She grimaces. “Thank you, I’m bearing up.”
It’s a relief to be with friends after her morning’s adventures. She squashes herself onto a chair next to Kathleen. “How was the lying-in-state?”
“The queues were long and frightful. The whole thing were real gloomy.” Maud gives a brief laugh. “I’m glad I saw it, but honestly! All them droopin’ heads, all that mournin’. Makes you want to put on your glad rags and dance the night away.”
Ravenous, the girls order eggs and chips; then tackle apple crumble with thick custard, and cups of scalding sweet tea.
“I’m paying for us all,” Eleanor says firmly. “I’ve just sold my pearls. The minute I get home, I’ll be sorting out the bills, putting the money into a bank account and starting to count the pennies. This is my celebration.”
She listens, fascinated, to Maud’s stream of gossip.
“The Prince of Wales had been plannin’ to run off with Mrs Simpson and to hell with everyone. Then his father died, so he put his plans on hold.” Maud scoops the last of her crumble. “Course, you can’t believe everythin’ you hear, but I reckon there’s truth behind the rumour.”
“Have you seen Mrs Simpson in the flesh?” Kathleen asks.
“I were in the hall once when Wallis arrived for a posh dinner. She were dressed to the nines in a slinky frock, and glitterin’ with jewels. She’s glamorous to look at, but her voice is hard as nails. She thinks everyone should curtsey to her.”
“Did you have to?”
Maud drops her voice. “Wallis Simpson were born illegitimate in Baltimore from some impoverished ‘grand’ family. She ain’t never done a day’s work in her life. She’s got two husbands still livin’ but pretends the first one doesn’t exist. Curtsey I don’t think! She ain’t got no money of her own, only what her husband Ernest gives her – and now, of course, Edward.” Maud crooks her little finger as she sips her tea. “And what do you think he does the minute he becomes king? He cuts the wages of his staff by ten per cent! They’re that angry about it, especially when Wallis is seen with a new string of emeralds.”
“Perhaps,” Kathleen suggests, “he’s tryin’ to economise?”
“He’s got plenty of money,” Maud says grimly. “Wallis is behind the petty meanness. Some staff have worked for the royals all their lives. Now they’re scared that Wallis will tell Edward to sack ’em.” She looks across at her sister. “Be warned, my girl. Don’t you never work for that woman yourself! If she ever asks you, pick up your skirts and run a mile.”
Looking for an Answer
Woodstock, That Same Evening
Eleanor reaches home feeling stiff and weary. The fresh Woodstock air comes as a relief after the stench of London’s horse-drawn carts and muddy traffic. But she dreads facing her mother with her news from The Topaz Gallery. As for being Walter’s second wife – and his second choice? – that news could certainly wait, possibly for ever…
If her father had not been in London last December, where had he been? Eleanor realises how little she knows about his life. He’d simply been the major player in hers, one she’d naïvely assumed would always be there for her.
Does she have to tell her mother the truth? Once she begins to lie, one falsehood will lead to another. She wonders where it will end.
The evening has already settled in. Woodstock’s shops are closed, its streets stand empty. But Eleanor’s startled to see her own house is plunged in darkness.
Vera meets her at the door, putting a finger to her lips.
“Your mother’s in there,” she points to the drawing room, whose door is firmly closed, “with Sylvia Dunkley and two of Sylvia’s friends.”
Eleanor throws off her hat and coat. “Why are they in the dark?”
“They’ve lit a pair of candles.” Vera rolls her eyes. “They’re having a séance.”
“What?”
“Come into the kitchen. You must be worn out and famished. I’m sure this is the last thing you want to hear.”
Eleanor eats supper and listens.
“Mrs Dunkley arrived, unexpected like, at two this afternoon, in spite of having spent all yesterday afternoon here. After about an hour, your mother comes out, looking flushed and excited. She tells me Mrs Dunkley had two sons. Both of them were killed in the Great War within a year of each other. Mrs Dunkley claims she regularly ‘speaks’ to them ‘on the other side’ – and gains great comfort from it.”
