The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo

Zen Cho

© 2012 Zen Cho

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The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo

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The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo

Saturday, 7th August 1920

I had tea with the intolerable aunt today. Aunt Iris, the one who is so rich she has a new fur every year, and so mean she has installed a tip box by the door of every WC in her house, so you have to pay a charge every time you need to go. And so sinfully vainglorious I remember she came to visit us at home once and wore a wonderful glossy black mink fur. She sat on the sofa with a fixed grin on her face, sweating gallons in the heat. Ma had to send Koko out to get the doctor. It was just before New Year and Ma was terrified Aunt Iris would go into an apoplexy in our drawing room—which would have been such bad luck.

I had my angle of attack all planned out today, though. On Wednesday I'd found out how much a piece of chocolate cake cost at the restaurant, and I went in with the exact change in my purse. When the waiter asked me what I wanted, I said: "Chocolate cake, please", and I counted out my coins and paid him right then and there.

"I haven't got any more money than that," I explained.

Aunt Iris was furious: she looked like an aunt and she was wearing her furs, of course. Even the English must have thought it peculiar. But even so she didn't offer to pay. She ordered two different kinds of cake and a pot of their most expensive tea, just to show me. But I profited in the end because she couldn't finish even half of one of her slices of cake. I whipped out my notebook and tore out a page and wrapped the other slice in that.

"I'll save you the hassle of eating it, auntie," I said. "You must be so full now! I don't know how you stay so slim at your age."

I hadn't meant the reference to her age as a jibe. My mother is a very modern woman in most ways, but she would still be offended to be accounted any younger than she is. Her opinion is that she did not struggle her way to the august age of forty-three only to have the dignity accorded to her years snatched away from her.

But Aunt Iris has become quite Western from living here so long. She has a passionate hunger for youth. It is especially hard on her to be thwarted in it because the British can never tell an Oriental's age, so she's been accustomed to being told she looks ten years younger than she is.

"My dear Jade," she said in her plushest voice—her voice gets the more velvety the crosser she is—"I know you don't mean to be impolite. Not that I'm saying anything against your dear mother at all—your grandmother wouldn't have known to teach her these things, of course, considering her circumstances. But as an aunt I do feel I have the right to give you—oh, not a scolding, dearest, but advice, meant in the most affectionate way, you know—given for your sake."

The swipe at my grandmother's "circumstances" made me unwise. Aunt Iris is not really an aunt, but a cousin of Ma's. Her mother was rich and Ma's mother was poor. But my grandmother was as sharp as a tack even if she couldn't read and Aunt Iris's mother never had two thoughts to rub together, even though she had three servants just to look after her house.

"You should call me Geok Huay, Auntie, please," I said. "With family, there's no need for all this 'Jade'."

I spoke in an especially Chinese accent just to annoy her. Aunt Iris's face went prune-like.

"Oh, but Jade is such a pretty name," she said. "And 'Geok Huay', you know!" She looked as if my name were a toad that had dropped into her cup of tea. "'Geok Huay' in the most glamorous city in the world, in the twentieth century! It has rather an absurd sound to it, doesn't it?"

"No more absurd than Bee Hoon," I said. "I've always wished I could name a daughter of mine Bee Hoon."

A vein in Aunt Iris's temple twitched.

"It means 'beautiful cloud'," I said dreamily. "Why doesn't Uncle Gerald ever call you Bee Hoon, Auntie?"

Aunt Iris said hastily:

"Well, never mind—you'd best take the cake, my dear. Are you sure you don't want sandwiches as well?"

I was not at all sure I did not want sandwiches. I said I would order some just in case, and ordered a whole stack of them: ham and salmon and cheese and cucumber. Aunt Iris watched me deplete the stack in smiling discontent.

"Greedy little creature!" she tittered. "I would rap your knuckles for stuffing yourself, but you rather need feeding. You are a starveling little slip of a thing, aren't you? Rose and Clarissa, now, have lovely figures. They are just what real women should look like, don't you think?"

"You mean they have bosoms and I don't," I thought, but did not say. It didn't seem worth trying to enunciate through a mouthful of sandwich.

She had lots more little compliments like that.

"You would be so pretty if not for your eyes, dear."

And:

"It's such a pity you inherited your mother's nose. Don't take this the wrong way, dear, but your mother's face has always had such a squashed look. A good nose does so much for a woman's profile, doesn't it? Rose has an exquisite profile. I think she is prettier from the side than from the front. That's from Gerald. His mother was known for having a beautiful nose."

"What a strange country this is," I said, "where a woman can have a famous nose. Did they write about it in the newspaper?"

Well, I didn't say that last sentence. The first was quite enough. I am sufficiently Confucian not to want to alienate even the intolerable aunt. After all she is the only aunt I have here.

It did sting, though. I know—at least, my mind knows—that she thinks Rose and Clarissa are beautiful because they look English, and anything that is English is good to Aunt Iris. My heart is rather less sensible, and vulnerable to jabs about eyes. When I got home I crept down to the landlady's drawing room and stared at myself in her full-length mirror to remind myself of how pretty I am.

You can't ever tell people you think you are pretty. Even if you are pretty you have to flutter and be modest. Fortunately here nobody thinks I am pretty, so my thinking I am pretty is almost an act of defiance; it makes me feel quite noble. I have that slim bending willowy figure that looks so good in a robe, and smooth shining black hair like a lacquered helmet, and a narrow face with a pointy chin and black slashes of eyebrows.

It took me a long time to realise I was pretty, because Ma and Pa never thought so. Even the fair skin they didn't like—I'm not the right kind of fair. The Shanghainese girls on cigarette cards are like downy white peaches. I am like a dead person. This was disturbing on a child. Now I am an adult, I am like an interesting modern painting, but my parents are keen on moon-faces and perms.

They are the nicest parents, though. They always told me I was clever.

But the eyes are small, there's no getting away from that. Poor phoenix eyes! Here you might as well be sparrows.

What a disgusting entry! I must improve my character. The reason why I started this diary was to become a better writer, to develop a purer voice, and to practise cursive handwriting. And here I am raving about looking like a willow when I don't in the least, not being anywhere near as leafy—and all in handwriting that would be enough to make the sisters at my old school cry. (Or more likely, move those tough old biddies to make me cry.)

Enough! I must work on my review. I am reading a terrible sententious book called The Wedding of Herbert Mimnaugh. Firstly, what sort of a name is Herbert and why would a parent with any trace of natural affection wish to afflict their child with such a name? Herbert's parents do not feature prominently in the book when this choice alone makes it obvious that they are the most interesting people in it.

Secondly and cetera, it is awful—hollow intellectual grandstanding that always stays five steps away from any true feeling even while it professes to plumb the depths of human experience. And no sense of humour. I cannot forgive a book that has no sense of humour.

I shall write a review tearing it apart and ask Ravi to look at it. He might give me enough for it that I could buy myself a new dress.

Monday, 16th August 1920

I did the stupidest thing today! My ears still burst into flames every time I think of it. Why is it that embarrassment afflicts me so much more than any other emotion? It must be an indication of a very unenlightened nature. I have forgotten all the passions of my youth, but I still remember the time at school when I absent-mindedly called Sister Mary "Mother" and the whole class laughed. Those were girls who had not absorbed the Christian lessons of loving kindness.

It was setting up to be such a good day as well. Ravi asked me to see him about my review of the terrible Mimnaugh book, so I went to Bloomsbury in trembling and fear.

I like Ravi's office: it's so small and box-like and like a room in a dollhouse. It's infernally hot in the summer and antarctic-cold in the winter. And Ravi in it, with his ink-stained hands and perpetually unfocused eyes, looks like the high-minded scholar he is. It is the twentieth-century equivalent of the poet's garret.

I was worried he would give me helpful critique, which I would have to listen to because Ravi's judgment is unerring. Instead, after shaking hands, he leant over the table and said to me,

"I'd like to publish your essay. We could do with another review in the next issue, and it's very sharp. But I want to be sure that you're prepared for what might follow."

Perhaps my parents were wrong in thinking I was clever. I hadn't the least idea what he was talking about.

"What might follow?" I said.

"Well," said Ravi, "there might be something of an uproar. You do realise Hardie is rather well thought of by the establishment? In fact, you might say he was the establishment."

I nodded, trying to look intelligent.

"It might pay off," said Ravi. "People will certainly read it, and that will attract interest in the journal. And it could be wonderful for you—you'll certainly get a reputation out of it. The question is whether that reputation would be one you'd want. Even the most venerable public intellectual is human, and the problem with offending a famous author is that his friends write for the TLS."

Ravi looked charming: he was so serious and concerned.

"Are you worried for my career?" I said. "D'you think the Bloomsbury harpies would leap on me and carry me off to have my insides for dinner?"

"Oh, I shouldn't think they'd do more than peck you around the head a trifle," said Ravi. "But you are young, you're only just starting out, and you aren't ...." He didn't need to say 'English'. We looked at each other and knew what the other was thinking.

"It's just a risk," said Ravi. "I wanted you to understand that so you could make the decision yourself."

"I am very grateful," I said. I touched his hand lying on the table. "It's good of you to think of me. But I haven't really got a reputation to destroy. With the money you'll give me for this and the money I'll get from my article on 'What The Well-Dressed Woman Is Wearing', I should be able to pay this month's rent and get a new dress. You don't know how I've been wanting a new dress. It's a terrible hunger."

Ravi grinned. "What is the well-dressed woman wearing?"

"Whatever she is wearing, she has got much more money than me to get it with," I said. "No, I'm happy to run the risk, if it is a risk. But I shouldn't think anyone of importance will read it."

Ravi's mouth quivered.

"Thank you," he said. "It's good to know you're excited about being published again in the journal."

"Oh, you know that's not what I meant!" I said. "It's an honour to be published in the Oriental Literary Review—you should have seen my face when I received the first issue with an article by me in it—oh, you are laughing. You are a beast! No, but seriously, Ravi, you must say when I offend you. I never stop to think about what I say before I say it. It's a very bad habit."

"I hope you never lose it," said Ravi. "It's one of my favourite things about you."

"Anyway, it isn't just the money," I said. "Whatsisname deserves a thorough vivisection. I've read some of his earlier works and those were quite good, but he's lost his grip in this Mimnaugh. It's sentimental posturing—inelegant language, ridiculous conclusions."

"That's candour," said Ravi approvingly. "Now that's the Jade Yeo I know."

I did that silly thing I do where I cover my mouth when I smile. I don't know where I learnt it from. It's a horrible affectation, as if I were some innocent little schoolgirl.

"I confess I don't know very much about the literary elite of London," I said, so Ravi wouldn't notice it. "Is Sebastian Hardie terrifically important?"

"He's well regarded," said Ravi. "Well off, well connected, but also a genuinely serious thinker. I've attended a couple of his lectures. He's an excellent speaker, and has something of a following. And he knows absolutely everybody who matters."

"Something of a sacred cow, then," I said without thinking.

"I wouldn't quite put it in those terms," said Ravi carefully.

Of course he is Hindu! He was very nice about it; the next thing he said was, "But yes, in effect."

But I felt dreadful about it. I haven't the faintest idea, come to think of it, whether the term comes from the golden calf in the Bible, or whether it is the British being rude about Hinduism. The problem is that it might very well be the latter, and either way it was an unfortunate thing to say.

The rest of the interview went smoothly enough, but I went home feeling foolish. Ravi is the last person in the world I should want to offend. He is one of the few kind people I know who are also interesting.

Well—I will write him a letter tomorrow, or the day after, and perhaps time will heal my wound. Really it is me and not him I am worrying about, because I do not like to think of him thinking ill of me.

I am sorry, Ravi!

Friday, 17th September 1920

I bought a cabbage at the market and had it in the broth I made from the bones of the roast chicken I lived on last week. Cabbage is a most unexciting vegetable, but I derive an unfailing pleasure from it. What I really want now, though, is winter melon soup, with pork bones. (Q: why is it called winter melon? It can't only be grown in winter, since we had them back home in the most tropical of climes. Is it a joke?)

It was a beautiful autumn day—the city glowed in the sunlight and the skies were that truly cloudless blue you never see back home. Sunshine is so precious here, though England is sunnier than I thought it would be, having been told so often about its greyness. I think it is because the greyness is so depressing that it makes the sunshine all the more spectacular.

But it is certainly autumn. I folded my batik and plaid sarongs and put them away for the next summer, when it shall be warm enough for me to wear them again when I'm pottering or writing or sleeping.

I wrote all the morning.—Oh, I almost forgot the most exciting thing that happened today! Along with the usual dreary bills (I hate bills, they should be outlawed), I received an invitation to a party from none other than Sebastian Hardie himself.

Sebastian Hardie! A party invitation would be excitement enough—I haven't been to a party since my big cousin had a wedding, and presumably she was made to invite me because I am a relation. But to think of getting one from London's leading literary luminary because one has been rude about his book. It is a bit comic.

