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She picked up the phone and dialled Anthony's office again.

There was no reply.

1941

Elspeth Twomey fell in love with Luke the first time he kissed her. ">

Most Harvard boys had no idea;how to kiss. They either bruised your lips with a brutal smackeroo, or opened their mouths so wide you felt like a dentist. When Luke kissed her, at five minutes to midnight in the shadows of the Radcliffe Dormitory Quad, he was passionate yet tender. His lips moved all the time, not just on her mouth but on her cheeks and her eyelids and her throat The tip of his tongue probed gently between her lips, politely asking permission to come in, and she did not even pretend to hesitate. Afterwards, sitting in her room, she had looked into the mirror and whispered to her reflection: 'I think I love him.'

That had been six months ago, and the feeling had grown stronger since. Now she was seeing Luke almost every day. They were both in their senior year. Every day they either met for lunch or studied together for a couple of hours. Weekends they spent almost all their time together.

It was not uncommon for Radcliffe girls to get engaged in their final year, to a; Harvard boy or a young professor. They would marry in the summer, go on a long honeymoon, then move into an apartment when they returned. They would start work, and a year or so later have their first baby.

But Luke had never spoken about marriage.

She looked at him now, sitting in a booth at the back of Flanagan's bar, arguing with Bern Rothsten, a tall graduate student with a bushy black moustache and a hardbitten look. Luke's dark hair kept falling forward over his eyes, and he pushed it back with his left hand, a familiar gesture. When he was older, and had a responsible job, he would put goop on his hair to make it stay in place, and then he would not be quite so sexy, she thought

Bern was a communist, like many Harvard students and professors. "Your father's a banker,' he said to Luke with disdain. You'll be a banker, too. Of course you think capitalism is great'

Elspeth saw a flush rise at Luke's throat. His father had recently been featured in a Time magazine article as one of ten men who had become millionaires since the Depression. However, she guessed he was blushing not because he was a rich kid, but because he was fond of his family, and resented the implied criticism of his father. She felt angry for him, and said indignantly: 'We don't judge people by their parents, Bern!'

Luke said: 'Anyway, banking is an honourable job. Bankers help people to start businesses and provide employment'

'like they did in 1929.'

'They make mistakes. Sometimes they help the wrong people. Soldiers make mistakes - they shoot the wrong people - but I don't accuse you of being a murderer.'

It was Bern's turn to look wounded. He had fought in the Spanish Civil War - he was older than the rest of them by three or four years - and Elspeth now guessed he was remembering some tragic error.

Luke added: 'Anyway, I don't aim to be a banker.'

Bern's dowdy girlfriend, Peg, leaned forward, interested. Like Bern, she was intense in her convictions', but she did not have his sarcastic tongue. 'What, then?'

'A scientist' '

'Whatkind?'

Luke pointed upward. 'I want to explore beyond our planet'

Bern laughed scornfully. "Space rockets! A schoolboy fantasy.'

Elspeth leaped to Luke's defence again. 'Knock it off, Bern, you don't know what you're talking about' Bern's subject was French literature;

However, Luke did not appear to have been stung by the sneer. Perhaps he was accustomed to having his dream laughed at 'I think it's going to happen,' he said. 'And I'll tell you something else. I believe science will do more than communism for ordinary people in our lifetime.' >

Elspeth winced. She loved Luke, fcut she felt he was naive about politics. 'Too simple,' she said to him. 'The benefits of science are restricted to the privileged elite.' ->"-

'That's just not true,' Luke said. 'Steamships make , life better for seamen as well as for transadantic

passengers.'

Bern said: 'Have you ever been in the engine room of an ocean liner?'

Yes, and no one was dying of scurvy.'

A tall figure cast a shadow over the table. 'Are you

kids old enough to drink alcoholic liquor in public?' It

was Anthony Carroll, wearing a blue serge suit that

looked as