‘Do I have to forgive my sister as well?’
Veronica shook her head. ‘Not as long as you can forgive your husband.’
‘After that, he battered my brother. Dan couldn’t defend himself against a professional boxer. Do I forgive that as well? He bashes me too. Shall I forgive him that? How much am I supposed to forgive?’
‘The lot, if you want to keep your husband,’ declared Veronica. ‘A woman can’t do too much forgiving in this world, as well you know.’ She gave Lily a hard look. ‘What’s your choice? I’ll tell you: forgive him, or lose him.’
Lily gazed back at Veronica, horrified. As she did so, she also observed Veronica’s greying hair, tired eyes and crows’ feet. She said, ‘Albert pays your bills, doesn’t he? The rent – all that knitting wool. Nobody’s going to look after you if he doesn’t. That’s right, isn’t it?’
Veronica’s voice rose. ‘That’s only normal. Where does that come into it?’ She dropped her voice. ‘I’m only trying to help you keep your husband.’
‘Seems to me I’ve got a choice, Veronica, and you haven’t,’ Lily observed.
‘No call to get insulting.’
Nell Baddeley, professionally known as Lola Javrez the exotic dancer, drifted over, her dark hair falling out of her snood and the scarf around her neck disarranged. ‘Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?’
‘It’s not a fight at all,’ Veronica said with dignity. ‘Lily’s come to me for advice. I’ve given it and she doesn’t choose to accept it. That’s all. I’m going now.’ She stood up and called to the bar, ‘Albert! I think it’s time to go home.’
Her husband detached himself from the crowd and followed her out.
‘She’s got him well disciplined,’ Nell observed dispassionately. She looked closely at Lily. ‘Perhaps you should be getting back to your hotel, too. You look as if you need some rest. Would you like me and Roger to see you back?’
Lily agreed. She felt very confused. Nell detached Roger from the crowd at the bar, and they walked through wide streets to Lily’s hotel. Nell and Roger maintained a tactful silence, evidently knowing that something was wrong, but not asking any questions. Lily invited them in for a nightcap. Over a large glass of whisky, she said only, ‘Veronica’s a wonderful woman. Everybody respects her. But she doesn’t know everything.’
‘In the end it’s always down to you, that’s what I’ve found out. Nobody can make decisions for you,’ Roger remarked.
‘If you can’t decide what to do, don’t do anything at all, that’s my motto,’ declared Nell. ‘Things have a habit of sorting themselves out.’
Lily, soothed by these remarks, although they solved nothing, went upstairs to her big empty bedroom and fell deeply asleep.
In the morning she went to a local solicitor and filed divorce papers alleging adultery by Jack Finlay with her sister; also his cruelty to her. She sent a telegram to Dan in Hoxton, asking him to charge Jack with assault, and put the lease on the Lodge up for sale. Then she went to Veronica’s lodgings, where she found her and Albert eating kippers for breakfast. She told them both what she’d done.
Albert said, ‘Oh my Lord, Lily. Divorce. Couldn’t you arrange your affairs quietly? This doesn’t reflect well on you, you know.’
‘You don’t want this kind of scandal, dear, do you?’ asked Veronica. ‘Especially with your whole family involved. It’s not very nice. Like Albert says, if you want to part with Jack, you could do it discreetly.’
‘I’ve come here to tell you, Veronica, exactly what I’ve done, and to say I don’t care. Your advice, sit still and say nothing, is rotten advice, that’s what I’ve come to say,’ Lily told her. She repeated, ‘I say I don’t care.’
‘I see. You’ve come to abuse my wife,’ Albert said. ‘Well, you may be a big star, but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to stand by and see that.’
‘I was going to offer you a cup of tea,’ Veronica said. ‘I’m not going to now. This is quite uncalled for. If you want the whole world to know your family business, I’m not going to try to dissuade you. One thing’s for sure – it’ll all rebound on you. People’ll say Lily Strugnell, for all her fame and money, couldn’t keep her husband, sacrificed him to her own career. They’ll ask was it worth it, and they’ll answer no. That’s what’ll happen, and it’ll serve you right, Lily.’
