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  ‘Silly, too,’ said Hilda. ‘And I think all that sort of thing’s so common, don’t you? Besides, it never gets you anywhere. Mother doesn’t know what she feels about me getting married. One minute she’s dying to see me sailing down the aisle in white satin, and the next minute she says she doesn’t know how she’ll ever get on without me. Well, I laugh at her. Go on, sorry.’

  ‘I felt worse and worse about it. She never gave me a minute’s peace. It was almost as if’ – she hesitated – ‘she wanted to drag me into the worry and sordidness and pettiness of being married.’

  Far away, in the silence that had followed the barrage, the All Clear began.

  ‘Goody!’ cried Hilda, springing up. ‘Come on, you can finish telling me on the way home.’ She opened the front door. The moon was shining brilliantly but a cold, still mist crept among the leafless trees and lightless houses. Hilda thrust her arm through Margaret’s and with the other hand slammed the door of the little house.

  ‘If I were you I’d decide on that one, Margaret,’ she said, as they hurried down the path.

  ‘It’s certainly the most suitable one I’ve seen yet.’

  ‘And it’s so nice and near us!’ cried Hilda with a skip, already planning to introduce Margaret to the most bookish among a multitude of decidedly non-bookish boys who frequented the small house where she lived with her parents.

  ‘Oh, you must have that one! Go on about Frank, we’ll be home in a minute and I shall be too busy eating to give you my full attention.’ She pressed Margaret’s arm and lifted her small face, with its delicate aquiline features, to the moon whose light sparkled in her blue eyes. ‘Gorgeous night.’

  ‘So, at last,’ said Margaret heavily, her face and voice unlightened by the haste of her footsteps and the refreshing night air, her whole personality sunk in unhappy memories, ‘I – I asked him outright.’

  ‘Gosh!’ muttered Hilda. Then, recovering herself, ‘Well, why not? If he was really your friend, he’d have understood.’

  ‘That was what I thought, you see. I told him how Mother had been worrying me, and how awful it made me feel, and I said I was only asking him about – about how he felt – so that I could have something definite, one way or another, to tell her and shut her up. I – I made a kind of joke of it, you see, really.’

  Hilda squeezed her arm again, in silence. Margaret was silent for so long that Hilda at last peeped round at her dark brooding face and said more quietly than usual:

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He was very quiet and – and nice, really,’ said Margaret in a low tone that barely concealed her agony of shame. ‘I don’t think he did understand. He seemed surprised that I took it all so seriously. He made a kind of joke out of it too – not unkindly, of course – he was two years older than I was and much more sensible. And he explained – he said – he told me – that he didn’t love me …’

  ‘But that was all right, because you didn’t love him,’ interrupted Hilda, ‘so you needn’t feel bad about that.’

  ‘No, I didn’t love him when I told him. But afterwards when I’d had a frightful scene with Mother and she’d told me I’d messed up my chance and I’d probably never have another, then I got thinking about how kind and quiet and sensible he was and how we liked all the same things, and I – I thought I did love him and that made it worse than ever. I was so miserable I wanted to die.’

  ‘You take things to heart so,’ said Hilda at last, in what was for her a depressed tone.

  ‘I know. I always have. I can’t help it.’

  ‘What will you be like when you’re old?’

  ‘Perhaps I shan’t live to be old.’

  ‘Go on, that’s right, be really cheerful.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to be.’

  ‘Yes you do; we’ll live together in that little house when I’m old too and all my boys have deserted me.’

  ‘You’ll be married.’

  ‘Well, so will you.’

  Margaret shook her head. ‘No, I shan’t. I’m not the type.’

  ‘You aren’t’ – Hilda hesitated – ‘you don’t still care about him, do you?’

  ‘I’m not still in love with him, if that’s what you mean. I still like to remember what friends we were. You see, I think of him as two people really; the real person who was so easy to get on with, and kind and sensible, and the person I was in love with, who was all romantic and marvellous because he was unattainable.’

  Hilda could only shake her head.

  ‘Did you see him again after you’d told him about your mother?’ she asked presently.

