by John Pearson
“Quite so,” said Richard. “Most commendable. But are you sure that you’ll be able to combine your duties as a constable with your work within the house?”
“I trust I will, sir, but if I do fall short in any small particular I hope that due allowance will be made.”
This was not like Hudson, but in the circumstances there was not much that Richard could say in reply. And similarly when Mrs. Bridges’ cooking showed the hideous effects of wartime recipes, Richard could only munch and bear it. Certainly the air of loyalty and optimism with which the united household had begun the war had gone; and the frustrations of the two male Bellamys started to spread fresh dissatisfactions in their wake.
James was by far the worst. Those very qualities that made him a first-rate fighting soldier almost entirely disqualified him as a successful staff officer. For several months he had an office in Whitehall and found himself shuttling between senior officers, War Office clerks, and government committees.
“It’s just like being back in the confounded City,” he would moan to Hazel. “Only worse. Far worse. You can have no idea of the sheer unadulterated pettiness of the military mind. The higher you go the smaller and sillier they seem. Do you know how I’ve spent the past three afternoons?”
Hazel shook her head.
“Working together with a general, a brigadier, a major, and three geniuses from the War Office amending the official army form sent out to battalions to check the supply of ink.”
Hazel laughed.
“Nothing at all to laugh about,” said James. “Wait till you see the headline in the Evening News—‘Staff Officer Goes Berserk with Boredom in Whitehall’—then realise it’s me.”
“I’d rather that, my love, than have you back at the Front.”
“Oh, Hazel, for God’s sake! Is that the only thing you can think about?”
She nodded. “It probably seems ridiculous to you, but I thank God every night for those two red staff officer’s tabs on your lapels.”
“You what?”
“I’d rather almost anything, my love, than have you dead in France.”
This reply infuriated James almost beyond endurance, but for his wife its logic seemed so obvious that she found it hard to understand his anger.
Richard was enjoying his work more than James. Disappointed though he was with his appointment, at least it gave him that strange something which is the breath of life itself to every politician, the sense of being even marginally within that magic circle where the power lies and the decisions happen. Also, not realising the extent to which his involvement with Lord Northcliffe had upset the inner caucus of his party, he still had hopes of real advancement.
He was kept very busy, working between the House of Commons and the Admiralty, where he now had an office of his own. Most of his work went on behind the scenes—chairing committees, doing liaison work between the War Cabinet and service chiefs, answering recalcitrant M.P.s. He was the epitome of the sort of tactful, hardworking politician of the second rank that all administrations ultimately need to get their business done. This was the trouble. He was kept so busy that he failed to see the situation that was developing at Eaton Place.
Young girls are dangerous creatures, especially to discontented men of thirty-two, and even more so when they live beneath the same roof. Hazel saw the danger but was far too proud to act the jealous wife. Richard should have realised it too, for at this stage Georgina was a very obvious young lady, and she made no attempt to hide her infatuation. As for its object, he was amused and rather flattered by it all. It made a change from ink returns and Whitehall brigadiers, and for some while he pretended to himself that Georgina was no more than a pretty schoolgirl with engaging dimples.
Since his return from France, James’s relations with Hazel had been growing worse. All their peacetime problems seemed to have been magnified by war. When they were apart they loved each other. Indeed, it was this love of theirs that caused the trouble—her dread of his return to the fighting, his guilt about the pain he caused her. No, without love they would both have been far better off. But as they were in love they tortured one another, torture which increased steadily after the dreadful summer months of 1915, when James’s own request to be seconded back to his regiment was finally turned down.
Much of the trouble was his health. At Ypres his nerves had been shot to pieces and not even the army doctors would commit themselves on the long-term effect the German gas would have on him. But he seemed strong and healthy. Only in bed when his nightmares started did Hazel glimpse the damage he had undergone. Then the next day he’d always turn on her as if he hated her for witnessing the dreadful fears that stalked their nights together.
It was her attempts at patient understanding that annoyed him most.
“You’re just like some bloody nanny,” he would rage at her. “Whatever I do or say you just smile sweetly and say, ‘Yes, dear, no, dear, three bags full, dear.’ Can’t you realise, Hazel, that I’m sick to death of being ‘understood’?”
Young Georgina didn’t “understand” at all; and this began to be her chief attraction. She could see him as he longed to see himself, as he appeared to be on that well-groomed, carefree surface. For her he was romantic, handsome, worldly-wise and brave, and it was an extraordinary relief to play the part that she expected. She even remembered the old nickname which Uncle Hugo used to call him. And it was Jumbo, not the war-torn Captain Bellamy, who began to respond to her flirtation.
That autumn James did return to France; not as he wanted to, in the front lines with his regiment, but very much the privileged staff officer attached to Corps Headquarters in the rear. It remained a job he loathed. Indeed, it was almost worse than being in Whitehall to be so close to his ex-comrades and to prepare the orders that would send them into battle.
