To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I am not certain what I said or how we got in the house. It was all I could manage not to blurt out, “Finch! What are you doing here?”

It was obvious what he was doing. He was buttling. It was also obvious he had patterned himself on that greatest of all butlers, P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves. He had the supercilious air, the correct speech, especially the poker-faced expression down cold. You’d have thought he’d never seen me before in his life.

He ushered us inside with a perfectly measured bow, said, “I will announce you,” and started for the stairs, but he was too late.

Mrs. Chattisbourne and her four daughters were already hurrying down the stairs, burbling, “Tossie, dear, this is a surprise!”

She stopped at the foot of the staircase, and her daughters stopped, too, in a sort of ascending arrangement. They all, including Mrs. Chattisbourne, had turned-up noses and brownish-blonde hair.

“And who is this young gentleman?” Mrs. Chattisbourne said.

The girls giggled.

“Mr. Henry, madam,” Finch said.

“So this is the young gentleman who found your cat,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “We heard all about it from the Reverend Mr. Arbitage.”

“O, no!” Tossie said. “It was Mr. St. Trewes who returned my poor lost Princess Arjumand to me. Mr. Henry is only his friend.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “I am so pleased to meet you, Mr. Henry. Allow me to introduce my flower garden.”

I had gotten so used to having people say nonsensical things to me in the last few days that it didn’t even faze me.

She led me over to the stairs. “These are my daughters, Mr. Henry,” she said, pointing up the stairs at them one by one. “Rose, Iris, Pansy, and my youngest, Eglantine. My own sweet nosegay, and some lucky gentlemen’s, she squeezed my arm, “bridal bouquet.”

The girls giggled in turn as she said their names and again at the end when she mentioned the bridal bouquet.

“Shall I serve refreshments in the morning room?” Finch said. “No doubt Miss Mering and Mr. Henry are fatigued from their walk.”

“How marvellous of you to think of it, Finch,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said, steering me toward the door on the right. “Finch is the most wonderful butler,” she said. “He thinks of simply everything.”

The Chattisbourne morning room looked exactly like the Merings’ parlor, only floral. The carpet was strewn with lilies, the lamps were decorated with forget-me-nots and daffodils, and on a marble-topped table in the middle of the room was a poppy-painted vase with pink peonies in it.

It was just as crowded as the Merings’, too, and being asked to sit down meant working my way through a maze of hyacinths and marigolds to a chair needlepointed in extremely realistic roses.

I sat down gingerly on it, almost afraid of thorns, and Mrs. Chattisbourne’s four daughters sat down on a flowered sofa opposite and giggled.

I found out over the course of the morning that, except for Eglantine, the youngest, who looked about ten, they giggled at all times and at virtually everything that was said.

“Finch is an absolute gem!” Mrs. Chattisbourne said, for instance, and they giggled. “So efficient! He does things before we even know we want them done. Not at all like our last butler — what is his name, Tossie?”

“Baine,” Tossie said.

“Oh, yes, Baine,” she said with a sniff. “An appropriate name for a butler, I suppose, though I have always felt it is not the name that makes the butler, but the training. Baine’s training was adequate, but hardly perfect. He was always reading books, as I recall. Finch never reads,” she said proudly.

“Wherever did you find him?” Tossie said.

“That’s the most amazing part of the whole thing,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. (Giggles.) “I went over to the vicar’s to take him our dresser scarves for the fête, and he was sitting in the vicar’s parlor. It seems he’d been employed by a family who’d gone out to India, and he was unable to accompany them because of a sensitivity to curry.

A sensitivity to curry.

“The vicar said, ‘Do you know of anyone in need of a butler?’ Can you imagine? It was Fate.” (Giggles.)

“It sounds highly irregular to me,” Tossie said.

“Oh, of course Thomas insisted on interviewing him, and he had the most glowing references.”

All of them from people who’d gone out to India, no doubt, I thought.

