Life after life

11 February 1926

‘SWEET SIXTEEN,’ HUGH said, kissing her affectionately. ‘Happy birthday, little bear. Your future’s all ahead of you.’ Ursula still harboured the feeling that some of her future was also behind her but she had learned not to voice such things. They were to have gone up to London for afternoon tea at the Berkeley (it was half term), but Pamela had recently twisted her ankle in a hockey match and Sylvie was recovering from an attack of pleurisy that had seen her spend a night in the cottage hospital (‘I suspect I have my mother’s lungs,’ a remark that Teddy found funny every time he thought about it). And Jimmy was only just over a bout of the tonsillitis he was prone to. ‘Going down like flies,’ Mrs Glover said, beating butter into sugar for the cake. ‘Who’s next, I wonder?’

‘Who needs to go to a hotel for a decent tea anyway?’ Bridget said. ‘Just as good here.’

‘Better,’ Mrs Glover said. Although, of course, neither Bridget nor Mrs Glover had been invited to the Berkeley and indeed Bridget had never been inside a London hotel, or a hotel anywhere come to that, apart from having gone into the Shelbourne to admire the foyer before catching the ferry at Dún Laoghaire to come to England, ‘a lifetime ago’. Mrs Glover, on the other hand, declared herself to be ‘quite familiar’ with the Midland in Manchester where one of her nephews (of which, it seemed, she had an endless supply) had taken her and her sister for dinner ‘on more than one occasion’.

Coincidentally, Maurice was down for the weekend, although he had forgotten (‘if he ever knew’ Pamela said) that it was Ursula’s birthday. He was in his last year at Balliol where he was reading law and was ‘more of a prig than ever’ according to Pamela. His parents didn’t seem particularly taken with him either. ‘He is mine, isn’t he?’ Ursula had overheard Hugh say to Sylvie. ‘You didn’t have a dalliance in Deauville with that terrifically boring chap from Halifax, the one who owned the mill?’

‘What a memory you have,’ Sylvie laughed.

Pamela had taken time out from her studies to make a lovely card, a découpage of flowers cut out from Bridget’s magazines, as well as baking a batch of her famous (in Fox Corner anyway) ‘piccaninny’ biscuits. Pamela was studying for the entrance exam for Girton. ‘A Girton girl,’ she said, her eyes alight, ‘imagine.’ As Pamela prepared to leave the sixth form of the school they both attended, Ursula was about to enter it. She was good at Classics. Sylvie said that she couldn’t see the point of Latin and Greek (she had never been taught them and seemed to feel the lack). Ursula, on the other hand, was rather attracted to words that were now only whispers from the necropoles of ancient empires. (‘If you mean “dead” then say “dead”,’ Mrs Glover said irritably.)

Millie Shawcross was also invited to tea and had arrived early, her usual chirpy self. Her present was an assortment of lovely velvet hair ribbons, bought with her own money from the haberdasher’s in town. (‘Now you’ll never be able to cut your hair,’ Hugh said to Ursula, with some satisfaction.)

Maurice had brought two friends to stay for the weekend, Gilbert and an American, Howard (‘Call me Howie, everyone does’), who were going to have to double up in the spare-room bed, a fact that seemed to make Sylvie uneasy. ‘You can go top to tail,’ she told them briskly. ‘Or one of you can sleep on a cot with the Great Western Railway,’ which was their name for Teddy’s Hornby train set that took up all of Mrs Glover’s old room in the attic. Jimmy was allowed to share this pleasure. ‘Your sidekick, huh?’ Howie said to Teddy, ruffling Jimmy’s hair so vigorously that Jimmy was knocked off balance. The fact that Howie was an American gave him a special kind of glamour, although it was Gilbert who had the brooding, rather exotic, movie star looks. His name – Gilbert Armstrong – and his father (a high court judge) and his education (Stowe) pointed to impeccably English credentials but his mother was the scion of an old Spanish aristocratic family (‘Gypsies,’ Mrs Glover concluded, which was pretty much what she considered all foreigners to be).

‘Oh, my,’ Millie whispered to Ursula, ‘the gods walk among us.’ She crossed her hands over her heart and flapped them like wings. ‘Not Maurice,’ Ursula said. ‘He would have been kicked off Olympus for getting on everyone’s nerves.’

