“Anyway, I did save her,” said Laura. “She isn’t hurt a bit-not a bit.” She bent over the child and spoke passionately. “I won’t ever let her be hurt, not ever. I shall look after her all my life.”
Mr. Baldock’s eyebrows rose slowly.
“So it’s love now. You love her, do you?”
“Oh yes!” The answer came with the same fervour. “I love her better than anything in the world!”
She turned her face to him, and Mr. Baldock was startled. It was, he thought, like the breaking open of a cocoon. The child’s face was radiant with feeling. In spite of the grotesque absence of lashes and brows, the face had a quality of emotion that made it suddenly beautiful.
“I see,” said Mr. Baldock. “I see… And where shall we go from here, I wonder?”
Laura looked at him, puzzled, and slightly apprehensive.
“Isn’t it all right?” she asked. “For me to love her, I mean?”
Mr. Baldock looked at her. His face was thoughtful.
“It’s all right for you, young Laura,” he said. “Oh yes, it’s all right for you….”
He relapsed into abstraction, his hand tapping his chin.
As a historian he had always mainly been concerned with the past, but there were moments when the fact that he could not foresee the future irritated him profoundly. This was one of them.
He looked at Laura and the crowing Shirley, and his brow contracted angrily. ‘Where will they be,’ he thought, ‘in ten years’ time-in twenty years-in twenty-five? Where shall I be?’
The answer to that last question came quickly.
‘Under the turf,’ said Mr. Baldock to himself. ‘Under the turf.’
He knew that, but he did not really believe it, any more than any other positive person full of the vitality of living really believes it.
What a dark and mysterious entity the future was! In twenty-odd years what would have happened? Another war, perhaps? (Most unlikely!) New diseases? People fastening mechanical wings on themselves, perhaps, and floating about the streets like sacrilegious angels! Journeys to Mars? Sustaining oneself on horrid little tablets out of bottles, instead of on steaks and succulent green peas!
“What are you thinking about?” Laura asked.
“The future.”
“Do you mean to-morrow?”
“Farther forward than that. I suppose you’re able to read, young Laura?”
“Of course,” said Laura, shocked. “I’ve read nearly all the Doctor Dolittles, and the books about Winnie-the-
Pooh and-”
“Spare me the horrid details,” said Mr. Baldock. “How do you read a book? Begin at the beginning and go right through?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“No,” said Mr. Baldock. “I take a look at the start, get some idea of what it’s all about, then I go on to the end and see where the fellow has got to, and what he’s been trying to prove. And then, then I go back and see how he’s got there and what’s made him land up where he did. Much more interesting.”
Laura looked interested but disapproving.
“I don’t think that’s the way the author meant his book to be read,” she said.
“Of course he didn’t.”
“I think you should read the book the way the author meant.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Baldock. “But you’re forgetting the party of the second part, as the blasted lawyers put it. There’s the reader. The reader’s got his rights, too. The author writes his book the way he likes. Has it all his own way. Messes up the punctuation and fools around with the sense any way he pleases. And the reader reads the book the way he wants to read it, and the author can’t stop him.”
“You make it sound like a battle,” said Laura.
“I like battles,” said Mr. Baldock. “The truth is, we’re all slavishly obsessed by Time. Chronological sequence has no significance whatever. If you consider Eternity, you can jump about in Time as you please. But no one does consider Eternity.”
Laura had withdrawn her attention from him. She was not considering Eternity. She was considering Shirley.
And watching that dedicated devoted look, Mr. Baldock was again conscious of a vague feeling of apprehension.
Part 2 – Shirley – 1946
CHAPTER one
1
Shirley walked at a brisk pace along the lane. Her racket with the shoes attached was tucked under one arm. She was smiling to herself and was slightly out of breath.