“Tossie, I should be cross at your dear mother for hiring away—” she frowned in thought, “—I’ve forgotten the name again…”

“Baine,” Tossie said.

“For hiring away Baine, but how can I be when I’ve found the perfect replacement?”

The perfect replacement came into the room bearing a flowered tray with a cut-glass decanter and glasses on it. “Currant cordial!” Mrs. Chattisbourne cried. “The very thing! Do you see what I mean?”

Finch began pouring the cordial and passing it around.

“Mr. Henry,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “Are you at school with Mr. St. Trewes?”

“Yes,” I said. “At Oxford. Balliol.”

“Are you married?” Eglantine asked.

“Eglantine!” Iris said. “It’s rude to ask people if they’re married.”

“You asked Tossie if he was married,” Eglantine said. “I heard you whispering.”

“Hush,” Iris said, turning, appropriately enough, carnation pink. (Giggles.)

“What part of England do you come from, Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Chattisbourne said.

It was time to change the subject. “I wished to thank you for your son’s loan of clothing,” I said, sipping the currant cordial. It was better than eel pie. “Is he here?”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “Didn’t the Merings tell you? Elliott is in South Africa.”

“He’s a mining engineer,” Tossie volunteered.

“We have just had a letter from him,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “Where is it, Pansy?”

The girls all got up and began looking for it with a good deal of giggling.

“Here it is, madam,” Finch said, and handed it to Mrs. Chattisbourne.

“Dear Mother and Father and Posies,” she read. “Here at last is the good long letter I had promised you,” and it became obvious she intended to read the entire thing.

“You must miss your son a great deal,” I said, trying to forestall her. “Will he be home soon?”

“Not until his two years’ tour of duty is up, eight months from now, I’m afraid. Of course, were one of his sisters to marry, he would naturally come home for the wedding.” (Giggles.)

She launched into the letter. Two paragraphs convinced me that Elliott was as silly as his sisters and had never been in love with anyone but himself in his life.

Three paragraphs convinced me Tossie didn’t care two pins for him either. She looked positively bored.

By paragraph four I was wondering why Elliott had escaped being named Rhododendron or Mugwort, and gazing at the Chattisbournes’ cat.

It was lying on a violet petit point footstool, and it was so enormous only a few violets showed round the edges. It was yellow, with yellower stripes, and even yellower eyes, and it returned my gaze with a heavy-lidded languor which I was beginning to feel myself, what with the currant cordial and Elliott Chattisbourne’s prose. I thought longingly of being back at Muchings End. Under a tree. Or in a hammock.

“What are you wearing to the fête, Rose?” Tossie asked when Mrs. Chattisbourne paused to turn over the letter to the third page.

Rose giggled and said, “My blue voile with the lace insets.”

“I’m wearing my white dotted swiss,” Pansy said, and the older girls leaned forward and began to chatter.

Eglantine went over to the footstool, picked up the cat, and dumped it on my lap. “This is our cat, Miss Marmalade.”

“Mrs. Marmalade, Eglantine,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said, and I wondered if cats were given honorifics, like cooks.

“And how are you, Mrs. Marmalade?” I said, chucking the cat under the chin. (Giggles.)

“What are you wearing to the fête, Tossie?” Iris asked.

“The new dress Papa had made for me in London,” Tossie said.

“Oh, what’s it like?” Pansy cried.

“I’ve written a description of it in my diary,” Tossie said.

Which some poor forensics expert will spend weeks deciphering, I thought.

“Finch,” Tossie said, “do hand me that basket,” and when he did, she reached under the embroidered cloth and brought out a cordovan leatherbound book with a gold lock.

And there went Verity’s hopes of stealing a look at it while we were gone. I wondered if I could possibly sneak it out of the basket on the way home.

Tossie carefully unclasped a delicate gold chain with a tiny key on it from her wrist and unlocked the diary, and then painstakingly refastened it.

