“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Jean as Howard reappeared from the kitchen with a carrier bag into which he proceeded to transfer the contents of the basket—rhubarb, lettuce and beetroot. “The bus will be fine.”
“We insist, don’t we, Howard?”
“Yes, you can’t carry all this like a market porter.”
Their joint determination swept away all her objections.
“And you must come again soon for a fitting,” Gretchen said as she and Margaret stood at the gate to wave her off.
“And to finish our badminton tournament,” Margaret reminded her.
She was clutching this week’s copy of Girl that Jean had brought her but been too tactful to hand over until Lizzie had left. By way of thanks she had given Jean a shy hug.
Unable quite to bring herself to return the invitation to tea until she had reflected on how her mother was to be accommodated in such an event, Jean said, “I’ll be in touch the moment I hear from Dr. Lloyd-Jones.”
It struck her as soon as the words were spoken that this introduction of a business—and, moreover, medical—matter into what was purely a social occasion had sounded a wrong note, but Gretchen didn’t seem to notice.
The interior of the Wolseley smelled of gas and leather and the memory of every car Jean had ever ridden in. She sensed from its pristine condition, polished chrome trims, glossy walnut dashboard and dustless floor, and the way that Howard opened and gently closed the passenger door on her, that he was as proud of his car as Gretchen was of her orderly house.
“Do you drive?” he asked Jean as they set off along empty suburban streets.
“I do, as a matter of fact,” she replied. “Although I don’t have a car. I used to be a driver with the ATS in the war. I was even a driving instructor for a while.”
“Were you?” He gave her a quick sideways glance as if he was seeing her in a new light. “I’ve tried to teach Gretchen but she’s terribly nervous behind the wheel. She’s happier being the passenger.”
“Most husbands prefer it that way,” Jean said.
“I did try to encourage her. But perhaps not enough,” he conceded.
He took the corner with his foot on the clutch, something she had always told her students not to do, as it meant you were not fully in control of the vehicle.
“I think men like to keep their cars to themselves, so they put it about that driving is harder than it really is. There’s nothing to it once you’ve learned.”
“There might be something in that,” he admitted.
His hand on the gear stick, brushed against the side of her knee as he changed down coming out of the turn, but he didn’t seem to notice, so Jean decided she wouldn’t notice either.
“The car is such an incredible thing, don’t you think?” he was saying. “Not just the engineering. I mean the freedom it represents.”
“Privacy too.”
She was thinking that the whole history of human courtship might have been very different without the opportunities it provided for a man and woman to be alone in a confined space. But this was not perhaps an appropriate matter to discuss in just such a setting.
“You work somewhere around here, don’t you?” he asked as they approached the Orpington War Memorial.
“Not far,” Jean replied. “Petts Wood. It’s very decent of you to run me home when you could be relaxing in the garden.”
“I never relax in the garden,” said Howard. “All I see when I look around are jobs that need doing. Anyway, it’s a pleasure. I hope you’ll come again. It’s so nice for Gretchen to have a friend.”
Jean was surprised and a little embarrassed by this compliment. She had considered herself to be transparently the lonely one among them.
“Gretchen doesn’t strike me as someone who’d be short of friends,” she said.
“Neither of us is what you’d call sociable,” he replied. “You’re the first person, apart from Aunt Edie, who’s been round to tea in ages.”
“We don’t entertain much ourselves. In fact, never. So today has been a lovely treat.”
“For us all.”
This conversation, which Jean imagined as a stately dance, proceeding forward and backward, toward and then away from real frankness, brought them to her turning. Just as she pointed out the house as the one with the red door, it opened and Mrs. Melsom appeared, saying her goodbyes to Mrs. Swinney on the threshold. They both peered at the Wolseley with undisguised curiosity as Howard sprang out to help Jean with her bags.