Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault

shocked by the crudeness of the summary, but even more relieved by its brevity. Because Helen was there, she added rapidly, “Great Aunt Gertrude’s dead. She died of cancer. And Harriet—Aunt Eveline’s Harriet, you know—she’s married and has a baby. The place is a lot bigger since you went.”
    “Has Father built it all?”
    “Most of it. And some are bungalows.”
    “It must look like the New Jerusalem.” Leo passed the crust again, critically, over her plate. Without looking up she said, “Are the Fawcetts still there?”
    “No, Mr. Fawcett died and they moved to Bristol. Tom’s still at sea. He’s a first mate now.”
    Leo ate her crust, and said when she had finished it, “I shall soon be owing him five bob. We had a bet he wouldn’t get a master’s ticket before he was thirty-five.”
    Elsie was beginning to feel chatty, as she did at the rare times when she met an old school friend. “I always thought Tom was a very nice boy. I expect you missed him when he went to sea.”
    Leo looked up from her plate. She seemed to Elsie to have lost the thread of the conversation, so she repeated her last remark to make it clearer. “Oh, yes,” said Leo. “Yes, Tom was a very good sort.”
    Elsie was saddened by so slight a dismissal of so old a friend. It brought back again, now that her hunger had been disposed of, the doubts she had had before. Outside the uncurtained windows, which were now quite dark, vague dispersed creaks and splashes seemed to her like the sound of approaching oars. Presently even Leo noticed her strained attention.
    “The river’s full of noises. Like The Tempest, you know. You’ll have earache if you listen to all of them.”
    Shielded by the tablecloth, Elsie twisted her hand round and under her knee. Gripping a fold of stocking, she said, “I was wondering if you were expecting any visitors. I mean, if you are, I could do my unpacking. You mustn’t ever let me be in the way.”
    “ Visitors?” Leo stared at her, with that blankness which is the least easily simulated form of surprise. “At this time of night? It’s nearly eleven. This isn’t St. John’s Wood, my dear. Even Joe doesn’t often blow in as late as this.” She walked over to the window, looked out, and added, as if in comment on something she saw, “Besides, he’s working.”
    She turned back into the room and gazed at Elsie, whose expressive face was full of half-hesitant relief. Suddenly she threw back her head and laughed. It was a clear, amused laugh, as open as a schoolboy’s; yet, Elsie thought, perhaps after all she had not remembered it quite right. “I see,” she said. “Of course, I should have thought. I was beginning to wonder what it was they had told you.” Elsie’s crimson face made her laugh, quietly, again. “Don’t worry. You’ve seen the household. All of it. No one belongs here except Helen and me.”
    “Oh.” Elsie let out a long breath. “I’m so … I mean, of course—”
    “We’ll tell each other the story of our lives in the morning.” Leo sat down across one of the chair-arms, and brought out a packet of cigarettes. “Do you?” she asked, holding it out.
    “Well … not really, very much.”
    “Quite right, they’re bad for your wind. I get into it when I’m working.” Helen, Elsie perceived for the first time, was no longer there; she had been vaguely aware of her absence without seeing her go. She had the power of putting herself, as it were, into soft-focus.
    Leo struck a match. Across its spurt she said, slowly, “I suppose this is all pretty different from what you expected.”
    “Well, I suppose in a way. …”
    Leo smiled. The lamp was behind her; the flame of the match threw into relief, like the selection of a brilliant caricaturist, the odd slanting lines of her face. She looked, for a moment, different and subtly inhuman, like a mocking Oberon surveying one of the simpler attendants of his Queen. Then the match went out; she pulled at her