Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

  Fitz saw the girls, looked twice, and said: "Good God!" His tone was sternly disapproving.

  Daisy suffered a moment of sheer panic. Had she spoiled everything? The English could be frightfully straightlaced; everyone knew that. Would she be asked to leave the house? How terrible that would be. Dot Renshaw and Nora Farquharson would crow if she went home in disgrace. She would rather die.

  But Bing burst out laughing. "I say, that's terribly good," he said. "Look at this, Grimshaw."

  The elderly butler, coming in with a bottle of champagne in a silver ice bucket, observed them bleakly. In a tone of withering insincerity he said: "Most amusing, Sir Bartholomew."

  Bing continued to regard them all with a delight mingled with lasciviousness, and Daisy realized--too late--that dressing like the opposite sex might misleadingly suggest, to some men, a degree of sexual freedom and a willingness to experiment--a suggestion that could obviously lead to trouble.

  As the party assembled for dinner, most of the other guests followed the lead of their host in treating the girls' prank as an amusing piece of tomfoolery, though Daisy could tell they were not all equally charmed. Daisy's mother went pale with fright when she saw them, and sat down quickly as if she felt shaky. Princess Bea, a heavily corseted woman in her forties who might once have been pretty, wrinkled her powdered brow in a censorious frown. But Lady Westhampton was a jolly woman who reacted to life, as to her wayward husband, with a tolerant smile: she laughed heartily and congratulated Daisy on her mustache.

  The boys, coming last, were also delighted. General Murray's son, Lieutenant Jimmy Murray, not as straightlaced as his father, roared with pleased laughter. The Fitzherbert sons, Boy and Andy, came in together, and it was Boy's reaction that was the most interesting of all. He stared at the girls with mesmeric fascination. He tried to cover up with jollity, haw-hawing like the other men, but it was clear he was weirdly captivated.

  At dinner the twins picked up Daisy's joke and talked like men, in deep voices and hearty tones, making the others laugh. Lindy held up her wineglass and said: "How do you like this claret, Liz?"

  Lizzie replied: "I think it's a bit thin, old boy. I've a notion Bing's been watering it, don't you know."

  All through dinner Daisy kept catching Boy staring at her. He did not resemble his handsome father, but all the same he was good-looking, with his mother's blue eyes. She began to feel embarrassed, as if he was ogling her breasts. To break the spell she said: "And have you been taking exams, Boy?"

  "Good Lord, no," he said.

  His father said: "Too busy flying his plane to study much." This was phrased as a criticism, but it sounded as if Fitz was actually proud of his elder son.

  Boy pretended to be outraged. "A slander!" he said.

  Eva was mystified. "Why are you at the university if you don't wish to study?"

  Lindy explained: "Some of the boys don't bother to graduate, especially if they're not academic types."

  Lizzie added: "Especially if they're rich and lazy."

  "I do study!" Boy protested. "But I don't intend actually to sit the exams. It's not as if I'm hoping to make a living as a doctor, or something." Boy would inherit one of the largest fortunes in England when Fitz died.

  And his lucky wife would be Countess Fitzherbert.

  Daisy said: "Wait a minute. Do you really have your own airplane?"

  "Yes, I do. A Hornet Moth. I belong to the University Aero Club. We use a little airfield outside the town."

  "But that's wonderful! You must take me up!"

  Daisy's mother said: "Oh, dear, no!"

  Boy said to Daisy: "Wouldn't you be nervous?"

  "Not a bit!"

  "Then I will take you." He turned to Olga. "It's perfectly safe, Mrs. Peshkov. I promise I'll bring her back in one piece."

  Daisy was thrilled.

  The conversation moved on to this summer's favorite topic: England's stylish new king, Edward VIII, and his romance with Wallis Simpson, an American woman separated from her second husband. The London newspapers said nothing about it, except to include Mrs. Simpson on lists of guests at royal events, but Daisy's mother got the American papers sent over, and they were full of speculation that Wallis would divorce Mr. Simpson and marry the king.

  "Completely out of the question," said Fitz severely. "The king is the head of the Church of England. He cannot possibly marry a divorcee."

  When the ladies retired, leaving the men to port and cigars, the girls hurried to change. Daisy decided to emphasize how very feminine she really was, and chose a ball dress of pink silk patterned with tiny flowers that had a matching jacket with puffed short sleeves.

  Eva wore a dramatically simple black silk gown with no sleeves. In the past year she had lost weight, changed her hair, and learned--under Daisy's tuition--to dress in an unfussy tailored style that flattered her. Eva had become like one of the family, and Olga delighted in buying clothes for her. Daisy regarded her as the sister she never had.

  It was still light when they all climbed into cars and carriages and drove the five miles into the town center.

