In rational moments Sarah said to herself that as time passed this nightmare would fog over, as other occurrences in her life had fogged over with the passing of time. She had destroyed the letter almost as soon as she’d read it. She had made inquiries: Sandra Pond, as she’d promised, had left Pollock-Brown.
Sarah visited Elizabeth and her family more frequently, she spent a weekend with her brother and his wife in Harrogate, she wrote at length to her other brother, saying they must not lose touch. She forced her mind back into childhood, to which it had regularly and naturally drifted before its invasion by Sandra Pond. It was a deliberate journey now, requiring discipline and concentration, but it was possible to make. Her father ambled into the sitting-room of the rectory, the spaniel called Dodge ambling after him. The wood fire brightly burned as indoor games were played, no one sulky or out of temper. ‘And the consequences were,’ her brother who was an engineer said, ‘fire over England.’ In the sunny garden she read about the girls of the Chalet School. Her brothers, in short trousers and flannel shirts, ran about catching wasps in jam jars. ‘The peace of God,’ her father’s voice murmured, drifting over his small congregation. ‘Of course you’ll grow up pretty,’ her mother softly promised, wiping away her tears.
The passing of time did help. The face of Sandra Pond faded a little, the wording of the ill-written letter became jumbled and uncertain. She would never hear of the girl again, she said to herself, and with an effort that lessened as more months passed by she continued to conjure up the distant world of the rectory.
Then, one Saturday morning in November, nearly a year after the Christmas party, Sandra Pond was there in the flesh again. She was in the Express Dairy, where Sarah always did her Saturday-morning shopping, and as soon as she saw her Sarah knew the girl had followed her into the shop. She felt faint and sickish when Sandra Pond smiled her pouting smile and the two dimples danced. She felt the blood draining away from her face and a tightening in her throat.
‘Sorry,’ Sandra Pond said instead of saying hullo, just standing there.
Sarah had a tin of Crosse and Blackwell’s soup in one hand and a wire shopping basket in the other. She didn’t know what to say. She thought she probably couldn’t say anything even if she tried.
‘I just wanted to say I was sorry,’ Sandra Pond said. ‘I’ve had it on my mind, Miss Machaen.’
Sarah shook her head. She put the Crosse and Blackwell’s soup back on the stack of tins.
‘I shouldn’t have written that letter’s what I mean.’
The girl didn’t look well. She seemed to have a cold. She didn’t look as pretty as she had at the Christmas party. She wore a brown tweed coat which wasn’t very smart. Her shoes were cheap-looking.
‘I don’t know why I did it, Miss Machaen.’
Sarah tried to smile because she didn’t want to be unkind. She ran her tongue about the inside of her mouth, which was dry, as though she’d eaten salt. She said:
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does to me. I couldn’t sleep nights.’
‘It was just a misunderstanding.’
Sandra Pond didn’t say anything. She let a silence gather, and Sarah realized that she was doing so deliberately. Sandra Pond had come back to see how things were, to discover if, with time, the idea appealed to Sarah now, if she’d come to terms with the strangeriess of it. As she stood there with the wire basket, she was aware that Sandra Pond had waited for an answer to her letter, that even before that, at the Christmas party, she had hoped for some sign. The girl was staring down at the cream-coloured tiles of the floor, her hands awkwardly by her sides.
The flights of fancy tumbled into Sarah’s mind, jogging each other for precedence. They came in flashes: she and Sandra Pond sitting down to a meal, and walking into the foyer of a theatre, and looking at the
Sandra Pond looked up and at once the flights of fancy snapped out, like lights extinguished. What would people say? Sarah thought again, as she had on the night of the party. What would her brothers say to see passion thumping at their sister from the eyes of Sandra Pond? What would Elizabeth say, or Anne, or Mr Everend, or her dead father and mother? Would they cry out, amazed and yet delighted, that her plainness should inspire all this, that her plainness at last was beauty? Or would they shudder with disgust?
‘I can’t help being,’ Sandra Pond said, ‘the way I am.’
Sarah shook her head, trying to make the gesture seem sympathetic. She wanted to explain that she knew the girl had come specially back, to see what passing time had done, but she could not bring herself to. To have mentioned passing time in that way would have begun another kind of conversation. It was all ridiculous, standing here in the Express Dairy.
‘I just wanted to say that and to say I was sorry. Thank you for listening, Miss Machaen.’
She was moving away, the heels of her shoes making a clicking noise on the cream-tiled floor. The smooth back of her head was outlined against packets of breakfast cereals and then against stacks of Mother’s Pride bread. Something about her shoulders suggested to Sarah that she was holding back tears.
‘Excuse me, dear,’ a woman said, poking around Sarah to reach for oxtail soup.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Mechanically she smiled. She felt shaky and wondered if her face had gone pale. She couldn’t imagine eating any of the food she’d selected. She couldn’t imagine opening a tin or unwrapping butter without being overcome by the memory of Sandra Pond’s sudden advent in the shop. Her instinct was to replace the goods on the shelves and she almost did so. But it seemed too much of a gesture, and too silly. Instead she carried the wire basket to the cashier and paid for what she’d chosen, transferring everything into her shopping-bag.
She walked away from the Express Dairy, by the newsagent’s and the butcher’s and the Martinez Dry Cleaners, who were offering a bargain, three garments cleaned for the normal price of one. She felt, as she had when the man called George had suddenly lost interest in her body, a pain inside her somewhere.
There was a bus stop, but Sandra Pond was not standing by it. Nor was she on the pavements that stretched on either side of a road that was busy with Saturday-morning traffic. Nor did she emerge from the telephone box, nor from the newsagent’s, nor from Walton’s the fruiterer’s.
Sarah waited, still looking about. Sandra Pond had been genuinely sorry; she’d meant it when she’d said she’d hated causing the upset. ‘Please come and have coffee,’ were the words Sarah had ready to say now. ‘It’s really