Eleanor groans.
“Mrs Dunkley, she persuades your mother that ‘talking’ to your father and listening to his voice will reassure her, allow her to find answers to many questions, including why he’s left his money to Felix Mitchell – and who the man is.”
Eleanor splutters, “Good grief, Vera. Séances are utter nonsense. Mummy’s never going to find sensible answers by burbling into a glass ball.”
“Course she isn’t, but would she listen to a word I said? She tells me Mrs Dunkley would be back this evening with some friends. Then she draws the curtains, sets up a table, puts on her favourite black frock, does her hair. Proper flustered, she was. Got herself into a right state.”
“This is going to make things a whole lot worse. Mummy’s got to come to terms with what’s happened and move on, not rake over the past.” Eleanor pushes her plate aside. “Do you think she’ll listen to me?”
“You can try, dear heart. Trouble is…” Vera hesitates. “If you get too fierce with her, I’m frightened she’ll disappear to Mrs Dunkley’s and carry on her séances there. I’d rather she stayed here, so I can keep an eye on her.”
***
Depressed, exhausted, Eleanor clumps up to her room. She opens her bag and digs out the envelope. She sits at her desk, counting the notes again. Then she begins to make solid, sensible plans.
She and her mother meet over breakfast next morning.
“How was London?” Anne asks listlessly.
“Crowded. Rainy. Gloomy. Everyone was in mourning. I was glad to get home.”
“Did you sell the pearls?”
“Yes, Mummy. At a jewellers in Bond Street.”
“Hmm.” Anne gulps her tea. “I hope they gave you a good price.”
“Good enough. I don’t have the experience to haggle.”
“And that gallery in St John’s Wood.” Anne straightens her back. “How was that?”
Eleanor says quickly, “It was closed. I’ll go back another time.” She moves the conversation onto the attack. “Vera tells me you held a séance with Sylvia.”
“So what if I did? It’s not against the law.”
“It may not be illegal, but it’s certainly a waste of time.”
“Then perhaps you’d like to tell me who Felix Mitchell is!”
“You know I can’t.”
“Then kindly let me find out! By doing it my way!”
“It’s a crazy way, Mummy. I don’t want you to be more upset than you already are.”
“I know.” Anne’s expression softens. “You’re only trying to look after me. By the way, a letter came for you yesterday. It’s over there.”
Standing by the window, Eleanor tears it open.
“It’s from Miss Darbishire. She thinks I’m still in shock and incapable of making a rational decision.”
“And what does that mean?”
Eleanor scans the neat handwriting. “She wants me to reapply for my place and start my course again in the autumn. She can’t guarantee I’ll be successful, but my application will be given priority. She wants me to think seriously about my future.”
“It’s her own future she’s talking about, not yours.”
Eleanor flushes. “That’s not fair, and you know it.”
Anne shrugs. “How can a woman like that know anything about real life? She’s never married or had child
ren. She lives in her ivory tower, protected from the world. She can’t know what it’s like to love someone for twenty years and lose them in a moment of folly.”
“You’re being most unkind—”
“All those books, all that papery knowledge. Do you really want to spend your life as a boring old blue stocking? Teaching snotty-nosed children in smelly classrooms?”
Eleanor meets her mother’s eyes with difficulty. She’s beginning to hate her.
“Not much, but it’s an honest way of earning a living. Not that you’d know anything about that.”
Anne flushes. She seems to have nothing left to say.
“I’ll tell Miss Darbishire I’m thinking about her offer,” Eleanor says.
Anne finds something. “How can you afford to return, now we’re little better than paupers?”
Eleanor folds the letter into its envelope. Her hands are shaking. “Sell the cottage in St Ives? I don’t know, but I’m going to see Robin Parker tomorrow. I worked it out last night. I can afford to pay Vera’s wages and our household bills for the next six months.”
