Felix was blond with an appearance of reserved nobility which he must have inherited. He seldom said anything very humorous, but was willing to be gay. On this Sunday afternoon in the May of Teck Club he proposed to drive to Richmond, which was a long way by car from Knightsbridge in those days when petrol was so scarce that nobody went driving for pleasure except in an American’s car, in the vague mistaken notion that their vehicles were supplied by ‘American’ oil, and so were not subject to the conscience of British austerity or the reproachful question about the necessity of the journey displayed at all places of public transport.
Jane, observing Selina’s long glance of perfect balance and equanimity resting upon Nicholas, immediately foresaw that she would be disposed in the front seat with Felix while Selina stepped, with her arch-footed poise, into the back, where Nicholas would join her; and she foresaw that this arrangement would come about with effortless elegance. She had no objection to Felix, but she could not hope to win him for herself, having nothing to offer a man like Felix. She felt she had a certain something, though small, to offer Nicholas, this being her literary and brain-work side which Selina lacked. It was in fact a misunderstanding of Nicholas — she vaguely thought of him as a more attractive Rudi Bittesch — to imagine he would receive more pleasure and reassurance from a literary girl than simply a girl. It was the girl in Jane that had moved him to kiss her at the party; she might have gone further with Nicholas without her literary leanings. This was a mistake she continued to make in her relations with men, inferring from her own preference for men of books and literature their preference for women of the same business. And it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.
But Jane was presently proved right in her prediction about the seating arrangements in the car; and it was her repeated accuracy of intuition in such particulars as these which gave her confidence in her later career as a prophetic gossip-columnist.
Meantime the brown-lined drawing-room began to chirp into life as the girls came in from the dining-room bearing trays of coffee cups. The three spinsters, Greggie, Come, and Jarvie. were introduced to the guests, as was their accustomed right. They sat in hard chairs and poured coffee for the young loungers. Collie and Jarvie were known to be in the process of a religious quarrel, but they made an effort to conceal their differences for the occasion. Jarvie. however, was agitated by the fact that her coffee cup had been filled too full by Collie. She laid the cup and swimming saucer on a table a little way behind her, and ignored it significantly. She was dressed to go out, with gloves, bag, and hat. She was presently going to take her Sunday-school class. The gloves were made of a stout green-brown suède. Jarvie smoothed them out on her lap, then fluttered her fingers over the cuffs, turning them back. They revealed the utility stamp, two half-moons facing the same way, which was the mark of price-controlled clothes and which, on dresses, where the mark was merely stamped on a tape sewn on the inside, everyone removed. Jarvie surveyed her gloves’ irremovable utility mark with her head at a slight angle, as if considering some question connected with it. She then smoothed out the gloves again and jerkily adjusted her spectacles. Jane felt in a great panic to get married. Nicholas, on hearing that Jarvie was about to go to teach a Sunday-school class, was solicitous to inquire about it.
‘I think we had better drop the subject of religion,’ Jarvie said, as if in conclusion of an argument long in progress. Collie said, ‘I thought we had dropped it. What a lovely day for Richmond!’
Selina slouched elegantly in her chair, untouched by the threat of becoming a spinster, as she would never be that sort of spinster, anyway. Jane recalled the beginning of the religious quarrel overheard on all floors, since it had taken place in the echoing wash-room on the second landing. Collie had at first accused Jarvie of failing to dean. the sink after using it to wash up her dishes of stuff, which she surreptitiously cooked on her gas-ring where only kettles were lawfully permitted. Then, ashamed of her outburst, Collie had more loudly accused Jarvie of putting spiritual obstacles in her path ‘just when you know I’m growing in grace’. Jarvie had then said something scornful about the Baptists as opposed to the true spirit of the Gospels. This religious row, with elaborations, had now lasted more than two weeks but the women were doing their best to conceal it. Collie now said to Jarvie, ‘Are you going to waste your coffee with the milk in it?’ This was a moral rebuke, for milk was on the ration. Jarvie turned, smoothed, patted and pulled straight the gloves on her lap and breathed in and out. Jane wanted to tear off her clothes and run naked into the street, screaming. Collie looked with disapproval at Jane’s bare fat knees.
Greggie, who had very little patience with the two other elder members, had been winning her way with Felix, and had enquired what went on ‘up there, next door’, meaning in the hotel, the top floor of which the American Intelligence was using, the lower floors being strangely empty and forgotten by the requisitioners.
‘Ah, you’d be surprised, ma’am,’ Felix said.
Greggie said she must show the men round the garden before they set off for Richmond. The fact that Greggie did practically all the gardening detracted from its comfort for the rest of the girls. Only the youngest and happiest girls could feel justified in using it to sit about in, as it was so much Greggie’s toiled-at garden. Only the youngest and happiest could walk on the grass with comfort; they, were not greatly given to scruples and consideration for others, by virtue of their unblighted spirits.
Nicholas had noticed a handsome bright-cheeked fair-haired girl standing, drinking down her coffee fairly quickly. She left the room with graceful speed when she had drunk her coffee.
Jane said, ‘That’s Joanna Childe who does elocution.’
Later, in the garden, while Greggie was conducting her tour, they heard Joanna’s voice. Greggie was displaying her various particular items, rare plants reared from stolen cuttings, these being the only objects that Greggie would ever think of stealing. She boasted, like a true gardening woman, of her thefts and methods of acquiring snips of other people’s rare plants. The sound of Joanna’s afternoon pupil liked down from her room.
Nicholas said, ‘The voice is coming from up there, now. Last time, it came from the ground floor.’
‘She uses her own room at week-ends when the recreation room is used a lot. We’re very proud of Joanna.’
Joanna’s voice followed her pupil’s.
Greggie said, ‘This hollow shouldn’t be there. It’s where the bomb dropped. It just missed the house.’
‘Were you in the house at the time?’ said Felix. ‘I was,’ said Greggie, ‘I was in bed. Next moment I was on the floor. All the windows were broken. And it’s my suspicion there was a second bomb that didn’t go off. I’m almost sure I saw it drop as I picked myself up off the floor. But the disposal squad found only the one bomb and removed it. Anyway, if there’s a second it must have died a natural death by now. I’m talking about the year 1942.’
Felix said, with his curious irrelevancy, ‘My wife Gareth talks of coming over here with UNRRA. I wonder if she could put up at your club in transit for a week or two? I have to be back and forth, myself. She would be lonely in London.’
‘It would have been lying underneath the hydrangeas on the right if I was correct,’ Greggie said.