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‘Oh, lovely,’ she said. ‘Music! I thought there’d be just chat and eating and so forth – I love that song –’ And she began to sing along to it. ‘ – It’s a hap-hap-happy day, toodle-oodle-oodle-ay, you can’t go wrong if you sing this song, it’s a hap-hap-happy day – ’

At once Daniel took her punch glass from her hand and set it down on the table. ‘More than music!’ he said and grinned at her, a great white glimmering grin, Robin thought, altogether overwhelming, as she watched him pull Chick into the middle of the room and begin to dance an energetic quickstep with her.

One or two people, the older ones, looked first a little startled, for no one else had made any effort to dance, and then moved good-naturedly aside to let the young pair have room. And almost at once other people began to dance and before the record was half over, there were five couples gyrating in the middle of the floor, even though it was carpeted, watched benignly by the people round the edges.

‘Oh dear,’ Sam Landow said in Robin’s ear, as she stood there with one foot tapping in the music’s rhythm. ‘I wish I could dance. I’m sure you’d love to, but I have to tell you that dancing with me would be like walking a very crotchetty and bronchitic bulldog.’

She stood there and smiled at him, a little disappointed, for indeed the sight of the others dancing so vigorously was inviting, and said as kindly as she could, ‘Oh, it’s all right! I know it’s a silly thing you do when you’re young – it really doesn’t matter – ’

He looked at her with an expression of comical dismay. ‘Heavens! How old do you think I am, then?’

‘Oh dear,’ she said, all compunction. ‘Have I put my foot in it? I didn’t mean to.’

‘Of course not! I just wondered whether you saw me as some sort of old bock who – ’

‘I only ever heard Auntie Jessie use that word!’ she said. ‘I’m not sure what a bock is but – ’

‘Someone old and pretty hidebound,’ he said. ‘And believe me I’m not. I suppose I’m old in your eyes – no, don’t tell me what you think I am, I couldn’t bear it if you came out with something on the high side. For your information, I’m
thirty-two. Is that past dancing, do you think?’

She smiled at him. ‘Of course not! I mean
I
don’t think it is. It’s just that I thought perhaps you’d stopped liking dancing – ’

‘I never could do it,’ he said and looked down at her with his face now showing just pleasant amusement. ‘How old are you, Robin?’

‘Twenty-one,’ she said. ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I feel about sixteen sometimes.’ And she turned to look at the dancers again.

‘Yes,’ he said quietly, still looking at her. ‘Ridiculous.’

‘Chick’s older than me, but sometimes she behaves much younger,’ Robin said then, unaware of his scrutiny. ‘She’s great fun, isn’t she?’

‘Great fun,’ he agreed. ‘Now, listen, Robin. I have no right to monopolize you. You want to dance and I can’t, so let me take you across the room to where there are people who I dare say can dance. Who is that young man there? I don’t recognize the uniform – it’s Army, clearly, but – ’

Robin looked and then lifted her chin in a spurt of recognition. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen newsreels. Australian army. That must be my other cousin from distant parts.’

‘Heavens, do you have so many?’

‘I don’t really know. I gather there were all sorts of brothers my grandmother had who were far-flung, so I dare say there are – but only two have come here at the moment, as I understand it. I suppose I ought to talk to him. Oh, and there’s my mother with my aunt – I wondered where she was – ’

The record ended and there was a little splatter of applause and Chick called, ‘Oh, more please?’ And whoever was looking after the gramophone obliged with ‘A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square’, and the dancers began to move again as Robin crossed the room to kiss her mother and Sam Landow followed her and was greeted like a long-lost relation by the ever ebullient Jessie.

‘Ma,’ Robin said under the cover of Jessie’s loud chatter. ‘Is that the other cousin?’

Poppy looked and then nodded. ‘He looks rather dour, doesn’t he?’ she said. And indeed the young man in the rather ill-fitting uniform did look gloomy. He was square and solid, with dusty hair that he kept slicked down rather fiercely and a rather nondescript face. He was staring across the room at the
dancers and Robin followed his line of vision and saw that it was Chick and Daniel he was watching so fixedly, and was a little amused. Good old Chick seemed to be doing rather well tonight, and she certainly looked as though she was having fun; she was laughing up at her partner as he swept her around in rather exaggerated foxtrot steps as the music wailed its familiar melody and her eyes and cheeks seemed to be competing for a shine award. It suited her, thought Robin, and smiled as she caught Chick’s eye and her friend winked at her, and she felt a sudden wave of melancholy sweep over her. Here she was at a party and no one to dance with; it really was too bad. And then, there was a little flurry at the door and three more people came in. And one of them was Hamish.