Perhaps I could ask Finch to steal it for me. Or perhaps he’d already thought of it, since Mrs. Chattisbourne claimed he could read minds.

“White mignonette organdie,” Tossie read, “with an underdress of lilac silk. The bodice is made with a lace front, edged with a ruffle embroidered in ingrained colored silks of the softest shades of heliotrope, lilac, and periwinkle, worked in a pattern of violets and forget-me-nots inset with—”

The dress description was even longer than Elliott Chattisbourne’s letter. I gave myself over to some serious petting of Mrs. Marmalade.

She was not only enormous, but extremely fat. Her stomach was huge and felt oddly lumpy. I hoped she wasn’t suffering from something. An early form of the distemper that had wiped all the cats out in 2004 had been around in Victorian times, hadn’t it?

“—and a pleated lilac sash with a rosette at the side,” Tossie read. “The skirt is prettily draped and embroidered with a border of the same flowers. The sleeves are gathered, with shoulder and elbow ruffles. Lilac ribbons band—”

I felt cautiously along her underside as I petted her. Several tumors. But if it was leptovirus, it must be the early stages. Mrs. Marmalade’s fur was soft and sleek and she seemed perfectly happy. She was purring contentedly, her paws kneading happily into my trouser leg.

I was clearly still suffering from Slowness in Thinking. She doesn’t seem ill at all, I thought, even though she looks as though she’s about to explode—

“Good Lord,” I said. “This cat is pre—” and was struck in the back of the neck with a sharp object.

I stopped in mid-word.

Finch, behind me, said, “I beg your pardon, madam, there’s a gentleman here to see Mr. Henry.”

“To see me? But I—” and got clipped again.

“If you will excuse me, ladies,” I said, made some sort of bow, and followed Finch to the door.

“Mr. Henry has spent the last two years in America,” I heard Tossie say as I left the room.

“Ah,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said.

Finch led me down the corridor and into the library, and pulled the door shut behind us.

“I know, no swearing in the presence of ladies,” I said, rubbing my neck. “You didn’t have to hit me.”

“I did not strike you for swearing, sir,” he said, “though you are quite right. You should not have done it in polite company.”

“What did you hit me with anyway?” I said, feeling gingerly along my neckbone. “A blackjack?”

“A salver, sir,” he said, pulling a lethal-looking silver tray out of his pocket. “I had no alternative, sir. I had to stop you.”

“Stop me from what?” I said. “And what are you doing here anyway?”

“I am here on an assignment for Mr. Dunworthy.”

“What sort of an assignment? Were you sent to help Verity and me?”

“No, sir,” he said.

“Well, then, why are you here?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I am not at liberty to say, sir, except that I am here on a…” he cast about for a word, “…related project. I am on a different time-track from you, and therefore have access to information you have not discovered yet. If I were to tell you, it might interfere with your mission, sir.”

“And hitting me on the back of the neck isn’t interfering?” I said. “I think you’ve cracked a vertebra.”

“I had to stop you, sir, from commenting on the cat’s condition,” he said. “In Victorian society, discussion of sex in mixed company was utterly taboo. It was not your fault that you did not know. You weren’t properly prepped. I told Mr. Dunworthy I thought sending you without training and in your condition was a bad idea, but he was adamant that you should be the one to return Princess Arjumand.”

“He was?” I said. “Why?”

“I am not at liberty to say, sir.”

“And I wasn’t going to say anything about sex,” I protested. “All I intended to say was that the cat was preg—”

“Or anything resulting from sex, sir, or relating to it in any way.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward me. “Girls were kept completely ignorant of the facts of life until their wedding night, when I’m afraid it proved a considerable shock to some of them. Women’s bosoms or figures were never mentioned, and their legs were referred to as limbs.”

“So what should I have said? That the cat was expecting? In the club? In a family way?”