He has written on the card that he has read my review of "what you were so kind as to call 'the terrible Mimnaugh'" in the Oriental Literary Review and "should very much like to meet me". How ominous. I wonder if he means to squash my presumption in person, or if it is a matter of heaping coals on my head. (Q: why is it virtuous to heap coals on your enemy's head? The disadvantages: singed hair; waste of coal; difficulty of balancing more than three coals at the very most on a person's head. I must find out.)

I do not know if I shall go. A party! And I didn't even buy the dress I wanted after all. Ma turned up in my dreams and told me to save the surplus. Would my mother approve of my going to a party to meet a man I've been rude to?

I think I will go. It will be so interesting. And after all even if he does laugh at me in front of everybody, it does not matter: nobody knows me here.

Friday, 8th October 1920

There's too much to say about the party. I hardly even know where to start.

I started to regret accepting the invitation the minute a butler the approximate size of a mountain opened the door. He looked at me as if he were wondering why I hadn't gone to the traders' entrance. When I managed to persuade him that I had been invited and was led to the drawing room, it was like being plunged into a jungle full of hornbills and parrots. It was bright and noisy and close and warm, and so horribly crowded with dashing people all of whom knew each other, and none of whom I knew.

A nice Indian servant gave me a drink (I wish I could have spoken to him). I skulked in a corner clutching it and trying as hard as I could to look inscrutable and aloof, but feeling scrutable and loof as anything.

It was one of those London townhouses that have long narrow faces on the outside but turn out to have unexpected dimensions on the inside—they go up and out forever. The rooms were large, and the furnishings were beautiful, but almost pointedly worn, just in case you thought they had been bought new. I expect Hardie's great-grandfathers themselves obtained them in a looting on some colonial excursion. There were some very bad examples of Chinese porcelain on the mantelpiece.

The people were the sort of people whose grandparents could have had chicken every day if they had wanted it. The men were beautiful and the women looked intelligent. They were a pleasure to gaze at, pretty as a picture and as real, but the whole thing made me wish I read the papers more. At parties it is as it is with gossip: it's not half as good if you don't know who the players are.

One of the guests passed me her empty glass, thinking I suppose that I was a servant, and I was just wondering whether I should take it as an opportunity to make a break for the kitchen and thence outside when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

"Enjoying yourself?" said Ravi, nodding at the two glasses I was holding.

"Oh, thank goodness," I said. It was such a relief to see a familiar face. I could have hugged him. "Do you know anyone here? I have no idea who anybody is. They really should set up some sort of system. The butler could label people as they came in. Just something discreet—a tag with their names and some indication of their relative notoriety would do. A gold tag for the Queen, silver for a Kipling. That sort of thing."

"I'm acquainted with some people here," said Ravi. He looked around. "Of course, almost everyone you'd know by sight or reputation."

"Are they important?" I said glumly. Ravi smiled.

"It depends on what you mean by important," he said. "They're the sort of people who would benefit from being seen at Hardie's party. And Hardie gains a certain cachet from having them here."

He was too polite to ask what I was doing there, so I explained:

"I was included because of that blasted review. Hardie sent me an invitation, with a personal note and everything. I thought it would be an experience."

"How are you finding it so far?" said Ravi.

"I feel a bit of a tomato," I said. I looked down at my bright red dress.

"Is that the one you bought with the proceeds of 'The Well-Dressed Woman'?" Ravi remembers the things one has said. It's a small thing, but it shows what sort of person he is.

"No, it's an old dress," I said. "I decided to save the money for my grandchildren."

"Well," said Ravi. He seemed about to swallow his words before he said them, but then his mouth went firm and he said, "Old or new, you look beautiful in it."

I expect I went as red as the dress. I was trying to think of something graceful to say in reply when thankfully Ravi stopped paying attention to me and started looking at something over my shoulder. I turned around to see what it was, and saw Sebastian Hardie.

"I'm very pleased to see you, Ravi," he said. "I thought you might be too sensible to come."

"I'm afraid curiosity overcame sense for once," said Ravi. "One knows there's always something worth turning up for at your gatherings." He shook Hardie's hand. "May I introduce you to my friend?"

"I'm not sure I need an introduction," said Hardie. "'The terrible Mimnaugh', I presume?"

He wasn't what I expected at all. I'd seen his picture in Vogue and so had known he was good-looking, in the style of a Romantic poet living in the Lake District. He had a long face with dark hair curling over a white forehead, and wrinkles around his eyes that made him look melancholy when solemn and sweet when he smiled. But he wasn't at all grand.

The most surprising thing about him in person was that he struck one as being sincere. He had a very grave, intense look that, when directed at one, made one feel one ought to say something interesting to deserve it.

"Hardly anyone calls me that," I said absurdly. Hardie smiled as if I'd made a joke. He had a nice smile as well—one that quirked the ends of his mouth just slightly, so that it had a quality of distance. He looked like he was smiling in a daydream, or at the sound of children's laughter.

"It was kind of you to reply to my invitation," he said. "You must forgive me for my importunacy. I was grateful for the attention you gave Mimnaugh, even if you didn't find the poor fellow to your liking."

"Oh," I said.

He was so good-looking! It is dreadful when people are good-looking and pay attention to you. It rarely happens to me, so I didn't know what to do with myself.

"I did like some of your other books," I offered.

"Please don't apologise," said Hardie. "I read your review with great interest, if not precisely pleasure—I'm not quite advanced enough for that, I'm afraid. But it would have been churlish to be offended. A really serious reader is a treasure for any author."

I thought of the novelette on my bedside table. It's sitting on top of Dream of Red Chamber, which I have been meaning to read for ages, only I've misplaced my Chinese dictionary somewhere, so I have been reading other things while waiting for the dictionary to turn up.

Right now my substitute book is The Duke's Folly. The Duke is searching for the naive yet spirited young governess who has helped him throw off his malaise (dukes are always in terrible danger of lapsing into a malaise; it must be all that fox-hunting and quail). But the heroine has gone to the country and is living with her amusing but embarrassingly middle-class sister. I can't imagine the sort of face Hardie would make if he came upon The Duke's Folly on his bedside table, but I love reading it. It's like sinking into a warm bath, or eating a bowl of congee with thousand-year eggs.

"I take all my reading seriously," I said.

"I could tell. That is why I wanted to meet you," said Hardie.

"Yes. I thought the review was written with remarkable insight," said Ravi. Hardie's grave interested expression wobbled a bit, but Ravi didn't seem to notice. He said to me,

"Shall I get you another drink?"

"Yes—no—" But by the time I'd made up my mind he was gone, leaving me alone with Hardie.

"There's an interesting mind," said Hardie, looking after Ravi.

"Ravi is a brick," I said.

Hardie smiled that absent-minded smile. "One does love him. But it remains to be seen whether there is true originality there, or whether it is simply cleverness," he said. "Now, you are a different matter."

It was difficult not to be flattered by that, but—

"How do you know?" I said. "You've only just met me. And you only read that one article. It was five hundred words and mostly complaining."

"We've met before in a previous life, of course," said Hardie. His face gleamed with humour. "Probably you were a porcupine then. How did Ravi find you?"

"I found him," I said. "I went to the doctor's one day and saw the Oriental Literary Review in the waiting room, and I wrote down the editor's address and went to see him the next day. I was quite surprised to find he was so young. I thought he would be old and bearded, and wear moon-shaped spectacles."

"Why did you go?" said Hardie.

"Oh, I fell and scraped my knee," I said. "It sounds ridiculous but it hurt terribly. Has it ever happened to you? It's as if your heart has picked itself up out of your chest and moved down to your knee. It sits there and pulses. You feel horribly exposed. And then the knee went filmy and yellow, and started to drip—"

"Thank you, I have a clear enough idea," said Hardie, grimacing. "I meant to ask why you went to find Ravi."

I knew that, of course. I suppose the question isn't that personal in itself, but the answer is something I'd rather not tell strangers. But Hardie's face was intent and listening. He wasn't only pretending to be interested. I said,

"I'd already sold a few pieces to—" perhaps I shouldn't mention my series on five ways to spruce up an old party dress—"to some other magazines, and I thought he might pay me to write things. But the other reason was because I was lonely."

"Were you?" Hardie looked at me. I thought he was going to say something serious and philosophical about loneliness, but instead he lifted his hand and traced the air just above my cheekbones, almost touching me but not quite.

"It's a shame I'm no sort of artist," he said, so low I had to strain to hear him over the noise. "How I should like to paint those lines."

Now what is one supposed to say to that?

"I'm sure you'd be nice to paint too," I said, unable to think of anything better.

Hardie laughed.

"Poor Ariel," he said. "Alone on an incomprehensible island. Has any other mariner heard your whispers, or did they think it just the wind?"

"I'm really more of a Caliban," I said primly.

Hardie tilted his head.

"Even better," he said.

At that point, thank goodness, someone called out to him: "Hardie! We need your opinion on a matter of very great importance!" He sounded serious and precise and drunk, so it was probably something silly.

Before I could turn away, Hardie put his hand on my arm.

"Come and see me again," he said.

That was all. The next moment he had vanished in the crowd, and I fled. I didn't even say goodbye to Ravi. I hope he didn't spend too much time searching for me.

I do not like Hardie, it was beastly what he said about Ravi being only clever. And he wrote a foolish book. Being good-looking and interesting and having the heavy-lidded gaze of a romantic tapir does not excuse writing a foolish book.

Perhaps he did not mean it. Probably he did not mean it. If he did not mean it, it is all right. I will wake up tomorrow and water my pansies and write as usual. This will be nothing but a dream.

My red dress smells of alcohol and smoke.

Tuesday, 19th October 1920

I shouldn't have gone. Why did I go? Curse this restless thirst for excitement! You would think living on one's own miles from home in the most thrilling city in the world ought to be enough, but no. I've got to rush off to see married authors in clandestine circumstances.

Sebastian Hardie is married! I suppose I ought to have known that, but he isn't quite posh enough to be in Debrett's, and he certainly didn't mention it in his letter. What a lot of nonsense he spouted about it in person—but I am getting ahead of myself.

It was a whole week before he wrote. I'd almost persuaded myself that he wouldn't when I received the letter. It was rather warm in its sentiments, considering we'd only met the once. But I must confess something shocking: I wasn't shocked.

The problem is that I have never had the chance to be naughty. When I was little I was too busy reading books for it to occur to me. When I was older there was never any opportunity—everybody I knew was so well-behaved, and it's no fun being bad on your own. Now I am living on my own in London and ignoring pleas to return home, which I suppose is badness enough.

But I want a chance to be properly bad. So far all I have done as an unaccompanied maiden in London is read and write and cook. This is hardly tasting the delights of debauchery in the immoral West.

Of course, I didn't go to see Hardie with the idea of debauching—or being debauched, I suppose, since I imagine any bauch he ever had has long been removed. (Certainly his letter gives this impression. I had to look up most of the words.) I just wanted to see what would happen.

This time the butler knew me. He ushered me in when I'd scarcely even given my name. I don't know what I was expecting, but I certainly didn't think to find the family sat down to tea.

There was Hardie, looking like a statue with a mind too grand for pigeons to disturb, and a queenly woman with lovely red hair, and two little boys. It was the little boys that made me stop. The letter burned in my pocket.

"Oh," I said. "Is this not Hardy's house? I'm sure the man outside told me Thomas Hardy lived here. I read Jude the Obscure and thought I should come to England and tell Mr. Hardy how I admired it. I must go and give that man outside a piece of my mind. I'm so sorry to have bothered you—"

"Do sit down, my dear," said the lovely red-haired one. "We've been expecting you. Sebastian's told me all about you."

"I hope you don't mind that we've begun without you," said Hardie. "Julian and Clive were ravening for their tea, and we don't stand on ceremony in this house. This is my wife Diana."

There seemed nothing to do but to sit down.

"That's all right," I said. "Tea is a made-up meal to me anyway."

"Do you not have tea in China?" said Diana.

The British are a peculiar race. My grandfather was transported to Malaya because they needed tin, and yet I've never once met a Briton to whom the thought had occurred that perhaps I spoke English because I am from one of their colonies. It is as if I were a piece of chess in a game played by people who never looked down at their fingers.

"We have the beverage, but not the buns," I said, to avoid tiresome explanation.

"I am glad to be English, then. I should miss the buns," said Diana. "And you were the one who wrote about the terrible Mimnaugh, if I recall correctly."

"That's right," I said.

"Dear Ravi, what magnificent risks he takes," said Diana, smiling.

"One loves him for his purity," said Hardie. "He's quite unspoilt, despite Cambridge and all this unhealthy mingling with lesser specimens of the Bloomsbury genus."

