After Clare by Marjorie Eccles

dark eyes and a mouth designed for smiling. Emily never remembered her losing her temper. She was gay and loved company and things happening, quite the opposite of Papa, that big, often taciturn man who smelt of pipe tobacco and had horny hands with dirt so ingrained under the fingernails it was impossible to remove entirely, making Mama say she was ashamed to be escorted out to dinner by someone who looked like the undergardener. But she laughed when she said it, and straightened his tie and tried to smooth his hair and said he was still the handsomest man this side of Mount Olympus, and who minded a little grime when he brought her armfuls of roses he had grown himself?
    â€˜Roses for my girls, my three roses,’ said Anthony once, memorably, and then reddened to the roots of his hair, having astonished himself as much as them.
    He said he hated London, and for the most part steadfastly refused to accompany Mama when she made her periodic visits there, to stay with her sister, Mrs Arbuthnot. Why waste his time there, where Uncle Laurence, a dull stockbroker, could talk of nothing but making money and his stamp collection, when he, Anthony, could have been pruning, grafting, planting? As for Aunt Lottie, her kind of life was beyond his comprehension; she never came home before two a.m., conducted her correspondence from her bed until noon the next day, and then filled the rest of the time with as many social events as she could fit in.
    Unlike Clare, Emily loved the occasional times when they were allowed to accompany their mama to stay with the Arbuthnots, in the house from where you could hear Big Ben, two years older than Emily, booming the time across London. On the notably rare occasions Anthony could be persuaded to join them, both parents would come and say goodnight before they went out to dine, or to the theatre, Mama smelling delicious in a whispering frou-frou of taffeta skirts, and Papa miraculously transformed into a smooth and well-brushed stranger in a stiff shirt with a gardenia on his lapel.
    But mostly, Leila made her visits alone, while Leysmorton counted the days before her return. The girls played with their friends, the Markham girls, and Anthony let them roam the countryside on their ponies, galloping along the rides through the great beech woods and up to the high chalk escarpment on the Downs, from where you could see over three counties. Sometimes they rode through the village and bought ginger beer in bottles with a glass marble stopper from the pop-bottling factory, or they might go by way of the gaunt red-brick convent. Back home, there was the little house in the Hecate tree, their special place where no one else was ever invited, not even the Markham girls; Dorothy would have taken charge and wanted things done her way, and Jane would have been too timid to climb the ladder.
    When Leila returned, the house came alive again: presents for everyone, tissue paper everywhere as she unpacked the new hats, shoes and gloves she had bought, her hair worn in a new style, her eyes sparkling as she told them of the amusing plays she’d seen, the opera, dances, suppers she’d attended.
    Emily lapped it up eagerly. It was what she herself longed for – wasn’t it? To be grown up, to put one’s hair up, be presented at court, become the beautiful Miss Vavasour and eventually marry a handsome man, possibly a young lord. Yes, of course it was. Except that sometimes, as they grew older, she began to wonder if Clare had a point when she continually asked, would a life of such undiluted pleasure be enough?
    Her daughters were in danger of becoming little savages, running wild and with dirt beneath their fingernails from grubbing in the earth like their father, Mama suddenly decided. Moreover, the teaching they received from the genteel but ineffectual spinster who had followed Miss Jennett amounted to little more than the three Rs, and though too much education was unnecessary for girls, it