least, but was concerned that the weather would be wet.. 'Northamptonshire is a dry county,' said Donald. 'Not at all like Somerset. Hardly any cows but fields of waving corn.' 'Where we could play hide-and-seek?' said Rosie. 'And we could follow Colonel Moore's suggestion and sample the pleasures of waterborne frolics.' 'There is a canal,' said Ian, 'though we would be in grave danger of being run down by a barge.'
'But there is an ornamental pond close to the house, if I recall, aright,' said his brother. 'Quite shallow, with a Chinese bridge and a gazebo nearby.' 'What's that?' asked Rosie. 'Like a summerhouse,' said Catherine. 'A place for assignations and intimate exchanges.' By now the idea had won more or less general approval. It was agreed that every effort would be made to persuade Gwendolen and Cecily at least to join us. Ten days later an excited party gathered at Euston station. The expedition had been made the excuse for an energetic round of clothes buying. We were surrounded by trunks, hampers and hat boxes. Rosie, responding to the hustle and bustle of a great main line station, was jumping up and down with glee. I had been put in charge of the buying and distribution of tickets. Donald and Ian were supervising the porters in the stowing of our luggage in the van. Locomotives hissed and snorted. Becky managed to stand in the way as a great squirt of steam shot across the platform, threatening to lift her skirt. Doors banged and whistles blew. Rosie spotted the Glasgow express on an adjacent platform. 'Let's go to Scotland instead,' she said.
'Think how long it would take and what we could do on the way.' She began to read off the stops shown on a board. 'Rugby, Nuneaton, Stafford, Crewe, Preston-We could fuck for hours and hours.'
'You'll have to be satisfied with Watford, Berkhamsted, Tring and Wolverton,' I said. 'Do you like my new dress, Andrew?' she said.
'It's made of French poplin. It was bought especially for the occasion. I thought it might be rather hot on the journey so I'm wearing nothing whatsoever underneath it.' 'Yes, very nice indeed, but don't bother me for the moment. I've got to make sure everyone is here.' She looked a little disappointed and made a face at me. 'Don't take your duties so seriously, Andrew. Here -'
With that she snatched the tickets from my hand and began to count them off against the members of our party. 'Becky, Hannah, Catherine, Ian, Donald, Cecily from school. Where's Gwendolen? And who's that dark girl. Is she with us?' 'I think she's a friend of Hannah's. I don't know her name.' 'And that man over there? The clergyman.' 'Most unlikely to be with us,' I said. 'I'll find out,' she said and before I could stop her, she went over to the clerical gentleman. I couldn't hear what she said but at once I feared the worst. I saw him turn an apoplectic shade of purple, swallow convulsively and run a finger round the inside of his clerical collar.
Rosie skipped back, trying to stifle a giggle. 'What did you say?' I asked, resigned to the fact that she was determined to misbehave. 'I just asked him if he was part of the Northampton pussey-hunting party,' she said. 'Rosie, do try to conduct yourself properly,' I said wearily. 'You'll get us all in trouble.
Look, he's talking to an official of the railway company.' 'Shall I go and say I'm sorry,' Rosie asked. 'He might well want to chastise me.' 'You're to stay here,' I said sternly. 'Do you want to chastise me?' said Rosie with a look of artfully contrived innocence.
'I shall pack you into a cab and have you sent straight home if you're not careful,' I said. 'We're still missing some of our party.
Where is Gwendolen! She was told what time the train left.' By now I was feeling more than a little flustered. I was holding twelve tickets and could only account for about eight people, assuming that the dark girl was in fact one of us. 'Cecily?' I called out with a growing sense of desperation, 'Do you know who all the others are and can you see them?' 'George is one,' Cecily shouted back above the increasing din of the station. 'Who on earth is he?' I asked.
'You met him at the studio,' she shouted back. 'No, of course you didn't. You weren't there.' 'What studio?' I fairly yelled as a locomotive suddenly blew off a great gout of steam. 'I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, is he here?' 'I think I saw him a minute ago. He was going to buy a ticket.' 'But I've got the tickets. Didn't he know that?' 'Well maybe he was going to buy something else. I don't know. Oh no! There he is, over there, talking to that clergyman.' 'What!' I almost shrieked. 'This is getting impossible!' I looked wildly round. A tall elegant young man wearing a fur coat and sporting a green carnation in his buttonhole was talking with great animation to a similarly languid young man in a pale grey velvet suit and wearing a clerical collar. At least it wasn't the same clergyman that Rosie had scandalised. 'Why on earth have we got a minister of religion with us?' I asked. 'It hardly seems an appropriate addition to our party.' 'Possibly he's a keen bicyclist,' said Cecily, not very helpfully. 'And anyway,' I went on, 'If that's George, I've certainly never seen him before in my life.' 'You're right,' she said. 'I was getting confused.'
