by John Pearson
His only difficulty lay in presenting all this to Virginia, and he was quietly pondering that as he and James entered the drawing room. They were greeted by an anxious-looking Georgina and an equally solemn Virginia.
As Virginia poured the coffee she looked suspiciously at Richard, who wondered what the two women had been saying in their absence. Before long Virginia told him.
“Dearest,” she said sweetly, “I’ve been talking to Georgina, who has been telling me several things I never really understood before.”
“Really?” said Richard innocently.
“Yes. She says you really love this house and it would be a dreadful wrench for you to leave it. Would it, Richard?”
“Well, in a way. You know a man does get attached to a place like this, and I have lived here for quite a while.”
“She also says that she and James are extremely eager for us to live here. Did you know that?”
“James did say something of the sort.”
“And that my children could quite easily have the empty bedrooms on the third floor.”
Richard nodded. “I had thought of that,” he said. “But it’s entirely up to you. I couldn’t possibly impose this house and all its problems on you.”
“Oh, but you wouldn’t be.” Virginia was smiling now. She was a very pretty woman and clearly not as obstinate as he had thought. He was a lucky man to have her.
“Then we’ll stay,” he said. “I’m sure that Hudson, at any rate, will be delighted.”
“And so am I,” said James.
“And I’m absolutely thrilled,” Georgina said, smiling mysteriously. As Richard looked across at her he realised that possibly Virginia had met her match.
And so a new lease of life began at Eaton Place. Richard and Virginia spent their bridal night at the Hyde Park Hotel, leaving next day to honeymoon at Monte Carlo for a surprisingly warm winter fortnight in the sun. They gambled moderately, made love carefully, ate judiciously, and were extremely happy. But it was not until they had been comfortably installed in Eaton Place for several months that Richard’s good fortune in his choice of a bride was truly evident.
Perhaps it is unfair to compare her with Hazel as the mistress of the house. Hazel had been unhappy and for much of the time she had had to cope with the miserable conditions of the war. Virginia had nothing similar to worry her, and from the start she brought enormous energy and drive to the running of the house. Several of the servants wondered what had hit them.
Rooms were repainted, accounts were double-checked, several longstanding tradesmen were abruptly changed. Mrs. Bridges had several famous battles with her—and generally lost. (Virginia made it plain that she was not putting up with Mrs. Bridges’ well-known habit of agreeing on a menu in the morning and then calmly producing something very different when it came to dinner. Mrs. Bridges, in reply, secretly complained that Lady Bellamy didn’t know a tenth as much as Lady Marjorie when it came to the serious facts of haute cuisine.)
There was some truth in this, but Virginia’s greatest gift was for creating order, and it was this that 165 responded to. So did its inmates, and it was thanks to her that those early years of peace seemed to roll by as effortlessly as they did. She was a tactful woman too, and generally managed to keep a truce among the temperamental members of the family.
Before long Richard was depending on her absolutely. She organised his day for him, helped him with his mail, made sure he had sufficient quiet for his writing, and was a capable if not a scintillating hostess. It was thanks to her that Richard finally achieved a measure of financial independence too, for she was shrewd enough to see that a title was a valuable commodity and it was at her imagination that he became associated with half a dozen prosperous and very respectable companies. Within a year of marrying, Richard was a director of a merchant bank, an insurance company, a construction firm, a wholesale wine company, and a firm that made ball bearings. He was also, on Virginia’s advice, a member of the British War Graves Commission, a sombre but prestigious post which involved them both in trips to northern France and in helping to make sure that a million Allied dead were decently buried by a grateful nation. They made these trips together and invariably combined them with a few days in Paris. Virginia was beginning to enjoy good food.
Surprisingly James relied upon Virginia as well. He liked her common sense and liked to call her his mother confessor. She was the only one who could get him out of what were known in the house as “the Major’s Black Days,” when he was gripped by hideous depression and retired to his bedroom with a whisky bottle. She used to go and drink with him—James said she had the strongest head of any woman he had known—and simply make him talk. He would describe his nightmares and what happened to him in the war. During these bouts he would swing between helpless rage and utter hopelessness.
“What’s the use of anything?” he’d shout. “We fought the filthy war and already they’re talking of another. Look at the politicians too—war profiteers and criminals, the lot of them! It’s a disgusting, filthy world.”
“Don’t be so damned self-pitying,” she’d say. “You might be dead.”
“I wish I was,” he’d moan. “I often wish I was.”
But somehow Virginia seemed to have the knack of helping him recover. Sometimes she’d nag him, sometimes she would simply make him laugh at himself. And certainly it was thanks to her that he took up his job at Jardines again.
“But I hate it,” he would say to her. “I hate the beastly City. It’s the one place in the world where they succeed in making even money boring.”
“Well, you’re pretty boring too,” she’d say, “so obviously you’re suited.” He’d scowl at her, but off he’d go—and in fact he did pick up the directorship that had been promised him before the war, although he dodged the chance of going off to India.
