The Second-last Woman in England (16 page)

Harriet was seated in the Guests’ Room, which was an antechamber off the Reading Room and was reached by an uncarpeted back corridor and a side entrance that led off, via an alleyway, to the rear entrance of the nearby tube station. One was left in no doubt as to one’s status as a lady in a gentlemen’s club. On the wall above the door to the Reading Room was a crest. Whose crest it was impossible to tell, even if one cared to know—and Harriet did not—because it was half obscured by a large creamy-white topi that someone had hung up there.

This seemed an unusually rakish thing for a member of the Planters Club to have done.

A topi. She hadn’t seen one for—well, it must be all of thirty years. Bombay bowlers, that was what they were colloquially called, and everyone in India wore them back then, simply everyone. If you didn’t, you were regarded with disdain. All the Europeans, that is. The Indians, of course, never wore them.

She stood up abruptly. God, the place was insufferably hot. She went to the window and attempted to open it. But windows in this sort of place were purely ornamental. In the street below, leaves swirled and a young couple, both in raincoats, hurried past with their collars turned up and heads down, side-stepping to avoid a puddle. She watched the scene for a moment. There was a time when England in November had seemed monstrous, when the mildest late-summer breeze had cut through her tropically thinned blood like ice and the sight of endless grey buildings, of dull grey streets and duller grey people, had filled her with horror. Despair.

But that was long ago. Another lifetime. A time when she had expected to return to India. When India had been her home. When she had expected to see her mother again.

She turned and faced the room. A Bombay bowler! Funny how one could remember exactly what it felt like, the shape of it beneath one’s hands. The weight of it on one’s head.

Their father’s district had been in Jhelum, in the Rawalpindi division of the Punjab, an area half the size of Wales with a population of over half a million. It had taken 15 days march to cross it—and consequently half of Father’s time each month was spent touring the district. Did Simon ever think about that time? He had left India even longer ago than she had, in 1918. It had been right after the Armistice was declared in Europe. And Simon had been only eight, which was late. Many European children were packed off to England for schooling when they were six. She had stayed in India another six years. A girl’s schooling wasn’t so important. One could get by with a governess, at least till one was twelve.

Funny how they never spoke about India, she and Simon.

Her eyes were drawn again to that crest above the door and the hat that hung incongruously from it. Mother had been wearing a topi the last time she had seen her. She had been lying on a bed on the veranda of the bungalow in Jhelum, one of the punkah-wallahs cooling her half-heartedly. It had been early summer, perhaps May or June, and already crushingly hot. Usually Father would have removed the entire household to Murree by then. All the Europeans fled to the hill stations to escape the oppressive lowland summer. But this summer Mother had become ill and the journey to Murree—made on horseback and elephant—had been considered too risky. So Mother had lain on a bed on the veranda and Father had ordered ice to be sent up by train from Delhi, when usually the cost would have been prohibitive.

Ice must have been the only luxury that
was
prohibitive. The bungalow they had lived in was enormous, rooms for all the family plus any number of servants. And yet sparsely furnished, as though they all knew it was only temporary. And most postings in India were temporary—though they had lived in that bungalow five or six years already by that summer. So many servants. It seemed ludicrous now. And in England one had practically no servants. And one got used to that, too, after a while.

With Father away so much, Mother had spent a great deal of her time organising the servants and attempting to train various ayahs in the finer details of child rearing, about which she had had very precise and strongly held views. This had all changed dramatically when the Great War had ended and Simon had been packed off to school in England. It was as though Mother had put all her time, all her effort, into this one child and now that he had gone she simply gave up. Instead she had spent her time at the tennis club and at the Surrey Club, a large wooden hut in a clearing about five miles away with a makeshift bar and an ice box, where all the local Europeans congregated.

Mother had become ill quite suddenly that May of ’24. She had appeared at breakfast one morning pale, feverish and listless and had retired to bed mid-morning. It was one of those lingering fevers that one got from time to time and that weakened the whole body almost overnight. Father had been at home that day, had been preparing the household for the move to Murree, but instead he had ordered the bed to be placed on the veranda and for someone to send for the doctor. There was a European doctor in the district, though he was half a day’s ride away. The doctor had come, had examined her, had spoken to Father and had ridden off. Father had looked concerned. The move to Murree would have to be delayed.

But there was more at stake than the planned relocation. There was Freddie.

Freddie had just turned eight. He needed to go to school. And Harriet herself, at twelve, needed to go to an English school sooner or later. Passages from Bombay to Liverpool had been booked weeks earlier and Mother was to accompany them on the month-long voyage in June.

It must have been late May, then, that she had watched Mother lying on the bed on the veranda with the punkah-wallah sporadically fanning her and the bearer proffering tea on a silver tray from time to time. In the hallway, trunks and bags were stacked, awaiting loading onto the bullock cart, handwritten labels identifying a ship’s name and a school outside Chatham in Kent and another in Sussex. Freddie, she remembered, had been excited about the voyage, but eight-year-old boys got excited about anything. Harriet had watched her mother from the garden and wondered for about the hundredth time if they were going to postpone the voyage; if they could just stay here. Perhaps forever.

Father had said not. Father had announced the previous evening that a man called Stephens, a junior subdivisional officer recently arrived from England, and whom they had met only once, would accompany them to Bombay and ensure they reached their ship in good time. They would be met by their grandparents at the other end.

At the time it had seemed surreal. A dream. A two-day train journey, a ship, a voyage. A different country. A school. Harriet’s mind had simply baulked at it all. Refused to take it all in. It had simply shut down and concentrated on the matter in hand: Mother on her bed on the veranda.

