Colonel Bronsen-Grey was on his way to take over my father’s duties and we were to make immediate preparations for our departure.

It seemed like fate. I could not help feeling very excited. This time I should not leave India with the same reluctance.

Aubrey St. Clare was delighted, and when he heard that we were booked on the Aurora Star, he decided he would return home on the same ship.

It proved the state of my feelings when I did not feel any great regret because we were going with him.

We had no home in England and my father decided that we should stay at an hotel while we looked for a temporary home and he ascertained from the War Office what his duties would be. When he knew we could set about finding a more permanent residence, which he expected would be in London.

My ayah took a tearful farewell of me. She was fatalistic and that helped her to overcome her sorrow at parting. It was ordained, she said and she had known that when I returned, I would not stay long in India.

“It is well that you go,” she said, ‘even though those who love you suffer at the parting. There will be trouble here and I am happy to know that you will be safe. The monsoons have failed to bring the rain and the crops are bad. When there is famine people look round for those to blame, and they blame those they envy . those who may have what they would like themselves. Yes, I should rejoice. It is best for you. Do not be impulsive as you have always been, little Su-Su. Think first. Do not seize the dross in mistake for the gold. “

“I promise you, dear ayah, that I will curb my impulses. I will think of you always and try to be wise.”

Then she embraced me and kissed me solemnly.

As I stood on deck the last person I saw as we sailed away was my ayah, standing there, looking lonely and forlorn, her pale blue said moving gently in the breeze.

It was a magic voyage. I felt very happy. How different from that time when I, a lonely little girl under the vigilance of Mrs. Fearnley, had tried hard not to burst into noisy protestations at being dragged away from my father and my beloved India. This was quite different. My father seemed younger. Only now did I realize the strain under which he had been living. He had never talked to me about the fear of trouble; but it must have always been there an undercurrent of apprehension. I remember moonlit nights, leaning over the rail, looking up to the rich velvety sky and the golden stars, listening to the gentle movement of the sea below. Aubrey was my constant companion; in the morning we paced the decks together; we played games; we indulged in lengthy discussions at meals with our table companions; we danced afterwards; and I wanted those days to go on and on. I tried not to look too far ahead when we should reach Tilbury and say goodbye, my father and I going to London and Aubrey to that stately home in Buckinghamshire.

There was something unreal about life on the ship. One felt that one was floating in a little world apart from the real one. There were no troubles here nothing but long sunny days, lying on deck, watching the porpoises and the dolphins frolic, while the flying fish skimmed the water, and here and there the hump of a whale could be seen.

One day an albatross, and presumably his mate, followed the ship for three days. We marvelled at the beautiful creatures with their twelve-foot wing span; they circled above us and there were times when we thought they were going to land on deck. They were waiting for the food, left over from meals, to be thrown into the water.

They were magic days with calm seas and blue skies and the ship sailing peacefully home.

Even so one was reminded of change. There was a day when we skirted a hurricane and the chairs slid across the deck and it was impossible to stand up. That was symbolic, I thought. Nothing lasts forever; and the most perfect peace can be quickly shattered.

We reached Cape Town, which I remembered from that other journey. This was different. My father, Aubrey and I went out in a flower-decorated carriage drawn by two horses in straw bonnets. It seemed far more exciting than on that previous occasion; perhaps that was due to the company.

It was the night after we left Cape Town. We had had a rough passage round the Cape and were now sailing northwards to the Canaries. We had left the tropical heat behind and the weather was bland with hardly any wind.

My father had gone to bed, which he often did after dinner, and that left me alone with Aubrey. We found our favourite spot on deck and sat side by side listening to the gentle swishing of the water against the side of the ship.

“It won’t be long now,” said Aubrey.

“We shall soon be home.”

I agreed a little sombrely.

“It has been a wonderful voyage.”

“For a particular reason,” he replied.

I waited and he turned to me and, taking my hand, kissed it.

“You,” he said.

I laughed.

“You have contributed to the enjoyment. My father is delighted that you are here and he can go to bed with a free conscience and leave me in good hands.”

“So he thinks that of me, does he?”

“You know he does.”

“Susanna, I have been thinking. When we get to England … what?”

“What? It is all planned. Father and I will go to an hotel and look immediately for a house. And you … you have your arrangements.”

“We are not going to say ” Goodbye, it was nice to have known you” when we get to England, are we?”

“I don’t know what will happen when we get to England.”

“Doesn’t that rather depend on us?”

“There is one theory which says that everything that happens depends on ourselves, while another believes in fate. What is to be, will be.”

“I think we are masters of our fates. Will you marry me?”

“Do you … mean that seriously?”

“I am deadly serious.”

“Aubrey …” I murmured.

“You are not going to say, ” This is so sudden”, are you?”

“No.”

“Then you will?”

“I think I will.”

“You only think?”

“Well, I have never had a proposal of marriage before, and I don’t quite know how to deal with it.”

He burst out laughing and, turning to me, took me in his arms and kissed me.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he said.

