The Edge of the Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

come to watch the parades. Still, she’d looked out for him, strained to see through groups of men in case he might be there.
    â€˜Celia!’ said Emmeline. ‘You’re gazing into space. What are you doing ?’
    â€˜I was thinking.’
    â€˜We should try and join in,’ said Emmeline, standing up, shifting uncomfortably as she did so. ‘Everyone’s singing.’ She waved her flag, bought for nearly a shilling. ‘Come on, Celia. Put in some effort. Aren’t you supposed to be the war heroine?’
    â€˜No, I’m not!’ But she gave in, joined arms with her sister, sang along as she waved her flag. God Save the King. Victorious . She thought of Stoneythorpe, ramshackle, fallen-down, the garden overgrown with ivy, Verena’s Versailles canals stagnant. So ruined and worn down that the work needed to bring it back to some sort of order was unimaginable, entirely so. And yet, how lucky they were to have a home and so much space. They should, she knew, really divide it up and let other people live there, change the whole thing entirely, so it wasn’t Stoneythorpe at all.
    At the end, after hundreds and hundreds of men had marched past them, thousands of people had cheered and waved their flags and the makeshift Cenotaph had been endlessly saluted, they queued in their lines under the boiling sun to leave their seats and were immediately jostled by the huge crowd. There were men, women, children on shoulders, and sellers bearing trays of everything: fried fish, cakes, flags, a whole set of plaster models of Field Marshal Haig, standing to attention on a lining of newsprint.
    Rudolf looked around vainly. There was no one who might help them, no porters or servants for hire. And by the time they got on to the road for cabs, they’d be nearly at the Savoy.
    â€˜If we get separated, let’s meet back at our room,’ said Rudolf. ‘Celia, look after your sister. Take her back to the hotel and keep close to her. Dear Emmeline is the priority.’
    Emmeline sighed. ‘There’s no need. I’m fine. I told you.’
    Celia nodded, took tight hold of her sister’s arm. ‘Come along, sister. Let’s go quickly.’
    She put her elbows up and started pushing through the crowds, past the children thrusting out hands for sweets, the men who’d already been drinking, women laughing arm in arm. ‘My sister is with child,’ she shouted loudly. ‘Let her through!’
    â€˜I don’t know why we even came here,’ said Emmeline, as she collapsed into a chair in the Savoy reception, dropping her flag. ‘We must be mad.’ It wasn’t even calm in the hotel’s black and white tiled interior, dozens of men in uniform and women in hats going back and forth, laughing, talking, shouting to someone or other. They only had a chair because one man had seen Emmeline approach and jumped up.
    â€˜We all told you not to come, sister,’ said Celia. ‘You remember.’
    Emmeline put her head in her hands. ‘I’m exhausted. I can’t get up. I literally can’t get up.’ Pins fell from her hair, clattered to the floor.
    â€˜We’ll have to at some point. Papa said we should meet him at their room.’
    â€˜I can’t possibly go up the stairs ’ Two women dressed in evening gowns glided past. Had the parties started already?
    â€˜Well, why don’t we go through to the tea room and get some tea?’
    â€˜All I want is tea. All I can think of is tea. But I can’t move.’
    â€˜You’ll have to.’
    Her head was still in her hands. ‘Sit by me. Please.’
    Celia perched, uncomfortably, on the leather arm of the chair. She reached down and tried to right her sister’s hat. Her hair wasdamp, matted – it felt like illness, smelt of it too. Emmeline was breathing heavily, now. She raised her head. ‘I feel,’ she said, then closed her eyes