'Oh, that,' Meredith said, opening his eyes. 'That was Rose, not me. You put the wind up her with that crucifix down your sock. She felt I was an undesirable influence, you coming from Methodist stock.'

She thought she had never seen anything so delicate as his left eyelid quivering above the green ball of his eye, nor anything so vivid as the scarlet spots spattering the bow of his tie. On the wall behind him there was a picture of a stag lowering its antlers on a rocky promontory beneath puffy clouds. She lost concentration for a moment and the stag slipped from its frame and glided along the picture rail.

'Look,' she heard him say, 'I'm sorry if I've made you unhappy, but I'm not for you.'

'Do you mean you think you're too religious?' she asked.

'Something like that,' he said, and she fell sideways onto his lap and shut her eyes against the whirling room, her cheek stuck to the little gla.s.s circle of the monocle balanced on his chest.

She woke in a strange room, facing a dressing-table with a scarf just like Geoffrey's draped over the mirror. There was a tin ashtray on the bedside table and a framed photograph of two men in bathing costumes, linking arms on a pebbled beach. One of them was Meredith. She jumped up in a panic, terrified at being late home.

Meredith was still in the parlour, and Bunny. They were sitting on either side of a dying fire. Bunny said he would see her home.

'I don't need seeing,' she said. 'I'm perfectly capable of walking round the corner on my own.' She was already moving towards the door. She didn't say goodnight to Meredith. He had upset her although she couldn't remember in what way.

She had never been out alone at such an hour. The trams had stopped running and the sodium lights burned in the empty streets. She fully expected the bas.e.m.e.nt door to be bolted.

Bunny followed at a discreet distance. He had telephoned Uncle Vernon before midnight to explain that Rose Lipman had insisted on Stella being present at a small celebration given by the Board of Governors.

10.

Three days before Christmas Vernon was brushing down the front steps when he saw Meredith crossing the end of the street. He would have ducked inside he was in his working clothes with not even a stud to his shirt but Meredith was already calling out a greeting and advancing towards him.

They shook hands. 'My dear man,' said Meredith. 'Not bad news, I hope.'

'Just the wireless,' Vernon said, taking a polishing cloth from his pocket and dabbing at his eyes. They listened as from the cellar below came the strains of a deep male voice singing a sentimental ballad. 'It's to do with the low notes. They always set me off. I first noticed it in the army when music was compulsory.'

Meredith nodded in sympathy. They both gazed thoughtfully along the wide, grey street lined with blackened houses to where the unfinished transept of the rose-pink cathedral smudged the high white sky. 'Over the dark still silence,' quavered Vernon, singing along with the wireless, and was seized with a bout of coughing.

'That reminds me,' said Meredith. 'Is young Stella bronchial by any chance?'

'She is and she isn't,' Vernon said. 'I mean she's got the usual amount of congestion, but in her case its aggravated by temperament, if you follow me.'

'I merely ask because last night she was unable to hold the torch steady. It was just before Peter enters and the night lights blow out. I take it you've seen the play?'

'What night lights?' asked Vernon.

'In the nursery scene. Fortunately the coughing didn't really matter so far as Tinkerbell was concerned... the light is supposed to flash erratically... but the noise was rather off-putting. Bunny's put a supply of cough drops in the prompt corner. I just wondered if there was anything radically wrong...'

'There's nothing wrong with her lungs, if that's what you mean,' Vernon said. 'We've had her X-rayed and she's sound as a bell.'

'That's all right then,' said Meredith.

'I'd better reimburse you for the sweets,' Vernon insisted, in a tight unfriendly voice. Clearly something other than the ba.s.s notes on the wireless niggled him.

In the end Meredith was forced to accept the threepence thrust into his palm. Taken aback, he mentioned the football match to be fought on New Year's Day between the Repertory company and the pantomime cast of Treasure Island Treasure Island appearing at the Empire. appearing at the Empire.