“You should not have said anything at all on the subject. The fact of pregnancy in people and animals was studiously ignored. You shouldn’t have referred to it at all.”

“And after they’re born and there are half a dozen kittens running all over the place, am I supposed to ignore that as well? Or ask if they were found under a cabbage leaf?”

Finch looked uncomfortable. “That’s another reason, sir,” he said obscurely. “We don’t want to draw any more attention to the situation than necessary. We don’t want to cause another incongruity.”

“Incongruity?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. When you return to the morning room, I would refrain from all mention of the cat.”

He truly did sound like Jeeves. “You’ve obviously been prepped,” I said admiringly. “When did you have time to learn so much about the Victorian era?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” he said, looking pleased. “But I can say I feel as though this is the job I was born to.”

“Well, since you’re so good at it, tell me what I am supposed to say when I go back in there. Who am I supposed to say was here to see me?” I said. “I don’t know anyone here.”

“It won’t be a problem, sir,” he said, opening the library door with a gloved hand.

“Won’t be a problem? What do you mean? I’ll have to say something.”

“No, sir. They will not care why you were called away, so long as it has afforded them the opportunity to discuss you in your absence.”

“Discuss me?” I said, alarmed. “You mean as to my authenticity?”

“No, sir,” he said, looking every inch the butler. “As to your marriage-ability.” He led me across the corridor, bowed slightly, and opened the door with a gloved hand.

He was right. There was a sudden caught-out silence in the room, and then a spasm of giggles.

Mrs. Chattisbourne said, “Tocelyn has just been telling us about your brush with death, Mr. Henry.”

When I almost said “pregnant”? I wondered.

“When your boat capsized,” Pansy said eagerly. “But I suppose it is nothing compared to your adventures in America.”

“Have you ever been scalped?” Eglantine said.

“Eglantine!” Mrs. Chattisbourne said.

Finch appeared in the door. “I beg your pardon, madam,” he said, “but will Miss Mering and Mr. Henry be staying to lunch?”

“Oh, do stay, Mr. Henry!” the girls chimed. “We want to hear all about America!”

I spent lunch regaling them with a story of stagecoaches and tomahawks I’d stolen from Nineteenth-Century lectures I wished now I’d paid more attention to, and watching Finch. He signalled the proper utensil to use by whispering, “The fork with the three tines,” in my ear as he set the courses in front of me and by signalling discreetly from the sideboard as I held their attention with lines like, “That night sitting round the campfire, we could hear their tomtoms in the darkness, beating, beating, beating.” (Giggles.)

After lunch, Iris, Rose, and Pansy begged us to stay for a game of charades, but Tossie said we must go, and carefully relocked her diary and put it, not in the basket, but in her reticule. “Oh, but can’t you stay for just a short while?” Pansy Chattisbourne begged.

Tossie said we still had to pick up contributions from the vicar’s, for which I was grateful. I had had hock and claret at lunch and that, combined with the currant cordial and the residual effects of time-lag, made me want nothing but a long afternoon nap.

“Shall we see you at the fête, Mr. Henry?” Iris said, giggling.

I’m afraid so, I thought, hoping the vicar’s wasn’t far.

It wasn’t, but first we had to stop at the Widow Wallace’s (for a sauceboat and a banjo missing two strings), the Middlemarches’ (a teapot with the spout broken off, a vinegar cruet, and a game of Authors missing several cards), and Miss Stiggins’s (a bird cage, a set of four statuettes representing the Fates, a copy of Through the Looking Glass, a fish slice, and a ceramic thimble inscribed “Souvenir of Margate”).

Since the Chattisbournes had already given us a hat pin holder, a cushion with crewelwork violets and sweet peas, an egg boiler, and a cane with a carved dog’s head, the basket was already nearly full, and I had no idea how I was going to carry it all home. Luckily, all the vicar had to donate was a large cracked gilt-framed mirror.

“I will send Baine for it,” Tossie said and we started back.

