The early letters were all of school, lessons, the new bicycle and life at Windyridge. And then the shock of Louise's death; her funeral, the first mention of Mr Baines, and the astonishing news of Judith's inheritance. (None of them had ever realised the extent of Louise's wealth. But so satisfactory to know that Judith would never have to ask a husband for money, one of the least agreeable aspects of married life.)
Then the first visit to Nancherrow, and Judith's gradual absorption into the Carey-Lewis clan. Which was a bit like reading a novel with far too many characters…children and friends and relations, to say nothing of butlers, cooks, and nannies. Bit by bit, however, Molly sorted out all the various individuals, and after that it wasn't too difficult to follow the plot.
Later again, and more school news. Concerts and plays, hockey matches, examination results, and mild epidemics of measles. A Christmas with Biddy and Bob in their new house on Dartmoor; a half-term with the Warrens in Porthkerris. (Molly was pleased that she had kept up with Heather. It would have been sad had Judith become too grand for old friends.) Then, a summer trip to London with Diana Carey-Lewis and Loveday, to stay in Diana's little mews house, and to be taken on a positive round of shopping and luncheons, culminating in an evening at Covent Garden, to see Tatiana Riabouchinska dance with the Russian Ballet.
All the trials and treats of an ordinary girl, growing up. And Molly, her mother, was missing it all. It is so unfair, she told herself on a surge of resentment. It is all wrong. And yet she knew that she was not isolated. Her anguish was shared by thousands of other British wives and mothers. Whether in Singapore or England, one was never in the right place, and always yearning for the other. Either braving the cold and rains of Home, and dreaming of the sun; or else sitting as she sat now, staring at the sun-baked gardens of Orchard Road and seeing only the path at Riverview on a misty evening, and Judith walking up towards the house from the railway station. Walking, and then seeing her mother, and pressing her cheek against Molly's cheek, saying her name. Touching. Sometimes, Molly held the sheets of Judith's letters to her cheek, because Judith's hand had touched the paper, the closest she was ever able to get.
She sighed. From behind her, from indoors, the bungalow was stirring. Amah's soft voice from Jess's bedroom, rousing the child from her sleep. Siesta was over. On the far side of the lawn, the garden boy appeared, diligently lugging an overflowing watering can. Soon Bruce would emerge, neatly turned out for the office, and later it would be time for afternoon tea. The silver teapot, the cucumber sandwiches, the finely sliced crescents of lemon. How shaming should Ah Lin, the butler, find his mistress sitting here dressed only in her wrapper. She must pull herself together, make her way back to her bedroom, to shower and dress and do her hair and then present herself once more as a respectable memsahib.
But before she could make this enormous effort, she was joined by Jess, fresh and clean in a sleeveless sun-frock, and with her milk-fair hair smooth as silk from Amah's ministrations with the hairbrush.
‘Mummy!’
‘Oh, darling.’ She put out an arm to scoop her small daughter into an embrace, to plant a kiss on the top of her head. Jess, now six, had grown tall and slender in the heat of Singapore, like a flower that relishes the warmth and the damp. Her face had lost some of its baby curves, but her eyes were still round and cornflower-blue, and her cheeks, her bare arms and legs were all gently tanned to the delicious colour of a freshly laid brown egg.
Her appearance caused Molly a pang of guilt, for she had been so taken up with thoughts of Judith that Jess, for a moment or two, had slipped quite out of her mind. ‘And how are you?’ The guilt rendered her voice especially loving. ‘How pretty and cool you look.’
‘Why are you in your nightie?’
‘Because I've been lazy and I haven't dressed yet.’
‘Are we going to the club to swim?’
Molly, gathering her thoughts, remembered plans already laid. ‘Yes, of course we are. I'd forgotten.’
‘And afterwards can we play croquet?’
‘Not this evening, my pet. There won't be time. I have to come home and change and go out for dinner.’
Jess took this information totally in her stride. By now she had become resigned to the fact that her parents went out most nights, and if they did not, then entertained in their own home. There was scarcely an evening when they sat on their own.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To a Guest Night at the Selaring Barracks. The Colonel has invited us.’