"Yes. Ravi," I said, "is more like a mountain view than a human being, really."

They laughed, though I am not sure that we were all amused at the same thing. The conversation was like walking along a narrow cliff path in the dark, never knowing whether the next step would take you over the edge. And yet one was drawn in despite oneself.

I think Hardie could sense I was cross, because he said:

"Ravi certainly has a genius for seeking out the genuine. I do not know anyone with such an unerring eye."

"Your essay bears out that truth," said Diana, nodding at me. "But Sebastian, we were discussing Mrs. Woolf's novel. You did not like it?"

Hardie shrugged. "I did not think there was anything to like, or dislike for that matter. There is nothing there. It is all surface."

"Sebastian is really a thwarted reactionary," said Diana to me. "He hates to see anyone do anything new with a book, or for anyone new to do it."

"Calumny!" cried Hardie.

"I must say I share Hardie's feelings in this," I said, thinking of The Duke's Folly.

We spoke of literature, or rather Hardie and Mrs. Hardie did, until the buns were consumed. Then Hardie got up:

"Our visitor shall decide. If you will come to the library with me, I'll dig up the book for you and we shall see what you think of it. I shall be deeply injured if you think it no worse than Mimnaugh."

"Go on, my dear," said Diana, looking up from the table. "Julian takes ever so long over his tea."

I trotted obediently out of that sun-drenched familial scene into the dusty seclusion of the library. Hardie shut the door behind me, swept me into his arms, and kissed me.

His chin was rough and he smelt of tobacco. I hit him in the chest and shrieked.

"Please, there's no need to be distressed," he gasped. "You looked so beautiful in the light—I couldn't contain myself. I thought you wouldn't mind."

There was a sturdy-looking desk. I planted myself behind it.

"By what byzantine chain of logic did you arrive at that conclusion?" I demanded.

"Did you not read my letter?"

"This letter?" I took the letter out of my pocket and waved it at him. "This letter? Is this a letter for a married man to write?"

Hardie stopped looking foolish. His face softened. His eyes went kind.

"Is that the problem?" he said. "Dear girl—dear innocent girl. I shall explain all."

"Not with two minors in the house, you won't," I said.

"I love Diana. She is my mate in the purest, truest sense of the word," he said. "But the glory of a love such as ours is that it is subject to no limits. The wellspring of an eternal love does not run dry. Diana knows this as well as I. We are as one in this, as in everything. We promised each other at the very beginning that we should never allow any appalling Victorian archaism to be a restriction on us. I am allowed my passions—for literature, for art, for beauty in all its forms."

He was coming closer. He was so dreadfully good-looking! I am not used to good-looking gentlemen leaning very close and speaking in low tender tones. Girls ought to be given training in their youth, to be prepared for such an eventuality.

"And Diana's passions?" I said.

The light in Hardie's eyes dimmed.

"The conjugal act gives her little pleasure," he said. "But she knows all of my heart and mind—she has joy in that, and in our children, and the garden. She has her own friends. She paints—she will never be great, but it gives her pleasure."

"Quite the perfect marriage," I said.

I had thought the position behind the desk the most secure, because with the wide rampart of the desk before me, I would only have to defend a limited space. It now became apparent that there was a flaw in my thinking. Having a limited space to defend also meant there was limited space for escape—space that could all too easily be filled up by the determined bulk of a man.

Hardie is surprisingly tall for a sensitive poet type.

"With such ideal domestic arrangements, I can scarcely see why you would need me," I said.

Perhaps I could scramble over the desk? Oh dear.

He smelt really very nice.

"Can you not?" Hardie whispered. He kissed me again.

I'm afraid I melted against him a bit. No one had touched me in months and months. Mine was an affectionate family and I missed human contact. And I have never been touched by a man, so of course that was exciting.

Hardie was doing quite uncivil things with his mouth. It was a trifle wet, but warm and strangely pleasant.

A pigeon took off from the window. The sound of its wings woke me out of my stupor. I broke away and said to Hardie,

"I am going home now."

"Will you come and see me again?" said Hardie.

I know what he means by "see me"! I am not so innocent as all that! And he can't have thought me so very innocent, considering the letter he wrote me. Anyone who wanted to stay innocent would have been scared away by that.

Perhaps that was the point.

That was quite a lot badder than I meant to be.

I do not know what to think. I have been restless all day.

Friday, 22nd October 1920

Succour from an unexpected source. I am to go to France with Aunt Iris. The beautiful Rose and the exquisite Clarissa are staying with friends; Uncle Gerald is tied down with business; and Aunt Iris must go to Paris to see a tailor about a dress. What strange exigencies drive the rich. But Aunt Iris cannot go anywhere alone, and so she has commandeered me.

I could not in any case have refused without awkwardness, but I will be glad to go. I must be out of London, even if it means days of uninterrupted Aunt Iris. And she has promised to pay my expenses, so that will mean at least a week's outgoings I needn't worry about.

I had a dreadful thought yesterday. Wouldn't it be terribly good for my career to have an affair with Sebastian Hardie? This literary high life is in a fair way to turning me into a monster of depravity.

Wednesday, 3rd November 1920

I am in Paris, the city of romance! It is a most peculiar place. You walk along gazing at the wonderful pretty buildings and their graceful wire railings to the tune of your intolerable aunt going on at you for not dressing better and not being married and not having a respectable profession etc. etc. etc. Then suddenly the scene is interrupted by the pungent stink of manure and urine, which rises out of nowhere and envelopes you. It is difficult to have the correct sentiments about the sight of the Eiffel Tower lit up at night when the smell is that of a poorly kept public toilet.

But we have had wonderful food, despite Aunt Iris's faces at the bills. I know I say a great deal that is unConfucian and unkind about Aunt Iris, but she has never forgotten herself so far as not to appreciate good food. Today we had a sultan's spread of a brunch: gigantic cups of milky coffee, little flaky croissants and sugared crepes, perfectly spherical roast potatoes like tiny yellow suns, crispy bacon and fat sausages and a bowl of scrambled eggs like liquid gold. (I suppose not quite a sultan's spread, then, given the bacon and sausages.) And for dessert, yoghurt with an elegant comma of raspberry coulis in it, and skinless pink segments of grapefruit that burst juice all over your fingers when you picked them up.

The grapefruit was a novelty. It is like pomelo, only smaller, bitterer and more pink. I must see if I can bring one for Ma to try the next time I go home—whenever that is.

I have written a letter to Ravi. I saw him last Tuesday and he said he would like to hear what I thought of Paris, so he shall. I have written the letter twice and have copied it out fair once. I expect he won't answer it, though.

Monday, 8th November 1920

Disaster: Hardie is here. I opened the newspaper this morning, thinking of looking for a cartoon and seeing if I could make out its meaning, and there in the letters section was his face staring up at me.

Blast the man! What is he doing, turning up in every corner of the world one thinks of visiting? You would think following Aunt Iris to Paris to carry her bags and watch her try on an endless series of hideous dresses would be enough to propitiate the gods. And yet here Hardie is, to give some talk or other at a loathsome Institute. The next thing I know, when I think of doing so much as sitting down on a comfortable sofa, it will turn out to be Hardie on his hands and knees, with a figured cloth and some cushions laid on him.

It is ridiculous!

I will not be disturbed. There's absolutely no reason why I should see him. Paris is a city of some considerable size, and I am not very large. I shall sink into the crowd. Probably he has forgotten all about his kisses and his silly talk. But it does not matter even if he hasn't, because I shan't see him.

Ravi writes, "I enjoyed your description of the charms of Paris. I have never been, but I must acquire an aunt of means and prevail upon her to take me there. I feel I should be at home: as with Paris, what you might call a leisurely approach to excrement disposal, and a consequent distinctive aroma, were characteristic features of my hometown."

It is such a comfort to have a friend who does not mind talking about these matters. At home one's digestive system was the property of every passing aunt and uncle; here in Europe one never ever speaks of such things.

Tuesday, 9th November 1920

Hardie came to see me.

I don't know how he found me out. Perhaps he is some sort of clairvoyant—a Theosophist—a qigong master. Perhaps he asked a medium.

I am in a daze. I will try to set things out in order.

I was in our hotel room, reading. Aunt Iris had gone out to meet one of her friends.

(Aunt Iris is an odd fish: even though she makes at least three trips to France in a year, the only French person she ever goes to see is her tailor, and all her friends in Paris are English people. I suppose it is because she can only say "too expensive" and "the silk, please" in French. Perhaps I shouldn't blame her, but I have already learnt to say "chocolate cake" and "pigeon" and "where is the station?" in French, and I have only been here a week.)

But I digress. I was reading Charlotte Bronte, and Jane was being serenaded by Mr. Rochester. (I see the source of all my problems: a Bronte was completely the wrong thing to be reading, unless it were an Anne. I should have been reading George Eliot.) A knock sounded on the door and I said, "Come in," without looking up, thinking Aunt Iris had returned early.

"This is just how I imagined you," said Hardie softly. "Sitting in the sunlight with a book—don't move! You were perfect."

I had leapt about two feet in the air and then scuttled behind my armchair.

"I beg to disagree: I think I am even better here," I said. "The chair hides all my problem spots. The feet—the stomach—the knees—"

Hardie was looking amused.

"I won't pounce," he said. "There's no need for you to hide from me. I shan't do anything you don't want me to, I promise."

"That's all well and good," I said, not moving. "But I don't trust you as far as I can throw you." I considered my arms. "And that wouldn't be very far! No, you can say anything you like, but don't you think I don't know what you mean just because you are using words that mean different things from what you really mean."

"There's your felicitous way with language," Hardie remarked. "Will you believe me if I say I simply want to talk?"

"No!"

"Very wise," said Hardie. "But I am telling the truth—part of it, at least. A talk is one of the things I would like to enjoy with you. May I sit down and try it?"

I glared at him, but he kept standing there at the door with that mild courteous look on his face. His lips were quirked in that daydream smile, but his eyes were clear and serious.

"You may," I said. "But order us some tea first. The beverage, and the buns. And you must pay or Aunt Iris will toss me into the Seine."

He did it without a murmur—not quite enough to restore him to my good graces, but he ordered hot chocolate as well, which did. It came in gleaming metal jugs with white foam on the top, and I poured it out and sat there with a bowl in my hand until the heavenly smell went all the way through my head and cleared it out. I forgot and smiled at him.

I should have hated him if he had made some comment about it: "There, that's better", or something to that effect. But he only smiled back.

"Do you like chocolate then?" he said. I liked him for asking, not stating it. But I was in a contrary mood, so I said:

"That is a silly question. Like asking one whether one likes sunshine, or flowers, or babies."

"Babies, at least, are not universally popular," Hardie pointed out.

"People who dislike babies are fools, unless they hate everyone," I said firmly. "Babies are nothing more than little small humans, only they're pleasanter and better-smelling and more attractive than your average adult."

"You've never been kept awake by a hungry infant squalling at an ungodly hour of the morning," said Hardie.

"Oh, as if you have," I said. I'm sure Diana Hardie cultivates a pure artistic passion for feeding babies at three in the morning!

Hardie paused a moment, his face working as if it did not know what expression to wear, but then he grinned and inclined his head.

"A hit," he said. "Where did you get that sharp tongue?"

"Is honesty sharpness now?" I said. "I can never understand the English. We Orientals are meant to be inscrutable and mysterious, but whenever I say what I think, the way my mother brought me up to do, the English fall about swooning. I can't imagine what you must be like by yourselves. How does anything ever get done if none of you say what you mean?"

"We muddle along somehow," said Hardie. "I take it a forthright manner runs in the Yeo family, then?"

"It is nice when you ask questions instead of assuming things and pouncing on people," I observed. "Yes, I suppose so. My mother is a great talker, and she is not very good at subterfuge. She has a grand mind that will not be trammelled by little things like etiquette. I like to think I am like her."

"You are fond of your parents," Hardie said. He poured me some tea. "An unusual affliction."

"Do you think it's an affliction to like your parents?" I said.

"It seems an inconvenient feeling when you live so far away from them."

"When they are all the way over in China, you mean?" I said maliciously.

"Malaya, I believe," said Hardie. He saw my look and laughed. "I do apologise. I asked Ravi about you. You see, I'm interested in you. I should like to be your friend, and not make you leap behind furniture every time I appear. I thought if I spoke to someone who knew you, I would get a better idea of how we could arrive on better terms."

"What did Ravi say?" I said.

"Not a great deal. Nothing bad, if you were worried," said Hardie. "He refused to tell me why you left Malaya, however."

Everyone asks this. But I was beginning to like Hardie despite myself, and I thought I wouldn't mind telling him. (Of course, I'd liked him enough to kiss him before. But one may like someone enough to kiss them without liking them enough to confide in them. The two are quite different emotions.)