“You have already done more than your share of fighting,” his father wrote in one of his letters soon after he arrived. “On no account must you feel the slightest guilt at being with the staff.” But, being James, he did. He never could forget what he had called the staff officers when he was at the Front. They were always referred to as “the Yellow Brigade.”
As well as the letters from his father, he heard almost every day from faithful Hazel, earnest, cheerful letters written in her neat secretary’s hand. But the letters he most enjoyed receiving where those beginning “Darling Jumbo.”
The second Christmas of the war found him at home in Eaton Place, but it turned out to be a most uneasy gathering. Richard was tired and Hazel very tense, but the real cause of tension now was James. On Christmas Day he was so drunk that he could barely sit through dinner. Richard tried not to notice—even when his son dropped a decanter and swore at Hudson—but finally James turned on the defenceless Hazel.
“Father,” he said softly, “d’you know what my wife does every night before she goes to bed? She prays to God to keep me on the staff. Touching, isn’t it?”
Richard glanced across at Hazel. She was near to tears by now.
“James, that’s quite enough,” he said.
“No, but seriously, it’s very interesting, Father. It proves that God exists—something I’d begun to doubt after some of the things I’ve been seeing out in France. But what d’you think that God will do if I start praying too and ask him to send me back to the regiment? Who will he plump for, me or Hazel?”
“Oh, James, do stop it!” Hazel cried. “Even on Christmas Day!” But James grinned back at her.
“That’s all you ever say these days—’Stop it! Stop it!’ But I was simply starting a little theological discussion. Most appropriate to Christmas.”
“And I think we should change the subject,” said Richard sharply.
Throughout this long unhappy meal the one person who seemed blissfully untouched by what was happening was Georgina. Eyes bright with adoration of her wartime hero, she made a cruel contrast to the distracted-looking Hazel. Unused to the champagne, the girl was giggling at James’s silliest
remarks. He played up to her, and, dinner over, joined her in a game of poker for forfeits. There was a good deal of hilarity. Hazel went off to bed and Richard soon went up too.
But Hazel could not sleep. For a long time she heard the faint noise of laughter from downstairs, but when this died away there was still no sign of James. Finally there were footsteps on the stairs, then a rustling from across the passage.
“Georgina,” she heard her husband saying in a heavy whisper, “it’s Jumbo.”
A door squeaked. Then came silence.
Hazel was too sensible to blame Georgina. Try as she might, she could still regard her only as a child; but James was different, and that night something in her love for him expired for good. Next day she confronted him with what he’d done. He confessed at once, was contrite in his former boyish way, and begged her to forgive him. She felt so weary, so past caring that she did. “But why, tell me why you did it,” she asked sadly.
“Well, she’s a very pretty girl and I suppose I’d had too much to drink.”
“But Georgina of all people! And here in your own home! James, I just cannot understand you any more.”
He looked so bleak and hopeless that she found herself beginning to feel sorry for him.
“It’s all this filthy war,” he said bitterly. “You’ve no idea how much I’ve grown to despise myself during these last few months. That dreadful staff job. For somebody like me you know it’s living hell.”
“One thing’s quite certain,” she replied. “Neither of us can go on like this. Something must be done.”
There were always two quite separate schools of thought about what Hazel did. Some, like Richard, felt that she showed the greatest love and understanding that a woman could when she went personally to plead with her husband’s colonel to take him back into active service. The colonel must have felt so too. Otherwise it is inconceivable that he would have acted as he did, for within two weeks a posting order had come through seconding Captain Bellamy from the general staff to the command of a newly formed machine-gun company with the Life Guards. Thanks entirely to Hazel’s pleading he had got what he wanted.
On the other hand, Georgina was outraged at Hazel’s intervention.
“How could you have done it, Hazel?” she stormed on at her. “You of all people. Was it because of me, because I loved him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Georgina. You’re far too young to understand these things,” Hazel replied.
“You were just jealous, Hazel,” wailed Georgina. “I know. You wanted your revenge on both of us. If anything should happen to him …”
“Georgina,” Hazel snapped with icy self-control, “please stop behaving like a shop-girl!”
The upset between Hazel and Georgina was only one of the crosses Richard had to bear in the bleak third year of war, but inevitably it made life still more difficult. Inevitably too it helped fuel the gossip about the whys and wherefores of his son’s return to active service. Prudence was only one of those who picked up half the story and opined most forcefully that “Hazel Bellamy really did behave with quite appalling callousness.”
At any other time Richard would have tried to put the record straight. Now he scarcely bothered. James was happy training his new company and getting ready for the “Big Push” planned for that summer on the Somme. Now that the German U-boat war had started, Richard and the British Admiralty had more important things to think about.
In fact, of course, Hazel and Georgina soon made peace, though not before Georgina had rushed off in pique and desperation to become a nurse. Part of the reason she did this was to show Hazel that she emphatically was neither a child nor a shop-girl; part also was that she felt this would be the one sure way she had to get out to France and be near the man she loved. But instead of service overseas, Georgina found herself slaving through that summer in her London hospital.
