Much against his will, Hugh felt it necessary to buy Izzie’s news paper every Friday and read it on the train home, ‘just to keep an eye on what she’s saying’ (and then jettison the offending item on the hall table, from where Pamela was able to rescue it). Hugh harboured a particular horror that Izzie would write about him and his only comfort was that she wrote under the pseudonym Delphine Fox, which was ‘the silliest name’ that Sylvie had ever heard. ‘Well,’ Hugh said, ‘Delphine is her middle name, from her godmother. And Todd is an old word for fox, so I suppose there is some logic in it. Not that I’m defending her.’
‘But it’s my name, it’s on my birth certificate,’ Izzie said, looking hurt when attacked over the pre-prandial decanter. ‘And it’s from Delphi, you know, the oracle, and so on. So rather fitting, I would have said.’ (‘She’s an oracle now?’ from Sylvie. ‘If she’s an oracle then I’m the high priestess of Tutankhamun.’)
Izzie, in the person of Delphine, had already on more than one occasion mentioned ‘my two nephews’ (‘Terrific rascals, both of them!’) but had not cited any names. ‘So far,’ Hugh said darkly. She had made up a few ‘amusing anecdotes’ about these clearly fictional nephews. Maurice was eighteen (Izzie’s ‘sturdy little chaps’ were nine and eleven), still away at boarding school and had spent no more than ten minutes in Izzie’s company in as many years. As for Teddy, he tended to avoid situations that might evolve into anecdotes.
‘Who are these boys?’ Sylvie quizzed over Mrs Glover’s surprisingly capricious interpretation of sole Véronique. She had the folded newspaper on the table next to her and tapped Izzie’s column with her forefinger as if it might be impregnated with germs. ‘Are they supposed to be based in some way on Maurice and Teddy?’
‘What about Jimmy?’ Teddy said to Izzie. ‘Why don’t you write about him?’ Jimmy, perky in a sky-blue knitted jumper, was spooning mashed potato into his mouth and didn’t look too bothered about being written out of great literature. He was a child of the peace, the war to end all wars had, after all, been fought for Jimmy. Yet again, Sylvie claimed to be taken by surprise by the newest addition to the family (‘Four had seemed like the complete set’). Once, Sylvie had had no idea how children were started, now she seemed uncertain as to how you might stop them. (‘Jimmy’s an afterthought, I suppose,’ Sylvie said.
‘I wasn’t thinking much,’ Hugh said and they both laughed and Sylvie said, ‘Really, Hugh.’)
Jimmy’s arrival had the effect of making Ursula feel as if she was being pushed further away from the heart of the family, like an object at the edge of an overcrowded table. A cuckoo, she had overheard Sylvie say to Hugh. Ursula’s a bit of an awkward cuckoo. But how could you be a cuckoo in your own nest? ‘You are my real mother, aren’t you?’ she asked Sylvie and Sylvie laughed and said, ‘Incontrovertibly, dear.’
‘The odd one out,’ she said to Dr Kellet.
‘Well, there always has to be one,’ he said.
‘Don’t write about my children, Isobel,’ Sylvie said heatedly to Izzie.
‘They’re imaginary, for heaven’s sake, Sylvie.’
‘Don’t even write about my imaginary children.’ She lifted the tablecloth and peered at the floor. ‘What are you doing with your feet?’ she said testily to Pamela, who was sitting opposite her.
‘I’m making circles with my ankles,’ Pamela said, unconcerned by Sylvie’s irritability. Pamela was quite bold these days but also rather reasonable, a combination that seemed designed to annoy Sylvie. (‘You are so like your father,’ she had said to Pamela only this morning over some trifling difference of opinion. ‘But why would that be a bad thing?’ Pamela said.) Pamela wiped gluey potato from Jimmy’s pink cheeks and said, ‘Clockwise, then anti-clockwise. It’s the way to a shapely ankle, according to Aunt Izzie.’