"It's not a very interesting tale," I said. "I came to study at one of the universities here. And then I started writing, and found I could make enough by it to keep myself. That was exciting—you see, before that everything I'd had was given to me by my parents, so it was refreshing to be able to do things for myself."

"They were fond parents, I take it," said Hardie.

"Oh yes. My mother and father are excellent creatures," I said. I hesitated. "I should have gone home and tried writing for the Straits Times, if they would have me. But then this blasted marriage business came up."

"Marriage?" said Hardie.

"Yes. My mother and father think it would be rather a good idea if I were to marry the son of one of his business friends," I said. "They would never force me. But they are so tedious about it. There is no turning aside to talk about one's walk to the library, or the iniquities of one's landlady, or one's trips to Paris. It all comes back to the son. And he's fallen in love with me, the gudgeon. And he is kind, and reasonably good-looking, and would look after me—"

"A romantic hero, in short," said Hardie.

"And my mother is convinced that I harbour a secret passion for him, only in my girlish naivete I don't know it," I said. "It is a bother. My parents write and say: you had better come home soon to marry him, or he will marry someone else. I say: I shan't come home until he has married someone else. They respond: well, you had better come, he won't wait for you forever—and so on, without end. My mother and father have very focused intellects. And they've never grown out of the habit of treating me like a delightful baby that doesn't know what it wants."

Hardie looked at me. It was coming on to evening and a soft dying light came through the windows. His face was half ivory and half deep purplish shadow, and his mouth was tender.

"What do you want?" said Hardie.

I said what my parents always hate hearing me say.

"I would like," I said, "some excitement before I die."

I kissed him.

Let me try to put down what happened as unblushingly as I can. Perhaps I will never engage in the activity again, and I shall have to go off this recollection of it for the rest of my life.

We kissed a while—Hardie very gentle and restrained, I trying to work out what I was meant to do with my teeth and tongue and lips. In ordinary kissing one aligns one's lips with the kissee's lips, and presses them together, but in—well—I can't think of a better term—in sex kissing the insides of one's mouth is involved, and it is quite difficult to make it so the respective lips are aligned. One folds one's lips on top of the other's. But caution is required: if anyone's lips stray too far beyond the mouth it gets very damp, and one feels as if one is being eaten by an excessively friendly lion.

When he got too excited to stop at kissing, Hardie picked me up and put me in his lap and put his hand up my skirt, kissing my face and my mouth and the hollow of my throat, and parts lower than that as well. How warm my face is! It's strange how embarrassed I am now, writing this down, when at the time I didn't even think to blush, but took his hand and showed him where to touch.

He has great big hands. The skin was rougher on the top and the fingernails were blunt (good job they were—I wonder if he cut them in advance). They were soft, except for writing calluses. Oh I do love men's hands.

Hardie put his fingers inside me. That hurt a little, but it was somehow exciting too—it was such a novel sensation. I thought I ought to do something other than shiver and sigh, so I tried opening his shirt and touching his chest (having observed that he seemed interested in mine). But I am not sure if he liked it. He did take it as a cue to lay me down and take my blouse off and kiss my breasts.

I have to say that it is very pleasant for one's bosom to receive flattering attention after years of its inspiring no warmer emotion than maternal disappointment. Pa's side of the family runs to flat-chestedness, so Ma should really have been prepared for my shape—or rather, my lack of one. But instead she nurtures the hope that some day, perhaps at the age of thirty or thereabouts, I will blossom into voluptuousness.

Oh dear, it doesn't seem right to be talking about one's parents when one is describing being debauched. I must try to focus my mind.

When he had been kissing my bosom for a while, both of us breathing very fast and heavy as if we were running a race together, I decided to take initiative and undid his trousers. Hardie laughed a low wobbly laugh and murmured something, but I was too busy looking at his parts to listen.

The male member is a peculiar thing. Of course complaints can be made about the female parts as well, but I think there is something rather pretty and charming about the mound of Venus and the soft crinkly hair that covers it, like grass on a hill.

Hardie's member, which presumably does not deviate wildly from the average, was a dark pink cylinder of flesh, which bulged out into a sort of knob at the top. It was covered by a veined skin out of which the knob emerged on occasion. This member and his testicles were a different colour from the rest of him, which is a pale doughy hue. It created a singular effect when most of his clothes were off. I felt rather tender of him, he looked so absurd and vulnerable.

The skin on the male parts is very soft, and one is not meant to try to strip the shaft of its outer skin, for this makes the possessor say, "Ouch!"

After this Hardie took my hand away, and kissed me, and settled down between my legs. I helped him push his way in. It was a little painful—I am still sore—but I did not mind it.

There was something very primal about the whole thing. That is a silly obvious sort of thing to say—but people are so sophisticated about sex. They say such a lot about it, or they don't say anything, so that it becomes something mystical and elusive. But the act itself was so wordless and unsophisticated and basic. Hardie could have been any man. I could have been any woman. And yet at the same time it was so personal, because one is so much in the moment. There was no distance because there was no thinking—no more than one thinks about what one's body is doing when one is in the WC.

Hardie is different when he is not talking. He was gentle and flustered and earnest. I liked him better than I'd ever liked him before. When we were done, much quicker than I would have liked, he was embarrassed and apologised: "Sorry—sorry", without looking up.

"I don't mind," I said, though I did rather. You'd think a married man and habitual philanderer would do better. "Was it all right?"

He was all tousled and sleepy, like a boy.

"Yes," he said. He touched my face. "Thank you. You were lovely."

I rousted him out pretty briskly. I can't imagine how awful it would have been if Aunt Iris had returned early.

He says he will come to see me again. I don't really know if I want to see him again. I feel I would be embarrassed.

How long this is! I started writing it in the morning and it is past lunchtime now. Aunt Iris has come in three times and looked begrudgingly approving of my diligence (though she thinks writing is bad for my back and eyesight, and also for my prospects of getting a husband). I must put this away and write something that I would be paid for.

(Could I sell parts of this? One suspects that anything with sex in it might sell for quite a good price, if one could find the right buyer. Imagine Ravi's face if I asked! Oh dear.)

I must not feel ashamed, I must never feel ashamed. One must be true to oneself, and taste as much as one can of the varied buffet of life: that must be the guiding principle.

Thursday, 18th November 1920

Our last day in Paris. Hardie took me out to lunch, then we went for a walk in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It was very very cold, but startlingly pretty despite the weather: orderly European gardens with wide gravel paths, statues, flowerbeds. It would be lovely in the summer. (How European it makes me feel to write that!)

"It is nice to meet outside a hotel room for once," I remarked.

"I am fittingly reproached," said Hardie. "I have not been very gallant, have I?"

"No. But you have been very instructive," I said to comfort him, but Hardie was not listening.

"My dearest, if you would come to me in London, preferably auntless, there would be no need for these sordid assignations in hotels. Diana and I would welcome you into our own home—"

"Oh no no no," I said, alarmed. "Of course I shan't see you in London. I have been perfectly happy with the sordid assignations. I simply meant that it is nice to see these gardens, and not be cooped up in a hotel all day. I've not had many chances to see the city. Aunt Iris doesn't much like to go out for anything besides shopping."

Hardie looked away, so I knew I had hurt his feelings. For a celebrity he has an awful excess of sensibility, and is very anxious about one's opinion of him. Perhaps it comes of being an artist.

"I am sorry," I said. "I like you and Diana well enough, but I should find it very odd to continue my relations with you in a sort of three-person marriage. I had a conventional upbringing, you see."

Hardie's expression wobbled between affront and amusement, but finally settled on a smile.

"'Well enough'! Heartless little animal," he said. "To fall back on your 'conventional upbringing' now, when for the past week you have been—"

"Yes, yes, but that was all for the purposes of artistic development," I said. "I thought it would be an educational experience. It is all grist to the mill. You ought to know, being a writer."

Hardie made a face.

"May we at least be friends on your return to London, little Caliban?" he said. "Or would that occasion too much disruption to your continuing artistic development?"

"Friends, yes," I said cautiously. "But you know I don't like parties, or clever people in large groups."

"If you will come to tea with me and Diana once in a while, I shall provide buns and biscuits and beverages, and never invite anyone clever at all," promised Hardie.

He is something of a cad, but he can be rather sweet for all that. It is funny to think of how dazzled and shy I was when I first met him. I am not in the least intimidated by him now, but perhaps that is what happens when you have seen someone in the nude. I felt I had been bullying him enough, so I gave him a kiss on the cheek when we parted.

I shouldn't object to seeing him socially, and I would like to talk to Diana and find out what she really thinks of things. But I am happy to put a period to our romance.

It has given me lots of material, and one feels one understands some things better now. I shouldn't have liked to have been a virgin my whole life. But I do not love Hardie even one little bit, and if I don't love him, it might have been immoral to continue fornicating past the point that it was educational.

Besides, my mother and father didn't sit with me for afternoons and afternoons teaching me my times tables for me to become a concubine.

I should have said that to Hardie! Imagine his face. I'm sure he would never think to describe me as his concubine, or his previous lovers as members of his harem. But all the high-flown poetising about passion overcoming staid convention in the world cannot change the fact that very few women harbour girlish dreams of becoming second wife. My grandmother was a second wife and she thought it was rubbish, and my grandmother was a very sensible woman.

Tuesday, 1st February 1921

I bumped into Ravi on Charing Cross Road today. I went there to purchase the sequel to The Duke's Folly. It's called The Duke's Delight. The Duke has procreated since the previous book, and his charming harum-scarum daughter has interrupted her primary occupation of getting into scrapes to become attracted to an ineligible young officer, thus repeating the mistakes of the previous generation. (My mother would say it was karma, dishing up to the Duke a fitting revenge for his unfilial actions in the first book.)

I came up the road with my brown paper parcel and there was Ravi standing next to a bin of discounted books, a Sanskrit grammar in one hand and a monograph on Ceylonese natural history in the other.

"Do you know Sanskrit, Ravi?" I said.

He started, came back down to Earth, and smiled at me.

"I've been making a study of it," he said. "I learnt a little when I was a boy, but that was a very long time ago. I'm trying to pick it up again. Are you busy? Would you like to have tea with me?"

"Is it tea time already?" I said. "Oh!" I caught his wrist and covered his watch with my hand. "Now tell me what time it is."

"It's half past three," said Ravi. "No—twenty-five to. And we've had a good month at the ORL. I am in a mood to spend my riches. Let me just acquire these books and then we will go to Fortnum & Mason."

When he'd paid he swiped my parcel and put it under his arm with his usual unfussy courtesy. We went off down the street, happy as ducks in a bakery.

"It is precisely twenty-five to," I said. "And you didn't even look! Was there any indication that you would be a genius when you were born? Did your mother observe that the back of your head jutted out particularly, or did you perhaps have six toes on one foot?"

"It isn't quite as unusual an ability as it seems to you," said Ravi.

"Because not everyone is as stupid about time as me, you mean," I said. "But you shan't shake me. I shall continue to believe it is magic."

"If you want to consider me a wizard then do by all means," said Ravi. "But it's nothing very mystical. I know how much time it takes me to do things. So long as I've looked at a clock once in a day, it's just a matter of calculation."

"Now that proves it's pure magic," I said. "If it were not for its sometimes getting dark, and for one's getting hungry, I would never notice the passage of time."

"Is that why I haven't been seeing you as often as I used to?" said Ravi.

I glanced up at his face, but he was gazing at the shop windows with a mild interested look.

"Oh—it isn't—" I said. "I've just been busy."

I felt foolish. I hadn't thought he would notice that I had stopped visiting the Oriental Literary Review office.

"Yes, I imagine the attention you received for the Mimnaugh review has kept you on your toes rather," said Ravi. "I hope it's been profitable as well as interesting?"

"Oh yes," I said. "I've had lots of work. Publishing that article was the greatest favour you've ever done me."

"I wonder," said Ravi quietly.

What did he mean? I should have asked him, but I felt too awkward. Instead I said,

"In fact I'm so nearly rich I ought to spend some of it, just to make sure I'm not shut out of heaven by my wealth. Will you insist on its being your treat, or may I pay?"

"I believe I set out the terms when I made my offer," said Ravi. "We'll have no chopping and changing now, if you please."

"You have," I said, "an unpleasing rigidity of character, Ravi. You lack flexibility. Work on this. It is the only blemish that mars a great mind.—Oh, but I have a brilliant idea. I shall buy your tea and you shall buy mine. That's fair, isn't it?"

Ravi allowed that it might be acceptable. I do like a man who allows you to be chivalrous in return. Hardie never did. I suppose he was trained to think that is manners, but I like to hold doors for other people once in a while.

It was nice to be with Ravi, who is sensible. But it wasn't the same—not quite the same as it used to be. He didn't seem entirely natural.

I can't bear to think he might be disappointed in me. And he doesn't know the half of it.

