by Murray Pura
“Thanks awfully, Mum,” James added.
They raced each other to the kitchen.
Emma watched them go. She smiled, frowned, and then smiled again. She was still smiling when she picked up the phone to call Jeremy.
A month later, in late May, Emma ushered Jane into the parlor, where Jeremy was reading the Times. The day was warm, so there was no peat fire and all the windows were open, lace curtains fluttering. Jeremy glanced up and got quickly to his feet.
“Jane.” He extended his healthy hand. “This is a surprise. How are you?”
She smiled tightly. “I’m not badly off, Uncle Jeremy. I’m sorry to pop in unexpectedly, but I really needed someone to talk to and I wondered if you and Aunt Emma—”
“Of course, of course. Take a seat here. I was just reading about Stanley Baldwin’s resignation. Fancy having Neville Chamberlain running the country now.”
“I’ll just ask Suzanne to brew some tea,” Emma said and left.
Jeremy smiled as he sank back down in his armchair. “The boys will be sorry to have missed you. They’re out training with the Auxiliary, you know.”
“Yes, that’s why I came today. I knew they’d be gone.”
“I see.”
Emma returned and took a chair. “The tea will be along directly.”
Jane half smiled. “I…I feel terribly. Peter and James are such princes…such princes.”
“Why, what’s troubling you?” asked Jeremy.
“I…I…” She looked helplessly from Jeremy to Emma. “It’s quite ridiculous. But ever since the incident with Lord Cheswick’s son and the others, I can’t…well, I can’t…”
“It’s quite all right, my dear,” soothed Emma. “Whatever you tell my husband and me remains with us. No one will hear anything at all about it. Certainly not the twins.”
“The twins! I wish I could tell them. I wish somebody would tell them for me!”
“Why…” Emma stared at Jane. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I love them. I love both of them. It’s awful, it’s wretched, but there you are.”
“Jane…” Emma began and stopped, not knowing what else to say.
“I’ve tried to talk myself out of it. I’ve tried to pray myself out of it. It’s no use. I don’t love one more than the other. I love them both the same…I mean, I love them both terribly. But I can’t marry one and not the other, can I? So I’m wretched, absolutely wretched. I shall have to marry someone else who I don’t love as much as either of them. I’m doomed to a life without love and without a shred of passion.”
“Steady, there,” said Jeremy. “You’re still young—”
“I’m almost twenty!”
“Yes, yes you are, but waiting until twenty-one or twenty-two is perfectly fine. Even twenty-three is not unheard of.”
“Twenty-three! I’d be an old maid!”
“Perhaps,” suggested Emma in a quiet voice, “another year or two would straighten matters out in your mind.”
“Oh, Aunt Emma, I can’t possibly wait that long. I would like…well, I would like to be held, you know…to be held by one of them. I want that very much. I’m tired of dreaming about it. I should like to go to the flicks with them, or to a pub, or take a walk along the Thames, but not with both at the same time, just one, just one of them with his arm around me. But if I choose one over the other, if I choose Peter over James, I’ll break James’s heart, and if I choose James over Peter, I’ll break Peter’s heart. I can’t do that—I could never do that. So I must date another man I don’t give a fig for. It’s dreadful. This whole dilemma has flattened my world completely.”
“Calm yourself, my dear.” Emma pulled her chair over to Jane and sat next to her, rubbing her arm. “It’s not as bad as all that. Surely a little bit more time—”
“Aunt Em, I’ve kept it bottled up long enough. I’m going to burst, I am.”
“Listen.” Jeremy leaned forward. “What you’ve just suggested may yet save the day, Jane.”
“I haven’t mentioned anything, Uncle Jeremy, except that I’m going mad.”
“No, no. You ask Peter to walk with you along the Thames on the Friday. You ask James to take you to the pub on the Saturday. The next weekend Peter takes you to a movie on one night and James takes you to an art gallery on another night.”
“They won’t agree to that.”
“Oh, I think they will.”
“But what if…what if…” She began to blush, the dark red spreading out from her neck over her face.
Emma patted her arm. “I know my boys. Peter will not begrudge James a little goodnight kiss from you so long as there is a goodnight kiss in store for him.”
“I can’t play one off the other.”
“You aren’t playing one off the other. You’re just enjoying the company of both of them. Fairly. Equally. Without any desire whatsoever to provoke jealousy in either of their hearts.”
“I don’t want them fighting over me.”
Jeremy and Emma both laughed. “They already fight over you.” Jeremy was smiling. “This will just make it more interesting for both of them.”
“I wish I could believe that. I adore Peter and I adore James. I don’t want either of them getting hurt.”
Emma patted Jane’s arm again. “If you give them the news that you are going to go out with both of them, you will make their day, believe me. Why, you will make their week, make their year. You know what they will say the instant you tell them, don’t you?”
Jane looked at Emma. Then a smile worked its way over her lips.
“Faint heart never won fair lady!” cried Jane as she laughed, tossing her hair back.
Jane’s sudden happiness, it seemed to Emma, brightened the room more than the sunlight that came and went as clouds moved back and forth over the face of the sky.
