by Rhys Bowen
“Don’t call her ‘miss.’ It’s ‘my lady.’ She’s the daughter of an earl,” one of the soldiers hissed at his friend.
Dido heard and laughed. “Oh, for goodness’ sake. Call me Diana or Dido. I can’t stand stuffiness. I’ll have half a pint of shandy, please, Ronnie.”
As she looked around the room, she spotted Ben at the same time and gave him a big smile. “Hello, Ben,” she said. “These nice boys offered to take me with them to the pub. Wasn’t that kind of them? A brief escape from captivity, you know.” She laughed, but her eyes were saying “Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me here.”
The bartender looked uncomfortable. “Pardon me, my lady, but this is the public bar. Don’t you think you’d be more comfortable in the private bar next door? There are armchairs, and it’s not quite as rowdy there.”
“Nonsense,” Dido said, giving Ben a swift glance for support. “I spend my life banished and away from people. I want to live a little. I want to hear laughter and talk to ordinary people.” She looked back to the soldier who had offered her a drink. “Make that a pint, Ronnie,” she said. She walked over to Ben as the pint was being drawn.
“So what are you doing these days, Dido?” Ben asked her. “Still at home?”
She gave a dramatic sigh. “Still stuck at home. Pah won’t let me do anything useful. I’m dying to do my part, you know. I don’t suppose you could find me a job in London, could you? At the place where you work?”
“I probably could, but I can’t go against your father’s wishes while you’re still a minor. There must be useful things to be done in Sevenoaks or Tonbridge.”
“Being a land girl and helping raise pigs? That’s about it. I want to do something exciting. I’m going to ask Mr. Churchill next time we see him. Pah knows him quite well, you know. And if Mr. Churchill says he wants to employ me, then Pah certainly can’t say no, can he?”
“Do you have any useful skills?” Ben asked. “Can you type and take shorthand?”
“Not really.” She chewed on her lip, making him realise how young she still was.
“That’s the sort of thing that women are hired to do on the whole,” he said. “Office work. Clerical stuff.”
“Boring, boring, boring. I’d rather drive an ambulance or learn to be a radio operator or even join the army.”
“They don’t let women fight. I imagine you’d still be doing clerical tasks in uniform.”
“It’s not fair.” She pouted. “I’m just as capable as these boys. And just as brave.”
“Oh no, miss,” one of the soldiers said. “It was to protect ladies like you that we joined up. We have to believe that you’ll be safe at home, waiting for us when we’re shipped overseas.”
“Will you be going overseas soon?” Ben asked.
The young soldier frowned. “We haven’t heard anything. Our lot was at Dunkirk. We lost men there, but I suppose it will be our turn to ship out again soon enough. In the meantime, life in Kent isn’t too bad. Especially when there are young ladies like you around.” And he grinned at Dido.
Ben had just decided there was no point in staying on any longer at the pub when Dr. Sinclair came in and beside him a middle-aged man. There was something distinctly foreign in his facial features and the cut of his jacket. The mysterious German, Ben thought and went over to greet them. The doctor greeted Ben warmly and introduced his companion. “This is Dr. Rosenberg. He’s helping me with my practice. Splendid chap.”
The other man gave a correct little bow and held out his hand. “How do you do?” he said in clipped English.
“You’re from Germany?” Ben asked pleasantly.
“Austria,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “I was at the medical school at the University of Vienna before the war.”
“One of their most distinguished professors,” Dr. Sinclair added. “He managed to get out just in time.”
The man looked at Ben with a bleak expression. “It never occurred to me that I was not safe, even though my grandfather was Jewish. I mean, I don’t look Jewish, do I? And I was a respected man. Then the Germans marched in, and I was dismissed from my position and told I had to wear a yellow star. That was enough for me. I left everything and took the next train to Italy and then to France and then here.” He paused to take the glass of beer that the doctor offered him. “I was fortunate to get out in time. I hear that my friends and relatives were not so lucky. They made my fellow professors scrub the streets while people spat on them. And others just disappeared. Nobody knew where they went, but there were rumours of camps . . .” He shook his head. “Sometimes I feel guilty that I am here, in this pleasant place, able to practise my medicine.”
