by John Pearson
That in itself had been a sort of nightmare, for the trouble was that she had taken everything that he believed in—literature and art and pure philosophy—and tried to live by them. Hideous mistake! He’d done his best, of course, to tell the girl that life is not a matter of ideals. He tried explaining how even he had had to come to terms with people like Lady Southwold and Lord Salisbury. All that she had said was that she was sorry for him, and she had gone her own sweet way with her socialism and her suffragettes and her art-for-art’s-sake.
It was embarrassing, of course, especially for Marjorie. He didn’t mind too much when other members in the House raised their eyebrows when they heard that Bellamy’s daughter, of all people, had been working in a soup kitchen in Whitechapel or, worse still, was mixed up with those confounded Fabians. But it really was too bad when she ducked her presentation to the King and Queen! Marjorie had had a dreadful time with her during her season as a débutante, the spring following her German period. She had been quite unmanageable and had scared away any potential husbands, so that her last-minute absence from the presentation had not come as a complete surprise. But it could have caused a scandal. His late Majesty had been very difficult on points of protocol. His son, young George V, was different, but Elizabeth had spent her season enhancing her reputation as a “difficult” young lady.
During the past two years neither he nor Marjorie had had much influence on her. “Wilful and obtuse” was what Marjorie had called her and she was right again. That was why it had been such a great relief when she announced her wish to marry the young poet Lawrence Kirbridge.
Again one could be wise after the event, but at the time it had seemed the lesser of two evils. Richard had had his doubts about the boy from the beginning. One can’t be totally naïve after twenty years in politics, and from the start he’d sensed something effeminate and weak about the wretched fellow. Even his verses gave the game away. No, as a responsible and common-sense man of the world, he, Richard Bellamy, ought to have realised that Kirbridge never could be a husband for his daughter and he should have spoken out. Then at least something of this present ghastly muddle might have been avoided.
But since it had not, it was no use feeling sorry for himself now. He’d better try to do something to clear up the mess. That was presumably what fathers were for.
“Elizabeth,” he said, knocking a second time on the nursery door. “Elizabeth, I’d like a word.”
To his relief it was his daughter who opened the door, not Nanny Webster. (Despite all his objections that all-too-faithful and unpleasant old family nanny had been resurrected from the depths of Southwold and duly sent up to nurse the next generation of the Southwolds, Miss Elizabeth’s new baby daughter, Lucy.)
Luckily, Elizabeth and Lucy were by themselves. Elizabeth was in her dressing gown. She looked pale and lethargic and there were deep shadows under her eyes. Despite her mother’s exhortations to “pull yourself together,” Elizabeth still felt terribly apart—from her parents, her baby, even life itself.
“Elizabeth, dearest.” Richard kissed her and tried not to show the anxiety he felt. “And how is Lucy?”
Elizabeth shrugged. Richard peered into the cot. His granddaughter seemed minute (he had forgotten just how tiny babies were), with strands of thin black hair. She was asleep. Even to Richard she seemed beautiful, and he continued looking at her as he tried to decide how he could possibly broach the subject that had to be discussed.
“Elizabeth,” he said at last, “something extremely painful and distasteful has occurred. I wish we could avoid it but we can’t. It’s about Lucy.”
“Lucy?” his daughter echoed flatly. “What about Lucy?”
“Last night Sir Geoffrey Dillon called and told me some incredible story about Lawrence not being her father. It isn’t true, is it, Elizabeth?”
The girl had no expression as he spoke, but she shrugged again and murmured, “Absolutely true.”
“And the father? Dillon said …”
“Henry Partridge. Lawrence’s publisher. Yes, I’m afraid that’s true as well.”
There was a silence broken only by the ticking of the nursery clock. Richard wiped a hand across his forehead and wearily shook his head.
“I just don’t understand,” he said slowly. “Partridge is older than I am. He’s fat, he’s vulgar, and for that matter he’s my publisher as well. Elizabeth, how could you?”