We had reached Fortnum's and sat down, and each commanded the other to order whatever we liked off the menu, price be damned. But the awkwardness, imagined or not, was gnawing at me, so I said:

"Ravi, we are friends, aren't we?"

Ravi gave me a surprised look. He has the nicest eyes. One feels one could say anything to those eyes, and it would be understood as one would want it to be understood.

"I should like to think we are," he said.

"You don't think notoriety has spoilt my character, do you?"

Ravi looked very serious. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin and raised his eyes to the ceiling. He opened his mouth, but he couldn't keep it up, and started laughing.

"You are a three-horned spotted beast," I said. "I am serious!"

"I think," said Ravi, "any damage to your character was already fixed by the time Mimnaugh made you famous. That is my professional opinion."

"Well—" I hesitated. "Would you still be my friend even if I had done something you didn't quite approve of? Something that was—that was rather foolish?"

That made him calm down and look at me properly.

"Is this about Sebastian Hardie?" he said.

"No! What makes you think that?" I said, but I could feel I'd gone a furious red. I pressed my cheeks to try to make it go away.

Ravi looked as if he regretted bringing it up. "I've heard ... some things."

"Oh," I said.

I could well imagine the sort of things people have been saying. Hardie has let drop that our dalliance in Paris is not as much of a secret as I'd thought. Apparently he wrote some poems about the piquant charms of Caliban, and his friends guessed who he meant. I got quite cross and called him all sorts of names, saying he was a great big jarmouth and a child like him brought shame to his mother, but he was so apologetic that I let it drop.

Aunt Iris does not move in Bohemian literary circles, so I thought it would be all right. It hadn't occurred to me that Ravi might hear of it.

"Were they rather awful things?" I said.

Ravi stared at the tablecloth. He seemed to be working out what to say.

"Everything I heard said more about the speaker than the spoken of," he said. He met my eyes and smiled slightly. "I'm afraid I couldn't tell you much about what was said. People didn't talk about it for very long in my presence."

"Thank you," I said. I wanted to touch his hand, but didn't. "I haven't seen Hardie since Christmas anyway."

Ravi nodded, but I knew he wouldn't say anything more about it if I didn't. I didn't know what he'd heard, but I didn't want to ask him either. I suppose it doesn't really matter.

I said, "Do you mind, Ravi? I mean ...."

But I didn't know how to say what I meant. Ravi is lovely, but probably he is like most other men, and expects good girls to be different from girls who have sex without being married or frightened.

I used to be a good girl and that was uncomplicated, but I thought complicated would be more interesting than safe.

"Shall we still be friends, do you mean?" said Ravi.

That wasn't quite what I wanted to say, but it was close enough. I nodded.

"We shall be friends," said Ravi, "as long as you continue to like me, and say things without stopping to think about them first, and do not insult my clothes or my poetry. Will that do?"

I rubbed my eyes.

"Do you write poetry, Ravi?" I said.

"Doesn't everybody?" said Ravi.

"I don't," I said. "I feel you only ought to write poetry if you are tremendously intelligent, or terrifically in love. You are the former, of course, but I've never been either. Will you show me your poetry?"

"I only write poetry in Tamil, I'm afraid," said Ravi.

"Will you teach me Tamil?"

"Perhaps," said Ravi. "Some day."

After that I was much happier, and I think Ravi felt more comfortable as well. He ordered a piece of sponge cake and I had trifle, and we both had interesting kinds of tea. And we talked about everything—almost everything.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him, but in the end I couldn't bring myself to do it. I suppose it's for the best. I do not see Hardie till Thursday, and it's only right that he should know first.

Thursday, 3rd February 1921

I told Hardie and Diana today. I did it almost as soon as I had sat down, for fear that I should lose my nerve if I waited. Diana was pouring us tea when I turned to Hardie and said:

"Hardie, you have said to me before that you tell Mrs. Hardie everything, don't you?"

"My dear," said Diana. "Call me Diana, please."

Hardie smiled at her. "Indeed there are no secrets between us."

Diana put down her teapot and passed me my cup of tea.

"Is this why you don't come to see us half as often as you should?" she said. "My dear, I know everything—everything. And I can't say how happy it makes me that Hardie should have found a gem like you."

"Oh, it's not that," I said hastily. "I've just been rather busy. It is kind of you to keep inviting me. But I did tell Hardie that I had no intention of disrupting your family routine."

"She's had her fill of me and would throw me away like an old toy," Hardie confided in Diana.

"And it delights me that you are such an obdurate gem," said Diana to me. "You can't think how good it is for him. The course of life is altogether too smooth for Sebastian and a good snubbing is tremendously bracing for his constitution. He wakes up in the morning snorting like a bull and dashes to his study and writes three articles before lunchtime."

I saw I would have to turn the tide of the conversation, or be swept away with it.

"I'm glad he has been so fruitful," I said. "Because I have been as well. In fact that's what I wanted to speak to you both about today."

Hardie was still laughing, but Diana's elegant dark eyebrows drew together. She is much more intelligent than Hardie. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this?

"I am going to have a child," I said. "I thought you ought to know. Only mind I've already picked out names for it. It shan't have stupid names like—" I caught myself before I said "Julian, or Clive". They are stupid names, but presumably Hardie and Diana wouldn't have given them to their children if they had thought so.

"It shall have a sensible Chinese name, anyway," I said. "'Light' if it is a boy and 'Valour' if it is a girl."

Hardie ran his hand through his hair.

"Ah," he said.

"Oh my word," said Diana faintly. She looked at Hardie, who sat hunched in his chair, looking like a schoolboy who has destroyed his great-uncle's collection of antique erotic figurines.

"It is his, I'm afraid," I said apologetically. "I haven't—um—with anyone else. And we've never had a case of virgin birth in my family. But you aren't to worry about it. I didn't bring it up to be horrible. I shan't tell anyone, or make a scandal. Only—"

It was dreadful to say it. But if I have learnt anything from my mother it is that one has got to carry out one's responsibilities, and something as trivial as personal pride can't be allowed to stand in the way.

"I haven't got any money, you see," I said. "I won't need a great deal, but for a midwife and things—and I suppose school in future—there isn't anyone else I can ask. My mother and father are far away, and—"

But I'd decided not to talk or think about what my mother and father would say if they knew, because the only thing that could have made the whole thing worse was my bawling like the baby I am going to have. I shut my mouth and looked at them.

Diana had sat there listening with an awful fixed face, her beautiful mouth in a stern line. Now she said, without taking her eyes off me,

"Sebastian, you must go. This is a thing between women."

Quietly she said it, but Hardie got up and went without a murmur. Anyone would have done. I felt like a fox backed into a corner, with the yelping of the hounds coming closer. But even so I admired her tremendously. Being with Diana must be like living in a beautiful play written by a playwright of the modern school.

When Hardie had left, Diana got up and sat down next to me and took my hands in hers. She has very soft hands, as some women do, smelling of lavender like my mother's. I looked up from her hands and saw that her eyes were full of tears.

"My dear Jade, to hear you talking like this—every word is a reproach to me. You must think we are absolute dragons. No, you know what Sebastian is—you know he is the dearest man alive—so you must think I am a dragon," she said. "How can you think that I would attack you now of all times? To speak as if we would quarrel over giving you money for Sebastian's child! As if we would not take you in as our own—as if we would blame you, when the only sin you have committed was to love, which is no sin."

I goggled at her. Diana laughed, took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

"Is it so astonishing that I should speak as a human being?" she said. "Did you think I would box you on the ears and throw you out on the street?"

"No," I said.

But I felt this was very peculiar behaviour for a first wife. I suppose she does have two sons, but all the same one doesn't expect roses and chocolate for the declaration that one has been made pregnant by someone else's husband. I said this (though I didn't mention first wives and sons).

It had the effect of making Diana take my hands again.

"My dear," she said. "When Sebastian and I promised to marry, we also promised that it should never ever become a shackle on us. And it should have grieved me if Sebastian, who has a heart large enough for the world—," (heart! More like penis) —"were forced to cage it and let it wither and shrivel and become a dry dusty thing. It should have grieved me far more than his having other loves has done.

"It has not always been easy. I have not liked everyone Sebastian has liked. He is so loving, you know, so childlike in his ready affections. I'm afraid I am much more reserved. But I am happy knowing he is happy. And I liked you the minute I saw you. And even if I did not like you, I could not hate anyone who was bearing Sebastian's child—Julian and Clive's little brother or sister."

"I like you too," I said. I hesitated. "Do you really not mind?"

Diana smiled. "Never enough to choose to destroy everything that is good and true and whole in my life. Besides, it would be churlish of me to mind when Sebastian allows me the same liberty."

"Oh, does he?" I said, sounding probably more surprised than I should have. I tried to make up for it by adding quickly: "Har—Sebastian hadn't mentioned it."

"Sebastian is wonderful—you know how wonderful—but he doesn't always understand," said Diana. "I tell him everything about my friendships. He knows my whole heart. But I suppose, for a man, it is rather difficult to understand how very much a woman may value the company of other women."

I was frightfully interested. One knows about Oscar Wilde and men like that, but I'd never known a woman who liked women that way.

"Do you have lots of beaus as well, then?" I said.

Diana went pink. With her red hair, it made her look like a very pretty lobster.

"I am not quite as unreserved as Sebastian, by nature," she said. "But ... do you know the painter Colette Lallemant?"

"The one who was at your Christmas party?" I said. I recalled a slim snakey-hipped woman, with bobbed hair and kohl-lined eyes, smoking a cigarette in a long cigarette holder and leaning over to whisper in Diana's ear—"Oh."

She squeezed my hand.

"Sebastian is the only man for whom I have felt any passion," she said. "I think, loving women as I do, it makes it much easier for me to understand his loves. And I hope, my dear, you would never find me less than understanding. I don't expect you to love me, of course, or even like me, at first, when you hardly know me, and perhaps your feeling for Sebastian makes liking me difficult. But when we have lived together for a while, perhaps we will become friends. And I shall love your child, whether it is Light or Valour. We have not had a baby in the house for years."

I felt the conversation had moved beyond my capacity for comprehension.

"I'm sorry, I don't quite understand," I said. "Why will the baby be in your house?"

"Of course you must come and live with us," said Diana. "It is nonsense, this talk about money. You have been very noble—Sebastian has told me all about it, how you said you would not come to live with us out of consideration for my feelings. But now you know I am not an ogre, and know how much I should love to have you, you will come, of course."

This was not how I had expected the meeting to go. I was feeling rather dazed. I imagine I would have felt much the same if I had gone into a lion's den, thinking I would have my hand bitten off, and instead been kidnapped by a troop of affectionate apes, who took me away to their treetop abode and crowned me as their queen.

It was not that I didn't appreciate their kindness, but being chimpanzee regent is not any part of my idea of how I wish to live my life.

"Surely there would be talk," I tried.

Diana waved this away.

"We shall tell people that you were married in China, and have been widowed, and are come to stay with us to teach our children," she said. "Or you could be Hardie's assistant—yes, perhaps that would be better. There will be talk, but not by anyone worth our esteem. And once people are used to it they will pay it no mind."

A widowed secretary or governess is better than a concubine, perhaps. All the same:

"That is very kind of you, Mrs.—Diana," I said. "I can't say how much I feel your kindness. You have been so much better to me than I had any right to expect. But I can't accept your offer. I'm afraid I must repeat my request for financial support—and—and nothing else."

Diana let go of my hand and sat back.

I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but I didn't want to hurt her. And I didn't want her to think ill of me—to think that I was only looking for money, and did not care about the affection and kindness she had offered me.

I could not tell her that I had no intention of being anyone's Jane Eyre, particularly as Jane Eyre herself declined to be a second wife. (Bronte again. Hardie is too silly to be like Mr. Rochester. But Diana reminds one of Jane's incandescently good women friends—Helen Burns, and Jane's Rivers cousins.)

I couldn't live with her to please her. But I could return her honesty with some of my own. I couldn't have told anyone else. I did not even like telling Diana, because it was bound to get back to Hardie if I did. But she had given me a piece of her nice heart, and I felt I ought to give her a piece of mine in return.

"I am sorry," I said, "But I have something rather shocking to tell you. I don't love Hardie at all. I like him very much, but—well, it was all just a bit of adventure. I had the nicest childhood, but my parents were so affectionate and solicitous they never let one do anything at all. It was so terrifically dull. One sleepwalked through one's days. So now that I am awake I feel I must do everything I can—see everything—taste everything."

I looked down at myself, feeling shy.

"This was rather a stupid way to end up," I said. "But I made my mistake and I intend to own up to it womanfully. I thought of finding a wise woman, you know, to see if I could get rid of it—but it would be awfully painful, and I've always liked babies. I shall go and have the baby somewhere quiet, and do my best to bring it up properly, and see that its life isn't any harder than it's got to be. But I must do it on my own.