The second week of June found Jeremy in his study at the church finishing a letter to Albrecht Hartmann while simultaneously working on his sermon for the coming Sunday.
“Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” he murmured, reading from an open Bible in front of him. He took off his round-rimmed glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose tightly between his thumb and forefinger. “Liberty to do what? Liberty to be who you are in Christ? But what does that look like exactly?”
He returned his glasses to his eyes and began to scribble on a sheet of paper with a fountain pen.
“People worry there will be another war,” he said out loud as he wrote. “They worry their sons will be sent to trenches in France and Belgium.
What kind of freedom is God able to give their spirits in anxious times like these? And how do they acquire this freedom? Prayer? Faith? Is it already in them? Or do they need to pull it down from heaven and tuck it into their hearts?”
He turned from the Bible and his sermon and wrote a PS at the bottom of his letter to Albrecht.
Listen. I am doing a series on the Corinthian correspondence. I’m not sure how fast our notes are going to make their way back and forth between England and Switzerland, but I wonder what you think of 1 and 2 Corinthians. You will not be able to respond in time to offer advice on 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” for I am preaching on that this Sunday. Still, I would like to know your thoughts on it for I may revisit it later in my series, perhaps in August or September. Danke.
He turned back to his sermon, read what he had written, scratched it out with long, smooth strokes of his pen, and started writing a new paragraph underneath.
“Liberty to be free from fear. Liberty to be free from hate. Liberty to liberate others.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Yes?” He kept his eyes on the open Bible and the notes he was scribbling. “How can I help you?”
“Reverend Sweet?” A man’s tentative voice.
Jeremy glanced at the door. “Come in, please.”
Skitt and his wife, Montgomery, entered
the study.
Jeremy pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. “Libby’s maid and butler, isn’t it? How do you do?”
He came around the desk and extended his hand.
“We’re sorry to interrupt, Reverend, but we’ve come on a matter of some urgency.” Skitt shook Jeremy’s hand. “Is this an inconvenient time? We should have rung you up first but—”
“Not at all, not at all. Pray take a seat, both of you.” Jeremy nodded and smiled at Montgomery and returned to his chair behind the desk. “I trust you are both well?”
Skitt looked white and narrow as he sat facing Jeremy, and so did Montgomery.
“Well, Reverend, here’s the thing. My wife is with child—we only found out a few days ago—and it presents us with something of a dilemma.”
“Why, that’s wonderful news, wonderful! Congratulations!”
“Thank you, sir, thank you. But we don’t know what to do about it all.”
“What?” Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “This is a wanted child, isn’t it?”
“Oh, very much, Reverend, very much—don’t take my meaning wrong. It’s just that…well, Lady Libby told us a few years back it would be difficult to keep us on if we ever decided to start a family of our own, you know. She said she wouldn’t be keen on Monty fussing over a baby and trying to tend to household chores at the same time.”
“How busy are you?”
“Lady Libby’s on her own a fair bit, so she goes out to visit her sisters and the house is easy enough to keep tidy then. But she often has the others over and that keeps us running. And when Commander Fordyce is in town he likes to have some of the officers up to the London house here and stay over, and that’s a lot of work for two pairs of hands, sir.”
“Quite.”
“But we feel we could keep up even with a baby in our lives. Montgomery would have him in our room and no one would hear a thing. We need the work, Reverend, and there’s a good understanding between ourselves and Lady Libby. I shouldn’t like to see that come to an end.”
“No, neither would I.” Jeremy leaned forward in his chair. “Let me pray with you and encourage you by way of the angel’s words to Mary: ‘Nothing is impossible with God.’ It does seem to be a delicate situation. Libby will want to know how you’ll manage with a baby to tend to if you already find it hard enough on your busy days. But let us see if God will not find for us a way.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Montgomery smiled a small smile for the first time. “Thank you, Reverend. I have high hopes.”
Jeremy smiled in return. “Talk to her today. After you have left St. Andrew’s. Tell her you are with child. Then ring me up with the news. I have high hopes as well.”
Skitt and Montgomery spoke with Libby after they had served her high tea at four that afternoon. She immediately set down her cup and laughed.
“Why, that’s marvelous news!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you find this house is much too quiet without Commander Fordyce or Jane?”
“We thought your ladyship might find a baby in the house overwhelming.”
“Overwhelming? It will be a godsend. I’m dreadfully lonely and I should like nothing better than to help care for the infant. When is all this happening, Monty?”
“In January, my lady.”
“That shall give us ample time to get a room prepared for the infant. Of course there’s the problem of what colors to use. But blues work with boys and girls, don’t you think? So long as the blues are not too dark.” She lifted her teacup to her lips but set it down again without drinking. “I’m so pleased. It is something of an answer to prayer. A baby I can fuss over at last.” She caught the look on both their faces. “Whatever’s the matter?”
“We thought…well, we thought,” Skitt stumbled, “you might want us on our way with a child coming.”
