"Are you doing anything tonight?" Froken had asked. "My mother and I are going into Larborough to the theatre. She has not yet seen an English company. We would be delighted if you would care to come with us."
Lucy explained that tonight she was going to a party in Stewart's room to celebrate her Post. "I understand that Staff don't usually go, but I am not real Staff."
Froken slid an eye round at her and said: "You ought to be. You are very good for them."
That medicinal phrase again. As if she were a prescription.
"How?"
"Oh, in ways too subtle for my English-and much too subtle for the German language. It is, a little, that you wear heels; a little, that you have written a book; a little, that they don't have to be just a tiny bit afraid of you; a little that-oh, a thousand littles. You have come at a good time for them; a time when they need a distraction that is not-distracting. Oh, dear, I wish my English was better."
"You mean, I am a dose of alkali on an acid stomach."
Froken gave her unexpected chuckle. "Yes, just that. I am sorry you will not be coming to the theatre, but it is a great mark of favour to be invited to a students' party, and you will enjoy it, I think. Everyone will be happy tonight, now that the examinations are over. Once they come back from the match they are free for the week-end. So they will be gay this Saturday. Off the chain," she added, in English.
And off the chain they certainly were. As Lucy came in by the quadrangle door, leaving Froken and her mother to go round to the front of the house where they lived, a blast of sound rose up round her. The rush of bath water on two floors, the calling of innumerable voices, the drumfire of feet on bare oak stairs, singing, whistling, crooning. Both teams had apparently come back-victorious to judge by the atmosphere-and the place was alive. The place was also excited, and one word was woven like a leit-motif through the babble. Arlinghurst. Arlinghurst. As she walked past the ground-floor bathrooms on her way to the stairs, she heard the first of it. " Have you heard, my dear! Arlinghurst! "
"What?"