‘I’m sure you do,’ she said, warmly.
From the library the hum of masculine voices had been growing louder as we talked. Subliminally I had heard the tread of feet along the corridor, the chink of glasses on a tray. ‘The men have called for drinks,’ I said. ‘They must want whisky instead of tea. Perhaps the meeting has come to a close.’
‘I’d like some whisky too,’ Mrs Simpson said, stretching her feet out and groping with a silk-stockinged toe for her shoes. ‘I ought to go and freshen up. Will you show me the way?’
I showed her up to her room where, I was pleased to see, a fire burned and the best towels had been laid ready. Her maid stood by to draw her a bath, evening clothes were laid across the bed and on the dressing table a case of jewels stood open.
‘You won’t join us for dinner, I am told,’ she said to me as she paused on the threshold. I shook my head.
‘That’s a pity. Send the whisky, will you?’
As I came back down the stairs I was conscious of a sense of disappointment our afternoon’s tête-à-tête had come to an end and that I could not indeed bathe and dress and go down to dine with Mrs Simpson and the men. Why should I be pushed into the shadows? Why had life left me marooned and increasingly out of step with its progress? I could not recall the last time I had spent so pleasant a time, or so long a time with another woman. The rector’s daughters - all now married and moved away - and those well-to-do neighbours with whom I had briefly socialised were all my experience of such a thing. It had been comfortable and companionable. In spite of the disparity of our situations in life our circumstances had been surprisingly equal. I felt beneath the adverse publicity and manufactured scandal which attached itself to Mrs Simpson she was a woman like me, a woman who had found her soul-mate and would defy society’s disapproval in order to keep him.
My longing for John was accompanied by a stab of guilt about Giles Percy, and, as though conjured up by it, there he was in actuality at the foot of the stairs as I arrived in the hall. His look on seeing me is hard to describe. He blushed, and a film of sweat broke out on his upper lip. I thought at first he would swivel on his heel and rush off to some excuse of an important task but he remained rooted. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came forth. His narrowed eyes spoke questions, doubts. A groove between his eyebrows denoted confusion. His head was tilted in such a way that one does when one has misheard something, or heard something that is just too impossible to believe.
He isn’t sure, I thought to myself. He thinks something happened but he isn’t quite sure. He thinks it might have been a dream.
I put on my very coolest manner. ‘Good afternoon Mr Percy,’ I said. ‘How are the discussions going? I have spent the most pleasant afternoon with our lady guest.’
‘Oh! Very well,’ he stammered. ‘That is to say, quite well, in the main, although, on one or two points… but no. That’s all in camera as we say.’
‘Everything at Tall Chimneys is in camera’ I quipped, ambiguously.
Down the passageway I could see Colin emerging from the library flanking the King on one side, Mr Ratton flanking the other. The absurdity of this juxtaposition made me want to laugh out loud; Colin all scrawny with his ridiculous belt askew, Ratton - wobble-paunched and piggy-eyed, full of his own self-importance, and between them the King, suave and perfectly groomed, his hands clasped behind his back.
Percy’s gaze followed mine and it reminded him of something he needed to tell me. ‘They won’t be staying, after all,’ he murmured. ‘After dinner, they’ll discreetly withdraw.’
‘Very well,’ I nodded, and made quickly for the servants’ door.
As Giles had predicted, the King and Mrs Simpson drove away after dinner, and I didn’t see either of them again. I gathered a tone of discontent at the visit amongst the gentlemen left behind - it seemed things had not gone as well as Mosley and his cronies had hoped. Clearly the King had been hesitant about lending his voice to their cause. None of them stayed up late, and I was glad of it. I checked the fires and extinguished the lamps and took to my own bed as soon as I could, but sleep evaded me. I felt too tired to rest, strangely achy and uncomfortable. The image of the King and Mrs Simpson haunted me. I pictured them travelling through the night, the rain beading the windows of the car. I hoped she had a blanket, and was warm.
The next day, all was hustle and rush as the gentlemen packed up their papers and maps and departed. Cars drove them to the station to catch their trains. Only Colin, Ratton and the secretaries remained for luncheon, a scratch kind of meal, taken in haste.
