Chapter 11: The Girls - The Golden Hours

Harriet, Za, Janie and Laura had gathered in the big girls’ room, where they could be a bit warm (they had been allowed a fire as it was Christmas) and a bit private from the grown-ups and the boys. They were lying on the floor, on the old rose-pink rug, with Belka, Strelka and a plate of swiped mince pies, looking at their presents, and finding them, in general, unsatisfactory.

Harriet, with her round high forehead and her Alice band, had wanted a radio for her bedroom, and not even for pop music because she only really loved Chopin, but she knew she wasn’t getting one because Clary had told her so. Harriet thought probably Zoë had forbidden it: she remembered how Juliet used to have Rupert’s old Dansette in her room and played her music so loudly it drove Zoë mad. It was quite unfair that one child should be punished for the misbehaviour of another. Instead, she got a washbag, and a tennis racket, which was a real cheat as that was school equipment and Harriet didn’t even like tennis. Laura, that bit younger, with primrose-coloured soft hair and wide eyes like her mother, just didn’t want a doll. She got a doll. Za and Janie had hoped for a Dansette. They had five singles between them and nothing to play them on unless they played them in the drawing room, where Gerald, whose taste ran to Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan and a little light jazz, was irritatingly possessive of his teak hi-fi cabinet, with the slatted doors which rolled back into the sides to reveal the turntable within, the radio and the compartment for a handful of LPs. They had tried to tell him it was out of date, that he deserved something sleek and modern, something better quality – the long game being that he would agree, and they could then have the old one. But their father had no taste at all for new things. Still, he had bought them the latest Bernard Cribbins record, ‘Right Said Fred’, with ‘Quietly Bonkers’ on the B-side, of which they didn’t think much. They’d played the A-side three times, though, and everybody thought it was hilarious and argued over what it was they were trying to lift. It was Grandpa Hugh who identified it as a piano. The seat and the fings wot ’eld the candles gave it away . . . Their main present was to be ballet lessons, and this required a lot of thought. One, it was lessons, so cheating. Two, they should have had them years ago, as everybody knew you had to start when you were five or your feet would never turn out properly. Three, though, which kind of overthrew one and two, they really did want ballet lessons – or, more to the point, to be ballerinas, but only (and this was a secret) so that they could be the girl in the tutu standing on the horse’s back in the circus.

The main issue was that as usual everything seemed too young for everyone, in everyone’s opinion. They were (most of them) thirteen! Yet everybody seemed to think they were children.

Harriet, at fourteen, had no desire to race ahead. Ahead meant exams and expectations, she knew that. Her parents had noticed not only that she was clever, but that there were various rather good girls’ schools in west London, and had sent her to one. She’d even managed to get a scholarship, so now there was no escape. And though they were discreet about money, Harriet could see they were relieved, as well as proud of her. Laura, the youngest and loudest, and merely twelve, did have claims of seniority, in that she was actually their aunt, not their cousin – she was Grandpa Hugh’s child by his second marriage, to Jemima. Polly, twenty-five years older, was Laura’s big sister; Simon and Wills were her brothers. All her siblings were grown-ups and this, she felt, made her one too, by proxy and birthright. The others of course would have none of it. Laura was already compiling lists of injustices against herself committed by older people, and of places she planned to go, and things she intended to do, to avenge these slights. First on the list was she would make her family move back to London where she belonged; second was go to Liverpool, to see The Beatles.

‘The whats?’ said Harriet. The twins preferred not to admit to ignorance of anything.

‘They’re new,’ Laura said. ‘You won’t have heard of them; you live in the country.’

‘I don’t live in the country,’ Harriet pointed out.

‘Barnes,’ said Laura. She drew out the A witheringly.

‘Anyway, we don’t live in the country,’ said Za, maddeningly. ‘We live in Notting Hill.’ This was based on their presumed right to stay at their grandparents’ house in Ladbroke Grove, which was based on Laura’s right to live at Fakenham. It was annoying and exhausting.

‘You don’t! You live here!’ shouted Laura. ‘You only live in London sometimes and then it’s in my house!’ She couldn’t bear it. It had been nearly four years! Any minute now it would be half her life. Why couldn’t she go back? It was so undignified. Who could be so wicked as to take a London girl and make her live in Norfolk?

‘Only because you live in our house,’ Janie said.

