Tiger Lilies

by Judith Glover

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Flora Dennison and Rossen O'Connor are linked by a secret. A strange and painful secret, powerful enough to bring their lives together again and again from their childhood in Wolverhampton through the tragic romance of the First World War and on into the wild abandon of the Twenties. Flora, daughter of a prosperous businessman, struggles to retain her respectability and goodness despite the passionate temptation of a married man. In her heart she envies Roseen's daring lack of restraint. Roseen, child of a poor Irish widow, is educated only in the harsh realities of back-to-back poverty. Her red-haired beauty and flamboyant tastes catch all eyes but she yearns for the security of Flora's family life. As envy turns to wary mutual respect, the two girls' contact with each other's lives will prove the turning point towards a lasting happiness. Tiger Lilies is the triumphant romantic saga of two girls of similar age but opposite backgrounds set in the Black Country of early twentieth century, from Judith Glover, much-praised author of The Stallion Man.

Release date: June 18, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 336

Sample

Dusty rays of sunlight spilled through the lace curtains drawn across the window, filling the room with a soft, diffused glow. The bed was unmade still, rumpled sheets thrown back over the brass footrail, the bolster pillow impressed with the hollow left by Connie’s head; and clinging to everything was that smell, warm and close and intimate, a mixture of cheap, scented face-powder and tuberose perfume and stale body odour. Connie’s smell.

Young Roseen wrinkled her nose and went and pushed up the window sash to let in some of the morning’s freshness. The lace curtains began stirring idly in the slight current of air. Sounds of voices raised in argument carried from across the street; somewhere a baby was crying, a dog barked, and children were playing a sing-song skipping game, their high-pitched breathless chant keeping time with the rhythmic slap of the rope on the pavement.

She leaned over the cluttered top of her mother’s toilette stand and used her sleeve to wipe away the dust which filmed the sunlit surface of the mirror, then rested forward on her elbows, chin cupped in her hands, staring at herself.

She was beautiful. Everybody said so. Uncle George. Her teacher, Miss Doyle. The fat, red-faced policeman. Mr Thompson from the corner shop. Her mother (of course). All of them said how beautiful she was. Only this last week one of the bigger boys at school had caught hold of her in the playground and tried to kiss her on the mouth. She might have let him, too, if he hadn’t been so rough.

The argument going on across the way grew suddenly more heated as the noisy exchange of abuse turned into shouts and screams. There was a crash of breaking glass.

Roseen pursed her lips into a pout and kissed the space in front of her reflection, watching herself to see what kissing looked like. The green eyes, flecked with hazel, held a rapt expression. She was twelve years old and had an avid curiosity about this sort of thing. Why did people do it? What was nice about it? Did it feel different, depending on whom you did it with? Her mother had told her she’d find out all in good time when she was older. Well, she was older now; she’d had her first monthly show (what Connie called the bleedin’ nuisance) and her figure was starting to develop. None of the other girls in her class was anywhere near as fast growing up. But she still hadn’t found out what she wanted to know.

She half-closed her eyes and looked at herself intently. Down in the street a door slammed shut with a bang, silencing the racket, and in the sudden quiet came the sound of a pair of hobnailed boots clattering on the cobbles in the direction of the White Rose.

Removing one hand from under her chin, she took the lid from a small white pot among the disarray in front of her, and poked a fingertip into its contents. The finger came out carmined red with soft waxy lip-rouge. Pursing her lips again, she wiped the rouge inexpertly round and round and then examined the result, smiling at her jammy-mouthed image in an artificially bright manner, as she’d seen her mother do. Not satisfied with this she opened another pot, containing a fine sooty powder, and spitting on the same finger to moisten it, applied the resulting mess to her eyelashes.

“Roseen –? Are you up there?”

Her mother’s voice shouting to her from the foot of the stairs made the young girl give a quick, guilty start. Connie must have come in by the back alley; that’s why she’d never heard the front door go.

“Roseen!”

“I’m just coming, Mam.” She looked round hastily for something to wipe her face on. “I won’t be a minute –”

The nearest thing to hand was a cotton chemise hanging on the back of the toilette stand. Roseen snatched it up and rubbed it vigorously over her mouth and eyes, then stuffed it away out of sight under the bed.

“Roseen!”

