“To do what exactly? Be maid of honour at some stupid ceremony? Smile, throw confetti and eat their revolting wedding cake?… The whole thing’s obscene.”
“No, Ellie. It gives you a chance to escape.”
“You want me to climb into my Morris and disappear in a cloud of October dust?”
“Not now, course not. But after the weddin’, when your mother and Jonny are on honeymoon, after we’ve closed the tea-room for Christmas, what’s to stop you leavin’ Woodstock then?”
“What indeed? Mummy only wanted me here because she couldn’t face life on her own. Now she’s got Jonny to pay the bills, she’ll hardly notice I’ve gone.”
“I know someone who will notice.”
“Who?” The knot of anger in Eleanor’s stomach feels the size of a melon. “Who the hell will either notice or care?”
“I will, you silly little lump of lard! Give me a hug, for heaven’s sake. I’m goin’ to run that tea-room of yours whether you’re here or not – and don’t you never forget it. But I’ll be missin’ you loads and I ain’t afraid to say so.”
The two girls stand for a moment in each other’s arms in the snug warmth of the kitchen.
“I’m sorry, Kath.” Eleanor’s voice comes thick with tears. “It’s just this stuff with Mummy has happened so fast. I can’t keep up with her.”
Kathleen holds her at arm’s length. “Oh, yes, you can. We’ve got until your mother’s weddin’ to make our plans ship-shape. Don’t you go sayin’ nothin’ to her about any of ’em. When she and Jonny have gone, you can leave a letter explainin’ everythin’. And then you can go down to Cornwall, and claim that man of yours who’s waitin’ so patiently for you by the big blue sea.”
“Do you think we can plan everything without Mummy suspecting?”
“She’ll be far too busy to think about anythin’ besides her trousseau.”
“That’s certainly true—”
“But I’ll only do this on one condition. I want you back here in Woodstock with me for a whole week every three months. So you can keep an eye on the tea-room. Check the books. Discuss any changes we need to make. I ain’t prepared to do this on my own. Your tea-room is called Eleanor’s, after all. Remember?”
“Blood, sweat and lots of worrying hours that place has cost me!”
“I know how dear to your heart it is… That’s settled, then. We’re goin’ to need someone to replace you as a waitress. I’ll ask around, but I’ll keep it unofficial for the time bein’. And by the way, I’ve got a Blenheim recipe for small Christmas puddin’s. I’m goin’ to make two hundred, and wrap ’em special like, as gifts. We can sell ’em for ten pence each and make a profit of five pence a puddin’. How does that sound?”
“Like my clever Kath.” Eleanor manages a wobbly smile. “What would I do without you?” She straightens her shoulders. “And now I’m going home to write to Felix. He needs to know that a major obstacle to my living with him has just removed herself from the Drummond chess board.”
The Gathering Storm
Woodstock, 1936
By the time Eleanor gets back to the house, a small crowd of well-wishers has gathered to drink Anne and Jonny’s health. Unable to contain her joy, Anne had rung Sylvia to tell her the good news. It has spread like wildfire.
Vera, flushed and happy – “You got it wrong, dear heart. It’s wonderful news. I’ve always liked Mr Giffen. He’s a real gentleman.” – makes sandwiches and cuts slices of the few remaining cakes the tea-room has to offer.
Tired and ravenous, Eleanor sits in the kitchen. She drinks a pot of tea and crams two cream-cheese-and-cucumber sandwiches down her throat, tasting none of them. She can’t face the hubbub of voices, the radiance in Anne’s eyes, the bursts of Jonny’s laughter. She disappears upstairs to the silence of her room.
Her anger subsides. She’s shocked to find she’s wildly jealous of Anne’s happiness, not because she has found it with Jonny but because she can’t help feeling the celebrations should have been for her and Felix. She knows Felix’s August arrival in Woodstock had given her a chance of happiness, but she hadn’t been brave, decisive or bold enough to seize it. Is it now too late?
