We entered a narrow room into which had been squashed a four-poster bed, several wardrobes, and an immense glass-topped dressing table. “I have the greatest favor to ask,” Julia said, yanking open a drawer. “Would you be an absolute angel and take some of these old things away with you? They’ll fit you, with your tiny waist—oh, try this frock on. It has a beaded wrap, here it is …”
And Julia proceeded to off-load what seemed like half her wardrobe on me. I kept protesting, but she wouldn’t listen. Instead, she rang for her maid, who pinned up some skirts for me and promised to have them hemmed before we left.
“Oh, Julia, I can’t possibly—”
“But they’re ancient, darling, and they don’t fit me and I can’t exactly pass them on to Rupert, can I? Besides, when I think of how it must have been for you, leaving all your things behind …” Her eyes welled. I didn’t point out that the clothes I’d left behind had hardly been worth saving. “Well, thank heavens you’re all safe now,” Julia concluded with a sniff. “I just wish I had something that could fit Veronica, but she’s so tall, isn’t she?” Julia dropped her voice. “And of course, she doesn’t love clothes and things as we do.”
I had to admit this was true. Then the gong rang for luncheon, and we went downstairs. The food was wonderful. There was roast pork with sage-and-onion stuffing and applesauce and julienned vegetables, then rhubarb tart with custard, then biscuits and cheese. Lord Astley and Anthony discussed politics with Veronica, the men tactfully avoiding any mention of Germany. Lady Astley, Julia, and Toby gossiped about a lot of people I’d never heard of. Rupert joined in occasionally but was mostly silent. At one stage, I saw him lean down to check on his rabbit, who was laid out underneath his chair. It was difficult to detect anything of Julia in him; it made me wonder what his brothers were like. He had fair, straight hair that slanted across his forehead, big hazel eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles across his nose. He looked several years younger than Toby, although I knew he was actually five months older. I had a better chance to study him after luncheon, when Toby urged him to show me the garden (Julia having been called to the telephone and Veronica drawn irresistibly towards the library, as though it were a giant magnet and she were made of iron filings).
Being the middle of winter, the rose garden consisted of spiky twigs sticking out of the ground, the daffodil beds were mounds of mud, and the herb garden was mostly wooden signs indicating where things might appear in three months’ time. But there was a nice, long hothouse, with a fat-bellied stove at each end keeping the trays of seedlings and potted flowers warm. Next to the hothouse was a fishpond, and beyond that were the stables. As there wasn’t much to say about any of this, Rupert and I crunched along the path in near silence, smiling shyly whenever we happened to catch the other’s eye. Unfortunately, my tongue had knotted up again. I couldn’t think of anything he might be interested in discussing; he probably felt the same about me. It was with a slight note of desperation that he asked if I’d like to see the birds.
“Oh! You mean your homing pigeons?” I asked.
“And yours. Well, Toby’s. I’ve been looking after them for him.”
He led me up a wooden staircase at the back of the stables, and we emerged into a large, light-filled loft. Soft cooing noises came from all around—from the rafters, from shallow boxes nailed to the walls, and from Rupert’s shoulder, where a white creature with feathery legs and a fanned tail had just landed.
“Is that a pigeon?” I asked, wide-eyed.
“A fancy one, yes,” he said, placing the bird beside a bowl of grain on a long wooden table. The bird pecked at a corn kernel disdainfully, then waddled off. “And a very spoilt one, as you can see. One of Julia’s young men gave it to her. But most of the birds here are ordinary homing pigeons.”
“Hardly ordinary,” I said. “Flying for hundreds of miles in a single day! How many do you have?”
“Thirty-nine,” he said, not even having to think about it. “But there are at least a dozen pairs that I’m hoping will nest this spring. Each hen usually lays two eggs, so—”
He stopped abruptly and blushed, perhaps remembering that such subjects weren’t meant to be discussed in mixed company. I quickly looked around for another topic.
