The Bellamy Saga

by John Pearson

  “It’s very stupid of me, I suppose, but I happen to be upset at the idea of the Bellamys leaving Eaton Place. I’ve been very happy there. I’m sad to think it’s over.”

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry for your father too. After half a lifetime there it seems hard.”

  “And any other reasons?” he continued.

  “Well, and the servants. It’s their home too. Where will they go?”

  “Just leave the servants out of it for a moment. Is there absolutely nothing else that you’d regret if you never did see Eaton Place again?”

  He stared very hard at her, pulling a mournful face to make her laugh. Finally, half-heartedly, she did.

  “And you, you wretched inquisitive man. Yes, I suppose that I’d miss you as well.”

  He beamed delightedly. “That settles it,” he said.

  “Settles what? I can’t see that it settles anything.”

  He roared with laughter and took her hands in his. “You’ve no alternative, my darling lovely Hazel,” he said happily.

  “What do you mean I’ve no alternative?” She frowned and even then he thought how beautiful she was.

  “You’ll have to marry me.”

  “Oh, James. Dear James,” she said. “I wish, I wish I could.”

  “It’ll solve everything. I’ve enough money now to run the house and keep all the servants just as they’ve always been. You’re the only one who’ll ever persuade father to stay, and we can adopt Georgina. You must say yes.”

  But by now the great grey eyes had filled with tears, and she shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”

  “And why not?” he asked very gently.

  “Because. Because I can’t.”

  She stared at him in silence as her tears fell on her omelette.

  “If I told you that I knew the reason, would it make any difference?” he said softly.

  “Oh, but you couldn’t know,” she replied rapidly. “If you did know you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Hazel, darling. Just because you’ve already had one wretched marriage, it doesn’t mean …”

  “How do you know? Who told you?” she said desperately.

  “A good friend of yours. Your father. I told him that it only made me love you that much more. He gave us his blessing. Hazel darling …”

  “Yes?” she said in a small, defeated voice.

  “As so many other people’s happiness depends on ours, I really think you must agree to marry me.”

  She nodded.

  “Very well,” she said.

  The news took some hours to filter through at 165.

  The perceptive Edward was the first one to suspect the truth. “Know what, Mrs. Bridges? Something’s up,” he exclaimed cheerfully next morning. “Mr. James singin’ in his bath. Hasn’t done that since I’ve been here. P’raps she’s gone and accepted him.”

  “What nonsense you do talk, young Edward!” she replied, wiping her hands impatiently on her apron. “Things like that just don’t happen any more.”

  But it was soon quite obvious to everybody that they did. Even Hudson noticed James’s extraordinary good humour before he departed for the City, and that very evening the news became official. The only one in Eaton Place who was surprised by then was Richard. When James and Hazel burst in on him in his study, the poor man was distinctly overwhelmed.

  “But …” he said, taking off his spectacles and rising from his chair. “But aren’t you being rather hasty? I had no idea. James, Hazel—I mean …”

  “Now, Father,” James said laughingly, “don’t be so boring. We’re not exactly children and we’ve known each other practically a year.”

  Hazel was smiling too; face flushed, eyes alight, she looked radiantly happy. The sight of her like this pierced Richard’s heart, but he knew what was expected of him.

  “James, my dear fellow, I’m extremely glad. And Hazel, dearest Hazel.” As Richard went to kiss her, emotion caught him, and his eyes began to fill with tears. “I’m so very happy,” he said manfully. “I only wish that James’s mother could be here to share it all.”

  That night the celebrations, both below stairs and above were as heartfelt as it was possible for them to be. For James’s exuberant good nature carried everything before it, and he made it clear that his marriage also meant a total reprieve for everyone at 165.

  “So things will go on here just as they always have?” asked Mrs. Bridges unbelievingly when James brought Hazel down to tell the servants his good tidings.

  “Just as they always have, Mrs. Bridges.”

  “God bless you both!” she said, a sentiment which Hudson echoed later in the evening when he proposed the young couple’s health before the other servants in a brimming glassful of the master’s Krug.

  For Richard, too, the idea of continuity was undoubtedly appealing—although that night at dinner when James began his optimistic planning for the future, Richard’s self-respect compelled him to say, “No, James, the two of you young things won’t want me here. You’ve your own lives to lead. The house is yours. Much the best thing would be for me to stick to my intention and move out.”

  But James, for some reason, seemed determined now that everything should stay the same as when his mother was alive; the same routines, the same traditions, the same safe, comfortable world that he had known as a boy.

  “Father, you’re staying. No further arguments. Hazel and I both insist on that, don’t we, darling?”

  Hazel nodded. She was learning fast that with her fiancé in his present mood, there was no point at all in disagreeing with him.

  “And, Georgina,” said Richard, turning to address the tongue-tied schoolgirl sitting opposite, “from now on you’re one of us. Is that clear?”

  She blushed and stammered out her thanks.

  “Excellent,” said James in his best crisp army manner. “Then I would like to propose a toast. The family!”

  They all stood and, in the same distinguished wine as the servants had just enjoyed downstairs, drank to the well-being of the Bellamys.

