the eleven o’clock train from Town. Pappy will go to the station to meet them.’
Peter heard the excitement of the arrival.
He was alone, watching the progress of the squares of sunlight across the polished floor. Then he heard the chugging of a taxicab, and running feet and excited voices. Alice’s shrill cries were the most clearly audible, but it sounded as if the entire household had spilt out of the front door and down the steps to greet the returning sons.
After the hubbub was over and the house had swallowed the voices up once more, it was a long, slow hour and more before Peter heard them coming along the passage to his room. He sat up against his pillows, watching the door.
Clio was the first to appear, with pink cheeks and bright eyes, as he had first seen her. She was followed by two tall young men who had to stoop to pass under the door lintel.
Peter’s first impression, born out of his upper-class Anglo-Scots prejudice, was that they looked large and strange and exotic, unmistakable Jewish. He had noticed none of this strangeness in Clio. The two young men were like their huge, black-bearded father, and Clio took after her aristocratic mother. But then, when they came closer to shake his hand, he saw the strength of the family likeness. It was especially marked between Clio and Julius. It was as if the addition of her brothers made him see Clio afresh, in a different context. Her duality seemed less puzzling, then.
Jake was friendly and direct. He sat on the end of the bed and talked to Peter about where he had been fighting, and about his injuries and recovery. Julius was quieter. Peter noticed that his wrists protruded from the sleeves of his coat, and that his hands were long and pale with broad, spatulate tips to the fingers. He asked if Peter played chess and diffidently offered to give him a game, later, after the birthday party.
Clio looked from one to the other of the three faces, with a mixture of pride and anxiety. It seemed very important that they should all like one another.
Eleanor called them. ‘Jacob! I need you to help to move this table. Why is poor Grace left to do all the work?’
They stood up obediently. ‘Can’t you come down and join the party?’ Julius asked.
‘Peter’s eyesight is affected, he has to keep still, the doctors won’t let …’ Clio broke off, blushing, knowing that she had betrayed her loving concern. Her brothers grinned.
‘Next time,’ Peter said, smiling at her. ‘But I would like to meet Grace. To complete the set.’ He saw, in the three faces, three different reactions to her name. Julius’s was the least ambivalent.
‘You will,’ Clio promised. ‘I’ll make her come up.’
Alice sat the head of the long table. She was wearing her best white muslin dress and a crown that Tabby had made for her out of gold paper. Tabby was always happier to celebrate other people’s birthdays than to be the focus of attention on her own. Nathaniel and Eleanor sat on her right and left hands, and down the length of the table were the Hirsh children, Julius and Jake vying with each other to make Alice laugh and encouraging her to an even higher pitch of excitement, three or four little girls who were Alice’s friends and who stared at her brothers with big, round eyes, and Oswald Harris and his wife and children. Grace sat at the far end, facing Alice.
On the white linen cloth there were the remains of jewel-coloured jellies and iced cakes, with ribbons and favours and fondant sweets. Grace watched Mrs Doyle come in with the birthday cake. It was chocolate and cream, with a ruff of the same gold paper as Alice’s crown.
Nathaniel beamed with paternal pleasure as Alice seized the bone-handled knife from Mrs Doyle. He looked across the table at his wife, celebrating in the exchanged glance another year of family life, Jake’s safe return and recovery, the quiet continuation of the domestic happiness.
‘My cake! I cut it,’ Alice shouted.
Grace thought that she could not stomach much more of this joyful family harmony. In a little while there would be singing, and then noisy party games. Just for the moment, she had had enough of Hirsh good humour and wholesome merrymaking. Birthdays and family occasions at Stretton and Belgrave Square were more sombre, restrained events. This party, today, made her feel rebellious and contrary.
She pushed her chair back, and slipped away from the table, murmuring an inaudible excuse. Only Julius saw her go.
It was pleasant to be out of the overheated room. She wandered slowly up the stairs. The upper part of the house was cool and silent. She came to the door of the turret room, and gently pushed it open.
Peter was asleep. Grace stood beside the bed, looking down at him. He was rather beautiful, she thought. He looked like a marble knight on a tomb. She had to lean down, until her face almost touched his, before she could hear the faint sigh of his breathing.
Grace smiled suddenly. She wanted to warm the cold marble and bring the effigy to life.
It was her last visit. She had no idea, still, what it was like to be Clio, and she understood that the notion was ridiculous. After this she would be Grace entirely. But for now, in this hour while Alice’s party went on downstairs, she felt that she was anonymous.
She reached up to the buttons that fastened the neck of her dress. It was her best afternoon dress, silk in tiny stripes of lavender and cream. She undid the pearl buttons, and the dress rustled down around her ankles. Grace stepped away from it, feeling the cool air on her bare arms and shoulders. She lifted the bedcovers and Peter stirred in his sleep. Grace lay down beside him, and drew the covers over them both.
Then she turned to him and put her arm around his neck. She felt that her own body was a matter of soft curves and recesses, whereas Peter’s was all bone and sharp angles. She let her breath warm his cheek, and then she reached with the tip of her tongue to the corner of his mouth.
Peter opened his eyes and looked directly into hers. She was afraid that he could see straight through into her head.
As soon as he woke up, Peter knew that it was not Clio in his bed. This girl did not look like Jake and Julius. She was rounder, fuller-lipped, more English. There was a dress lying on the floor, in shadow now but where he had watched the square of light move that morning, and it was not Clio’s hyacinth blue.
Peter was used to dreams, to apparitions that were more vivid than dreams. This one was as welcome as the others were unwelcome. He didn’t try to talk, or to define the mysterious boundary between sleeping and waking. He put his arm around her waist, and his mouth against her bare shoulder.
‘Zuleika,’ he whispered.
Outside in the Woodstock Road a car drew up. It was a dark green Bullnose Morris, driven by a young man in flying goggles and leather gauntlets. He jumped from the driver’s seat and strolled around to open the door for his passenger, another young man. The passenger put one hand on the driver’s shoulder and carefully negotiated the high step to the ground. Then he held on to the polished chrome door handle while his friend took a pair of wooden crutches from behind the seats and fitted them under his armpits.
‘Very good of you, Farmy,’ Hugo said. ‘Won’t you come in and have a drink? My aunt and uncle will be glad to see you.’
‘No, thanks all the same, Culmington. Little girls’ birthday parties are not quite my métier. Big girls’ quite different, of course. Let me just see you to the door, won’t you?’
Hugo
