The Quality Street Wedding

by Penny Thorpe

  Albert staggered backward and found himself once again beside Mary. He was clearly in shock. ‘This cannot be! They were to have a referendum tomorrow, it was all planned. Hitler agreed it with the Austrians, this was publicly announced, this was not to be forced upon the Austrians, they were to keep their sovereignty.’

  Mary was ashamed to be more worried for Albert than she was for the nation of Austria which had just been invaded and occupied by a hostile force. ‘What does this mean for us? Does this mean you can stay? Will the Home Office see how dangerous it is now?’

  Albert shook his head sadly. ‘They’ve always known how dangerous it is, that is not the trouble. I think this will make things very much worse for us, I am afraid. I am no longer a Jew from Germany, I’m a Jew from a country which has broken its peace treaty with the British, and with everyone else. I am the enemy.’

  And Mary looked around her at the yew trees which surrounded them on all sides and in that moment remembered that they were symbols of death. She shivered. It had suddenly turned very cold.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  One of the things which irked Cynthia Starbeck about the Crabley Hall fete was that it was held far too early in the year to be anything like summer weather which would have attracted more crowds but Lord Mayhew could not be found at home from the start of the Cheltenham Festival in March to the end of Cowes Week in August and then he dashed off to the Bavarian Alps to hobnob with prominent German politicians at their mountain retreats. This year would be slightly different; he’d squeezed in the annual fete for his estate workers, but intended to be on the boat train to the Continent before they’d packed away the coconut shy to help celebrate the great triumph of the Anschluss in Germany. Membership of the British Union had been dwindling a few years previously, but the very real threat of war had sent membership soaring again, and those who had kept faith all that time were reaping the rewards of their loyalty.

  Perhaps what had irked Cynthia most was that she had previously been among Lord Mayhew’s set, spending her two weeks annual holiday in Berchtesgaden, enjoying the air and the local culture. However, funds had been in short supply over recent months and her summer holiday was just one of the sacrifices she had been forced to conceal that she was making.

  The Crabley Hall fete was a nuisance in her social calendar. It always fell on the third Saturday in March when it was as likely to be cold and wet as it was to be changeable. Dressing for it was a chore now that they weren’t permitted to wear their BUF uniforms, and so was attending. However, attend she must. Mayhew was an important member of the local branch of the British Union and a prominent fascist. She had to be seen to attend. The only problem was that all the other members of their local branch would likely be in attendance, and this included Dolly Dunkley.

  Cynthia had first met Dolly at a fascist meeting at Crabley Hall, not ten months earlier. If she’d known that her best chance of ridding herself of the Dunkley problem would cross her path at the fete, she might have shown more enthusiasm for it.

  A chill wind shivered through stalls and tents and caused a brief flurry of flapping canvas, then died down again. Cynthia had tried to find somewhere to stand in the weak warmth of the sun without looking too much as though she was biding her time until she could leave. She had chosen a spot close to the tea tent because she could at least nurse a warm piece of china. It was here that an acquaintance – eager to palm him off onto someone else – introduced Percy Palgrave.

  ‘Miss Starbeck knows all about Mackintosh’s.’ The acquaintance, a steward of some sort on one of the local estates, hailed her with the enthusiasm of a drowning man. ‘Miss Starbeck, may I introduce you to Percy Palgrave? He was just telling me how much he enjoyed a recent tour of your factory. Mackintosh’s is still your factory, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I don’t own it personally, but I flatter myself that I have a hand in keeping it ticking along.’ Cynthia attempted to warm herself with her own charm, but it wasn’t enough to keep the acquaintance from pleading an appointment and leaving her with the young man who had been treated to a day at her place of work, as if it was a zoo and she a caged beast.

  ‘Jolly interesting place.’ Palgrave gave the words an odd emphasis, suggestive of having seen something secret or illicit. ‘Met an old school pal of my cousin’s while I was there.’