‘The self-importance of gods,’ Millie said, ‘what a wonderful title for a novel.’ Millie, needless to say, wanted to be a writer. Or an artist, or a singer, or a dancer, or an actress. Anything where she might be the centre of attention.

‘What are you little girls chattering about?’ Maurice said. Maurice was very sensitive, some might have said over-sensitive, to criticism.

‘You,’ Ursula said. Girls did find Maurice attractive, a fact that continually surprised the women in his own family. He had fair hair that looked as if it had been marcelled and a strapping physique from rowing but it was hard to overlook his charmlessness. Gilbert, however, was even now kissing Sylvie’s hand (‘Oh,’ said Millie, ‘can it get any better?’). Maurice had introduced Sylvie as ‘My old mater,’ and Gilbert said, ‘You’re too young to be anyone’s mother.’

‘I know,’ Sylvie said.

(‘A rather louche fellow’ was Hugh’s verdict. ‘A Lothario,’ Mrs Glover said.)

The three young men seemed to fill Fox Corner as if the house had suddenly shrunk and both Hugh and Sylvie were relieved when Maurice suggested that they go outside for ‘a tour of the grounds’. ‘Good idea,’ Sylvie said, ‘work off some of that surplus energy.’ The three of them ran out into the garden in Olympian fashion (sportive rather than sacred) and commenced a hearty kick-about with a ball that Maurice had found in the hall cupboard. (‘Mine, actually,’ Teddy pointed out to no one in particular.) ‘They’ll ruin the lawn,’ Hugh said, observing them howling like hooligans as they chewed up the grass with their muddy brogues.

‘Oh,’ Izzie said, when she arrived and caught sight of this athletic trio through the window, ‘I say, they’re rather gorgeous, aren’t they? Can I have one?’

Izzie, swathed from head to toe in fox fur, said, ‘I brought gifts,’ an unnecessary announcement as she was laden with all kinds of different-shaped parcels in expensive wrapping ‘for my favourite niece’. Ursula glanced at Pamela and gave a rueful shrug. Pamela rolled her eyes. Ursula hadn’t seen Izzie in months, not since a fleeting visit to Swiss Cottage in the car with Hugh to drop off a crate full of vegetables from Fox Corner’s bountiful late-summer garden. (‘A marrow?’ Izzie said, inspecting the contents of the box. ‘What on earth am I supposed to do with that?’)

Prior to that she had visited for a long weekend but had more or less ignored everyone except Teddy, whom she took off for long walks and quizzed relentlessly. ‘I think she’s singled him out from the herd,’ Ursula told Pamela. ‘Why?’ Pamela said. ‘So she can eat him?’

When questioned (closely by Sylvie), Teddy was mystified as to why he had received special attention. ‘She just asked me what I did, what school was like, what my hobbies were, what I liked to eat. My friends. Stuff like that.’

‘Maybe she wants to adopt him,’ Hugh said to Sylvie. ‘Or sell him. I’m sure Ted would bring a good price.’ And Sylvie, fiercely, ‘Don’t say things like that, not even in jest.’ But then Teddy was dropped by Izzie as swiftly as he’d been picked up by her and they had thought no more of it.

The first of Ursula’s presents to be unwrapped was a recording by Bessie Smith which Izzie immediately placed on the gramophone, home usually to Elgar and, Hugh’s favourite, The Mikado. ‘The “St Louis Blues”,’ Izzie said instructively. ‘Listen to that cornet! Ursula loves this music.’ (‘Do you?’ Hugh asked Ursula. ‘I had no idea.’) Then a lovely tooled red-leather edition of Dante in translation was produced. This was followed by a satin and lace bedjacket from Liberty’s – ‘as you know, a shop of which your mother is inordinately fond’. This was pronounced ‘far too grown-up’ by Sylvie, ‘Ursula wears flannelette.’ Next a bottle of Shalimar (‘new by Guerlain, divine’) which received a similar verdict from Sylvie.

‘So speaks the child bride,’ Izzie said.

‘’I was eighteen, not sixteen,’ a tight-lipped Sylvie said. ‘One day we must talk about what you got up to at sixteen, Isobel.’

‘What?’ Pamela said eagerly.