“I’m coming –”

She scrambled across the room and out on to the small dark box-landing. Her mother’s head was poked round the open door below, shadowed by the light from the kitchen behind her.

“What’re you doing there in my room?”

“Nothing. Just looking out the window.” Roseen jumped down two steps at a time, until she was level with the feather in her mother’s black straw hat. “The Handleys have been having a row.”

“Aye. I heard it, as did half the street. And what’s that you have all over your face?”

Connie grabbed her daughter by the arm and hauled her out from the staircase into the kitchen, for a better inspection.

Two black-smudged eyes looked back at her in feigned innocence.

“What’s what all over my face, Mam?”

“Don’t come that with me, you little madam. I can see plain enough what you’ve been doing. You’ve been up there among my pots again, have you not. Just look at the sight o’ you! Your Uncle George would go mad if he knew, so he would.”

As always when she was angered, Connie’s Dublin brogue grew more exaggerated. Keeping a firm grip on Roseen, she hauled her along behind her into the scullery and ran some water into the brownstone sink.

“You’re a wicked, bad girl, Roseen, and I’ll tell Father Doran of you, so I will, if I catch you at my face-pots again. ’Tis forbidden, d’you hear, and I’ll not have it!”

Seizing the child by the hair, she jerked back her head and commenced scrubbing at the smears with a piece of coal-tar soap; then, splashing off the sudsy mess, dried her roughly on a length of towelling hanging on a nail beside the sink.

“The soap’s in my eye –” Roseen wailed petulantly.

“Serve you right.”

Connie went through again to the kitchen. She’d been out to the market to do her Saturday shopping and was in an irritable temper from lugging two heavy bags up the long slope of Snow Hill. Pulling off her hat, she patted her hair back into place out of habit, with a quick glance in the mirror above the range, and without looking again at her daughter emptied the two bags on to the kitchen table and started removing the contents from their newspaper wrappings.

Suddenly she stopped, and bending down, began searching frantically through the paper just discarded on the floor.

“Oh – no –!”

Rising to her feet again, she declared in vexation, “Well, would you believe it. I bought two pig’s sweetbreads, and what have I done but left them there at the butcher’s. ’Twas that Mrs Dwyer made me forget, so it was. Her and her blether! You’ll have to go down and fetch them, Roseen, or he’ll be selling them to somebody else, the old divil.”

“Oh, but Mam –”

“Do as you’re told!” The cry of complaint was cut short. Connie tossed a sharp look over her shoulder; and seeing the obstinacy in her daughter’s expression, tried softening her tone to a more wheedling note.

“Sure, but I can’t be going all that long way myself. If you’re good and be quick now, there’ll be a ginger beer for you.”

Roseen knew what this meant. She’d find her mother round at the White Rose by the time she got back from her errand.

“I’ll go if I can have threepence to spend.”

“You! D’you think I’m made o’ money?”

But already Connie’s mind was on the drink she’d been promising herself all the way home from the market.

Five minutes later, clutching a silver threepenny-bit, Roseen was skipping along Powlett Street towards Snow Hill. She’d put on her woollen tam o’shanter, but the spring morning was warm enough for her not to need a shawl over the frilled white pinafore covering her cotton frock; and with a breeze to carry away the pungent sourness of the nearby brewery, the air smelt of that dusty freshness which follows overnight rain.

Once on Snow Hill itself a sense of adventure seized her. She was a town child, used to the streets, and knew her way round the area as well as any adult. Instead of making directly for the market, a ten-minute walk at most, she cut across into George Street and through to St John’s Square with its imposing old church and walled graveyard overlooked by handsome Georgian townhouses.

This was one of her favourite places. The trees deadened the noise of traffic from the surrounding streets, and in the stillness the sound of birdsong filled the square, coming from the melodious throats of caged linnets and canaries trilling at open windows, and echoed by the whistle of thrushes among the leafy branches.

She jumped up on the wall and sat there swinging the heels of her boots against the brickwork. At the opposite corner next to the church a baker’s delivery van had stopped, and the blinkered horse stood quietly between the shafts, its head down in an attitude of stoic resignation. Apart from the horse and the birds and Roseen, the only other living thing in St John’s Square this morning was a housemaid over beyond the other side of the graveyard, polishing a brass nameplate beside a front door.

