Against the Light

by Marjorie Eccles

  Dudley, religious? A devout Catholic? He had given no indication of any such beliefs during all the time he’d been with them – nor of any beliefs at all, for that matter. The notion cast a whole new light on him. But in that case, how careless of him to have left the missal behind. A precious possession from his adored mother, what was more. He would be mortified. Oh, Heavens, did that mean he would return for it?

  The nondescript man with the pale face had been leaning against the wall in the set-back gateway to one of the large, prosperous houses further along the wide street for over half an hour before Alice appeared. He waited until she and her bicycle had disappeared down the drive of Manessa House, then stubbed out his cigarette, turned up the collar of his shabby suit jacket against the rain, now coming down with serious intent, and sloped away with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets, his head down. How he lived made him suspicious of everyone and he’d had to make sure, to see for himself, confirm what he’d been told. Now, after three days’ watching, he was satisfied they could guarantee the routine of the house.

  At the palace of Westminster where the two houses of Parliament sat, behind the stately and imposing chambers in which the means of governing the nation and drawing up its laws was debated, lay a maze of corridors and staircases leading to offices in which the business of implementing them was conducted.

  Edmund had just been called to Downing Street, to see the Prime Minister.

  ‘Do me a favour, will you?’ he asked David Moresby, who happened to be in his office with him at a time when the secretaries had left in search of their afternoon cup of tea. ‘Telephone my wife for me and make my apologies, there’s a good fellow?’ He hurriedly gathered papers together, tall and well built, sober and distinguished-looking in the Parliamentary uniform of pinstriped trousers and frock coat, his dark hair turning silver. He had a birthmark, a port wine stain that ran diagonally across his forehead, but he made nothing of it – and neither did anyone else after a while, except to see it as a mark of distinction. Though courteous and urbane with everyone, he was always a man to hold his own counsel, with something reticent about the eyes. Yet, like all politicians, he was something of an actor, and more than most, he was a good one. Presenting himself as quiet and self-controlled, it was repugnant to him to do anything outrageous or attention-craving. His speeches in the House of Commons were moderate and reasonable, winning him the trust and respect of his colleagues. Such histrionics as Lloyd George was capable of were anathema to him.

  ‘We’re expected at the Essendines – tell her I’ll be home as soon as I can, if you would, but I believe she might wish to go ahead without me.’

  ‘Of course, Minister,’ David replied good-naturedly.

  ‘Thank you, Moresby, I’ll do the same for you some time.’

  David stood looking thoughtfully after the departing figure. It was unlike Latimer, who was scrupulously polite with everyone and meticulous in consideration of his wife’s feelings, not to have taken a few minutes to speak to her himself, even though David was friendly enough with both Latimer and his wife to be asked to do it for him. Still, an urgent summons to the Prime Minister at Number Ten wasn’t something anyone delayed answering. While he still had the matter in his mind he stayed in Latimer’s office to make the telephone call from there. Taking a seat and adjusting the knees of his immaculately pressed trousers, he picked up the telephone. The wind blew grit against the windows and from the framed sepia print on the wall Queen Victoria looked down, unamused, as he dialled the operator and waited to be connected.

  When the position of his Parliamentary Private Secretary had become vacant, Edmund Latimer had immediately offered it to David Moresby, a younger MP on whom he’d had his eye for some time. The post was acknowledged as a stepping stone to governmental office for an ambitious man and David, a backbencher with his own Derbyshire constituency, was ideally suited to it in every way, even if reaching the heights of PPS was sometimes looked on as a doubtful honour. Making oneself aware of everything that was going on, being on good terms with members of all parties in order to gauge the mood of the House, listening to gossip, liaising with the party Whips and reporting back to his Minister, as well as attending to work linked to his own constituency, was not necessarily a path to appeal to everyone. The position was, in fact, slightly suspect in some eyes. But David had given no indication so far that his integrity, or his capacity for hard work, was in any way compromised. Personable and agreeable, with a lazy smile that belied a formidable energy and staying power, saved from self-importance by the possession of an ironic sense of humour, he was respected as a sound, reliable, up and coming young MP.