‘Quite right,’ said Albert. ‘Quite right.’
‘Good,’ said Lily. ‘I’m glad – and good morning to you.’
Chapter Thirty–Two
1913
Eighteen months later, in May, Lily was pouring tea on the lawn for Emily and John Hislop, her neighbours, at her husband’s large house, Chivering, in Kent. She was bored to tears, and trying unsuccessfully to disguise it. What was undisguisable was the bulge under her loose sea-green gown.
‘So pleasant to be able to sit outside early in the year, Lady Stillwell,’ Emily Hislop was saying.
Lily felt she had heard this remark, or something very similar, a million times since she had married. It was pleasant out of doors at the end of summer, jolly indoors by a fire at the start of winter, delightful to walk through the garden and woods beyond in early spring, and charming to walk out after dinner as the days were lengthening. Everything at Chivering House was described as pleasant, Lily thought, which was quite right, because everything was pleasant. Pleasant to be in a lovely big house, pleasant to wake up in a comfortable bed in the morning to find the fire in the bedroom lit, pleasant to sit down in the evening to a good dinner, a fine bottle of wine and agreeable company. No one, she thought, could say this wasn’t pleasant, but pleasant wasn’t really enough. Or was it? She must have made a reply, for Emily Hislop went on, ‘I do hope it’s not a nuisance – our adding to your numbers at such short notice?’
’It’s always pleasant to see new faces and get a fresh viewpoint on life,’ responded Lily. The Hislops, who had come to tea and been invited by her husband Gordon to stay for dinner, had refused the invitation, as their son and a friend were arriving later that day for a visit. Whereupon Gordon had suggested they stay and that a servant should be sent the five miles to the Hislops’ home, inviting their son, Harry, and his friend to join the party at Chivering.
Lily knew that Gordon was bored most of the time, as men were if they had nothing to do, so she accepted with good grace the news that there would be first two, then four more for dinner. At least Harry Hislop was an actor, she thought, so he would have something to talk about other than crops, hunting, shooting, fishing, holidays, weddings, christenings, funerals and the affairs of family and friends unknown, usually, to her. The worst of it was that Gordon, once married, had declared that he did not like London, where the family had a house in Upper Brook Street. So they were here at Chivering all the time.
Although Harry Hislop was apparently part of the Constance Albury company, and therefore on the legitimate stage, no actor, reasoned Lily, could be quite as dull as the Stillwells and their circle. Even if anything exciting happened, they muffled it deliberately, as if any incident disturbing placid waters was indecent, like a naughty chorus in the middle of Handel’s Messiah.
Well, Lily brooded, she’d got herself into this, and Christ only knew how she was going to go on putting up with it, especially with a baby coming. She shifted uneasily in her chair. They made you feel thoroughly uncomfortable, babies, gave you aches and pains all over the place, made lumps where no lumps had been before. It was like an invasion, and as for childbirth, she didn’t look forward to it at all. It was agonising, she knew that, and you could die. And to go through all that to produce another of these huge Stillwells, like Gordon’s brothers, Lionel and Thomas, more brawn than brains, was a horrible idea. Did the world really require any more Stillwells, she asked herself, when there were so many of them already? Still, at least it would have enough to eat, and wasn’t likely to stray and go under the wheels of a brewer’s dray in Whitechapel Road and get smashed to strawberry jam. It would be brought up wit
h care by staff paid to make sure each and every Stillwell baby grew up safely to take its place in the world. Perhaps she’d love it when she saw it, thought Lily – and perhaps she was the King of Siam.
‘John!’ Lily’s husband hailed his neighbour. ‘Servant’s back with a message – your son and his friend have just arrived at your house. They say they’d be delighted to come to dinner. That’s good – there’ll be eight of us now: the Lumleys, yourselves and us. Such a pity Mercy’s away.’ Not for me, thought Lily, who found the Hislops’ daughter limp and snobbish.