The house at 165 had now become a mournful place. Hudson’s patriotism tended to be irritating, particularly to Rose, after her fiancé, an Australian named Wilmot, was reported missing at the Front.
“I wish to goodness, Mr. ‘Udson, that you’d think a bit about them poor men dyin’ out there in their thousands when you go sticking pins in your beastly war map of the Western Front.”
Hudson’s war map was his pride and joy, and he loved talking knowledgeably of strategy and tactics to the servants in the evening when he had had time to absorb the war news from the day’s edition of the Daily Telegraph. For Rose to have spoken out like this was evidence of how the strains of war were starting to affect even the most level-headed of the inhabitants of 165.
At the same time Mrs. Bridges’ cooking seemed to receive its death knell from the wartime shortages. She who had managed to perfect her art in the abundant days of fat King Edward could not adapt to managing with margarine and substitutes for eggs. She herself lost weight, and the dining room became a grimmer and a sadder place.
All this helped to form a mood of resignation in the house. Richard, working harder now than ever in his life, was simply grateful to get through each day. Hazel had sunk into a state of lifeless unconcern about herself, and she seemed unconcerned about James too. She still wrote to him, once a week now, giving him the news of what was happening at home. This salved what conscience she still had about him. As for affection, he was doubtless getting that from young Georgina’s letters. And that July, as James and his men were trying out their Lewis guns in the first of the great, disastrous battles of the Somme, Hazel went back to work. As the wife of a serving soldier she had no need to, but she told Richard, “I get bored and morbid sitting round at home all day.” She worked as a secretary in the Government Pensions Office in the Horseferry Road. It helped to pass the time.
Although 1916 was a bleak year for Britain, it ended with a certain note of hope at 165. Georgina attained her ambition and went off, a neatly uniformed and fully trained nursing sister, to a base hospital behind the Western Front. Richard had done his best to dissuade her to the last, but she had all her mother’s strength of will—and it was undeniable that her departure made life with Hazel that much easier. The news from James was good as well. His charmed existence seemed to be continuing. He had got through the Somme campaign, been mentioned in despatches, and was now officially a major.
Richard was preparing to take Hazel out to dinner at the Ritz to celebrate that news when he received a telegram. His heart missed a beat. At this stage in the war a telegram had come to mean one thing and one thing only, tidings of someone’s death in action. And an impassive Hazel watched as Richard’s fingers fumbled with the envelope. Almost despite herself she found that she was praying silently, “God, may it not be James. Let him be wounded, captured—anything but that, oh Lord!”
But as he read the yellowish piece of paper, Richard’s face changed from deep anxiety to puzzlement to sudden joy. He passed his hand across his brow, blinked, sat down, then said in a small stunned voice, “Good heavens! Who’d have thought it? Bless my soul!”
He handed her the telegram. It was so unexpected that at first, like Richard, she found it difficult to comprehend.
“Am wishing to recommend you for peerage in New Years Honours. Will you accept?” It was signed, “Bonar Law.”
“You don’t think somebody’s trying on some sort of practical joke?” he asked uncertainly. But she took his hand and kissed him firmly on the cheek.
“Congratulations, dear Lord Bellamy.” she said. “Of course it’s not a joke. If anyone deserves it you do. It will suit you wonderfully.”
And so they had a double celebration. It was so long since there had been anything but bad news that they were both a little out of practice. Wartime London, blacked out against the Zeppelin attacks and crammed with troops, was not very festive either. But as he sat with Hazel between the chandeliers and the sand-bagged windows of the Ritz Hotel, enjoying an unbelievably expensive bottle of champagne, Richard felt as if he were reliving a few brief precious moments from some earlier exist
ence.
“You know,” he said, “one does forget what it’s like to be happy. It’s a strange sensation.”
“I suppose it will come back,” she said, “when the war ends. If it ever ends.”
She looked lined and older than her years yet strangely beautiful tonight.
“Oh, it will end now, sooner than you think,” he said.
“Will it really, Richard? You know, I’ve given up thinking about it any more. All I know is that at this moment you and James are happy—so for tonight I’m happy too.”
“What about you and James?” he asked.
She smiled enigmatically and stared at the tiny bubbles rising in the champagne.
“That’s something else that can begin again when the war’s over. I hope. If we survive that long, we’ll both have grown up. Perhaps we’ll make it work.”
“You don’t sound very hopeful.”
“I don’t think about it very much,” she said. “If I start thinking it becomes unbearable. No, I think we’re like people in limbo. We can only wait and see what happens. Until then …”
“But you still love him?” Richard asked quickly.
“James? Oh yes.”
“Despite the way he’s treated you?”
“Of course. I’ve not always treated him that well, you know. I lost his baby.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“No, but I didn’t want it at the time. I often blame myself for that.”
There was a silence then, and Richard felt as if the great black cloud of gloom outside was reaching in for them. But Hazel smiled suddenly.
“Pour some more champagne,” she said. “It’s you we should be talking about tonight, not me. How does it feel to be Lord Bellamy after all these years?”
“I’m not yet. Give me time.”