She could still find an opportunity to tell Anne about the love of her life. While her mother’s so happy on her own account, might she not greet her daughter’s news with tolerance and delight? Isn’t the time to tell her exactly now, before she has become too enmeshed in preparations for her wedding?
Kathleen’s suggestion that Eleanor say nothing, do nothing, until Anne is on honeymoon is a practical solution, but it’s also a coward’s way out. To hide behind a letter when it’s too late for talk, for explanations – indeed, for Anne’s improbable but not impossible blessing – makes Eleanor feel uncomfortable. She should want to shout about Felix’s love from the rooftops, not mope around keeping him a secret.
One reason she doesn’t discuss her love life with Anne is that she’s no longer sure how Felix feels about her. His letters are full of love, but they are also few and far between. She can only hope that no news is good news. So although she looks for a letter from him every morning, hopes wildly whenever the phone rings that maybe his Cornish burr will make her heart leap for joy, the absence of both letters and calls dampens her spirit – but continues to keep her hopes alive.
No news has got to be good news. Hasn’t it? Writing to him now with her mother’s news might break the silence. A week later it does. Felix send her an ecstatic card saying how delighted he is that Anne will soon be off Eleanor’s hands. And then he asks, yet again, “And have you told her yet about me?”
The atmosphere in the Woodstock house changes from muted sadness to one of gentle joy. Photographs of Anne and Walter disappear from the shelves. Vases of autumn flowers grace the drawing room, along with Jonny’s gifts: boxes of chocolates, bottles of perfume, heavily-scented soap, and baroque ornaments that his fiancée admires.
Anne herself is increasingly absent. Sometimes entire nights go by when she doesn’t come home. Busier than ever in the tea-room, Eleanor still has time to notice. She’s only too aware of her mother’s empty bedroom, but she makes no comment.
What exactly can she say? She can hardly reprimand Anne for falling in love, getting engaged, planning her wedding. Her mother’s perfectly entitled to spend the night in Jonny’s arms. Eleanor doesn’t have a querulous leg to stand on. And she’s reluctant to open discussions of a personal nature with Anne in case her own temptation to talk about Felix overtakes her, leaving her in deep water.
After a great deal of thought, Eleanor decides she prefers to flounder in the guilty shallows, talking instead about the wedding party, frocks and flowers, while in her head she plans her letter to Dear Mummy.
And she starts to worry about Vera. Eleanor doesn’t dare tell her about her plans until after Anne and Jonny have left for Paris. Vera might disapprove, or feel it’s her duty to tell Anne. And how will Vera feel about Kathleen taking over the tea-room? About Eleanor becoming what will be in effect a sleeping partner?
At the end of October, in preparation for Kathleen’s arrival, and after a meeting with her accountant during which he tells her she can never be “too professional”, Eleanor drives to Oxford. She buys an Underwood typewriter for thirty pounds, carries it up to her room, plonks it on her desk. Between now and Christmas, she’ll teach herself to type and she’ll stop writing out her menus, accounts, invoices and lists by hand.
On Sunday the 1st of November, the day before Kathleen’s due to take over the kitchen, Eleanor makes herself clear out her father’s studio, insisting on doing it without Vera’s help. Anne has gone to Aberystwyth on a shopping trip with Jonny.
The job is more depressing than Eleanor had anticipated. She gets halfway through and decides enough is enough. Kathleen has sufficient space to store preserves, bottles and Christmas puddi
ngs. She pushes the chaise longue against the wall, remembering her precious hours of love on it. Throwing out her father’s half-finished paintings is unbearable. Instead, Eleanor stores them in neat piles at the far end of the room.
And as she starts to collect the paintbrushes Walter had worked with, she thinks of a good use for them. She sorts out the best dozen, cleans them, wraps them in her handkerchief and stores them in the desk.
She has just decided to leave the studio when she looks at the floor. It’s thick with dust. Two old rugs lie on it, their corners frayed and curling. Kathleen will be sure to tell Eleanor the studio isn’t clean enough for the storage of food.