It had hardly been easy for a music-hall star to fit in as Lady Stillwell. In fact, she had not; but some people had been prepared to accept, even enjoy her for what she was. Mercy had been one of those who did not. This had annoyed Lily, although later she realised that Mercy – who never spoke to Lily, and if Lily spoke to her pretended she could not hear her – was probably jealous but would never admit it. A surprising number of the upper-class women she came across, whether friendly or unfriendly, were secretly jealous of her, Lily concluded, nor was the envy always because she had married into the peerage. No, some of it was because she’d made a career for herself, had been famous and very well paid. Of course, they had to pretend to despise a music-hall artiste – but however secure they might feel socially, Lily thought, many women couldn’t help feeling wistful.
It hadn’t taken her long to realise that on the whole, the upper classes left all their money to their sons, particularly the oldest. The women and girls were left out. The tiaras they wore didn’t really belong to them, but were on loan until they were passed on to the next generation. They often owned very little of anything themselves. Of course, to have to work was considered undesirable, merely a last resort when there was no other choice. Nevertheless, undesirable as her career was supposed to have been, she knew the women envied her.
Gordon had taken his place at the tea table and was talking to the Hislops, so Lily seized her opportunity to pass a limp hand across her forehead and say she felt a little tired and would go and rest. Gordon, short and thick-set, jumped to his feet and offered to take her in, but Lily refused. She left Emily Hislop angry, she knew. Emily was aware that Lily was perfectly well. She just needed Lily there so that Lily could put her foot in it, as she so often did. Then she could dine out on another of Lady Stillwell’s gaffes and blunders. ‘Life here’s so boring,’ Lily muttered to herself as she walked into the house, followed by her dog. ‘Even passing round the sandwiches the wrong way keeps them going for a fortnight.’
Upstairs in her room, Lily lay down on her bed. It smelt faintly of lavender. The coverlet, at the bottom of which the dog had settled illicitly, was white and crisp. Every surface was polished. A fire was laid, though not lit, in the grate and there were flowers on a small table in the window. She put her hands behind her head, tried to ignore the lump under her dress and considered her position. At least pregnancy made you calm, she thought, though not necessarily happy.
She was now nearly twenty-seven. When she’d married the previous year, that had seemed a great age. She’d felt quite old. In fact, she now realised, she wasn’t old, just worn out. By that stage she’d worked for a year without a break to pay off the debts accumulated during the Streatham period. She’d had to sell her house and all the furniture. The divorce had not been cheap either – yet another reason for doing four or five houses a night, every night, in London, which often meant being at the Oxford in Oxford Street at half past eight, the Metropolitan in Edgware Road at nine, the Trocadero in Great Windmill Street at half past, the Alhambra in Leicester Square at ten, and often enough finishing the evening with a rush to a music hall out of central London, in Hammersmith, the East End or south London, by eleven. Six nights a week, in and out of a carriage, often doing her make-up in the conveyance, and often enough alone. Sometimes she’d invite another artiste, bound for the same theatre, to join her in her cab; sometimes Sam Stackpoole would be with her, sometimes her father; but all too frequently she’d be by herself, clopping through dark streets in her stage costume and make-up. By the early hours of the morning she’d be back, exhausted, at the two rooms she’d taken, without caring where she went, in a hotel in Russell Square.
The divorce between Jack and Lily had ravaged the Strugnells. Divorce alone was bad enough in a respectable family. To cite a sister as co-respondent made it far worse. Although, as the law stood, Jack could have divorced her merely for adultery, Lily had been startled to discover that in order for her to end the marriage, she had to produce evidence not only of Jack’s infidelity but of cruelty, bigamy, incest or sodomy. Consequently, she’d had to produce witnesses to her own beatings-up by Jack, her black eyes, cracked ribs, bruises. Queenie pleaded with her to drop the adultery charge and concentrate only on cruelty. Why, she demanded, did Lily want to drag her sister’s name through the courts? Lily responded that she didn’t care whose name was dragged through the courts as long as she got her divorce. Her own name was perfectly clear. Queenie then tried to persuade her to ask only for a legal separation, which, she said, would attract less public attention.