"I really am conventional, you see. I told Hardie so and he didn't believe me. But it's true. I couldn't live the way Hardie does, or even the way you do, with two loves crowding your heart. My heart only has space for one person."

I meant to tell her who it was, but I couldn't bring myself to say it, I felt so damnably embarrassed. Instead I said,

"And if I'm not to have the only one I want, I won't have anyone else. I am sorry."

Diana was very gracious about it. She called Hardie back in and we discussed the thing civilly, like adults, and when I left she kissed me on the cheek like a sister.

There was just a touch of frost in it, however. I think she was still a trifle offended. I ought to have told her who I meant, but I couldn't say it.

I am such a coward! I can't say it now. No, I must. When I have said it I can lay it to rest.

I love Ravi. I didn't know it until I saw him on Tuesday and my heart twisted in my chest, with a happiness so acute and so sad that it made me feel like crying.

But now I know it, I know I always have loved him, ever since I climbed up those dark creaking stairs to his box of an office, and he looked up and smiled as if he had been waiting for me. And I know I shall always love him, as I shall always hate custard and find dogs charming.

If I love someone like Ravi, someone who is quiet and kind and true, how can I possibly think of living with Hardie and Diana? They are amusing, but they are not real. It would be like forswearing rice, and only eating cake for the rest of my life. I couldn't do it.

My parents would point out that I should have thought about that before I engaged in an educational liaison with Hardie.

What a mess I have made of things. What a bloody mess.

Wednesday, 16th February 1921

What I did today! I have not got words bad enough to describe myself. Of all the most absurd heedless silly romantic nincompoops—

But this calling myself names is to no purpose. I shall try to record my misdeeds in as straightforward a fashion as I can. I have decided that this journal is to be an instructive text for my grandchildren, so that they may learn by my example not to be the addlebrainedest blunderer who ever lived. (I must remember to redact the bits about Hardie's parts.)

I went to see Ravi in the Oriental Literary Review office to bid him goodbye. I found him standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by packing cases. His curls were in disarray and there was a great black ink-blot on his shirtfront. He looked as flustered as I have ever seen him, but he was very hospitable.

"Jade! This is an unexpected treat. Do sit down."

He glanced at his chair, as a man lost in the desert for many days might gaze at an unattainable oasis. It was barricaded against us by pillars of reading material.

"I'm afraid the chair is out of reach," he said, "but here is a pile of New Statesmans. Or there is a stack of the Athenaeum. It looks reasonably comfortable."

"Either will do," I said. "Are you moving, Ravi?"

"The ORL is moving," said Ravi. "Kamal Masood is taking over as editor and he's rented a larger set of offices in Richmond. Rather out of the way, but with Kamal at the helm, I don't think the ORL need worry about lapsing into obscurity. He's even going to hire a secretary."

I made an impressed noise. "We are moving up in the world. But what are you going to do if Kamal's taking your job?"

"A friend's asked if I'd like to teach at the School of Oriental Studies," said Ravi. "Nothing's been confirmed yet, but they've pretty nearly made me an offer."

I was about to congratulate him—I knew it was precisely what Ravi has been working towards—but he paused and gave me the oddest look. At the time I thought he looked wistful, of all things, but of course I see now that he must have been feeling sorry for me.

"But I might not take it," he went on, as if he had not stopped. He picked up a dictionary and dropped it in a case. "I'm thinking of going home."

A cold hand wrapped around my heart.

"Going home?" I said.

Ravi didn't look at me.

"I'm thinking about it," he said.

"But your parents will make you get married," I said.

Ravi's parents are not quite as importunate as mine because he is a man, but I knew they had accumulated a list of likely candidates and that was one of the reasons he'd stayed in London instead of going home.

"Would that be so bad?" said Ravi.

I must have looked exquisitely silly at this, for Ravi looked up and laughed.

"I always meant to marry eventually," he said. "I'm twenty-eight years old. At my age, my father had two children. It might be time I started thinking about settling down."

"I thought you said you wanted to choose a wife without your family's interference," I said.

"I'm afraid my attempts to choose for myself haven't been altogether successful," he said. He smiled at me. "But that's all right. I've not had much practice. Some parental assistance might be just what I need."

He lifted a case onto his desk and started putting things in it.

"I suppose I feel I've had my fun," he said. "I've been in England for such a long time. My grandmother's been asking when I mean to come home for years now. Perhaps it's time."

It wasn't a sad thing in itself, what he was saying, but something in his voice made my heart go out to him. He looked so tired.

"Ravi, you haven't been working yourself too hard?" I said. "I know your brain takes up an awful lot of energy, but you ought to consider the rest of yourself. It must be a dreadful strain on your body, trying to keep pace with your mind."

"I eat plenty of porridge and do my exercises in the morning, as you told me to," said Ravi. "Don't worry, my—" he coughed—"my friend. I'm simply rather tired of porridge, and begin to want parotta."

I went up to him and held his face between my hands, so I could look into it. I wasn't thinking about what I was doing. I only wanted to be sure that Ravi was well.

"There, you are coughing," I said accusingly. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Quite all right," said Ravi. He touched my hair gently, as if he were comforting an upset child.

He smelt of old books and soap. Perhaps pregnancy has meddled with my intellects—perhaps having a baby makes you soft-headed as well as soft-hearted. I already knew my loving Ravi was a hopeless case and would have been even if I hadn't destroyed any prospect of a decent marriage by my pursuit of an artistic education. Even though it feels as if we are the same kind of person, we are not, of course. I can't imagine the face my mother would make if I brought Ravi home as a son-in-law, and I expect the expression on Ravi's parents' faces would be just as bad.

But none of that matters, because my silliness with Hardie has put anything of the sort out of the question. I knew that perfectly well. So I ought to have been safe—quite safe.

"You have been a brick, Ravi," I said. "You must look after yourself when you've gone home. And we will stay friends, won't we? I'll write you, and you must write back, when you're not too busy. Will you?"

"I haven't yet decided to go," said Ravi in a low voice.

I can remember his face so clearly. I can see it before me now, every line of it, and his beautiful eyes. I didn't understand the look in them. It was almost as if he were frightened of me.

I suppose he had good reason to be, considering how I behaved!

"Jade," Ravi said, and I kissed him.

I can't think why I did it. I didn't go for to do it. It just seemed to happen.

And he kissed me back, I know he did. I shall remember every detail of it for the rest of my life—the stubble on his chin, his hot breath on my cheek, the pressure of his hand on the back of my head. Perhaps he kissed me back out of courtesy, or curiosity, but Ravi ought to know better than that. Oh hear me, here I am blaming the poor man when I was the one who pounced on him like a ravening tiger.

He was the one who stopped it. He pulled back and took my hands away from his face, and held my wrists.

All he said was: "That was not right, Jade."

"I know," I said. "I am sorry."

It was dreadful: I was weeping. I grow hot and cold all over when I think of it, it is so embarrassing.

Ravi was not angry, but stern and distant, like a schoolmaster. He gave me his handkerchief and waited till I'd wiped my eyes and blown my nose. When I was done he said, very gently,

"I'm sorry to have put you in this position. You're not to blame. But you've got other people to consider."

My heart stopped. I thought for a wild moment that Hardie had written a poem about Caliban having a baby and it had got out, and Ravi knew. But Ravi went on to say,

"Hardie can be difficult, I know, but he means well. Are you happy with him?"

I wanted to explain how things were with Hardie and Diana, but if I spoke at any length I knew I would start crying again. I was in that foolish sort of mood that overtakes one sometimes, in which one is profoundly impressed by the potential for sorrow in all things. The world seemed unspeakably sad.

"I have no complaints," I said, gulping.

Ravi looked at me with a horrible compassion in his eyes. I don't want him to pity me. I want him to like me. I want him always to think of me as happy and careless and his friend, not as a sopping clinging wreck who is idiotically in love with him.

"It is hard," said Ravi. "I know. But perhaps it's worth it. After all, what do we live for, if not for the impractical and the beautiful? What is more beautiful and impractical than unrequited love?"

Hardie might say that sort of thing and be serious, but Ravi wasn't. He smiled at me, trying to share the joke. I smiled back at him in a watery sort of way.

"It's all right," he said. "Really, it's all right."

He took my hand and pressed it.

"Thank you," I said in a small voice. He nodded, not looking up from our joined hands.

I remembered what I had come to tell him.

"I'm going away for a while, Ravi," I said. "Aunt Iris insists that I visit her in the countryside, to keep her company while my cousins are away. I'll be out of London for a few months. Will you be gone by the time I return?"

"Do you think it'd be better if I was?" said Ravi. Before I could reply, he smiled. "I'll wait. I meant to buy us both tea at Fortnum's, remember? You owe me another go."

He was perfectly normal for the rest of my visit. We talked as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

I was too sodden and confused at the time to understand what Ravi meant when he was going on about unrequited love, but I've thought about it and I know what he was trying to say now.

It was my stupidity in kissing him. He knows how I care for him and he was trying to tell me that it was all right, that he would think of me as his friend just as he's always done. It ought to make no difference, because I already knew that he didn't love me as anything but a friend. But somehow the thought that he knows and is sorry for me makes me feel even more wretched.

I am still glad I saw him. How I'll miss him when he's gone. It's a jolly good thing I'm going away. I shall have to get used to missing him all the rest of my life.

How melodramatic! I expect I would stop missing him when I was seventy. Oh dear, I can't wait till I am old and past all unholy passions. When I am old I shall become an itinerant poet and wear a straw hat and never worry about love again.

Tuesday, 22nd February 1921

Well, here we are. We arrived at eight in the morning, me and the poor benighted worm who sleeps, chewing on its tail, inside me. The woman who runs the establishment is a Mrs. Crowther, a mouse-coloured lady with sharp eyes and a wobbly voice shot through with vibrato, which makes her sound as if she is always on the verge of tears.

She took my bag and led me to my room and brought me breakfast here, and now I am writing at my desk by the window, looking out at rolling green meadows.

Mrs. Crowther is a widow, but her assistants are Misses mostly. They are all very nice: they knit and are tremendously tactful. The food is British and hearty, and the furnishings are soothing, if plain. Perhaps they thought patterns might distress our minds further. Anyway there are plenty of shelves in my room, and a lending library in the village, so I'll have enough to keep myself busy with.

I will be all right here. Diana and Hardie wanted to send me to his old nurse, who lives on a farm in Kent. I had nightmarish visions of an apple-cheeked old lady, who would feed me milk fresh from the cow and indulge me for her old charge's sake, and call me "that poor young creature". Horrors!

I knew I should have to come up with a plausible alternative if I were to avoid being drawn into the spider's web. Thank goodness for Cousin Rose's friend's nerves, and what a blessing that those nerves belong to an aristocrat. It was through Aunt Iris's revelling in the girl's lineage that I heard about Mrs. Crowther's private nursing home.

Mrs. Crowther takes in women with all sorts of problems—wayward girls like me with inconvenient tadpoles, ladies with unexplained persistent headaches, gentlewomen who see dreadful creatures in the walls. She does it quietly, for lots of rather well-known people, which made it easier for Diana and Hardie to reconcile themselves to it. And she does it for money, which makes me more comfortable.

After all perhaps I prefer business transactions to things done for love. At least with the former, one knows where one stands.

And now I shall read books and write only a little and take long walks over the green grass and have gentle unstimulating conversation with the knitting Misses. I shall sleep for years every night and I shall eat all Mrs. Crowther's bowls of porridge, and the worm will uncurl and grow fat and pop out arms and legs and a nose and two eyes. And I shall not cry myself to sleep, or write bad poetry about anyone anymore.

Poor worm! You have not got anybody else, so I must try to be better company for you. I didn't have any foolish passions when I was a girl, that is the problem. In fact I was a remarkably cold fish and could not see why my friends were forever swooning over some boy or other.

I am making up for lost time now, but never mind—it will soon wear itself out. I must be sure to arrange an unwise infatuation for the worm in its youth. It is absurd to be in the mid-twenties and behaving like the Lady of Shalott.

I can't recall if Tennyson ever said how old the Lady of Shalott was. I should be surprised if she was a day over sixteen.

Monday, 14th March 1921

I have made a friend! Those of us who loved not wisely but too well are quarantined from the decent women, so there has not been much opportunity for conversation with the other half. But I was struck down by a vile cold this past week, and have only been able to creep out of my room today. I was too late for lunch, but one of the Misses took pity on me and persuaded the cook to whip something up for me.

I was gnawing doggedly on a potato, alone in the dining room, when a girl came in and sat down across the table from me. She asked if I wouldn't mind her horning in on my bread rolls.

"Please do," I said.

I liked the look of her at once: she had untidy brown hair, and bright dark eyes that darted as a bird's eyes do, taking in everything about her. She looked like a nice squirrel. "Are you sure you don't want a sardine?"

