to be so original. Drink of course. Fatal.’
Iris had a plan for the afternoon: they would walk across the park and up Piccadilly to Bond Street. Jocelyn had told her that Fenwick’s had the smartest clothes, and she was determined to buy Ruth a coat for the winter. Iris was generous in fits. The October sunlight shone thinly through the plane trees, whose trunks bore a dappled tracery, as if they were half shadowed, half bleached with light. Iris walked fast, as always. In the store, a tired-looking assistant wearing thick, too-pale face powder brought out coats for Ruth to try on: one a dark chocolate-brown gabardine, belted; the next a pale-green swing coat with raglan sleeves which puffed at the wrists; then one in red bouclé, with big black buttons.
‘Oh, I think the green, don’t you?’ Iris asked the assistant.
‘The cut is very much of the season,’ the woman said.
‘It moves prettily at the back,’ said Iris.
Ruth surveyed herself in the glass and was not happy with what she saw: a young woman with dark hair that wouldn’t lie flat and bright eyes. Her calves were lean enough, but somehow lacked the curve necessary to make them look like the limbs of a real woman. They were a child’s legs, straight down, stumpy. The green coat accentuated the flaws of her figure and concealed its attractions: her trim waist and firm bosom were utterly lost within its folds. The colour reminded her of the drabness of hospital corridors. She thought it made her look like a huge broad bean. She wished the assistant would stop hovering so she could say so.
‘I’m not sure, actually,’ she said.
But Iris was.
‘That colour’s terribly fetching on you, darling,’ she said firmly.
‘But I don’t think I’m tall enough. I think I’d be better with a belt,’ said Ruth.
‘Don’t be silly, darling. Belted coats are for Norland Nannies. Swing coats are all the thing, for the young, I mean. Aren’t they?’ she asked the assistant, who murmured in assent. Iris was already reaching into her bag for her chequebook. Before Ruth could voice any further objections the coat was being whisked towards the counter and wrapped in tissue paper, like egg whites being folded into cakes. She was handed an important-looking paper bag, with the box containing the coat inside. The bag was grass green, with black lettering swooping across its sides, and thick string handles. Iris looked expectantly at her, for thanks.
Ruth was not going to let her mother see the tears which stung her eyes, so she bent as if to tighten the lace of her left shoe. She suddenly felt much younger than her years, forlorn and childish and mutinously ungrateful.
‘Well, I want to go down to Simpson’s and buy some tea,’ Iris announced briskly. ‘I’m going to be frightfully extravagant and get all sorts of exotic things one can’t find in the country, like Lapsang Souchong.’
‘It’s lovely being able to have as many cups as one likes now,’ Ruth said. Tea had only just come off the ration. ‘Last week it went to our heads rather. Verity and I drank so much tea that we felt quite sick.’
‘Darling! Really! You do say the queerest things.’
They had reached Piccadilly and Ruth could feel her mother invisibly tugging away from her, like when you tried to push one magnet against another. ‘Thank you for the lunch. And the coat. It’s really very kind of you.’
‘Well, we can’t have you freezing to death,’ said Iris.
Ruth was able to muster a thin smile.
It was all most awkward. Iris and Digby had barely even been in the same room as Edward and Helen, let alone for a whole afternoon. They had certainly never sat down to eat at the same table before. Iris would no doubt talk too much, Digby too little. Edward’s manners would prevail of course, but Helen prattled so. And all the Longden relations were Catholic and obviously disapproved. Ruth herself had received Instruction, so that it could be a Catholic service, to please Harry’s parents. She had had to undertake to bring up her children within the Faith, in due course. It was rather wonderful, to think of all those saints constantly interceding on her behalf and to learn that Mary never, ever refused a prayer. She kept quiet about the aspects of her new religion in which she could not quite believe. The only difficulty occurred when Verity suggested she make no mention as to how she was related to Jamie, who was to be her page.
‘But why?’ asked Ruth. ‘Aren’t you allowed pages who are your half-brothers?’
‘It’s only that Father Leonard might find it difficult about him being your mother’s child from her second marriage.’
‘What?’
‘Well, you know we don’t go in for divorce. It may be – and I’m not sure, it may be that I’m erring on the side of caution – that the Church would not recognise your mother’s second marriage. In which case, Jamie—’
‘You can’t mean it! That’s absurd!’
‘Father Leonard doesn’t need to know that he’s your half-brother. You can simply give his name. After all, it’s different from yours.’
‘But isn’t that terribly hypocritical? And what about “Suffer little children to come unto me”? It’s not very Christian, is it, to declare Jamie a … well, illegitimate? It’s not his fault, after all.’ Ruth had flushed with anger. ‘He’s innocent. He’s a child.’ It was the first time she had ever been short with Verity.
‘Nobody said anything like that, Ruth. It’s a question of whether or not he was born in sin. And after all, we all are. That’s why we are baptised, as you will no doubt have learned. I could very well be wrong about this question. It could very well be that there is no reason why he shouldn’t participate in the wedding Mass. But Father Leonard’s rather a stickler. I just wouldn’t want there to be any unpleasantness.’
But it was too late. The question over Jamie lodged in Ruth’s upper chest painfully, like hiccups that have gone on too long. At first she was determined to bring it up with Harry, but she thought better of it. If he did not disagree with his sister, Ruth knew she would struggle to forgive him.
Ruth had other worries. She feared embarrassment: Iris was practically a pagan, went about with bare legs, seldom did her hair. ‘You will wear a hat, won’t you, Mummy? Only, all the Longdens are,’ Ruth dared at last to ask her on the telephone.
‘Of course I will! What do you take me for?’ said Iris hotly.
‘Of course. I didn’t … it’s only that—’
‘Just because one isn’t absolutely hidebound with formality doesn’t mean that one doesn’t know how to behave,’ Iris interrupted. ‘I am a doctor’s wife, you may recall. One may live in the North, but that doesn’t make one an absolute Eskimo.’
Ruth thought that Eskimos generally did wear hats, but judged it wiser to say nothing. Getting married seemed to necessitate a lot of not saying things.
At least Iris was not intending to come south in advance of the wedding. And the thought that the reception might take place at her house seemed never to have crossed her mind: there were advantages in her failure to observe convention. It was tacitly accepted that Ruth
