by John Pearson
“But it must be wonderful to suddenly win such a prize.”
“Well, you know, it’s very strange. In one sense of course it’s marvellous. I’m a vain, silly fellow and for all manner of unpleasant snobbish reasons I will love being Viscount Bellamy. I only wish Marjorie was alive. I’d have enjoyed telling her that she was Lady Marjorie now because she was my wife, and not because she was the Earl of Southwold’s daughter.”
“Used that to rankle then?”
He smiled and sipped his wine. “Terribly,” he said. “Then there’s James,” he continued. “It will be good as far as he’s concerned. One of these days he’ll inherit my title, something that he’s got from me, not from the Southwolds. That’s nice to know. And for that matter too, my dear, I’m glad that you’ll be Lady Bellamy one day because of me.”
“Why do you seem so doubtful about it then?” she asked.
“Do I seem doubtful? Oh, Hazel, you must know me very well. Yes, of course I’m doubtful. It really marks the end, you see.”
“The end of what?”
“The end of all those dreams I had of climbing to the topmost branches of the tree. This means I’ll never really get there now.”
“But you’ll still remain as First Civil Lord?”
“Oh, yes, for a while at least. For as long as Lloyd George likes the look of me. But now I know that I can get no further.”
“Still, you’ll be in the House of Lords.”
“That elephants’ graveyard! Well, I’m nearly sixty. Possibly it’s time. Lord Richard Bellamy. Just fancy that!”
Richard’s title annoyed him in a way. As he complained to Hazel, “For more than a quarter of a century I sit in the House of Commons, I become a minister, but for the people round me I’m like anybody else. Then because the Party needs my seat, I’m kicked upstairs and what happens? For the first time in my life the post arrives on time, my wine merchant bows to me and calls me ‘my lord’—then doubles up my bill. And as for Hudson—”
“He’s in seventh heaven. It was the greatest boost you could have given his prestige. Butler to Lord Bellamy,” Hazel said grandly.
“And doesn’t he just know it! I’ve increased his salary by a full pound a week. It was made very clear to me that a viscount’s butler is worth a minimum of fifty pounds a year more than a mere commoner’s.”
“Poor Richard.”
“Poor Hazel, too. You’ll have to face it all one day. It’ll serve you right.”
But although he grumbled, the time came when Richard was grateful for his title and all the subtle privileges that it implied. This was in the spring of 1917, when James’s luck finally deserted him and he was badly wounded during the bitter Passchendaele offensive.
At first the family all feared him dead. Several days later a patrol discovered him lying in a shell hole, delirious and wounded in the thigh. Then, by one of those extraordinary coincidences that seem to happen only during wars, he was brought back to the very hospital where Georgina was nursing. It was a telegram from her that brought the first news of his safety.
As soon as Richard learned what had happened he was uneasy. It was wonderful, of course, to have his son alive; wonderful as well to hear the news of his recovery. What troubled him was the news that it was Georgina who was nursing him. Not that he mistrusted her skills as a nursing sister. Far from it. But what did worry him was the effect all this would have on James’s marriage. It was rickety enough already and Richard had a fair idea of the relationship between Georgina and his son. A month or so now with a convalescent James in continual contact with Georgina as his loving nurse! Whatever chance the marriage still possessed would vanish utterly.
Richard spent several anxious days trying to decide exactly what to do. There seemed to be no way of getting James shifted from the hospital without upsetting Hazel (and she was of course upset enough already). Then somebody suggested the idea of going out to fetch him in a private ambulance. At first the plan seemed crazy, but the more he thought of it the more the whole idea appealed to him. If James and Hazel were to have a chance together it seemed to be the only way. And here his title and position really counted.
