Amelia’s father, not unnaturally, by now was looking a little anxious. ‘Well, come on, boy, get on with it.’

  ‘The message was “Uncle Douglas is here”.’

  ‘What do you mean, he’s here?’

  ‘He’s here in the church. Seems he flew from New York after all. Told David he’d had second thoughts. First David knew of it was when he suddenly saw the old boy advancing down the aisle towards him. Happened five minutes ago. David let out a great bellow of welcome, and the organist lost his place in “Sheep May Safely Graze”, and with one thing and another, there’s been quite a to-do. But David wanted you to know, and I’ve told you, and you haven’t fainted. So now we can get on with it.’ He gave her a quick, brotherly kiss. ‘And you look smashing. You really do!’

  ‘If he has any sense at all, he’ll swallow his pride and get into an aeroplane and be in the church today to see his nephew married!’

  * * *

  ‘You’re not going to cry?’ asked her father, anxiously inspecting his daughter’s lovely face.

  Uncle Douglas was here. David would have somebody at the wedding who belonged to him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ whispered Amelia. For the first time she felt nervous. All at once she was shaking with nerves.

  ‘You mustn’t cry.’ He remembered what Amelia had told her mother. ‘Your mascara will run.’

  So she didn’t cry. And now they were in the church, and everybody was singing. On their feet, led by the choir, their voices cheerful and robust, filling the tiny church with a triumphant explosion of sound.

  ‘Oh Worship the King,

  All glorious above.’

  Her father took Amelia’s hand, tucked her arm into his. They moved forward. She could feel the whisper of her long silk skirts on the worn flagstones of the aisle. At the far end, standing facing her and wearing a grin that matched Mr Potter’s, David waited. All nervousness suddenly evaporated. She smiled back, and then looked for Uncle Douglas.

  She found him. A solitary figure in the front pew, singing away with the best of them. And there was no mistaking that upright and comfortable-looking figure, despite the fact that now he was dressed in formal wedding clothes and wore no hat upon his white-haired, balding head.

  Uncle Douglas.

  I knew it was you, that nice sympathetic man I met up on the hill this morning. I thought that Uncle Douglas would be cold and inhuman, with an electronic calculator for a heart. And you obviously thought Amelia was a stupid little featherhead without a notion of what she was letting herself in for. And by a miracle – by some heaven-sent chance – we’ve found out that both of us were wrong.

  The little procession, moving slowly, came alongside the front pews. Amelia hesitated, halted and turned her head to look at him. He stopped singing and met her gaze. She saw the blue eyes, set deep beneath the shaggy eyebrows, and at this moment there was undoubtedly a most irreverent twinkle in them. She half-expected him to send her a conspiratorial wink, but he didn’t. He smiled. Amelia smiled back, and he turned once more to his hymn sheet and went on singing.

  She couldn’t stop smiling. She was still smiling when she reached David’s side; when she stood beside him; when she took his hand and knew all was well in their world.

  Magic Might Happen

  There are times in one’s life that one remembers being good, even if they only last for a month or two, or even a week, or a couple of days. That summer was a good time. Like getting into a placid harbour after a stormy voyage, or touching down at some sunlit airport after a turbulent flight.

  The storms, turbulence, call them what you will, had taken various forms. My father, Chairman of Crayshaw Floorings, had gone through some anxious months, totally taken up with the business of trying to steer his company through the rough seas of modernisation, internal relations and the economic recession. I had struggled through my last year at school, working for sufficient A levels to get me a place at university. I wanted this so badly that I swotted into the early hours of the morning, panicked over the amount of revising I had to do and lost a stone and a half in weight. I am a born worrier.

  And finally, perhaps because of all this, my mother became ill, and was whisked into hospital for an operation which the doctor termed minor, but which didn’t seem minor to us. The worst thing that can befall a family is to have its mother in hospital. The entire world becomes disoriented, the home has lost its heartbeat, there is no answer when you call.

  But by the summer it was all over, Crayshaw Floorings survived, and even began, gradually, to prosper again. My father stopped falling into a chair and dropping off to sleep when he came home, and instead emerged into the garden to do constructive things like slaying slugs or dead-heading roses. I achieved the A levels but, best of all, my mother came home from hospital. She still had to rest from time to time, but she was there. You could smell her scent when you came into the house. You could hear her soft voice talking in the kitchen to Rosa, our Spanish cook. There were scones for tea again, and the house was filled once more with flowers.

  * * *

  Now, it was drawing towards the end of August. There was nothing more to worry about and the sun shone day after day. My father suggested a holiday, but my mother had already promised to visit her sister Charlotte in Sutherland, in September, so we stayed at home, just the three of us, and lay in the garden, did a little desultory gardening, and ate all our meals on the terrace.

  We live in a largish and rambling old house, and the fact that it is really too big, with a garden that has been allowed to go half wild, is more than compensated for by the little river which flows gently around its boundary, willow-fringed and speckled with shafts of sunlight. Mostly it is shallow, chuckling and bubbling down in a series of small water splashes and little pools. But at one special place there is a pool deep enough to swim in. There is a rock there in the middle, usually covered by water, but now, after the dry weather, its smooth rounded surface lay dry and exposed, patterned with leaf shadows so that it looked like leopard-skin.

