The Second-last Woman in England (7 page)
Did he himself care? In light of what had happened this morning?
Damn
Rocastle for putting them—for putting
him
—in this frightful position.
‘There you are, old man,’ said Mumford, reappearing at his elbow and waving his martini glass before him like a divining rod. ‘I hear things are not as one might hope on the work front?’
Cecil froze and felt an uncomfortable tightening of the chest. How the
devil
could Leo know about the Rocastle thing? Could Harriet have said something? He kept his expression blank and concentrated on making the tightness go away.
‘I’m sorry, but I prefer not to discuss such things now, Mumford,’ he replied, with an attempt at a smile to soften his words.
‘But it’s all over the papers, old man.’
Cecil blanched.
‘The
United States
,’ Mumford prompted. ‘Made the Atlantic crossing in under four days! Extraordinary when you think about it. Think there’s any way back for your lot?’
The Blue Riband. Of course. Cecil allowed various internal organs a moment or two to steady themselves.
‘Certainly there’s a way back,’ he bristled. ‘Do you really believe American engineering can defeat British?’
‘Of course I do,’ replied Mumford, with obvious surprise.
Cecil took a long sip of his lemonade.
‘I see Simon Paget is here,’ he remarked, choosing to pass over his brother-in-law’s facetiousness.
‘Oh yes.’ Mumford gulped down his martini. Then he winked. ‘Pompous old boy, just between you and I, Ceece, but he’s proving very useful. We’ve made him technical advisor, you know, on this Spitfire drama.’
So it was true. Simon working for the BBC. And he a bone fide Battle of Britain hero.
‘And how exactly does he square it with the Palace?’ Cecil enquired. His brother-in-law worked in some sort of protocol capacity at Buckingham Palace, a position that entailed spending a great deal of time on the telephone to various obscure foreign embassies, consulates and trade missions.
‘No idea,’ said Mumford breezily. ‘He does it in his spare time. Don’t suppose they know—or care.’
Cecil frankly doubted this. A Palace employee assisting in the making of a fictional Television drama? Hardly appropriate, one would have thought.
‘It’s pretty exciting stuff, actually,’ Mumford went on. ‘Much of the action takes place in the air, well, in the cockpit really, and as we can’t actually fly the things—none of them are airworthy nowadays—we do the entire thing in the studio. Camera peering in through the cockpit window, chap on a wind machine at the front, another chap on sound effects—roar of engines, radio static, ack-ack-ack of enemy machine guns, that sort of thing—and chaps three and four on either side of the cockpit rocking it back and forth to simulate flight. Ingenious, isn’t it?’
Was it? Was a team of ‘chaps’ rocking a broken down old aircraft back and forth in a television studio the crowning achievement of human endeavour?
And meanwhile Rocastle had opened the safe in his office and absconded with who knew how many bonds and shares—not to mention the firm’s reputation. Cecil said nothing.
‘Have a martini, old boy,’ said Mumford.
Cecil hesitated. Felicity, he noticed, had drifted off inside the house.
‘May I ask you a question, Mumford?’
‘Certainly, old boy. Fire away,’ Mumford replied, reaching behind him for an olive.
But it was impossible. What on earth could one possible say to Mumford?
The silence was broken by an unpleasant squelch as Leo bit into the olive. Cecil felt slightly nauseated.
‘Who on earth is that extraordinary creature in the hat?’ he said instead.
They both looked over at a young woman in an enormous hat who was standing in a circle of Mumford’s BBC-types blowing smoke rings and looking bored.
‘Haven’t the faintest idea,’ Leo replied. ‘Group Captain Paget brought her. Quite a girl, isn’t she?’
Simon had brought a girl? First the BBC and now this! And she must be fifteen years his junior at least. But then one was led to believe the girls loved all that flying ace sort of thing. Cecil felt faintly disturbed by it all.
‘I
had
thought this was to be a quiet family luncheon, old boy.’
‘Had you? Yes, Felicity said you would detest it.’
Cecil felt a second flicker of annoyance at this betrayal.
‘Well, better be the good host,’ said Mumford, darting off.
I ought to go and say hello to Simon, Cecil thought. He could see his wife and her brother deep in conversation, Simon debonair in a smart dark-grey suit, all snow-white shirt collars and stiff creases. His Battle of Britain days were well behind him, but he still cut quite a figure. No doubt that was how one landed a job at the Palace.