  ‘No. He did want to, but I said not. We wrote to each other once or twice, at Christmas; just ordinary letters, not long ones. After I’d got over being in love with him I didn’t want to see him again.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to see him again now?’ suggested Hilda.

  Margaret did not answer for a little while. Then, when they were nearly at the gate of Hilda’s house, where she was staying, she said:

  ‘No. I still feel too bad about it. It absolutely did something to me, Hilda. That’s what’s made me “different,” as you say. It was such a shock to me, telling him like that – and then falling in love with him after he’d told me he wasn’t in love with me – and feeling so despairing. I’ve got such frighteningly strong feelings – you don’t know.’

  ‘I think you imagine a lot of it,’ said Hilda firmly, pushing open the gate of a tiny house whose wintry garden had not a dead leaf in sight or a grass blade out of place, and whose blackout showed not a cranny or chink. The front doorstep was snowy in the moonlight and the metal letter-box glittered.

  ‘No, I don’t. I wish I did.’

  ‘Well, never mind now. You’re quite bats but I love you,’ and she gave her a quick hug and tapped out the Victory tattoo on the knocker, ‘and it’s lovely that you’re coming to live in London.’

  2

  The town of Lukeborough, to which Margaret returned in a few days, was in Bedfordshire.

  Before the Second World War Lukeborough had a population of some seventy thousand, being smaller than Northampton and larger than Luton, its nearest comparable neighbours to the north and south. Evacuees from London and war-workers drafted into its new factories from the Midlands and the North had increased its numbers to nearly eighty thousand by the fourth year of the War, and its natural ugliness and dullness were enhanced by overcrowding in its streets and shops and cinemas, and a chronic shortage of those small delicacies that make life in war-time a little brighter. As a result, the pre-Second World War inhabitants of Lukeborough were bitter about the town’s new population, and the newcomers swore that it was the last place God made and were only anxious to get away from it for ever as soon as possible.

  Lukeborough’s growth during the last forty years had been due entirely to its commerce; all its large new buildings were factories, and its small ones were bungalows or rows of neat, boring little houses built to house the factory workers. There was not even a core of gracious country-town architecture buried in the heart of the place, for it had only been a sprawling village with a strong Dissenting tradition, and all that was left of the village was one or two weather-boarded cottages in the High Street which had been turned into cafés and wireless shops, and the Corn Exchange, a hall built in 1882. The sky seemed to be grey for five days out of the seven above Lukeborough, and when it was blue it only stirred in the hearts of the few romantics in the town an echo of loveliness, an aching longing, as they glanced away over the low, mean houses and unpicturesque streets towards the clear, ethereal turquoise heaven.

  But although nine out of ten of the inhabitants of Lukeborough were permanently cross and on the defensive, this does not mean that they were discontented with their lot, and pined to make Lukeborough the Athens of North Bedfordshire, flashing with concrete mansions and gracious with gardens where civic pride grew like flowers. So long as buses ran regularly, and the electric light and gas worked properly
, and the streets were kept moderately clean, and there were up-to-date films at the Roxy and the Lukeborough Plaza, they did not ask for much else; and if the evacuees and the war-workers could have been removed overnight, their pipkin of happiness would have been full. Life certainly did run on a very low voltage in Lukeborough; we pride ourselves on being able to perceive romance and beauty in the common scene, but even we are bound to admit that at Lukeborough the streets were usually covered with a thin greasy paste that was not quite mud, the air was usually windless and muggy, and the rise in the ground from one end of the town to the other was about half an inch in five hundred yards.

  Margaret came out of the station on a typical Lukeborough afternoon, grey and moist, and walked along to the end of the road to catch the bus. It was exactly half-past three. She would arrive at her home – which was on the outskirts of the town – in time for tea at four o’clock.