“What? However did you two get that idea? How could I possibly manage either the home here in Camden Lock or at HMS Picadilly in Plymouth without the pair of you? Especially when all the captains and admirals and whatnot descend upon us? No, no, we shall see this through together. If you cannot be with the child, Monty, I shall, and we shall spell each other. Jane will be ecstatic, you know, absolutely ecstatic. I expect her to come down from Oxford more often once we tell her the news.”
Montgomery beamed. “I’m so glad to hear the enthusiasm in your voice. Will Jane be home for supper? May I tell her about the baby?”
“Jane home for supper? Not if the twins have their way. No, she is out watching the pair of them fly. Then there is some sort of RAF Auxiliary ball. Lady Emma will be her chaperone. Nevertheless, sometime after midnight, I expect our Cinderella to return. I’m sure what you have to say will be the perfect cap to her evening.”
Around two in the morning, Emma Sweet slipped under the covers at the St. Andrew’s Cross vicarage. She did not do it quietly. Jeremy mumbled in his sleep.
“Are you awake?” asked Emma.
“I’m not,” he said into his pillow.
“The ball was quite a success. At least in terms of how matters went as far as James and Peter are concerned.”
“Mmm.”
“Jane danced exactly as many times with one as she did with the other. She danced with some of the other Auxiliary pilots as well, which I think was a good thing. And I’m given to understand they each had their first kiss. So they are flying without airplanes.”
“Do they tell you everything?”
“Probably not.”
“So they could have had more than one kiss each.” Jeremy was still speaking into his pillow.
“They could.”
“No pistols at dawn between them?”
“Oh, never. It’s the grandest sport, you see. The loser has to stand for the winner as the best man. And if one of them dies the other has to make sure he marries her on behalf of both of them.”
Jeremy snorted. “What nonsense.”
“Not to young men who have their blood up.”
“We’ll need to pray some extra prayers. The Catholic priest may have to help us as well. And the Baptists and Methodists.”
“My heavens. All the heavy artillery.”
“There’s Billy to worry about next.”
“I don’t think he’s at all interested in girls. It’s rugby and football and cricket that take up his waking thoughts, dear.”
Jeremy put his pillow over his head. “Don’t you believe it for a minute.”
July, 1936
Kensington Gate, London
“Good night, Winston. Our butler will show you to your room.”
“Very good, Lord Preston. What time is breakfast?”
Lord Preston smiled, his hands in his pockets. “There is a first breakfast at eight. A second breakfast, specially designed for the more leisurely pace of summertime, is at eleven.”
“Ah. The very thing. Shall I see you and Lady Preston at the second breakfast or will I be on my own?”
“You shall certainly see us there, Winston.”
“I will look forward to that. Can the butler bring the newspapers up to my room in the morning?”
“Certainly. Any particular time?”
“As soon as they arrive. He can just place them at my door. I’ll keep an eye out. Though a light tap or two wouldn’t be out of place.”
“I think the butler can manage a light tap or two, can’t you, Tavy?” asked Lord Preston.
“I can, my lord. The papers will be at your door first thing, Mr. Churchill.”
Churchill nodded. “Thank you very much indeed.”
Tavy led the way down the hall to Churchill’s room. Lord Preston watched them go and reflected on how the butler and the politician had the same gait and build and height. Then he knocked gently on a nearby door and opened it.
Lady Preston was sitting up in bed reading Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, glasses halfway down her nose.
“Winston’s abed,” said Lord Preston, shutting the door behind him.
“Have his feelings improved since we dined together?”
Lord Preston took a chair by his wife’s bed. “Not really. He is stoic one moment and the tears are in his eyes the next.”
Lady Preston put down her book and removed her glasses. “Do you truly believe he is finished politically?”
“Very near it.”
“Just because he warns Parliament about the German military?”
Lord Preston shook his head. “It’s more than that. He’s been backing the wrong horses all along. Supporting Mussolini till just this year. Supporting Franco in the war in Spain—when Guernica was firebombed he was accused along with the fascists. Fighting against India’s independence, fighting against granting her Dominion status in the face of strong support in the House. For heaven’s sake, he supported the Japanese in their invasion of Manchuria. And what’s freshest in everyone’s minds is his support of Edward VIII even when the king made it clear he would throw over the throne to marry that American divorcee—the whole House howled against him the day he made that speech, howled and raged like a North Sea tempest. I’ve rarely seen such viciousness. No, he’s done, my dear. The Conservative Party does not trust him, the House of Commons does not trust him. He is left with his dogs, his wife, his estate, his oil painting, and his writing. I expect that will have to be enough.”
“But you trust him, William.”
“I suppose I do.”
“Why? When he has made so many errors in judgment?”
Lord Preston half smiled. “I don’t know, unless God Almighty is directing my thoughts and inclinations. I like Winston. I know he won’t always be in the right, but there’s a dogged determination and love of England I find refreshing. And often enough he is spot on in his judgments. The rest of us hope Nazism and Communism will simply fall apart and disappear from the earth. He knows better, and he forces us to look reality in the eyes by means of his insight and his eloquence. So I am for him despite his faults. But alas, my being for him will help him not at all in the political arena.”
“Surely you have some influence, William. You were able to make the university come around, weren’t you? James and Peter will be back at classes this fall and their suspensions stricken from the record.”