‘Oh, that is sad!’ Serena looked moistly concerned. ‘I mean it’s always sad when anyone dies, but you can’t help getting ill, whereas when it’s an accident there’s always an if only – you know!’
‘You mean if only Sally hadn’t leaned out from the top of a multistorey car-park she might not have lost her balance and tumbled out?’ Derek said with sudden flat brutality.
‘Is that what happened? Oh, I do think some of those places are dreadfully dangerous!’ Serena exclaimed. ‘I thought you were going to say it was a crash – like Bryan Grimes.’
‘Bryan Grimes has been in a car crash?’ Sister Joan said. ‘What happened? Is he all right?’
‘Well, he’s dead,’ Serena said calmly. ‘I don’t know if that means he’s all right now or not. I mean it depends on your views about the afterlife.’
‘Never mind about the afterlife!’ Barbara said impatiently. ‘What happened?’
‘There was a hit-and-run-accident,’ Serena said. ‘A drunk driver probably or a joyrider, though I do think that’s a silly name to call them. I mean they don’t provide much joy, do they? Anyway I happened to read a bit about it in the newspaper. Only a column which seems rather a pity when one remembers how clever Bryan was! He was living back in Lincolnshire, near Boston, I believe, and he must’ve been taking a walk or something because someone ran over him and didn’t stop. I knew it was the Bryan we knew because it mentioned that he illustrated children’s books.’
‘When did this happen?’ Derek asked sharply.
‘Last year sometime. Let me see – Seth and I decided to call it a day in March, so it must have been just after that – April? Yes, April, when I read about it. I did wonder if I ought to go to the funeral or write to somebody but we hadn’t kept in touch since college or anything – did anyone else keep in touch?’
‘If we had then we’d have known he was dead,’ Dodie pointed out.
‘Was he married?’ Barbara asked.
‘It didn’t mention any widow,’ Serena said. ‘Perhaps he was gay.’
‘Of course Bryan wasn’t gay,’ Barbara said crossly. ‘Just because a man isn’t married at thirty-seven doesn’t mean he’s gay.’
‘Whatever he was he was a nice person,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I’m sorry to hear the news.’
‘So Bryan couldn’t have sent the photograph,’ Dodie said. ‘That leaves Paul, Fiona and Serge. Paul might have sent it.’
‘You can ask him yourself,’ Derek said, nodding towards an approaching figure in cotton sweater and jeans as if it were still high summer.
‘I’m late but I had some work to catch up on!’ Paul shook hands, perspiration on his receding hairline. ‘Hey! I’d have known you anywhere, Dodie, Joan. Barbara, you’ve gone glamorous on us! Serena, nice to see you! Really nice to see you all! Why the grim faces? I wasn’t that late was I?’
‘We just heard about Sally and Bryan,’ Sister Joan said.
‘I knew about Sally. Hard luck that, old man!’ Paul clapped Derek on the shoulder. ‘I meant to write but you know how it is – time goes on! Anyway, somewhat belated condolences! Sally was a nice girl. What did you want to ask me?’
‘Ask—? Oh, did you send round copies of the photograph to remind us of the reunion?’ Barbara asked.
‘No. Mine arrived about a week ago. Posted in London.’
‘I never thought to look where mine was posted from.’ Sister Joan took out the square envelope and looked at the postmark. ‘London too.’
‘And mine,’ said Dodie. ‘I said to Colin when it came, “Now who on earth is writing to me from London? It’s years since I was there”.’
‘Mine was posted in London too,’ Barbara said. ‘W.1.’
‘Mine too,’ Derek said. ‘Not that it means much. Well, that leaves Fiona or Serge, neither of whom has turned up yet.’
‘You can bet it wasn’t Fiona,’ Paul said. ‘That girl never knew the time of the next lecture. She certainly wouldn’t remember a reunion planned twenty years ago!’
‘There’s no sign of anyone else coming,’ Dodie said.
‘And you must all be getting hungry!’ Serena exclaimed, adding, ‘I’m actually slimming at the moment so I won’t need more than a snack, but the rest of you must feel quite peckish!’
‘Still slimming?’ Dodie said, a little smile lifting her mouth. ‘Honestly, Serena, I’d have thought that after twenty years you’d have given it up as a bad job by now!’
