Free Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page B

was most touching – my father, whose experience was unrivalled, always said that he would trust his sepoys as he would his own brother.’
    This both made Jessica and Villy exchange a glance of suppressed amusement – only they knew that Lady Rydal’s father had quarrelled so fiercely with his brother that they were not on
speaking terms for at least forty years – and gave the Brig the opening he needed: armed with the slightest coincidence, he could breach a small gap in anyone’s conversation, and now he
was in with how interesting that she should mention sepoys, because a remarkable man he had met on the boat – extraordinary thing – both going over
and
coming back had said . .
. Sid moved on to the great-aunts, who sat side by side in their bottle-green and maroon crêpe-de-Chine long-sleeved dresses placidly sorting out the food on their plates: Dolly regarded
forcemeat as indigestible, and Flo could not bear fat, while each deplored the other’s fussiness. ‘In the last war we were grateful for anything,’ Flo was saying, and Dolly
retorting, ‘I have not the slightest recollection of
you
being grateful for anything; even when Father gave you that nice holiday in Broadstairs after you had to leave the hospital
you weren’t grateful. Flo was useless as a nurse, because she simply could not stand the sight of blood,’ she remarked rather more loudly to anyone who might be listening. ‘She
ended up with other VADs having to look after
her
which, of course, was not at all what the doctor ordered . . .’
    Sybil, wearing a rather shapeless crêpe dress – she had put on weight since having Wills – was telling the Duchy how worried she was about him.
    ‘It’s only a phase,’ the Duchy said placidly. ‘Edward used to spit whenever he lost his temper as a little boy. He used to have the most ungovernable rages, and, of
course, I worried about him. They all have tantrums when they’re babies.’ She sat, very straight, at the end of the table, dressed, as she always was, in her blue silk shirt with the
sapphire and mother-of-pearl cross slung upon her discreet bosom – breasts, Sid thought affectionately, would not figure in her anatomy or her language – her frank and unselfconscious
gaze directed now at her daughter-in-law. Now she began to laugh, as she went on, ‘Edward was the naughtiest of the lot. When he was about ten, I suppose it was, he once picked every single
daffodil in the garden, tied them in bunches with his sister’s hair ribbons, and sold them at the end of the drive. He had a notice that said “Help the Poor” on a board, and do
you know who the poor were? Himself! We had stopped his pocket money for some other crime, and he wanted a special kind of spinning top!’ She took the tiny lace handkerchief from under the
gold strap of her wrist-watch and wiped her eyes.
    ‘And did he get it?’
    ‘Oh,
no
, my dear. I made him put it all in the box on Sunday at church. And, of course, he got a spanking.’
    ‘You must be talking about me,’ Edward called from across the table. He had been listening to Jessica.
    ‘Yes, darling, I was.’
    ‘I was hopeless at school, too,’ Edward said. ‘I don’t know how you all put up with me.’
    How self-confident he must be to say that, Sid thought, but any further thoughts were interrupted by Jessica saying, ‘I wish you’d tell that to Christopher. He feels he is such a
failure at school.’
    ‘He feels that because he
is
,’ Raymond said. ‘I’ve never known a boy muff so many opportunities.’
    ‘He
is
good at Latin,’ Jessica said at once.
    ‘He
likes
Latin. The test is whether a boy works at anything he
doesn’t
like.’
    ‘And natural history. He knows a lot about birds and things.’
    ‘I don’t think anyone works much at things that they don’t like,’ Villy remarked. ‘Look at Louise. I really think that all those years with Miss Milliment all she
did was read plays and novels. She has the most