Sometimes they’d discuss his women. Like a true mother confessor she was virtually unshockable, and James began to tell her everything: the girls he slept with and the girls he didn’t, those who were married and those who were sufficiently ambitious to want to marry him.
“Well, why don’t you?” Virginia asked after he described, with lurid detail, the way some young American tobacco heiress had actually proposed to him.
“What, marry? Her? You must be joking, my dear Virginia. I’ll never marry anyone.”
“But why on earth not, James?” she said. “I’ve done it twice and really recommend it.”
“And I’ve done it once and it was not a great success.”
“The second one is often better than the first.”
“Not in my case. The war really did for me, you know. It would be cruelty to inflict myself on any woman now. I realised that after Hazel died. No, stepmother mine, I’ve found my rut and I propose to stick in it. I love this house. I’m grateful for the way that you and Father humanise the place and I’m not taking any risks. I just intend to go on as a crusty, self-indulgent, increasingly drunken old bachelor—then, like a genuine old soldier, I hope I’ll fade away.”
“And wouldn’t you like to have a son to leave this place to then?”
“A son? Good God, no. He’d probably be like me, or worse. If I’d inherited Southwold I’d agree with you, but I didn’t. And all that business of great families and dynasties has had its day. No, if there’s anything of all this left when I go, your William can have it. That’s if he wants it.”
James’s hints that he might leave 165 to Virginia’s son were nearer to the truth than anyone suspected. Now that he had virtually abandoned any thought of starting his own family, he seemed to be adopting Virginia’s two children. He spoiled them, indulged them, showed them conjuring tricks and made them laugh. Part legendary elder brother and part wealthy uncle, he was, in fact, far closer to them both than Richard was. Richard did make strenuous attempts to be friends with them, and to some extent succeeded. They both liked him and obeyed him, but secretly found him most formidable—and very, very old. James, on the other ha
nd, was always at his best with them, showing no sign of misery or gloom. When they came home from boarding school he was the one who always took them out to an enormous tea, then on to the theatre. He would take them off on great excursions in his car (a very rakish Alvis tourer). And when the time came it was James who almost automatically paid William’s fees at Eton.
Georgina, on the other hand, was far less involved in the family now. Indeed, she used to worry Richard with her apparent wildness and irresponsibility.
“Unmarried girls are all the same,” he’d moan to Virginia. “Deceitful, silly young hussies. Why can’t she find herself a husband and just settle down to a decent useful life? The way she’s going on, she’ll soon be nothing more than a loose woman!”
“Oh, come now, Richard,” Virginia would reply, smiling at him in her most indulgent way. “She’s not as bad as that. From what you tell me, your Elizabeth was fairly wild at her age and now she’s a pillar of respectable New York society.”
“Don’t compare her to Elizabeth, Virginia! I forbid it. And anyhow, she had ideals. She wasn’t like this present empty-headed lot of, of—” He spluttered for the word. “Of footloose pleasure seekers.”
“Now, now,” she said. “I’m not a public meeting, and you must realise that times have changed from when Elizabeth was growing up. Frankly, I don’t blame Georgina for being a pleasure seeker, for a while at least. She lost four good years of youth in the war and she saw the most dreadful horrors in that hospital of hers. If I were in her place I’m not certain that I wouldn’t do the sarrie.”
“Virginia!” said Richard, quite aghast.
Georgina’s situation was more complicated than either Richard or Virginia suspected. She had grown up in love with James. Throughout the war her love had deepened and she had remained faithful to him even when she tried to rouse his jealousy with other bright young officers. For at heart Georgina was a very serious and passionate young lady.
Perhaps it was because of this that Hazel’s death affected her so cruelly. She realised how much a year or so later when James took her to a dance and tried to kiss her. Suddenly she was horribly aware of Hazel’s presence and all the ancient guilt came flooding back.
“No, Jumbo, no!” she said, and tried as sensibly as possible to prevent the moment from going any further. But James was amorous and slightly drunk, as usual by this time of evening, and he persisted.
“Georgina darling, my little Georgina. Let’s enjoy ourselves. You always used to like me kissing you, Georgina. Why not now?”
She had to struggle to release herself, and in her anger said far more than she intended.
“Can’t you see that it’s obscene?” she blurted.
James stood as if she’d struck him, then slowly backed away.
“Obscene,” he muttered to himself. “Yes, I suppose she’s right. I am obscene. Trust Georgina for telling me.”
After that night his drunkenness got worse, and it was then that Georgina became a “footloose pleasure seeker” in earnest.
Despite Virginia’s firm discouragement, politics still involved the family from time to time. With Richard this was probably inevitable. A gregarious man, he knew everybody at Westminster. The world of smoking rooms and government committees was the only outside life he knew well, and he made certain that his new directorships and City interests didn’t impinge on it. Balfour remained his closest friend within the party hierarchy. He never did like Bonar Law, although he felt genuinely sorry for the man when cancer of the throat abruptly ended his parliamentary career in 1923. And when this brought up the question of the leadership, he naturally sided with the new man, Baldwin, rather than Lord Curzon. This was partly instinct. He felt that Baldwin was, as he put it to Virginia, “my sort of man.” He liked his unpretentiousness, his middle-classness, and his solidity. Also, although he would not have admitted this to anyone, the aristocratic Curzon reminded him unhappily of old Lord Southwold.