“Goodness, it’s all so … so well organized,” I said, which was quite true. Each metal feed-bin was neatly labeled, the floor was swept clean, the water in each bowl was clear. It smelled pleasantly of wheat and straw and feathers.
“We have a very good pigeon man,” said Rupert, still slightly pink. “He does most of it, especially when I’m at school.” Walking over to a nearby box, he peered inside, then lifted out a bird. “Here’s one of Toby’s. The first one to make it back with your message, actually. Hold out your hands.”
I did so, and a soft, warm weight was lowered into them. A gray pigeon, vaguely familiar-looking, gazed up at me. I stared back, a heavy feeling growing in my chest.
“She’s four years old, one of my very first chicks. I remember training her.”
“How …” I cleared my throat and started again. “How can you tell one bird from another?”
“That little metal band on her leg. And she remembered exactly which box was hers, she headed straight to it. After I’d fed her, of course.”
“She must have been so hungry,” I said. “And, and so tired, flying all that way—”
Then I burst into tears.
Poor Rupert. When he’d agreed to show me round the garden, he had no idea he’d be forced to deal with this. The pigeon fluffed out her feathers, wondering why it had suddenly started raining inside, and Rupert stepped forward to rescue the unfortunate bird. Then he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it out to me.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, looking almost as distressed as I felt. “I’m such a clod … Won’t you sit down?” He led me over to a bench and sat beside me as I sobbed and sobbed. It was the sort of crying that I knew from experience wouldn’t stop just because I wanted it to—in fact, trying to control it only made it worse. After about five minutes, which felt like five hours, I ran out of tears and oxygen.
“Sorry,” I gasped.
“No, it’s my fault,” he said. “I was so thoughtless, reminding you of—”
“Montmaray,” I said. I blew my nose into his handkerchief.
“Mummy told me not to mention it,” he said miserably. “That it would be too awful for you, and then I went and—”
I took an unsteady breath. “Although it is supposed to make one feel better, having a good cry,” I said.
“Do you feel better?” he asked.
“Not just at the moment, no,” I admitted. “I feel much worse.”
“As though you’d stuffed a whole lot of things into a cupboard, far too many to fit, and you were worried the door would burst open? And then it did, at the worst possible moment, and everything fell out on the floor and smashed?”
“Well … yes,” I said, staring at him.
And indeed, I did feel empty inside, and it did seem that my memories of Montmaray had been shattered beyond repair, that even my oldest, happiest recollections were tainted by the way things had ended. But I was surprised that a near stranger, a boy at that, could understand this so well.
“How does it burst out for you?” I asked, curious. “Toby never cries anymore. At least—he did a bit when he broke his leg, but he was barely conscious at the time.”
Rupert looked down at his hands. “Well, I haven’t had anything nearly as dreadful as what you’ve had to deal with, of course. Just … well, just being homesick and hating school. But I do cry. I try to save it up for when no one’s around, though. It’s difficult at school. Sometimes one has to save it up for weeks, and by then, it’s stopped being sadness and become a sort of … irritation with everything and everyone.”
“I can’t imagine you stomping about, kicking and swearing at people,” I said with a watery smile.
“No, it’s more snapping at them—usually
at friends because they’re the closest and most convenient,” he said. “Which makes one feel even worse. I think it would be easier to be a girl, to be expected to cry.”
“Veronica doesn’t.”
“What, never?”
“Never. Not even when she was very little.”
“Gosh, Julia does it about once a day,” he said. “She doesn’t even have to be sad. She cried when Ant gave her her Christmas present, and then when our grandmother said Julia could borrow her tiara for the wedding …”
We discussed whether crying was an involuntary reflex, like sneezing, and whether animals cried. The conversation was so interesting that I almost forgot to be upset. But I kept needing to blow my nose, and a glance out the window revealed the afternoon light had suddenly grown much dimmer. Rupert jumped up and showed me the sink, and I washed my face and dried it on my sleeve. It didn’t do much good—I knew my eyes would stay red and puffy for hours. We went back into the house, where everyone stared, then decided the most courteous thing to do would be to ignore my woebegone countenance. Lord Astley had been called away to his study to speak with a tenant, so the rest of us sat around the drawing room for a while, Julia and Toby reading bits of Tatler and Country Life out loud to each other in silly voices and Rupert dabbing ointment on his rabbit’s paw where she’d gnawed off her bandage. Then Parker brought the car to the front, and we went outside, and Lady Astley kissed us all goodbye in a very motherly way, which nearly made me start crying again. In the car, Toby put his arm round my shoulders, and Veronica took my hand and squeezed it. Nobody said anything. I was so exhausted, I slept most of the way back.
