the side of the bed. He was no worse than the others, less so perhaps; inoffensive, with some charm about him, able to take away the loneliness for a few moments of passion and rob the night of its desolation.
She suddenly wanted none of him. She had yanked at his leg, thrown his clothes at him, driven him from the flat. Home from work that evening, she had taken the telephone off the hook, unwired the door bell, and spent the whole evening soaking in the bath and reading the children’s books she had bought at lunchtime: The Phoenix and the Carpet and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and What Katy Did.
She had expected the mood to pass, that in a little while she would want to be back among her set – but it hadn’t happened. The liveliness seemed brittle, their vivacity aimless and empty, the round of parties and nightclubs pointless, the sophistication superficial and unsatisfactory. She was like a snake that had sloughed its skin, and was waiting to see what new patterns it might find its scales forming themselves into. She bathed a lot, drank very little, refused all invitations, fled round corners or hid in shop doorways to avoid the acquaintances who’d been her companions for months past.
And now there was Cecy, smiling at her in the old way. She felt guilty at how she had let her old friends drop. All very well to cut herself off from her family, but Cecy wasn’t family. Alix had known she was in London, a medical student at one of the big hospitals, but had made no effort to meet up with her.
She suggested a film.
‘There’s the new Cary Grant at the Odeon. With Bettina Brand. Queues round the block, I should think.’
‘Never mind,’ Cecy said. ‘Let’s brave the queue, and go.’
It was a good programme, with a cartoon before the Pathé News and the main feature. They found the cartoon very funny, although the light-hearted mood was rather dispelled by the grainy news pictures of a rally in Berlin.
‘Good marchers, you’ve got to say that for them,’ said a woman in the row behind.
‘Some of that discipline would do all the layabouts in this country a bit of good.’
‘That Hitler’s barking: shouting and yelling and shooting his arm into the air all the time. And his moustache, did you ever see anything so silly?’
‘He makes my flesh creep, him and those others going about in uniforms all the time.’
‘Sssh.’
The scenes of Herr Hitler addressing a rally gave way to ranks of German beauties, bursting with health at a Strength Through Joy camp, waving scarves in synchronised patterns, and then to a shot of members of Hitler Youth relaxing with outsize tankards of beer on benches at a heavily timbered country inn, with snow-capped mountains as a backdrop.
‘At last,’ Cecy said, settling herself more comfortably in her seat as the strains of organ music faded away, and the curtains swished open again to show MGM’s roaring lion.
Late to bed, and cursed with wakefulness, Alix finally fell into a restless sleep in the early hours of the morning. As a result, she overslept and only just got to her office on time, signing her name in the book at one minute to nine. The man on duty at the reception desk scowled at her, he’d hoped to catch her out for once. ‘Thank you, Mr Milsom,’ she said brightly. Avoiding the minute and ancient lift in the centre of the stairwell, she started up the three flights of stairs to her office in the copywriting department.
Although office was a generous word for a cubby-hole carved out of a box room, with barely enough room for a small desk, a chair and a wobbly bookshelf containing out of date directories (cunningly dumped there by other members of staff), a thesaurus (essential, always tracked down and recovered within a short time of it being purloined from the shelf), a dictionary (1912 edition, the more modern one having been borrowed by the copy department and never returned), an aged copy of Gray’s Anatomy (invaluable for pharmaceutical clients and for the dull but profitable remedies-for-all-ailments products), last year’s Wisden (a mystery, that one), dictionaries of quotations and proverbs (almost as closely guarded as the Roget) and several discarded trashy novels, borrowed by members of the typing pool on dull days and kept there as being the only available shelf space.
A brisk morning’s work with the EasiTums account – For the liverish feeling that takes the zest out of life – saw her desk clear of immediate tasks, and at ten to one, she was in the telephone box on the corner of the street.
She’d try Edwin at his studio number first, she might be lucky and she’d rather telephone him there than risk ringing Wyncrag. She picked up the receiver, dialled the operator, and asked for a long distance number. There was a long pause, clicking sounds, the operator told her to put in her coins, and she was through.
Her twin’s voice came down the line, blessedly familiar. ‘Alix?’
‘Oh, Edwin, yes, it’s me. Look, I wonder …’ Now she didn’t really know what to say. ‘Is it true, is the lake freezing?’
‘Coming along nicely. Give it a few more days of this frost and we’ll be skating on it. They all swear there’s no sign of the weather changing. Come up, do, or can’t you bear to drag yourself away from the bright lights of London?’
‘If only you knew. I was thinking of it, but Grandmama …’
‘She’ll be pleased.’
‘It’s been more than three years.’
‘No time at all, and besides, it is your home. Come up as soon as you can get away. Don’t bring the man in your life with you, however.’
‘There isn’t one.’
The silence at the other end spoke volumes. ‘Edwin? Are you still there?’
‘Let me know what train, so that you can be met, Lexy,’ he said.
His use of her nursery name from long ago made her blink. ‘I’d better telephone Grandmama.’
‘I’ll tell her. I’ll say I rang you and persuaded you to come north. And I’ll look out your skates for you, take them to the blacksmith if the blades need sharpening.’
The operator cut in, her voice indifferent. ‘Your three minutes are up, caller.’
London, Whitehall
Saul Richardson looked down from the tall window. Beneath him, the traffic in Whitehall buzzed to and fro, the cars and taxis so many black beetles, the red livery of the double-decker buses a flash of brightness in the rainy gloom. A troop of Horseguards trotted past, hooves ringing on the Tarmac, the riders’ uniforms and the gleam of their breastplates adding another dash of colour to the scene. Black horses shook heads and manes, snatched at bridles, eager to get back to their stalls, out of the sleeting rain.
He turned and looked in the other direction, out over Parliament Square. Westminster Abbey and squat St Margaret’s, both blackened by soot, looked ancient, cold and unwelcoming. The great Gothic edifice of the Houses of Parliament did nothing to enliven the scene. A solitary constable in a cape stood on duty at the gates to the House of Commons. No flag fluttered above St Stephen’s