The walk home was a repeat of the walk there, except that I was more laden and a good deal more tired. Tossie prattled on about Juju and “bwave, bwave Tewence,” and I thought about how glad I was my name didn’t begin with a “C,” and focused on finding a hammock.

Baine met us at the end of the drive and relieved me of my basket, and Cyril came running out to greet me. His unfortunate tendency to tilt to port, however, brought him up to Tossie’s feet, and she began to cry, “O naughty, naughty, bad creature!” and emit little screamlets.

“Come here, Cyril, boy!” I called, clapping my hands, and he ambled over happily, wagging his whole body. “Did you miss me, boy?”

“What, ho, the travellers return,” Terence called, waving from the lawn. “ ‘Back to the white walls of their long-left home.’ You’re just in time. Baine is setting up the wickets for a croquet match.”

“A croquet match!” Tossie cried. “What fun!” and ran up to change her clothes.

“A croquet match?” I said to Verity, who was watching Baine pound stakes into the grass.

“It was this or lawn tennis,” Verity said, “which I was afraid you hadn’t been prepped in.”

“I haven’t been prepped in croquet either,” I said, looking at the banded wooden mallets.

“It’s a very simple game,” Verity said, handing me a yellow ball. “You hit the ball through the wickets with a mallet. How did this morning go?”

“I was once a scout with Buffalo Bill,” I said, “and I’m engaged to Pansy Chattisbourne.”

She didn’t smile. “What did you find out about Mr. C?”

“Elliott Chattisbourne’s not coming home for another eight months,” I said. I explained how I’d asked her about the chap whose name I’d forgotten. “She couldn’t think of anyone it might be. But that’s not the most interesting thing I—”

Tossie came running over in a pink-and-white peppermint-striped sailor dress and a large pink bow, holding Princess Arjumand in her arms. “Juju does so love to watch the balls,” she said, setting her on the ground.

“And bat them,” Verity said. “Mr. Henry and I shall be partners,” she said. “And you and Mr. St. Trewes.”

“Mr. St. Trewes, we are to be partners,” she cried, running over to where Terence was supervising Baine.

“I thought the object was to keep Tossie and Terence apart,” I said.

“It is,” Verity said, “but I have to talk to you.”

“And I have to talk to you,” I said. “You’ll never guess who I saw over at the Chattisbournes’. Finch.”

“Finch?” she said blankly. “Mr. Dunworthy’s secretary?”

I nodded. “He’s their butler.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was ‘a related project,’ and that he couldn’t tell me without interfering with ours.”

“Are you ready?” Tossie called from the stake.

“Nearly,” Verity said. “All right. The rules of the game are perfectly simple. You score points by hitting your ball through a course of six wickets twice, the four outside hoops, the center hoops, then back again in the opposite direction. Each turn is one stroke. If your ball goes through the wicket you get a continuation stroke. If your ball hits another ball, you get a croquet stroke and a continuation stroke, but if your ball goes through two hoops in one stroke, you only get one stroke. After you hit a ball, you can’t hit it again till you’ve gone through your next hoop, except for the first hoop. If you hit a ball you’ve hit, you lose your turn.”

“Are you ready?” Tossie called.

“Nearly,” Verity said to her. “Those are the boundaries,” she said to me, pointing with her mallet, “North, South, East, and West. That’s the yard line, and that’s the baulk line. Is all that clear?”

“Perfectly,” I said. “Which color am I?”

“Red,” she said. “You start from the baulk line.”

“Ready?” Tossie called.

“Yes,” Verity nodded.

“I go first,” Tossie said, stooping gracefully and putting her ball on the grass.

Well, and how difficult could it be? I thought, watching Tossie line up her shot. A dignified Victorian game, played by children and young women in long, trailing dresses on lush green lawns. A civilized game.

Tossie turned, smiled prettily at Terence, and tossed her curls. “I hope I make a good shot,” she said, and gave the ball a mighty whack that sent it through the first two hoops and halfway across the lawn.