'I haven't got the wind,' said Vernon. 'My kicking days are over.' Meredith explained it was touch-line supporters they were after rather than players. A charabanc would be leaving from Williamson Square at ten o'clock. 'Do come,' he urged. 'It would be lovely to have you with us.'

'I'll think about it,' said Vernon, and he stumped up the steps with his polishing cloth and rubbed vigorously at the lion's-head knocker of the door.

He waited until Meredith had turned the corner before going downstairs to put on his Sunday overcoat. Though all but one of the travellers had decamped for Christmas, he didn't care to be seen improperly dressed in the hall. He ran back upstairs to telephone Harcourt.

'I shouldn't have insisted on him taking the threepence, should I?' he said.

'It depends on his tone of voice,' said Harcourt. 'Was he annoyed or genuinely anxious?'

'You didn't see her, did you?' accused Vernon. 'You never got there...'

'We were given a refund,' protested Harcourt. 'I can hardly be blamed if the production was cancelled.'

'The board of governors have noticed her,' said Vernon. 'She's been singled out.'

'There you are then. There's nothing to worry about.'

'All the same,' said Vernon. 'Life has a nasty habit of repeating itself.' He stood with his shoulder pressed against the wall, his gaze fixed on the fanlight. Just then the boom of the one o'clock gun echoed across the river; the gla.s.s flushed crimson as the neon sign flashed above the door. He thought of the flares bursting like orange plums in the soot-black night, illuminating the trucks, the humped tanks, the upflung arms of waking men shielding their eyes from the glare. He said, 'I may have mentioned I saw service in the desert...'

'Once or twice,' admitted Harcourt.

'There was one particular evening when Jerry sent up a barrage of Verey lights. They were trying to find our position.'

'I remember you telling me,' Harcourt said.

'It was different for our Stella. In her case someone was all too willing to abandon her.'

'I don't quite follow your gist,' said Harcourt.

Vernon remained silent for perhaps half a minute. 'No,' he said, at last. 'It's not easy.'

Just then Lily shouted up from the bas.e.m.e.nt to complain that the kitchen range was smoking again. 'I blame next door,' Vernon told Harcourt. 'They eat different food. It's bound to affect the chimney.'

'Would you like me to accompany you?' Harcourt asked. 'To the match?'

Vernon was staggered. Never once had his supplier suggested they should meet socially. Over the years they had attended the same victuallers' functions, and on every occasion Harcourt had kept very much to his own table. He had raised his gla.s.s civilly enough in recognition of Vernon's presence whenever their eyes had met across the floral displays, and he had always been very effusive if they chanced to meet in the queue for the cloakroom or on the pavement outside the State Restaurant, but he had held his distance in mixed company, had never introduced him, for instance, to Mrs Harcourt. Not that she was anything to write home about, in spite of coming from the Wirral.

'Much obliged for the offer,' Vernon said, 'but I shan't go. The wife's brother is coming up for the festivities.'

He was c.o.c.k-a-hoop when he recounted this part of the conversation to Lily. 'The nerve of it,' he crowed. 'Muscling in on a theatrical invitation. It just shows you how pushy the educated cla.s.ses can be when they smell an advantage.'

He didn't tell Stella he had been asked to the football match. She too had received an invitation, to a supper dance at Reece's Grill Room on Christmas Eve. Originally St Ives had intended a foursome consisting of himself and Dotty, Babs...o...b..rne and her elusive foreigner. Incapacitated as he now was and about to go off to stay with his mother in Weston-super-Mare, St Ives had sold the tickets to Desmond Fairchild. The party had since grown and extra tickets had been bought. The company had clubbed together to pay for her and Geoffrey. It was a sort of Christmas present.

'That was kind, wasn't it?' said Lily. 'I hope you thanked them.'

'We run errands for them all day long,' Stella retorted. 'I don't have to go overboard with delight.'

'Is Geoffrey your partner then?' asked Lily. She was smiling, partic.i.p.ating at second hand in the evening to come.

'No, he isn't,' snapped Stella. She wanted Lily to stop talking. It was spoiling things, this building up of expectations.

