Lost Autumn

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  I frowned. “From Sydney?”

  Helen nodded. “Remember she left us after Canberra? Do you know why? Because of David and his stupid cousin. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  She had become so stern with me I felt like crying. “Mr. Waters doesn’t agree with you,” I said. “He also says you’re wrong about the prince and F.D.W., that she is his friend and he would never act improperly.”

  “Mr. Waters is a slave to the fucking prince,” she said angrily, “and so he will tell you a whole pack of lies and sell you down the river. He’d sell his mother if it would make David happy.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t because the prince danced with me more than you?”

  I simply didn’t accept what Helen was saying, that the prince would be anything but noble. I had seen him with the soldiers and their families, his kindness and generosity. Helen was wrong, surely.

  She laughed that hard laugh again and it frightened me. “Oh, Maddie, I wish you hadn’t said that. Our friendship matters to me.”

  “It matters to me too,” I said. “But why are you saying these things? You sound so angry with me.” I was feeling very upset.

  Helen softened and I saw sadness in her eyes too. “It’s because I know the world. No, I am not jealous of you. David has picked you because you are young and inexperienced and he knows it. Freda’s dumped him. You are sport to him. And if you think for one minute that it will be different with you or that I’m making this up, you are mistaken. You are not the first. You will certainly not be the last.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll see what I can do with Mr. Murdoch, but you need to stay away from David. Yes, he’s a darling. Yes, we are terribly loyal to him. Yes, he endears himself to us. But, Maddie, do not think for one minute that you matter to him. You don’t. None of us does. Not really. He will pursue you and then he will discard you. That is what these men do.”

  I was crying now, thinking of how angry Helen had been with me, how disappointed. I wished I’d never gone to the ball.

  “I’m sorry, Helen. He was so lovely to me, especially tonight. And I didn’t think he was that sort of person. Is that what Mr. Waters is like too then?” I said, through tears. It felt as if the world was not how I thought it was.

  “No, of course not,” she said, more gently, looking upset herself suddenly.

  “You know what I’m going to do?” I said then, wiping my eyes and recovering myself. “I’m going to write your story.” I was smiling through my tears. I had suggested it in my letter to Daddy, more to cheer him up than anything, but now I knew what I could do for Helen and Mr. Waters. “I’m going to write the story of the brave ambulance driver, who is my friend, and her captain.” I could write their story, I decided, or what I knew of it, and they would read it and understand each other.

  I leaned over and hugged her. “Thank you for being my friend,” I said.

  She held on. “Oh, Maddie, darling, you are so very young. It’s sweet of you to try, but it wasn’t simple.”

  I withdrew from the hug. “So? It’s simple now, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “He said he loves you. You said you love him, Helen.”

  She softened again. “I do, Maddie, and perhaps he does, but it’s not enough. It will never be enough.”

  Thirty-three

  LONDON, 1997

  Ben had left early and Victoria was relieved when she woke and the flat was empty. She didn’t want to talk to him. They’d shared the bed last night but it was as if she were sleeping with a stranger. She’d stayed awake half the night worrying. Martha spent the early morning hours spooned around Victoria’s head. It had felt protective. “Good girl,” she said to the cat as she left for the office.

  She saw Mac at the front desk on the way in.

  “Miss Byrd,” he said, “you were in Paris? You saw her?”

  She nodded. For some reason, she thought she might cry.

  “We went to St. James’s,” Mac said. “We signed the book.”

  “Of course you did,” she said, tears pricking her eyes. “I’m glad you did. I’m glad there are people marking her passing.”

  He walked her over to the lift. “You take care now,” he said.

  When she got up to the fifth floor, she went to see Ewan in his office.

  “I haven’t written anything more,” she said. “I’m so sorry. You’ll have to get someone else, Ewan. I can’t do it.”

  “You can’t just not file, Victoria. Surely you know that.” He was sitting at his desk sorting through pictures. He hadn’t looked up when she’d come in.

  She didn’t want to tell him about last night, about Ben.

  “Well, I can’t. I can’t write about her anymore. I can’t write about Diana.”

  Now he did look up, seeming more curious than anything else. “Is this because Harry didn’t run the piece from Paris as the leader?”

  “No—as if I care about that.”

  “Then why not?”

  “I’ve lost all my muscle. She’s my age. She’s . . . I saw everything in Paris and I wrote my heart out, but you’re right. It’s not what’s wanted right now, and I’m finding I can’t write to order anymore. Claire said yesterday she thinks it’s us, our industry, that killed her.”

  “That’s like blaming a—”

  “A cow for heart disease. I know. But maybe it’s time we take responsibility. Even if people are demanding this stuff, it doesn’t mean we have to supply it.”

  Ewan sighed. “Oh, Victoria, I can’t have you go ethical on me. I’m up against a hell of a deadline. I need you.” He gestured to his desk. It looked as it always looked: like the desk of a teenager raging against the very notion of adulthood. “I have to get the stories finalized and go to press within four hours of the funeral, so that we get the edition out before the others. We don’t have a lot of flexibility here.”