The child sat for a few minutes drinking in the peace and enjoying the warmth of the sun on her upturned face, and thinking as always how grand it must be to live somewhere as posh as this, where the neighbours never brawled in the street, and never came home maudlin drunk of a Saturday night. From what he’d told her, she imagined her Uncle George had his house in an area much like this one; only his had a big garden right round and stables at the back, and if you looked out of the upstairs windows you could see all the way into the country.

She loved her Uncle George. She wished she could go to live with him instead of staying in Raby Street, but her mother said his wife wouldn’t like that. Roseen knew why, of course; or thought she did. His wife didn’t know that her mother and Uncle George were ‘friends’. It was a secret. And as he’d explained, if she did know, she’d cause no end of a fuss and he’d have to stop coming to visit.

Roseen hated his wife. And she hated too that stuck-up, prim-faced little Flora. If it wasn’t for that pair her mother could marry Uncle George and then they’d move to live at Stockwell End and be happy ever after.

Suddenly impatient to be on her errand again, she jumped down from the wall and went running out of the square, not stopping until she reached the busy, noisy bustle of Victoria Street. Ahead, at the top of the hill, was another of her favourite places – the Empire Palace theatre. It had been built only nine years ago, in 1898, and really was like a palace inside, with its red-plush seating and potted palms and gilt stucco work, and the enormous ceiling which Roseen always thought was like an Arabian magic carpet suspended above her. She came here often with her mother and they’d sit high up among the wooden tiers of the ‘gods’ looking down on the circle and stalls bathed in the soft, golden glow of concealed gaslights.

The most exciting moment of her life had happened here. A wild animal act was on stage, and one of the animals – a lion – had been sitting on an upturned barrel when it suddenly leapt with a roar and attacked its trainer, knocking the man to the floor and seizing him in its jaws. Everyone in the theatre had jumped from their seats screaming, and for a while absolute pandemonium reigned as the pit orchestra tumbled over itself trying to get out of the way. Finally a group of stage hands armed with broomheads and a net had managed to trap the lion inside a cage, and the trainer had been carted off on a trestle, covered in blood and mauled almost to death, the Express and Star said afterwards.

The poor lion had been shot on a patch of waste ground behind the theatre.

Dodging the horse traffic in Queen Square, Roseen crossed over into the street leading down to the market hall. She knew which butcher her mother used, and once inside the vast, cavernous building with its elaborate cast-iron pillars and glass roof, pushed her way confidently along the crowded aisles to Mr Whitehouse’s stall.

Turning from serving a customer, Harry Whitehouse recognised the strikingly pretty child with the mass of copper-coloured curls beneath her tam o’shanter. Without pausing from his conversation, he wiped his hands on the gore-smeared front of his blue-and-white-striped apron and reached under the counter to produce the sweetbreads which her mother had left behind. After being all this time in the same piece of newspaper the meat had started seeping through, and before handing it to Roseen he rewrapped it in a couple of fresh sheets.

“’Ere y’are, bab,” he interrupted himself to tell her, leaning over. “Yo’ tell Connie ’er’ll lose ’er ’ead one o’ these days!”

She smiled at the wink which accompanied this good-humoured observation; then, turning away with the packet, retraced her steps back along the aisle, in the direction this time of a stall selling ribbons and laces and buttons and all sorts of other general haberdashery goods. Already the choice had been made upon what to spend her threepenny-bit. Roseen liked sweets; but her Uncle George brought her sweets enough every week, and today she’d set her mind on a new green ribbon for her hair.

Struggling to get through the mill of market shoppers blocking the way with their baskets and pushcarts, she felt herself suddenly caught by the arm, and looking round, found a thin-faced man in a greasy bowler right behind her.

“Here, I haven’t done anything!” she exclaimed indignantly, squirming to try and free herself. “Let me go!”

His grip tightened. “Lost your Ma, have you?” he said, bending his face towards hers and smiling in a way that she didn’t like.

“No, I haven’t. Let go!”

“Where is she, then?”

“She’s at home.”

“You’re here all by yourself are you, little girl?”

The ‘little girl’ annoyed her even more than having him holding her so hard by the arm.

“What’s that to you? I’m old enough. If you don’t let go of me I’ll scream.”

“I’ll give you sixpence,” he said quickly, the smile going and a sudden curious intentness showing in his pale eyes. “Sixpence, all to yourself.”