I mean, most of the way home. I have to start thinking of it as that.
22nd January 1937
Surprisingly, I have felt better since my outburst—not right away, because when I got back to Milford, my primary emotion was severe embarrassment over what the Stanley-Rosses must have thought of me. But that night, for the first time since I’d arrived, I didn’t dream—or I didn’t recall what I’d dreamt, which I took to be a good sign, since the ones I did remember were so horrid. I told Veronica this when I went in to see her before breakfast. I’ve got into the habit of sitting on (or in, if it’s especially cold) her bed while she goes through the process of waking up, which seems to take her about ten times as long as it did at Montmaray.
“So,” I concluded, “I’ve decided it’s better to talk about things. Otherwise it just bursts out some other way, in nightmares or fits of weeping.”
“You sound like that Freud-obsessed tutor we used to have,” Veronica said, her eyes still closed.
“Oh, yes—what was his name? Francis? Fergus? Something like that. But, Veronica, that reminds me! Have you written to Daniel Bloom yet?”
“No.”
“But what if he’s still sending letters to Montmaray and they’re being Returned to Sender! He’d be so worried!” Another thought occurred to me. “Do you think it was in the newspapers? The bombing, I mean. The British government knows we’re here, because that policeman came round just after we arrived and told Aunt Charlotte we needed registration cards. Not that she paid the slightest bit of attention to him. But do you think people know why we’re here?”
Veronica finally opened her eyes, but only to glare at me.
“I suppose Daniel might have heard about it, anyway,” I went on, not allowing the glare to deter me. “Doesn’t he work as a journalist now?”
“Not that sort of journalist,” she mumbled, closing her eyes again.
“What sort? Veronica, don’t go back to sleep!”
“He writes for some little weekly in the East End,” she said, and turned over on her side.
“Perhaps we can see him when we go to London,” I said. “Did you know it’s a quarter to eight? Are you getting up today?”
“Is there any point?”
“Yes. We get to see the new governess in action! And Henry’s pony arrives this morning.” Veronica groaned.
“Aunt Charlotte wants us to have riding lessons, too,” I said. “She says it’s an essential part of a young lady’s education, that one can’t even begin to take part in Society if one can’t ride. That’s how most meet their future husbands, apparently—at a hunt or the races or a polo match. Or at dinner parties, where everyone talks about hunts and races and polo matches.”
“All the more reason not to learn to ride, then,” she said.
“They are awfully big, aren’t they?” I said, biting my bottom lip. “Horses, I mean. It’s such a long way down if one falls off.”
“Yes, I expect people die of it all the time.”
“You’re not being helpful,” I told her. “Sit up, and I’ll brush your hair while you finish waking up.”
She submitted to this, and then to me twisting the thick, dark waves into a knot at her nape. It was as I was pinning this in place that I returned to my original topic, the one that had been battering against the sides of my head for days, even though I’d made a very good attempt at ignoring it for a while.
“What are we going to do? I mean, about Montmaray, about the Germans.”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?”
But she’d shrugged into her dressing gown and was stalking off to the bathroom. Unfortunately, having a policy of talking about things doesn’t mean one’s conversational partners will actually answer, or even listen properly. I also happen to know that Veronica shoved her Brief History of Montmaray parcel at the very bottom of her wardrobe. Unopened.