'Well, who is?' said Lily. 'You'll need a partner.'

'It's not that sort of do. We're not in couples. Grace Bird is an abandoned wife and Babs's Stanislaus has jilted her. Not that she accepts it. She keeps ringing him and sending him presents.'

Lily said Babs was a foolish girl. No man liked to be chased. She should buy herself a new frock and set her cap at someone else. That would soon bring this Stan chap running.

'Why would it?' asked Stella. 'If he doesn't want her?'

'He doesn't want her,' squealed Lily, 'because he's got her. He'd soon change his tune if he thought she'd lost interest. They're all the same. You tell her from me.'

Stella tried to imagine a younger Lily giving Uncle Vernon cause for jealousy. It wasn't possible. The real Lily sat opposite, her too brightly coloured hair set in stiff waves about her faded face.

'Hasn't your Mr Potter got a young lady?' persisted Lily. 'It stands to reason a man like that would have a partner.'

'Shut up,' Stella shouted. 'Not everybody needs propping up, you know. Not everybody wants...' and trailed into silence, for Lily's eyelids were now fluttering, holding back offended tears. Stella jumped up and made a clattering show of stacking the supper plates onto a tray.

Alone in her room, struggling into her ice-cold nightgown, she felt ashamed. It was unjust of her to disregard those thumb-sucking years in which Lily had held her close. In the end everyone expected a return on love, demanded a rebate of grat.i.tude or respect. It was no different from collecting the deposit on lemonade bottles. She should have given Lily a cuddle.

Instead she got into bed. I have my whole life in front of me, she thought. I can't be hamstrung by sentiment.

Stella had planned to sit next to Meredith at the Christmas Eve party, but Geoffrey got there first. It was her own fault. Not wanting anyone to see her dress from behind the hem had come undone and she wasn't wearing stockings she had hung back as they came through the doors of the Grill Room.

The head waiter made a servile fuss when they arrived and begged permission for a photograph to be taken for publicity purposes. Then Dotty Blundell, who a moment before had drooped under the weight of her leopard-skin coat, flung back her shoulders and lowering her chin gave a peek-a-boo smile. John Harbour, as if looking into a mirror, leaned chummily against Babs...o...b..rne and stared adoringly at the camera. Stella was coughing when the flash bulb went off.

The dance floor, wreathed in blue smoke, was crowded with revellers foxtrotting to the magnified beat of the paper-hatted band perspiring beneath a trembling canopy of holly boughs and mistletoe. An army of waiters carrying silver-plated dishes barged back and forth through the swing doors of the kitchens. The restaurant was so packed that there weren't enough chairs, and somehow Geoffrey squeezed in between Stella and Meredith. He squatted on his haunches, his pug nose on a level with the table. 'I can't go on like this,' he said, shouting to make himself heard. 'We have to talk.'

'Absolutely,' Meredith replied. 'Couldn't agree more.' And fitting his monocle beneath the bone of his eye he studied the menu.

'He's thinking of going into business,' Stella said. 'His father would like it.' Meredith didn't respond. Geoffrey crouched at his knee like a faithful dog. Another chair was fetched from the store-room and Stella was forced to make a s.p.a.ce for it. She could have throttled Geoffrey, wriggling in where he wasn't wanted.

Bunny was there under duress. 'I gain no pleasure from that sort of entertainment,' he had protested earlier to Meredith. 'I don't dance, and neither do you. We shall be spectres at the feast.'

'Bear with me,' Meredith had said. 'It may well turn out to be diverting.'

At eleven o'clock, fifteen minutes after being shown to their table, Bunny threatened to leave. He detested turkey and there was nothing else he fancied apart from the chocolate gateau. Meredith told him to stop moaning and ordered him a double portion of cake as a main course. 'He's a sick man,' he informed the waiter. 'They couldn't get all the shrapnel out.' Bunny saw the joke. He was wearing a clean shirt and a tartan tie under a crumpled blazer whose b.u.t.tons were missing; he began to laugh and quant.i.ties of cigarette ash spilled from his clothing and speckled the tablecloth.

