‘But I can’t let you depart without a few words of advice. You are going to a foreign country — where there will be temptations. I trust you follow me, Imogen.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘We are letting you go because we trust you. We know Nicky is an attractive young man, and a celebrity, used to getting his own way in life, but we still trust you.’
He stopped by the window, absent-mindedly stripping yellow leaves off a geranium on the ledge, testing its earth for sufficient moisture.
‘It’s been a trying afternoon,’ he went on. ‘Molly Bates and her daughter Jennifer were here for over an hour. Poor Molly. Jennifer suddenly revealed she was three months pregnant and the young man concerned has disappeared. Of course every attempt will be made to trace him and persuade him to marry the girl, but if not, she will spend the next months in an unmarried mothers’ home — not the most attractive of dwelling places — but Molly Bates feels, as a member of the Parochial Church Council, that Jennifer cannot have the child at home. Whatever the outcome, the girl’s life is ruined. She is second-hand goods now.’
Poor Jennifer, thought Imogen, perhaps she’ll be sent off to the jumble sale.
‘When you’re in the South of France,’ said her father, ‘remember the fate of poor Jennifer Bates and remember you’re a clergyman’s daughter, and they, like Caesar’s wife, must be above suspicion.’
Imogen had a momentary fantasy that the packets of purple pills must at this moment be burning a hole in her old coat pocket, that her father’s outrage was like the sun on glass. Fortunately he construed her crimson face as embarrassment at the topic of conversation rather than guilt.
He sat down and moved the inkwell on the desk. ‘Remember the words of Milton,’ he said in sepulchral tones, ‘She that has chastity is clad in complete steel.’
Imogen suddenly had a vision of herself clanking around the beach in the South of France in a steel suit of armour. Her father, she decided, must have been very much like Milton. She also suspected that he was rehearsing his sermon for next Sunday. She had a horrible feeling that he was going to make her kneel down and pray over her.
‘You are entering the school of life,’ he said, dropping his voice dramatically. ‘All I can do is pray for you night and day. Now go back to your packing and have a wonderful holiday in the sun. I must away to the jumble pricing committee.’
The contrast between her gadding, sybaritic existence and his modest, selfless toil was only too obvious. Imogen went out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her. She went upstairs feeling hopelessly depressed. Her father had brilliantly succeeded in taking all the excitement out of her holiday. Sex with Nicky would be even more of a moral battlefield than ever. Whatever she did, bed or not, her father would be standing at the bottom of her bed in spirit, shaking his finger at her.
Oh hell, it was time to have the pill, lying in its little capsule like one of the lights round an actress’s mirror. She felt like Persephone about to take her pomegranate seed and be condemned to an eternity in Hades.
She shut her bedroom door and started groping through her half-empty wardrobe to find the thickness of her old tweed coat at the back. She couldn’t find it. She pushed aside the rest of the clothes; it wasn’t there, not even slid off its hanger on to the floor. She burrowed frantically through the landing cupboard, then ran downstairs. Her mother was peeling potatoes and reading a novel at the same time.
‘My old school coat, it’s gone,’ gasped Imogen.
‘Surely you’re not taking that to France?’ said her mother.
‘No, but where is it?’
‘I gave it to the jumble, darling. As we’d taken out Lady Jacintha’s bathing dress and those trousers I thought it was the least we could do.’
But Imogen had gone, out of the house like a rocket, belting down the garden path, slipping on the wet pavement, tearing along the moorland path, bracken slapping against her stockings, twigs scratching her face.
The coat had her name in it, the pocket contained the pills and Nicky’s last letter, the one about getting fitted up and telling her most explicitly all the delicious things he was going to do to her when he got her to France. Visions of what her father would do swept over her. He’d stop her going. Suddenly the thought of not seeing Nicky again filled her with such horror she thought she’d faint. Her breath was coming in great sobs.