  Alice wasn’t yet home to answer the telephone, but he spoke to her sister-in-law, who promised to pass on the message. He repeated what Latimer had said, that Alice might wish to go on without him. ‘On the other hand, Mrs Martens,’ he said, after a pause, adding his own view, ‘I imagine there’s absolutely no obligation on Mrs Latimer to attend … it’s only one of those tiresome bashes where there’ll be too many people and too much to eat and drink. Though of course, she’ll be aware of that.’

  ‘I’m sure she will be,’ answered Violet, who would have given her eye teeth to attend such a brilliant gathering. ‘I’m sure she’ll understand that perfectly well.’

  David had no sooner put the earpiece back on its hook than the office door flew open. Unlike those who were familiar with its eccentricities, the young woman who stood there wasn’t in time to grab it before it crashed against the wall and ricocheted back towards her. She managed to dodge it but lost hold of her briefcase in the process, and its contents scattered over the floor.

  A decidedly unladylike exclamation was uttered, hardly according with the neatly dressed figure and pretty face presented to him. The fiery blush as she bent to retrieve the papers and stuff them back into the case showed her mortification at having let it slip.

  ‘Here, let me help.’

  ‘Thank you, I’m so sorry! I mean, I didn’t … I – I seem to have lost my way. I was looking for the tea room.’

  ‘Then you’ve certainly strayed a long way.’

  ‘I never did have the sense of direction,’ she said ruefully as the last of the papers was stowed away. ‘And I’m not familiar with the layout here yet. I’m so sorry to have intruded.’

  ‘Not at all. Westminster’s a rabbit warren. It’s almost mandatory to lose your way until you get the hang of it.’

  ‘Would you put me in the way of the tea room, then?’

  ‘As it happens I’m going in that direction,’ he said, aware of a sudden thirst. ‘Allow me.’

  Over tea and toasted teacake, when she learned David’s name and what his position was she flushed again with embarrassment but she was naturally talkative and soon recovered. She told him her name was Mona Reagan and that she had just started work in the office of Joe Devlin, the fiery Irish Nationalist MP for Belfast West, popularly known as Wee Joe.

  He had noted at once the lilt of her Irish accent, and he liked the smile in her deep blue eyes and the way tendrils of silky blue-black hair escaped its knot and clung to her white neck. He smiled, feeling the first stirrings of interest, imagining her as the country girl she told him she was. Wearing a red petticoat maybe, bare-footed, her hair hanging loose and blowing free in the wind across the Irish peat bogs. She was from County Down, where her family still lived on the shores of Lough Neagh, she told him.

  ‘So what made you leave them and come over here?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d already left home. I was in Belfast to train as a teacher but I wasn’t cut out for it. It was the job with Devlin that came up and brought me to vile, wicked London.’ She laughed. ‘But if the number of my mother’s Hail Marys and the candles the nuns have lit for me count for anything, I won’t come to any harm.’ She noticed the clock on the wall. ‘I’d better go. I only slipped out for a cup of tea and I’ve been gone for twenty-five minutes. I’ve enjoyed the talk with you – though we’re sup
posed to be enemies, aren’t we?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’ But there was no denying that the man she was working for, Wee Joe Devlin, was a thorn in the flesh of the Government, one of those Irish Catholic Nationalist MPs, led by John Redmond, who were demanding Home Rule, a Parliament in Dublin devolved from the United Kingdom. It was not an issue for which Asquith, or the rest of the Cabinet, had much enthusiasm, and to which the Conservatives and the House of Lords were implacably opposed. Indeed, the country as a whole, with its deep distrust of Roman Catholicism, was generally thought to be against Ireland being governed by Papists, as they saw it. But after his slim majority at the last election, Asquith needed the support of these Nationalists for his own domestic reforms – and they were not averse to blackmail: Home Rule in return for their votes.

  ‘You’re on our side – for the moment,’ David reminded her. ‘But it can’t be easy, working for Devlin.’ A firebrand, an accomplished, rousing speechmaker, champion of the working class, Joe Devlin was full of Irish charm and humour, but also hot-tempered, and a fiend for hard work.