“You made the right decision, old chap,” Dr. Sinclair said. “You acted. Others didn’t. Most people don’t think such things can happen to them until too late.”
Ben left the Three Bells, thinking about Dr. Rosenberg. As he had said, he didn’t look Jewish, with his blond hair and light greenish eyes. Ben toyed with the idea that he could have been a plant, sent over to become embedded in the community. Dr. Sinclair was a soft-hearted man, lonely, easily taken in. Perhaps the parachutist had expected to find sanctuary at the doctor’s house.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Farleigh again
The next morning there was great excitement in several households with the arrival of the morning post. Lady Esme looked up in surprise, waving a sheet of paper at the other occupants of the breakfast table. “Well, isn’t that nice?” she said. “We’re invited to a dinner party at the Prescotts to celebrate Jeremy’s safe return home.”
“Just you and Pah or all of us?” Dido asked.
“It says you and your family,” Lady Esme said. “Not Phoebe, of course. She’s too young for dinner parties.”
“What?” Phoebe looked up from her porridge. “That’s not fair. I’m never included in anything.”
“You are not an adult, Phoebe. You haven’t come out,” Lady Esme said.
“Neither has Dido. Neither has anybody these days,” Phoebe said.
“Don’t remind me!” Dido said angrily. “If you’re talking about not fair, then my missing a season is the unfairest of all. No balls. No parties. Nothing. I’ll never meet a man and I’ll die an old spinster.”
“I don’t know how they can get their hands on enough food to hold a dinner party when we are eating sawdust sausages and shepherd’s pie that is ninety-percent potato.” Lord Westerham interrupted this tirade. “But then that blighter Prescott always does seem to get his hands on things other people can’t. He drives that Rolls of his around as if there wasn’t petrol rationing.”
“He’s on important committees, dear,” Lady Esme said. “Obviously, he has to go up to London.”
“What’s wrong with a train, like for the rest of us?” Lord Westerham snapped. “I am most careful about the amount of petrol I use.”
“I don’t believe you’ve taken out the motorcar once since the chauffeur was called up,” Lady Esme said. “But then you’ve always been a hopeless driver.”
“I resent that,” Lord Westerham retorted. “I’m sure I could be a splendid driver if I put my mind to it. But there’s always been a chauffeur, so there didn’t seem much point. Besides, we are supposed to set a good example by not using any unnecessary petrol. And since I’m apparently no use to anybody in the war effort, apart from leading the local home guard, I have no justification to use petrol.”
“If you’d teach me to drive, then I could chauffeur us around,” Dido said. “Will you, Pah?”
“You? Drive us around? Even without the petrol coupons, the answer to that would be no, no, a thousand times no. You’d be more danger to the British populace than the Germans. You’d kill us all.”
“I wouldn’t,” Dido said, her cheeks now bright pink. “I bet I’d be a marvellous driver. Lots of girls from good families are driving ambulances and lorries these days. Doing their bit for the war effort, unlike me, stuck here, bored to tears.”
“Any
way, Roddy, you’ll have to get the motorcar out to drive us to the Prescotts,” Lady Esme said. “We can hardly arrive on bicycles.”
“I don’t know if I want to go,” Lord Westerham said. “There’s something about that blighter Prescott. I don’t trust him. He’s not one of us.”
“How can you say that, Pah?” Pamma had sat quietly until now, finishing up a slice of toast and marmalade.
“Because he’s not. Oh, he might have a fine house and all the airs and graces these days, but he grew up distinctly middle class.”
“Well, he’s one of us now,” Pamma said. “He has a title, just like you.”
“You either inherit a title or you buy it,” Lord Westerham said dryly. “In his case, the latter. And I query how he made all that money, too. There is something too smooth about the blighter.”