‘We’ll all eat,’ Barbara said, ‘except for Dodie who’ll enjoy a nice saucer of milk. It’s way past two so I vote we repair to the nearest café and catch up on the past few years.’
‘And not wait for Serge and Fiona?’ Paul nodded. ‘Good idea. No guarantee that either of them’ll turn up.’
‘But one of them must have sent the photo,’ Dodie protested.
‘Then they should’ve been on time. Come on, Joan – or is it Sister now?’
‘Joan sounds fine.’
‘Sister Joan,’ Barbara said, shaking her head as they drifted back to the door. ‘I never knew you’d become a nun, Joan. I thought you went off and married that Jewish fellow – Jacob or something.’
She had known, of course, that sooner or later the name would be spoken in just such a casual way, and had expected to feel pain, but the pain was muted now as if it had all happened before to a different person.
‘Oh, we did talk about it,’ she said equably, ‘but neither of us could make the final commitment and then, for me, at least, something better came along.’
‘Better than sex?’ Serena looked astonished.
‘Different,’ Sister Joan said.
‘How long have you been a nun?’ Barbara enquired.
‘Eight years. Mine was what they call a late vocation.’
‘And they let you in even after – you know – lost your virginity?’
‘Actually they never asked.’ Sister Joan interrupted Dodie’s prim little voice. ‘They didn’t ask if I’d lost it, sold it, lent it or given it away. They’re not as fixated on physical details as people outside seem to think. And for me different turned out a whole lot better.’
‘Do you ever hear from Jacob?’ Barbara came to her side as they emerged into the bright afternoon sunshine.
‘Not a word,’ Sister Joan said.
‘I heard he’d gone back to Israel,’ Derek volunteered. ‘Mind you, I think I only met him once or twice. Where shall we eat?’
‘We could get the boat down to the Tower and have a lovely English tea in the restaurant there,’ Serena said.
‘It’s a bit early for tea,’ Paul said.
‘Speak for yourself! I missed lunch. When does the next boat go?’
‘Three o’clock, I think. Let’s go and look at Westminster Hall,’ Barbara suggested.
‘What’s to see?’ Derek said.
‘The architecture,’ Barbara said. ‘It’s either that or hang round the abbey and that’s a bit overwhelming as far as I’m concerned. Come on!’
She plunged across the road towards the building, leaving the others trailing in her wake.
‘Our Barbara’s blossomed out quite a bit, hasn’t she?’ Paul said, looking after her with amusement. ‘She used to be one of the most colourless people I knew.’
‘We all change, I suppose,’ Sister Joan said.
‘Not you, dear! You haven’t aged at all.’
‘That’s because I’m a nun,’ Sister Joan said with resignation.
‘Cheaper than a facelift, eh? So what’s this about Bryan then? Someone said he was dead. Last I heard he was illustrating children’s books back in Lincolnshire.’
‘Apparently there was a hit and run accident last year. I only just heard about it and about Sally’s death myself. I was very sorry.’
‘Ditto.’ He sounded casual, uncaring. ‘Mind you, I hadn’t seen anyone for ages. My own work takes up a lot of time.’
‘I used to see your designs on television sometimes,’ she told him. ‘You’ve done reall
y well, haven’t you?’
‘Commercially.’ He shrugged dismissively, his thin, sharp face betraying discontent.
They were in the soaring space of Westminster Hall. It was years since she’d stood here, looking at the steps on which men whose names were recorded in history had pleaded their cases. Here Raleigh had defended himself, calling to witness the late queen, that ‘lady whom Time hath forgot’. Here St Thomas More had flung defiance at the king.
Within her short white veil her round face was thoughtful.
‘There you are! All of you! I’ve been waiting for ages, simply ages!’
A slim blonde vision was threading her way through a little group of Japanese tourists who left off looking at the stone and gaped at her instead as she undulated towards the others, hands outstretched, short skirt revealing magnificent legs. People had always turned to look at Fiona, Sister Joan thought, jerked back into the present as the other flung her arms round her as if they had been bosom friends.
‘Joan! Oh, but you’re dressed up as a nun!’
‘That’s because I am one,’ Sister Joan said, amused.
