Page 29 of Broken Country

“It’s fine, we won’t stay long.”

“Gabe, about that night—”

“Say that again, Beth, I didn’t quite catch it—?” says Claudia-or-Imogen, and I miss the rest of their conversation.

Suddenly I’m being embraced by Louisa, and everything about her—the way she is dressed, the cigarette she smokes inits black-and-gold holder, her round, black-framed glasses—glasses—which manage to make her look even more beautiful than I remember—destroys me.

Helen, my talented friend, surprised me with a polka-dot dress she’d made for me before I left—a Christian Dior rip-off from his New Look days, copied from aVoguepattern. Low neck, fitted at the bust, a flouncy circular skirt. I loved this dress, I felt like a different person in it. Looking at Louisa now, I’d like to rip it to shreds.

Her black top is off the shoulder, revealing satiny golden skin and a glimpse of cleavage, and she’s wearing it with black-and-white checked pedal pushers which she has cinched at her waist with a wide gold belt. Perched on the back of her head is a white-and-gold naval cap. She looks incredible.

“How was your interview. Did it go well?” Louisa asks, smiling at me with her pretty blue-green eyes.

I’m so bored of the question, so bored of myself.

Actually, it couldn’t have gone better. Out of two dons interviewing, one was a woman and we seemed to click instantly. Within minutes we’d segued from the Wife of Bath and Shakespearean tragedy to trading poems from our favorite female poets. Professor Gilbert told me to look out for the modern Americans Anne Sexton and Mary Oliver, and a young Cambridge scholar she’d just come across named Sylvia Plath. Escorting me from the room, she’d said: “We have an active creative writing community. I believe you’ll do very well here.”

I manage to tell Louisa some of this and she touches my wrist and says: “Oh, you write too?” She puts one hand to her bosom, closes her eyes. “The novel Gabe is writing, it’s beautiful. Funny, devastating, brave. What you’d expect from him, I suppose. You must have read it?”

I manage to smile. “He’s quite cagey about his writing. We both are.”

“Talking about me, by any chance?”

Gabriel is smiling as he comes to stand between us.

Louisa’s face lights up the moment she sees him. She places a palm against his chest, the gesture jarring in its familiarity.

“I was telling Beth about your wonderful novel,” she says, turning back to me.

But I am not looking at Louisa. I’m looking at Gabriel, at the deep flush in his cheeks. He looks uncomfortable. Or guilty. Even after Louisa has removed her hand.

A battle is raging in my head when Gabriel and I leave the party a short while later. I want to rail at him:Why didn’t you tell people I was your girlfriend? And why did you blush when Louisa touched you? Is there something between you? Something I should know about?

“Most of the restaurants will be closing,” Gabriel says, looking at his watch, “but there’s an Indian that stays open.”

“Do you think I’m a country bumpkin?”

Gabriel frowns. “Of course not. Where’s this coming from?”

Oh, I don’t know, being in a room full of clipped, upper-class voices, girls in cashmere, boys opening bottles of champagne as if they were lemonade. Money and acceptance and me having neither, the fish out of water with a Dorset intonation.

“Your friend Claudia, or whatever her name was, kept asking me to repeat myself. She seemed to find me hard to understand.”

“How bloody absurd.” Gabriel pulls me to a stop. Leans forward to kiss my forehead, then my eyes, my nose, my mouth. “I love the way you talk. It’s one of the things I miss the most.”

I breathe in the Oxford night air, the sight of him, the most beautiful boy on earth.

“What do you say we skip the restaurant and go back to my rooms?” he asks.

“I say, thank God.”

We stand there in the cool night air, watching each other. Gabriel has this look on his face, one I know from before, where everything shrinks, until it’s just him and me. A look that tells me I am enough; more than that, I am everything. All I have to do is keep the faith.

“I wish you could see what I see, Beth. You’re worth a thousand of the girls in that room.”

1968

“You think you know someone,” I say, as we turn onto a long, tree-lined drive and the hotel comes into view. It is a large, redbrick house on the borders of Devon, and Frank has planned our stay as a surprise for my birthday.

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