Voyage of Innocence. Elizabeth Edmondson

than the Dean, deeply disapproved of smoking, and had been known to harangue tourists with a stream of Old Testament prophecy about where those who smoked would end up.

      Hugh slid to his feet. ‘Lord, yes, what a bore, but anything not to get a lecture about going from one smoking pit to another.’

      Vee got up and linked arms with him. ‘Or Daddy being distressed and asking himself where he went wrong with us.’

      Hugh looked at Vee with affection. He was barely half a head taller than her, short for a man. They were very alike, obviously brother and sister in physique and colouring, and with the same direct gaze in their dark eyes.

      ‘He did go wrong, in a very big way, I fear, but smoking is the least of it.’

      Hugh wasn’t there when their grandfather arrived to discuss Vee’s future. ‘Lucky for me I’ll be back in Oxford when he comes,’ he’d said. ‘You know how scenes upset me.’

      Unfortunately, scenes didn’t upset Grandfather.

      With the easy movement of dreams, she was no longer in her austere, bare-floored bedroom, but in the drawing room, large and sombre; Victorian in furniture and colour, and even smell.

      It was a Monday. Family conferences always happened on a Monday. Grandfather never came to the Deanery at the weekend, because on the Saturday the Dean would be polishing his sermon, and on Sunday, Grandfather’s absence from divine service would be noticed.

      Unlike many a child of the clergy, Vee never longed to escape Sunday services. The time spent in the great gloomy, chilly Minster: Matins and Evensong, and sometimes Holy Communion as well, gave her hours of peace. Sometimes she thought it was a God-given peace, could almost feel herself wrapped in the arms of a loving God; at other times a harsher realism told her it was simply that it was possible to be alone in church in a way that you couldn’t at home. The Dean never questioned his children’s faith. Even though he had lost all his trust in a beneficent and watchful God, he hoped by one means or another that his beliefs would return, and, meanwhile, his remaining children were going to be brought up in godly ways.

      They were both a disappointment to him, Vee knew that perfectly well. Hugh was an aesthete from birth, a fey, babbling infant who had grown into a brilliant twister and spinner of words. His time at school had not been celebrated, as the Dean’s had, by success at sport, and the grim establishment he was sent to at thirteen, his father’s old school, had neither time nor liking for any boy who was different, who wasn’t obsessed with sport, who was in any way unchristian.

      Hugh had survived, as Vee had survived her own bleak, northern boarding school. In fact, for most of the time, she was happier at school than at home, although in the holidays there had always been Hugh to escape with, to share jokes and enjoy the excitement of a modern world beckoning from outside the Deanery walls.

      Grandfather, when he arrived late on Sunday evening, was in one of his jolly moods. Vee’s heart sank as she gave him a dutiful kiss, allowed him to pinch her cheek – how she hated that, and put his stick in the hall stand.

      Grandfather in a jolly mood meant he had a scheme, something that pleased him, and she had a presentiment that it was to do with her – that was why he had come, she was sure of it, from the hints her mother had let drop, clothes for her, now that she was growing up, not much scope for a young lady in York …

      She had already broached the subject of What next? with her father. When she told him her plans, striving to sound natural even while her hands were held so tightly together that her nails dug into her skin, he’d simply looked through her in that way he had.

      ‘Oh, I doubt if that will be possible, my dear. Your mother would hardly like it.’

      The truth was, her mother wouldn’t care what she did, as long as she did it somewhere else. Vee knew that her mother was dreading her leaving school and spending days and weeks and months at the Deanery. Almost as much as she herself was dreading it.

      ‘Besides,’ her father went on, ‘there is the question of money.’

      ‘Hugh’s paid for.’

      Which was a stupid thing to say. Hugh was a man, it was different for Hugh.

      ‘Your grandfather’s paying for Hugh at Oxford, not me. You’ll have to ask him.’

      She knew what the answer would be.

      Now they were all in the drawing room. Grandfather, his large and magnificent head under a mane of splendid white hair, sitting erect in the Dean’s chair. The Dean standing awkwardly by the fireplace, not looking at Vee, and Mummy, sitting on a slender upright chair, her tapestry in her hand, fingers searching among her wools for a colour match. Like one of the fates at work, Vee thought with a sudden feeling of resentment. Spinning and weaving and cutting, and what choice or say did any of the lives represented by those slender threads have in their fates?

      Vee perched herself on the edge of the heavy-footed sofa.

      ‘Eighteen, now,’ said her grandfather genially. ‘A grown-up lass. Time to go out into the world. You’re looking forward to leaving school, I feel sure.’

      Vee said nothing.

      ‘So we need to settle what you’re going to do next. You can’t hang around at home, getting under your mother’s feet and taking up with some stiff-necked young curate, that would never do.’

      The Dean stirred uneasily and gave the fire an unnecessary stir with the poker.

      Vee took a deep breath. ‘I know what I want to do when I leave school, Grandfather.’

      ‘You do?’ His face became more watchful. ‘Out with it, then.’

      ‘I want to go to university. I sat the exams, at school, and I’ve been accepted. At Oxford.’ She swallowed, and ploughed on. ‘For the new academic year that starts in October.’

      The silence was palpable. The Dean looked down at the floor, her mother stitched resolutely on. Grandfather’s face was reddening alarmingly.

      ‘And I thought that perhaps I could spend six months abroad before I went up. I’m going to study modern languages, you see, and I’d like—’

      Vee moved her head from side to side in a vain attempt to avert the explosion of wrath, the deadly missiles of her grandfather’s anger as they rained about her. She always hated to be shouted at, and even her mother’s cold reserve and chilly indifference was a thousand times better than this terrible rage.

      Alarmed, the Dean rang for the maid, ordered a brandy, and the maid, after a frightened glance at the thunderous countenance of the bellowing Jacob Trenchard, scuttled away for the restorative.

      It would take more than a brandy to soothe Grandfather. His contempt poured over Vee in an abusive torrent, the stupidity of all women, the wickedness of any university to open its doors to women, the incredible folly and wilfulness she had shown in going about her selfish, pointless schemes with no thought for family or her place in the world.

      ‘Have you wasted my money on education, so that you can turn into some dreadful bluestocking? Why, they won’t even give women degrees at Cambridge, because they know the whole thing’s a sham. Women’s brains aren’t designed for academic study, just as they aren’t designed for business or politics or any of the other spheres they try to meddle in these days.’

      Her grandfather’s hatred and fear of women streamed out of him. Even Vee’s mother looked up from her needlework with a doubtful glance, but she wasn’t going to defend her daughter.

      He hated educated women? Dear God, if only he knew how much she hated and despised him. ‘Daddy, please,’ said Vee desperately.

      She should have known better than to expect any support from that direction.

      ‘My dear, it’s folly, and the school should never have encouraged you or allowed you to think of such a thing. I shall have something very sharp to say to your headmistress there, in fact, I shall write to the governors.