She had no idea how much her face lit up at the sight of him, but Poppy saw it and so did Sam Landow, and they both watched her as she moved quickly across the room to greet him, though each was thinking very different thoughts.

For the next hour and a half the party was, Robin felt, the best she had ever been to. Hamish, having told her briefly that the good-hearted relief Sister McCann had let him go, firmly countermanding the egregious Meek’s instructions, had thrown himself into the proceedings with considerable energy. He turned out, a little to Robin’s surprise, to be a superb dancer, if a little given to making sudden swerves and twirls, and they danced to every record played by the indefatigable gramophone user – who, Robin discovered, was her stepfather, being as he always was, useful and agreeable.

And when the dancing stopped because supper was announced, she and Chick and Daniel and Hamish and Dr Landow, who had been talking to the Australian cousin Harry, all sat together on the floor of the dining room, leaving the chairs to the much older guests, and ate quantities of Jessie’s good food, and laughed and joked a great deal. Or at least Chick and Daniel did, putting on a sparkling show for the rest of them.

Daniel was obviously a man of considerable social gifts, with a fund of light-hearted chatter and good jokes that had just enough edge of malice to make them sharply witty, and Chick, who was clearly entranced by him, proved an excellent foil. Robin, leaning against the wall between Hamish and Sam Landow, watched her friend and was happy for her; she hadn’t looked so pleased with herself for a very long time.

And Robin was also happy for herself, because the whole evening was turning out so well in so many different ways. First of all her grandmother and her Aunt Jessie hadn’t had a spat with each other. This was a remarkable thing in Robin’s
experience. She had only the haziest notion of why the two of them should be so sharp with each other when they met, though she did know that it had something to do with Poppy’s childhood when both had looked after her for a while, and that therefore there was a certain rivalry between them, but Robin had frankly never really cared that much about why it happened. She had just disliked it heartily when it did, and to spend an evening with the two of them under the same roof with no flounces from Auntie Jessie and no dry sharp comments from her grandmother was a delight.

But best of all, she had here just the members of her immediate family she wanted, her mother and stepfather, sitting between Jessie and Mildred at the table and gossiping contentedly, and no one else at all. Most especially there was no Chloe. And she sighed happily and returned her attention to Daniel who was telling a long, involved and apparently enthralling story involving a Boer farmer and a Bantu girl and the local pastor, which was holding the attention of the others like a vice.

Or was it? Her gaze slid along the group and came to rest on the square bulk of her cousin Harry. He showed no sign of any emotion at all. He just sat and ate – a large amount, in fact – and listened and watched them all but said little. When people had offered him a dish from which to help himself he had nodded politely and taken it with brief thanks. When anyone talked to him – mostly Sam Landow – he answered in monosyllables, and Robin found that puzzling. If he was so unwilling to make any effort to get to know the people amongst whom he found himself, why had he written to his aunt in the first place? Her grandmother had invited them, as Robin understood it, in order not just to meet them but to give them the chance to make new social contacts in a strange city. Well, Daniel was obviously using that opportunity to the point of wringing it out like a piece of tired muslin, but his cousin was doing nothing at all. And Robin felt irritated by that rather than sorry for him. She wondered why, and then realized it was because his face wasn’t entirely expressionless after all. Looking at him again she thought – he’s jealous. Jealous of Daniel, that’s what it is. And she glanced again at Daniel and saw how closely Chick had placed herself next to him and the way she looked in the tall man’s face, and understood. Poor Harry, she thought
then. He’d like to be with Chick himself. And preened a little on her friend’s behalf.

But then sharply the bubble of pleasure in which the party had wrapped her burst and all its iridescent charm vanished. She was a dull ordinary girl sitting on the floor with her back to the wall and surrounded by sticky plates, staring at the doorway in which a vision was standing.

