Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page A

speak in the House,’ he said. ‘I must say I think it would have been better if they’d waited until we’ve finished off Japan.’
    ‘Do you want to talk about France?’ he asked a few minutes later, when it was clear he wasn’t getting much response about politics.
    ‘Not at the moment,’ possibly not ever, he thought, and then wondered whether he would ever bring himself to say even that – even to Archie.
    Archie said, ‘When the bell rings I’m going down to fetch her. It’s going to be a tremendous shock for her. I’d like to give her some sort of warning.’
    ‘You make me sound like a catastrophe.’
    ‘No, I don’t. Shocks come all shapes and sizes.’
    When the bell rang – at last – they both jumped and Rupert realized that Archie was nervous as well. He put down his drink and limped quickly to the door, where he stopped.
    ‘Er. One thing. She really has – minded about you. She – oh well.’ He shrugged and went. His uneven footsteps on the stairs faded, there was temporary silence. He got up and walked over to the balcony, which was further from the door. He heard voices, Archie’s and hers, and then Archie saying, ‘A bit of a surprise for you,’ and hers, ‘Oh, Archie! Another one? I’m not going to guess because last time you got me what I guessed it might be before – if you see what I . . .’
    She was in the room, struck motionless at the sight of him, silent, and then, as though released by a spring, she shot into his arms.
    ‘Only crying because I’m so pleased,’ she said moments later. ‘I always cry about things.’
    ‘You always did.’
    ‘Did I?’ She stood in front of him – nearly as tall as he, stroking his shoulders with small uneven movements. Looking at her eyes was like looking at the sun. ‘Wouldn’t it be awful,’ she said, and he saw her luxuriating in the fantasy, ‘if you weren’t actually real? If I’d just imagined you.’
    ‘Awful. Darling Clary, I have missed you.’
    ‘I know. I got your note that you thought of me every day. It made a great difference. Oh, Dad! Here you are ! Could we sit down? I feel I’m going to break .’
    Archie, who had put a drink for her on the table by the sofa, had disappeared.
    ‘He’s probably having a bath. He spends ages in them doing the crossword,’ she said.
    They sat on the sofa.
    ‘Let me examine you,’ he said. ‘You’ve grown up so much.’
    ‘Well, up ,’ she said. ‘But not sort of – in other ways. Not like the others. Louise has become rather a beauty – it’s generally acknowledged – and Poll is so pretty and elegant. They’re both quite exotic, but I’ve just become a larger caterpillar – or a moth compared to butterflies.’
    He looked at her. Her face was thinner, but still rounded, flushed now with excitement and streaked with tears, her eyelashes wet around eyes the frankness of whose love struck him then with an almost painful force.
    ‘This is the most joyful day of my life,’ she said.
    ‘You have eyes just like your mother’s.’
    ‘You never told me that.’ She began to smile, but her mouth trembled.
    ‘And you’ve lost your freckles, I see.’
    ‘‘Oh, Dad! You know I don’t get them properly until the summer.’
    He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. ‘I shall look forward to them immensely.’
    During the rest of that first evening with her, which they persuaded Archie to share, he saw both how much she had grown up and also how intensely she had missed him: this last was revealed to him obliquely in various things that she asked or said. When Pipette had gone to Home Place and described the journey west, she’d realized that a lot of her imagining about him had been right. ‘Not exactly the same adventures,’ she said, ‘but the same sort of ones.’
    ‘And after D-day,’ she had remarked later, ‘I thought you might turn up at any minute. I suppose that was rather silly?’ But she had immediately sensed that this was back to dangerous