‘Il n’avait pas d’importance,’ Izzie said dismissively. Finally, from this cornucopia, a bottle of champagne. (‘And definitely far too young for that!’)

‘Better get that on ice,’ Izzie said, handing it to Bridget.

A perplexed Hugh glared at Izzie. ‘Did you steal all this?’ he asked.

‘Hey, darkie music,’ Howie said when the three boys returned from the outdoors, crowding into the drawing room and smelling vaguely of bonfires and something else, less definable (‘Essence of stag,’ Izzie murmured, sniffing the air). Bessie Smith was now on her third go round and Hugh said, ‘It begins to grow on one after a while.’ Howie did some kind of odd dance to the music, vaguely barbaric, and then whispered something in Gilbert’s ear. Gilbert laughed, rather crudely for someone with blue blood, albeit foreign, and Sylvie clapped her hands and said, ‘Boys, how about some potted shrimps?’ and marshalled them into the dining room when she noticed, too late, the dirty footprints they had tracked through the house.

‘They didn’t fight in the war,’ Hugh said, as if that explained their muddy spoor.

‘And that’s a good thing,’ Sylvie said firmly. ‘No matter how unsatisfactory they turn out.’

‘Now,’ Izzie said when the cake was cut and apportioned, ‘I have one last gift—’

‘For goodness’, sake, Izzie,’ Hugh interrupted, unable to contain his exasperation any longer. ‘Who is paying for this? You have no money, your debts are piled to the rafters. You promised you would learn economy.’

‘Please,’ Sylvie said. Any discussion of money (even Izzie’s) in front of strangers filled her with reticent horror. A sudden dark cloud passed over her heart. It was Tiffin, she knew.

‘I am paying,’ Izzie said, very grandly. ‘And this is not a present for Ursula, it is for Teddy.’

‘Me?’ Teddy said, startled on to centre stage. He had been thinking what a jolly good cake it was and wondering what the chances of a second piece were and certainly had no desire to be pushed into the limelight.

‘Yes, you, darling boy,’ Izzie said. Teddy visibly shrank away from both Izzie and the present that she put on the table in front of him. ‘Go on,’ Izzie said encouragingly, ‘unwrap it. It won’t explode.’ (But it would.)

Gingerly, Teddy removed the expensive paper. Unwrapped, the present turned out to be exactly what it looked like when wrapped – a book. Ursula, sitting opposite, tried to decipher the upside-down title. The Adventures of …

‘The Adventures of Augustus,’ Teddy read out loud, ‘by Delphie Fox.’ (‘Delphie?’ Hugh queried.)

‘Why is everything an “adventure” with you?’ Sylvie said irritably to Izzie.

‘Because life is an adventure, of course.’

‘I would say it was more of an endurance race,’ Sylvie said. ‘Or an obstacle course.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ Hugh said, suddenly solicitous, ‘not that bad, surely?’

‘Anyway,’ Izzie said, ‘back to Teddy’s present.’

The thick card of the cover was green, the lettering and line drawings were gold – illustrations of a boy, roughly Teddy’s age, wearing a schoolboy’s cap. He was accompanied by a catapult and a small dog, a scruffy West Highland terrier. The boy was dishevelled and had a wild look on his face. ‘That’s Augustus,’ Izzie said to Teddy. ‘What do you think? I’ve based him on you.’

‘Me?’ Teddy said, horrified. ‘But I don’t look like that. It’s not even the right dog.’

Something astonishing. ‘Give anyone a lift back to town?’ Izzie asked casually.

‘You haven’t got another car?’ Hugh moaned.

‘I parked it at the foot of the drive,’ Izzie said sweetly, ‘so as not to annoy you.’ They all trooped down the drive to inspect the car, Pamela, still on her crutches, hobbling tardily behind. ‘The poor and the maimed, the halt and the blind,’ she said to Millie and Millie laughed and said, ‘For a scientist you know your Bible.’

‘Best to know your enemy,’ Pamela said.

It was cold and none of them had thought to put their coats on. ‘But really quite mild for this time of year,’ Sylvie said. ‘Not like when you were born. Goodness, I’ve never seen snow like that.’

‘I know,’ Ursula said. The snow the day she was born was a legend in the family. She had heard the story so often that she thought she could remember it.