His daughter stared at him, then smiled. What an extremely nice, extremely stupid man her father was! And how embarrassed the poor love got at anything which shocked that touchingly conventional old mind of his. Her mother had been so much more sensible when she had told her. “Not a word to anyone,” was her advice, “and least of all to your father. It’ll blow over. These things do.”
But thanks to that dirty-minded, dry-as-dust old lawyer, it looked as though nothing could be allowed to be that simple.
As Richard tried to explain to Marjorie that evening, surprised at how calmly she reacted to the news, the whole question of the child’s paternity was crucial to the divorce that Elizabeth was claiming from her husband.
“Provided that no hint of the truth slips out, and provided too that Kirbridge sticks to his part of the bargain to give Elizabeth grounds to sue him for adultery, we’ll still be all right. But if these rumours get around—and you know how people talk—things could be difficult.”
“Difficult, Richard? How?”
“Dillon was most worked up about it last night. If the divorce judge heard that Elizabeth had already been unfaithful to her husband it could torpedo the divorce—and lay Elizabeth open to a charge of perjury. It seems that the courts are now becoming very strict about these things.”
“But how ridiculous! It must be obvious to anyone that the whole marriage was a terrible mistake, and that the sooner it’s ended and forgotten the better it will be for everyone.”
“That’s not the point,” said Richard. He was beginning to get exasperated now, and Marjorie knew how terribly upset he was by the whole unpleasant business.
“There,” she said, smiling gently. “I’m sure that everything will be all right.”
But Richard wasn’t. Dillon had always been able to upset him, and on top of that there were other worries too, most of which boiled down, as worries do, to money or the lack of it.
To start with, there was James. Luckily he’d finally disposed of the fiancée he had brought back with him from India, a nice enough but very dominating girl and quite unsuitable. But women, Richard felt, would always be a problem for that son of his—as for all the Southwolds. There’d been all that trouble with the pretty under-housemaid, Sarah. Luckily for everyone she had lost the baby, but it just went to show how irresponsible he was where women were concerned. Perhaps it was as well that he was now all set to leave the army. He’d have to buckle down, particularly with the job he’d been promised in the City. Jardines were an excellent firm. Richard knew several of the directors personally (otherwise James would never have been accepted), and there were splendid prospects if he would only realise his salad days were over and that there was nothing in the least “degrading”—as he had put it—in working for your living.
But before James could leave the army there were his debts to pay, over a thousand pounds of them. Marjorie had promised that they would be paid, but as Richard told her, there simply wasn’t that much money in the bank. Normally they lived quite comfortably, but they had never saved, and there had been a run of unexpected expenses over the past twelve months. Elizabeth’s marriage and the little house she had at Greenwich had been covered by some shares that Marjorie sold. Similarly, the Rolls they bought was paid for by a legacy from Marjorie’s Great-Aunt Flo. But the trouble with a car like that—as he had argued at the time Thomas the chauffeur was bullying them to buy it—was that it gave everybody the idea that the Bellamys were far, far richer than they really were.
One extravagance like that led to another, and Richard, as he recognised hi
mself, was hopelessness itself when it came to managing money. Since they had bought the Rolls most of the household bills had mysteriously risen—“Tradesmen charge you what they think you’re worth,” said Marjorie—but although she had promised to keep an eye on Mrs. Bridges and check every account herself, the bills had gone on rising.
Then the house had had to be repainted (according to the strict terms of the lease this had to happen every seven years) and the electric wiring completed, and while this was being done it was discovered that the timbers in the roof would have to be renewed. Hideous unheralded expense!
Marjorie would normally have paid. In the past she had always kept what she called her “emergency fund” on deposit in the bank. But eighteen months before, the emergency fund had gone to help to settle some of Hugo’s debts and pay his fare to Canada. Hugo’s life had changed abruptly. Poor intolerable Lilianne had died, and Hugo, taking Martin out of school to go along, had gone out to Alberta to forget his sorrows and find a fortune. When he got there Marjorie had helped him buy a ranch, and just recently he had re-married—to Marion Worsley, a widowed Englishwoman with a teen-age daughter named Georgina. All this cost money, although Hugo wrote that “an English title here is worth its weight in gold.”