"No—the plainest possible bread. A crust would be even better, in fact," she said, extracting one from a roll. "I have been fed on milk and fat for days. Bread and water is my idea of heaven. What is your name? I am Margery."

"My name is Jade," I said. I don't tell people my real name, after the way everyone at university mangled it. It's fortunate that my name can be translated into a name that sounds sensible in English. Imagine if I had been named Swallow, or Plum.

"That is a pretty name," said Margery.

"So is yours," I said courteously. "What are you in for?"

Margery cast a look around to check that none of the Misses were hovering, and swallowed a crust.

"I'm mad," she confided. "And you?"

"I'm bad," I said.

Margery nodded sympathetically.

"I thought you seemed to have all your marbles lined up in a row," she said. "And of course they've allowed you civilian rations. I expect they don't drown you in milk, as they do us."

"Why do they drown you in milk?" I said, interested.

Margery turned the palms of her hands up in a gesture of despair.

"Why do they do any of the things they do?" she said. "I am made to eat and eat and eat, and sleep the rest of the day."

"As if you were a dormouse," I said.

"Indeed, as if I were a dormouse," said Margery. "They have only let me out of bed today. I suspect the purpose of these torments was to force me to recover out of pure indignation."

"I was going to observe that you seem to have quite a good hold on your marbles yourself," I said.

"Oh yes, most of the time," said Margery. "But sometimes, you know, they get away from one. Then a black thing with horns and wings comes and sits at the foot of the bed and stares at one with evil yellow eyes—and one can't get out of bed, but lies there and wishes one was dead, until one's relations come to pack one off to the nearest nursing home. Do you know the feeling?"

"No," I said.

"Good," said Margery. "I hope you never do."

We were quiet for a while. I broke the silence to ask:

"Did your relations send you here, then?"

"My brother-in-law, I should say," said Margery. "He tried the seaside first, thinking the sea breeze would blow away my humours. But my humours clung obstinately to me, so he sent me here instead.

"My sister would have kept trying with the seaside," she added.

"I hope you shan't be here much longer," I said. "Since you dislike it so."

"Why, don't you?" said Margery.

"Well, I chose to come here, which puts a different complexion on things," I said. "Besides, they let me eat all sorts. I would leave if they tried to restrict my diet to milk."

"You chose to come?" cried Margery. "But what about the—" She clamped her mouth shut and went pink.

"Oh, the father?" I said. "He is paying, but he didn't force me to come here. I chose the institution."

"I retract what I said about your looking sane," said Margery. "Fancy choosing to come to a dreadful place like this! Do you not find it fearfully dull?"

I have, rather. It is not so much not having anything to do, because I spend my days reading and writing, as I always did. I don't cook here, but save for that and for the fresh air and better view from my window, I might as well be in London.

No, what I miss is not the giddy whirl of life in the metropolis, but having people to see and talk to. The Misses are kind, but they don't talk; they issue platitudes.

"It does get lonely," I admitted. "But where else could I have gone? If I had stayed where I was it might have got rather awkward in a few months. My landlady lives in mortal fear of what her neighbours might think, and they would have had awful thoughts about me."

Margery looked somber.

"That is true," she said. "If I were you, I suppose I would have relied on my sister."

"If you don't like it here," I said, "can you not write to your sister to say that you are feeling better and please will she take you away?"

"There is Reginald, you see," said Margery. "That is my brother-in-law. He is not unkind, but he has a scientific mind. He hates to see me lolling about at home in a funk when I could be here, lolling about in a funk under the supervision of trained nurses. If I insist on coming home now he will say, but the doctor said you must lie in bed for two months at the very least, and not an inch will he budge, no matter what I tell him.

"But," said Margery—I could tell she had a mind that got stuck on ideas, and would not let go of them easily—"do you not have anyone you could rely on? You haven't got a Reginald barring your escape."

"No," I said. "But I don't have a sister either. I haven't got any family here." I sent a silent apology to Aunt Iris, but in this sort of eventuality she doesn't really count—and wouldn't want to, either.

"Oh," said Margery.

The corners of her mouth turned down. Then she brightened.

"But you must have friends. Do you not have friends?"

I haven't got many friends in England. Everyone I was close to at university has returned to their respective countries since, and after university I was mostly too busy to make new friends. Ravi, of course—and Hardie and Diana qualify, I suppose.

"I have three friends here," I said, "but it would be rather awkward for me to ask them for help."

Margery did not seem to like this answer. She frowned.

"Well, that's wrong," she said. "Because you have four. I am your friend. I'll help you."

"That is kind, thank you," I said. "How do you mean to start?"

Margery reflected. "I shall comfort your cheerless hours with my prattle. Cordelia—that's my sister—she always liked to hear me talk. And I shall help you select a name for the baby. Have you chosen one already?"

We spent the rest of the afternoon making great plans. Margery is not allowed to read books because the words are too taxing for her intellects, so we are to see if we can arrange for me to come into her room to read to her. The doctor might not mind that. And Margery is to pretend to be wholly oblivious of my being pregnant, for fear that the Misses might ban contact to prevent my polluting her virginal mind.

I wonder what Ravi is doing right now. Perhaps I shall explain everything to him some day, when the tadpole is a frog and both Ravi and I are too old to be troubled by the past. Then we will sit on a porch in the twilight drinking good tea and laugh about how silly I was, and he will reach out and touch his beautiful wife's greying but still lovely hair, and feel serene and happy about how everything turned out ....

But now I am wallowing again!

Thursday, 24th March 1921

Today we finished Pride and Prejudice. I have been reading it to Margery for the past week, though we both know it almost by heart. When I had read the last word Margery rolled over on the ottoman and sighed.

"That is my favourite love story," she said. "Jade, what is it like to be in love?"

"What makes you think I would know?" I said.

"Why, of course you do," Margery said. "Why else would you be having Claude?"

Margery is convinced that the baby is going to be a boy, and not only that, but that he will be a Claude. I am not persuaded on either count, but there's no harm in letting her suppose. At any rate Claude is better than Aloysius, which was her last guess.

"Pure wantonness," I suggested.

Margery considered this, but she shook her head.

"No, no," she said. "You've been in love. I think you're in love even now. You have the look. I've never been in love myself, but I know it."

"What's the look like?" I said.

"It's as if you were hugging a secret to yourself," said Margery promptly. "When you are happy in love it's a delightful secret, but when you are sad it's a distressing one. Cordelia had that look when she first met Reginald. It took me ages to recognise it, because Reginald is such a—but there, he's a good husband by his lights. Anyway, you have the look—but I suppose," here she drooped—"it is an unhappy love, and I ought not to have brought it up."

"I don't mind," I said.

"What is it like? Do tell," said Margery. "With this disordered mind of mine I don't think I shall ever fall in love. I am such a bother to everyone when I have one of my episodes. I should feel sorry for anyone who married me."

"I shouldn't," I said. "Think of all the insufferable creatures in the world who fall in love, and are loved back. And you one of the nicest people I have ever met! You have every right to fall in love, if you would like to, and anyone you married would be lucky."

Margery pursed her lips, but she only said,

"You are trying to distract me. Won't you tell me how it was for you? Is your beloved like Mr. Darcy?"

"Nothing like," I said. "I wouldn't like to marry Mr. Darcy, would you? Fancy calling your husband Fitzwilliam for all eternity. It would be so awkward in the bedroom."

"Oh Jade," said Margery: she is rather easily shocked. "Well, but what is he like, then?"

I felt the real story was rather implausible. Would anyone believe I'd had an affair with Hardie out of simple curiosity? Margery certainly wouldn't: she is convinced I was cruelly deceived. And I am still feeling too tender about Ravi to tell anyone about him, so I told her a somewhat embroidered tale about Hardie and me, in which Hardie's charm and the giddy romance of Paris swept me off my feet, and Hardie's Bohemian ideals blinded him to the sordid realities of love outside the bounds of sanctioned matrimony.

I finished with the magnificent forgiveness of Diana and my self-denying retirement to Mrs. Crowther's. Margery's eyes were dewy.

"Oh Jade, how sad," she said. "How terribly, terribly sad—but beautiful, too. You lived a whole lifetime in the space of a few months. So Hardie and Diana are two of the friends you spoke of. Oh, it is so poetic, it is like something out of a story. But it must make you terribly distressed to think of them, though they have been so noble."

I was beginning to enjoy my role. I tried to look damp and ethereal.

"Yes," I murmured.

"But you had three friends, you said," said Margery. I think she must have some bulldog in her ancestry: she has the most tenacious memory. "Who is the third?"

"Ah," I said. "That is just the editor of the Oriental Literary Review. I used to write pieces for him, and we became friends through that. Nice man."

"I must ask Cordelia to look that journal up," said Margery.

She's already requested old issues of Woman's Weekly from her sister, since I told her I'd had articles published in it. She took down the name and address of the ORL so that Cordelia could order the issues I'd been in. The address will have changed, I suppose, but I expect they'll forward any post.

I barely felt a twinge when I talked about Ravi. Perhaps I am recovering! Soon I shall be as footloose and fancy-free as any maiden (though I suppose I do not quite count as a maiden anymore). That will be good for the worm. Poor old worm! It can't be doing it good to have so many feelings sloshing about on top of it.

When the wormlet has come into the world I must become the sagest of matriarchs. I shall put on wisdom like a mantle, and read a chapter of the classics every day, and only eat cake once every half a year. I will avoid telling fibs to my friends, and if I can't avoid it, I will certainly not enjoy it. Oh dear, I'm afraid I'm very far from perfection yet.

Sunday, 3rd April 1921

I dreamt of my father last night. Ma comes to me in dreams sometimes, usually to say something pointed about money or the state of my clothes, but Pa never. He wasn't there to give advice; it was a remembering sort of dream.

Pa had just had an argument with my grandfather, and I was upset. I don't remember what the argument was about, but I remember Pa sitting by me and explaining, as he always did whenever anything frightened me. And as always he was making everything all right again.

"You have a better brain than your old father," he said. "Even a better brain than your brothers. What have I worked all these years for if not so I can bring up my children the way I want to?

"My girl, remember this. Your father will never begrudge how much he is spending on your education. Don't believe those who will say because you are a girl it is useless. Learning is never useless. You will make something of yourself because you are my daughter.

"But don't prove them right. Don't let your freedom make you disobedient. Don't go wild like those European women. Remember your family. Then it will all be worth it."

I woke up half-believing I was still there, in the kitchen with the sun shining on the table, with my father next to me. I had to go around my room, touching everything in it, before the cold worked its way into my fingers and toes and drove me back to bed. Then I believed I was here.

It was only when I laid my head on my pillow again that I felt the wetness on it, and realised I was still crying. The tears oozed out of my eyes as if they weren't my eyes, or my tears. It wasn't me who was crying, but someone long ago and far away. Someone who still trusted everything her family told her.

I wish Ravi were here.

Friday, 8th April 1921

Bad news today. At breakfast Margery was looking like a squirrel that had discovered the existence of peanut butter. She leant over to me and said:

"I am rescued!"

Her sister is coming next week to take her away. Her letters have been so sprightly even Reginald has been persuaded that science cannot justify Mrs. Crowther's keeping her.

"And besides, Cordelia misses me," she said happily.

I smiled, but I was soggy with self-pity inside. We have been such chums—reading books together and gossiping about the Misses behind her back. I had missed having girl friends. I haven't known a woman I could talk to, really talk to, since I left home. One cannot really talk to Diana, the way she floats through the clouds hand-in-hand with Hardie.

Margery, on the other hand, is thoroughly sensible—gets dirt in her toenails, and pens caught in her hair—so we understand each other. I do need people to be rooted in the earth. It must be a legacy of my sensible upbringing. I like artists but feel rather suspicious of them, and do not know what to make of it when they go spinning off into the higher reaches of the atmosphere.

When I said, trying to sound as if it were a joke, "But what shall I do without you?" Margery's eyes went round and moist like a spaniel's.

"Oh but Jade, you said you liked this place," she protested. "You chose it yourself."

"You have been far too convincing," I said. "You have persuaded me that it is a hole. And now you are going away—to the seaside, I suppose!"

"Cordelia did say we might go to the seaside," said Margery.

"You will sit on the pebbles in a woollen bathing suit and a cap and gaze at the sea through a telescope and eat chips," I said. "And never a thought for your abandoned friend! I will shut myself up in my room and go in for becoming an immortal. With you gone I shall have so much time to kill that I'll be forced to grow a beard and discern the secrets of the Tao to entertain myself, and you'll be sorry that you did not stick around to hear it."

"I hope you grow a very long beard indeed," said Margery unrepentantly. "I shall send you a postcard from Brighton."