I had the opportunity of a brief conversation with Colin before he too departed. I found him in the library staring out of the window at the soggy lawn and dripping trees beyond.
‘Have things gone as you hoped?’ I asked, gathering together the coffee cups which had been left on the table. I meant, really, whether he had been pleased with the way I had managed the house, but he misinterpreted my question.
‘Very much so,’ he said, busying himself with a sheaf of documents. ‘Mosley is pleased. We will forge ahead with our plans. He has been invited to visit Mussolini.’
‘I am glad for you,’ I said. ‘When do you think you’ll be back here? Shall I keep the cook and the maids on? If the house is to be kept in readiness, I can’t manage on my own.’
‘About that,’ Colin said, indicating I should take a seat. ‘Surely you don’t want to? Wouldn’t you rather come to London, with us?’
I was stunned. ‘I hadn’t thought,’ I stammered. ‘To your London house, do you mean?’
‘Ah, well temporarily, perhaps. But not long-term. Naturally you’d want to find your own way, wouldn’t you?’
I laughed, incredulously, ‘On what? I have no means!’
Colin made a show of rummaging for his handkerchief, and mopping his eyes. ‘Women work, these days,’ he said at last. ‘In shops and offices and factories. You could find something.’
The idea appalled me, not because I was shy of work, or considered myself above menial or clerical tasks, but because it suddenly hit me that to go out into the world would be to leave behind, probably forever, Tall Chimneys and my enchanted life with John.
‘What is to become of Tall Chimneys, then?’ I asked, in a small voice. ‘Do you intend to sell it? Or knock it down?’
‘Hardly,’ he sneered, ‘not when I have spent a king’s ransom on the repairs, and had all the silver brought back. I shall use it, from time to time, or allow my friends to do so.’ He gave me a straight look.
‘Do you mean Ratton?’ I spat.
‘It’s possible, amongst others. I don’t know why you have taken such a dislike to him. It’s he, to tell the truth, who suggested you might prefer to come away.’
That settled it. Nothing on earth would persuade me to go to London with Colin. ‘I told you,’ I cried, ‘he molested me. He almost raped me. He would have done if John…’
Colin made a moue of distaste. ‘He remembers things differently. And, really, you’re in no position to take the moral high ground, now, are you?’
His hypocrisy astounded me. ‘Neither me nor Mrs Simpson,’ I said, through gritted teeth, ‘but if Ratton had attacked her I think you’d have something to say about it.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’
I sighed. ‘So you’re going to keep Tall Chimneys on, then. You’ll need a housekeeper.’
‘Yes. But I’m offering you something else. Another opportunity. Don’t you think you’ve been cloistered here too long? Wouldn’t you like to step out into the world and see what’s out there?’
I considered his proposition. I could go to London, find work and somewhere to live - Ratton would never have to know where. John could work there, as well as here, and he’d be closer to the hub of things. Now I knew our relationship could never be regularised, we could never be ‘respectable’, we might as well be disreputable in London as here at Tall Chimneys, and perhaps it would be easier, in the metropolis. Th
at was, assuming John wished to carry on our relationship, or even came back from Europe at all. Without John, I didn’t think I could face the Capital. There was a chance that, if I stayed in Yorkshire, I’d stay alone. But at Tall Chimneys I felt safe. I knew, whatever befell out in the world, I could survive and even thrive if Colin were prepared to keep the house. From what I read in the newspapers, London was an awful place, dirty and crowded. Politically I did not like the way things were going. There were even whispers of war; German troops had already occupied the Rhineland and Italy was fighting in Abyssinia; where would be next?
I looked around the library. Even with all its unhappy associations - I could picture Ratton, even now, standing proprietorially on the hearth - in its newly refurbished state, it felt like part of me. The sense of belonging extended throughout the house to its remotest room; the furniture felt like my bones, the curtains and draperies like my skin. Up the slope of the driveway, through the belt of woodland, I pictured the gatehouse, my last bastion, my place of peace. Tall Chimneys comprised all my memories. It was my world.
‘No,’ I said, firmly. ‘Thank you, but no. I want to stay here, if you’ll allow it.’
‘Very well,’ Colin said. ‘Keep the gardener and a maid on, for now, but dismiss the rest. If we need to re-engage them, we will.’
