Free Evie by Julia Stoneham Page B

her to dance? No. Because he didn’t know how to. There had been no dancing classes at his prep school. Next year, at his public school there would be. Tonight he and she would have sat, he had supposed, side by side on the small gilt, brocade-covered chairs that fringed the dance floor and talked. About …? Probably their horses? Or whether they would ride next day? Or go into Exeter to the cinema? Another of the Seale Hayne boys was dancing with her now. When the dance ended and she had been escorted back to the table where her parents had settled themselves, Edward John crossed the floor.
    ‘Hullo,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, hello, Edward John.’
    ‘Would you like a … can I get you a …?’
    But Mr Seale Hayne was back. In his hands two glasses of champagne in which bubbles were rising exactly as one would hope. As he handed a glass to Pamela, her father indicated the only empty chair at their table and said, ‘Won’t you join us … um …?’
    ‘Philip.’ Pamela smiled. ‘His name is Philip, Father.’
    Edward John chose not to remember the details of the rest of that evening. At one point his mother had tried to persuade him onto the dance floor.
    ‘It’s a waltz, darling! Ever so easy. Anyone can waltz. Justone two three, one two three, one two three …’
    Next day, hoping to encounter Pamela, Edward John rode out into the familiar landscape, scanning the places where experience had taught him she was most likely to appear. And suddenly there she was, emerging from a plantation of softwood saplings, turning Playboy’s head uphill, towards The Tops. Then, immediately behind her, another horse appeared. The animal was a mature bay. Edward John recognised the rider. Philip sat his horse well. With practised skill he turned the animal’s head round, drawing level with Playboy and blocking his path. He reached across and taking Pamela’s reins, brought both horses to a perfectly controlled stop. Then he leant across and kissed her. And she let him. She could have stopped him, kicked Playboy on, turned her head away. But no, she let him, leaning towards him, then allowing her head to fall back so that he could more easily reach her lips with his.
    ‘I expect you’re tired, darling,’ Alice said when, that evening, Edward John declined a second helping of Eileen’s famous chocolate sponge pudding. ‘We didn’t get to bed ’til almost one and you were off riding at cockcrow this morning. Have a nice hot bath and an early night.’
    ‘I don’t think he enjoyed last night very much, do you?’ Alice asked Roger as the two of them finished off the pudding. ‘Very few people of his own age. D’you think that was it?’ Roger shook his head.
    ‘No, no’ he said. ‘It was that Pamela girl. The one he met at Georgina and Christo’s wedding. Completely smitten, as I remember.’
    ‘Was he?’ Alice asked. ‘I wasn’t aware of it.’
    ‘No? Ah, well. It takes a man to recognise a heartbreaker when he sees one.’
    ‘A heartbreaker? You mean Pamela what’s-it is a heartbreaker?’
    ‘Undoubtedly, my darling.’
    ‘But … How dare she! Oh, Poor Edward John!’
    Roger was laughing.
    ‘He’ll survive. We chaps all fall for women out of our league from time to time. I thought I had with you.’
    ‘Did you? When?’
    ‘When you were being heavily pursued by that ghastly fellow from the Fleet Air Arm. The adjutant fellow. Maynard, was it? Oliver Maynard?’
    ‘Oh, him!’
    ‘Yes “him”. Gave me a few sleepless nights, I can tell you!’
    ‘Roger! How sweet. And I never knew!’
    ‘Young Pamela probably doesn’t know, either. Bloody women!’
     
    Winnie and Gwennan were sitting at the kitchen table in the pub, making short work of the meal their landlady had placed in front of them only minutes before. They had been hungry. They were always hungry. Today’s work had been even tougher, wetter and muddier than usual. It had involved more mangels than could be imagined, all of which had to be