  Cynthia’s cold teacup was beginning to give her fingers a chill, but the shiver which seized her then was caused by the way this young man looked at her. His eyes seemed almost permanently on the verge of closing, but somehow they leered at her beneath their red, watery lids. He had pale hair which had thinned prematurely at the temples, a fact which he had tried to disguise by very brazenly combing as much of his hair as possible from the very back of his neck over his crown, and then up in a wave of white fluff over his brow. He looked as though a seagull had flung itself on him and died prostrate, and he didn’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed by it. He reminded her of Dolly with her surprised-puffin maquillage, and it was with a jolt of surprise that she heard him mention her name.

  ‘Dolly Dunkley – from Stump Cross?’

  ‘Yes, do you know her?’

  Starbeck decided to keep her cards close to her chest. ‘I know most people at Mackintosh’s factory. Tell me, what brought you on a tour? Do you have a particular interest in manufacture?’

  ‘Oh, well, manufacture.’ He spluttered out some platitudes about the empire, but to Starbeck’s relief it was clear that he had no real interest in her place of work. ‘In oil, myself; Burmah Oil. Out in the Rangoon office. Home leave to check on my mother. She’s not been well.’ Palgrave nodded in the direction of a bilious-looking woman with distinctly red cheeks who was even then trying her hand at the Test Your Strength stall, where her swing of the mallet was not far off ringing the bell to indicate virility. Cynthia thought she recognised her; if she wasn’t mistaken, this woman was on the board of trustees of the Bankfield Museum.

  The ghost of an idea was forming in Starbeck’s mind. ‘And have you brought your wife back with you, Mr Palgrave, or has she stayed on in Rangoon with the children?’ Cynthia Starbeck judged herself to be a good fifteen years his senior and thought she could get away with asking the question without seeming coquettish.

  ‘Ah, no; not married. Bachelor. I’d had some hopes, but …’ He gave her a tragic, self-pitying look from beneath his sneaking, hooded eyes.

  ‘“But”, Mr Palgrave?’

  ‘Dashed, Miss Starbeck, dashed.’

  Cynthia Starbeck thought she knew something about these ‘hopes’ he hinted at. If his strong-arm mother was the woman she thought she was, then she had heard rumours. She’d heard about the woman’s son who was stationed abroad and who had been writing to three different girls to hedge his bets and had arranged to come home to ‘get himself a wife’. Whether they had all turned him down because they couldn’t stomach the reality of him she didn’t know, but she did remember that money had come into it. His family had none and he’d chosen girls who – while not being heiresses of the grand sort – would certainly bring him some solid, short-term comfort in the form of immediate ready cash. Starbeck thought she could use this weakness to her advantage.

  ‘Not dashed by Dolly?’

  ‘The vicar’s daughter? No, no, I hadn’t seen Dolly in years until the other week. Happened to bump into her by chance at the factory.’

  ‘Well, if you’ll allow me to give you some friendly advice, don’t let her hear you calling her father a vicar. He’s a Rector, and she doesn’t like anyone to think he’s just a lowly parson.’ Mrs Starbeck made it sound very grand indeed.

  ‘Is there a difference? My lot are nonconformist, so I can’t say I ever paid much attention to these ecclesiastical distinctions.’

  ‘Money.’ Cynthia conveyed the information in a whisper to make certain that the young man would pay attention. ‘Vicars have a stipend, but Rectors get a living from the land their church owns and rents to farmers.’ Here Cynthia S
tarbeck told the very precise lie which she felt would be necessary to nudge the whole thing along. ‘Her father’s put it all into stocks – or so my uncle tells me. They’ve invested in some similar companies. I expect her father will settle the lot on her. I shouldn’t mention it, though; so many young men have taken an interest in her when they’ve found out how much the father’s got tucked away. Someone will snap her up before long and I do so hope it’s someone who appreciates her for her personal qualities rather than just the pecuniary assets … well, here I am wittering on.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dolly Dunkley liked to seek the approval of her manager through easy tasks which she hadn’t been asked to complete, rather than difficult ones which she had. This led to a surprising amount of disappointment on both sides. On Dolly’s desk that day waited a pile of ledgers full of numbers which she had been told to do something with, but she hadn’t listened fully to the instructions, and asking to have them repeated seemed too hard, so once again she was wandering the corridors looking for something easier to do.