Clearly, Colin had concluded our discussion, and done his duty, as he saw it, to his sister. He thrust the letters he had been holding into a folder and began patting his pockets, checking for his wallet and cigarette case. But there were some things I needed to get established. ‘You’ll fund their wages?’ I asked, ‘and the upkeep of the house?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He said, impatiently, making for the door. ‘But not on any lavish scale. Be prudent.’
‘Of course I will,’ I said. ‘And, Colin, just one more thing.’
He was already at the door. In the hallway, I could see Ratton loitering. The secretaries had assembled their boxes of documents and their portable type-writers on the steps. Giles Percy was loading things into the back of one of the motorcars.
‘Yes?’
‘About John. You have no objection…?’
‘If you want to make a fool of yourself over him, go ahead,’ he said, coldly. ‘You could have done much better for yourself. You do know that, don’t you?’
Ratton stepped forward just then and took the packet of papers from Colin’s hand. They both looked at me, Colin with an icy reproach, Ratton will ill-disguised contempt.
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ I said.
I dismissed the two gardeners, Mrs Bittern and the kitchen maid that afternoon. They cleared out their belongings and left immediately; the kitchen maid didn’t even finish washing the lunch dishes. I told Rose she could come to the house five days a week, and Kenneth likewise, but sent them both home early. I wanted Tall Chimneys to myself again.
The drizzle cleared towards the end of the afternoon and a watery sunshine warmed the vaporous air, giving it a brightness that was magical, like an aura; it touched everything and made it fresh and new. Everything shone, new-washed and lush with moisture; the lawn looked as though it had been strewn with diamonds. I wandered round my domain in a kind of dream. The gardens were burgeoning, neatly groomed as they had not been for many a year. The kitchen garden was already beginning to yield crops. The fountain splashed and, as I watched, a robin came and drank. He looked at me with a beady, conspiratorial eye.
Inside, everything was untidy with the haste of departure - furniture askew, cushions everywhere, beds unmade and damp towels in heaps. It was dirty with the kind of carelessness which only men can leave; clods of mud from unwiped boots, worms of cigarette ash, abandoned glasses. But I gloried in it. The house was sound once more, repaired, the neglect of years made good. The furnace was well-stocked, the generator purring like a cat on cream. Damp plaster had been replaced, paintwork refreshed, windows repaired. Better still, the house’s treasures had been restored; cabinets shone with curios, benign ancestors smiled vaguely down from the walls. In the strong room, I knew, the silver glowed dully. Perhaps by accident, perhaps on purpose, a new radiogram had been left behind, a vast improvement on the old Marconi I had been using in the servants’ hall. I felt more like a chatelaine than a skivvy, although, over the following days, there would be much work to be done.
As dusk fell I took myself into the kitchen and raided the refrigerator for left-overs. I took them to the dining room and helped myself to a glass of wine from a decanter on the sideboard. I dined in state; the curtains open onto the darkening night, a fire burning in the grate, the candles blazing. Music played from the radio. The house wrapped itself around me and I felt in some strange way as though I was not alone.
That night I took a bath in Mrs Simpson’s bathroom, running the hot water until it almost slopped over the sides of the tub. I wallowed in it, drinking more wine, hearing the strains of the light programme floating through the house and up the stairs. When I got out, tiredness overtook me and I climbed into the bed which the King and Mrs Simpson were to have shared, and slept like the dead.
1936 - 1941
The spring and summer of 1936 stand out in my memory as a kind of arcadia. True to his word, Colin arranged regular payments into a bank account and I had a cheque book I could draw on for supplies of fuel and groceries and to pay the wages of Rose and Kenneth. I abandoned immediately the dour uniform with which I had been supplied by Giles Percy, and ordered myself some new clothes. Nothing flashy, but much more à la mode for the time. I ordered two calf-length skirts, figure-hugging over the hips and nipped in at the waist, and some brightly coloured blouses and long-line jackets and cardigans for warmth. I had some floral print day dresses, too, which were ideal for the unusually warm weather we had that year. I subscribed to some women’s magazines; Nash’s and The Woman’s Companion, and from these I found I could stop wearing the dreadfully constricting underwear I had been struggling with and adopt newer and much more comfortable alternatives. The articles in the magazines brought me up to date with women’s issues, politics and literature as well as fashion. I found out, for the first time, about the work of Marie Stopes, who had opened one of her clinics in Leeds, not thirty miles away.