  Because the house was still officially in mourning, the wedding could not take place as quickly as James wanted. But the delay, frustrating though it was to anyone of his headlong temperament, enabled certain things to be worked out and helped everybody acclimatise to what was happening. Richard, for instance, was able to meet the Forrests at his leisure and to turn what might have been an uncomfortable occasion into a fairly painless one. At the small luncheon that he gave for them at 165, Hazel’s mother—an emphatic, rather handsome woman with a feather boa—insisted on recounting all the sad details of her daughter’s first disastrous marriage: the terrible brutality of her Irish husband, the unspeakable things he did to her, and the way she and Mr. Forrest had been able to make sure that she divorced the brute for cruelty without the faintest slur to her good name. Mr. Forrest kept quiet through this sad recital, but when his wife paused for breath he said firmly, “I think that’s enough, Mother. I’m sure Mr. Bellamy has heard all this before. It’s best forgotten.” Richard hurriedly agreed before the overwhelming Mrs. Forrest could take over again.

  More important, he and James came to an understanding, of sorts, about the future. James would provide the money for the household out of the income from his inherited investments and Hazel would manage things more or less as Lady Marjorie had done. Richard, despite his firm remarks about refusing to live on James’s money, continued to be the figurehead at 165 just as he always had. The adoption of Georgina, which occurred that summer, showed how little things had changed. James and Richard discussed it with Sir Geoffrey Dillon, who was very much in favour of the move.

  “We would like to have her legally a member of the family,” James explained. “I was fond of my Uncle Hugo, and this is one thing that I can do for his memory. I gather there’s no money coming to her from the estate, so I’ll provide for her, at least until she’s twenty-one.”

&n
bsp; “Extremely generous,” murmured Sir Geoffrey, “and an extremely fortunate young lady, if I may say so.”

  But when it came to settling who was to be ultimately responsible for her, everyone agreed that it must be Richard. He was secretly quite flattered and announced the news to her that night with great solemnity.

  “I hope you realise, young woman, that you’re to become my legal ward.”

  “Really, Uncle Richard? How v-very exciting. What does it mean?”

  “That I can beat you and chastise you when you need it. That you obey me absolutely, and that in my old age you look after me with loving care.”

  “That sounds a very good arrangement,” she replied a trifle archly.

  And so in fact it was, for during those weeks before the marriage Richard found himself alone a lot. James was tied up with fresh responsibilities at Jardines and Hazel was busily preparing for the wedding. Richard and Georgina now became firm friends.

  In some ways the girl was like Elizabeth. She was not so clever and she lacked Elizabeth’s fanatical devotion to lost causes, but she was affectionate and warm and lively. Richard enjoyed spoiling her. Sometimes he’d invite her to the House; he found it a marvellous relief from the sterile battles with the Liberals to watch her demolishing a mound of strawberries and clotted cream as they sat together on the Terrace with the Thames beneath them and she prattled on about the latest crisis in the marriage preparations.

  “Uncle Richard, why are they getting married from Eaton Place?” she’d ask, and Richard would tactfully explain that the Forrests’ house was just not big enough and that Eaton Place was more convenient for guests than Wimbledon.

  “And doesn’t Hazel mind?”

  ’Why should she mind? It will be her home, so what difference does it make?”

  “All the same, I’d mind, dreadfully,” said Georgina.

  Richard was quite right. Hazel didn’t mind at all. She was in love with James and what mattered was to survive the boring weeks until her wedding and then live happily ever after. There was something very touching and appealing now about the pair of them. Love suited Hazel. She bloomed, and for those early months of summer she became what she had never really been before—a beauty. James had changed too. His prickliness and discontent and moodiness had gone. He was gentle with his fiancée, and the two of them made such a happy pair that there was hardly any of the snobby gossip from Belgravia that might have been expected. Just the same, James very wisely kept his bride-to-be well out of range of the smart set he used to know—and particularly of that arch-bitch, Diana Russell.

  The wedding took place in July, and it went off exactly as smart weddings invariably do (the pattern of these tribal celebrations doesn’t, after all, permit a great deal of variety). It was perhaps a little smaller than it might have been had James been marrying someone from his own stratum of society. Nor were there any of the grander names that might have been expected on the guest list of a tip-top Society affair. But nobody disgraced himself. The Forrests and their few presentable relatives were safely swamped by Bellamys and James’s sober friends from Jardines. At the reception, Prudence stood in for Marjorie. Richard drank too much and became distinctly sentimental. As the young couple were driven off to Victoria by Edward in the Rolls—they were to honeymoon in the South of France—it seemed impossible for life to go wrong for them. They had love, youth, good looks and money on their side. If any newly married couple seemed guaranteed a lifetime’s happiness, it was James Bellamy and his bride.

  In later years Richard would often ask himself just what went wrong and how much, if at all, he was to blame for what occurred. He had had his doubts from the start, but in the circumstances what could be have said? And for that matter, when had saying anything to anyone in love done any good? But it was a most depressing business, for him particularly, being half in love with Hazel on his own account and also feeling both sorry and responsible for his handsome, self-destructive son.