At this moment he was frowning and looking across the garden, perhaps at the extraordinary girl in the hat, and Harriet was frowning too, though she was looking at Simon. She touched his arm to get his attention again, but when she noticed Julius making his way over to them she fell silent and looked away.
‘Hello, Uncle Simes. How’s it hanging?’ called Julius, sauntering over.
‘Julius. How are you, old man?’ Simon pulled a pipe out of his jacket pocket and placed it in his mouth.
Harriet appeared irritated by the interruption, but she gave Julius a brief smile, pulled out a cigarette from her case and lit it.
‘I suppose those policemen weren’t here for anything serious, then?’ Julius asked his mother.
Blast! thought Cecil. Why couldn’t the boy learn some discretion? No chance now of forestalling the inevitable questions.
‘Police?’ Simon replied, raising an enquiring eyebrow.
‘I expect it was serious to them, dear,’ said Harriet, who was a master of deflection.
No one had yet answered Simon’s question and Cecil moved out of ear-shot before he could ask it a second time. It was simpler to wander over to the food table, sip one’s lemonade and pretend one was taking an awfully long time deciding between the tuna, the shrimp paste or the ham and tomato sandwiches. He studied the array of neatly cut sandwiches and was about to place his faith in the tuna when Julius sauntered past. The boy was munching on a sandwich himself, his shirt open at the neck, and, inexplicably, his shirt collar out over the collar of his blazer in a rather secondary-modern way.
They stood side by side at the long table, solemnly and silently regarding the plates of slowly curling sandwiches before them. There was, Cecil realised, something rather special in the bond one had with one’s son. It was something to take pride in. It transcended other relationships, perhaps even the bond between man and wife.
He looked over to his wife who was studying the girl in the hat, over her sunglasses, the way women studied each other if they suspected the other one was more of a hit than they were. The marital bond was an enduring one—they had, after all, set up a home together, raised children together, gone through a war together—but once these things had been achieved, the relationship between a man and a wife naturally, perhaps even by necessity, tended to become more distant. One’s interests, having once coincided, now drifted apart. Like a peace accord between distant nations.
He paused, his hand hovering over a plate of sandwiches.
Was
there still a peace accord? It occurred to him Harriet had barely spoken to him since Thursday. And it had taken him till Saturday lunchtime to realise it.
Beside him, Julius reached for a shrimp paste sandwich on the top of the pile.
‘Oh, I should avoid that one, old man,’ Cecil remarked, ‘I saw a fly on it a moment ago.’
‘Oh. Right-oh.’
Julius stuck out a hand and reached over for another sandwich, barely pausing to see what he had picked up from the plate.
‘Having a good time?’ Cecil asked.
‘Rather,’ replied Julius. The boy hesitated then he spoke, casually addressing the sandwiches. ‘What did that Inspector want, Father?’
‘Oh, procedural matters. Just procedure.’
‘Procedure for what?’
‘Police matters. Julius, do tuck your shirt collar inside your blazer, old boy. Don’t want to look like an East End barrow-boy, do we.’
‘No, we most certainly do not,’ said Julius and he made a show of putting his sandwich down on the table and exaggeratedly carrying out this necessary adjustment to his appearance, then walked off.
Cecil selected a shrimp paste sandwich from some way lower down the pile and inspected it dubiously. He took a hesitant bite, then paused, unable to swallow.
Was he going to have to lie to the police?
The following morning Jean Corbett travelled by bus rather than taking the tube, because this was a momentous journey and from a bus you could see where you were and you had time to think.
The number 11 took her from Liverpool Street into the city past bombsites and half-demolished office blocks and the remains of half a dozen churches. She changed buses at Trafalgar Square and there were no more bombsites. Hyde Park shone brilliantly in the morning sunlight and large, gleaming black cars cruised down Park Lane. In the distance a troop of Horseguards trotted silently through the park and a small crowd of smartly dressed women and small children with their nannies stood and watched.
This is not my London, she thought, clutching her small case tightly in her lap.
She arrived too early and had to sit in an ABC café on Old Brompton Road sipping a cup of tea and watching the early risers on their Sunday morning strolls or walking their dogs. No one looked dressed for church.