Whether it was or not, Hugo had made no sign of repaying the Bellamys what he owed, and Richard decided there was no help for it. For the first time in his life he’d have to borrow from the bank.
He dreaded borrowing and some hidden sense of shame kept him from telling Marjorie. “She’s got enough to worry abou already,” he told himself, chivalry excusing the deception. But in fact it turned out to be a gentlemanly, almost casual operation. Sir Lionel McMasters, a director of Coutts’s Bank, was a member of his club, and as a well-known M.P. and former minister who had banked there for over twenty years, he was treated with extreme consideration. The manager, old Mr. Haldane, with his frock coat, pince-nez and gleaming pate, was the model of discretion, so much so that Richard felt as if he were doing the King’s personal bankers an extraordinary favour by asking for a loan.
Of course there was no problem of allowing him an overdraft of “up to—shall we say—two thousand pounds, Mr. Bellamy, sir?”
The eyes behind the pince-nez twinkled happily.
Richard, a little overcome, replied that that should be enough. Mr. Haldane beamed as if thanking him for such extraordinary moderation.
“There is just one thing, Mr. Bellamy, though,” he added almost as an afterthought.
“Yes, Mr. Haldane?”
“The slight question of security. Forgive my mentioning it, but almost anything will do—shares, valuables, deeds to your property. The bank, you understand, needs something.”
Embarrassed now, Richard did his best to explain his somewhat strange position, with almost everything he possessed being in his wife’s name. The manager’s benevolence seemed unaffected.
“But there’s your father-in-law, of course, sir. Lord Southwold. He is—forgive my saying it, but facts are facts—extremely old and—shall we say—infirm.”
Richard nodded.
“And I take it that you and the Lady Marjorie are adequately covered in the will?”
Again he nodded.
“On that basis, then, I’m confident the bank can help you on a short-term understanding, Mr. Bellamy.”
So James could leave the army, 165 could have its roof repaired, and Elizabeth’s divorce could go ahead with Richard confident that he could meet Sir Geoffrey Dillon’s thumping fees. But there was another, most unpleasant task for Richard to perform before all the legal niceties could be observed which would allow his daughter to forget the past and begin her life anew.
Dillon had suggested it to him in that cold, noncommittal voice he used when mentioning something of which as a lawyer he could not possibly approve but which all the same his client would ignore at his peril.
“There is this fellow—what’s his name, Richard?—Partridge—what we might term your common-law son-in-law.” Somewhere behind his spectacles Sir Geoffrey smiled mirthlessly at his own little joke.
“Yes,” said Richard, “what about the swine?”
“Somebody should see him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Geoffrey, you’re not suggesting …”
“It could be more embarrassing if you didn’t—a great deal more. If this divorce is to go ahead, we must be absolutely certain about the man. In fact I’ll go so far as to say that I’ll not handle the case unless I have his solemn undertaking that on no account will he give any countenance to rumours of his relations with your daughter.”
“You mean you want me to ask him to keep his mouth shut?”
Sir Geoffrey Dillon nodded.
It was not an easy situation for any man to have to face—especially Richard, who would do almost anything to avoid a scene. How does one face one’s publisher, a man of some distinction and a member of one’s club, and calmly broach the subject of whether or not he is your grandchild’s father? For several days and sleepless nights Richard agonised over the problem. (Stupidly he didn’t ask Marjorie, who would undoubtedly have settled Mr. Partridge in a trice.) Instead he let several lunchtimes pass, with boisterous, expansive Henry Partridge actually eating on the far side of the club dining room, before he plucked up courage, strolled across and spoke to the man in a very hollow voice.
“Partridge—there’s something important to discuss. Could you spare me a moment when you’ve finished eating?”
