Ultimate Prizes

‘Poor Nev,’ said Emily in 1942. ‘You can shed a tear if you like. I’ll look the other way and afterwards we can pretend it never happened.’

‘For God’s sake!’ I shouted and blundered out of the kitchen into my study. Willy arrived five minutes later with the whisky and banged on the door until I let him in.

‘Em driving you round the bend? How her husband stands all that tea I don’t know. What a mystery marriage is, but of course I’m just a bachelor schoolmaster who observes society’s mating customs from afar … Do you remember when you said to me on the beach at St Leonards all those years ago: “I’m going to marry the perfect girl and have the perfect family and live happily ever after”? I’d never even considered getting married, and yet there you were, seventeen years old, with that misty look in your eyes, the look of the dyed-in-the-wool romantic, the look Father always wore when he read us “The Charge of the Light Brigade” –’

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