Victory for Victoria. Бетти Нилс

as he turned away from her. ‘The path will be abominably muddy. Shall I go first?’

      She walked behind him, answering his occasional remarks with a politeness which admitted of no wish to be friendly on her part. Not that this seemed to worry him; his own friendliness was quite unforced and he made no attempt to find out anything about her, and Victoria, who was used to men looking at her at least twice and certainly wanting to know something about her, felt let down. She wasn’t a conceited girl, but she was a remarkably pretty one and she would have been a fool not to know it. It irked her now that she had made no impression on this man; he had even implied that she had no idea how to dress. She eyed his broad back resentfully; it was a pity that she was unlikely to meet him again when she was dressed with her usual careful eye to fashion.

      ‘Do you live here?’ she asked.

      He didn’t slow his pace but said over one shoulder, ‘No,’ and nothing more. She was right, her chance of seeing him again was negligible. For some reason she felt sorry, then she told herself that it was because she had taken a dislike to him and it would have given her great satisfaction to have met him again, herself becomingly dressed, and put him in his place. She began reviewing her wardrobe, deciding what she would wear for that occasion, and then grinned ruefully to herself because of course they wouldn’t meet again. He was probably an early visitor to the island; there was nothing about his clothes to suggest otherwise—a guernsey, just like her own—but a great many visitors bought them as a matter of course—and bedford cord slacks which had seen better days. She longed to ask where he came from; she had detected a faint accent when he spoke. Before she could stop herself, she asked: ‘You’re not English, are you?’ and exactly as before, got a ‘No’ over one shoulder. After that she didn’t speak again, not until they were past St George’s Fort and the town was in full view, not ten minutes’ walk away. He stopped then and asked, ‘Which way do you go?’

      She answered briefly, ‘Havelet,’ not caring if he knew where that was or not. Apparently he did, for he said: ‘I’m going to the harbour. Would you like me to walk up with you first?’

      She forbore to tell him that, born and bred on the island, she knew every yard of it, and as for St Peter Port, she could walk blindfold through its length and breadth and know exactly where she was. Her reply was a sedate refusal. She thought, she added pleasantly, that she could find her way. His, ‘Oh, good,’ was disconcertingly casual.

      They parted at the end of the cliff path, she to turn up the narrow hill away from the sea, he presumably to walk along the sea front to the harbour. The Jersey boat was in, so possibly he was going to board her—a great many people came over for the day, although he didn’t look like a day tripper, for despite his clothes he had an air of assurance, almost arrogance. Victoria frowned as she wished him a coolly polite goodbye, and was left gaping at his parting words.

      ‘You’d be quite a pretty girl if you smiled more often,’ he pronounced—and he didn’t say goodbye either. She crossed the road and then turned to watch him walk away without a backward glance.

      Her parents lived almost at the top of Havelet, in a pleasant elderly house tucked away from the road. It had a glorious view of the harbour and the sea beyond, and a garden which, although not large, was a riot of colour for most of the year. Victoria climbed the steep, narrow road without effort, went through the gate—just wide enough to take the car—and into the house through its open front door.

      ‘If that’s you, Victoria, shut the door, will you, darling?’ called her mother from somewhere upstairs. ‘Did you have a nice walk?’ her parent continued as she began a descent of the staircase. Victoria shut the door and turned to meet her mother. Mrs Parsons was a large woman, still very handsome and despite her size, surprisingly youthful in appearance. She had a commanding presence and a voice which, while not loud, was so clear that no one ever failed to hear it. She paused on the stairs now and peered down at her daughter.

      ‘Victoria, my dear child, did you really go out looking like that?’

      ‘No,’ said Victoria reasonably, ‘I was dry then, Mother. I got caught in that downpour.’ She advanced to plant an affectionate kiss on her mother’s cheek, reaching up to do so because Mrs Parsons was five feet eleven inches tall and Victoria, the eldest of her four daughters, was only five feet six. Her mother returned the salute with warmth.

      ‘Well, I’m sure you enjoyed yourself, child. I must say you need the fresh air after London—why you have to work there…’ she sighed. ‘Your father could speak to—’

      ‘Yes, Mother dear,’ interposed Victoria hastily, ‘but I do like nursing, you know, and when the Old Crow retires next year, I’m hoping to get the ward.’

      Her mother fingered the sleeve of her guernsey. ‘You’re wet,’ she said rather absently, and then: ‘Don’t you want to marry and settle down, Vicky dear?’

      ‘Only when I meet the right man, Mother.’ She had a peculiarly vivid memory of the man in the powder magazine as she spoke and dismissed it as nonsensical.

      ‘But they fall over each other…’

      Her daughter smiled. ‘I bet they fell over each other for you before you met Father.’

      Mrs Parsons’s composed features broke into a smile. ‘Yes, they did. Your father will be home in a minute, so you’d better go and change, Vicky—your sisters are upstairs already. They take so long to dress, try and hurry them up, dear.’

      Victoria said, ‘Yes, Mother,’ and went up the stairs to a half landing which had a door on either side of it; she passed these, however, and went through the archway at the back of the landing and up half a dozen more stairs leading to a corridor running at right angles to them.

      There was a good deal of noise here; her youngest sister, Stephanie, sixteen years old and already bidding fair to out-shine them all with her beauty, was hammering on the bathroom door with a good deal of strength.

      ‘Come out, Louise,’ she shouted. ‘You’ve been in there ages, you’re mean…’ She broke off as she saw Victoria. ‘Vicky darling,’ she begged, ‘get her out, I’ll never be ready…’

      Victoria approached the door and knocked gently. ‘Louise?’ she called persuasively, ‘do come and see my dress and tell me what you think of it.’

      The door was flung open and her sister sailed out. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘but let it be now, this minute, so that I’m not interrupted while I’m doing my face. Where’s Amabel?’

      ‘Here.’ Amabel was two years younger than Victoria and the quietest of the four. The two of them followed Victoria to her room and fell on to her bed while she took the dress from her cupboard and held it up for their inspection. It was a midi dress of leaf green crêpe with a demure collar like a pie-frill above a minute bodice and a very full skirt. It was admired and carefully examined and Louise said, ‘You’ll put us all in the shade, Vicky.’

      Victoria shook her head. She was a very pretty girl, but her three sisters took after their mother; they were tall—even Stephanie was five feet ten and she hadn’t stopped growing—and magnificently built with glowing blonde hair and blue eyes. Their faces were beautiful. Victoria, putting the dress away again, looked at them and wondered how it was that she, the eldest, should have copper hair and tiger’s eyes and be of only a moderate height; she was slim too and although she had a lovely face it couldn’t match the beauty of the other three girls. She grinned at them suddenly. ‘Me for the next bath—I’ll be ten minutes,’ and started for the bathroom, shedding the guernsey as she went.

      They collected in her room as they were ready, squabbling mildly and criticising each other’s dresses as she sat at the dressing table putting up her hair. She had combed it back from her forehead and arranged it in three thick loops on her neck and it had taken a long time, but the result, she considered, staring at her reflection in the mirror, had been worth the effort. Rather different from her hair-style of that afternoon—it was a pity… She dismissed the thought and said briskly: ‘If we’re ready we’d better go down.’ She eyed her sisters