‘What are you going to wear?’
‘I thought perhaps my new lilac voile. The one the dressmaker finished last week. What do you think?’
‘Why don't I come and look in your wardrobe and help you choose?’ Jess was intensely keen on clothes, and spent much time tottering around in her mother's high-heeled shoes, or draping herself in beads.
‘What a good idea. Come, we'll go together before Ah Lin catches me looking such a mess.’
She swung her legs over the side of the long chair, holding her wrapper modestly about her. Jess took her other hand and skipped her way down the length of the veranda. The little tree-rat was still scuttling about in the branches of the bougainvillaea, and the petals drifted down, to pile, where they had fallen, in a profusion of magenta.
There had been a time when Judith had become disillusioned by Christmas. This was during the Riverview years, when Molly Dunbar's lack of enthusiasm for the annual festival, her reluctance to deck the house with holly, and even her disinterest in traditional food engendered a flat sensation of anticlimax, so that by four o'clock on Christmas afternoon, Judith was ready to retire with her new book and be quite glad that the day was nearly over.
It had not, of course, been entirely Molly's fault. Circumstances were difficult for her. She had never made friends easily, and with no young relations to fill the house, it was not easy to whip up a whirl of social gaiety for her two young daughters. Without the moral support of a husband to dress up as Father Christmas, fill stockings, and carve turkeys, her naturally passive nature won the day, and she ended up taking the line of least resistance.
But, along with so much else, now it was all changed. Three Christmases had come and gone since those singularly unfestive times at Riverview; each different, and, in retrospect, each even better than the one before. First, those two weeks in Keyham with Aunt Biddy and Uncle Bob. That holiday had done much to restore Judith's confidence in the essential magic of the celebration. Then, the first Christmas at Nancherrow, with the house aglitter with decorations and awash with presents. All the Carey-Lewises gathered and a good many others as well, and the fun had never stopped, from Christmas Eve and Midnight Service, to the long walk home after the Boxing Day meet of the local Hunt. And Diana had given Judith her first long dress, pale-blue paper taffeta, and she had worn it for Christmas dinner and afterwards waltzed with the Colonel, round and round the drawing-room floor.
Last year, 1937, she had returned to the Somervilles, not to Keyham, but to their new house on the edge of Dartmoor. And Ned and a friend had been there, a young sub lieutenant from Ned's ship. A lot of snow had fallen and they had gone sledging, and one evening had driven down to Plymouth for a memorable party in the Wardroom of one of His Majesty's cruisers.
And now it was to be Nancherrow again, and at seventeen Judith was as excited as a very small child by the prospect, and counting the days until the end of term. From Loveday, who still returned home every weekend, she had gleaned, on Monday mornings, scraps of pleasurable information concerning plans laid, parties arranged, and guests to be invited.
‘We're going to be the most enormous houseful. Mary Millyway is counting sheets like a maniac, and Mrs Nettlebed is up to the eyes in mincemeat and puddings and cakes. I can't tell you how delicious the kitchen smells. All spicy and drunk with brandy. And Athena's coming from London, and Edward's going to Arosa to ski, but he's promised he'll be back in time.’
Which caused a small tremor of an
xiety in Judith's heart, because how awful it would be if he didn't make it. Edward was grown up now, had left Harrow, and had done his first term as an undergraduate at Cambridge, and seeing him again was part of the excitement and anticipation that she was experiencing. In fact, quite a big part. She wasn't in love with him, of course. Being in love was something that you fell into with film stars or matinee idols or other beings safely unattainable. But his presence added such life and glamour to any occasion that it was hard to imagine any sort of celebration being complete without him.
‘I do hope he is. What about Jeremy Wells?’
‘Mummy didn't say. He's probably working, or being with his own parents. But I bet he'll turn up some time. He always does. And Mummy's asked the Pearsons, from London. They're sort of second cousins of Pops', but they're quite young…I suppose about thirty. They're called Jane and Alistair, and when they got married, I was their bridesmaid. St Margaret's, Westminster. Frightfully posh. They've got two children now, and they're coming too, with their nanny.’