Had he still been plain Mr. Bellamy, he would never have so much as got his private ambulance aboard the Dover Ferry, let alone have been permtted to drive unimpeded all the way to the base hospital where James was. Nor as straightforward Mr. Bellamy could he have over-ruled the opposition of the doctors and nurses—to say nothing of a furious Georgina—and brought James safely home to convalesce in Eaton Place. There was in fact no danger now to James in travelling, but regulations being what they were … Viscount Bellamy, with lordly arrogance, calmly over-rode them all. The matron finally agreed. The R.A.M.C. brigadier was positively servile. Georgina never quite forgave him.
It was shortly after this, and the war was limping to its close, when Richard met Virginia. By then she was in her late thirties, the lively, pretty, somewhat pushing widow of a Scots naval officer named Hamilton. She was tough, middle-class, and practical—as she had to be to force her way completely unannounced into 165 one afternoon when Richard and Hazel were having tea together.
Outrageous woman! Why on earth should he consent to have anything at all to do with the court-martial that involved this pretty widow’s son except, to put it frankly, that she was a very pretty widow? Her wretched son, a seventeen-year-old midshipman, had been charged with cowardice before the enemy when he broke down during a torpedo-boat attack on Zeebrugge, on the Belgian coast. It was all most distressing, but as he tried to explain to Hazel after Mrs. Hamilton had left, “Cases like this are two a penny these days. It’s rough justice and I know the boy’s extremely young, but cowardice is cowardice, and in time of war one has to make examples of such flagrant cases.”
“Pour encourager les autres, as Voltaire said when we shot poor Admiral Byng.”
“Good heavens, Hazel, he won’t be shot—simply disgraced and dismissed from the service.”
“Couldn’t that be as bad?”
“Of course not. Why, you women are all the same. Sheer sentimentality! That won’t win the war!”
But sentimentality or not, Richard did help the widow Hamilton by bringing in Sir Geoffrey Dillon to defend her son. And when Sir Geoffrey won the case he was delighted, but again, as he admitted to himself, his delight came more from the service he had done the mother than from the help he had brought to the son.
And in fact Virginia was just the sort of woman that he needed, especially now. For James’s return had placed a hideous emotional burden on the whole of 165. Had Richard known how his son would be, he might well have left him to Georgina. As it turned out, the ultimate results could hardly have been worse.
During the first few weeks things had gone comparatively well. Hazel gave up her job and nursed her husband with devotion. His wound was healing slowly, but he was still weak, bed-bound, and apparently grateful to be home. Richard rejoiced to see that the marriage seemed to have survived. But when the weeks dragged on and James’s leg still kept him to his bed, a change came over him. The war had damaged more than his body. Nearly four years of fighting had exhausted him and now he was undergoing some sort of breakdown.
For hours on end he would lie stationary in bed, staring at the ceiling. When anyone upset him, he would throw everything—food, books, even plates and crockery—at the wall opposite. Suddenly poor Hazel found she couldn’t cope with him alone. A nurse was hired, more to protect him from himself than because of danger from his wounds.
“Shoot them all!” he’d rage. “Shoot all the politicians! Shoot all those safe fat profiteers! Let them have a taste of dying for democracy!”
At other times he would awake from sleep screaming about the rats. When Hazel tried to comfort him he would lie trembling, then lash out at her. “Filthy, black, creeping bastards,” he would pant. One night he even tried to strangle her. Richard, who heard the rumpus, managed to pull him off, but next day when he tried to question him about i
t James refused to speak. Instead he was once more inert, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
It was after this that Richard insisted that a male nurse sleep in the room at night, and Hazel reluctantly moved into the dressing room next door. James barely seemed to notice. The specialist who saw him, a tall, bald Czech called Professor Seltzer, diagnosed “war exhaustion.”
“Haven’t we all got that?” said Richard, but Seltzer didn’t seem amused.
“What treatment do you advise? Should he be sent somewhere to a clinic or a hospital?”
“Later, perhaps. Just at the moment I would advise against it. Most of his trouble is reaction to his wounds. Give him security and love—and let him cure himself.”