‘It’s just an Austin,’ Izzie said. ‘An open-road tourer – four doors though – but nowhere near as costly as a Bentley, goodness, it’s positively a vehicle for hoi polloi compared to your indulgence, Hugh.’ ‘On tick, no doubt,’ Hugh said. ‘Not at all, paid up in full, in cash. I have a publisher, I have money, Hugh. You don’t need to worry about me any more.’

While everyone was admiring (or not, in the case of Hugh and Sylvie) the cherry-bright vehicle, Millie said, ‘I have to go, I have a dancing exhibition tonight. Thank you very much for a lovely tea, Mrs Todd.’

‘Come on, I’ll walk you back,’ Ursula said.

On the return home, through the well-worn shortcut at the bottom of the gardens, Ursula had an unexpected encounter – this was the something amazing, not the Austin tourer – when she almost tripped over Howie, on his hands and knees, rooting among the bushes. ‘Looking for the ball,’ he said apologetically. ‘It was your kid brother’s. I think we lost it in the’ – he sat back on his heels and looked around helplessly at the berberis and buddleia – ‘Shrubbery,’ Ursula supplied. ‘We aspire to it.’

‘Huh?’ he said, standing up in one clean move and suddenly towering above her. He looked as though he boxed. Indeed there was a bruise below his eye. Fred Smith, who used to be the butcher’s boy but now worked on the railways, was a boxer. Maurice had taken a couple of his pals to cheer Fred on in an amateur bout in the East End. Apparently it had dissolved into a boozy riot. Howie smelt of bay rum – Hugh’s scent – and there was something polished and new about him, like a freshly minted coin.

‘Did you find it?’ she asked. ‘The ball?’ She sounded squeaky to her own ears. She had thought Gilbert was the handsome one out of the two but faced with Howie’s clean-limbed, uncomplicated strength, like a large animal, she felt stupid.

‘How old are you?’ he asked.

‘Sixteen,’ she said. ‘It’s my birthday. You ate cake.’ Clearly she wasn’t the only stupid one.

‘Hoo-ee,’ he said, an ambiguous kind of word (closely related to his own name, she noted) although it seemed to signal amazement as if reaching sixteen was a feat. ‘You’re shivering,’ he said.

‘It’s freezing out here.’

‘I can warm you up,’ he said and then – the something astonishing – he took her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him and – an action that necessitated bending down quite a bit – pushed his big lips against hers. ‘Kiss’ seemed too courtly a word for what Howie was doing. He prodded his enormous tongue, like an ox’s, against the portcullis of her teeth and she was amazed to realize that he was expecting her to open her mouth and let the tongue in. She would choke, for sure. Mrs Glover’s tongue press in the kitchen came unwontedly to mind.

Ursula was debating what to do, the bay rum and the lack of oxygen were making her dizzy, when they heard Maurice shouting, quite nearby, ‘Howie! Leaving without you, chum!’ Ursula’s mouth was released and, without a word to her, Howie yelled, ‘Coming!’ so loudly that her ears hurt. Then he let go of her and set off, crashing through the bushes, leaving Ursula gasping for air.

She wandered back to the house in a daze. Everyone was still on the drive, even though it felt like hours had passed but she supposed it was only minutes really, like in the best fairy stories. In the dining room, the ruins of the cake were being licked delicately by Hattie. The Adventures of Augustus, lying on the table, had a smear of icing on it. Ursula’s heart was still palpitating from the shock of Howie’s advances. To be kissed on her sixteenth birthday, and in such an unlooked-for way, seemed a considerable accomplishment. She was surely passing beneath the triumphal arch that led to womanhood. If only it had been Benjamin Cole, then it would have been perfect!

Teddy, ‘the kid’, himself appeared, very browned off and said, ‘They lost my ball.’

‘I know,’ Ursula said.

He opened the book at the title page where, in a flamboyant hand, Izzie had inscribed, To my nephew, Teddy. My own darling Augustus.

‘What rot,’ Teddy said, scowling. Ursula picked up a half-drunk glass of champagne the rim of which was adorned with red lipstick and poured half of it into a jelly glass that she handed to Teddy. ‘Cheers,’ she said. They chinked their glasses and drained them to the dregs.

‘Happy birthday,’ Teddy said.