Thursday's Child by Helen Forrester Page B

of us had gone out together, when we were all students – and I saw sudden little pictures of Barney hauling Angela up Scafell, Barney and Angela picking gooseberries in our garden and quarrelling at the same time, only to fall silent when I approached, Angela kissing someone good night under the laburnum – I had thought it was James she kissed, but it could have been Barney – Angela making a point of meeting the postman on her way out to work during the war and taking her letters from him.
    I tried, as I scrubbed the kitchen sink, to remember Angela’s other men friends. There were one or two vague figures escorting her during her teens, but I realised with a growing feeling of nausea that, if I excepted a fellow scientist who had written a paper with her, I knew of noman with whom she had gone out alone either during or since the war, except Gaylord, an American officer, towards the end of the war.
    I tried to crush down my fears. I did not really know who were her admirers – she could have been in love with the entire British Army – and we should not have known at home.
    I was afraid to pursue the subject further and yet a morbid fascination led me on from one damning consideration to another. Try and be sensible, I told myself. He is dead anyway. Maybe he did admire Angela, loving her like a sister and you like a wife-to-be. But the kiss under the laburnum tree was not a sisterly kiss, said my memory.
    I dried my hands. ‘Mother, I think I will lie down for a while before going to work.’
    I felt like lying down to die, like the laddie in the Scottish song.
    The winter twilight had already closed in, as I lay down on my bed. Why had I never thought of this before? Probably because I had never thought of being in competition with Angela. I was nearer the age of the twin brothers, being three years older than she was – and I had always imagined that her sweethearts would be younger men. Three years’ difference in age is nothing between adults – but it is between children, and I was still carrying on the same childish attitude that I had when she was four and I was seven. She had always been my little sister – too young to really feel what I was feeling. Too young to suffer what I was suffering.
    Too young to suffer what I was suffering? My heart leaped with pity for Angela. If she and Barney had been sweethearts, what must she have suffered when he was killed? I remembered her tears on the day the news came and I mentally kicked myself for being so stupid. What must she have felt when he became engaged to me? How did it come about that he proposed to me instead of her? I buried my head in the pillow as if to shut out further thought.
    The light was switched on – Angela walked to the clothescupboard, singing under her breath. She hesitated when she unexpectedly discovered that I was resting on the bed.
    â€˜Sorry to disturb you, Pegs,’ she said. ‘I wanted a dress from the wardrobe.’
    â€˜It is all right,’ I said, ‘I have to go to work soon.’
    She took out the dress and came and sat on the bed by me. She was in her petticoat, and I looked at her coldly. She was beautiful, I thought regretfully, in comparison with my English prettiness.
    â€˜At this minute you look just like Father,’ she said, and then broke off. She must have seen my eyes glistening with unshed tears.
    â€˜Don’t cry, Pegs,’ she said, her voice full of sympathy.
    My eyes examined her face critically. It was lined quite heavily under her powder, and there was a maturity about it that spoke of acquaintance with pain. Something had taken away her springy youthfulness.
    I tried to behave like my normal self, and smiled at her.
    â€˜That’s better,’ she said.
    â€˜Angela, is it true about you and James?’
    â€˜James and me?’
    â€˜Yes, Mother was saying she thought you might be getting married.’
    â€˜Well – er, no