  At least they had a year or so of some happiness together, and Richard’s uneasy status as head of the household seemed to work. There were times, of course, when he required all his reserves of tact to avoid rows with James. For James was very much a Southwold—impulsive, arrogant, and none too sensitive of other people’s feelings. But Hudson did a great deal to ensure that the prestige of “the master” was maintained at 165. The household went on very much as when Marjorie was still alive, as Richard and James both wished, and Hazel too turned out to be an excellent manager. Like Richard she was essentially a tactful person. She got on well with Hudson, played along with Mrs. Bridges’ oddities, and acted as part mother, part elder sister to Georgina.

  The first Christmas the newlyweds spent together in Eaton Place passed off splendidly, thanks in the main to Hazel, who had arranged it all with considerable flair. What might have been a time of gloomy memories turned out to be a great success. It was Hazel who had the huge tree put in the drawing room, carefully selected presents for the servants, planned the candles and the holly and the other decorations. Even with Marjorie the house had never looked more beautiful.

  To complete the party, Georgina arrived home from hated boarding school on Christmas Eve. At first Richard hardly recognised her. Gone were the spots, the stammer and the pigtails; gone too the shyness and uncertainty he remembered.

  “Georgina, my dear, you’re beautiful,” he said with involuntary admiration when he saw her.

  “Thank you, Uncle Richard,” she replied demurely.

  Hazel’s efficiency, her tact, her essential kindness were enough to make the household happy—but apparently not James, her husband. Slowly Richard noticed that James was tiring of her. He was becoming difficult and restless again. Part of the trouble was quite simply that he was still frustrated by his job and missed the old easy, carefree life of the army. Also the fact was that James had married Hazel when he had needed the sort of quiet support that she offered after the shock of Marjorie’s death. Now that the shock was wearing off, so was his need for her. So their squabbles increased, with James shouting and Hazel sulking in response.

  Richard had the sense to try to keep aloof from their troubles. He dined out more and more, surprised and flattered to discover how much in demand he was. He had a curiously platonic relationship with Prudence now. They would talk, dine, go out to the theatre together, but that was all. Richard knew quite well that she was eager for the relationship to go much further, but he had no wish to hurt the lady’s feelings, still less to end up married. Just at the moment he was seeing quite enough of marriage at home, as James increasingly resumed the social life he had enjoyed before he married Hazel.

  At first she gamely tried to join in, but these were not the sort of people she was used to, nor was this a world she understood. She was too serious and prim to fit in with the crowd of scatterbrained young socialites that James enjoyed. She disapproved of drinking, hated gambling, and there was one hideous weekend when she went off with James to hunt at Lord Newbury’s estate. She had never hunted in her life. Her horse bolted, and James, being James, was typically far more concerned at the frightful loss of face than by the fact that Hazel herself had come within an ace of being killed. He was repentant afterwards, of course. He always was. But Richard, who for once did castigate his son, began to realise how deep a rift there was between them.

  Throughout that year incidents kept occurring that shook the thin foundations of their marriage.

  One night at Londonderry House Hazel thought Margot Asquith was the cloakroom lady and gave her sixpence and her evening coat. Instead of laughing, as Lady Asquith did, James was furious and made the scandal worse by insisting that he and Hazel leave. At another smart reception during the summer Hazel was introduced to Mrs. Keppel, and in making conversation asked that lady if all the stories that one heard about his late majesty and his lady friends were true. A few days later James distinctly heard two members of his club laughing about the gaffe behind his back.

  “For God’s s
ake, Hazel,” he stormed at her that night, “I’ll be forced to leave the club if you go on like this.”

  “But how should I know she was King Edward’s mistress?” she wailed tearfully.

  “There are some things everybody knows,” he retorted.

  Even then, sorry though he was for Hazel, Richard kept scrupulously apart from what was going on. He had matters of his own to attend to now. There was a brief fling that autumn with an Austrian countess; it meant little, lasted a mere fortnight, but did quite a lot to show him that he could still enjoy a pretty woman. Politics too began to take up more time than they had for many months. Richard had obviously lost out the year before when his old chief, Balfour, was replaced by Bonar Law at the head of the Conservatives. Once again he had been tempted to cross over to the Liberals and once again the old loyalty to the Southwold interests restrained him. Instead he had merely withdrawn somewhat from active politics.

  Now all this was changing. In the autumn of 1913 the Prime Minister designated him as one of the Conservatives on a newly formed committee of defence. Richard accepted with alacrity and found himself with a brand-new role to play in Parliament. Once more he became one of his party’s leading spokesmen on defence, and once more he found himself close to his old love, the Board of Admiralty, where Lord Randolph’s son, young Winston Churchill, was now in charge. Richard admired his zest for politics, though not his apparent relish for a full-scale war.

  During the debates in Parliament that winter Richard made it plain that he at any rate still passionately believed in peace, despite the dreadnought programme that was now in progress. But in the new year Richard’s belief began to change. The more he learned of German preparations, the more convinced he became that war was looming. Even more of his time was spent away from home, as he travelled, talked to generals, and tried to warn the leaders of his party of the real threat of German armaments.