They did their best. The servants were particularly understanding, and seemed prepared to overlook James’s rages and his rudeness. They heard the news that he had been awarded an M.C., and now that he was a wounded hero they could make allowances. So, in his way, could Richard. After all, he knew James better than anybody else. He had experienced that stormy nature, the sullen moods and the cruel way he had with those who loved him.
Also, by now, Richard had Virginia. After her son Michael, now a sublieutenant and restored to active service, went off to meet a hero’s death in a fresh sea-borne raid on Ostend, she relied on Richard increasingly to see her through her period of grief and mourning. Richard, discreet, unpressing but immensely comforting, was exactly the steady father figure that she needed. She in her turn, with her trim figure and uptilted nose, was just the sort of little woman who brings out the protective male in romantic-minded gentlemen of a certain age.
He would send flowers to her hotel, place the Rolls at her disposal when she went shopping, take her to tea at Gunters.
“Richard, you’re spoiling me,” she would say.
“Well, Virginia, someone must look after you,” he would gallantly reply. And Virginia, who was really as capable of looking after herself as any widow in London, would lean dependently upon his arm and smile demurely.
It was certainly no passionate elopement. For Richard, much of the pleasure that he found in Mrs. Hamilton was simply in her conversation. She was so down to earth, so utterly direct and practical, that it was a relief to talk about the tensions and the troubles of his family to her. Also, she never really rivalled Marjorie: Marjorie was so different, so distant now and so regal in his memory, that he could love Virginia without impinging on her world at all.
Prudence always said, of course, that Virginia vamped Richard outrageously, that she had planned to catch him all along, and that she really was a very cunning, common little woman. This was predictable but it wasn’t really true. Virginia had never had to play such games with Richard. By the time he proposed to her in the summer of 1918, he had made himself so totally dependent on her that it would have been sadistic to refuse him. Instead she pointed out her disadvantages as the next Lady Bellamy. She had no money, there were two young children, and she came from very lowly stock. Such honesty enchanted Richard.
“Dearest Virginia, you’ll bring a breath of life to Eaton Place,” he declared.
“It that what you want?” she asked him in her level-headed Scottish way.
“I think that we can make each other very happy,” he replied, taking her hand. And since she believed him, she accepted him.
At the age of sixty a brand-new marriage is one of life’s little extras that are vouchsafed to few of us. Richard was duly grateful. It was clear now that the war was ending, and quite suddenly his life was filling with hope. The only problem now was James, and even he was gradually recovering. His leg was almost healed, leaving him with a faint but not unattractive limp. As for his breakdown, the worst was over. The periods of rage and lethargy had gone, leaving him irritable and bored—but much more like the pre-war James than he had been for years.
But Richard was worried now for Hazel.
“Poor lost thing,” was Virginia’s verdict on her after the dinner Richard gave to celebrate his engagement.
“Why d’you say that?” he asked.
“She seems so beaten, so depressed and lifeless with the strain of coping with him. Does he have to be so cruel to her?”
“He’s always been hard on her. Something about her seems to invite it.”
“Well, he should stop it, or she’ll be the one who breaks—not him.”
But when he spoke to James they had the usual stormy interview.
“Hazel? Oh, she’s all right. Perhaps a touch of flu. There seems to be a lot of it about,” James replied airily.
“Well, that could be extremely serious,” said Richard. “I’m going to call the doctor.”
“Haven’t we had enough members of the medical profession in this house lately, Father?”
“For you, James, but you’re better now. I think it’s time you thought about your wife.”
But James refused to listen and it was Richard, on his own authority, who called in Dr. Foley two days later.
Hazel as usual made so little fuss that no one realised how ill she was. The doctor called, found she had a temperature, and ordered her to bed. She ignored him for as long as possible and it was Rose who saw her tottering unsteadily around the house and finally persuaded her to do as she was told.
“Come along now, Mrs. Bellamy,” she said firmly. “You’re ill, real ill. I’m getting you to bed and telling the master straight away.”
“No, don’t do that,” she said. “I’ll go to bed, but don’t go worrying anybody.”