'You're not the only one,' I said bitterly. 'Look, Andrew, it's quite simple, George is a friend of Gwendolen. You do know Gwendolen, don't you? And I'm Cecily. I'm the one who sucked you off under the table. You remember that, don't you. And afterwards you complimented me on the size of my breasts.' 'Don't be sarcastic,'
I said. 'Of course I remember you.' 'Well,' she went on, 'George also knows your friend Donald. They were at Oxford together. And we're expecting Jack.' At this moment we were almost run down by a railway porter struggling with the weight of a trolley laden down with luggage. As he pushed his way between us, I had to step back sharply so that I slipped and almost fell in a pool of oily water that smelled strongly of fish. By the time I had recovered my balance, I realised that I had missed some part of Cecily's explanation of who was who on our expedition. '-the cousin, I think, of Becky's friend Charlotte. He studies the piano in Paris -' 'Well, what's happened to him and does anyone know what he looks like?' I asked.
Railway officials were beginning to shut the doors. The locomotive at the head of our train gave a short sharp blast on its whistle. An inspector or a guard fished out his watch and peered at it solemnly. The hands on the station clock stood at one minute to the hour. We were due off and I was beginning to perspire. 'I think I've found him,' said Rosie, suddenly appearing at my elbow. 'He's in that compartment there, talking to Gwendolen.' 'I never saw her arrive,' I shouted. 'That's because you were too busy talking about clergymen with Cecily,' said Rosie. 'This is surely no time to enter into theological conversations.' I suddenly realised something was terribly amiss. 'They're sitting in the wrong train! That's the Glasgow express. Get them out of there at once and across the platform into ours. For Heaven's sake!' Rosie, to do her justice, moved quickly. She ran over and almost dragged a startled- looking Gwendolen and her companion from their compartment, pushed them across to the Northampton train, bundled them in, ran back, brought out their luggage, thrust that in through the door after them. A moment later an elderly gentleman erupted from the Glasgow carriage, bolted across the platform to the Northampton train, threw open the door, almost fell inside and then backed out holding a leather hatbox. As he scrambled back into his compartment I realised that Rosie must have been over-enthusiastic in collecting up Gwendolen's luggage, although why an elderly gentleman should be accompanied by a ladies' large hatbox, I couldn't imagine. This scene had been played out before my eyes like a charade, since I could not hear a word of what had been spoken above the hubbub of steam escaping from a locomotive which was obviously preparing to help push the Glasgow train out of the station and up the slope that lay beyond.
Frantically, I tried to count our party. Hannah. I knew she was there although I had lost sight of her for the moment. Becky. She was sitting decorously at a window seat, not unaware that she looked pretty as a picture, neatly framed and wearing her new bonnet. Rosie, Ian and Donald, Catherine, the dark girl, the two aesthetes, Cecily, Gwendolen, Becky's friend's cousin Jack from Paris. If everyone was who I thought they were, the numbers added up. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I realised that they didn't. I'd forgotten to count myself. 'Deirdre's coming as well,' said Rosie suddenly. 'Hannah told me.' This was too much to bear. The signal at the end of the platform dropped. The guard whistled and waved his flag. The locomotive gave a great Whuff! and a cloud of black smoke shot up into the station roof. I gave up, dived for a compartment and scrambled in, pulling Rosie with me. I banged the door shut behind me, barked my shins on a wicker hamper that was on the floor and, as the train jolted forward, sat down abruptly. 'Ow!' said Becky. 'You're heavy,' and pushed me off her lap. And so we set off on the great Northampton adventure, although who was there and if they were the right people, I had no idea. Nor in truth did I much care. I pulled out a handkerchief and mopped my brow. The train was labouring and lurching as the locomotive made heavy weather of the steep gradient out of the station. There came a sudden jolt and I dropped the tickets which I had managed to retrieve from Rosie all over the floor of the compartment. As I scrabbled around frantically on all fours, reaching under seats and people's feet, the wicker basket by the door over which I had tripped on getting in, creaked and moved.
'What the devil is that!' I exclaimed. 'It moved. There's something alive in it!' 'It's all right,' said someone. 'It's only George.' 'I thought George was Gwendolen's friend. Cecily, you pointed him out to me. The tall man in the fur coat and green carnation. Now you claim he's shut up in a hamper! I think I'm going insane!' 'That's the other