“You’re just jealous, Pah,” Dido said with a little grin. “So will you teach me to drive? I could drive us over to the Prescotts tomorrow. I can hardly hit anyone going down our driveway, can I?”
“Absolutely bloody well not,” Lord Westerham stormed.
“Then what can I do?”
“Stay at home and help your mother until you’re old enough, that’s what you can do. Knit socks and helmets for soldiers.”
“Knit things? You’re joking. If I were a son and I was eighteen, I bet you’d be proud if I joined up.”
A spasm of pain crossed his face. “But you’re not, are you? I just have girls, and it’s my job to protect them.”
“If you’re not careful, I’ll run off and marry a gypsy, and then you’ll be sorry.” Dido stood up, dropped her napkin, and flounced out of the room.
“I’ll look forward to buying clothes pegs from you,” Lord Westerham called after her, chuckling.
Lady Esme looked at her husband. “You’ll have to let go of her sometime, Roddy. I understand how she feels. She can’t sit home doing nothing when everyone else is helping with the war effort.”
“When she’s twenty-one she can do as she bloody well pleases,” he said. “Until then, she’s under my care, and I do what I think is best for her. You know what she’s like, Esme. If we let her go off to London, she’ll be back with an illegitimate baby in ten minutes.”
“Really, Roddy. Sometimes you go too far.” Lady Esme turned pink. “I must make sure we all have something decent to wear to the Prescotts. I haven’t had my good frocks out for ages, and Lady Prescott is always so chic.” She looked across at Pamela, who had now risen from the table. “Did you bring an evening dress with you, darling?”
“I left most of my things here,” she said. “Not much chance to wear evening dresses when I’m on night shift.”
“Then pass the news on to Livvy, will you. I’m sure she’ll want to come.”
As Pamela left the room, she heard her father say, “I’ve been thinking this over, Esme, and the more I think of it, the less I want to go. Prescott will be effusive and magnanimous and handing out his single malt Scotch and getting my goat.”
“But we have to go,” Lady Esme lowered her voice. “For your daughter’s sake.”
Pamela paused in the passage outside the dining room.
“Daughter? Which daughter?”
“Pamma, of course. It’s to celebrate Jeremy’s safe return. Jeremy and Pamela, you know?”
“No, I didn’t know. Has he asked for her hand or something?”
“No, but I’m sure he will when the time is right.”
Pamma waited no longer but went on up the stairs. Her face was flushed at what she had just heard. Everyone else assumed she’d marry Jeremy, except Jeremy himself, it seemed. And now another nagging doubt had crept into her mind. Her sister Dido. She had apparently been visiting Jeremy, and then last night . . .
Dido was waiting at the top of the stairs. “Are you sure I can’t come and live with you, Pamma? I’ll go mad if I stay here much longer. They must be able to find me a job where you work. I’d take anything at this stage, even boring old filing.”
“Dido, you can’t go against Pah’s wishes. You know that. Besides, I share a room with another girl in an absolutely awful boardinghouse, and we’re as far out of London as we are here. Stuck in the middle of the countryside with nothing going on. You’d be just as bored as you are here.”
“But you must be working with men.”
“That’s true. Although I wouldn’t call most of them exciting, either. They’re too old or they’re gangly boys with pimples. Nothing exciting, I assure you.” She turned to her sister. “I know. Why don’t you ask Pah to see if the colonel of the West Kents could use you for office duties? That would be a start and get you some experience.”
Dido’s face brightened. “Yes, that would be a start, wouldn’t it. Good thinking, Pamma. You’re not such a bad old stick.”
As she went to walk past, Pamela said in a low voice. “I know you were out last night, Dido. I heard the floorboards creaking and saw you going into your room. Where did you go?” A worrying thought had been playing in her mind that Dido had been to see Jeremy. And Dido didn’t seem to have any inhibitions about sex—positively keen for it, in fact. Had she been giving Jeremy what Pamela had denied him?
