Justin Go - The Steady Running of the Hour

— I suppose some of them did. But why go to all that trouble if Imogen wasn’t coming back to England?

— I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet.

— Did you read all that was there?

— Yeah. There were seven letters, and one of them was the one you showed me in your office. This was the only thing I found.

— Then by all means, keep looking. Your letter is certainly interesting, but you’ll need something more definitive. Unfortunately, I’ve a client meeting shortly. I shall let you research onward with my blessing. Do stay in touch.

I hang up the phone and walk onto the road in the rain, still holding the notebook.

19 August 1916

Queen’s Hall

Marylebone, Central London

The concert concluded, the musicians fit their instruments in velvet-lined cases. The audience stands. Some chat idly in the aisles; others file out toward the exit. The murmur of conversation grows steadily.

Ashley sits in the last row studying a Great Western Railway timetable. He has already seen Imogen. He is waiting for her to notice him on her way out. Ashley takes a fountain pen from his pocket and circles the 9:38 from Paddington to Didcot.

Imogen takes the seat beside him. Her eyes fixed on the stage, she leans toward him and whispers.

— So it is you.

Ashley puts the timetable back in his tunic pocket.

— One might imagine, he says, that you were following me.

— Did you enjoy the concert?

— Immensely.

— Then why sit at the back?

— I came in late.

— And why were you late?

Ashley smiles. He looks away down the aisle.

— I was outside, he admits. Wondering if I ought to come in.

— I’m glad you did.

An elderly woman with a cane tries to squeeze by them in the aisle. They rise to let her pass. Standing now, they do not sit back down.

— I cross on Thursday, Ashley stammers. I mean that — it’s a splendid day. What do you think of a stroll?

Imogen agrees. Ashley says they could go to Green Park or even Hyde Park, but Regent’s Park is closest.

— We’d as well go to Regent’s Park anyhow, Imogen says. It’s the loveliest, and there are French gardens, if we tire of the English. Though you are going to France. Then again—

Imogen lets the sentence hang. She bites her lip and gazes toward the exit. Ashley watches her expectantly.

— Pardon?

She shakes her head.

— I didn’t want to say it. I suppose you shan’t see gardens there.

They are in Regent’s Park, walking among the ordered fountains and linear hedges, the afternoon sunlight golden on their faces. Ashley looks at the empty stone planters and frowns.

— Not quite the same without the flowers.

— But one remembers what they looked like.

Imogen walks forward and touches a planter.

— Here were the crocuses. The oddest name for the loveliest flower. The purple hyacinths were here, surely. And the daffodils there, and behind them the geraniums and dahlias—

Ashley walks beside her, swagger cane clasped behind his back. A group of wounded soldiers in blue hospital uniforms walk by, followed by a pair of nurses. Ashley talks about his officer training and Imogen mentions that she is studying for the entrance examinations for Somerville College.

— You’ve my sympathy, Ashley remarks. I had an awful dread of my Cambridge little-go, made it that much easier to run off to the army. Are the Somerville exams difficult?

— Not exactly. But I’ll be taking the scholarship papers, so I’ll need a decent score. Of course, it’s easier because I’ve studied for them before.

— You have?

Imogen nods. — It’s a rather embarrassing tale. But you have to understand, Mr. Walsingham, there was so much confusion. No one would have raised an eyebrow if I wanted to study art or music like Mummy or Ellie. But I wanted to know things, to be a part of life and not simply imitate it. So I got it in my head that I must go to Somerville. There were endless rows with Papa, but in the end I went up for the Easter exams anyway. Naturally I hadn’t studied nearly enough. I could manage the English or Greek, but my Latin was weak, and maths was pure misery.

Imogen glances at Ashley, knitting her brow.

— You see, it just felt so wrong. Sneaking out to Oxford on my own when Mummy had practically bent over backwards to put Ellie in the Slade. And when I got there it was nothing like I’d imagined, the colleges practically empty save for cadets. The exam was four days, staying in the most frigid rooms at Oriel, for you know they’ve made Somerville a hospital. By the third morning it just seemed absurd, with the war on and rebellion in Ireland, that there I was quivering in bed at the thought of algebra—

— You didn’t finish them?

Imogen sighs, shaking her head. — But I’m going to take them again. I’ve had a few months to knock about London and think things over. That’s quite enough. Sooner or later one realizes it isn’t enough to be clever, to have even the finest ideas. One must do something, one must create some corner of goodness in the world, however small. For a few weeks I was convinced I should be a midwife with the Quaker relief in France, but as soon as I told Papa he said perhaps I ought to go to Somerville after all.

Ashley laughs. Imogen smiles, shaking her head in mock indignation.

— He was quite right, she protests. No doubt it’s easier on the nerves than war nursing, but I can hardly stand to see someone with a bloody nose. I only wanted to do something useful. The trouble is that I’m simply not trained for anything. So I’ll have to learn more first.

— Starting with algebra?

Imogen wrinkles her nose.

— Good Lord, let’s not speak of it. If I suddenly dash behind a tree, it’s because I’ve seen my tutor, Mr. Blagdon. He thinks I’m in bed with fever.

They walk out of the gardens onto broad green lawns. Ashley looks at Imogen.

— I’ve the impression your people are different from mine. Certainly your sister seems an interesting woman.

Imogen shrugs. — I don’t know. Ellie and Charles do go around with a certain set that share certain ideas. But their marriage is rather ordinary. My parents are the same. Papa’s very conventional, it’s only that he married a woman nothing like him.

— You say he’s a Swede. But you were born here?

Imogen shakes her head. — Ellie and I were born in France. At the time, Papa was posted to the embassy in Paris, that’s where he met Mummy. Apparently it was quite a romance, though you’d never guess it to see them now. Papa was young and very dashing. Mummy was studying sculpture at the Académie Julian.

They pass into the shade of a huge willow and Imogen sits down beside its trunk. Ashley hesitates, then takes a seat beside her, not very close. He grabs a fistful of grass and tosses it into the air idly. He looks at her.

— I’m confused, Ashley admits. So are you English or not?

— That’s the question, isn’t it? I spent my first years in France. We moved to Berlin when I was five, and we only came here when I was nine. After that Mummy refused to leave England again. When it comes to languages, my French is good, mainly because I’ve kept it up by reading. My German is decent, but my Swedish is rather disappointing, and Ellie isn’t much better. I can speak Swedish if I have to, but I can’t write it to save my life. With English—

— You haven’t a foreign accent, Ashley interrupts. But you don’t speak the same as an Englishwoman. It’s something in your phrase.