She smiled surprisedly, asked, “Do I get another shot?” and whacked it again.

This time it nearly hit Cyril, who had lain down for a nap in the shade.

“Interference,” Tossie said. “It hit its nose.”

“Cyril hasn’t got a nose,” Verity said, placing her ball a mallet’s head behind the first hoop. “My turn.”

She didn’t hit her ball quite so violently as Tossie had, but it wasn’t a tap either. It went through the first hoop, and her next shot brought her within two feet of Tossie’s ball.

“Your turn, Mr. St. Trewes,” Tossie said, moving so her long skirt covered her ball. After his shot, when she walked over to him, her ball was a good yard farther away from Verity.

I went over to Verity. “She cheats,” I said.

She nodded. “I wasn’t able to find Tossie’s diary,” she said.

“I know. She had it with her. She read the dress description to the Chattisbourne girls.”

“Your turn, Mr. Henry,” Tossie said, leaning on her croquet mallet.

Verity had not said anything about the proper grip, and I hadn’t been paying attention. I put my ball down by the wicket and took hold of the mallet with a sort of cricket bat grip.

“Fault!” Tossie called. “Mr. Henry’s ball isn’t the proper length from the hoop. You lose a turn, Mr. Henry.”

“He does not,” Verity said. “Move your ball back the width of a mallet head.”

I did and then hit the ball more or less the right direction, though not through the hoop.

“My turn,” Tossie said and thwacked Verity’s ball completely off the court and into the hedge. “Sorry,” she said, simpered demurely, and did the same thing to Terence’s.

“I thought you said this was a civilized game,” I said to Verity, crawling under the hedge to retrieve her ball.

“I said simple,” she said.

I picked up the ball.

“Pretend you’re still looking for it,” Verity said under her breath. “After I searched Tossie’s room, I went through to Oxford.”

“Did you find out how much slippage there was on your drop?” I said, prying branches apart.

“No,” she said, looking solemn. “Warder was too busy.”

I was about to say that Warder always thought she was too busy, when she said, “The new recruit — I don’t know his name — the one who was working with you and Carruthers — is stuck in the past.”

“In the marrows field?” I said, thinking of the dogs.

“No, in Coventry. He was supposed to come through after he’d finished the rubble, but he hasn’t.”

“He probably couldn’t find the net,” I said, thinking of him messing with his pocket torch.

“That’s what Carruthers said, but Mr. Dunworthy and T.J. are worried it’s connected to the incongruity. They’ve sent Carruthers back to look for him.”

“It’s your turn, Verity,” Tossie said impatiently. She started over to us. “Haven’t you found it yet?”

“Here it is,” I called and emerged from under the hedge, holding it aloft.

“It went out here,” Tossie said, pointing with her foot to a spot several miles from where she hit it out.

“It’s like playing with the Red Queen,” I said, and handed Verity the ball.

My only goal on my next three turns was to get my ball on the same side of the court as Verity’s, a goal that was repeatedly thwarted by “Off With Her Head!” Mering.

“I’ve got it,” I said, limping over to Verity after one of Tossie’s shots had sent Terence’s ball straight into my shin, at which point Cyril had got up and moved to the far side of the lawn. “Mr. C is the physician who’s called in to doctor Tossie’s croquet casualties. What else did you find out?”

Verity lined up her shot carefully. “I found out who Terence married.”

“Please don’t say it was Tossie,” I said, standing on my good leg and rubbing my shin.

“No,” she said. She hit the ball neatly through the hoop. “Not Tossie. Maud Peddick.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” I said. “That means I didn’t ruin things by making Terence miss meeting Maud.”

She pulled a folded sheet of paper out of her sash and handed it surreptitiously to me.

“What’s this?” I said, sticking it in my breast pocket. “An excerpt from Maud’s diary?”