  Her mind was still full of pictures of London, and she felt half-enchanted. She had been there before, but this was the first time that she had been able to wander about by herself and let the spell of the capital sink into her heart. She had stood for half an hour on Chelsea Embankment and watched the sullen pearly river running roughly past the Egyptian massif of the Battersea Power Station, the only beautiful modern building in London; she had seen the rows of ruined houses with their blind windows of black paper, and the charred wood in the doorways of Soho that was like quilted black satin. For a week she had wandered about, searching for a house for her parents to live in, and conscientiously doing what she had been sent by them to London to do; but she had also dreamed more, and found richer food for her imagination, than she had ever found before. London had changed her. The knowledge that in a few weeks she would be returning to London, to live there, was full of wonder and delight.

  The bus was entering a road with small detached redbrick houses standing at the end of long narrow gardens. At the next stop she got down.

  The houses, which were fairly new and three-storied, had names like Coombe Dene, and Wycombe, and Fiona. Margaret pushed open the gate of one called Ilsa, and walked up the path. The windows were draped with soft curtains of pale yellow, frilled at the edges and crossed, and the doorstep was as white as that of Hilda’s home and the metal-work on the front door as gleaming. Clumps of yellow chrysanthemums stood in the narrow beds on either side of the path and the lawns were neatly mown. Beyond the house could be seen flat fields and elm trees with houses here and there; this was a main road leading straight to Northampton, and provided an excellent example of ribbon development.

  She rang the bell, and in a moment her mother opened the door.

  ‘I thought it would be you, dear,’ she said, and gave her daughter a pecking kiss. ‘Come in and shut the door; the damp makes the oilcloth look so dull, and I’ve only done it this morning. Well, I hope you’ve found somewhere nice for us; you didn’t say much in your letter. Better go up and put your things away; tea’s just on ready. Reg will be here any time after five; he’s got forty-eight hours again. It’s nice having him, of course, but I do wish they’d give you longer notice. I’ve just sent his eiderdown to be cleaned, and Mrs Burrows and I were going to do his room to-morrow. But it can’t be helped. Margaret! You’ve dropped this.’

  Margaret came down the stairs again to take the glove her mother was holding out.

  ‘I can’t say your holiday seems to have done you much good; you look half asleep,’ said Mrs Steggles, glancing at her sharply and discontentedly. ‘Sitting up half the night talking with Hilda, I suppose. Well, hurry up and get washed; I want my tea, and I want to hear all about the house. How we’re going to get everything packed up and ready in three weeks I don’t know. Still, it’s got to be done, so I suppose it will be. Don’t leave the bathroom untidy, dear, it was only done this morning.’

  Margaret went upstairs, and Mrs Steggles hurried into the dining-room, where a little electric fire was burning on one bar, and tea was laid. The room was decorated in light, cold colours, and the furniture, made of pale wood in angular shapes, gave an impression of flimsiness and sparseness. Every object, from the frilled curtains to the yellow tea-cosy, was exquisitely clean. A faint odour of furniture polish and freshly made tea hung in the air. Mrs Steggles sat down at the head of the table and stared out of the window, waiting for her daughter. The worried look faded from her face as she gazed, and it was possible to see that she had once been unusually pretty, though now her complexion was marred by the settled reddish hue of middle age and her abundant dark hair was waved stiffly and unbecomingly against her head. Her teeth were not her own and her figure was spare and taut. Deep lines of worry ran down on either side of her mouth and across her forehead. Her large brown eyes were suspicious, and, when she sat quietly as she was doing now, very sad. Her full mouth, that was like Margaret’s, was ill-tempered and her voice edgy. Rage, rather than mere irritability, lurked in that voice and mouth. She wore a pale satin blouse with elaborate embroidery at the neck, and a dark skirt; and although her hands were worn with housework some attempt had been made to preserve their softness.

  Margaret came in, pushing back her hair from her forehead. She had tiny ears, fine dark eyebrows, and good ankles; all minor beauties and not in themselves enough to make a woman attractive.

  ‘I expect you want your tea,’ said Mrs Steggles, beginning to pour out. ‘Was the train very crowded? I had a letter from Mrs Miller this morning; she said they had a terrible journey down; they had to stand all the way, and Ella was sick. I’m sure I hope it won’t be like that when we go. Well, now, about the house. It’s near Hilda, you say?’