Another person who is not very interested in discussing Montmaray’s invasion is Aunt Charlotte, who seems to assume “the authorities” will deal with it. But what authorities? I daren’t ask. Aunt Charlotte regards the whole subject as entirely unsuitable for young ladies. I also suspect she simply doesn’t care as much as we do. She hasn’t been back to Montmaray since my grandfather’s funeral in 1917, before I was even born, and she seems thoroughly entrenched in English Society now. Perhaps Montmaray is one of those childhood things she has put aside, along with hopscotch and teddy bears and Beatrix Potter.
I suppose that when she arrived here in England as a young bride, torn from her home and unable to do a thing about it, she just got on with it—threw herself into Society life, and then, after her husband died and there was no longer any possibility of children, channeled her relentless energies into managing her estate and building up her stable of racing horses and bossing around people on her charity committees. She had a responsibility to her husband, to her new country, not to look back. It was what her parents would have expected of her. It was the Sensible Thing to Do.
My aunt is extremely Sensible.
Anyway. Henry came down to breakfast that morning dressed in her new riding jacket and jodhpurs, trailed by her governess, Miss Thompson. I’ve never seen anyone wear so much pink at once; she’d even pinned a pink silk rose to her lapel, and every time Toby glanced in her general direction, her whole head blushed to match. Aunt Charlotte had apparently chosen the most girlish governess available, in the hope that all the pinkness would rub off on Henry.
“Did I say she’d last three weeks?” Toby muttered. “I meant three days.”
To make up for this, I gave her an especially encouraging smile, but I don’t think she noticed—she was too busy being terrified of Aunt Charlotte.
Simon wasn’t at breakfast, but he joined Veronica, Toby, and me in the library before luncheon. While Veronica and Toby grappled with Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Simon sat beside me on the window seat and told me all about Rebecca’s introduction to the clinic, which hadn’t been entirely smooth.
“Still, the therapists are very experienced,” he said, a little line appearing between his brows. “And she has a lovely bedroom, with a view of the sea. I think that will help, don’t you?”
Just as I succeed in hardening my heart towards Simon, he reveals something of himself that makes me adore him. To care so deeply a
bout Rebecca—a most unlovable person—is surely the mark of a kind soul, even if Simon does his best to disguise it. I was agreeing that sea views were extremely soothing when Henry burst into the room.
“What are you all doing in here? Talking, I suppose!”
“How was your first riding lesson?” Toby asked.
“Well! You won’t believe it!” exclaimed Henry. “I had to put both my legs on one side, in this silly girls’ saddle! I thought it would be like pictures of cowboys, a leg on either side of the horse. How else is one supposed to stay on? But Aunt Charlotte says that only boys get to ride like that! It’s the stupidest thing! It ought to be the other way round. It’s boys who have dangling bits between their legs—they ought to be the ones riding sidesaddle!”
“Quite right,” said Toby. “Especially if they have really large bits. The first time I got off a horse, I couldn’t walk properly for hours afterwards.”
Simon was suddenly overcome by a severe coughing fit and had to leave the room in search of a glass of water.
“Please tell me you didn’t say that in front of Aunt Charlotte,” I begged Henry.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it isn’t very ladylike,” said Veronica, straightening her face. “Nor gentlemanly. Come here, you’ve got mud all over you.”
“I fell off twice,” said Henry proudly as Veronica helped her out of her filthy riding jacket. “That was mostly the saddle’s fault, though. I do love my pony. He’s called Lightning. Isn’t that a good name? And the groom is called Ericson, and he’s going to see if he can find a proper saddle for me tomorrow.”
“Where’s Miss Thompson?” I asked.
“Lying down in her room,” said Henry. “She got dizzy when I fell off the first time. You’d think it was her who’d fallen on her head. Then she had a screaming fit because Carlos jumped up on her. He only wanted to see what was on her hat, and do you know what it was? Pink rabbit fur! No wonder he was confused.”
“Did I say three days?” Toby murmured to me. “I meant three hours.”
The FitzOsbornes in Exile Page 5