  ‘You’d have a job keeping up with him,’ she agreed. ‘But he’s a charmer, right enough, so nobody minds. Anyway, I don’t have to keep up – my job’s only filing and typing and menial work of that class.’

  The nonchalance of that intrigued him. Redmond’s Nationalists, his whole team, top to bottom, most of them a good deal less moderate than their leader, were not precisely known for their tepid opinions. But of course those who were employed in lowly positions behind the scenes didn’t necessarily have to hold the same views, or any views at all, come to that.

  ‘I promise not to burst in on your privacy again,’ she said as they parted. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.’

  ‘Westminster’s a small place.’ He picked up her briefcase and handed it over. ‘You’d better get the clasp on this seen to.’ It was an odd thing, to be carrying a briefcase weighing a ton around when you were merely in search of a cup of tea … nearly as odd as mistaking a room with the Right Honourable Edmund Latimer’s name on the door for a tea room. Again his interest stirred, and he knew he’d be keeping a lookout for Mona Reagan. He was a man who liked women, and she would not be the first he’d encouraged. He was a single, moderately wealthy man with excellent prospects who was marked down as a good catch for young women on the lookout for a husband, though he had so far adroitly avoided the net.

  That she was in the enemy camp, as she had seen it, need not matter, nor need anything else. Neither of them was in any danger. He smiled at her. Why not? he thought with a certain resignation. It was no use wishing for what you couldn’t have. The woman he loved was irrevocably married to someone else. She didn’t know it, but she held his heart in her hands and always would. Forever.

  Two

  In case Violet had made the effort to be in her daughter’s nursery for her teatime – and to be fair, she usually did – and in order to avoid raised eyebrows, before going to the nursery Alice had changed her bicycling skirt for a conventional one and tucked her shirtwaist into a wide belt, washed her hands and face and smoothed her hair. She was glad she had when she found Violet was indeed there with Lucy and her nanny, who was supervising her tea. Violet, with her unerring fashion sense, noticed every detail of other people’s dress. Today she was immaculately dressed as ever, her tiny figure enhanced by a fashionably narrow-skirted dress of self-striped lavender moiré trimmed with satin ribbon the same colour as her name, a colour that gave her large blue eyes something of the same hue.

  She was observing her baby daughter’s teatime with a slight smile, her little pug cradled on her lap. She was not a demonstrative mother. One did one’s duty and had children. They were little darlings, of course, but it was as well one only needed to see them after breakfast and before bedtime and could leave the messier aspects of their upbringing to a capable and sensible nursemaid such as this new one, a replacement for the previous nanny, who had departed in high dudgeon a month ago after a sharp exchange of words with Violet. Emma was promising, even though she was from one of the poorer parts of London. The baby had taken to her and she had a cheerful disposition.

  Lucy was sitting in her high chair, clutching a piece of sticky malt loaf, delighting as it squelched between her fingers on its way to make approximate contact with her mouth. She beamed as Alice came in, dropped the cake and held out her arms.

  ‘Just a minute!’ Emma deftly intervened with a damp flannel before allowing Alice to pick the baby up. ‘Don’t let the little mischief make a muck-up of your blouse, Doctor!’

  Violet opened her mouth to protest at such uncouth language, then changed her mind, in case she should be left nanny-less once more, but Alice just laughed. Emma was a high-spirited girl with a quick repartee. Where she came from, in the East End, such language came naturally and it didn’t mean she was any less caring of the child.

  Taking safe hold of Lucy needed careful manoeuvring, so encumbered was she with her numerous embroidered petticoats, but once in her arms, Alice hugged tight the warm, wriggling little body inside them and was given a sloppy kiss in return. She was accustomed to keeping a tight rein on her emotions – if she had not, the hopeless situations she came across daily at the Dorcas would have overwhelmed her long since. But where Lucy was concerned … The fierceness of her love for this child sometimes frightened her. Edmund, too, showed a tenderness towards her one would not have believed him capable of. He might, she thought, with a fleeting pang, have made a surprisingly good father.