  “I know.” She forced herself to hold back her tears. She didn’t want to cry in front of him and have him know how upset she was. “I just can’t do it, Ewan. I can’t. It’s something to do with Diana, and also me and those photographers. I can’t. I’m so sorry.” She felt her voice falter. She still hadn’t mentioned Ben.

  He sat back and looked at her more carefully. “No, I’m sorry,” he said, taking his glasses off. For a minute, she thought he was going to fire her, but he only said, “Jeez, it’s been a long couple of days.” He rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Okay. Okay. You know you can only do this once, don’t you?”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice right then.

  “I mean, I get it. This one has affected us all. So.” He sat there for a moment, thinking, put his glasses back on. “How about I take you off Diana and we get you straight on M. A. Bright? I think we can run that as the November cover if Fin gets his contract in place. If that’s not a story with your fucking name on it, Victoria, I don’t know what is. It’s you to a tee. You’ll find your muscles again.” He made to flex his bicep, his arm skinny even in a long-sleeved shirt.

  She smiled. The relief she felt was enormous. “Have you heard from Finian?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. He called me early yesterday. You’d think Diana didn’t happen. He just went on and on about the new novel. Do you know what a lost baby is?”

  “I think it’s just that—a lost baby.”

  “Okay. He sort of expected me to know.”

  “Me too, but I think it’s just a baby that’s lost somehow. He said it’s a trope.” On the flight back from Paris, Victoria had read the chapter Finian had given her. “There’s a baby left at a foundling wheel and it dies. It’s very sad, maybe a bit overwrought. Not exactly uplifting as the start of a novel either.”

  “Okay. Well, what I’m thinking is that you can go sooner rather than later. M. A. Bright will get out. It absolutely will get out and currently w
e’re ahead of it. Frankly, I don’t much care about the novel. For us, it’s an interview with M. A. Bright, and she’s offering it to you. That’s a story even if it’s not really M. A. Bright. It’s like that lord everyone tried to chase. What was his name?”

  “Lucan?”

  “That’s it. Finding M. A. Bright is like finding Lord Lucan.”

  He looked at her and smiled gently. “It’s going to be easier on you, I think,” he said.

  “What will you do about Diana?”

  “That’s my problem. Maybe Harry will let us hold longer. I wouldn’t mind that anyway. Maybe I’ll write it.”

  “Thank you,” Victoria said. She looked at him. “Why are you doing this?”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Why do you think?”

  “Because I’m a good writer?”

  He didn’t answer straightaway but only looked at her again. “Because you’re my best writer,” he said. “And . . .” He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at her. “Is everything okay, Victoria?”

  “Yes,” she said, too quickly. “I just . . . it was the . . . The photographers are at my place again today.”

  “Who?”

  “No one I know. Ben told them we’re engaged.”

  “I see,” Ewan said. “You’re engaged?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We were keeping it under wraps, but Ben thought it was a good idea to tell someone he knows at the Tele, so now they want pictures again because Diana will only be a story for so long. They’ll need something else then. They’ll run a story about the wedding, and I . . .”

  “You?”

  “I wanted to keep it private.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a living.”

  “I guess it is,” Victoria said. “Anyway, thank you. I’ll never forget you did this.”

  “Do forget it,” he said, waving her off. “I just want the old Victoria back.”

  He looked upset then, and it scared Victoria for no reason she understood.

  Thirty-four

  PERTH, 1920

  Helen managed to convince Mr. Murdoch that he shouldn’t mention me in his story about the ball. “He said it wasn’t your fault and he wouldn’t put you through it,” Helen said.

  She gave me a quick hug. “We averted disaster, darling.”

  When it came to the prince, though, Helen said, Mr. Murdoch was less disposed to be kind. The piece he’d written after Sydney had now been published. In it he said the prince showed “unnerving judgment in choosing pretty girls who were good dancers,” but his mother might prefer he choose “good girls who are pretty dancers.” Dickie thought it very funny but Colonel Grigg was hopping mad, apparently.

  I hardly saw the prince the day after the ball. Early in the morning, he went with Mr. Waters to inspect the train that would become our home for the first leg of the journey east across the continent. It was the train we’d traveled up from Albany on and not as elegant as the train from Sydney. The narrower gauge of the railway tracks meant the carriages were not quite as wide and comfortable, and the train rocked from side to side more. They had built special carriages for the visit, Mr. Waters had told me, making them as wide as they possibly could.

  The prince’s private chamber and dining room, which had been placed in the middle of the train to mitigate the rocking, were separated by curtains. Curtains also separated his office from ours. When Mr. Waters returned to Government House, he said the prince wanted doors put in. Before long I heard him giving instructions to the carpenters.

  At lunchtime, the prince took a boat trip along the Swan River to the town of Fremantle, where there was another reception. Helen accompanied him, along with Colonel Grigg. I stayed at Government House drafting letters for Mr. Waters, who was still trying to ensure the King changed his mind about the prince’s trip to India.