‘Honestly?’ Fiona opened her turquoise eyes still wider and fell back a step. ‘I never knew. Nobody ever tells me anything! Were you disappointed in love or aren’t you allowed to tell? Dodie, how super to see you! You look wonderful. Doesn’t she look wonderful everybody? I’ve been here ages honestly. After I got the photograph I remembered about the reunion, of course, but maybe I got the time wrong?’
‘Not the time but the place,’ Barbara told her. ‘We were supposed to meet in the abbey itself by the tomb of Queen Elizabeth.’
‘Were we?’ Fiona looked even blanker, then laughed. ‘Oh, well, never mind! We’re all here now! Are we going for a drink or something? Catch up on the last twenty years?’
‘Serge Roskoff isn’t here,’ Derek said.
‘And he must have been the one who sent out all the photographs.’ Dodie nodded as if she’d just solved an important mystery.
‘Well, he’s not here,’ Barbara said impatiently. ‘I honestly don’t see much point in waiting much longer. I vote we get the boat down to the Tower and have something to eat there.’
‘The Tower? Oh, oh wonderfully spooky!’ Fiona linked her arm through Paul’s, glancing up at him through the naturally dark eyelashes that contrasted with the naturally fair hair brushing her shoulders.
It was a teasing, flirtatious glance which should have looked ridiculous on a woman of nearly forty, but it looked charming. Fiona had only the faintest of lines at the corners of her eyes to prove she was no longer eighteen, and she hadn’t put on a pound of spare flesh since Sister Joan had seen her last. If I wasn’t a religious, Sister Joan thought, with a tremor of amusement, I’d be dead jealous!
They were streaming towards the wharf to join the queue for the boat that would take them at a leisurely pace down the Thames past various landmarks pointed out by the guide over the loudspeaker. There wouldn’t be time for any private conversation. Sister Joan paid for her ticket and took her seat on the wooden bench, Dodie squeezing in next to her.
‘She must’ve had a facelift,’ Dodie was whispering. ‘Honestly her whole body is simply defying gravity!’
‘I don’t think so,’ Sister Joan murmured back. ‘She looks absolutely natural to me.’
There was no need to ask whom Dodie was talking about.
‘We’re far too late for lunch,’ Serena was proclaiming, ‘but since I seldom eat any it’s the rest of you I’m worrying about.’
‘Do you get lunch in the convent?’ Barbara enquired.
‘Soup and a sandwich – vegetarian,’ Sister Joan told her.
‘Is it a terribly strict order?’
‘Middling.’
Why, she wondered, did convent life fascinate lay people so much? She’d been much the same herself once, she supposed, though she hoped she hadn’t held such silly ideas about the cloistered life. Semi-cloistered in her case. The river flowing past the boat was greenish-grey. She shut out the surrounding noises and drifted with it.
‘Does anyone know where Serge lives these days?’ Dodie was asking. ‘We could all go round and get him if he lives in London.’
‘As a matter of fact I know,’ Paul said unexpectedly, leaning forward as the boat scraped against the wharf. ‘At least I know where he hung out six months ago. He had an exhibition in one of the smaller galleries and I saw it advertised. I did think that it might make a bit of an item on the arts programme, so I got my agent to find out his address. Flat Fifteen, Putney Walk – somewhere near the Embankment. Anyway I dropped him a line but he never bothered to answer.’
‘Sounds like Serge,’ Derek commented. ‘He was always a moody sod.’
They disembarked, nodding thanks to the guide to whose spiel nobody had troubled to listen. On their left the high walls of the Tower loomed up.
‘This is rather a grim place for a reunion,’ Serena complained, dragging her scarf clear of her bag. ‘First the Abbey and then the Tower! Why not the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s?’
‘We probably provide quite sufficient horror all by ourselves,’ Barbara said.
‘A bunch of old fogies trying to recapture their youth.’ Paul was nodding.
‘Who’s calling whom an old fogy?’ Fiona demanded.
‘Nobody,’ Serena said. ‘Paul’s being sarcastic as usual.’
‘Paul’s being truthful,’ Paul said. ‘I don’t really mean we’re old fogies exactly! None of us is past forty yet after all, but these reunions, years after most of us have lost touch and gone our separate ways – it’s a bit pathetic.’
