struck her first, and then came a tide of other impressions. She saw that he was good-looking, even though his head was bandaged and partly shaven, and she felt disappointed that Clio had claimed his friendship first. She understood at once that he had eagerly mistaken her for Clio, and it was a ferment of mischief and pique and residual boredom that made her smile back and answer, ‘Of course I have come.’
As she said it she sat down on the bed, in the space his long legs had made for her. She was remembering the stories that Blanche and Eleanor used to tell of confusions at evening parties when they were girls. Her smile widened, and grew brillant.
Peter Dennis was dazzled by it.
‘It’s my job to go to the library and bring back books. You must tell me what you like to read. I’m afraid there’s only one left today.’
‘What is it?’ He had been unable to read for a long time. The print blurred and ran down the page like tears, and made pain slice through his head. But now he felt that he wanted to read again. He would have liked the volume of Tennyson that had been in his tunic pocket.
Grace held out the book. ‘It’s Zuleika Dobson.’
‘I’ve read it,’ Peter said. And then he added, ‘But I would love to read it again.’ This was Zuleika, he thought lightheadedly, sitting on his bed with a rainbow around her hair. He knew that he would happily throw himself into the river for her sake.
‘Do you know the story?’
Grace hesitated. She did not, but she had no doubt that Clio did. It would not be easy, passing herself off as her cousin. The challenge enticed her. ‘Not very well,’ she hedged.
‘Zuleika is the most beautiful girl in the world. All the young men in Oxford drown themselves in the river for love of her.’
Their eyes met.
‘How stupid of them,’ Grace said softly. ‘What a waste.’
In the moment’s silence that followed there was nothing for Peter to do but lift her hand from where it lay on the bedcover. He turned it in his own, examining the fingers, the dimples over the knuckles and the knob of bone at the wrist. It seemed extraordinary that this girl should be here, with her clean apple-scented skin and shiny hair, extraordinary that he should be here himself, in this room that smelt of lavender and fresh linen and polished oak boards. He wondered if he would wake up and find himself lying in a shell-hole, the sky over his head blackened with smoke.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
Grace was looking steadily at him. ‘Are you tired? Does your head hurt?’ Her voice had turned gentle.
‘No. I’m not tired.’
He lifted her hand and held the palm of it against his lips.
As if drawn by an invisible thread, Grace leant towards him. She leant closer, until her cheek rested against his head. She could feel the silky texture of his natural hair and the rougher prickle of the new growth. She rubbed her cheek, turning her head so that her mouth was against his skull, and her chest seemed to tighten and expel the breath out of her lungs in a ragged sigh.
He said, ‘Clio,’ and she was startled because she had forgotten the deception.
To exclude it once more she drew her hand back, away from his mouth, and put her own lips in its place. Peter breathed in sharply, but then when her mouth opened a little he tasted the slippery heat of her tongue. He put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her so close to him that he could feel her small breasts against his chest. He pushed his tongue between her teeth, his own mouth widening. He was thirsty, and ravenously hungry.
Grace thought, What did Clio do yesterday?
It came to her that she didn’t know her cousin nearly as well as she had thought, and then that for now she was Clio, looking out from inside her. Or controlling her from above, like a puppet. The notion was intriguing, and oddly exciting. It was more exciting than what was actually happening to her.
Grace didn’t feel frightened by Captain Dennis, not in the way that Jake had frightened her with his furtive desperation. She felt pleasantly alive, and stimulated by his kisses, without being afraid that she might not be able to control him, or understand her own response.
She knew what she felt about this. She enjoyed being kissed by the damaged hero, she liked the way that he seemed to give himself up to her, with blind concentration. She was relieved to find now the first surprise was over that she felt cool, almost detached. She reached up and stroked back his hair, away from the stark white dressing.
Had Clio done the same thing yesterday?
When Peter opened his eyes her face was momentarily shot into bright and dark fragments, prism-edged, like broken mirror-shards. He waited for the visual disturbance to subside and her features reassembled themselves. For another instant there was a complete image but it was a double one, so that he saw two of her. Then the dark heads slid together and coalesced, and she was smiling at him, soft-lipped. They were both panting a little.
‘You are really here, aren’t you?’ he asked.
For answer she held out her two hands for him to take. They were warm and quite solid. He kissed the knuckles of each one in turn.
‘I can’t believe you,’ he said delightedly. ‘You are a miracle.’
‘If I were a miracle, I wouldn’t have to go now and do the tea-trays.’ Clio would be home soon.
He was anxious immediately. ‘Will you come back again?’
‘Of course I will. When I can.’
After she had gone, Peter Dennis lay back against his pillows and slipped into an erotic reverie of the kind he had not had for two years. Love and sex had been a part of the old world, the one he had exchanged for the trenches. He was astonished to find that he could re-enter the old kingdom so easily.
And in her turn Grace might have been amused to know that Peter’s imaginings were set in an idyllic water-meadow backed by a hawthorn hedge.
When the starched nurse came in she looked sharply at her patient and then pronounced, ‘You are looking very much better, Captain Dennis.’
‘I am feeling very much better, nurse, thank you,’ Peter agreed with her.
Clio came home from school, bumping her bookbag down on the console table in the hall and sending the cards and papers piled on it whirling to the floor. ‘I’ve so much work to do. Miss Muldoon is a tyrant, a vile tyrant. I wanted to be free on Saturday, and now I shall have to plough through a thousand pages of Racine. You’re so lucky, Grace, you just don’t know.’
‘I’ll do your chores for you, if you like,’ Grace offered.
Saturday was important. It was Alice’s sixth birthday, and there would be a family party. Jake and Julius were coming home for it.
Clio’s face lightened. ‘Will you, really? If I go straight up and start on it now, I might just finish it by Friday. You are a true friend, Gracie. I’ll remember you in my will.’
Grace had been intending to confide in her. She had imagined that they would enjoy the mischief