  I learned that the prince was to have barely three months at home before setting out again. Mr. Waters said, in one of the letters I typed for Sir Godfrey’s signature, that they feared the prince would not survive if put under this much pressure.

  The mail was still being received in Sydney and we’d made arrangements for two bags to be sent by rail and car. Meantime, I was working my way through the letters we’d brought with us from Sydney and the few that had so far been gathered by the governor in Western Australia.

  There were no letters with the spider seal.

  Mr. Waters wasn’t short-tempered but I could tell he was feeling the strain.

  Before he’d left for Fremantle, the prince had come into the office where Helen and I were working.

  “No letters for me?” he said.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “David, you might check with the steward,” Helen said. “But we have work to do.” Her tone was curt.

  “Oh, Helen,” he said, “don’t you want to have any fun?”

  She looked at him and smiled. “I don’t think the tour is about my fun, sir.”

  “No, quite right too,” he said.

  After he left, Helen only said: “I have told him he’s to leave you alone, Maddie. I feel sure he will. He’s a good sort, in his own way.”

  I didn’t say anything, but privately I had decided Helen didn’t need to protect me. I had the skills a girl with five brothers would have—I knew how to defend myself with whatever was at hand; a pot of tea, for instance. I knew I’d been in danger at Christie’s, even if I didn’t actually know for certain in detail what the danger was (being without previous experience in that department!). But Helen was mistaken. The prince was fond of me, and I was fond of him. He liked talking to me. He was a good man, just as Mr. Waters said he was.

  Whatever had happened to Helen in love, it had colored her thinking too negatively.

  Helen and Colonel Grigg had made no announcement about their engagement. I’d heard Helen tell Mr. Waters that Colonel Grigg wanted to wait until we returned to Sydney. Not that their engagement was a matter for royal protocol, but he didn’t want the news to be out until those back in London knew.

  I had thought more about my idea to write their story, Helen’s and Mr. Waters’s. The title came to me late one night, Autumn Leaves, which I thought was so beautiful I immediately found Helen and shared it with her. She said it sounded like flannel nightdresses and hot chocolate, not romance.

  “Also,” she said, “it was winter not fall.”

  “What was winter, not fall?” I said.

  “Rupert and I,” she said.

  “Well, Winter Leaves is no kind of title at all,” I said, and stomped off.

  I had no idea then what she’d been through, what it had cost her. I would have been kinder had I known. I know I would have, even given my youth.

  * * *

  The prince and his cousin returned by motorcar from Fremantle late in the afternoon, just as the rain set in. The prince had hardly any time between coming in from Fremantle and an evening event, I knew. I saw him rushing toward the house under an umbrella with Dickie. He looked exhausted. He didn’t even come over to the offices to check for mail.

  Helen had gone to the town hall to finalize details for a state banquet to be held the following day and she’d sent a message for Mr. Waters to go and talk to the mayor about who would be sitting at the head table as there was some to-do about the plan.

  I was in the staff lounge in the main house. I’d had a letter in the mail that day from Bert. It was full of news, but it was what he didn’t say that worried me. He mentioned Mummy and the boys but not Daddy, who I knew had left Sydney early to return home. I hoped he was all right.

  Just then, James came in and said the prince had asked for me.

  I was making my way to the back door to grab a brolly and go over to the cottage when James said, “No, miss, he’s in his private chamber.”

  I went up the stairs and to the end of the hall and kno
cked on the door.

  “Come!” he called.

  I opened the door and stepped inside. The room was lavishly furnished, with lounges and two chairs, a fireplace where a cheery little fire burned, and large sash windows on two sides that faced out across the lawns. You would look straight to the river during the day, I thought.

  “Sir, you wanted to see me?”

  The prince was sitting in one of the easy chairs. By him on the table was the pile of draft replies I’d finished the day before. He got up and came over to the doorway where I stood.

  “Maddie, darling, you have done a marvelous job on all these letters,” he said, closing the door behind me. “Come in, you silly old thing. Sit, sit.” He gestured to one of the lounges and I took a seat.

  “Was there something you needed, sir?” I asked. I had brought with me my pencil and notebook.

  “David,” he said, gently admonishing. He came over to where I was.

  “David. Did you want anything?”

  “Talk. Can we talk?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  He gave me a mock-stern look.

  “David,” I corrected myself. I put the notebook down on the table, the pencil on top of it.

  I felt on edge, uncertain about him, or the room, which felt strangely sinister. I dismissed my fears, assumed it was the fire casting shadows.

  “My father now wishes I were my brother Bertie,” he said. “I’m telling you this because you are the only person on my staff right now whom I trust. Bertie has been such a good boy, and I have been a disappointment, he says. He’s sending me to India.”

  “I don’t believe he dislikes you,” I said, relieved we were on familiar ground.

  “You think fathers always like their sons?”

  “I think any father would like a son like you.”

  He laughed. “Well, my father doesn’t. He doesn’t like me. He doesn’t like my friends. He probably wouldn’t like you!”