Eleanor picks up the rugs, intending to throw them away. She finds a threadbare broom in a corner. She starts to sweep the floorboards, and notices a small metal rung attached to one of the boards beneath the chaise longue. Burning with curiosity, she pushes the furniture aside and tugs at the rung. The floorboards lift surprisingly easily. Beneath them lie two large, flat sketch pads. Eleanor’s heart thrums as she pulls them out.
The first is filled with drawings of a naked woman. Eleanor stares at them, her cheeks flushing with shock and recognition. A single face looks back at her.
It is Moira’s.
There’s no mistaking the burning intensity of those eyes, the long dark flowing hair. She lies in bed and out of it, on a chair, on the floor with cushions behind her. Eleanor flicks through the pages. Detailed drawings of arms and shoulders, legs and thighs, hands and faces follow. All of Moira.
Eleanor closes the sketch pad and opens the second. This time she gasps with shock. Perdita Willoughby-Jones looks back at her, stark naked.
Eleanor’s stomach churns. Without turning another page, she stuffs both sketch pads back into their hiding place. She has no idea when her father drew them, or whether he’d managed to get Perdita to pose for him. She only knows she doesn’t want to see any more. Part of her never wants to look at her father’s work again. She’d like to slam out of the studio and never come back.
Trembling, exhausted, and then overcome with sadness, she closes the trapdoor, pushes the chaise longue over it, and makes sure that a couple of old cushions nestle against the floor. Nobody else will find that telltale rung, or bother to lift it to discover its secret.
More than ever, now, Eleanor longs to drive to St Ives, into the arms of her lover.
“You haven’t gone missing from my life, have you, my darling Felix?” she murmurs that night as she climbs into bed. “No news is good news… Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Sleep well. Think of me. Sweet dreams.”
The following day, Kathleen arrives to check Vera’s stock, bringing the two hundred Christmas puddings with her in Sean’s van. They unload the fragrant gifts and store them in the studio. Eleanor’s heartily glad when she can close its door again.
At lunchtime, Maud appears unexpectedly. She asks them to eat with her at a small restaurant in Woodstock, relating another string of anecdotes about the King.
“Wallis Simpson’s divorce was heard in Ipswich on the 27th of October,” she tells them. “God only knows what’s goin’ to happen now.”
That night, Eleanor flicks through The Times, thinking how ironical it is that the King has never been so popular, how much he’ll be missed if he gives up the throne.
On the 27th of November, a morganatic marriage is finally opposed by the Cabinet. By early December, news of the dangers Wallis poses has become public knowledge. Customers in Eleanor’s begin to gossip about it, scandalised by the news. Wallis receives poison-pen letters. When a stone is thrown through the window of her London flat, Edward insists she leave immediately for Fort Belvedere. On the 3rd of December, desperate and grim-faced, without a word of thanks to her staff, Wallis leaves for the south of France, taking with her one hundred thousand pounds’ worth of jewellery: gifts from her blond, blue-eyed and besotted King.
On the 9th of December, Edward is officially asked one last time to reconsider his decision to abdicate: to wait for a year, during which his passion for Wallis will hopefully cool. He’s asked to attend his coronation, to accept his role as king without Wallis, and then possibly marry her later.
Edward rejects all suggestions. Many of his advisors think he’s losing his mind as well as his throne. They monitor his every move and phone call, looking to his younger brother, Bertie, with his embarrassing stammer, strong-willed wife and pretty daughters, to inherit his title and restore sanity to the Empire.
Meanwhile, Anne plans her wedding outfit with extreme care and a lot of help from Eleanor. They shop in Oxford for a cream velvet suit with a tight, low-cut jacket and a long flowing skirt. Anne looks stunning in it: slim, elegant and glamorous. Eleanor chooses a pale pink satin frock she doesn’t really like, but Anne adores. For the moment, keeping her mother happy is Eleanor’s top priority.