‘What are the children called?’
‘Camilla and Roddy.’ Loveday screwed up her nose. ‘Don't you simply hate that name, Camilla? It sounds like underclothes. They're very little. Let's hope they don't howl all the time.’
‘They'll probably be very sweet.’
‘Well, they're not going to be allowed into my bedroom, that's for sure.’
‘I wouldn't worry. Nanny will keep an eye on them.’
‘Mary says if she starts turning Mary's nursery upside down, she'll give her what for. Oh, and on Saturday, Pops and I went out into the plantation and chose a tree…’
A bell clanged, and there was no time for more. Judith headed for her French class, hugging herself with pleasure, because, in truth, it all sounded as though it was going to be the best Christmas ever.
Meanwhile, at St Ursula's, Christmas took off on a suitably religious note with the onset of Advent. At morning assembly, they sang Advent hymns.
O come, o come Immanuel
And ransom captive Israel…
and out of doors the days were short and the dark evenings long. In art class, Christmas cards were designed and paper decorations made. During the music period, carols were practised, the choir struggling with the hideously difficult descants to ‘The First Nowell’ and ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’. Then there was the annual party, with a different theme each year. This year was to be Fancy Dress, the costumes made of paper and to cost no more than five shillings. Judith had stitched some crêpe-paper frills into a gypsy outfit on Matron's sewing machine, and looped curtain rings onto her ears with thread, but Loveday simply glued a lot of old newspapers together, put on her riding hat, and went as The Racing News. Her costume fell apart during the course of the energetic games they played, and she spent the rest of the evening in her navy-blue knickers and the old Aertex shirt which she had worn under all the layers of the Daily Telegraph.
Even the weather contrived to add to the seasonal build-up, turning bitterly cold, unusual for this temperate, sea-girt claw of England. Snow had not fallen, but hard frosts turned lawns into silver, and rendered the playing fields so hard that all games were cancelled. In the gardens, frozen palm trees and semi-tropical shrubs drooped pitifully, and it was hard to imagine that they could ever recover from their cruel experience.
But there were more important things to think about. At last, the final morning of term, the annual Carol Service in the chapel, and then home. Already, on the gravel sweep before the front door, cars and taxis and buses were assembling, to bear away the chattering throng of schoolgirls. Having said goodbye to Miss Catto, and wished her a Merry Christmas, Judith and Loveday, with arms full of books and shoe-bags dangling, escaped, out into the bitter air, and freedom. Palmer was there, with the shooting-brake already loaded, and they climbed on board, and were away.
At Nancherrow, they found preparations already hotting up; fires blazing everywhere, and the huge spruce erected in the hall. Even as they came in through the front door, Diana was there, running down the stairs to meet them, with a garland of holly in one hand and a long festoon of tinsel in the other.
‘Oh, you darling creatures, there you are, safe and sound. Isn't it utterly freezing? Shut the door and keep the cold out. I didn't think you'd be here so quickly. Judith, sweetheart, heaven to see you. Goodness, I think you've grown.’
‘Who's here?’ Loveday asked.
‘Only Athena so far, and not a cheep yet from Edward. But that just means that he's having a good time. And the Pearsons come tonight. They're driving down from London, poor things. I hope the roads aren't too ghastly.’
‘What about Nenny and Camilla and Roddy?’
‘Darling, don't call her Nenny. That's a private joke. They're all coming tomorrow, by train. And then Tommy Mortimer's coming the next day, and he's being sensible and taking the train as well. What a lot of people to go and meet at the station.’
‘So, where is everybody?’
‘Pops and Walter Mudge have taken the tractor and the trailer, and gone to find me masses more holly. And Athena's writing Christmas cards.’
‘Hasn't she done her Christmas cards yet? They'll never get to anybody in time.’
