something? Tell me to mind my own business if you like. Only I try, you know, to fit the past together these days. I was thinking about you and Felix. I wondered if you ever talked about him leaving Ginny, and moving in with you.”
“Oh, there was a lot of talk. There always is in these affairs.” Emma ran her hand back through her hair. “I knew him before, you know, before he took up with Ginny. We used to hang around together, when we were sixteen, seventeen, and then when I was away doing my training he’d come to London to see me. I suppose I had my chance then. But I told him to push off. He used to get on my nerves. His waistcoats, mainly. Yellow waistcoats. So it was my own fault, wasn’t it?”
“But later he didn’t get on your nerves, did he?”
“No, I learned to put up with him. He persisted. But Felix had children, remember.”
“Perhaps he shouldn’t have done.”
“Oh, Ginny was never one to avail herself of my devices. The babies were born before we got together again. Or at least, before we got together again in any way that seemed likely to last. Yes, of course, we should have married in the first place, I see that now … but it was done, it was done. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave Daniel and the little girl.”
“You could have had his children. I would have liked it if you’d had children, Emma. There’d have been more of us.”
“But then perhaps there wouldn’t have been any Daniel.”
“Well, I don’t know … I think I would trade Daniel for cousins. They wouldn’t have been like cousins, they’d have been like brothers and sisters.”
“You mustn’t be greedy, Kit,” Emma said. “The truth is, Felix wouldn’t have left Ginny, even if there’d been no children. Ginny’s not the sort of woman that men leave. And what we had was enough, Felix and me. And what you have is enough.”
“I suppose so,” Kit said.
A ray of grace shone through Emma, from some long-ago Sunday-school afternoon. She said it again, gently: “You mustn’t be greedy, Kit.”
Emma had tried to stop Ralph’s children calling her “Aunt.” What you are called you become, she said; she did not want to become something out of P. G. Wodehouse. She had tried to make their lives easier for them, but it was not easy being Ralph’s children.
His standards were high, but different from other people’s. When they were small the children had played with their friends from the row of council houses that straggled up the lane beyond the church, a quarter of a mile from the Red House. Ralph’s children had better manners, Emma thought; but the council-house children were better dressed.
It was lucky that the young Eldreds had schoolmates in similar plights, or they would have thought themselves hard done-by. Kit, for instance, had a friend whose father wouldn’t let a television set in the house. Robin knew a boy whose mother knitted his trousers to her own design. Norfolk breeds such people; huddling indoors out of the wind, they give birth to strange notions.
Emma had been a refuge for the children once; they still liked to be at her house, even if she could not assemble a sandwich without the filling dropping out. She thoroughly understood her practical value to them. She provided money for heart’s desires—for vital clothes and sudden causes, and treats that Ralph disdained. Poor Ralph, she thought. He made them all have music lessons, but they were neither musical nor grateful. Robin had said last year, “Dad’s supposed to be good with young people, but it’s other young people he’s good with. Not us.”
Emma and Kit finished their tea, drove the three miles to the Red House. As they pulled up, Kit said, “Is Dad still on Julian’s back—about doing a year for the Trust?”
“I think he’s given up on it. Julian wouldn’t do in London, would he? He’d be back within days.” Emma leaned across to kiss her niece. “I’m not coming in. The partners are going to the King’s Arms tonight, we’re going to paint the town red.”
“Have a good time.” Kit put her head in at the car window. “Maybe I’ll do it, instead. Do a year … it wouldn’t hurt. Or would it?”
Emma was surprised. “I thought you were doing postgrad? I thought it was all fixed?”
Kit shook her head. Her face was placid, almost sad. “Nothing’s fixed. I had this idea—I wrote home to Dad—I said I didn’t want to be in London … but I suppose I could face it, if it were for the Trust, if I could be any use there.” She looked away. “I don’t know what to think, though. I’ve lost my … no, I don’t know what I’ve lost.”
Your virginity? Emma wondered. The thought must have shown on her face. “It’s not Daniel,” Kit said. “I wouldn’t stay around here for Daniel. Though if I needed an excuse, I suppose he could be one.”
Emma drove away. The door of the house was thrown open and Julian came out, pretending to peer into the bushes, and calling “Come in for your dinner, kitty kitty kitty.”
Rebecca, behind him, said, “Kate of Kate Hall.”
Her brother looked well, Kit thought at once, he looked happy. He straightened up to his impressive height, put his arms around her and hugged her. Behind him was his red-haired girlfriend, Sandra Glasse.
Kit found Daniel Palmer in the kitchen with the rest of the family. All of them were watching carefully, to assess how pleased she was to see him.
“Hello,” Kit said. “I didn’t expect you, where’s your car?”
“I put it under cover.” Daniel did not know his status with Kit; did not know her mood; wondered what the family thought his status was. “Welcome home,” he said. He picked up a strand of Kit’s hair and touched the end of it to his lips.
“He’s got a new car, you see,” Julian said. “He’s afraid rain will fall on it.”
“It’s my Morgan,” Daniel said. Amazed delight showed on his face. Kit retrieved her hair and tucked it back, among those strands romance had not distinguished. “Handbuilt,” Daniel said. “I’ve been waiting four years for it.”
“Goodness,” Kit said. She wondered how desire could last so long.