‘I. Don’t. Live. In. Your. House,’ Laura said. ‘I stay here sometimes. And you don’t live in my house, the tenants do – and anyway, you only stayed there when you weren’t at your little country school. And only because I say it’s all right. I could have you chucked out any time I like. I could just flick my finger and my father would chuck you out.’

‘And we could flick ours and chuck you all out now . . .’ said Za, and Janie smirked, and Laura felt the chill.

Laura had been brought up on Ladbroke Grove, though her father called it Holland Park, and her mother called it Notting Hill, and the children at her old school called it North Kensington. She’d learnt at Miss Driver’s, her primary school, to mimic whoever was speaking to her. Everybody spoke differently and if you spoke like them, they’d like you. Laura loved her father passionately, but she flinched when she went to shops with him and he boomed. But then something had gone awfully wrong, when she was nine, and they’d all had to go off to Fakenham, and she was compelled to attend a school in a sort of barn full of children of all ages who had to leave early for haymaking, and now they were still here and she had to go to the twins’ stupid school in Norwich. Laura had almost immediately relaunched her campaign for going back to London. Last year, thank God, she thought, in her Aunt Zoë’s most worldly voice, at least they had gone back for the summer – and there had been the added excitement that the parting tenants had left behind a television set. Her mother, though, was insistent her father should not have to travel too far too often, in case he got tired – as if being driven about by Tonbridge was tiring! It was just sitting! It was becoming more and more apparent to Laura that her parents were very happy not to go anywhere. And it was occurring to her that she might have to go without them.

‘And you’re not a teenager, Laura,’ said Za. A deadly wound.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Janie comfortingly. ‘You will be soon.’

Laura would not be grateful for this small mercy. She refused.

Harriet, sensing doom on the Laura front, wanted to change the subject. She proposed that they all agreed to take their parents more firmly in hand before any more birthdays or Christmases were squandered, and then diverted everyone to an old beloved game: asking each other questions from a battered little book they treasured, called The Ladies’ Oracle. It had belonged to their great-great-aunt Flo, or possibly their great-great-aunt Dolly, or, perhaps, to Mrs Tonbridge, and it was currently Harriet’s turn to keep it under her pillow. They all hoped it had been Mrs Tonbridge’s, because every question was about love and dreadful mistakes and whether or not one’s husband would be a sullen brutal fellow. And the idea! Mrs Tonbridge was at least a hundred and had been cooking for their family since before their parents were born, and her husband Tonbridge was as narrow as a croquet mallet, with bandy legs, and only ever talked to Grandpa Hugh. It was Harriet’s turn, and she got number twenty-two: Shall I have many adventures?

‘Imagine Mrs Tonbridge having adventures!’ murmured Za.

‘You have to think really hard or it doesn’t work,’ said Janie, who knew all about it.

Harriet waved her forefinger over the little table of symbols in the front of the book, waiting for one to mysteriously and inexorably draw her finger down, so she could look it up in the back of the book and find her answer.

‘Enough to make you regret it,’ she read. Everybody laughed, because that was the mood, but Harriet thought about it later, as it seemed to her it could mean almost anything. She was beginning to notice that this could apply to a lot of what grown-ups said. Not her mother, though. Clary, like her name, was clear.

Later, tucked into her tight little bed, Laura was proud of knowing about a pop group the others hadn’t heard of. The twins’ school, as she thought of it, because it would never be hers, taught nothing worth knowing. Harriet, being academic, knew nothing. None of them had had an au pair, as Laura had last summer: Marie-Christine, who was French, who wore ballet slippers even though she didn’t do ballet, whose pitch-black hair was cut in a high fringe. Marie-Christine would cunningly forget to turn the radio off when Children’s Favourites finished on the Light Programme, at which point they were meant to go for a walk in the park. But after Children’s Favourites came Saturday Club, which played pop music – so they’d listen to that. And if Mummy happened to come into the kitchen, they could turn it off and say oh, hello, yes, we’re just going out to the park. Though more often they’d gone instead to Portobello Road, where Marie-Christine met a man in a black sweater, with whom she smoked cigarettes and drank coffee while Laura mooched round the market stalls looking at records and clothes and Edwardian underwear and junk, pretending to be fifteen and out on her own. This all on pain of death from Marie-Christine, if she told anybody. As if she would!