As usual, too, Richard’s instincts seemed to coincide with his self-interest. His feeling for Baldwin was reciprocated, and it was through him that in 1924 a surprised and utterly delighted Richard Bellamy received a final prize he’d hardly dreamt of. Although he was in the Lords he was appointed Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, with responsibility for the League of Nations.
“It looks as if I’ve come full circle,” he said jokingly to Balfour. “I started as a diplomat, and now it looks as though I’m ending up as one again.”
“Well, you see,” said Balfour wisely, “it takes some people quite a while to realise the promise of their youth.”
The post was perfect for Richard. He was enough of an idealist to believe enthusiastically in this first attempt to achieve cooperation between all the nations of the world, and enough of a cosmopolitan to enjoy his time in Geneva. Virginia was invariably there with him and he would often take the Rolls. During those carefree summers of the twenties they got to know the Riviera and especially the Italian lake country extremely well.
Richard’s political success, although admittedly late in life, served in a cruel way to underline James’s political failure. It was a great mistake for him to stand for Parliament as he did, especially in a working-class constituency like Barking. And it was still more of a mistake for him to have worn his ideals quite so firmly on his sleeve. But he did feel most strongly that the ex-servicemen he knew were getting extremely shabby treatment from a government that should have known better. The mistake, as Richard tried to tell him at the time, was in thinking that this honest anger would unite a working-class electorate behind him.
James, of course, knew best. He always did when it came to self-destruction. Richard had several rows with him when he attempted to “talk sense” to him. “Don’t you understand?” he said. “The working men in Barking must inevitably see you as just one more smart young Tory officer who’ll promise them the moon and then do nothing.”
“But I will do something. If I promise them houses and employment and a decent pension, I’ll make sure they get it.”
“Why should they believe you?”
“Who else do they believe?”
“And why are you so sure that you’ll be able to do what you say? Many other men have tried and not succeeded.”
James turned on his father then. “Father, if every politician is as cynical as you, I can understand exactly why this country acts the way it does. If everybody says it’s hopeless, we’ll get nowhere.”
Richard broke off the argument, knowing already just how badly James would be defeated—and even worse, how he would take it. And as usual with his son, Richard was right. When Barking, as expected, sent a Labour man to Westminster, it drove another nail in the coffin that contained James’s dwindling reserves of hope and courage and self-confidence.
It was Virginia who understood James best. Even Richard was increasingly inclined to take him, as the world did, at his surface valuation. He now seemed to be, as someone called him, “a middle-aged young bounder on the make,” elegant, well dressed and highly enviable. The Alvis had been exchanged for a Lagonda. His shares did well. He tended to be seen in the smartest places with the smartest divorcées. He gambled quite a lot and drank a great deal more. But he had one thing that apparently redeemed him—style. He was a stylish drunk, a stylish businessman, a stylish lover. It seemed to be the thing that mattered.
He no longer confided in Georgina, nor did he see much of her. He had even begun to disapprove of her. She was becoming just a little too outrageous for his taste. “Outrageous men are bearable,” he’d say. “Outrageous girls are not.” When some poor would-be lover shot himself for her during a party held at Eaton Place, the scandal appeared to prove his point.
“Georgina’s being talked about too much. You must do something, Father. Scrapes of this sort are bad for a girl’s reputation.”
Richard agreed but shrugged his shoulders. Then a few months later there was another scrape. Georgina was involved in the notorious accident in which a
Sussex farm hand was knocked off his bicycle and killed by Richard’s Rolls.
“For God’s sake, Father, think of the family! Think of the damage that this sort of thing causes your name. Put your foot down, Father!”
Once again Richard replied that he agreed, and once again he shrugged his shoulders.
James meanwhile was, as he admitted to Virginia in one of his “confession sessions,” “just dabbling with life.” Others envied him but he was bored. His brief flirtation with the Fascist Party failed to convince him that they were any more sincere than any of the other politicians that he so despised. His love affairs were tedious. Even his enthusiasm for flying was short-lived. He bought a little biplane, learned to fly, and then found there was nowhere in particular he wished to fly to.
He was complaining about his health these days, too. He felt increasingly lethargic, out of breath, depressed.
“What on earth is it, Virginia?” he asked. “You and father are obviously happy. Why can’t I be the same? I’m not so very different, am I?”
“Perhaps you expect too much,” she said.
“Too much. Good God, I don’t want anything. That’s half the trouble.”
“Perhaps you ought to have a change,” she said.
It seemed to work. New York in 1928 was such a thriving, thrusting, life-enhancing place that even James’s jaded taste-buds were restored. Elizabeth helped a lot as well. Although it was so long since he had seen her, nothing had really changed. She was the same Elizabeth that he had teased in the nursery and chased across the roof at Southwold.