Much as he despised the dreadful fellow, Richard had to give him full marks for the breezy way he replied, “Richard, my dear chap. Certainly! Give me five minutes and I’ll join you in the smoking room.”
Perhaps that was the answer to the troubling mystery of how his daughter could have allowed the man to touch her? His sheer effrontery and vulgar push. Some women always seemed to find a bounder irresistible, but why Elizabeth?
“Richard, how very very pleasant!” Partridge exclaimed as he came bustling in. He had a large cigar, a bulbous nose, and small and very piercing raisin eyes. “When are you going to let me have another novel? It’s about time, my boy.”
His familiarity was odious, but once again Richard found it impossible to snub him. “It’s not my book I want to talk about. It’s my daughter,” he replied.
“Ah yes, Elizabeth. A lovely girl. I met her with her husband. Talented young man—a dreadful pity!”
“That’s what I wanted to discuss with you. Let’s not beat about the bush. I’m told that you and my daughter—that she—that you are the father of her daughter, Lucy.”
Partridge eyed him shrewdly and then roared with laughter. “Richard, my dear good fellow! What an accusation! Wherever did you get such an extraordinary idea?”
“Elizabeth told me,” said Richard flatly.
“Oh! Oh, I see.”
He paused a moment, thoughtfully stubbed out his cigar, then looked at Richard with a faint smile. “Rather a piquant situation. My child, your grandchild—I wouldn’t know what that makes us. But what can I do for you? If it’s money you want, or if there’s any legal nonsense, I admit nothing. Is that clear?”
Richard had to make an effort not to strike the man. Instead he answered grimly, “That’s all I want—to make absolutely certain that under no circumstances whatever will you say anything about it. If pressed, even in a court of law, you admit nothing.”
“You must be joking. As if I would!”
“Have I your word?” Richard nearly added “as a gentleman” but checked himself.
“That’s one thing you can have—for nothing.”
Whilst Richard was being plagued by family and money problems he also had his worries as a politician. That autumn was a time of turmoil. The new King’s accession earlier that year had brought no easing of the war that raged between the parties over the power of the House of Lords. Richard was inevitably involved. Along with Balfour, Lansdowne, Austen Chamberlain and other leaders of his party he was inclined to favour
a plan of compromise that came orginally from the Liberal Lloyd George, and that would have brought agreement between both parties on some limitation of the power of the Lords, along with a measure of Home Rule for Ireland and various social measures such as pensions, better housing for the poor, and improved education. It all seemed very reasonable, and as a reasonable M.P. Richard told Balfour that the plan had his support.
But it was not that easy. When Marjorie heard—as Marjorie inevitably did from one or another of her friends—that Richard was willing to support that rabble-rousing Welshman in his outrageous plan to emasculate the House of Lords (where the Southwolds had held sway since it began), she was indignant.
“I feel that the family has done enough for you across the years to be entitled to your loyal support. What has Lloyd George ever done for you, I’d like to know.”
Luckily for Richard the plan was shelved, thanks to the opposition of precisely those old Tory die-hard interests which the Southwolds represented, but the disagreement between himself and Marjorie lay unresolved. Once again Richard felt the ancient tug of double loyalties that had pursued him all his married life. How much longer could he compromise between his conscience and the interests of the Southwolds? The question took on fresh significance that September when he heard that his father-in-law was ill again.
“They’ve sent for Hugo,” Marjorie said. “Apparently there’s not much hope. I feel I should go at once.”
She spoke in the clipped, matter-of-fact tones she always used when trying to disguise emotion. He would have volunteered to go with her but as they both knew it would be impossible. Thanks to the stalemate in the Commons over the powers of the Lords there were constant rumours of a fresh election in the air. As one of Balfour’s shadow ministers he was needed in Westminster. And there were other matters that needed his attention: there were still complications over James’s departure from the army, and now suddenly Elizabeth’s divorce was going wrong. Dillon was being more than usually evasive about it all, confirming Richard’s original intuition that it would have been best to allow some other lawyer to handle the affair.