There was the church hall, light, laced with raindrops, streaming from its uncurtained windows. Inside Imogen found scenes of tremendous activity and was nearly knocked sideways by the smell of moth balls, dust and none too clean clothes. Ladies of the parish in felt hats stood round laden trestle tables, rooting through other people’s cast-offs, searching for possible bargains, subtly pricing down garments they pretended they didn’t know had been sent in by fellow sorters.
‘I don’t think she’s even bothered to launder these corsets,’ said the butcher’s wife, dropping them disdainfully into the nearest bin. ‘And this hostess gown is quite rotted under the armpits.’
‘Lady Jacintha has sent in a fox fur without any tail,’ said the local midwife. ‘Rats, rats,’ she added, waving it at the caretaker’s cat, who, giving her a wide berth, leapt on to a pile of old books and records.
‘Hullo, Imogen love,’ said the butcher’s wife. ‘Come to lend a hand? I thought you were off on your holidays tomorrow.’
‘I am,’ said Imogen, frantically searching round for the piles of coats.
‘If you’re looking for your Dad, he’s over there.’
Imogen peered through the dusty gloom and froze with horror. In the far corner, in front of a long freckled mirror, Miss Jarrold from the Post Office was trying on Imogen’s school coat, which came down to her ankles, and being encouraged on either side by Mrs Connolly, her mother’s daily woman, and the vicar.
‘There’s still some wear in it,’ Miss Jarrold was saying. ‘I could get my sister from Malham to turn it up.’
‘Oh very becoming, Miss Jarrold,’ the vicar was saying jovially. He had his hearty ‘flock-off’ smile on again.
‘Not sure about the colour, Elsie,’ said Mrs Connolly. ‘It never did anything for Miss Imogen either.’
‘I’m only going to use it for gardening and walks, seems a bargain for 50p,’ said Miss Jarrold, and turning back to the mirror, she adopted a model girl’s stance, shoving her hands into the pockets. ‘Oh look, there’s something inside.’
Imogen was across the room in a flash, just as Miss Jarrold pulled the purple packets and Nicky’s letter out of the pockets.
‘Whatever’s all this?’ she went on.
‘They’re mine,’ said Imogen, snatching them from her.
Miss Jarrold was so startled she stepped back with a resounding crack on some 78s of the Mikado.
‘Imogen,’ thundered the vicar, ‘where are your manners, and what have you got there?’
‘Nothing,’ she muttered, going as red as a GPO van.
‘Love letters and photos,’ said Mrs Connolly calmly, who disliked the vicar intensely, and had seen exactly what was inside the pocket. ‘No girl likes to lose those, do they, love? Oh look, there’s Lady Harris at the door. I expect she wants to discuss the refreshments with you, vicar.’
‘Ah, yes, indeed. Welcome, welcome,’ said Mr Brocklehurst in a ringing voice, finishing off the Mikado altogether as he went towards the door.
For a minute Imogen and Mrs Connolly looked at each other.
‘Thanks,’ stammered Imogen. ‘That was terribly kind.’
‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ said Mrs Connolly. ‘My Connie’s been on them things for years. I’d beat it if I were you, before your Dad has second thoughts. Have a nice time. ’Spect you’ll come back brown as a berry.’
‘Seems in a hurry,’ said Miss Jarrold innocently. ‘Is she courting?’
‘Happen she is,’ said Mrs Connolly, who knew perfectly well Miss Jarrold read all the cards that came through the Post Office. ‘She hasn’t told me owt about it at any rate.’
The last few hours were a torment, but at last Imogen was on the train to London, her small suitcase on the rack. Her mother, Juliet and Homer, drooping and looking gloomy, stood on the platform. Suddenly Imogen felt a great lump in her throat. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so awful and boring the last few weeks. I’ll make it up to you, really I will,’ she said, leaning out of the window. ‘I wish you were coming too.’
‘We’ll all miss you,’ said her mother.
‘Don’t forget to send me a card,’ said Juliet.
‘Be careful about drinking the water,’ said her mother.