Stella chose fish and regretted it. She kept getting bones in her mouth and each time she took one out O'Hara appeared to be looking in her direction. If it would have caught Meredith's attention she wouldn't have minded a bone lodging in her gullet, but then there was always the risk he might think she was merely coughing she could choke for nothing. Presently she stopped eating and hid the fish under a heap of Brussels sprouts. Geoffrey, the food untouched on his plate, sat sideways on his chair, bellowing into Meredith's ear. She sat back and freed her hair from the collar of her frock. 'My dear boy,' she heard Meredith say, 'you're far too sensitive.'

O'Hara, watching Stella, was disconcerted by the wave of tenderness evoked by the sight of her bright hair rippling like a flag against the dark wall. He was half-heartedly involved in a discussion on Mary Deare, who at this moment was speeding in a hired car towards Manchester to spend Christmas Day at the Midland Hotel with an unnamed friend appearing in The Tinder Box The Tinder Box. Mary had abrasions in her armpits, some of them serious, from wearing her flying harness next to her skin. The wardrobe had provided her with a vest of padded cotton, but for some reason she wouldn't wear it. Grace had seen the blisters.

'I bleed for her,' announced Harbour. 'Just think of it she suffers agonies every time she flies.'

'She can't bear to carry an ounce more than her usual weight,' said Grace Bird. 'She dispensed with the vest because it made her feel larger than life. She's neurotic.'

'You're right,' cried Babs...o...b..rne excitedly. 'Stanislaus said he knew people in the camps who experienced satisfaction when they started to waste. Stanislaus knew one woman who...'

'I'm sure this stuffing's off,' said Grace, and she impaled a lump on her fork and thrust it across the cloth for John Harbour to sniff at.

Stella, who for a miserable quarter of an hour had been contemplating going to the ladies' room and not coming back, was suddenly struck by the curiously fragmented nature of the group about the table. She had dreaded the moment when the food would be done with and the others would get up to dance, leaving her on her own at the table. Now she saw that all of them were alone, not least those who chatted so animatedly together. Contrary to what Lily might think, a twosome was an inaccurate indication of partnership. Dotty, apparently listening attentively to Desmond Fairchild, her hand on his arm, was looking at O'Hara. Even in the throes of laughing at some remark pa.s.sed by Grace Bird, Bunny watched Geoffrey. John Harbour, confiding something important to Babs...o...b..rne, kept glancing at Meredith. Babs didn't notice; she was staring straight ahead, dreaming of Stanislaus. Only Geoffrey, tugging at his hair, sniffing, thumping the tablecloth, could be said to be concentrating on the person beside him. He was demanding something of Meredith, that much was evident. The words 'unfair advantage' were used, and then Stella distinctly heard Geoffrey say, 'You're ruining my life.'

She was amazed at his ambition; he had given her to understand he wanted to give up the theatre. She nudged him in the ribs and hissed, 'Don't be such a twerp. You can't bully him into giving you better parts.'

'Mind your own business,' he shouted, turning on her quite violently. 'You don't know what you're talking about.'

Just then O'Hara rose from his chair and invited Stella to dance. 'I'm no good at it,' she lied and, pleased, struggled her way from the table and walked stiffly into his arms.

O'Hara wasn't a tall man. She didn't know the colour of his eyes because she had never looked into them. He was stocky and broad-shouldered and he had thick black eyebrows. Until now she hadn't taken much notice of him, so she couldn't say for certain whether he was handsome or not. There was a smear of yellow greasepaint on the collar of his shirt. His hand, clasping her own as he steered her about the floor, was somewhat cold.

At last Meredith was looking at her. I'm setting my cap at someone else, she thought, circling the room with her chin in the air.

