Jennifer Bulldock, who opened the farmhouse door on New Year’s Eve, was a tall girl, but awkwardly coltish rather than gracefully willowy.
‘Oh goody, Ivor, you’re just in time for Blind Man’s Buff.’ Her hearty voice competed with the yapping of the small terrier dog which she was trying to collar.
‘Maybe once I’ve got a drink inside me,’ Ivor laughed. ‘Jen, this is Miss Sarah Bailey and her sister Diane.’
‘Wonderful to meet you both. Do come in. Whoops, don’t mind Chester, he gets overexcited.’ The dog was making angry rushes at the newcomers, but Jennifer was finally able to nab him and bundle him into the arms of a maid who bore him away.
‘You’re very kind to have us,’ Sarah said, liking this girl immensely. She possessed an air of good humour and took their hats and coats without any fuss before ushering them into a large cheerful drawing room where a scene of chaos greeted them. The furniture had been pushed to the walls and a dozen young people were crowding around a burly ginger-head in an ill-fitting dark suit. His blindfold, a ladies’ polka-dotted scarf, pushed his fringe up into a spiky halo.
‘He’s all yours, Harry!’ somebody shouted.
Harry, a muscular, smiley young man with dark, healthy good looks, seized the blindfolded boy by the shoulders and turned him till he was dizzy. Everyone drew back as the victim staggered free and the girls squealed as he barged about, trying to catch one of them.
Sarah enjoyed the game from the sidelines, feeling too old for this buffoonery, but she couldn’t help laughing when Diane was caught and took her turn, though the girl appeared terrified as Harry tied the scarf over her eyes. Then her heart went out to her sister, for she looked so utterly lost as he released her and she stumbled about until the lad himself took pity and allowed himself to be caught.
‘She’s rather a sport, your sister,’ Ivor remarked, appearing beside her with two glasses of steaming mulled wine.
‘She’s always liked parties.’ It was true. Something about being in a crowd appealed to Diane. Perhaps other people helped take her mind off herself. Sarah remembered with sudden pain how it had been too late to cancel Diane’s party on that awful summer afternoon. The guests arrived only to turn away at the sad news of Colonel Bailey’s illness, but Diane had begged them to stay. Sarah had discovered this about grief, that she kept being reminded of her father at the most unlikely moments.
‘Are you all right?’ Ivor said. His sincere brown eyes examined her anxiously and she was touched by how attentive he was being.
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘We’d better not stand here or Harry will get us for sure. Watch out!’
They ducked Harry’s lurching figure and Sarah followed Ivor out through the hall and into the candlelit dining room where a large bony woman with a look of Jennifer and wearing spectacles on a gold chain was ordering the finishing touches to a supper table groaning with dishes and fussing at the terrified maid about the number of chairs around the wall.
‘Ivor, dear, it isn’t ready yet,’ she snapped by way of greeting.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bulldock. I simply wanted to introduce Sarah Bailey.’
The woman fixed a glare upon Sarah, who felt a little shiver pass through her as though she was being judged and found acceptable. The lines on Mrs Bulldock’s forehead betrayed her as a worrier. ‘So you’re the elder Bailey girl then? Such bad luck about your father. I gather he didn’t leave your mother much to live on? It’s a lesson to us all.’
‘I’m not sure who you’ve heard that from, but Daddy looked after us very well.’ Sarah could hardly manage to be polite, she was so irritated by this stranger who seemed to know so much about them and felt free to comment.
‘How are you finding the cottage? Those tenants you had were a poor sort, I’ll say. The boys ran wild.’
‘They weren’t too bad,’ Ivor put in, eyeing the sausage rolls hungrily. ‘Their father was the artistic sort, that’s all.’
‘With morals to match, I suppose. The wife must have been shy, she always slipped away if one tried to speak to her. Still, Sarah, I hope you’ll be happy here. I’ll pay your mother a visit soon, tell her, I expect she’d be glad of the company. And I need someone sensible on the summer fete committee. Lady Kelling’s our chairman, you know, but she’s in London most of the time so she leaves these things to me. I’m sure your mother will fit the bill. Mary, don’t leave the butter near the candles, you silly child.’
The thought of her mother agreeing to help on a committee was so unlikely that Sarah had to stifle a laugh. Mrs Bailey had always avoided the duties of an officer’s wife as far as she could, apart from the entertaining, for she enjoyed basking in male attention.
Finally everyone was called through for supper. Sarah noticed that Diane was flushed and giggling and her eyes were unnaturally bright. Was it, she wondered, the effect of the high jinks or of the contents of the empty wine glass in her hand? Oh, what did it matter, for the moment her sister appeared happy.
Jennifer, she saw, became anxious in her mother’s presence. Mrs Bulldock criticized the perfectly reasonable-sized portion of Jubilee chicken her daughter was helping herself to, which made Jennifer drop some on the lace cloth as she jerked the spoon back towards the dish.
Ivor, apparently popular and at ease in this company, introduced Sarah to several of his friends, the sons and daughters of gentleman farmers for the most part, with whom he’d grown up and mixed with during holidays from school. The cheerful, handsome lad, Harry, was one of them. Despite his earlier boisterousness he proved perfectly presentable company, easy to talk to and with a good word for everyone. He popped a sausage roll into his mouth and fixed her with an amiable, round-eyed gaze. ‘I say, what do you plan to do with yourselves now you’re here?’