‘Izzie is not a person from whom anyone with any sense would take advice.’ (‘Excuse me?’ Izzie said.) ‘Besides which, you’re too young for shapely ankles.’
‘Well,’ Pamela said, ‘I’m nearly the same age as you were when you married Daddy.’
‘Oh, splendid,’ Hugh said, relieved at the sight of Mrs Glover waiting in the doorway to make a grand entrance with a Riz impératrice. ‘The ghost of Escoffier is at your back today, Mrs Glover.’ Mrs Glover couldn’t help but glance behind her.
‘Oh, splendid,’ Izzie said. ‘A cabinet pudding. You can rely on Simpson’s for nursery food. We had a nursery, you know, it took up the whole top floor of the house.’
‘In Hampstead? Grandmama’s house?’
‘The very same. I was the baby. Like Jimmy.’ Izzie wilted a little, as if she were remembering some hitherto long-forgotten sadness. The ostrich feather on her hat trembled in sympathy. She revived at the sight of the silver sauce-boat of custard. ‘And so you don’t have those odd feelings any more? The déjà vu and so on?’
‘Me?’ Ursula said. ‘No. Sometimes. Not so much, I suppose. It was before, you know. Now it’s gone. Sort of.’ Had it? She was never sure. Her memories seemed like a cascade of echoes. Could echoes cascade? Perhaps not. She had tried (and largely failed) to learn to be precise with language under Dr Kellet’s guidance. She missed that cosy hour (tête-à-tête, he called it. More French) on a Thursday afternoon. She was ten years old when she first went to see him and had enjoyed being liberated from Fox Corner, in the company of someone who gave his full attention to her and only her. Sylvie, or more often than not Bridget, put Ursula on the train and she was met at the other end by Izzie even though both Sylvie and Hugh doubted that Izzie was sufficiently reliable to be in charge of a child. (‘Expediency,’ Izzie said to Hugh, ‘generally trumps ethics, I’ve noticed. Personally, if I had a ten-year-old child I don’t think I would feel entirely comfortable allowing it to travel all on its own.’ ‘You do have a ten-year-old child,’ Hugh pointed out. The little Fritz. ‘Couldn’t we try and find him?’ Sylvie asked. ‘Needle in a haystack,’ Hugh said. ‘The Hun are legion.’)
‘So I rather miss seeing you,’ Izzie said, ‘which is why I asked if you could come up for the day. To be frank, I was surprised Sylvie agreed. There’s always been a certain, shall we say, froideur between your mother and myself. I, of course, am considered mad, bad and dangerous to know. Anyway I thought I should try to single you out from the herd, as it were. You remind me a little of me.’ (Was that a good thing, Ursula wondered?) ‘We could be special chums, what do you think? Pamela’s a little dull,’ Izzie continued. ‘All that tennis and cycling, no wonder she has such sturdy ankles. Très sportive, I’m sure, but still. And science! No fun in that. And the boys are, well … boys, but you’re interesting, Ursula. All that funny stuff in your head about knowing the future. Quite the little clairvoyant. Perhaps we should set you up in a gypsy caravan, get you a crystal ball, Tarot cards. The drowned Phoenician sailor and all that. You can’t see anything in my future, can you?’
‘No.’
‘Reincarnation,’ Dr Kellet had said to her. ‘Have you heard of that?’ Ursula, aged ten, shook her head. She had heard of very little. Dr Kellet had a nice set of rooms in Harley Street. The one that he showed Ursula into was half panelled in mellow oak, with a thick carpet figured in red and blue on the floor and two large leather armchairs either side of a well-stoked coal fire. Dr Kellet himself wore a three-piece Harris tweed suit strung with a large gold fob watch. He smelt of cloves and pipe tobacco and had a twinkly look about him as if he were going to toast muffins or read a particularly good story to her, but instead he beamed at Ursula and said, ‘So, I hear you tried to kill your maid?’ (Oh, that’s why I’m here, Ursula thought.)