Iâm the perfect damsel.â
Hilda is listening very carefully.
âLook at that!â I say.
Weâve reached Throckmortonâs Fine Art, which today is displaying a canvas by Samuel Peploe. A still life of a restaurant table late at night.
Billâs eyes are hooded. Her fingers stray towards mine, then, remembering, twitch away again. I know what sheâs thinking. Iâm thinking it myself. The silver coffee pot beside the empty glass, the discarded napkin, that blown rose: itâs a painting of us. What use have we for Nature? Weâre a new species, releasing our strongest scent in artificial light.
Her thumb strokes the pearl button at her throat. âHalf stupefied by meat and drink, the bitter aftertaste of coffee in my mouthââ
Sheâs putting herself inside the canvas. Itâs a game we play when weâre alone. I cough to remind her of our chaperone, but she takes no notice.
ââthe throb of my pulse so alive to you, I canât bring myself to meet your look.â
Dinner at Mamaâs table is a cheerfully temperate affair, precursor to eight hours of soundly dreamless sleep, and yet my little sister says, âIâve felt like thatâ.
âI should hope you have not,â I say, sounding like Aunt Nellie.
âAnd why shouldnât she? Sheâs old enough to provoke a glance. Or do you think they only have eyes for you?â
This is my cue to laugh, and reply of course: one glimpse of me and theyâre smitten for all time . Instead I say, âSheâs too young for all that rot.â
Bill slides me a sidelong look, âYou werenât at seventeen.â
âCheese it, Bill.â But itâs too late, I can see Hilda wondering how, or rather with whom, I disgraced myself. The weedy aesthetes at Miss Burt-Cowperâs dance classes? One of Gordonâs friends? The gardenerâs boy in Devon, with his strong brown hands?
Itâs almost eleven by the clock on the wall of Barkers department store when we get to Kensington High Street. Iâm about to suggest we telephone Brewer with our apologies and have an early lunch in that place with the potted palms that does such delicious squab pie, when Bill catches my eye and directs a quizzing glance across the street. Itâs a perfectly ordinary Monday morning. A good throng on each pavement. Errand boys in their white aprons, ladiesâ maids in search of ribbons and stockings, chaps like Pa in bowler hats, a couple of fashionable gentlewomen rustling along in their whipped-cream skirts.
But now I do spot something. That tall girl. Dressed with a simplicity that graces her slender figure like a boast, her hair much the same colour as Hildaâs and mine. She stands apart from the human tide, right against a shop window. All at once, as if she can feel my scrutiny, she turns and looks straight at me. A pretty face, though my first thought is not her prettiness. She seems terribly familiar.
And there is something in her hand.
Barkersâ clock strikes the first of its eleven chimes and, with a tremendous cacophony of smashing glass, the perfectly ordinary Monday morning turns to madness. It happened on Saturday on Regent Street, I read about it in the paper, which makes the fact of it happening now even more dumbfounding. The cheek of them! To do it twice! All along both sides of the High Street women I had not noticed until this moment â women wearing mannishly-tailored jackets over shapeless skirts â are pulling hammers out of their sleeves and striking at shop windows. Other women, shrieking, cower from the splintering glass. Policemen blow whistles. The chaps in bowler hats wrestle hammers out of hands. Not five feet away from me, a chit of a girl in a green, white and purple sash has her arms pinned behind her and is frogmarched towards a policeman. I feel so strangely filled and empty all at once, outraged and excited and even . . .