things, but tested first. Aurora breathed in the delicious decay of last year’s grass and the green scent of this year’s growing, and ceased to fret.
As they crouched there, Lewis Ridgeway came running down the schoolhouse steps across the street. He paused when he saw her there with Avery, and after an instant’s hesitation, came to join them.
‘Have you escaped from the hive?’ he asked.
Aurora laughed. ‘I am a bad bee.’
He looked at her with curious fondness. ‘You are no bee, you are a luna moth. You are in the wrong purlieu, that’s all.’
She thought perhaps he was flirting with her. Not wanting that, she stood and said in a comradely way, ‘I don’t know what a luna moth does, but I did work hard for the first half.’
‘It is pale green, long-winged, a nocturnal creature that always seems to be dancing. Unsuited to this climate, in fact.’
Aurora looked at Lewis. His whole being seemed to live in his skull: bright eyes and sharp angles, demanding and dissecting. He had a gift for appreciation. She remembered saying long ago to Mayhew, we are the same. To Jimmy, too. Maybe if she stayed here she could be the same as Lewis—intelligent, perceptive, sure.
A general locust noise rose from the Opera House door, tea-full ladies going back to packages and bandages and ordering each other about. Aurora picked Avery up, needing to walk. Leaning his head on her shoulder, he studied the crocus he had finally picked.
Lewis kept step with her, but did not speak until the sound receded behind them. Then he asked, ‘What will you do with your life?’
She laughed at such a ridiculous question, out of the blue; shifting Avery to one hip, she shook her head and looked down at her feet passing over the boardwalk.
‘This is not for you, this buzzing parish world.’
‘Is it for you?’ she asked.
His face grew serious. ‘I believe it is. I am a schoolmaster bone-deep.’
‘Did you know my father was a schoolmaster too?’
‘I knew. Did you admire him?’
‘For his learning, I suppose—but more for his wilder nature. He was a great gambler and a minor drunkard, and kept my sisters and me very well amused. But he did not have a happy life.’
‘So Chum has told me. Melancholy is a scholastic deformation.’
She could not afford melancholy, herself. Children were too important to allow one to entertain maunderings about the purpose of life. You do what you have to do, Mama had said. What she had to do was keep Avery safe. And keep Mama from sinking.
Ladybug
February had come in like a polar bear; in France, soldiers froze to death frequently. Even into March, Victor was not able to get home to see Harriet. But in April he wrote:
I put in for leave this week end, but with the best intention in the world they can’t grant passes freely—we are the first line of defence now. I am longing to see her. If I get a pass shall arrive 3.30 or 4—not issued till Saturday p.m. and until then may be rescinded … but I am always with you, and now with her also, my beloveds.
Knowing he would not come, overcome with knowing it, Clover wept so much on reading this letter that the baby’s soft brown ringlets were soaked. She could not work out whether she was crying for herself or Victor. Then, recalling her vow to be more courageous for Harriet’s sake, she stopped and settled her back to the breast. Madame made a great show of not having noticed the sobs, only brought a cup of chamomile tea and kissed her cheek.
Clover walked to Victoria with Harriet in an ancient perambulator Madame had unearthed from the basement. It had been storing onions, but worked very nicely once the wheels were oiled. The noise at the station was fierce—trains toiling in and out, soldiers walking about or lounging with blank stares, faces sharp and worried even here in safety.
She wheeled the pram around the platforms and back into the arcade, and saw—Victor!—detach himself from a bit of wall and come towards her. A gas mask dangled from his rucksack. She could not bear to think about gas.
‘But it’s not even three, you’re early,’ she said.
He folded his thin, real arms around her.
They were vaudeville people, they were used to separation.
She kissed him, his caved-in cheek, his tunic collar, his hand, again and again.
He pressed her away, at last, saying, ‘This, I take it, is the offspring?’ Clover nodded, suddenly worried that