But just now there was a knock on my door and Margery came in, looking soft and curly and sad. She said,

"Jade, you will not really miss me too dreadfully? After all I have been such a bother to you. I will write—I'll write every week—and I'll send you starfish for your room if I can find them."

I felt so guilty! I hugged her and told her I didn't mean it really.

"I was just being beastly because of my overweening envy. I hope you do eat lots of chips, and wear a fetching bathing suit, and lie on the beach for as long as you can without getting pneumonia."

But she still looked wistful.

"You will not really be lonely?" she said. "Could you not write to your friend? The nice editor you told me about."

That gave me more than a twinge around the heart, so I think I have overestimated the rate of my recovery. But I tried to look cheerful.

"Oh, I shan't need to," I said. "I have lots to divert me. You aren't to worry about me at all. I should hate to think of you dripping tears into your kippers on my account."

Then she was satisfied and went away, saying she would not interrupt the workings of genius. I'll admit it: I sat down and cried. But I didn't do it for more than half an hour, and I think it did me good. I wish I were out of love—past caring. When Margery asked me what love was like I ought to have told her the truth: it's just the most damnable thing.

Tuesday, 12th April 1921

It is eleven o'clock at night and I have crept to an armchair to write this surreptitiously. I love the feeling of writing in a dark room. One feels like a quiet busy rat, going about its business behind the walls while the humans slumber in their beds.

How cold it is! And it is April. But soon spring will start tapping on the window, thinking of coming in—then May—then warmth, and sunshine again.

I am so happy! Why do my feet and hands not glow with it, why is my hair is not all a-frizz with joy? I feel reborn—newly washed—leagues away from the wailing old misery I was yesterday. Let me try to recount this day in full, so that when I am old and my knees ache, I can read this to cheer myself up.

It was a grey day this morning. I opened my eyes and saw the window silver-beaded with rain. And it kept raining as I dressed and went down to breakfast, and went right on after: a miserly persevering plip-plip-plip, nothing like a proper tropical thunderstorm.

I prefer a storm with some self-respect, one that puts its back into storming. At home you could expect thunder like God rolling barrels across the floor of heaven, and rain like spears that knocked trees over and destroyed gardens.

I sat in my chair in the thin grey light and tried to distract myself with Anne Bronte, hating everyone. Margery for going away, and Ravi for making me love him, and my parents for being tiresomely attached to the idea of my marrying Ng Wai Cheong, and Hardie for implanting me with the worm, and Diana for not hating me. And my poor wormlet most of all, for numerous sins, none of which were in the least its fault.

I was in no mood to see my visitor when Miss Thompson told me I had one. I must have looked terrifically lowering when I dragged myself to the drawing room, holding Agnes Grey like a shield. I thought it must be Hardie or Diana, and rather fancied the idea of hurling the book at them.

I didn't think it would be Ravi.

"Have you ever read David Copperfield?" I said, when I had got my breath back and he had helped me up. "Do you know the part where he goes to see his aunt, and Miss Betsey sits right down on the gravel path because she is so surprised? I was just thinking what an education Dickens is. If I hadn't read him I wouldn't have known that people sat down in times of astonishment, and I might have thought that there was something wrong with my knees. However, as it is, I know I am perfectly normal. It is a great comfort."

Ravi was looking into my face. He looked as if he had found a cold drowned cat crying on his doorstep.

"Your friend Margery Hargreve told me you were here," he said. "I'm sorry I did not find you earlier. Jade, will you come away with me?"

"Please," I said. My throat ached. I felt as if there were a rock lodged in my chest, pressing against my ribs. "Ravi—I have been so unhappy!"

"Let's get you away first," said Ravi.

After that he didn't say much, but was very efficient. I packed a bag of things I would need for the night, and then I crept down the stairs to the gate, where Ravi had a car waiting. As I jumped in and the motor started I saw Mrs. Crowther gaping at me from a window on the first floor. I waved, and we were off.

It is a bit silly now I think about it, because of course nobody was keeping me there and there was no need to stage any sort of escape. But it felt wonderfully liberating at the time. And I shan't go back, though Hardie has paid Mrs. Crowther a six-month advance for my keep. I expect he can afford to write off the loss.

"I have something to say to you," Ravi said when we were safely on the road.

He paused.

"I know you would never say something you did not mean, or do anything you did not want to do," he said. "But perhaps it's worth saying that you do not need to say yes, or give me your reply straight away. At the same time, I hope you will consider it. I think it might be the best solution, if you could bring yourself to do it."

"What are you going on about?" I said.

"I'm getting to that, Impatience," said Ravi. "Jade—Geok Huay—will you marry me?"

How do I describe what I felt then? I felt as if my heart had climbed out of my chest and gone a-roaming. I felt as if my spirit had leapt out of me, leaving me rudderless. A great empty space floated under my ribs, hollowed out by shock.

I said, "What did you say?"

Ravi was glaring furiously at the road.

"Don't reply at once," he said. "Think about it. I know it's not what you want, and you deserve better. But I would help you as much as you let me, and be a father to your child. You wouldn't have to live alone. I know how you must be feeling, but—"

"I'm going to have Hardie's child," I said, too loudly. I swallowed. "I should have told you. I'm sorry."

Ravi blinked. He pulled over to the side of the narrow road and turned to me.

"I know," he said.

"You know?"

"This is not a very gallant thing to say," said Ravi. "But Jade, you're .... "

He couldn't bring himself to say it, so I said it for him:

"I'm the approximate size of St. Paul's Cathedral?"

"And I knew before I saw you," said Ravi. "Miss Hargreve wrote to me saying she thought you needed a friend, and that I ought to come to visit you since she was leaving Mrs. Crowther's. It didn't take me long to work out why you were at Mrs. Crowther's. I wasn't sure if you wanted to see me, after what happened the last time. But I had to try."

"Is that why you're proposing?" I said. "Because you knew about this?" I gestured down at my belly, which for some time now had introduced a pronounced irregularity in my figure.

"Well—" said Ravi. "Jade. May I take your hand?"

I gave him my hand mutely. He held it flat against his palm and looked down at it.

"You know I love you," he said. "I should like to look after you and your child, if you would let me. But I promise I would never expect anything more than friendship from you. I think we could rub along happily all the same. We are friends, aren't we? Will you consider it?"

"You love me?" I said. "Did I know that?"

Ravi's eyebrows drew together.

"I thought you knew," he said.

"Did you tell me?" I said. "No, you didn't tell me. I'm sure I would recall it if you had told me!"

"But—that day, when you came to see me at my office," said Ravi. He looked confused, though he couldn't be any more bewildered than I was. "I told you, I was thinking of letting my parents arrange a marriage for me, since I hadn't had any luck with my choice. I said I didn't mind being in love with you. I thought you understood. You seemed sorry for me."

"I didn't understand a thing," I said.

It was beginning to dawn on me how very true this was.

"But then why did you kiss me?" said Ravi.

"Never mind that," I said, cheeks burning. "If you liked me, why did you stop?"

"It wouldn't have been fair to you to take advantage of your pity," said Ravi. "I knew you loved Hardie and he had hurt you, so you were seeking comfort. I didn't feel I could—"

"Oh, blast Hardie!" I roared. "Will you stop talking about that confounded man? I don't give a fig for Hardie! I shouldn't be sorry if I never saw him again!"

"What?" said Ravi.

"What?" said I.

We gazed at each other in wild surmise, like stout Cortez's men on the peak in Darien. Then Ravi ran his hands through his hair and sat back.

"You are having a baby," he said.

"I certainly hope it turns out to be a baby," I agreed.

"And it is Hardie's child."

"It can't very well be anyone else's," I said. "Biologically speaking."

"But you didn't have an affair with him in Paris, and he didn't drop you afterward."

"That is a nice way to talk about me," I said indignantly. "As if I were a bit of paper to be dropped in the bin. No, we did have an affair in Paris, but Hardie didn't drop me. He wanted to go on as we were. It would've been part of his arrangement with Diana—they have a very modern sort of marriage—but I didn't like to. And I wouldn't have seen him anymore, except socially, only then I found out the baby was going to come. So we decided I should go to Mrs. Crowther's home to have the baby—discreetly, you know."

"'We' decided?" said Ravi.

"Well, I did," I said. "They wanted me to come to live with them, but can you imagine living with the Hardies? Dinner parties every other day and having to remember everyone's lovers' names?"

Ravi was still looking as if he'd been hit on the head with a blunt object, but he started to grin at this.

"That would be a difficult life," he said. "On the other hand, you'd be able to have tea at the Ritz every day."

"You know me too well," I said sternly. "But even that couldn't tempt me. You see, I like Diana, but Hardie is such a cad."

"Is he?" said Ravi.

"He's a well-meaning cad," I said. "And he's been decent enough to me. But that doesn't absolve him of caddishness. Don't you think he's a cad?"

"The thought has crossed my mind before," Ravi admitted. "But why did you have an affair with him if you thought so?"

I looked down at my hands, folded meekly on top of the slumbering worm.

"I was just so curious," I said. "I wanted to know what it would be like. And he is awfully good-looking, you know. I am sorry, Ravi. You must be shocked at my lack of moral fibre."

Ravi's mouth worked. Then he started laughing.

"I have got hold of entirely the wrong end of the stick, I see," he said. "You've got it all sorted out."

"I thought I did," I said glumly. "But I was really horribly unhappy at that beastly home. I didn't know a person could be so unhappy. I was so glad to see you. It was like the sun coming out after rain. I suppose .... are you cross at me, Ravi?"

"Why would I be?" said Ravi.

"Oh, you know. For being such a fool."

"As far as I can make out, I'm the only fool here," said Ravi.

"If you aren't cross at me, would you still like to marry me?" I said. "I would like to marry you, if you're sure you asked because you like me, and not just because you thought I needed it, and wanted to save me. And if you are sure you wouldn't mind about the baby. You must be sure you'd be kind to the baby."

"Of course I'd be kind to the baby," said Ravi. "I like babies. And your baby would be bound to be nicer than any other baby."

I was pleased by this.

"I had suspected that myself," I confided.

Ravi was pressing his fingers against his forehead. "But Jade, I'm sorry—did you say you would like to marry me?"

"Yes," I said. "Because I love you. That's why I kissed you, if you must know. I don't kiss out of pity. I only kiss people if they're good-looking, or if I'm in love with them. Or both. You're both. Do you still love me?"

Ravi looked at me for so long I felt shy. I raised my hands to my face to cool my cheeks. Ravi reached out and took my hands before I could do it.

"You think I might have stopped since five minutes ago?" he said.

"Well," I said. "I thought I'd best make sure."

There is one last thing to remember. I asked Ravi how he'd known my name.

"Jade?" he said.

"No," I said. "My real name."

"Ah." He smiled: the same smile he'd turned to me the first day I met him, that said, I have always known you.

"You wrote it at the end of the first letter you sent me, about the Waley article," said Ravi. "You crossed it out and wrote Jade in its place. But I remembered."

3 Seddon Street, London

Tuesday, 26th April 1921

My dearest Margery,

I'm sorry I did not tell you I was going to leave before I did it. But when Ravi came I knew I should have to make a break for it, as if I were a prisoner escaping his gaol, or I should never bring myself to do it, but be stuck at Mrs. Crowther's forever. It was my decision to go there and I felt duty-bound to stick by it.

Well, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Emerson says. I think I shall work on having a great mind from now on, like yours. Ravi is consistent, but that is because he is always right about everything. It comes to him naturally, as singing does to a nightingale.

My blessed girl, thank goodness you wrote him. I shall never be able to thank you enough for the favour you did me then. I shall dedicate my next article in Milady's Boudoir to you—it is a delicious piece on this spring's hemlines—but that can only go a very little way towards repaying the debt.

There is another thing I have not told you, and you will quite justifiably be cross that I haven't, but I hope you will see why it had to be done in such a hurry. I have got married to Ravi. We are tremendously happy, though not entirely respectable: we are living in his lodgings in London, but the landlady doesn't like it, and it is no place to have a baby in any case. My two other friends have offered us the use of their country house in Sussex for my confinement, but we shan't be staying there too long, I hope. We think of heading eastwards soon.

If you are vexed to have missed my wedding, as rushed and prosaic an affair as that was, imagine what my mother will have to say to me. I shall be very glad to see my parents again and to meet Ravi's family, but I may pack a full suit of armour in preparation—and fireproofed underthings.

It seems rather cold to be at Brighton, but I hope you are having a wonderful time with Cordelia and even Reginald. If you aren't too busy looking charming in a bathing suit and building rock castles with shingle from the beach, will you come and see me in Sussex one of these days? We shan't be going anywhere until the baby is born, and I should love for you and Ravi to meet. You would like each other, and even if you do not, I have enough liking for the both of you to go around. Do let me know if you can come—and write, whether you can or not.

The worm sends its love, and so does

Yr affate

Geok Huay (Jade)

Thank you!

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