Roseen stopped her squirming and looked up at him warily. “For doing what?” Her mother had warned her never to speak to strangers; but she’d not said anything about taking money from them.

The man smiled again, spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth. “Come along wi’ me and I’ll show you.”

“Come where? What have I got to do?” She pulled back as he tried to shove her in front of him across the crowded aisle.

“Just over there, that’s all. Just round by that door.”

“But our Mam’s expecting me home –” The meat in its newspaper wrapping was shown as evidence.

“It won’t take more’n a minute. Come on.”

He urged the child with his body towards the door; and reaching it, pushed her inside and shut it fast behind them both. They were at the top of an ill-lit stone stairway leading down into darkness, and the cramped area stank of rotten vegetables and urine.

After a sharp glance round, Roseen decided she should get herself out of here again as fast as possible.

“Well –?” she demanded, raising her small chin aggressively. “Where’s the sixpence you promised?”

The man’s expression wore a look of feverish excitement. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket.

“Here –”

As she accepted the coin from him he grabbed her by the wrist, and pulling her against him, said hoarsely, “Now you be a good little girl and drop your drawers for me, eh?”

She shrank back from the leering, spittle-flecked lips so close to her face. There was something here that she didn’t understand, and it disgusted her. There was no fear in her reaction, though; only an anger and revulsion which manifested itself as instant temper.

“I won’t hurt. Just let me feel you –” he went on. But that was as far as he got before Roseen’s sharp little teeth fastened themselves into the fleshy base of his thumb.

The next moment the man’s yell of pain rose even higher as she kicked at his legs, the toe-cap of her boot catching him across the shin. Tearing herself away, she flew to the door and was through in a flash, leaving him there cursing impotently after her; and without staying to look back, she went darting off into the market crowd, not satisfied until she’d put a good distance between herself and that end of the hall.



Crossing back over Queen Square into the safety of Dudley Street, Roseen’s headlong progress was checked from a run to a walk by the sheer volume of traffic and people about. She kept looking over her shoulder to see whether or not she was followed, ready to scream at the top of her voice if her molester came anywhere in view. It wasn’t that she was frightened of him – nothing frightened Roseen O’Connor – but the thought of his pale, wet mouth and his hands feeling under her skirt made her skin crawl.

She paused for a minute to get her breath in front of Hyam’s the Outfitters, and catching sight of herself mirrored in one of the tall plate-glass windows, made a rapid inspection of her appearance. The meat had seeped through a bit and marked the front of her pinafore where she’d been clutching it against her, and her wrist was still red from being gripped so hard; but apart from that, there was no damage done that she could see.

Straightening her tam o’shanter, the child smirked at her reflection, recalling the way she’d stood up for herself – then in an oddly mature manner, tossed back her head and suddenly laughed out loud. She wouldn’t tell her mother about her adventure. She’d only get walloped for talking to strangers; and anyway, what was there to tell? All she had done was to go behind a door with a man and get sixpence off him for nothing.

She laughed again; and passers-by turned to look at the pretty little girl with the lovely red-gold curls, such a delightful picture of innocence.

“I think –” said George Dennison, laying aside the table napkin on which he’d just wiped his mouth, “I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we had some sort of a Christmas party this year. What d’you think, Maud? A party for all our employees’ kiddies.”

His wife glanced up at him from the other side of the dining-table, but being still engaged in eating made no immediate response. Only a slight creasing of the white, smooth skin of her brow indicated that she would have preferred not to hear the word ‘kiddies’ used in front of Flora.

“Yes, and we could have the tenants’ young ’uns, as well,” Mr Dennison went on. “No need for them to be left out.”

“Oh, not the children from Raby Street, surely.” Maud, having now emptied her mouth of the final morsel of treacle suet pudding, permitted herself to speak, and the way in which she said Raby Street with a slightly acidic emphasis was indication enough of her opinion.

“Why not? They’re as much a part of our big happy family as those I employ in Dennison’s Stores.”

His wife shot a pained look towards Flora, sitting quietly between them at the table, hands folded in her lap, spoon placed at the correct angle in her pudding-dish.

“I do wish that you would not refer to your employees as family, George. They are not family. They are people you pay to work for you. Please remember what I have so often said before, that as owner of this business you have a position to maintain, and over-familiarity with inferiors in whatever capacity they are employed, can only breed contempt.”

