After Clare Read Free Page A

in the world, poor as church mice, and he felt responsible for her. As for himself, he didn’t see how anyone who had spent two years in that hellish show over the Channel could have a right to expect true happiness ever again. A company officer leading his men over the top, a young sprig straight out of school, by the skin of his teeth he had missed being killed, or even injured, not once but several times. He had gained a reputation for bravery, when he knew it was sheer luck – and plain fear of being seen to be in a funk. Luck had followed him most of his life – apart from the disaster that was their parents. Lucky Val Drummond: scraping through his exams, batting the winning innings at the inter public school cricket match in his last year; lucky to be the brother of Poppy Drummond, many of his acquaintances would no doubt say.
    Lately, however, that luck seemed to have deserted him. He was recently down from Oxford, where he had gone straight from the trenches because he couldn’t think what else to do in the sombre hiatus, the anticlimax after the last dark, adrenalin-fuelled years, when all the world had teetered on the edge of catastrophe. He had easily obtained one of the many places available – all those young hopefuls gone west – and in the same haphazard way had chosen to read English. He hadn’t yet lost the wild air of the undergraduate, and was apt to wear a college scarf wound around his neck, even when it was not strictly necessary.
    This train of thought brought him back to the wedding. Oh, God! Bad enough being seen as the poor relations, but there was another, even more cogent reason he did not feel inclined to go. Reading English had given Valentine literary aspirations, but no one, it seemed, wanted to publish, much less read, the kind of novel he had recently surprised even himself by producing: angry, declamatory, accusing. They said everyone had had enough of that kind of angst; amusement was what the world wanted now, this fast and light-hearted world determined to forget the recent past and its horrors in the hectic whirl of nightclubs, fast dancing, jazz music, cocktail drinking – and perhaps more – as Poppy and her friends did.
    If he went to the wedding he would have the embarrassment of facing Gerald Markham, who in his professional capacity had just turned down his novel. Gerald, conscientious and well-intentioned Gerald, whose own war had been spent at the War Office, was once more running the Markham Press, while old Hugh, who had emerged out of retirement to fill the breach for the duration of his absence, had gracefully stepped back into it once more.
    Poppy picked up her black figured-velvet wrap with its white swansdown collar. ‘You can stay here for a bit if you wish, Val, but I don’t want you camping out on my sofa all night. For one thing, my landlord wouldn’t like it.’
    He swung his legs to the floor. ‘No fear, I’m off now. Where are you going?’
    â€˜I’m not sure.’ She avoided his eyes. ‘Maybe the Blue Bird. With Xanthe and a few others.’
    â€˜Don’t do it, Poppy.’
    He’d heard of the Blue Bird of Happiness and what went on there. He caught hold of her wrist to emphasize his point. Her bracelets jangled. ‘Let go, you’re hurting me,’ she said pettishly. ‘I know what I’m doing, I am not a
child.
’
    No use telling her not to act like one, then. There was no coping with Poppy lately. He dropped her wrist and picked up his scarf. Before he could say anything else, she added, ‘By the way, Dee tells me Lady Fitzallan is coming home for the wedding.’
    â€˜What, the Female Fitz? After all these years?’
    â€˜The
rich
Female Fitz.’ Shortly before he died, their father, Jack Drummond, had extracted a promise from his older friend, Sir Patrick Fitzallan, to keep an eye on his boy, should anything untoward happen. A reluctant promise,