‘Oh, well. Perhaps she'll just put Happy New Year.’ Diana thought about this, and giggled. ‘Or even, Happy Easter. Now, darlings, I must get on. What was I doing?’ She gazed, as though for inspiration, at her tinsel and her holly. ‘Decking halls, I think. So much to do. Why don't you go and find Mary?’ Already, she was drifting off in the direction of the drawing-room. ‘…get unpacked. Settled in. I'll see you at lunch…’
Alone in her pink bedroom, once she had orientated herself, checked on her possessions, and spent a few icy moments hanging out of the opened window, the first thing Judith did was to change, get out of her uniform, and put on proper, comfortable grown-up clothes. Once she had accomplished this, she was ready to deal with her unpacking, and was kneeling beside the opened suitcase rummaging for a hairbrush when she heard Athena's voice, calling her name.
‘I'm here!’
She paused in her rummagings, her face towards the open door. She heard the swift light footsteps, and the next instant, Athena was there. ‘Just popped along to say hello, and Seasons Greetings and all the rest of it.’ She came into the room and flopped languidly down on Judith's bed. She smiled. ‘I've just seen Loveday, so I knew you'd come. How's everything?’
Judith sat back on her heels. ‘Fine.’
Of all the Carey-Lewis family, Athena was the one whom Judith knew least well, and consequently, at first encounters, was always slightly overwhelmed and a bit shy. It wasn't that she wasn't friendly, or funny, or easygoing as an older sister, because she was all those things. It was just that she was so sensationally glamorous and sophisticated that the impact of her presence was apt to stun. As well, she was not often at Nancherrow. Done with débutante dances and Switzerland, she was now totally adult, and spent most of her time in London, roosting in her mother's little house in Cadogan Mews and leading a sybarite's life of pleasure. She didn't even have a proper job (she said that a job would interfere with lovely, impromptu arrangements), and if questioned about her idleness, merely smiled in dazzling fashion and murmured something about a charity ball she was helping to organise, or an exhibition to publicise some scrofulous painter or sculptor, whose incomprehensible work she professed to admire.
Her social life appeared to be non-stop. Men buzzed about her, the proverbial bees around a honey-pot, and whenever she was at Nancherrow, she spent much time on the telephone, placating lovelorn swains, promising to get in touch when she returned to London, or else concocting some unlikely story as to why she was, at the moment, unavailable. The Colonel was at one time driven to remark that she had had him on a bed of sickness so many times, it was a wonder he was not already dead.
But Judith was sympathetic. In a way, it must be a terrible responsibility to be possessed of such beauty. Long blonde hair, flawless sk
in, and enormous blue eyes fringed with black lashes. She was as tall as her mother, slender and long-legged, and she wore very red lipstick and very red nails and was always dressed in lovely new clothes, in the height of fashion. Today, because this was country, she wore trousers, cut like a man's, and a silk shirt, and a camelhair jacket, with padded shoulders and the glitter of a diamond brooch pinned to the lapel. Judith had not seen that brooch before, and guessed that it was the latest gift from some adoring male. That was another thing about Athena. She was perpetually being given presents. Not only for Christmas and birthdays, but all the time. And not just flowers and books, but jewellery and charms for her gold bracelet, and expensive little furs of sable and mink. Sitting there on the bed, she filled the room with the romantic fragrance of her perfume, and Judith imagined the huge cut-glass flagon, pressed upon her by some man mad to possess her, and set down carelessly, to join the dozen or so others on her dressing-table.
But, despite all this, she was very sweet; and very generous about lending clothes and giving advice about hair, and for some reason not in the least swollen-headed. Men, she implied, without actually saying so, were really something of a bore, and she was always perfectly content to escape their attentions and spend a little — but not too much — time with her family.
Now she curled up her legs, and settled herself comfortably down for a chat.
‘Adore the colour of that jersey. Where did you get it?’
‘In Plymouth, last Christmas.’
‘Of course. You weren't with us, were you? We missed you. How's school? Aren't you getting utterly sick of it? I nearly went mad with boredom when I was seventeen. And all those ghastly rules. Never mind, it'll soon be over and then you can whiz off to Singapore. Edward said he never realised how stultifying Harrow was until he left. I think Cambridge has opened up a whole new world for him.’