On the eve of the wedding, Jonny puts a beautifully wrapped box into Eleanor’s hands. “Anne told me how much you loved Walter’s pearls,” he says awkwardly. “You’ve been wonderful to us, and you’ve organised our party so brilliantly. I can’t wait for the three of us to be a proper family. But I want you to have this, to wear at the wedding. Don’t open it now… You’ll only embarrass me.”
Alone in her room, Eleanor opens the gift, her fingers trembling. Jonny’s given her another necklace: three strands of perfectly round natural pearls finished with an emerald clasp. They’re breathtakingly beautiful and must have cost a fortune.
Eleanor bursts into tears. She doesn’t want jewels or a pink frock or a new stepfather; nor to have to make complicated decisions that’ll affect the rest of her life. She wants her father back in Woodstock, in spite of everything – and Felix by her side.
Later that night, on Friday the 11th of December at ten o’clock, Eleanor sits in the drawing room with Anne, Jonny and Vera. She turns on the wireless to listen to a piece of history. Sir John Reith, Director of the BBC, announces, “This is Windsor Castle. His Royal Highness, Prince Edward.”
And the sad, quiet voice of the Prince of Wales takes up his story:
“At long last I am able to say a few words of my own. I have never wanted to withhold anything, but until now it has not been constitutionally possible for me to speak. A few hours ago I discharged my last duty as king and Emperor, and now that I have been succeeded by my brother, the Duke of York, my first words must be to declare my allegiance to him. This I do with all my heart.
“You all know the reasons which have impelled me to renounce the Throne, but I want you to understand that in making up my mind I did not forget the country or the Empire, which, as Prince of Wales and lately as king, I have for twenty-five years tried to serve. But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry out the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king, as I wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love. I want you to know that the decision I have made has been mine and mine alone…
“And now we all have a new king. I wish Him, and you, His people, happiness and prosperity with all my heart. God bless you all. God Save the king.”
There’s a long silence. Eleanor switches off the wireless, her heart racing.
Jonny says, “Crikey! I bet that brother of his is having sleepless nights. Poor old Bertie can hardly get a word out without stammering. How on earth is he going to speak to the nation?”
Vera says, “The one I like is Elizabeth. She’s such a sensible little girl. She’ll make the most dignified queen… Not like that trumped-up American. Never trusted her further than I could spit. Edward must be out of his mind. Imagine spending the rest of your life following Wallis around!”
Anne says, “Well, I think it’s so romantic. Fancy giving up a throne for your girl! It’s the love story of the century.” She turns to Jonny. “What would you give up for me, my darling boy?”
Jonny gazes into Anne’s eyes. “Pretty much everything,” he says. “But luckily for me, that won’t be necessary.”
Eleanor bites her lip. She knows that she, too, is about to give up everything for the man she loves.
Spelling It Out
Woodstock, 1936
The morning of Anne’s wedding dawns clear and surprisingly mild – unlike Eleanor.
She feels a gamut of confused emotions: jealousy, relief, resentment, and a grudging admiration for her mother, about to step into the arms of a second husband with such elegance and ease.
“I’ll never forget your father.” Anne adjusts her glorious hat, checks her flowing hemline one last time. “We had some good years together before he decided to sample the delights of other women. But Jonny’s such fun. He makes me feel young again. And I’m not going to give him a chance to be unfaithful.” She turns to Eleanor. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful. Now come on. Jonny’s waiting for you in Oxford. You’d better not give him a chance to marry anybody else.”
The ceremony goes without a hitch. The luncheon party in the tea-room is gentle and merry. If anyone apart from Eleanor – who thinks about her father and Felix all day – remembers Walter, nobody mentions him.
By three o’clock the guests have eaten the delicate cold meats and salads, drunk more than is good for them, and devoured Vera’s succulent wedding cake. In their hats, coat-tails and rustling skirts, brushing away the crumbs, murmuring good wishes, they drift away.
Jonny, intoxicated and beside himself with happiness, flings an arm around his bride. He beckons to Eleanor and pours three glasses of champagne.
“Before we leave, a final toast to my two girls… Here’s to love.”
The Choice Page 33