  ‘Yes, in the next road but one. It’s almost the same kind of house. There’s a hill at the back of it –’

  ‘Oh dear, I hope we shan’t be very overlooked!’

  ‘It’s all hills round there, so we shall have to get used to it. Hilda said I was to tell you the kitchen sink is under the window.’

  Mrs Steggles nodded. ‘And you say they promised to get the ceilings done by the end of this week. Are the rooms much smaller than these?’

  ‘They said they’d try. No, about the same size. Mrs Wilson was awfully kind, Mother; she promised to go round every day and see how the men are getting on.’

  ‘Yes, that was kind of her. How is she? Is Hilda any nearer being engaged yet?’

  ‘She’s very well. No, I don’t think so; she never said anything about it.’

  ‘If she’s not careful she’ll miss her market; those very popular girls with crowds of boys so often don’t marry; I’ve noticed it.’

  ‘Mother, she’s only twenty-two!’ exclaimed Margaret, colouring.

  ‘Oh, yes; I know you think there’s all the time in the world to get married, and Hilda’s the same; but time goes quicker than you girls realize, and you’ll both be twenty-seven before you can turn round. Is it a light house, should you say?’

  ‘Not quite so light as this because the road isn’t so wide, but it is light. I think you’ll like it, Mother. It’s in a nice road, and the shops are only just round the corner.’

  ‘Well, that’s something. Is it near the bus for your father?’

  ‘About five minutes’ walk from a new Underground station.’

  ‘And how long does it take to get into London?’

  ‘I found it took me nearly three-quarters of an hour; everything was so crowded.’

  ‘How did you get on? Did you like the look of your new school? I don’t expect so!’ Mrs Steggles vigorously helped herself to jam.

  ‘It’s in a neighbourhood that’s gone down a lot, and the school itself is very knocked about; they’ve been evacuated, as I told you, and the school has been used as a British Restaurant. The headmistress, Miss Lathom, seemed quite nice.’

  ‘Is it far from Stanley Gardens?’

  ‘About twenty minutes by bus.’

  ‘Well, it all sounds very convenient; we’ll hope it’s as nice as it sounds. Another cup, Margaret?’

  ‘Yes, p
lease, Mother. How – is Dad all right?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Why shouldn’t he be?’

  Margaret did not answer, and they went on to talk about the house again and to discuss plans for the move in three weeks’ time.

  Mrs Steggles was not daunted by the prospect of a move in war-time, for her restless unhappiness found relief in a domestic upheaval, and she enjoyed moves. The Steggleses had had six homes in their twenty-eight years of married life, and each one a solid little provincial house filled with good plain furniture from attic to kitchen; not a series of three-roomed flats sketchily equipped with a few sticks. Mr Steggles earned a comfortable income as Chief Sub-Editor on the North Bedfordshire Record, an old-established weekly newspaper, and his particular weakness was not improvidence with money. He indulged his wife’s liking for movement and change. She was an excellent manager and a superlative housewife. There had always been every amenity in those six little houses during the past twenty-eight years except laughter and love. There was not much laughter left in Jack Steggles at the age of fifty-six, and as he went to other women for love, he felt vaguely that Mabel must be allowed her fits of discontent with a perfectly satisfactory house and her feverish search for a better one, and her purchase of new rugs and curtains to equip it when she found it. She was neither socially nor financially ambitious; he granted her that. She did not nag at him to earn more money or get a more important job. She was only driven by some inward passion for perfection; some deep dissatisfaction that made her scrub and polish and rub and dust and clean until their home, wherever it was, glittered and shone like a museum.

  After tea, Margaret unpacked and put her clothes away. She sighed as she looked at her untidy curls in the mirror, and decided that a neater way of wearing them must be found before she joined the staff of the school in London at half-term. A style that had been indulgently over-looked at Sunnybrae School, Lukeborough, where she had had her first post as a teacher, would not do for London. The few members of the staff whom she had encountered on her visit to the Anna Bonner School for Girls had been noticeably neat.