He swallows. ‘All right. Sorry. Anyway, so they built a lighthouse. The Stevensons. And Tom Cavendish worked on it. They were there every day, just out on the rock. They couldn’t even build a cabin, they had to go out every morning, whatever the weather. They shaped every stone, interlocking all the way up. I’ll show you the designs, Aunt Ally, it’s an amazing thing. Amazing that you can do it. You can’t imagine the waves it withstands. I mean—sorry.’
‘Go on, George. I know that the sea is still there. Am I to take it that you want to be a lighthouse builder?’
He looks up, older again. ‘It’s all I want to do. I can do it. I’ve always liked math. And I’m strong, you know that, I’m never ill.’
‘What does your Papa say?’
He looks down. ‘That’s the thing. He says it’s probably just a fad and last year I wanted to join the Navy and anyway I can do it after Cambridge if I still want to. But I can’t. Cambridge would just waste three years and then I’d be too old for an apprenticeship. And I could study engineering here or in Edinburgh or Aberdeen and actually learn something useful. He says Engineering isn’t a scholarly subject and I would regret Cambridge all my life, but I wouldn’t. He means he would have regretted Cambridge if he hadn’t gone. But honestly, Aunt Al, I’ve never been much interested in art, and I’m no good at Latin and all that. I mean, I can get by, but you know I’ve always liked real things more than books. It’s my life, not his.’
Ally nods. Either of them may be right, as far as she can see, but people learn more from their own mistakes than those of others.
‘You know I can’t interfere between you and your father. What does your Mamma say?’
His face brightens. ‘“Let the dear child be happy,” mostly. Like the ending of a romantic novel.’
They both smile. Aunt Mary’s novel habit has spread into a second bookcase.
He sits forward, coming to the crux. ‘I just thought, you know what it’s like to have—well, a calling. Because you wanted to be a doctor when you were young, didn’t you? And that must have been much harder than me wanting to be an engineer.’
‘Not, though, as hard as if I’d wanted to be an engineer,’ she points out. ‘And you know that there are girls who would give everything for the choice between Cambridge and engineering?’
‘I know. Really, Aunt Ally, I do. Anyway, the thing is, I invited him, Tom Cavendish, to dinner. I mean, I asked Mamma first, if I might. And I thought maybe, please, you might join us? I said Thursday because that’s your day off at the moment, isn’t it? I checked with Fanny.’
Dear George. She remembers herself at fifteen, the strength of her longings and the dread of the god-like powers of the grown-ups. George, plainly, has no idea how much easier these things are for him than for a girl with similar ambitions, but he has, still, his own passion and fear.
‘Very well, George. My “day off” is in no way guaranteed, but if I can I will come to your dinner, and meet this Mr. Cavendish, and if he asks me I’ll tell Uncle James that work one loves is a rare gift not to be lightly discarded. Though I think he knows that, I doubt his own parents particularly wished him to become an art dealer. But I ask you something in return.’
‘Anything you like, Aunt Ally.’
‘Promise me that you will indeed remember that there are girls all over Britain with just such capacities and ambition as yours, who might, given the opportunity, design just such buildings as you marvel over. Promise me that however far you travel and however high you climb, you will keep these wasted intellects and forbidden dreams in your mind.’
He sighs. He has heard it before. But he promises. She wishes she could make every professional man in Britain make the same promise, add it to the articles signed at matriculation to the great universities.
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He cannot remember why he agreed to come. It is not as if the boy recalled to mind his younger self, or as if he particularly believes that the sons of houses such as these require encouragement. All the porticos are freshly painted white, with the house-numbers in the same black italic hand on the pillars. All the front steps—sandstone, it will wear over the years—and even the identical boot-scrapers to the left of each front door, are clean. He pushes his finger through a hole in his glove; it is not that he is incapable of mending it, not that his mother didn’t teach him to thread a needle. Only the doors themselves show a limited variety: pillar-box red, black, or bottle green. He is here, he supposes, because he has not passed through such a door since his professor used to give suppers for his favoured students in Aberdeen. Because he has spent enough evenings among the other lodgers making the best of his landlady’s cooking in the front room thick with the smell of decades of gravy and pipe-smoke. Soon, he promises himself, back to Falmouth, to the sound of the sea and the sight of hedgerows in their midwinter plainness. It is not that he dislikes London, but as in any city, you cannot forget that you are not rich. And so here he is, visiting the rich in their own quarters. Number 67, a black front door. He checks the soles of his boots, adjusts his jacket, before he climbs the steps.
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Aunt Mary does not usually withdraw to leave Uncle James to his port unless there is a formal dinner party, for he likes to say that unlike most men, he prefers
