Sunshine was bursting into the garden, but it wasn�t quite warm enough to sit outside, so tea was served in the drawing room. Lady Winifred presided, and Lizzie helped to pass the cups and the sugar. They were the women with the greatest and the least status in the room, once the maid had withdrawn, and they had been doing this job together for years. The afternoon tea machinery was well-oiled.
The room was a little less crowded than usual with those multi-coloured creatures that Lady Winifred�s husband disparagingly referred to as weemen. In fact, these days, the balance was almost redressed, as the older girls occasionally invited young men to tea. Sixteen year-old Lizzie was never sure who was supposed to be approving of whom, on these occasions; but her mother had no doubts at all, and Lizzie�s opinion did not particularly count anyway.
You�re looking particularly nice today, Meggie. Are you expecting a guest? Audrey�s inquiry was mild in tone, but Marguerite glanced towards her sharply, trying to detect the hidden barb. Lizzie could see that it was there, but not why. Tension hovered in the air like gas.
Where is Nora?
She felt queer. She said she would miss tea.
Nonsense. Lizzie, run and tell her that she must come down at once. There was nothing wrong with her at lunchtime.
Lizzie observed Marguerite�s face again, as she left the room. It was not unusual for her to be the one causing the trouble; as middle sister, she was never quite part of one set or the other, and it was never clear whether one should side with her or against her. In a family of five girls, the eldest learned to take charge, and the youngest learned to do as she was told. The middle one learned the skills of diplomacy and manipulation, and often found herself doing her own thing, unnoticed.
In such dangerous times, the older girls found demand for themselves as nurses, and escaped the constraints of home, and to some extent the constraints of class, too. They often managed to return to the village for weekends, but then spent most of their time smoking on the verandah.
Marguerite had spent a year in Malta working as an au pair, and had had a simply splendid time attending tennis parties and dinners on board various impressive naval ships. She had failed spectacularly in the unmentioned mission to find a husband, returning with only an attachment to a most unsuitable Irishman. Their father had spoken to him quite firmly, and now Marguerite was also training to become a nurse.
Lizzie knew she would find Nora in the music room, seated at the small piano where all the girls had learned their scales, and only she had excelled. As children they had often hidden there, crouching beside the piano stool and cooking up harmless nonsense. They kept the important documentation of their secret club underneath the stack of music, and no-one ever discovered it.
Nora sat with the lid open, but her fingers resting, still, on her lap. She refused to say why she would not come down to tea, but made it clear that she was quite unwilling to leave the music room at that moment. It hurt Lizzie�s feelings to be told that she would not understand, as though Nora had finally swapped sides, and Lizzie was the only child left in the family.
She returned empty-handed to the drawing room, and Lady Winifred only raised an elegant eyebrow.
The room was busier than when she left it. Audrey�s particular friend Sue was sipping tea and loudly bemoaning the recent ban on iced cakes; Ruth�s American friend, whom everyone knew as Joe, held a tiny, delicate cup in a paw like a sledgehammer; and Lady Winifred�s attention was all being poured into her scrutiny of the newcomer, a man with the appearance of an officer from the tips of his moustache to the toes of his gleaming shoes. Marguerite was smiling prettily, and her officer was handling his interrogation with charming correctness.
He was introduced to Lizzie as Will, and Lizzie remembered straight away the information that Nora had confided in no-one else. This was the gentleman Nora had met on the train, and gone to the dance with. He appeared to be here as Marguerite�s guest.