tastes better than it smells, I promise.”
“That’s very kind of you—” begins Flora, taking the moral lead.
“Yes, please.” Pam sticks out a hand and tosses her hair. Dot’s eyes widen behind her glasses.
Flora, annoyed that Pam has made her look prim, says, “Since when do you drink beer, Pam?”
Pam shrugs. “I’m dying of thirst.”
Flora hesitates, laughs. “Oh, you know what? I’ll have one, too.”
“Flora,” I mutter in astonishment, wondering where this will all lead, if we’ve been out too long in the sun. Or whether it’s just the stones themselves, the way their shadows are lengthening, lapping at the grass, making the red sky spin. But Harry is already pouring beer into the tumblers, the liquid foaming over the sides like thick cream. He hands them to Pam and Flora, who sniff it curiously, as if it were some strange elixir.
“You might be a little young for beer,” Harry says to Dot sweetly. “So I bequeath you my water flask.” He turns to me with yellow eyes glinting. “But you . . .”
“Margot,” I say, disappointed that he’s already forgotten my name, hoping he doesn’t think me so young he’ll offer me water, too.
“Margot,” he repeats, unflinching. “Margot Wilde, with an e.” He grins, and a freckle on his lip flattens. “Can I tempt you?”
“No, thank you.” I’m not even sure why I say it, when I desperately want to say yes and my mouth is so dry my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
“But this beer has your name on it.” He plucks his pen out of his pocket and carves M in the creamy white foam. “See?”
I start to laugh, light-headed, like I might have drunk barrels of beer already. He presses the cup into my hand, folding my fingers one by one around the metal, deliciously cold against my skin. Sticky beer drips down onto my hand. Bats start to loop behind him, black as the night to come. I lift it slowly to my mouth, feeling the world tilt, come loose somehow. The cool rim of metal pushes against my lips and I taste it, bitter and sweet at the same time, hay and honey.
Outside the house, we pass Billy, watering can angled, spilling a silver liquid line. The way he looks at me makes me wonder if he’s seen us, knows where we’ve been. My older sisters flurry past, barely aware of his presence now—eclipsed by the Gores in a moment—as he straightens, politely removing his straw hat. A few moments later, I turn around to smile, remembering my manners too late, but he has gone.
The orangery is like a bell jar, Moll and Sybil its butterflies, Moll fanning Sybil with gray wings of newspaper, making Sybil’s white hair fly from her pale, high forehead as she slumps, back to us, on a wicker chair. I can see her spine through the cotton of her dress, bones like buttons, the bright pin of her eyes reflected in the dark window—it is far later than we realized—tracking us as we cross the flagstones.
“Aunt?” Flora says gently. “Did we miss dinner?”
She doesn’t turn around. “I’ve been worried sick.”
“We’re very sorry,” says Flora with a nunlike bow of her head, sneaking a smile at me. We’re not sorry at all.
“I thought something had happened, Flora.”
Something did happen, we want to say. Summer just became a lot more interesting.
Sybil hands a little silver bowl of browning peach slices to Moll and twists in her chair. “I thought you were sensible girls.”
Moll starts fanning her again with the newspaper, which flutters in her thick, ink-stained fingers. The sweetness of jasmine trickles through an open window.
“We lost track of time,” says Dot bravely, looking at Pam for approval. “It suddenly went faster.” Pam gives her a small nod. Our little sister is learning.
“Oh, the hours do slip about in this sort of heat.” Moll sends Dot a quick, sympathetic smile that reveals the black door of her tooth. “There’s some cold cuts in the kitchen, don’t worry.”
“And Flora is seventeen,” Pam points out. “Margot and I not far off. Ma lets us—”
“I don’t give a damn what Bunny lets you do,” Sybil spits, naming Ma with unexpected acidity. “You are my charges while you’re at Applecote Manor.”
We glance at one another in dismay: the perimeters of our summer tighten, just when we thought they might be thrillingly expanded.
Flora tries to save us. She squats beside Sybil’s chair, the evening still glittering in her eyes. “Aunt, we were only at the meadow. Quite safe, I promise.”
“Nowhere is safe, Flora. Nowhere.”
She holds up her hand to stop Moll fanning. And it is impossible to see in this gaunt nervous woman the aunt with the easy laugh who’d tell us to run off after lunch, enjoy ourselves, and try to be back for tea.
“But the men were terribly nice,” says Dot. Pam elbows her, but it is too late.
There is a pause, a gash in the humid evening air. “Men?”
“Young men, really. Boys. Just a bit older than us,” corrects Flora quickly. “Summering at Cornton.”
Sybil starts and sits up a little straighter, hand leaping to her throat. “Cornton? Cornton Hall? Are you sure?”
Flora nods enthusiastically.
“Tom and Harry.” I smile and taste the bitter beer on my tongue. It occurs to me that I will always be able to taste it. “The Gore cousins.”
“One’s about to go to Oxford, I think, the other National Service.” Pam rushes in with these impeccable credentials.
Sybil stands up abruptly, long skirt swishing around her legs. “Did you know this, Moll?”