George Dennison smoothed a forefinger over his clipped grey moustache. He knew his wife’s views. He had heard them so often they no longer irritated him, but fell upon ears now deafened to the predictability of their argument. He liked to think of himself as the Guv’nor, the paternal benefactor of all those men and women whose livelihood was his responsibility – and that included dependants and children as well. With more than a hundred people drawing wages, it was a burdensome commitment but one which he relished shouldering in his role as their employer.

He motioned to the spotlessly-dressed young housemaid standing behind his chair.

“Thank you, Tilly. You can clear the dishes now.”

And when she had gone from the room with her laden tray, “I’ve asked you not to pass that sort o’ comment in front of the staff, Maud.”

The rebuke was uttered mildly; but Maud, who had an inbred middle-class belief in the invisibility of servants, took umbrage at it.

“I hope that I may be allowed to speak as I wish beneath my own roof?” Her words held just a touch of frostiness, and served to underline the silent but always present reminder that it was her money which had enabled George Dennison to purchase the house in which they were living.

When the two of them had first made each other’s acquaintance – introduced at the Staffordshire County Horticultural Show in 1889 – Mr Dennison had only recently set his foot on the ladder of commercial success and had little more than ambition and good looks to recommend him. Maud Kemp was a shrewd young woman, however, as well as a practical one, and felt assured that his faith in himself was not misplaced. Somewhat against her father’s wishes she had married; and had brought sufficient money of her own to give the Dennison grocery business the impetus to grow and to prosper. And if it should irk her that, under cover of the clatter of china teacups, her Stockwell End neighbours sniffily referred to her as the Grocer’s Wife, at least she had the satisfaction of seeing her dowry earning its interest in bricks and mortar up and down the high streets of the Black Country.

She pushed back her chair and rose from the table, a slim, straight figure in grey silk evening dress.

“Come, Flora. It is time for you to go upstairs. Say goodnight to Papa.”

Obediently the young girl got up from her seat and went round the table to kiss her father. As she leaned against him, her hand on his shoulder, he caught her round the waist in a hug and returned her kiss on the cheek with hearty affection.

“You’ll give us a hand with this Christmas party, won’t you, our Flora. There’ll be a lot to organise – presents for all of the kiddies, games to keep them amused, that sort of thing. I’ll need a list making out as soon as I know how many we’ve got coming, so put your thinking cap on.”

He hugged her again and she smiled, a shy, loving smile that lit up her serious features.

“Right. Off to bed with you.” He tapped her on the nose, then, to his wife, “I don’t think I’ll bother with coffee, Maud. I’ll have a brandy and soda in the office instead. Will you tell young Tilly to bring one through?”



Flora left her parents together in the dining-room and went upstairs. A coal fire had been lit in her bedroom grate against the dank October night’s chill and she undressed herself on the hearth in front of it, folding her clothes neatly ready for Agnes or one of the other maids to put away. At thirteen she was too old now for a nurserymaid, and personal needs such as her wardrobe were seen to by whichever of the domestic staff was on duty, or else by her mother’s own lady’s maid, Agnes Reid.

Pulling her white flannel nightgown over her head, Flora knelt on the hearthrug and stretched her hands to the flames, warming herself thoroughly before she had to make a dash along the landing corridor to the icy, white-tiled arctic of the bathroom. She recalled wistfully the time when hot water was brought in a jug for her to wash herself in cosy comfort by the fire, but that was before Papa had had the new bathroom installed, replacing one of the guestrooms.

The firelight shone between her hands, outlining each finger in a rosy glow. Except for the rustle of the flames and the companionable tick of the mantel clock, there wasn’t a sound to be heard. She tucked her legs beneath her and stared into the incandescent coal-caverns of the grate, watching the heat-shimmer play on their surface, the glitter of spark-patterns blaze for a moment and die again.

She loved to sit like this, quiet and alone, seeing pictures in the fire, drifting away from the world into a make-believe place of fantasy, of fairy princesses and dragons and witches and many-towered castles wrapped in enchantment. Almost since she first began reading her vivid imagination had been fuelled by story-books, especially those of Andrew Lang with their re-telling of magical tales from faraway lands and their eerie, other-worldly, dreamlike illustrations. She read them again and again, begging new volumes for Christmas and birthdays to add to her growing collection.