But Rose had the sense to tell Virginia. The doctor was resummoned. This time he looked serious.
“No doubt about it,” he said gravely. “Spanish influenza. Not much resistance by the look of it. Warmth, quiet, all the fluids she can drink.”
But all that Hazel wanted now was James. She called for him pathetically most of that evening. When he came home at ten o’clock he had been celebrating, and went limping up the stairs to Hazel’s room to tell her the good news.
“Hazel. Dear old girl! It looks as if it’s over.”
She stared uncomprehendingly, her eyes grown large with fever.
“James,” she gasped. “My darling, darling James!”
But James had drunk too much to realise quite what was happening.
“Hazel, cheer up,” he said. “Cheer up, old thing. Can’t have you feeling down at a time like this. I’ve been all evening at the club. The news is coming in. It’s definite. The Boches have asked for peace.”
Richard glanced quickly at Virginia, who shook her head.
“James,” he said. “James, listen to me. Hazel is very, very ill.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Nobody’s ill tonight. The war will soon be over. Come on, Father, Virginia. Let’s have a song.”
“Get him to bed, Richard,” said Virginia. “I’ll stay with her. When he is sober we can have him back, but now he’s only upsetting her.”
So Richard did as he was told, then he and Virginia stayed up all that night with Hazel. Most of the time she was in a coma.
Next morning, the eleventh of November, Europe was at peace—and so was Hazel.
1918–29
17. Exeunt
While Britain was going wild with joy during those first three days of peace, the Bellamys were burying Hazel. The contrast was so macabre that in years to come Richard discovered that his memory had mercifully blanked out the details. James’s bouts of weeping and remorse, the stifled tears of the servants, the last pathetic view of Hazel in her coffin—all these images finally dissolved into a vague, sad memory.
His only vivid memories were of the funeral itself—the way the hearse was jostled by the cheering crowds on Putney Bridge, and then the drunken shouting from the streets outside as they stood bareheaded in the cemetery. This mourning in the midst of rejoicing made the bereavement that much worse. The Forrest family was there—Hazel’s mother grim and dignified, the father pale and frightened-looking in a bowler hat. Richard felt embarrassed that he�
��d never bothered much with them. Throughout the burial he stood beside the little man.
“Well,” said Mr. Forrest when it was over.
He sniffed, but there seemed nothing anyone could say. “Well,” he repeated in a flat voice. “She was our only one.”
That night poor Mr. Forrest had to endure the bitter lamentations of his wife.
“The way they all stood there,” she said. “His lordship and our precious son-in-law and that cousin creature in the nurse’s uniform What’s her name, Albert?”
“Georgina.”
“Exactly. Hard-faced young hussy! All of them just letting our daughter die like that and not a tear from any of them. Oh, Albert Forrest, we never should have let her marry him. You were the one who persuaded me against my better judgement. If it hadn’t been for that, our Hazel would have been alive today.”
But Mrs. Forrest in her grief was wrong about the Bellamys. Dry-eyed they may have been. Unaffected they were not. Indeed, the misery that night in Eaton Place was every bit as great as in the terraced house in Wimbledon.
Richard had no idea of how to cope with it. He did his best but merely seemed to make things worse. James was immured in his room, refusing to come down to dinner. Richard made the mistake of trying to persuade him.
“James, my dear old chap,” he said. “Behaving like this doesn’t do Hazel any good. Life must go on. Come down to dinner.”
“Dinner!” shouted James. “How can you think of eating at a time like this? We let her die and all you talk about is dinner. You disgust me, Father!”
Georgina too was knee-deep in remorse. “I treated her so dreadfully,” she sobbed. “It was disgusting of us both. She was so good and we were so absolutely awful to her, Richard.”
“There,” he said, patting her shoulder in an avuncular, understanding way. “There, there. You know that she’d forgiven you for all that years ago.”
“That’s not the point. To think of her in that dreadful grave, whilst James and I … Richard, how could we have done it to her?”
“But you were very young.”