By the time they returned to the table for the Christmas pudding John Harbour had moved and there was nowhere for her to sit except beside O'Hara. A woman came up with a red balloon and asked him to autograph it, and he took out a fountain pen and commenced a squeaky signature. The balloon burst as he scrawled the last letter. The woman said it didn't matter. They both hunted through the debris on the floor to find that shrivelled sc.r.a.p bearing his name. O'Hara didn't ask Stella to dance again. He was too busy trying to restrain Babs...o...b..rne from telephoning Stanislaus.

Half an hour later Meredith announced he'd had enough. Bunny and he were off to Midnight Ma.s.s. Stella hoped he might ask her to go with them but he didn't even say good-bye, not properly, let alone wish her a Merry Christmas. One minute he was at the table and the next he was threading his way between the dancers, leaving Geoffrey asleep with his cheek resting on a bread roll, bits of tinsel glittering in his hair.

'Shall I give you a lift home on my motorbike?' O'Hara asked, and Stella accepted at once, almost running out of the restaurant, scarcely bothering to wave a farewell to the others who were now giddily swaying across the dance floor. Desmond Fairchild, paddling through the spotlights, his trousers rolled up to his hairy knees, shouted something at her. She pretended not to notice. All that mattered was that she should catch up with Meredith.

O'Hara took a long time to kick-start the motorbike from the kerb. 'Which way?' he asked, when at last the engine spluttered into life, and she directed him the wrong way round so that they might overtake and confront the trio lurching towards Midnight Ma.s.s.

She shouted contradictory commands. 'Faster, faster,' she ordered, as they puttered up Brownlow Hill, empty of Meredith. 'Not so fast,' she cried as they thundered along Rodney Street. She didn't care what O'Hara thought. She didn't care about anything; she just wanted Meredith to see her on the back of the Prince's white charger. Perhaps then, when he realised he was in danger of losing her, he and O'Hara would exchange a hostile, challenging glance. If looks could kill, she thought, clinging to O'Hara's leather-clad waist, the river wind whipping her hair into her eyes.

She had almost given up hope when she saw Meredith arm in arm with Grace and Bunny stepping off the kerb outside the Women's Hospital. 'Slower, slower,' she screamed over O'Hara's shoulder, fearful they might pa.s.s unnoticed.

Bunny and Grace saw her, she was sure. Startled, Bunny stepped backwards, dragging Meredith with him. Grace swung her handbag in recognition, and a ball of wool jerked out and fell to the gutter. Stella kept her arm in the air, waving, waving long after O'Hara had swerved the motorcycle round the corner.

She wouldn't let him take her to the Aber House Hotel. Instead she made him stop in the next street; she didn't want Uncle Vernon storming up the bas.e.m.e.nt steps and putting his oar in. 'I'll make you a cup of tea,' offered O'Hara. 'I only live two doors up.'

'If you like,' Stella agreed. 'It's interesting to see how other people live.'

When she saw she was disconcerted. The room was tidy enough, after a fashion, but there was nothing of value on the mantelpiece and not one stick of furniture that wouldn't have been better employed on a bonfire. She was surprised he lived so poorly, him being a successful man. 'It isn't very salubrious, is it?' she said, eyeing the scuffed skirting-board, the mushroom growths on the wall.

'I was happy here once,' he told her.

There was nowhere to sit but on the narrow bed beside the fireplace.

'I can smell something,' Stella said. 'I've a very good nose for smells.'

He apologised for the damp and she shook her head. 'I know about that sort of smell. It's sweet. This is different.' She sat there wrinkling her nose, trying to identify what it was. 'Turpentine,' she cried at last. 'Turpentine and linseed oil.'

He was impressed and proceeded to tell her about Keeley, recalling some inflammable occasion on which Keeley had set fire to something or someone. Her jaw ached with smiling her appreciation. What fun they'd had, he concluded.

'Where is he now?' she asked, thinking he was possibly behind bars.

'I lost touch with him when he joined the Air Force. I'm not entirely convinced he survived. I've a painting of his at home, of this room with me standing by the door. I'm very fond of it.'