‘We don’t know at the moment,’ she replied, accepting a dish of trifle Ivor brought her and aware of him hovering at her elbow. ‘We’re still settling in.’
‘I hope you don’t find it very remote here. Though I suppose coming from India you’re rather used to remoteness.’
‘Yes, we were out in the sticks there, but the thing is we were always among people.’ Too many people sometimes, though she didn’t tell Harry this. Though the bungalow in Kashmir had been spacious and set in large gardens, she had rarely had the privilege of feeling alone. Lonely, yes. One could feel lonely in a crowd, but the pleasure of one’s own company and the time to pursue one’s own interests, not only was that rare, but it was looked upon with suspicion. To survive as a member of the colonial force in the country, the thing to do was to stick together, to keep up the appearance of being civilized. There was unease with loners or the eccentric.
After supper Jennifer set up the gramophone and there was dancing and much horseplay and laughter. Diane was steered about the floor by Harry, who held her slight frame carefully as they quickstepped, as though she might easily be crushed. Ivor danced with Sarah several times, which she thought gallant of him. There was only a few inches difference in their heights and he was a good dancer, on which she complimented him.
‘Is it one of things new officers learn at Sandhurst?’
He smiled down at her. ‘There is certainly a good social side to be had there.’
She found he was different here, in company, than during that time on Christmas Day when they’d walked together in the snow. He seemed happier, more relaxed, sure of himself. The other Ivor, the one she saw when they’d been alone, she wasn’t sure she’d liked as much, but there was something that made her sorry for him. His father was hard on him; maybe he didn’t mean to be, but he was. Ivor wore the weight of his father’s expectations, perhaps that was what made him highly strung.
Some of the guests were staying overnight, but since it hadn’t snowed again Ivor drove Sarah and Diane home slowly through the wintry darkness. In the porch of Flint Cottage the lamp had been left burning, making the house appear golden and welcoming.
Sarah was lying sleepless in the grey snow light of her room, the laughter and the music still playing in her head when the latch clicked, the door cracked open and Diane’s pale face appeared.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she whispered, slipping into the room. ‘I can’t sleep, is all. Too cold.’
Sarah made room for her shivering body. ‘Oh, your feet,’ she breathed through her teeth, ‘they’re like blocks of ice.’
‘My hot stone was hardly warm.’
‘Mine is still. Here, that’s it.’
They hugged each other till Diane’s shuddering ceased. Despite the familiarity of the scent of her hair and skin, Diane felt to Sarah like a foreign little creature, unknown, unknowable, her slender limbs as finely wrought as a bird’s wings, her cropped hair soft as down against Sarah’s cheek.
‘I feel a bit icky,’ she said, using their old childhood word.
‘You’re not going to be sick, though, are you?’
‘I don’t think so. Did you like it tonight?’
Sarah sighed. ‘Yes, of course. Did you?’
She felt Diane nod. ‘It was fun. I don’t think it was for you, though.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Diane rolled over to face her so that her troubled eyes filled Sarah’s vision.
‘I could tell.’
‘You’re wrong, I was perfectly happy. I liked Jennifer.’
‘Yes, she was all right. The salt of the earth, that’s what Daddy would have called her. Oh I do miss Daddy.’ A little sob.
‘I know. So do I. Diane, is it all right for you here? Norfolk, I mean.’
‘Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?’
‘I don’t know. It’s so different from what you’re used to. Maybe you’re wondering what you want to do here.’
Diane rolled away and Sarah heard her swallow, then whisper, ‘But I never have, Sarah. Never have known what I want to do. What I’m for. And I’m different from you because I don’t care. I don’t feel things like you and Mummy. There’s just a deadness. Is there something wrong with me, Saire?’
Diane turned her head and their eyes locked in the hazy light. Sarah felt such a rush of shock and sadness at this revelation that she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Instead she reached and pulled her sister close and pressed her lips gently against her forehead. Diane snuggled against her and they simply lay there. Soon Sarah felt her sister’s body go limp and her breathing deepen as she fell into sleep.
No sleep for her. Diane’s words troubled her and she thought again how unknowable her sister was. It was touching that she had come to her in the night like this, an unexpected gift. She got cramp with one arm pinned under Diane’s chest, but when she tried to move, her sister groaned. She’d wait before trying again.
The picture came to her again, as it had many times since Daddy’s death, of Diane’s face that day as she’d rushed in from the garden. The shocked whiteness, her shallow breaths, the muttered words that didn’t make sense. ‘I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ Didn’t mean what? When she asked her weeks later, Diane appeared to have forgotten, for her hands flew to her face. ‘It was so dreadful. I should have helped him, not left him lying there.’
‘There was nothing else you could have done, dear. You are guilty of nothing, don’t you see?’ Diane simply stared at her with pleading eyes. There were no tears. If Diane cried for her father she did so alone and unseen. Sarah sometimes wondered whether Diane had been marked by something, the earlier tragedy that had struck their family. The thought was too painful and she brushed it away.
‘It’s all right, darling, it’s all right,’ she whispered to her sleeping sister. ‘You’re safe here. I’ll look after you. I’ll always look after you.’