A Gathering Storm(44)

It was the first time Beatrice had seen herself full-length in the dress and she couldn’t believe that the stranger who looked back, rather a beautiful stranger, was herself. The blue and the silver glimmered against her glossy dark curls, highlighting her pointed ivory face and bright chestnut eyes. Her mother’s sapphire pendant lay on her collarbone, and she clipped on the matching drop earrings. They pinched her ears madly, but the pain must be borne. She slipped her feet into the silver kid sandals her mother had bought in Truro.

‘You’re not little brown Bea any more!’ Angie whispered. The face looking over Beatrice’s shoulder in the mirror did not show admiration so much as envy, and Beatrice was shocked. But when she turned to look at Angie the expression had been smoothed away. All was as serene as before.

‘Come on,’ Angie said, handing her some gloves, and they went downstairs together.

The hall was already full of men in dinner jackets and women in opulent dresses divesting themselves of coats, hats and fur wraps, taking glasses from the young boy’s tray, noticing the wonderful Christmas tree covered in candles before moving into the drawing room to be greeted by Mr and Mrs Wincanton.

As the girls came down the stairs, they were received by a sea of admiring faces. They were looking not just at Angie, but at both of them – blonde and brunette, light and dark, a pair of opposites, but both lovely.

Just then, Bless opened the front door, and there on the doorstep stood Rafe.

He paused on the threshold, looking from Beatrice to Angie and back to Beatrice, who smiled at him shyly, but it was Angie who pushed forward to greet him.

‘Oh, Rafe, you’re nice and early,’ she said, taking his coat. ‘Don’t we all look grown-up?’

‘You both look very well,’ he stammered, and blushed. His eyes said ‘stunning’ and Angie laughed, one of her golden infectious giggles.

‘Thank you. So do you, doesn’t he, Bea?’

Rafe, too, was all grown up, tall and dashing in formal dress, his fair hair soft in the light of the candles. As they helped themselves to champagne, Beatrice couldn’t keep her eyes off him.

‘Well met, Ashton!’ called Ed, coming across and clasping Rafe’s hand. And turning to Angie and Beatrice, ‘I say, you girls look . . .’ He trailed to a halt.

‘Don’t they?’ Rafe said, the first rush of champagne hitting its mark.

‘Shall we take you to Mummy and Daddy?’ Angie asked. She was looking at Rafe, who immediately presented his arm to escort her. Beatrice pushed away her disappointment to take Ed’s.

‘Darlings!’ Oenone said, as they passed into the drawing room. ‘So lovely. And boys, you look so handsome. Where’s Peter, by the way? Is he down?’ No one seemed to know.

‘Who are these exquisite young things? I don’t remember inviting them,’ Michael Wincanton said. Angie squealed delightedly. ‘Oh, Daddy, don’t be silly,’ she said, and leaned to kiss him. Over his daughter’s shoulder, Mr Wincanton looked Beatrice up and down with open appreciation. He reached to clap his son on the shoulder and to shake hands with Rafe.

They moved past Angie’s parents, further into the room, where they merged with the other younger visitors, the children Ed and Angie and latterly Beatrice had played tennis and shared dancing lessons with, whose birthday parties they’d won prizes at and who were now, many of them, at their first proper adult party, awkward, spotty and gangly, most shy and self-conscious. The girls grouped together in little giggling groups for safety, peeping at the boys, who squared up to one another like young bucks clashing antlers, ignoring the girls.

‘Beatrice, that’s such a clever dress,’ said Deirdre Garnett, large-framed and deep-voiced. ‘No one would guess about your poor legs.’ Everyone heard her and everyone immediately stared at Beatrice’s skirts, as though wondering if she wore callipers underneath.

‘My legs are completely fine, thank you,’ she said in her coldest tone. ‘The doctor says I’ll be perfectly all right.’ She’d liked to have added, ‘Which is more than I can say about you and your fat hips, Deirdre,’ but of course didn’t.

She wandered off crossly to where Rafe was standing by the fire, already deep in discussion with Ed, who loved talking politics. ‘I say we should stop him now, before he gets the idea anything goes.’

‘But we’re hardly prepared for a war,’ Rafe replied. ‘My uncle says we don’t have the weapons or the planes.’

‘We’re rearming like mad,’ Ed said. ‘My father reckons we’ll be ready for him.’