face brightened. She poured us both more coffee and popped a piece of halva into her mouth. ‘Well, darling, it’s really rather fascinating … I went to see her just before Christmas. You remember Dougall always made us take our shoes off in the porch? Well, now you have to put on plastic things like bath hats over your feet …’
I was anxious to look my best for dinner at Shottestone Manor. Luckily I had brought my best dress with me. Like many of my clothes it was a cast-off from Wardrobe. It came originally from a production of Ondine, Ashton’s ballet about a water nymph. Now, unless you looked closely, you couldn’t see the bad tear under the arm which I had spent hours mending, because the dress was made from several layers of chiffon in different shades of aquamarine and jade with a hem cut into long strips to shimmer like water. It had a high waist bound with silver braid which ran up over the narrow straps. Unfortunately the plaster cast, already quite grubby round the edges, and the black sock I wore over it to cover my bare toes seriously impaired the glamour lent me by the dress. While waiting for inspiration to effect some improvement, I wrapped a blanket round my naked shoulders and sat on my bedroom window seat to admire the view across the valley.
The hillside opposite was steep and thickly wooded. At this time of year the façade of Shottestone Manor could clearly be seen among the branches, though the distance was too great for its inhabitants to be more than moving dots. Like Dumbola Lodge it was built of grey stone but it had an altogether superior air. Two projecting wings made it an impressive size, a third storey with steep gables gave it an imposing height, and a pillared portico added gracefulness.
Isobel’s bedroom had been on the top floor. As children we had sometimes signalled to each other by arrangement. You could just make out an energetically waved pillowcase as a fleck of white. Isobel had got into hot water when one had blown out of her hand and into the trees below, never to be seen again. For a brief period we had sent messages with torches using Morse code. I had swotted up all the dots and dashes, hoping to impress Rafe with my prowess. I dreamed that he might send me messages of love flashing in beams of light above the treetops, but of course it never happened. My exchanges with Isobel were laborious because she did not have the same incentive to learn the alphabet, so there were long intervals between letters while she looked them up. Also, having spent the day together there wasn’t much to say.
Rafe’s bedroom had been on the first floor. Once I had borrowed my father’s telescope and trained it on Rafe’s window for hours, hoping for a glimpse of my idol. I had been rewarded when he had leaned on the sill for a whole five minutes wearing an unbuttoned shirt and smoking a cigarette. I drank in the sight of his godlike head and manly chest, my heart thumping with excitement while the barrel of the telescope became damp from my perspiring fingers.
Evelyn’s bedroom was on the floor below and took up three windows above the portico. Isobel had told me her parents slept in separate rooms. Even as a small child I had perceived that Kingsley worshipped Evelyn whereas my father barely tolerated my mother, yet they slept in the same bed and even shared bath water. At the time this had puzzled me.
A knock interrupted these reminiscences. Dimpsie came in.
‘Just wanted to see how you were getting on. Hello, Siegfried poppet.’ Siggy, who had been lying with every appearance of content on the rug beside my bed, dashed into the wardrobe as though in terror. I did not believe this for a moment. Fear was an emotion unknown to Siggy, but he liked to be interesting.
I stood up, threw off the blanket and twirled, or rather, stomped in a circle, so she could see how I looked.
‘Fabulous, darling! I love that dress! The sock does detract rather …’
‘Perhaps bare toes would be better. But my nails are still growing out their bruises.’
Dancers feet are always ugly, with bunions, calluses, crooked toes, peeling bloody skin and discoloured nails.
‘I’ll paint them for you.’ Dimpsie went away and reappeared a minute later with a box of acrylic paints. She sat on the carpet and worked away with dedication. On four nails she drew glittering stripes of gold and silver. On my big toe she managed a just recognizable Mona Lisa.
‘You are clever!’ I examined my foot approvingly.
‘What a pity Tom’s had to go out again. Poor Vanessa Trumball is worried about her blood pressure. You look so stunning. He’d be proud of you.’
My mother liked to maintain the fiction that my father entertained paternal feelings towards his daughters. He and I had met at breakfast that morning, not a good time for either of us. I was still tired after the journey and had slept badly. My bed was a converted paddle steamer from a derelict merry-go-round that Dimpsie had discovered long ago in a salvage yard. She had bought a little wooden bus for Kate and had converted them into beds by replacing the seats with boards and mattresses. She had painted them in bright colours and decorated our rooms to match. I had blue waves below the dado, sky and seagulls above. Kate had hedges and houses and Belisha beacons on her walls. These unusual sleeping quarters had been the envy of all our friends, but now the boat was too short and the high wooden sides delivered agonizing blows to my knees whenever I turned over. The plaster cast made things worse. A further cause of discomfort had been the turbulence caused by the gaseous vegetables. I had gone down to breakfast feeling tense and exhausted.
My father had looked up from the newspaper he was reading. ‘Hello, Marigold. To what do we owe this unlooked-for condescension? If it’s money I’m sorry to tell you that there’s none to spare.’
I felt a violent return of all the old feelings.
‘Don’t be silly, Tom,’ Dimpsie said before I could reply. ‘I told you she’d broken her foot.’
My father glanced down at my leg. His hair, the exact colour of mine, was grizzled at the temples. Mine was straight as a pencil but his was curly and stood up in a shock above his white face, which now had a faint blush across the cheekbones where veins had broken. His once dramatic red and whiteness was merging to a generalized pink. His eyes, sharp with intelligence, looked at me through rimless hexagonally framed spectacles. ‘What sort of fracture is it?’
‘Comminuted.’
‘I suppose you continued to walk on it after you broke it?’
‘I didn’t know I had. Broken it, I mean.’
He snorted and returned his eye to the page.
‘What are you going to do today, darling?’ Dimpsie had plopped two poached eggs on top of the wholemeal brick on my plate. ‘Perhaps you ought to have a nap this afternoon so as to be sparkling for dinner with Evelyn. You can ring me when you’re ready to come home. I shan’t mind waiting up. I’ve some paperwork to do for the craft shop.’
‘Aren’t you coming?’
‘Oh no. Evelyn said I’d find her guests too stuffy and conventional. She said they bore her to tears but she feels she has a duty to entertain the county and, besides, Kingsley likes them. She’s always so unselfish.’
‘Rubbish!’ My father folded his paper neatly as he spoke, matching the edges precisely. ‘The county could get on perfectly well without being patronized by Evelyn. What she means is, you aren’t smart enough. Evelyn’s a snob, but in this case I can hardly blame her. A fat, middle-aged hippy clinging to her Bohemian past, babbling about