  Seven months old Lucy had three teeth, eyes like forget-me-nots and silky hair the colour of a new-minted sovereign. ‘Marigold, we’ll call her,’ the besotted father had declared, delighted when she was born.

  ‘We had a marmalade kitchen cat once called that,’ returned Violet coolly, killing the idea stone dead, adjusting his tie and smiling at him in the way that brooked no opposition. ‘I thought we had long ago decided on Lucinda. It’s a pretty name, and far more appropriate.’

  ‘Oh, righto.’ Ferdie had hidden his disappointment. He usually found it expedient to agree with Violet, since he never won an argument with her. He was a bit of an ass, Alice thought, but such a thoroughly nice fellow his inadequacies in the mental department could be overlooked. And at least he’d asserted himself by demanding that the name of his own dead mother, Amalia, be added to the baby’s, and he himself shortened Lucinda to Lucy, and sometimes used Marigold as a pet name when Violet wasn’t there to object. Rather to Violet’s annoyance, she’d become Lucy to everyone else, too.

  Ferdie, for all he was an ass, could charm the birds off the trees with his good nature and his laughing dark eyes. The son of a Portuguese mother and a Belgian father, he allegedly worked with his father, Emil, at the family-owned Martens bank, but was still able to find time to visit his clubs, play sports and generally live an easy, amusing life. Money slipped through his fingers like wind through a sieve and it was his misfortune to have married someone equally extravagant. He and Violet made an attractively handsome couple but they were perennially short of money – Martens Senior not being inclined to shell out as much as Violet thought he should – but socially much in demand, if not in the set she really aspired to. She gathered herself now, preparing to leave Lucy to the nanny’s ministrations in order to dress for whatever the evening held for her and Ferdie.

  ‘You’ve seen the message from Edmund, I suppose, Alice?’

  ‘Thank you, I have.’

  ‘I took the call. It was David Moresby I spoke to.’

  ‘Edmund didn’t telephone himself?’ Alice asked, surprised.

  ‘Apparently he was closeted with Mr Asquith on urgent business.’ A glint of malice appeared in the blue eyes (you are not as important as the PM) which Alice pretended not to see.

  ‘Ah. Then I can’t expect him home until late.’ Or possibly not at all. Her eyes darkened at the thought of how frequent this had lately become, and how often, when he did come home, his cas
e was stuffed with papers, which he worked on until late into the night. What with Lloyd George, the House of Lords and the Home Rulers, Asquith wasn’t the only one who wasn’t having it easy at the moment.

  Violet presently stood up. ‘I must leave you to Nanny, now, Lucinda, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s nearly your bedtime.’

  Alice scrambled from the fluffy hearthrug where she’d been playing in an undignified way with the baby, much to Lucy’s crowing delight, then bent to pick the child up to hand her to her mother. Although she herself was no more than medium height, she felt at a clumsy disadvantage compared to Violet, who was tiny, although she compensated by holding herself very straight and keeping her head high. She was like one of the exquisite pieces of china Edmund’s mother had collected – a Dresden shepherdess, perhaps – which Violet had scornfully banished when she and Ferdie took over their part of the house, though Edmund had kept the collection and indeed added to it with discrimination. She had a firm chin and a polite, social, closed-lips smile that tucked itself in at the corners, and she allowed this to appear as Alice held Lucy out and Lucy lunged towards her. She graciously accepted a damp kiss on the cheek but attempted nothing further than smoothing her daughter’s hair, since the pug was still clasped in her arms. Lucy reached out and grabbed a handful of its fur. The dog snapped and bared its teeth and Lucy’s face crumpled.

  ‘Naughty Lulu!’ Violet admonished the dog, kissing the top of its head. Then suddenly and rather fiercely, she put the pug down and took hold of the little one, hugging her tightly and laying her cheek on the bright curls. ‘Good night, darling Lucinda. Be a good baby for Nanny.’ It was an unaccustomed sign of affection, but she was already extracting a wisp of lace handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbing the cheek her daughter had wetly kissed as she left the room.