At nine o’clock she presented herself at the Wallises’ front door, but instead of pressing the doorbell her index finger paused, midair, refusing to go the last few inches and she found herself glancing to left and right down the length of the street waiting for someone to stop her, for a shout, running feet on the pavement, a policeman’s whistle to pierce the serene Sunday morning stillness.
She took a deep breath. She had every right to be here, a God-given right. There could be—there
must
be—no turning back now. Too many years had already passed. She rang the doorbell.
The housekeeper, Mrs Thompson, opened the front door so rapidly she must have been standing right behind it.
‘They’ve given you the job, then?’ she enquired, peering at Jean with a raised eyebrow.
‘Yes. Hello. It’s Miss Corbett. Jean. I start today.’
‘I dare say!’ Mrs Thompson replied in a manner that suggested she had seen nannies come and go, and at this time in her life she didn’t need to see any more. ‘Well, I expect it’s for the best,’ she added cryptically. ‘You’re very early though,’ and she peered at Jean as though the explanation for this early arrival could be read on her face. ‘They aren’t up yet.’
It was nine o’clock and hadn’t she been told to be here at nine? But it seemed best not to argue.
‘Well, you’d better come in,’ Mrs Thompson announced, sounding as though she had weighed up various options and had arrived at this, the best one.
She was a stocky woman, short and broad, and Jean found herself regarding the top of Mrs Thompson’s helmet of unlikely tight blonde curls as she stepped past her into the hallway. Yellow would be a more accurate description of the curls, the kind of brassy yellow that came out of a hairdresser’s bottle. She wore a tight-fitting floral dress that looked at least one size too small with buttons that strained across an enormous bust, and a white apron double-tied around her waist.
Mrs Thompson led the way up a flight of stairs. Then they climbed a second flight and continued going up until Jean lost count of which floor they were on and Mrs Thompson turned purple and began to wheeze. At last she paused on a distant landing and opened a door on her right.
‘This is the room,’ she gasped. She didn’t say: This is
your
room.
They stood in the doorway surveying the room, Mrs Thompson with an air of suspicion as though she half expected the now departed Nanny Peters to be hiding in the cupboard.
‘That’s the bed,’ she said (Jean had already spotted the bed), ‘the window—I don’t think it opens or nothing, but they do say you can see right over to the hospital and beyond from there. There’s a chest under the bed and the tallboy here for your clothes and what-not,’ (she paused to regard Jean’s meagre suitcase) ‘and the bathroom’s out here, second door on the left. I’m across the landing there.’
She finished up by reaching for a cigarette and appeared in no hurry to depart.
‘Well, I must unpack,’ Jean declared, going into the room. She placed her case on the pink, tasselled bedspread and hoped Mrs Thompson didn’t intend to stand and watch. She slowly undid the clasps and surveyed the contents, aware that Mrs Thompson hadn’t moved.
‘You don’t need to hide nothing from me,’ Mrs Thompson declared huffily. ‘I’m sure you’ve nothing I wish to take.’
Jean turned at once to face her. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Thompson, I certainly never meant to imply—’
Mrs Thompson had already turned and made her way, with some dignity, across the landing and down the narrow stairs. But she paused on the bend in the staircase. ‘You can come down to the kitchen, if you want to, when you’ve finished unpacking. I daresay you’ll be wanting a cuppa by then,’ and she disappeared.
Unsure if this was an invitation or a challenge, Jean stood for a moment regarding the bedspread. It had a hole in its centre that had been inexpertly darned, she wondered for a moment about Nanny Peters, who had been here before her and who had left to tend to an elderly parent in Leicester. There was nothing of her here now, no trace at all.
She would leave something of herself here in the Wallis household, Jean resolved, something by which they would always remember Nanny Corbett.
The bed was pushed into the corner of the room. On the far wall was a window that faced east, across to the private garden opposite, and looking down the street she could see the roofs of the Royal Brompton and Marsden hospitals to the south. The room seemed quiet and empty and bare, but perhaps any room would seem quiet and empty and bare when compared with the room she’d shared with the children at Mrs McIlwraith’s in Malacca Row, or with the room they had all slept in together at home. That had been four to a bed. Here you had a room to yourself—all to yourself!