She had looked beautiful. But then didn’t every mother look beautiful on the last day that one saw them? Especially if one was a child. Mother was such a solid presence—more solid than Father, because she was always there. Built for colonial life, Father called it, and Mother would frown crossly because it implied she was stockier than she actually was. But that day she had been—what? Wispy. Insubstantial. Or was it merely with the wisdom of hindsight that one thought that? Certainly they were not accustomed to seeing Mother lying prostrate on a bed on the veranda in her thin white cotton dressing gown. Her wrists had been so thin, and the skin over her face pulled taut and shiny, not with the red glow of the summer heat but with a paleness than was unnerving.

‘Dearest, do get me a drink,’ Mother had said that final day, her eyes half-closed, and Harriet had passed her the glass of water the bearer had left by her side. But Mother hadn’t taken it. She had waved it aside at the last minute as though she had lost interest in it, the same way she had lost interest in motherhood.

Moments had passed. Harriet had thought, we are leaving soon. If Mother gets up now she could accompany us. There’s still time.

‘Are you off soon?’ Mother had said, suddenly opening her eyes, and the way she had said ‘Are
you
off?’ meant she had not been intending to come.

‘Soon, yes. The trunks are in the hallway. The men are loading them into the cart. Father says Stephens is to accompany us to Bombay.’

‘Good, dear. I’m sure Father knows best. I hear Stephens is a very good man … There were some Stephenses at Minehead. Mr Stephens was in tin, as I recall. I wonder if they are related.’ After this she had lain back again and closed her eyes. ‘This wretched heat,’ she had murmured, waving a hand over her face, and it had seemed as though she might not rouse herself even to say goodbye.

The trunks had been secured and checked and Freddie had been marched past and placed in the cart and finally Harriet had stood beside the bed to say goodbye. She had put out a hand, instinctively, tentatively, to touch her mother’s face, but before she could do so Mother had opened her eyes very wide.

‘You’ll look after Freddie, dear, won’t you?’ she had said. ‘He is in your care.’

Harriet had withdrawn her hand and looked over at Freddie, already in the cart, sucking on a stick of sugar-cane. She had taken him to church on her own once or twice, had held tightly on to his hand in the market, had read to him when he had been sick with a fever last year. But now he was in her care. All the way to England.

What if she were to refuse?

But one didn’t refuse. She had nodded, though Mother, by then, had already fallen asleep.

So Harriet and Freddie and the man called Stephens had made the journey to Bombay on their own.

‘Would you care for some refreshments, madam?’

Harriet looked up and half expected to see a bearer in his turban and white tunic standing there, offering her a planter’s punch. But it was the ancient waiter from the club in his black tailcoat and white gloves and with an unpleasantly swollen red nose and burst purple veins in his cheeks.

‘Yes, all right. Get me a vodka martini.’

It was early to be drinking but, Lord knew, one needed some defence against this oppressive mausoleum.

‘Harriet.’

Simon strode through the door of the Reading Room, dressed in his usual fashion—a tweed jacket, good quality, of course, but God, it made him made him look years older than 42, and those endless dreary brown trousers and a nondescript tie of indeterminate colour and design. It was almost as though he was at pains to disguise the fact he was a decorated Battle of Britain hero. He was still lean, his chin scrupulously clean-shaven, his hair recently cut and neatly parted. Once upon a time, in the years leading up to the war, he had been something of a catch. Cut quite a dash, one might say. And in those days he was simply a lowly clerk in a law firm. Now he had every reason to throw himself about and yet he kept himself tucked away. Perhaps it was the approach of middle age. Perhaps it was the war. Perhaps it was a hasty and unwise marriage and an even hastier divorce—the war again. Lord knew, it had enough to answer for. Still, there was no need to let oneself go.

‘How are you, old girl?’ he enquired mildly, stooping to kiss her. The kiss was somewhat stiff and awkward. Their relationship had never quite recovered from Simon being sent away to school at age eight. By the time she and Freddie had arrived in England Simon was fourteen and had had very little time for two younger siblings whom he barely knew.

‘I’m well. You?’

‘Oh, you know. Sorry I’m a bit late. There was a flap on at the Palace.’ He laughed suddenly and sat down. ‘Sorry. That’s the sort of nonsense we tell the press when a silver teaspoon has been mislaid before some dreadfully important State dinner. Actually, I lost track of the time, then it took an absolute age to fight one’s way through the hordes of tourists in The Mall.’

Harriet smiled vaguely. He was going to give an update on preparations for the Coronation if she didn’t cut him off at once. But he didn’t give an update on the preparations for the Coronation. Instead he said, ‘There’s a great deal about Emp and Col in the press. Is Cecil at all concerned?’

Harriet sighed crossly. Of course Cecil was concerned. This blasted business with the stolen money and the absconding employee didn’t seem to want to go away. The police had returned, twice, to the house to talk to him. A ‘talk’, apparently, was not an interview; it was less serious than an interview. It suggested they were asking for Cecil’s advice, picking his brains, rather than accusing him of anything. At least his name had been kept out of the newspapers.

‘He’s not concerned, no,’ she replied. ‘That silly affair with the ex-employee has all but blown over.’

‘I thought they’d uncovered all sorts of fraud? And the chap’s still at large, isn’t he?’

‘I’ve really no idea.’

‘Is anyone else implicated?’

Harriet reached for a cigarette. Everyone asked about it, of course, everywhere one went. It was rather as though Cecil had been caught out in some lurid affair that had been splashed across the tabloids—everyone falling over themselves to feign sympathy with the poor wife but privately agog with curiosity. And the wife, naturally, held her head high and smiled and never,
never
betrayed her husband.