It was hard for Lily to believe, but her mother was siding with the guilty couple. Dan reported that there’d been a sentimental meeting between Queenie, Rose and Jack. This had taken place in the parlour of the small house in Hoxton where the family now lived under Charlie’s new rules – Lily was not to give money to any of the family. He had allowed her to put up the money for Dan and Lennie’s apprenticeships. Both were now employed in a piano factory in Camden Town. This, said Charlie, was quite enough.
The result of the meeting between Queenie, Rose and Jack was unknown to Charlie, who had been at work at the time. Afterwards he resolutely refused to comment on what he heard of it from Queenie. ‘I don’t know what was said, gel,’ he told Lily. ‘Your ma tried to drag it all up when I came home from work, and I told her to shut up and get me something to eat or I’d walk out of the house. Which she did – shut up, I mean – and handed me some little cakes and sandwiches – the broken meats from their tea party. If you want to hear what was said and done, ask Dan. He’s had to listen to it, over and over. And he thinks you should know, though Queenie swore him to secrecy.’
Lily met Dan at a chophouse in the Strand, bought him a big supper and asked him what had happened.
‘Ma says I’m not to tell you,’ he said, eating voraciously. ‘But I said I ought. Then she said she’d kill me if I told. But I’m disgusted. She made sure they only came while we were at work, only Jack and Rose in the house. They had quite a little party, apparently – salmon sandwiches, chocolate cake, the lot. I said, “What are they – honoured guests or what?” She told me she wanted to bring the family together again. How can she? With what’s been going on? And now a divorce.’ He looked at his sister. ‘What have you ever done to Ma that she should side with Rose against you?’
‘Got out of Whitechapel, I suppose,’ said Lily. ‘That’s my crime, in her eyes, making something of myself.’
‘It’s hard to believe,’ Dan said.
‘You might as well believe it because it’s true,’ Lily told him. ‘But what happened apart from Ma’s desire to reconcile the family?’
‘That’s hard to believe as well.’
‘Tell me,’ Lily demanded grimly.
‘Well, from her account,’ Dan said, ‘Jack’s planning to counter-sue. He’s saying he’ll accuse you of adultery.’
Lily was appalled. ‘That bastard. I never – honestly, Dan, I swear to you. Who’s he picked on?’
‘Sam Stackpoole.’
‘Sam? The most respectable family man in London? He can’t believe that!’
‘He’s had your place watched – reckons Sam’s come out of your hotel in the morning time after time,’ Dan said uncomfortably.
‘He stays at the hotel some nights when it’s too late to go home. He doesn’t like to disturb Becky. I’m grateful, I’m so bloody lonely. But he takes another room.’
‘T
he detective’s seen you both in the bar at night – then you go upstairs together. Look, Lily, I dare say you go to your own rooms, but what’s it going to look like in court?’
‘Oh my God,’ said Lily. ‘Oh my God. The villains. I bet Rose and Jack know I never… I mean, Sam of all people – they know I never did anything with Sam.’ She paused. ‘Oh, Jesus, what’s his wife going to think? Becky couldn’t stand it. He’s everything to her.’
Dan said, ‘I reckon it’s a plan to stop you from divorcing Jack. If he threatens to cite Sam Stackpoole, you’ll call off the case. That’s what I think they plotted. They knew you’d take it hard, the idea of dragging Sam in. See, Jack doesn’t want a divorce, otherwise he’ll have to marry Rose. Rose wants one, but not like that. She don’t want what she did made public, would do anything to avoid it. Because of scandal, the family name, the neighbours – all that.’
‘Jack doesn’t want to marry Rose?’ asked Lily.
‘I don’t think so,’ her brother told her. ‘He doesn’t want the burden. His career’s going down the drain. He’s losing fight after fight. It looks like he’s without Laschmann. With things as they are I reckon he thinks he don’t need Rose on top. She’ll be no help to him. But Rose and Ma have put their heads together. They want Rose married but they don’t want the scandal. They want you to get a legal separation now; then if you two stay apart for a few years one of you can sue the other for desertion. Then Rose is supposed to marry Jack. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.’
Lily put her well-arranged coiffure in her hands. Two men sitting in the opposite booth stared. ‘Lily Strugnell,’ one said. ‘Looks as if the young man is giving her trouble,’ said the other.
Elizabeth and Lily Page 32