‘My darlings!’ fluted the vision, which was closely draped in shimmering blue silk which swept to the floor, at which point it was edged with very soft white fur. ‘Did you think we were never coming? Well, here we are and the party can start at last! Madly sorry, but we simply had to go to the old War House. The General’s pre-Christmas do, you know – he’d have been livid if we’d missed it – ’

A silence had fallen on the room as everyone had turned to stare at the doorway’s occupant and then David got to his feet, and Robin, in the middle of her own sense of lurching disappointment, was aware of how typical it was of him to walk into any awkwardness and try to smooth it out.

‘Well, better late than never, Chloe, my dear,’ he said. ‘And how are you?’ And he bent forward and kissed her cheek, which she proferred in what Robin regarded as the silliest filmstarish manner imaginable. ‘And your friend too – ah – Captain Stanniforth, wasn’t it? I think we met at Ley On’s one night – ’

‘Yes, indeed, yes, we did, sir.’ The vision’s companion stepped forwards, very dapper in a perfectly pressed dress uniform on which a good deal of red braid was scattered. ‘How de do – ’

The room became noisier then as people at the table and around it, sitting on the floor like Robin’s group, relaxed and began to chatter again, as David took the newcomers towards the food and drink.

‘Well!’ Daniel said and grinned down at Chick. ‘As my old Daddy used to say, there’s nothing quite like putting all your goods in the store window, is there? Question is, are there any wares inside to match up to what’s on offer?’

Chick, whose face had fallen at the sight of Chloe, for she really was breathtaking to look at, at once lightened. ‘You have a point there, my colonial friend! We’re a bit leery about that sort of lady where I come from too! Who is she, Robin? Do you know?’

Robin, watching Chloe sparkling and performing for the delectation of everyone around her, and especially for her straight-backed Captain in his over-garnished uniform, looked miserable. ‘She’s my half-sister,’ she said shortly.

There was an appalled silence and then Chick, mortified, scrambled across the space between them to put her hand on Robin’s knee.

‘Oh, pull my tongue out with red-hot pincers and feed it to the wolves! I’m so sorry, ducky – ’

‘It’s all right,’ Robin said a little wearily. ‘She has that effect on everyone. She’s a bit – well, my mother says she was rather spoiled. And you have to admit she’s marvellously good-looking.’

‘Not at all.’ It was Harry who spoke and everyone now stared at him in some surprise, except Sam Landow who was still looking at Chloe with his brows slightly creased. ‘She thinks she is, and so she sends out a message telling everyone that she is. So that’s what everyone else believes. It’s a common enough trick.’

Again there was a silence and then Sam laughed.

‘I couldn’t agree with you more, Harry. I have nothing against the lady at all – agreeable to look at and so forth. But I am intrigued by someone who finds it so necessary to make an impact. She comes late, dresses in a way that you can’t deny is outrée, if interesting, and manages to make a room full of people talk about her and only her. Just look at those over there. All fascinated by her. But when you really look at her, it’s a pleasant enough face but fairly ordinary. She’s a self-created thing – make-up, and clothes and manner. Quite fascinating – ’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘That’s what I thought,’ and lapsed again into silence.

‘Well, I’m not talking about her,’ Hamish said and there was something a little wooden in his tone. ‘I don’t think it’s verra kind of us to be criticizing a relation of our hostess – ’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Hamish,’ Robin said, a little bitterly. ‘We all have our problems with my sister Chloe! All except Grandmamma, that is, but then she’s special. Anyway, let’s all go upstairs, shall we? Maybe someone else can play the gramophone as David’s busy, and we can dance again – ’

It was suddenly important to Robin that they all escape from what she regarded as Chloe’s baleful influence, and she was very relieved when they all got to their feet obediently.

‘I’ll deal with the gramophone,’ Sam Landow offered and Robin smiled at him gratefully.

‘That would be lovely,’ she said and gave Hamish a small push so that he led the way to the door. If they could just get out of the dining room and upstairs before Chloe saw her and her friends, perhaps it could all be all right – still –

And at first it seemed it would be. Sam played a tango and then a rumba record and that made them all laugh immoderately as they struggled to deal with the steps, and when the record finished it was generally agreed that Hamish, with Robin battling gamely to keep up with him, had been far and away the best; and then as Robin protested her shame at her own inability to dance as well as her partner, the hated voice broke in from the doorway.