Treasures of Time by Penelope Lively Page A

Lucas to put it to soak; she sticks her lip out, pulls a face, really she can look plain when she wants to.
    She has been threading beads. She wants me to wear this necklace she has made. She puts it round my neck, and I feel her sticky, hot fingers against me. I never like people to touch me, except – well except in the obvious ways. Children touch you all the time, they pat and paw and poke, it is something I have never much liked. I can’t help it, it is the way I am.
    I am tactful. I say what a lovely necklace it is, but it is a pity it doesn’t go with my frock – look, I say, look at the colours. I want Katie to learn to have nice taste, to have an eye for things. I say I know, why don’t you go and see if Aunt Nellie would like it, I expect she’d love it, Aunt Nellie hasn’t got as many necklaces as I have.

    ‘In a junk shop near the flat,’ said Kate.
    ‘Which of course I’ve never seen.’
    ‘Oh, Ma, it’s awfully grotty. It isn’t your kind of place at all.’
    ‘I offered, ages ago, to come and make it nice for you.’
    ‘Thanks, Ma, but honestly, it suits me fine as it is.’
    ‘Well, it’s up to you,’ said Laura graciously. She was wearing a new coat, and had stowed a couple of shopping bags under her chair. ‘I have had quite a successful morning,’ she went on.
    ‘Oh, good.’
    ‘And this afternoon I am meeting Barbara Hamilton. We are going to an art exhibition together.’
    ‘You ought to come to London more often.’
    Laura sighed. ‘Perhaps eventually, when one is less tied. Of course I sometimes think, eventually, of selling Danehurst. It will get too big. And if I hadn’t Mrs Lucas. Barbara and I have toyed with the idea of turning it into an Arts Centre of some kind. An Arts Centre for the county. The government would have to give us money, of course, and we would run it jointly, it would take time to get off the ground, but one imagines it in ten or fifteen years’ time being a sort of second Chichester. For art, though, not plays.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Kate.
    ‘There would have to be tremendous alterations, of course. We would get in some really top architect.’
    ‘In ten or fifteen years’ time you’ll be over seventy, ma.’
    There was a silence. ‘Possibly,’ said Laura coldly. She studied the bill. ‘I don’t remember having soup. I suppose we did. Tony Greenway has been on to me again. He is coming down at some point to have a look through Hugh’s papers, to see if there is anything that might be of any use for this programme. Nellie is very disapproving for some reason.’
    ‘I’m not surprised. I don’t like the idea of someone poking around in Dad’s stuff, either.’
    ‘Not private things. Not letters. Just his work things. Dig notes and so on.’
    ‘Hmnn.’
    ‘I should imagine he’s queer, wouldn’t you?’ said Laura.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Tony Greenway.’
    ‘I’ve not the slightest idea. What does it matter, anyway?’
    ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter ,’ said Laura. ‘It’s just that I notice that kind of thing about people. Nothing to look so prim about, darling, I thought your generation was so outspoken…’
    In ten minutes, Kate thought, I shall be back in the museum. I shall work terribly hard all afternoon. This evening I shall see Tom again. I haven’t seen him now for – for five and a half hours.
    ‘… partly of course because one has always rather kept up with things, as a matter of fact I never really feel of any particular time in the way one is supposed to be of the time when one was young, whereas some people very much are, take Barbara Hamilton for instance not that she’d care to have it said but her I do see very much as a thirties person. Or your Tom.’
    ‘What about Tom?’
    ‘Oh, Tom is very much of now, isn’t he?’ said Laura with a laugh. ‘He really couldn’t be anything else. And now I don’t know about you darling but I have a lot to do, I shall have to rush.’

    One of William Stukeley’s contemporaries