  On this particular day I had spent the whole afternoon there, alternately lying in the sun with a book, and wading into the cool brown water when I could bear the heat no more. Finally, as the shadows lengthened across the burnt-brown lawn, I pulled an old sundress over my bikini, picked up my book and made my way back to the house.

  My mind was full of cool thoughts, cool images. A shower, perhaps; a Chopin prelude on the record player; the cold salmon I knew we were going to eat for supper. As I came up the sloping lawn I heard the telephone ring indoors and my mother answer it. In the fear that it might be someone to speak to me, I hung about the garden. When the telephone rang briefly once, and I knew that the call was finished, I went on into the house.

  After the brightness outside, the hall was dim. My mother materialised as though out of darkness.

  ‘Oh darling, that call was for you. Roger Marsden. He says will you ring him back?’

  I knew a moment of quiet satisfaction that I had had the wit to delay my entrance. ‘What does he want?’

  Her voice pleaded slightly. She longed for me to be a social success, leading a life of perpetual dates and outings. I loved her very much and it was hateful to disappoint her, but no amount of telling could persuade her that I simply wasn’t that sort of person: that if I was lost in a book, it was because I loved the book, not because I hadn’t been asked out: that if I sat for hours at the grand piano in the sitting-room, practising and knowing that I could never achieve perfection, it was because this fulfilled and absorbed me more than an evening with Roger or indeed anyone else. I don’t really like Roger.

  ‘I said I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Now, why not? Roger’s so nice …’

  ‘Just because his mother and you are bosom friends it doesn’t follow that Roger and I have to be too. I’m sorry but I don’t want to go. I want to eat cold salmon with you and Dad. Besides, there’s a gorgeous concert on television …’

  ‘Victoria, you’re eighteen. It’s unnatural to be so unsociable.’

  ‘Then you have mothered an unnatural child,’ I said lightly. ‘Perhaps I’m a foundling. Are you sure you actually had me and didn’t find me in a laundry basket at the door?’

  ‘Of course I had you. It’s just that …’

  ‘I know, I’m a disappointment to you.’ I kissed her. ‘Just try not to be disappointed. And I’ll ring Roger and tell him I can’t make it.’

  At that moment the phone rang again startling us both, and my mother, with an exasperated glance in my direction, picked up the receiver and found it was my father ringing from the office. I sat on the stairs and listened, and because he always talks on the telephone as though they had never been invented, their two voices were entirely audible. In fact, my father’s was more audible than my mother’s.

  ‘Diana.’

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘Would it be all right if I brought a man home for dinner this evening and to stay the night?’

  ‘But of course,’ said my mother instantly, without taking time mentally to measure up the cold salmon, or to start fussing about clean sheets. This is one of the things that I love about her. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s down from London. From Fleming Bernsteins, actually.’

  My mother raised her eyebrows. ‘That sounds exciting.’

  ‘It might be. Don’t start chattering about it, though.’

  ‘When will you be home?’

  ‘About seven. See you then.’

  ‘Stephen!’ called my mother in a panic, before he could ring off. ‘What’s he called, the man who’s coming tonight?’

  ‘John Stebbings,’ said my father, and this time he did ring off.

  My mother put down the receiver and looked at me, making a knowing face.

  ‘At a guess,’ I said, ‘something is up.’

  ‘Yes, it is. It’s a secret, but I don’t suppose it matters telling you, if you keep it to yourself. Your father’s negotiating to take over Topley’s furniture business – you know, that little factory over on the other side of Thornleigh. They make kitchen fitments, tables, that sort of thing …’

  ‘I thought it was an old family firm.’

  ‘Yes, it is, and has been for donkey’s years, but I’m afraid these are changed days, and with inflation and taxation and all the rest of it, they’re beginning to feel the pinch.’

  ‘You mean, Crayshaws would start making furniture as well as floorings?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And who’s going to raise the money?’

  ‘That’s where Mr Stebbings comes in. Fleming Bernsteins are merchant bankers.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, not sure how I felt about all this, but hating the soullessness of big business. Somehow the very name of Mr Stebbings personified this soullessness. He would be bald and thin and have a face like an adding machine. I almost decided that I would go to Roger’s barbecue after all, but in the end the balance fell in favour of cold salmon.

  * * *

  I heard the car arrive as I was changing. Usually in the evening I wear a clean pair of jeans and a fresh shirt but because company was expected I put on a white, loose dress, previously unworn, with a good deal of ethnic embroidery around the neck and a narrow band of the same around the billowing hem. It felt very cool and soft against my skin, almost as though I were wearing nothing. As I left my room, I could hear my parents talking in their room, and imagined Mr Stebbings also occupied in the guest room, perhaps changing one dull suit for another, and a gloomy tie for some tasteful number in beetroot brocade.

  I wandered into the sitting-room and was startled when a male form instantly put down the paper and unfolded itself from a corner of the sofa.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Mr Stebbings.