Laura hugged herself. How glad she was that she had already taken her own parents in hand. It took months, after the shift to Norfolk, for her to realise that they treacherously had no intention of going home properly ever again. Rooms here were referred to as theirs. This stupid school was referred to as hers. There was talk of a horse for Mummy, and for her to join some kind of pony club. Then one day she had seen Mummy and Gerald looking at papers together, and the next she had found her and Polly plotting about rose bushes. It wasn’t just that they were going to plant them together, they were choosing them together. ‘Madame Alfred,’ they said, and ‘Madame Isaac’, as if Madams could have boys’ names. And ‘Guinée, for the wall’, which for a moment she misheard as ‘a guinea, for Laura’, which would have been exceptional luck. Then Mummy started saying how glad she was Laura was settling at school. And Laura said no.

Of course they ignored her. So she got to work. It took a lot of imagining, but when the idea came, it was quite clear. Harriet was the way forward. Harriet went to a school called St Eleanor’s in London, and everybody was excited about it and proud. It was difficult to get into. Only marvellous girls could go there. You had to be clever and work hard. Well, Laura could do that. Laura could be marvellous. Hadn’t Daddy always said she was the ghastliest, during their tickling matches? She giggled at the memory. She would be the marvellousest.

When she was ready, Laura had announced her plans in front of all the grown-ups, at breakfast. No grown-up would squash you in front of everyone. Every child would, of course, but they were all safely away at their own far-off schools. ‘Mama, Daddy,’ she said, in her most reasonable voice. ‘I have decided not to go to the twins’ school any more. Instead, I would like to go to St Eleanor’s in London like Harriet. I am a clever and ambitious child. I can stay in our house and of course I will come at weekends to see you.’ (She wasn’t at all sure she would.) ‘But I deserve a good school and the opportunity to make the best of myself. It’s not like the old days when a girl’s education didn’t matter.’ She smiled as she spoke. Half these phrases she had picked up from grown-ups. ‘Harriet is doing so well,’ she continued. ‘It’s a splendid chance for the right kind of girl.’

‘Laura!’ exclaimed Jemima.

‘I know it is a bit expensive but I can get a scholarship,’ Laura said. She didn’t actually know what that was, but needs must. ‘I’m sure if Harriet can get one, I can too. Or Georgie might be prepared to sell some of his zoo for me.’ (Georgie had said outright that he would do no such thing, but they didn’t need to know about that.)

Jemima looked at Hugh. Hugh looked at Jemima.

‘But darling,’ Jemima said.

‘No,’ said Hugh.

‘Or I can live with Georgie and Bertie. I could go with Harriet on the bus. I could have Harriet’s hand-me-down uniforms,’ she said winningly. Irresistible, surely? (She didn’t mean for one moment to put up with Harriet’s hand-me-downs.)

Her parents remained stunned.

‘Or Marie-Christine could come back,’ she said. This was a slightly desperate bid. Nanny spoke disparagingly of au pairs and their obsession with washing their hair. ‘I liked her so much and mon français est très bien maintenant, don’t you know? Or cook for myself. I know about beans.’ She pressed her advantage in the continuing silence. ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘You could at least let me do the exam. I must get ready for school now.’ And she slipped demurely from the table, picking up – hardly showily at all – the copy of A Tale of Two Cities she had brought down for the occasion.

Jemima looked at Hugh. He was laughing.

Nobody could resist a child who wanted to do an exam, and Laura was persistent. Daddy and Mummy held off, of course, but Laura didn’t give up.

It was Marie-Christine who had apprised Laura of the existence of The Beatles. She had bought their record. One night, Hugh and Jemima had gone out to dinner, all trussed up, him in his stiff collar, his grey chin smooth, her with pearls, pale silk hair carefully folded into a chignon, both of them smelling good. Marie-Christine and Laura had sat in the drawing room where they did not usually go, curtains drawn, and played the record loud while drinking a tiny bit from each of the bottles in the drinks cupboard. ‘Like this they can’t see any is gone,’ Marie-Christine had said. ‘If they think, they put a pen mark on the bottle. If they are clever, they turn the bottle upside down then put the pen mark. So if you don’t see the pen mark on the level, don’t be fool. Turn upside down and check too.’

The French death threats were quite intense, and Laura wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t genuine. But she was a quick learner.