“Have you been wanting me to?”

“Yes, I think I have.”

“You think! Don’t you know? You are so definite in your views on every other subject.”

“I feel such a novice … at love.”

“That is what I love about you. So young … so fresh … so innocent… so honest.”

“I would rather be more worldly like some of the wives .. Mrs. Freeling, for instance.”

For a moment he was silent. I thought he looked uncertain and was about to say something. He appeared to change his mind and I wondered if I had imagined it.

“Those people are not really worldly, you know,” he said at length.

“They are older than you and pose all the time as socialites. Don’t be like they are, for Heaven’s sake. Just be yourself, Susanna. That’s what I want.”

He held my hand tightly and we looked out over the sea.

“What a perfect night,” he said.

“A calm sea, a gentle breeze and Susanna has promised to marry me.”

When I told my father he was faintly disturbed.

“You are very young,” he said.

“I am eighteen. That’s a marriageable age.”

“In some cases … yes. But you have come straight from school. You haven’t really met any people.”

“I don’t have to. I know I love Aubrey.”

“Well … I suppose it is all right. There is that place in Buckinghamshire which I presume will be his one day. He seems fairly solid.”

“It’s no use trying to play the mercenary Papa because you don’t do it very well. You know that if I want it and I’m happy that will be all right with you.”

“That’s about it,” he agreed.

“Trust you to sum up the situation in a few words. So you are engaged. It is amazing how many people become engaged on sea voyages. It must be something in the air.”

Tropical seas . flying fishes . dolphins . “

“Hurricanes, rolling breakers and nausea.”

Don’t be unromantic, Father. It doesn’t suit you. Say you are pleased and proud of your daughter who has managed to find a husband without the expensive London season you were planning, to launch her into society. “

“My dear child, all I want is your happiness. You chose this man and if he makes you happy that is all I ask.”

He kissed me.

“You’ll have to help me choose a place in London,” he said.

“Even though doubtless you will be obsessed by your own affairs.”

“I shall indeed. Oh, Father, I was planning to look after you!”

“And now you will have a husband to look after instead. I am deeply hurt.”

I hugged him and felt a sudden twinge of apprehension. How ill had he been? And why had Head Quarters decided that he should leave India?

I was so happy. The future loomed ahead, so exciting that I had to warn myself that there was rarely complete perfection in life. I had to look for the worm in the wood, the flaw in the diamond. Nothing could be quite so perfect as it seemed that night when Aubrey asked me to marry him.

There was so much to talk of, so much to plan. Aubrey was to accompany us to London and see us into our hotel before going on to his home.

Then it had been decided that my father and I should pay an early visit to Minster St. Clare in Buckinghamshire.

I was looking forward to the arrival at Tilbury not dreading it as I had anticipated when I had thought it might mean saying goodbye to Aubrey for ever. As for Aubrey himself, he was in a state of euphoria, and I was immensely gratified to know that I had created it.

So we said au revoir with promises to visit Aubrey’s home in two weeks’ time. Amelia, his sister-in-law, would be delighted to receive us, he was sure. As for his brother, he did not know how he would find him.

I wondered whether, as his brother was so ill, guests would be welcome in the house, but he assured me that it was a big house and there were plenty of people to look after everything and both his brother and his wife would surely want to meet me.

We had comfortable rooms in a somewhat old-fashioned hotel close to Piccadilly recommended by Uncle James who used it on his brief visits to London; and on the following day I went house-hunting and my father presented himself at the War Office.

I found a small house in Albemarle Street which was to be let furnished, and I planned to take my father along to see it at the first opportunity.

When he came home he seemed quite excited. He was to have a job of some responsibility at the War Office, which he thought would be very demanding. He looked at the house and decided we should take it and move in at the beginning of the next week. I had a few very busy days engaging servants to start with and making arrangements to go into our new home, which we had taken on rental for three months.

I said: “That will give us time to look round for a real home and if we haven’t found it by then, we can no doubt stay here a little longer.”

My father said rather sadly, “It will probably be a bachelor’s apartment which I shall need, for you are bent on making a home with someone else.”

“Weddings take a long time to arrange and I shall be with you for a while. And in any case I shall be visiting you often.

Buckinghamshire is not so very far away. ” I had found the search quite exciting. I had always been interested in houses. They seemed to have personalities of their own. Some seemed happy houses, others mysterious, some even mildly menacing. My father laughed at my fancifuli ideas; but I really did feel atmospheric sensations quite vividly. J I was pleased, too, that my father was enjoying the War, Office. I had feared that after having been on active service he might find work in an office dull. Not so. He was absorbed and I could not help feeling that it had been a good move to bring him home. Sometimes he looked a little tired, but of course he was no longer a young man and that was natural. I wondered now and then about that illness he had had, but he was rather reticent about it and I fancied it disturbed him to talk about it so I did not mention it. He was well now and life was too exciting for me to want to cloud over the brightness, so I assured myself that there was nothing to worry about and that we were all going to be happy ever after.