Anne’s cheeks flame with two bright red spots. “God Almighty, Eleanor! All this scrabbling around for the nearest penny… It’s so humiliating—”
“We have a problem and we’re solving it.”
“I know.” Anne, also trembling, puts down her cup. “Look, there’s something else you could do… Could you call on Jonny Giffen? That big linen press in the spare room. It’s Cuban mahogany, been in our family since 1775. I love it, but I could store the sheets and blankets somewhere else. Ask Jonny to pop in and look at it.”
“Shall I tell him why?” Eleanor knows this has been a difficult decision for Anne. “Take him into our confidence?”
“Why not? He’s a dear, sweet man. We’ve known him ever since he set up his shop. Your father liked him very much. Tell Jonny what’s been going on. He was at the funeral. He’s probably heard the rumours.” Anne blinks back tears. “Tell him the truth. He’ll be appalled, he’ll be furious – but I trust him. He knows how to be discreet. And he might just give us a decent price.”
In The Tuppeny Chew
Woodstock, 22 August 1931
“It’s poor little Eleanor Drummond’s thirteenth birthday today.” The man hunkers down with his companion, mopping his face.
“Aye, it is that.”
“Makin’ a proper song and dance about it, is You Know Who.”
“Aye, he is that.”
“Bought hisself a new car. Bloomin’ bright yellow, like a bloomin’ bird. Bullnose Morris from that Longwall Garage.”
“I ask you!”
Pause. The men drink. The beer foams comfortably around their mouths and dribbles onto their beards.
“It’s goin’ to make everythin’ worse, ain’t it, what with her bein’ thirteen and all.”
“You reckon?”
“Aye. Seen it afore now, I ’ave.”
“’Ave you now?”
“Aye, I ’ave that.”
Pause.
“Does you think we’d better do summat?… Give ’im a kind of a warnin’? Gentle, like, but me and my missus, we reckon summat should be done.”
“’Appen to agree.”
The two men shake hands on it.
“Praps after we’ve supped up, you and I could take a gentle walk in the Park, ’ave a few words together in private, like.”
“Aye, we could that.”
Pause.
“Shouldn’t take long… Promised the missus I wouldn’t be late ’ome… Think I know someone who could sort out this ’orrible mess for us.”
The following evening, Walter Drummond, strolling along, unaware of everything but the black obsessions in his heart, finds himself being pushed down Woodstock’s Market Street by someone behind him who has his hand on his neck.
Before he realises what’s happening, he’s up against a mossy wall in a dank alleyway. He can’t see the writing on the wall because he has his back to it.
“I’m going to spell it out to you straight, Squire Drummond,” the man mutters. His voice trembles with hatred. He’s wearing a large felt hat and a scarf pulled over his face but even so his breath stinks of beer. “My dearest daughter, the joy of my heart, I caught her in tears the other week and she told me all about you. I know what you’ve been getting up to in that cellar of yours, underneath that oh-so-pretty house your lovely wife allows you to squat in.”
Walter’s knees feel as if they’re crumbling into splinters. “I’m sure I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re talking about. Kindly let go of—”
“And if you don’t stop it right now,” the man continues, “you won’t live to see your own dear daughter’s fourteenth birthday. Not by a long chalk!”
A large hand takes hold of Walter’s neck and, ever so slightly, squeezes it.
“Are you listening to me, Squire Drummond?”
Walter’s sure he’s about to suffocate. His eyes bulge with terror. His hair beneath his velvet hat streams with cold sweat. He gulps. He’s allowed to come up for air. He remembers how he almost drowned near Port Meadow when he was a child.
“I hear you,” he says. “Can I go home now?”
In a way that feels and looks like magic the man vanishes, leaving behind him only a glob of spit. One minute the stinking alleyway feels full of hatred and menace. The next it’s silent and empty. Except for Walter, who remains a sweating, quivering mass of guilt, shock and remorse.
