This Cold Country by Annabel Davis-Goff Page A

years, say, there is something that doesn’t fit the pattern. Or maybe it does, but it’s too large a pattern for us to see. A volcano, an earthquake, an ice age. What are you smiling at?”
    â€œI was admiring the way you kept your metaphors in place,” Daisy said, not untruthfully, but concealing the real reason for her smile. She was thinking of the educational opportunities she had had since she had arrived at Bannock: a lecture on art, another on ocean currents, and a glimpse of the social structure of the English upper classes at play. How much she had been told and how little her opinion had been sought.
    â€œAll right. Sorry. The war isn’t a storm—it’s the equivalent of an ice age. What’s so strange is that no one else seems to see that when the war’s over nothing is going to be the same. The Great War got the vote for women and altered the social fabric of this country forever; do they imagine the Tommies will go back to the mines or unemployment lines as soon as there is peace? Are you planning to go back to whatever you were doing before you joined up?”
    â€œI’d just left school, so in a sense I’ll be back where I was—trying to decide what to do with my life. Of course, that in itself is a change—the idea that I might decide instead of just accepting what happens.”
    â€œAnd the choices will be different.”
    â€œLord, I hope so. So, you see, I
am
an example—to your family—of the less affluent middle class forgetting its place. My father’s a rector—to them, I suppose, a sort of grown-up chaplain. No wonder they’re so snooty with me.”
    â€œYou’ll find it much harder to get me on the defensive. The main bunch of Nugents, this lot here—my family can’t afford to be so picky—look down on the royal family as a little too recent, too German. Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “in terms purely of blood-lines, they can make a case.”
    They both were laughing when James came into the room; Daisy could not have chosen a better moment for his entrance and she, an all too frequent victim of
l' esprit d’escalier,
felt a triumphant surge of delight.
    â€œDaisy, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Dance with me—” James said, his arms invitingly open.
    Despite the triumph of the previous moment, Daisy felt her feet press the floor with an involuntary movement toward rising.
    â€œDaisy has promised this dance to me—and I think a few young bloods of the neighborhood are ahead of you. Get in line, Nugent.”
    Patrick rose and took Daisy by the hand. Daisy glanced back as they left the sitting room. She achieved a glance of amused helplessness, tinged with only the slightest suggestion of regret. It was not hard for her to simulate the lack of reproach; at that moment she had forgotten the humiliating events of the day.
    Daisy glanced at Patrick as they descended the stairs, very much aware of her hand in his.
    â€œJames has always been very competitive. He was rather a spoilt little boy.”
    â€œGulls,” she said. “Do you think seagulls circle the island of weed and the tiny fishes? Or would it be too far from land?”
    ***
    ALTHOUGH DAISY FELT a lot warmer toward the North of England and those who lived there than she had the previous morning, she thought when it came to singing hymns, they couldn’t hold a candle to the Welsh. Otherwise, matins was familiar.
    The Nugents occupied two pews toward the front of the church on the right-hand side. Originally, Daisy thought, these pews would have been theirs, not only because the pews nearer the front were “better seats” but so that the Nugents would be visible to a larger proportion of the congregation to whom they provided an example. Since the Crimean War, their right to the second and third pews were further established by a memorial, on the wall above the pews, to a