LITMIR.BIZ

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Grace. You don’t have to be conventional and do the right thing and marry whoever it is Blanche and John single out for you. Anthony Brock or anyone else.’

      There was a voice within Clio whispering that Grace was lucky, as always, and that she would not reject Anthony as readily herself. But she ignored it and went on, ‘Five years ago you might have had to, but the war has changed all that. Women can live their own lives now. They have proved it, by doing men’s work. Look at all the women in shops and factories. I’m going to get my degree and then work as a translator. Live abroad.’ She began to be fired by her own fantasy. ‘Be what I want to be, not just a wife and mother. It was right for Eleanor and Blanche, Victorian ladies. But it’s not right for me. Not for us, Grace.’

      Grace stabbed out her cigarette and sat upright, wrapping her arms around her knees. ‘Yes. You’re right, of course you are.’ She looked down at Clio with shining eyes. ‘Have you forgiven me?’

      There was a moment’s silence. No, the voice whispered within Clio’s head.

      She said, ‘Yes.’

      A year seemed a long time.

      Grace laughed, a little wildly. ‘Good. That’s very good. Let’s make a pact, Clio. Let’s promise each other that we won’t submit to the yoke. Let’s do what we do only because we want to do it, not because we think we ought to. We must be determined to enjoy ourselves. We must be free.’

      Clio thought that Grace’s resolution was grandiose, but typically vague. She wasn’t quite sure what freedom from the yoke would mean in detail, and she didn’t think Grace did either. But she was beguiled by the passion of her declaration.

      ‘Modern women,’ she said, and Grace echoed her fiercely.

      ‘Modern women.’

      If they had had wine they would have drunk a toast. Instead Grace proffered her cigarette case again. Clio took one now, and inexpertly lit it with the gold briquet. She inhaled, and coughed out a puff of swirling smoke.

      Jake and Julius walked out into Belgrave Square together. The June night air was sweet and cool and they lingered under the trees opposite the house.

      ‘Duty done,’ Julius said, with some satisfaction. ‘It was an adequate evening, I think, as such evenings go.’

      It had even been more enjoyable than he had expected. Armstrong and the others had apparently met his mother’s requirements, and his friends in their turn seemed to have had plenty to eat and drink. They had gone off a little earlier in Zuckerman’s car. And for Julius himself, there had been the bonus of two dances with Grace. He put his hands in his pockets and looked up through the black fretwork of leaves over his head, into the sky where he could see a dusting of stars. He let himself remember the scent of her skin and hair, and the way that she reached up, putting her mouth close to his ear, so that he could hear what she said over the dance music. He found that he was smiling.

      Jake was moody and restless. He had undone his white tie and the ends hung unevenly over his shirt studs. He wanted some more to drink, something stronger than hock or his uncle’s third-best claret. He had not wished to penetrate the card room where whisky, brandy and port were on offer to John Leominster’s friends.

      ‘Adequate is a compliment,’ he grumbled. ‘Did you ever see such insipid girls? Were you introduced to the lisping Miss Beauchamp? Complexion like orange crêpe-paper?’

      ‘I can’t remember,’ Julius said cheerfully. His Grace-induced good humour was unshakeable.

      Jake put a heavy arm around his shoulder. ‘Well then, we’ve done our filial duty. Where shall we go to finish the evening off? Nightclub, d’you think?’

      ‘Not me,’ Julius answered without hesitation. ‘I’ve got work to do tomorrow.’

      ‘Come on.’

      ‘No thanks. I’m going to walk quietly home up Park Lane.’ Julius’s rented rooms were behind Marble Arch. It was late enough, he was thinking, for his neighbour to have been in bed for hours. There was no chance that she would be lying in wait for him as he came up the stairs.

      Jake scowled at him. He was on the point of protesting when he saw the door of the house open and close behind Hugo and Farmiloe. Hugo walked stiffly now, on a wooden leg, with the aid of a stick.

      ‘All right, Julius. I shall have to fling myself on the mercy of Hugo and his brother officer. They will certainly have a plan of action.’

      Julius knew that Jake was half drunk. ‘Don’t do anything reckless.’

      Jake shouted, ‘If you would just do something reckless, for once. Something other than play the violin and moon after Grace.’

      Julius glanced sharply across the road at Hugo. ‘That’s enough, Jake. Go on to your nightclub, if that’s what you enjoy. No doubt Hugo will be Culmington and keep an eye on you.’ He wrapped his white silk scarf around his neck and strolled away towards Park Lane.

      Jake swore under his breath, and then called after him, ‘Wait, Julius, can’t you?’

      But a taxi was noisily drawing up on Hugo’s side of the street, and Julius seemed not to hear him.

      ‘Want a cab, gents?’ the driver asked.

      Hugo waved his arm. ‘Come on, Jake, come with us. We’re going somewhere lively.’

      The inside of the cab smelt of gardenias and stale cigars. Farmiloe leant forward between Jake and Hugo. ‘Dalton’s, Leicester Square,’ he told the driver.

      The nightclub was entirely underground. Past the huge doorman who took Hugo’s money and waved them inside without another word, there was a narrow flight of steps leading down to a long, stale-smelling corridor. Farmiloe tried to take Hugo’s arm to help him, but Hugo impatiently shook him off and climbed down sideways, like a crab. Through the double doors at the distant end of the corridor they came to an enormous low-ceilinged room packed with people. A band was playing on a platform at the far side, and everyone was dancing.

      Jake stared at the jostling crowd and at the naked powdered back of the woman closest to him, and then he smiled. Here, it seemed, was everything that had been missing at his sister’s dance. The thick air itself seemed to taste of sin.

      They found a table against the wall, and Farmiloe beckoned to a waiter. ‘A bottle of brandy.’ There were bottles on every table, as far into the distance as they could see.

      ‘I’m very sorry, sir. It’s after ten o’clock.’ Ten o’clock was closing time, according to DORA. It was so much after ten that the three of them laughed uproariously. Farmiloe took out a five-pound note and smoothed it on the tabletop. A moment later the note was gone, and brandy and three glasses had materialized in its place.

      Jake drank, and felt benign anticipation replacing his earlier restlessness. Hugo and Farmiloe were good fellows, and good company. They knew what they liked, and where to find it. This was where he wanted to be, listening to Farmiloe’s stories through the throb of the music, and watching Hugo lean back to squint past his cigar smoke at the women on the dance floor.

      The bottle emptied itself and they called for another. The room was pounding with noise, making even their rudimentary conversation difficult to sustain. Jake had been watching a black-haired girl at the next table. Their eyes met, and a moment later she stood up, sinuous in a slip of satin dress, and came to lean over the back of his chair. Her mouth brushed his ear. ‘Won’t you ask me to dance?’

      Jake rose to his feet. Hugo and Farmiloe didn’t appear to notice as he steered the girl away into the hot mass of dancers.

      It was too noisy to talk, too crowded to perform more than a shuffle. Jake saw that the girl’s eyes were closed and she was dreamily smiling. Tentatively he drew her closer, and then closer so that she bent against him, pliant and slippery under the thin satin. When he looked down at her face he saw that her powder was creased with sweat and caked at the corners of her eyes, and

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