with her writing, and I write too, I make lists like Aunt Nellie.
I look at the necklace, round Aunt Nellie’s neck. It looks funny; it looks wrong. Aunt Nellie is not a necklace kind of person.
Laura said, ‘And this is my daughter Kate, and her young man Tom Rider. Tony Greenway, from the BBC. Tom is writing about somebody frightfully obscure for his thesis, and then he is hoping to be a lecturer somewhere or other, is that right, Tom?’
Tony Greenway, Tom thought, had a beautifully perfected line in deference combined with professional confidence kept discreetly in check. He stood at the fireplace in his brown velvet jacket and spectacles that made him look a little like Mahler, and said all the right things to Laura. He turned to Kate and made sensible, well-informed conversation about the museum scene. He said to Tom, with a nice warm smile ‘We can’t have missed each other by too much at Oxford, I imagine. I must say I envy you – I’d have liked to do post-graduate stuff but no way, I didn’t get a respectable enough degree.’
Laura was thinking that Tony Greenway improved on acquaintance. She had been disappointed at first meeting. To begin with, he was much younger than she had expected. Somehow, she had imagined a more imposing, more distinguished-looking person – someone like Huw Weldon or Lord Clark – and instead here was this thin shortish young man in these rather informal clothes, not a lot older than Kate’s Tom. She had sat opposite him at one of the window tables in the Ailsford Arms, fretfully crumbled her roll and tried to conceal her feelings of anti-climax. He was, at any rate, satisfyingly deferential and obviously frightfully impressed by Hugh and everything and the kind of life one had led. ‘Well, no,’ she said, ‘I didn’t in fact go with Hugh on excavations all that often. I mean, a lot of it is very routine you know, the exciting part is often sorting things out afterwards and of course one did a lot of that. I suppose my part was more seeing to it that things ran smoothly, I’ve always been a sociable sort of person’ – she beamed at him over the pâté, warming as she talked – ‘more so than Hugh, really, and of course one knew all sorts of fascinating people then, Danehurst was always full of visitors, one entertained, well, rather more than one does nowadays, and…’
Now, over Saturday night dinner, Tony Greenway was outlining his plans for the programme. He turned frequently to Laura, to say things like ‘If, of course you feel that that is the kind of thing we should do…’, ‘But what I do terribly want is suggestions from yourself…’
Laura progressed through graciousness to girlish conspiracy. She opened a second bottle of wine. Kate looked glum. Nellie said little and appeared watchful.
‘Tom and Kate will take you up to Charlie’s Tump tomorrow,’ said Laura. ‘I always find it frightfully windy up there, it’s not really my cup of tea. And any other of the sites you might want for filming, Kate knows where everything is. And I’ll look through the old photos to see what might be useful – there are some rather super ones of us all on the Brittany dig, in, goodness it must be nineteen forty something.’
‘What would be marvellous,’ said Tony, ‘would be if there was anything we could use to give a personal slant – diaries, letters. Did he keep a diary on excavations?’
‘Oh, goodness,’ said Laura, ‘I’ve really no idea, I…’,
Nellie said sharply, ‘No, he didn’t.’
Alone with Tom in the drawing room after dinner, while the women cleared up, Tony dropped suddenly his role of deferential guest. He stretched out in an armchair and said, ‘What’s so fascinating about this kind of assignment is that you never know what you’re going to dig up. Smoke?’
‘Not perhaps the most felicitous word, in this instance.’
Tony laughed. ‘I don’t mean, of course, past scandals or anything like that – just that if
I look at the necklace, round Aunt Nellie’s neck. It looks funny; it looks wrong. Aunt Nellie is not a necklace kind of person.
Laura said, ‘And this is my daughter Kate, and her young man Tom Rider. Tony Greenway, from the BBC. Tom is writing about somebody frightfully obscure for his thesis, and then he is hoping to be a lecturer somewhere or other, is that right, Tom?’
Tony Greenway, Tom thought, had a beautifully perfected line in deference combined with professional confidence kept discreetly in check. He stood at the fireplace in his brown velvet jacket and spectacles that made him look a little like Mahler, and said all the right things to Laura. He turned to Kate and made sensible, well-informed conversation about the museum scene. He said to Tom, with a nice warm smile ‘We can’t have missed each other by too much at Oxford, I imagine. I must say I envy you – I’d have liked to do post-graduate stuff but no way, I didn’t get a respectable enough degree.’
Laura was thinking that Tony Greenway improved on acquaintance. She had been disappointed at first meeting. To begin with, he was much younger than she had expected. Somehow, she had imagined a more imposing, more distinguished-looking person – someone like Huw Weldon or Lord Clark – and instead here was this thin shortish young man in these rather informal clothes, not a lot older than Kate’s Tom. She had sat opposite him at one of the window tables in the Ailsford Arms, fretfully crumbled her roll and tried to conceal her feelings of anti-climax. He was, at any rate, satisfyingly deferential and obviously frightfully impressed by Hugh and everything and the kind of life one had led. ‘Well, no,’ she said, ‘I didn’t in fact go with Hugh on excavations all that often. I mean, a lot of it is very routine you know, the exciting part is often sorting things out afterwards and of course one did a lot of that. I suppose my part was more seeing to it that things ran smoothly, I’ve always been a sociable sort of person’ – she beamed at him over the pâté, warming as she talked – ‘more so than Hugh, really, and of course one knew all sorts of fascinating people then, Danehurst was always full of visitors, one entertained, well, rather more than one does nowadays, and…’
Now, over Saturday night dinner, Tony Greenway was outlining his plans for the programme. He turned frequently to Laura, to say things like ‘If, of course you feel that that is the kind of thing we should do…’, ‘But what I do terribly want is suggestions from yourself…’
Laura progressed through graciousness to girlish conspiracy. She opened a second bottle of wine. Kate looked glum. Nellie said little and appeared watchful.
‘Tom and Kate will take you up to Charlie’s Tump tomorrow,’ said Laura. ‘I always find it frightfully windy up there, it’s not really my cup of tea. And any other of the sites you might want for filming, Kate knows where everything is. And I’ll look through the old photos to see what might be useful – there are some rather super ones of us all on the Brittany dig, in, goodness it must be nineteen forty something.’
‘What would be marvellous,’ said Tony, ‘would be if there was anything we could use to give a personal slant – diaries, letters. Did he keep a diary on excavations?’
‘Oh, goodness,’ said Laura, ‘I’ve really no idea, I…’,
Nellie said sharply, ‘No, he didn’t.’
Alone with Tom in the drawing room after dinner, while the women cleared up, Tony dropped suddenly his role of deferential guest. He stretched out in an armchair and said, ‘What’s so fascinating about this kind of assignment is that you never know what you’re going to dig up. Smoke?’
‘Not perhaps the most felicitous word, in this instance.’
Tony laughed. ‘I don’t mean, of course, past scandals or anything like that – just that if
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