  As well as being a natural worrier, I am very shy. Meeting a new person in the presence of my parents is bad enough, but being suddenly flung face to face with one when least expected is inclined to leave me speechless. I mightn’t have been speechless if Mr Stebbings had lived up to my dour imaginings. But he was not bald and neither did he have a face like an adding machine. He was tall, with thick dark hair, and quite young – scarcely thirty. His face was deeply tanned and he looked as though he spent some time playing tennis and squash. His eyes were very dark. There was something disconcerting in their steady regard, and I realised that he was waiting for me to say something.

  ‘Good evening.’ It came out in a sort of pipe.

  ‘You must be Victoria. I’m John Stebbings.’

  We shook hands. It seemed very formal. I said, ‘I thought you were still upstairs, getting changed.’

  ‘No. I’m downstairs, reading the newspaper.’

  I wondered if he were laughing at me. ‘Have you got a drink?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  My father had left some bottles and glasses out on a tray. I said, ‘Would you like to help yourself?’

  ‘All right.’ He laid down the newspaper and went to do this thing. ‘Can I pour something for you?’

  I like white wine and my father had opened a bottle and left it in a bucket of ice, so I said that I would like some of that. He poured it and a sherry for himself, brought both the drinks over to where I stood, and handed me my glass. There was another pause.

  I said, ‘Would it be nice to go out into the garden? It’s still warm.’ Somehow I felt it would be easier to cope with him out of doors. We could talk about the roses and the hot weather. He said that he would like that very much, so we went out on to the terrace and settled ourselves in two of the ramshackle chairs which my mother is always promising to replace, and the one that he chose creaked horribly and I prayed that it would not give way beneath that solid weight of bone and muscle.

  It didn’t.

  He said, ‘Your father tells me you’re going to university in October. What are you going to read?’

  ‘English and History.’

  ‘Have you been away from home before?’

  ‘No, I was at day school.’

  ‘You’ll miss all this.’ He glanced about him, and I was pleased with his perception, because I knew I was going to miss it badly – the drowsy garden, and the gentle old house.

  ‘Yes, I know I will.’ I added, ‘It was a vicarage, the house I mean. That’s why there are so many bedrooms, to accommodate the enormous families of the Victorian clergy.’

  ‘I don’t know whether it’s due to the clergy or the children, but it has a charming atmosphere.’

  I had begun to feel less shy. I said ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘In London. Where I work.’

  ‘Did you always live there?’

  ‘No, I hail from the black North.’

  He didn’t sound as though he had liked it much. I said, ‘My Aunt Charlotte lives in Scotland. In Sutherland. She loves it.’

  ‘It’s scarcely the same thing.’ His voice was cool, and I wondered if he meant to sound as cutting as he did. To show him that I was not to be intimidated, I asked boldly, ‘Is my father’s firm going to take over Topley’s?’ and was rewarded by his expression of astonished disapproval.

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘My father told my mother and my mother told me. Don’t worry, I shan’t breathe a word. I just wanted to know if it was true.’

  ‘You’ll know when it’s a fait accompli and not a moment before.’

  ‘Does Mr Topley mind being taken over?’

  He sent me a glance in which irritation and amusement were mixed in about equal proportions. ‘How you do worry a bone! No, I don’t think he does. In a way I think he’s relieved.’

  ‘Does it mean a lot of people will be made redundant?’

  ‘Perhaps a few. But that’s better than the business being declared bankrupt and closing down and everybody losing their jobs.’

  I said, ‘I hate it.’

  ‘What do you hate?’

  ‘Big business. Big fish swallowing little fish. People losing sight of the only thing that matters, which is other people.’

  ‘You have,’ said John Stebbings, ‘to trim your craft to the prevailing wind.’

  ‘I like things to stay the same.’

  ‘So do we all. But they don’t.’ He raised his glass to me. ‘Salud, Victoria,’ he said, and even I was not stupid enough to realise that he had purposely closed the conversation.

  * * *

  When dinner was over my father took John Stebbings into his study; the sound of their muted voices came steadily from beyond the panels of the firmly-closed door. After a time my mother took herself off to bed, asking me to make her excuses to our visitor.

  I put some soothing Brahms on to the record player and lay on the sofa with The Mill on the Floss. I had read it long ago at school, and was now ploughing through it again, and enjoying it a great deal more the second time around. When I am truly into a book, I become unaware of anything else. I only knew that suddenly it had become too dark to read, that the record had finished long ago, that a door had opened and shut, and …

  John Stebbings materialised out of the gloom and sat himself down at the other end of the sofa, gently moving my feet to one side.

  I gazed at him owlishly, slowly remembering who he was. He said, ‘You’ll strain your eyes, trying to read in this light.’

  ‘I hadn’t realised it had got so dark. My mother said to say goodnight to you. She’s gone to bed.’

  ‘And your father is telephoning. He told me to come and talk to you.’

  Caught in the velvety half-light, we looked at each other. I said, ‘I’m not very good at talking. I mean, I’m not very good at making conversation.’

  ‘Then we’ll do something else.’

  He was far too close to me. My heart leaped in a panic. For an idiotic instant I imagined being grabbed by him and kissed. Roger had once done this, squashing his lips, unasked, on to my mouth, scratching my face with his moustache. That was why I disliked him.