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By Root 273 0

In her navy linen trousers and her, perhaps too tight, white jersey, Jennifer was determinedly gamine. Edith wondered how old she was. She looked very young, as did Mrs Pusey, but in a way she could not define they were both out of date. They referred almost constantly to times gone by, times illuminated by glamour, happiness, success, confidence, and security, times of necessity remote and mysterious to their interlocutor. Edith reflected how enormously one-sided conversations with the Puseys were always likely to be. They imposed their past as deliberately as they did their present, and to both of these one was expected, in some curious way, to pay homage. They required no information at all; once they had assured themselves that Edith was alone, they had requisitioned her, and this was not only a kindness but a convenience, proof, to Edith’s mind, of sophisticated thinking. And as most of Mrs Pusey’s sentences began with the words ‘Of course’, they had a range of tranquil confidence which somehow occluded any attempt to introduce an opinion of her own. She found all this amusing and very restful; the last thing she wanted to do was to talk about herself. No, not that. But she confessed to herself that she was somewhat disturbed by Jennifer’s cheerful but steady refusal of any kind of mutuality. After all, she thought, we are almost of an age, although she is a few years younger. She might be, what? Thirty-two? Thirty-three? Possibly thirty-four? And yet she belongs to her mother, as if her mother had been cast upon an uncaring and philistine world and it was Jennifer’s duty to protect her from it. What Jennifer felt about this few people were likely to find out, Edith thought, as she observed, while Mrs Pusey was talking, Jennifer’s uninflected smile.

At this point in her musings she was disturbed by a pleasant male voice saying, ‘Don’t lose this’, and offering her the notebook which must have slipped from her lap unnoticed while she was contemplating Jennifer. Startled, she looked up to see a tall man in a light grey suit smiling down at her. She murmured her thanks, expecting him to go away; she could hardly ask him to sit down and join them. But, ‘Are you a writer?’ he enquired, in a voice very slightly tinged with amusement. As if he knew, thought Edith, in some confusion, although the idea that anyone could be a writer in a place like this was not likely to be taken seriously. Or so she hoped. She gave a distracted smile, intending to deflect further questions, and, still looking amused, he moved away and followed his friends or colleagues out, away from the tea tables, into the fresh air.

‘It seems you have an admirer,’ said Mrs Pusey. And when more hot water arrived she added, ‘He’s had his eye on you since you came in. I saw it at once.’ She spoke roguishly, but her eyelids drooped, as if this merely added to the day’s disappointments. Jennifer, Edith saw, was still glassily smiling.

It was time to go up and change and yet they lingered on. Edith felt constrained by a kind of loyalty to wait upon Mrs Pusey, although it was not quite clear to her why loyalty was involved. Their silence was ruminative; no confidences were to be offered or exchanged. Just what I wanted, Edith reminded herself, but what she suddenly longed to do was to speak to David; the intrusion of a man into her consciousness, however parodic, had the painful effect of awakening her longing. She glanced at her watch, calculating the time anxiously; if she rushed upstairs now, she might just catch him before he left. At the Rooms, she thought, with a pang of love and terror.

‘I must be getting back to the Rooms,’ were the first words she had consciously heard him say, and she was struck by their mystery. She turned the amazing sentence over in her mind, conjuring up vistas of courtyards with fountains trickling and silent servants in gauze trousers bringing sherbet. Or possibly large divans in whitewashed houses shuttered against the heat of the afternoon, a dreaming, glowing idleness, inspired by Delacroix. Or of grave merchants, with clicking