Mama said it wasn’t healthy to spend so much time with her nose in a book, stuffing her head with fairy stories; but Papa said no, let her be, where was the harm in it; it showed the child had an inventive mind.

Thinking of her father now and the party he proposed giving, Flora wondered whether the girl from Raby Street would be included in the invitation. She had learnt a little about her from the chance remark – that her name was Roseen O’Connor; her school and her birthdate. Exactly why she should have this interest in a perfect stranger, Flora didn’t know; but since first seeing her three years ago she’d never been able to rid herself of the vision of that girl leaning from the window to wave to her Papa, so full of fearless impudence and laughter and self-confidence, so startlingly pretty … everything which she herself was not.

There was something else too which she’d never been rid of; something darker, half-forgotten, that seemed to cling to the edge of her memory like a burr, refusing to let go. A feeling of complicity in some sort of deceit.

She gave a deep, unconscious sigh; then remembered the bathroom, and with an expression of chagrin got up from the hearth and glanced at herself in the mirror. Oh, what would it be like to be Roseen O’Connor for just one day, instead of Flora Dennison, too plump, too plain, too shy, too ordinary ever to be noticed.



In the end there were more than fifty children invited to the Christmas party, and Dennison’s Stores hired a church hall in Wolverhampton to accommodate them all. Thank goodness the weather was fine; cold, but with a brittle, bright December sun pouring in at the windows to add its illusion of warmth to the two Dutch stoves burning cheerfully at either end of the hall.

The sober drabness of the place, redolent of soup-kitchen evangelism, had been entirely transformed by the gaiety of festive decorations. Swags of paper chains festooned the wooden rafters, filling the space overhead with a kaleidoscope of colour; there were bunches of holly looped with red ribbon against the plainness of the walls; and best of all, a splendid Christmas tree bedecked with glittering tinsel and shining glass baubles, and hung from the lower boughs with presents, each of which bore the name of one of the young guests here this afternoon.

The wrapping and labelling of the presents had been Flora’s responsibility.

First of all, while everyone was settling down and to get them into the right, jolly mood, a sing-song was conducted by one of the store managers dressed as a clown. The programme contained a medley of nursery rhymes and carols and favourite seasonal tunes and – most popular by far – the patter-songs of music hall turns, learned at home from parents; but after a while of this, small throats began to get thirsty and heads to turn longingly towards the trestle tables laid out ready at the other end of the hall.

One of Flora’s suggestions for this party was that every child should be given a number as he or she came in, matching a corresponding one on the table settings. She had even gone as far as cutting out coloured circles of cardboard with the numbers boldly crayoned on, to be affixed to the recipient’s garment with a safety-pin. George Dennison had thought this a capital method of avoiding what he called ‘a free-for-all bunfight at teatime’ and praised his young daughter accordingly; and it gave Flora a glow of achievement now to look round the noisy, crowded hall at this mixed assembly of children, all sporting one of her numbered circles like a badge of identity.

Her eyes stopped at a girl in an ivory-coloured muslin frock with deep lace collar and satin sash, standing against the wall at the back. Expecting to see her here, she knew at once who it was; but even so the sight of Roseen O’Connor made Flora catch her breath with sudden sharpness, as though startled. She stared at her, watched her joining in the singing, animated and confident, hands on hips, tapping time with one foot; and wondered whether they’d be seated near one another at tea, close enough to speak. And then, later, she didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed when she found herself sitting directly opposite the girl, but at a separate table.

Roseen had obviously recognised her too. From time to time she glanced across from her place, unsmiling, something almost spiteful in the way her expression narrowed slightly. Then she would turn away again to her neighbour, a nice-looking boy who kept catching Flora’s eye and winking; and the laughter would spring back into Roseen’s face and the sunny exuberance of her manner spill over everyone round her.

Her attractiveness fascinated Flora. Spellbound her. It conjured up in her mind instant images of the enchanted damsels of Mr Lang’s fairy tales. The heroines with whom she filled her adolescent dreams were beautiful and lithe and noble, with hair of just that shade of Roseen’s copper-gold, rippling in waves about their shoulders. She was reminded of Fair Olwen, and Imogen, and the Counte