  It was with a pleasant feeling of surprise that Dolly discovered the noticeboards all over the factory had been covered with a dire warning from Nurse Munton about a small local outbreak of Scarlet Fever and Septic Sore Throat. The posters, which claimed to have been printed by the District Medical Officer, extolled workers to be vigilant and report symptoms and then quarantine until they could be tested. Bold black and red type told the toffee workers that this latest scourge was a second wave of scarlatinal infections caused by the new strain of the disease first seen in Doncaster the preceding year. The Medical Officer emphasised that this strain was more contagious, more dangerous, and more deadly than anything they were used to, and that it was imperative the people of Halifax played their part in containing it before it could do the same damage it had done in Doncaster – or worse.

  Dolly was delighted; there were scores of posters and if she took them all down she’d have a whole pile to give to her manager and that should distract her from the unfinished work for quite some time. Dolly set about her task with gusto, imagining how her manager would praise her for stamping out this nonsense and by the time Dolly arrived back at the Time and Motion office she had worked up quite a glow. Her manager was waiting for her.

  ‘Dolly, I have just had a telephone call from the gatehouse. There’s a young man here to see you from the Burmah Oil company – in a motor car. I understand he was here at the factory recently as a VIP visitor. He asked if he might call on you this afternoon and I told him that I’d allow it as he’s only going to be in England for a short time.’ Mrs Starbeck’s benevolent smile was convincing.

  Dolly Dunkley had a visitor at the factory gates, and he was driving a motor car. The news of this would spread around the factory for days to come and Dolly would revel in the celebrity of it for all it was worth. The bundle of posters in her arms were quite forgotten and she was ready to chase out of the door, but before that she had an obstacle to overcome: she couldn’t just leave her job for the afternoon to go and chinwag with a visitor. Dolly had anticipated that if she asked to be excused she would be belittled, but Mrs Starbeck took her by surprise:

  ‘You may take the rest of the afternoon off on condition you begin work half an hour earlier in the morning.’

  It was an unexpected boon and Dolly didn’t question the easy price, nor did she stop to show her manager the bundle of posters she had brought her as an offering. She was still wearing the cotton overall she’d put on to visit the production line earlier and she didn’t think to take it off before she ran out of the brass and glass doors at the bottom of the office tower.

  Down in the old canal basin, where all the girls in Albion Mills could see, was the unmistakable white mop of hair which belonged to Percy Palgrave. But to whom did the car belong? The idea that the well-connected young man with the exotic line of work should also come with a car was too thrilling to imagine. Dolly hurried over to the gleaming metal monster and breathlessly greeted its driver.

  ‘Hullo. Remember me? I came on a tour of the factory.’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ Dolly’s puffin face was alive with excitement. ‘My manager told me you wanted to call on me and she’s given me the afternoon off.’

  He gave an awkward sort of chuckle and pointed to her overalls. ‘I’ve got the loan of a Ford for a couple of hours. Just trying it out. See if I want to buy one.’ He did not explain how he would get a car to Burma if he did buy one, but that wasn’t the sort of thing Dolly would notice. ‘I thought we could take the car out for a drive. I know all girls like cars.’

  ‘Rather! If I run and go and change my overalls, will you wait? I’ll run fast.’

  ‘Run your fastest!’ And Percy Palgrave followed her with his hooded, lascivious eyes.

  The drive was a bumpy one over the roads out of Halifax. Industrial towns attracted industrial traffic, and the heavy goods vehicles showed the tarmac the corporation had lavished upon them no mercy. Palgrave was keen to take the car up to the top of Beacon Hill ‘to see what it was made of’. It was the purest of coincidences that the view of Halifax was breathtaking from that spot and that the sun was over in the sky in the afternoon, tinting the clouds with pretty colours by five o’clock when they arrived at the lip of the Devil’s Cauldron.