When Rose saw the parcels being delivered she asked me why I had not simply gone into town to buy my clothes. I had never dreamed of such a thing!
‘It’s easy, there’s a bus takes you all the way from the village,’ she said.
The idea of it sounded like an expedition to the North Pole, to me.
I spent my mornings helping Rose around the house. I thoroughly enjoyed her bright, gossipy chatter as she filled me in on the news in the village and I found myself laughing often, and lapping up that species of close female friendship I hadn’t enjoyed since my school days. I worked hard, although she did most of the really gruelling jobs. We closed off the north wing altogether and most of the bedrooms, keeping only a small number of the principal suites in readiness for guests, should they come. In the same way we made sure the library, dining room and drawing room were always clean, with fresh flowers in vases, but shrouded the rest. We aired all the rooms when the weather was clement, and, when it wasn’t we lit fires to keep the chimneys clear. I seriously toyed with the idea of moving my things to what I thought of as Mrs Simpson’s rooms but decided against it in case Colin or some of his cronies descended on us at the last minute; it would be embarrassing to have to move out in haste, and I didn’t want to put myself in the position of having to play the role of hostess.
In the afternoons I put on some of John’s old trousers and went out to help Kenneth in the gardens. I thoroughly enjoyed weeding the ornamental beds on my knees, sticking the peas and gathering in the produce. He mowed the lawns with a recalcitrant petrol mower he had stripped down and repaired, and clipped the hedges, laboriously, by hand. He didn’t say much; nodding at a shrub and telling me its name, eyeing the sky and predicting ‘rain later’ or ‘fair for the rest of the day.’ His convers
ation tended to boil down to the essential verb and object (‘ought to water the lettuces’; ‘need to order onion setts’), obfuscating somewhat who, exactly, was to do the watering or ordering. But we rubbed along and got things done between us, developing an almost telepathic connection so I knew without him having to tell me when to step in to hold an awkward branch for pruning, what screw or nut he might need to fix an engine, and he seemed instinctively to know when I needed help, handling a grouchy cockerel, for instance, and would appear as if by magic in the poultry yard just at the right moment. Most of the time we worked very happily in companionable silence. When Rose joined us for a cup of tea in the middle of the afternoon she talked enough for all three of us.
The greenhouses and raised beds were so productive I regularly sent them both home with baskets of fruit and vegetables and eggs. Financially, things were as difficult as ever for working people. Kenneth’s father had been killed in the war and he supplemented what his mother earned in the shop from the wages I paid him and what other money he could earn locally doing odd jobs. In return, Rose brought meat from her father’s shop and Kenneth brought baked goods; Mrs Greene was the pre-eminent baker of the WI. A grocer’s van began to call once a week, from which I bought some tinned and dry goods but I made it a habit to buy things from the local shop too.
With all my work and exercise I found I was ravenous at the end of the day. Sometimes, at night, I got up and feasted on food from the refrigerator, standing in the yellow light of its open door in my nightdress gobbling cheese and cold meat, or glugging milk straight from the pitcher in the pantry. I was sorry for it in the mornings, though, queasy and unsettled until mid-day.
As well as confectionery, Kenneth’s mother sent me an invitation to attend one of the WI meetings. My standing in the community was very moot and I agonised over whether I should attend for quite a while. In days gone by none of the family would have dreamed of attending an event organised by or for the ‘ordinary’ village people other than, in a rather patronising way, to have shown their faces as a mark of special favour or approval. I feared the few older village inhabitants who were ex-employees at the house might resent or suspect my participation. Loyalty to the Talbots and the ‘Big House’ might remain strong enough to quash any criticism but then again it might make people feel entitled to voice it. That I would be the target of criticism, I had no doubt. To some in the village I would be the eccentric recluse who lived at Tall Chimneys, to others, undoubtedly, I would be the Jezebel who lived over the brush with the artist. I quailed at the thought of censure but I also thirsted for companionship.
Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years Page 10