‘I think it’s lovely,’ Dodie said. ‘Meeting old friends and catching up on all the news. Let’s go and have something to eat and then we can go round and drag Serge out for the evening! It’s only fair he should join in since he obviously set the whole thing up!’
Three
‘I suggest we take turns and give a brief resumé of what we’ve been doing since college,’ Barbara said.
They were drinking coffee after smoked salmon sandwiches and white wine. Sister Joan felt a pleasant sense of dissipation as she sipped her drink. So far talk had been desultory, odd remarks tossed into the air, caught or dropped.
‘We’d be here all night,’ Fiona objected.
‘You might be, darling,’ Paul said, ‘since we all know you lead a very, very busy life but Dodie won’t take more than two minutes flat, will you?’
‘You start, Barbara,’ Sister Joan said.
‘My account really will take two minutes,’ Barbara said deprecatingly. ‘I had to give up college in my second term because father was so gravely ill, and by the time he was well again I just didn’t feel like going back. Anyway he’d met a very lovely lady. Claire’s a nurse, over here then from New Zealand on an exchange scheme, so they got married and we went to New Zealand. I went to business school out there, got a good job, worked my way up. Five years ago I was offered a promotion. It entailed a transfer over here so I decided to return.’
‘Looking extremely smart, if I may say so,’ Derek said.
‘Thank you.’ For an instant, as she smiled, a trace of the shy, colourless Barbara they had scarcely noticed, appeared, and then was gone.
‘No private life?’ Dodie’s tip-tilted nose twitched slightly.
‘The occasional fling.’ Barbara drank her coffee.
‘If anyone were to hear my personal history,’ Serena said, ‘they simply wouldn’t credit it! They wouldn’t!’
‘Just give us an outline,’ Derek said, winking at the others.
‘Well, let’s see.’ Serena pushed back her fringe and concentrated. ‘Of course I never was any good at drawing or painting, but Daddy had money so I got in. I daresay that was unfair but it didn’t honestly bother me. I mean I hope I didn’t keep a better student out or anything but—’
‘We knew you had a rich daddy,’ Paul said. ‘Get on with what happened after you left. You didn’t
get your qualifications, did you?’
‘I scraped through,’ Fiona said.
‘I didn’t even manage that,’ Serena said cheerfully. ‘Daddy couldn’t pull any more strings. I didn’t mind. It was fun being a student, that’s all. And I didn’t have to work anyway. So it didn’t matter. I did the social bit – Claridges, Queen Charlotte’s Ball, Ascot, all that. Then I got married. He was rather sweet actually but no brains and not much money. Anyway I stuck it out for ten years and then we had an amicable divorce. I went abroad for a bit – the hippie trail—’
‘Weren’t you a bit late for that?’ Sister Joan said.
‘I’m usually late for things,’ Serena said, tugging at her fringe again. ‘I mean as soon as I get round to buying the latest fashion it goes out of fashion. Anyway I meandered about a bit and then I met Seth. He’s a professional polo player, not terribly famous but handsome and awfully good company, so we got married about four years ago. It didn’t work out very well. He turned out to be rather greedy. Anyway we took a cruise a couple of years ago and tried to patch things up, but it didn’t really work out so we decided to get divorced. It’s been hanging on a bit because the lawyers keep trying to hold on to my money for me. I tell them it really doesn’t matter because I’m quite happy for Seth to have as much as he wants but Daddy left everything tied up in trusts and things and it takes forever to disentangle. Seth and I just wait.’
‘No family?’ Dodie asked.
‘No, nothing ever came along,’ Serena said. ‘Daddy would have liked a grandchild but I never was the maternal type. It just didn’t happen.’
‘I have two children,’ Dodie said. ‘Simon is twelve and Cecily is ten. They’re both at boarding-school.’
‘Any husband?’ Paul enquired.
‘Of course I have a husband!’ Two circles of colour dyed her cheeks. ‘Colin is an engineer and we’ve been married for fifteen years. After we left college I got a job designing greetings cards, and one day I saw him buying one of my designs so I couldn’t resist telling him I was the artist. We got talking and that was it really.’
‘And do you still design greetings cards, dear?’ Paul asked.
Vow of Adoration/Vow of Devotion/Vow of Fidelity Page 41