  Percy did not ask Dolly many questions, but he paid her an almost implausible number of compliments. Her dress sense was ‘up-to-the-minute’, her hair was ‘jolly chic’, her decision to give the factory a bit of her time was ‘very patriotic’, and her knowledge of the locale was like that of Ariadne to his Theseus.

  The car performed its job well, but the view from Beacon Hill performed its job even better. Dolly was keen to point out the spire of her father’s church at this great vantage point that looked out across half the Calder valley and which didn’t look to her like it was suffering under a great plague of scarlet fever.

  ‘And where’s his rectory? Nearby, is it?’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s just the other side of that wall. It’s ever so big, and we’ve got walled gardens to keep the parishioners from wandering in at all hours.’

  ‘Must be an occupational hazard if you’ve got a large parish, what?’ Palgrave managed to sound both concerned and casual.

  ‘Oh, it’s ever so much work. The parish stretches from all the way down there at Clough Mills and covers the two farms on the other side of that ridge. His parish is one of the biggest for miles around.’

  This was all lies; Dolly hadn’t the faintest idea where the boundaries of her father’s parish were, but she had cottoned on to the idea that big things made her visitor happy and so she had decided to make everything gargantuan in order to win his approval. She liked his approval.

  ‘Your father, he’s a Rector, isn’t he?’ That practised, casual note held just long enough. ‘Where is his rectory land? Got much of that these days?’

  ‘Oh, all of this you can see is his rectory land.’ Dolly had no idea what she was saying, but she enjoyed impressing Percy – and he did look very impressed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘That’s bad news for Herr Baum.’ Amy Wilkes put down the telephone receiver and took the cup of tea her assistant Diana was offering her.

  ‘A problem with the Home Office?’ Diana had put the call through herself and she knew it was the solicitor, but she didn’t like to give the impression that she eavesdropped on her manager’s telephone calls.

  ‘No, a problem with a landlord. Won’t sign the lease.’ Amy Wilkes took a thoughtful sip of her tea. ‘People can be such beasts.’

  ‘I thought the lease had already been signed. Isn’t that what Herr Baum was doing at the solicitor’s office when you sent me there with him?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t as simple as that. The solicitor had arranged the lease and the landlord was going to countersign the contract once Herr Baum had signed it, but when they saw his name – and realised that it was a Jewish name – they refused to sign and said they won
’t lease him the property.’

  ‘But whatever for? What do they think he’s going to do to the place? Fill it to the rafters with bagels?’

  ‘The landlord happens to be a member of the British Union and so he won’t lease property to Jewish tenants.’

  Diana said nothing, but closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Which leaves us with a very immediate problem: Herr Baum cannot apply for a permit to work here without a signed lease on a full house to prove he has a permanent home here for himself, his children, and his sister.’

  Diana nodded. ‘We need to find him another house.’

  ‘How long did it take us to find the last one?’

  ‘Five months.’

  Amy Wilkes blew out her cheeks and took off her tortoiseshell spectacles. ‘All right, well let’s be less fussy this time. We don’t need to find the perfect house, just four walls and a roof.’

  ‘With respect, those were our criteria last time. With the current housing shortage in Halifax we are competing against scores of other families who are just as quick to put in offers on homes they haven’t even seen; this could take some time. How long can he stay in the country to sign a lease?’

  Mrs Wilkes consulted her notes. ‘His current permit allows him to stay until he has signed all the papers relating to his application and his lease – he has until the Tuesday after Easter, so approximately four weeks.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Diana turned to leave her manager’s office.

  ‘Pull out all the stops, Diana. It’s not just about the job – although God knows we can’t get another trained confectioner of his calibre in England – it’s the thought of sending him back. You’ve seen the newspapers, it’s …’ Mrs Wilkes shuddered. ‘We can’t let it happen.’