Dido grinned. “To the Three Bells with some of the soldiers I met.”
Pamela heard herself give a sigh of relief. “Dido, for heaven’s sake, be careful. Pah would hit the roof if he found out. And soldiers? That’s not exactly wise.”
“It was brilliant. They were so nice to me. They treated me perfectly.”
“Well, I suppose they would, given that you’re the daughter of the house where they’re staying. And you’re a lady.”
“But it wasn’t like that at all. We talked. We laughed. It was so nice to be just like an ordinary person. One of the gang. Is that what it’s like where you work? Do they have to call you ‘my lady’ and rubbish like that?”
Pamela laughed now. “Of course not. And they certainly don’t treat me any differently because I’m the daughter of an earl.”
“That’s what I want. To be someplace where nobody cares who I am.”
Pamela put a hand tentatively on her sister’s arm. “Your turn will come, I promise you. And if this war goes on much longer, then I’m afraid we’ll all be called upon to do our share.”
“Golly, I hope so,” Dido said. “Thanks, Pamma. And you won’t say anything to Pah, will you?”
“I won’t, but you’ll be lucky if someone from the village doesn’t blab. You know what gossips they all are.”
“You really are a good old stick,” Dido repeated.
“Thank you for the compliment.” Pamma smiled as she went into her bedroom.
Phoebe stomped into her room, making her governess look up from the book she was reading.
“Why, Phoebe, whatever is the matter?” she asked.
“They’ve all been invited to a dinner party at the Prescotts, and I’m not included.”
“Well, I wouldn’t feel too badly about it,” Miss Gumble said with a smile at the girl’s scowling face. “I’m not invited, either.”
“Well, of course you wouldn’t be. You’re only a governess,” Phoebe said and saw a spasm of pain cross the woman’s face.
“For your information, Phoebe Sutton, I grew up in a situation not unlike yours. Oh, our house wasn’t quite as grand as this one, and my father didn’t have a title, but it was a good-sized estate. Then my father died when I was up at Oxford, and my brother inherited everything. And his wife told me in no uncertain terms that I was no longer welcome at my old home.”
“Golly, how mean,” Phoebe said.
Miss Gumble nodded. “So I had no choice. With no money and nowhere to go, I had to leave university and get a job teaching other people’s children because that gave me a roof over my head.”
“Why didn’t you get married?” Phoebe said. “You must have been quite pretty once.”
“I think you mean that as a compliment.” Miss Gumble gave a sad smile. “There was a young man.
But he died in the trenches in the Great War, like so many others. A whole generation of young men wiped out, Phoebe. For women of my age, there were no men to marry.”
“Golly,” Phoebe said again. “Do you think that will happen this time? Do you think by the end of this war there will be no men left for me to marry?”
“I hope not, for your sake,” Miss Gumble said. “At least when the last war ended, we were still free. And we won, however terrible the cost.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
All Saints vicarage
Over at the vicarage, Reverend Cresswell opened the morning post and looked surprised. “Well, well,” he said. “We’ve received an invitation to a dinner party tomorrow night, at the Prescotts. That’s a turn-up for the books, isn’t it, Ben?”
“At the Prescotts?” Ben paused. “I suppose they’ve only invited us as a courtesy.”
“Nonsense, my boy,” the vicar said. “They’ve invited you, as Jeremy’s oldest friend. I’m the courtesy.”
“We don’t have to go,” Ben said.
“Not go? I personally shall look forward to a slap-up meal in these times of economy. One hears things about the Prescotts’ table.”
Ben wished he could come up with a good reason not to go. Lord Westerham’s family would most definitely be invited, and he’d have to watch Jeremy and Pamela gazing at each other with that special look. Get used to it, he muttered to himself, disgusted with his own weakness. He was here to work, and the dinner party would see the leading lights in the local community assembled in one place. A perfect opportunity for observation.
“Then we can’t deprive you of a good meal.” Ben got up. “I’ll write an RSVP note to Lady Prescott.”