She was silent for a while as Dimpsie and I stared anxiously at her pinched nostrils and compressed lips, waiting for the oracle to pronounce. Young and unsophisticated though I was, I dimly understood that, because of the Preston supremacy in birth and upbringing, for a child of Evelyn’s to be surpassed in anything was something of a facer. An inward struggle was evidently taking place as she folded the letter into small sections.
Then her better self got the upper hand. Talent must never be wasted. She had heard of a ballet school in Manchester that had an excellent reputation. She would ring at once and ask them to send a prospectus. She congratulated me very kindly and asked us both to stay to tea. There was no more talk about ‘little accomplishments’ and ‘hopping about’.
When Isobel heard about the letter she went down to the beck that races through the valley of Gaythwaite and threw in her ballet pumps. Then she put a note through our letterbox. Unless I dropped the whole idea of ballet school she would never speak to me again. Furthermore she would put a curse on me so that my nose would be permanently covered with blackheads.
After a terrifying audition at Brackenbury House Ballet School, I was awarded a place for the following term. This meant I had only a few weeks mooning about Dumbola Lodge in a state of excommunication, shut out from the paradisial delights of Shottestone Manor – the pony, the swimming pool, the tennis court, the garden, the dogs and Mrs Capstick’s celebrated orange cake, which, being a greedy child, I regretted perhaps most of all.
The curse had been lifted by Christmas, much to my relief. I had spent anxious moments, in my precious free time at Brackenbury, examining my face for blackheads. Isobel had been sent to a smart boarding school in Berkshire, and she needed an audience during the holidays for tales of her new life and her new friends. It was about then that Isobel began a campaign of pubescent rebellion against her mother and I was drawn in as her sympathizer and support. Fortunately Evelyn was too busy reorganizing Northumberland to take much notice.
Superficially our relationship had survived the storm. But I had learnt to be guarded. I said almost nothing about my life in Manchester. I played the part of Isobel’s admiring friend, conscious that it behoved me to be generous. Together we celebrated her triumphs, when she was made a school monitor and captain of tennis, when she came top in English, when she was given the role of Jo in Little Women. We went shopping for clothes suitable for visiting school friends’ houses, mansions, chateaux, palazzos, once even a yacht. I listened and marvelled and praised without resentment, for I was going to be a dancer and nothing in the world could compare with the glory of that. First Isobel and then I became old enough to go to proper parties and dances. The best bit about these were the post mortems held in her bedroom when we discussed in minute detail and with tremendous scorn the boys we met there.
When Isobel was sixteen she was sent to school in Switzerland. Eighteen months later I moved to London to join the LBC and the friendship lapsed. I had not seen her for six years. ‘What was Isobel doing before she came home?’ I asked.
‘She finished her course in Fine Arts. Did I tell you that? Then she got a job at Sotheby’s. She sent a message to say how much she was looking forward to seeing you.’
‘That was kind of her.’
‘You were good friends once. I know she could be difficult, but you’re both grownup now … sometimes I think the friendship between women is the most sublime that’s possible between two human beings. Oh, I know the Greeks thought the same about men,’ she dismissed Homer and Plato with a wave and the back wheels skewed as they hit the mound of snow in the middle of the road, ‘but men never really talk to each other, do they?’
I felt sure a sweat of terror must be breaking out on my benumbed brow. ‘Being women, can we know that?’
‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, if Tom’s anything to go by, they never admit to anything more self-revealing than their golf handicap or the size of their socks.’
I realized she was being merely illustrative. My father despised golf and had never given a second’s thought to his socks, which my mother always bought for him. ‘The men I know are usually only too ready to invite you into their psyches. But I don’t suppose they’re typical. But neither is Tom, would you say? I’ve often wondered why he chose to do something that requires being nice to people. He’d be much happier locked in a laboratory on his own.’
I was making idle conversation to take my mind off the narrowness of the road and the steepness of the drop as we reached the head of the valley, but I heard a defensiveness in Dimpsie’s reply.
‘That would have been a great loss to the community though, wouldn’t it? I mean, he’s the cleverest doctor for miles around …’
While my mother rambled on in praise of my father’s diagnostic acuity, I indulged in a brief moment of pleasurable nostalgia. This first view of the valley into which we were now descending always moved me by its beauty. At this time of day only the lights of Gaythwaite were visible. Eagleston Crag, the highest point in the circle of hills, was only a darker mass in a sky swollen with inky clouds, but it was so familiar to me that I could have drawn its shape – like a bent old man with a sack on his back – with complete accuracy.
I closed my eyes tightly and tried to think about other things while we whooshed downwards and bounced over the bridge. ‘Nearly there,’ cried Dimpsie, braking hard to negotiate the sharp turn into our drive. What made it dangerous was a sheer drop of twenty feet into the river below the house. I opened my eyes to see the bright lights of another vehicle approaching. We had lost most of our speed by now and just managed to trickle across the path of a large lorry, with inches to spare. Dimpsie accelerated up the steep drive and ran gently into the mattress placed on its side at the back of the garage to act as a buffer.
‘There we are, darling. Home at last!’
Dumbola Lodge was a solid stone house built in the last century. Going into the hall, I was surprised by the vivid familiarity of things not seen or called to mind for several years. The wallpaper with its pattern of ivy leaves had been put up before I was born. The flagstones undulated at thresholds where generations of footsteps, including my own, had worn them away. Opposite the door was a serpentine chest of drawers to which Dimpsie had applied something caustic in the days when stripped pine was all the rage. Evelyn had been cross with her for ruining a good piece of eighteenth-century mahogany. To the right of it was the longcase clock that had belonged to my maternal grandmother.
Throughout my childhood I had held this clock in special affection. Above the dial were painted billowing clouds and gilded stars surrounding a cut-out semicircle in which the moon, the size of an orange, appeared according to its phases. It had small, kite-shaped eyes above fat cheeks, with lips curved up into a smile, but as a child I had discovered that when I was sad the moon’s smile became a grimace of sorrow. On the day the letter came offering me a place at Brackenbury Lodge, his bright little eyes had flashed with triumph. I was too old now to believe in the existence of a secret ally. It was my guilty conscience that made me imagine a hint of reproof in the moon’s expression. I sniffed the instantly recognizable smell of wet plaster, rubber mackintoshes and the fainter scent of medicated soap from the downstairs cloakroom.
‘Let me look at you.’ Dimpsie pulled off her red tam-o’-shanter and slung it in the direction of the hat stand. ‘Fabulous coat, darling. Evelyn’s always said that you had all the beauty in the family.’
‘How unkind of her. Also untrue. You have remarkable eyes.’
They were large, light brown and transparent with good nature.
‘Unkind? Evelyn? Darling, how can you say that when she’s been so good to you?’ My mother looked
