her husband had been disappointed because we hadn’t accompanied Pamela and herself to church. I did my best to apologize; Hubert ignored the revelation. ‘We won a fortune at the races,’ he said, which helped matters as little as it would have had the old man been present.
‘Tennis would be lovely,’ Pamela said.
She added that she’d change. Hubert said he’d lend me a pair of tennis shoes.
A remarkable transformation appeared to have overtaken him, and for a moment I thought that the frosty lunchtime and his grandfather’s reported distress had actually stirred his conscience. It then occurred to me that since there was nothing else to do on a Sunday afternoon, tennis with Pamela was better than being bored. I knew what he meant when he said we’d show her how three could play: on the tennis court Hubert belonged in a class far more exalted than my own, and often at school Ossie Richpatrick and I had together played against him and still not managed to win. It delighted me that Pamela and I were to be partners.
Hubert’s tennis shoes didn’t fit me perfectly, but I succeeded in getting them on to my feet. There was no suggestion that he and I should change our clothes, as Pamela had said she intended to. Hubert offered me a choice of several racquets and when I’d selected one we made our way to the tennis court at the back of the house. We raised the net, measured its height, and knocked up while we waited.
‘I’m afraid we can’t,’ Pamela said.
She was wearing a white dress and tennis shoes and socks of the same pristine freshness. There was a white band in her hair and she was wearing sunglasses. She wasn’t carrying her tennis racquet.
‘Can’t what?’ Hubert said, stroking a ball over the net. ‘Can’t what, Pam?’
‘We’re not allowed to play tennis.’
‘Who says we’re not allowed to? What d’you mean, allowed?’
‘Grandmother says we mustn’t play tennis.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘Because it’s Sunday, because you haven’t been to church.’
‘Oh, don’t be so bloody silly.’
‘He asked her what we were doing. She had to tell him.’
‘The idiotic old brute.’
‘I don’t want to play, Hubert.’
Hubert stalked away. I wound the net down. I was glad he hadn’t insisted that he and I should play on our own.
‘Don’t be upset by it.’ I spoke apologetically. I didn’t know what else to say.
‘There won’t be a quarrel,’ she reassured me, and in fact there wasn’t. The raised voices of Hubert and his grandmother, which I thought we’d hear coming from the house, didn’t materialize. Pamela went to change her dress. I took off Hubert’s tennis shoes. In the drawing-room at teatime Mrs Plunkett said:
‘Hubert’s turned his face to the wall, has he?’
‘Shall I call him?’ Pamela offered.
‘Hubert knows the hour of Sunday tea, my dear.’
Lily brought more hot water. She, too, seemed affected by what had occurred, her mouth tightly clamped. But I received the impression that the atmosphere in the drawing-room was one she was familiar with.
‘A pity to turn one’s face to the wall on such a lovely day,’ Mrs Plunkett remarked.
Silence took over then and was not broken until Mrs Plunkett rose and left the room. Strauss began on the piano, tinkling faintly through the wall. Lily came in to collect the tea things.
‘Perhaps we should go for a walk,’ Pamela said.
We descended the stepped path between the rockeries and strolled past Hanrahan’s yard. We turned into the sandy lane that led to the dunes and made our way on to the strand. We didn’t refer to what had occurred.
‘Are you still at school?’ I asked.
‘I left in July.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I’m hoping to study botany.’
She was shyer than I’d thought. Her voice was reticent when she said she hoped to study botany, as if the vaunting of this ambition constituted a presumption.
‘What are you going to do?’
I told her. I envied Hubert going to Africa, I said, becoming garrulous in case she was bored by silence. I mentioned the cultivation of groundnuts.
‘Africa?’ she said. When she stopped she took me unawares and I had to walk back a pace or two. Too late, I realized I had inadvertently disclosed a confidence.
‘It’s just an idea he has.’
I tried to change the subject, but she didn’t seem to hear, or wasn’t interested. I watched while she drew a pattern on the sand with the toe of her shoe. More slowly than before, she walked on again.
‘I don’t know why,’ I said, ‘we don’t have a bathe.’
