Bel had never seen anyone as obviously bored as Mrs. Adam Wainright. She had no idea of the woman's Christian name, though the aspiring MP's had been repeated until it virtually echoed in the ears, along with the slightly leaden themes about affordable housing and access to a physician in the candidate's speech. She'd heard worse but it wasn't clear that Mrs. Wainwright had. The older woman, her blonde hair in the post-War equivalent of a Victory Roll, in a hat that did not even pretend to be smart, did everything short of sighing and Bel could not help hearing Freddie's voice reciting almost absently some perfect epigram from Dryden or Pope about ennui; he would not have the least sense that he was doing anything remarkable, the words would emerge as if they were the only reasonable commentary, and Bel would seethe and admire in equal, tormenting measure. Then he would look at her with that entirely innocent expression, intent upon some deviltry and she would also keep from sighing as she listened to him.
The other journalists focused on Mr. Wainwright in his dark blue suit and grey tie, his earnest answers pouring forth, and Bel made a beeline for his wife, who stood by the platters of biscuits and nearly arranged tea-cups like a lieutenant general.
"Mrs. Wainwright, I wondered if I might ask you a few questions, get a woman's…perspective on all this," Bel began, hoping she had guessed right, with her assessment of a pair of hazel eyes, the gloved hand constantly pleating a handkerchief, the tapping of a right foot in a decorous black court heel.
"Oh, do call me Sam! It's Samantha really, but I can't bear it, expect a ruler to rap my palms, and Mrs. Wainwright, oh dear, being Mrs. Wainwright…" Mrs. Wainwright, Sam, trailed off, as if she started to hear what she had said, her bright, anxious, furious eyes darkening a little.
"I'm Bel," she found herself responding. Freddie would approve, she knew it, and Lix and Hector would give her a heavy-lidded look and take a swig from his flask.
"What a lovely name. Bel, beautiful, isn't it, in French, and the sound of church bells, that was my favorite part, how they would ring out so, and if you stood beneath, how the sound would ring right through you, like it was the Lord himself at the clapper," Sam said with a smile, color rising in her cheeks below the inexpertly applied rouge.
"You know quite a lot about church bells, then?" Bel asked.
"I'm a vicar's daughter and niece. Comes with the territory," Sam replied.
"And an MP's wife, perhaps?" Bel asked, knowing she must find something that would make an article, even the shortest column anchoring an advertisement about typewriter ribbons or a sale on lisle stockings.
"P'haps. I was a Chief Inspector's driver once, I suppose I might be anything," Sam said. Ruefully, regretfully, with a degree of satisfaction that made Bel only more curious. For the article and for herself.
"A Chief Inspector?"
"In Hastings. In the War. And I feel, I think he was rather the Chief Inspector, the best, the epitome…like Plato's chair," Sam ended, rather incoherently, except that Bel understood. The words and the tone and the complications of complicated affection. She knew Freddie's dark eyes and Lix's and the curve of Hector's mouth. Sam Wainwright knew a car and a detective and the number of tea-cups and saucers needed for a jumble-sale, how to press a grey tie and maybe how to throw away a love-letter, half-written. It wouldn't make an article, but Bel wanted to understand more.
"I'm meant to ask you half a dozen questions about this meeting and the speech and whether Mr. Wainwright likes cricket or the opera," Bel said, working her way towards a request that ought not be granted. She was interrupted.
"I can rattle all that off in a quarter-hour. These things are always so dull. D'you think sometime, another time, we might have a cup of tea? And some Battenburg cake? I've a sweet tooth, it's something terrible," Sam exclaimed. She seemed the youngest person Bel had ever known, except for the crow's feet near her golden hazel eyes and how her hands were not a young woman's, and she spoke before she thought, as Freddie would have.
"Yes, let's. Let's."