He’d better do something smartish about the cellar… Whose daughter had he been messing about with? Whoever it was, it had only been a bit of harmless fun. He always makes sure his girls have a thoroughly good time. Crazy to make such a fuss about it.
He manages to limp home.
“Is that you, darling?” Anne calls from the drawing room.
“It is, my sweetness and light.”
“Won’t you join us for a hand of bridge?”
Walter checks his face in the hall mirror. It’s a strange shade of pale green. His eyes are bloodshot. His collar is black with sweat and soot.
“Got a bit of a headache, my angel. Think I’ll go straight to bed.”
Walter slips as quietly as a mouse out to his studio in the garden. Once inside, he doesn’t need to put on the light. He creeps towards the chaise longue, pushes it aside with his hip. He presses a floorboard. The trap door opens.
He slides into it, climbs down the rungs, slithers along the underground passageway until he reaches the cellar door. He’s inside the cellar in a flash, a wink, another grubby little slither of his athletic body.
He reaches in the pitch dark for the shelf, the matches and the candle. The guttering flame reveals a pile of seductive pillows, a pair of silky knickers, a few drawings of stark naked women, a towel, a feathery fan and two dead roses.
Walter scrabbles around in a corner for the bricks he used to create the gap in the cellar wall. Perhaps it would be best if he used them again, only this time in reverse…
Not now. No, not right now. Anne might waltz into the bedroom and wonder where he was. He’d start filling it in tomorrow. For, say, an hour at a time over the coming week. That should do the trick…
Then that vile busybody, the bastard, he’d have nothing on him, would he? Only the hysterical words of a rambling girl whom nobody would believe. He, Walter Drummond, would be innocent as the day he was born.
He gets out his ancient pocketknife and begins to slash at the drawings. When they lie in ribbons at his feet, he starts on the underwear.
Five days later, Walter sits in the immaculate office of his friend and solicitor, Michael Humphreys.
Walter has partially recovered from the most unexpected events of that very brief, very dark encounter. Indeed, it might never have happened. He
prefers to remember it – if at all – as an unfortunate incident with someone who’d obviously got the wrong man. He’s worked with some bricks and mortar, fast. Very fast indeed.
He checks his fingernails. They’ve survived. Nobody would ever know.
“Good to see you, Walter.” Michael spoons sugar into both steaming cups of coffee. “What can I do for you?”
Walter gulps his drink. It’s a lot stronger than the stuff Vera gives him. Its powerful aroma makes him feel like a man again. It gives him courage. He fills his lungs with determination.
“Need to make a will, old boy… Need to make a will.”
Michael puts down his cup. “Oh?” he says with an anxious flicker. “You’re not ill, are you, sir?”
“Course not, old boy.” Walter adjusts his fetching cravat, and admires the shine of his shoes. “Never had a day’s illness in my life.” He hesitates. “Except for that tragic accident when I was a child. The one that prevented me from fighting in the war—”
“Ah, yes, that one.”
“How I should have adored to do my bit in the trenches. But you know how it is. Getting on a bit now. The knee aches and all that… You know, old boy, I should’ve done these formalities long ago. For my darling Eleanor.” Walter’s eyes mist over. He’s frightfully good at making their violet-blue light a bit misty. “For my darling little girl.” He looks directly at Michael. “And, of course, for Felix.”
“Ah, yes… I get your drift.”
Michael pulls a folder, labelled last will and testament, out of his desk.
“Right, then. Let’s begin at the beginning. That’s always the foolproof way.”
Walter feels relief seeping out of his toes. Now he can make plans. His Eleanor and his Felix, they might actually meet in St Ives. They’ll talk about him, sit in his cottage together, in his own hideaway. Stand on the balcony. Watch the sunset, hear the roar of the waves. Touch hands.
The Choice Page 14