“No,” she said. “She’s apparently the only woman in the entire Victorian era who didn’t keep a diary. It’s a letter from Maud St. Trewes to her younger sister.”

“Your ball, Mr. Henry!” Tossie called.

“Second paragraph,” Verity said.

I gave the red ball an enthusiastic whack that sent it straight past Terence’s ball and into the center of the lilacs.

“I say, too bad!” Terence said.

I nodded and went crashing into the lilacs after it.

“Farewell, dear friend,” Terence called gaily, waving his mallet. “ ‘Farewell! For in that fatal word — howe’er we promise — hope — believe — there breathes despair.’ ”

I found the ball, picked it up, and moved into the thickest part of the lilacs. I unfolded the letter. It was written in a delicate, spidery hand. “Dearest Isabel,” it read, “I am so happy to hear of your engagement. Robert is a fine young man, and I only hope you will be as happy as Terence and I are. You worry that you met on the steps of an ironmonger’s, a singularly unromantic location. Do not fret. My darling Terence and I first met at a railway station. I was standing with my Aunt Amelia on the platform of Oxford Railway Station—”

I stood there looking down at the letter. The platform of Oxford Railway Station.

“—scarcely a romantic location, yet I knew instantly, there amidst the luggage vans and steamer trunks, that he was my true mate.”

Only she hadn’t. I had been there, and she and her aunt had hired a fly and gone on.

“Can’t you find it?” Terence called.

I hastily folded the letter and stuck it back in my pocket. “Here it is,” I said, and emerged from the bushes.

“It went out here,” Tossie said, indicating a totally fictitious point with her foot.

“Thank you, Miss Mering,” I said and, measuring one mallet head’s length from the edge with my mallet, placed it on the grass, and prepared to hit it again.

“Your turn is ended,” Tossie said, going over to her ball. “It’s my turn, she said, giving it an enormous whack that sent my ball right back into the lilacs.

“Roquet,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Two strokes.”

“Isn’t she a topping girl?” Terence said, helping me look for my ball.

No, I thought, and even if she were, you’re not supposed to be in love with her. You’re supposed to be in love with Maud. You were supposed to meet her at the railway station, and this is my fault, my fault, my fault.

“Mr. Henry, it’s your turn,” Tossie said impatiently.

“Oh,” I said and hit blindly at the nearest ball.

“Your fault, Mr. Henry,” Tossie said impatiently. “You’re dead.”

“What?”

“You’re dead on that ball, Mr. Henry,” she said. “You’ve hit it once already. You can’t hit it again till you’ve gone through the hoop.”

“Oh,” I said, and aimed for the wicket instead.

“Not that hoop,” Tossie said, shaking her blonde curls at me. “I call a fault for attempting to skip a hoop.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying to focus.

“Mr. Henry is used to playing according to the American rules,” Verity said.

I went over and stood next to her, watching Tossie line up her shot, setting it up like a billiards shot, calculating how the balls would ricochet off each other.

“There’s worse,” Verity said. “One of their grandsons was an RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain. He flew the first bombing raid on Berlin.”

“Terence!” Tossie said. “Your animal is in the way of my double roquet.”

Terence obediently went to shift Cyril. Tossie sighted along her mallet, measuring the angles at which the balls would collide, calculating the possibilities.

I stood there, watching Tossie line up her shot. Verity didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. I knew all about that first bombing raid. It was in September of 1940, in the middle of the Battle of Britain, and Hitler had vowed that bombs would never fall on the Fatherland, and when they did, he had ordered the full-scale bombing of London. And then, in November, of Coventry.

Tossie swung her mallet. Her ball hit mine, ricocheted off, hit Verity’s, and went straight through the hoop.

That bombing raid had saved the RAF, which the Luftwaffe had badly outnumbered. If the Luftwaffe hadn’t switched to civilian bombing when they did, they would have won the Battle of Britain. And Hitler would have invaded.