  Daisy thought Cambridge was the quaintest place she had ever seen, with its winding little streets and elegant college buildings. They got out at Trinity and Daisy gazed up at the statue of its founder, King Henry VIII. When they passed through the sixteenth-century brick gatehouse Daisy gasped with pleasure at the sight that met her eyes: a large quadrangle, its trimmed green lawn crossed by cobbled paths, with an elaborate architectural fountain in the middle. On all four sides, timeworn buildings of golden stone formed the backdrop against which young men in tailcoats danced with gorgeously dressed girls, and dozens of waiters in evening dress offered trays crowded with glasses of champagne. Daisy clapped her hands with joy: this was just the kind of thing she loved.

  She danced with Boy, then Jimmy Murray, then Bing, who held her close and let his right hand drift from the small of her back down to the swell of her hips. She decided not to protest. The English band played a watery imitation of American jazz, but they were loud and fast, and they knew all the latest hits.

  Night fell, and the quadrangle was illuminated with blazing torches. Daisy took a break to check on Eva, who was not so self-confident and sometimes needed to be introduced around. However, she need not have worried: she found Eva talking to a strikingly handsome student in a suit too big for him. Eva introduced him as Lloyd Williams. "We've been talking about Fascism in Germany," Lloyd said, as if Daisy might want to join in the discussion.

  "How extraordinarily dull of you," Daisy said.

  Lloyd seemed not to hear that. "I was in Berlin three years ago, when Hitler came to power. I didn't meet Eva then, but it turns out we have some acquaintances in common."

  Jimmy Murray appeared and asked Eva to dance. Lloyd was visibly disappointed to see her go, but summoned his manners and graciously asked Daisy, and they moved closer to the band. "What an interesting person your friend Eva is," he said.

  "Why, Mr. Williams, that's what every girl longs to hear from her dancing partner," Daisy replied. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she regretted sounding shrewish.

  But he was amused. He grinned and said: "Dear me, you're so right. I am justly reproved. I must try to be more gallant."

  She immediately liked him better for being able to laugh at himself. It showed confidence.

  He said: "Are you staying at Chimbleigh, like Eva?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you must be the American who gave Ruby Carter the money for the dentist."

  "How on earth do you know about that?"

  "She's a friend of mine."

  Daisy was surprised. "Do many undergraduates befriend housemaids?"

  "My goodness, what a snobbish thing to say! My mother was a housemaid, before she became a member of Parliament."

  Daisy felt herself blush. She hated snobbery and often accused others of it, especially in Buffalo. She thought she was totally innocent of such unworthy attitudes. "I've got off on
the wrong foot with you, haven't I?" she said as the dance came to an end.

  "Not really," he said. "You think it's dull to talk about Fascism, yet you take a German refugee into your home and even invite her to travel to England with you. You think housemaids have no right to be friends with undergraduates, yet you pay for Ruby to see the dentist. I don't suppose I'll meet another girl half as intriguing as you tonight."

  "I'll take that as a compliment."

  "Here comes your Fascist friend, Boy Fitzherbert. Do you want me to scare him off?"

  Daisy sensed that Lloyd would relish the chance of a quarrel with Boy. "Certainly not!" she said, and turned to smile at Boy.

  Boy nodded curtly to Lloyd. "Evening, Williams."

  "Good evening," said Lloyd. "I was disappointed that your Fascists marched along Hills Road last Saturday."

  "Ah, yes," Boy said. "They got a bit overenthusiastic."

  "It surprised me, when you had given your word they would not." Daisy saw that Lloyd was angry about this, underneath his mask of cool courtesy.

  Boy refused to take it seriously. "Sorry about that," he said lightly. He turned to Daisy. "Come and see the library," he said to her. "It's by Christopher Wren."

  "With pleasure!" Daisy said. She waved good-bye to Lloyd and let Boy take her arm. Lloyd looked disappointed to see her go, which pleased her.

  On the west side of the quadrangle a passage led to a courtyard with a single elegant building at the far end. Daisy admired the cloisters on the ground floor. Boy explained that the books were on the upper floor, because the river Cam was liable to flood. "Let's go and look at the river," he said. "It's pretty at night."

  Daisy was twenty years old and, though she was inexperienced, she knew that Boy did not really care for gazing on rivers at night. But she wondered, after his reaction to seeing her in men's clothing, whether he might really prefer boys to girls. She guessed she was about to find out.

  "Do you actually know the king?" she asked as he led her across a second courtyard.

  "Yes. He's more my father's friend, obviously, but he comes to our house sometimes. And he's jolly keen on some of my political ideas, I can tell you."

  "I'd love to meet him." She was sounding naive, she knew, but this was her chance and she was not going to miss it.

  They passed through a gateway and emerged onto a smooth lawn sloping down to a narrow walled-in river. "This area is called the Backs," Boy said. "Most of the older colleges own the fields on the other side of the water." He put his arm around her waist as they approached a little bridge. His hand moved up, as if accidentally, until his forefinger lay along the underside of her breast.

  At the far end of the little bridge two college servants in uniform stood guard, presumably to repel gatecrashers. One of the men murmured: "Good evening, Viscount Aberowen," and the other smothered a grin. Boy responded with a barely perceptible nod. Daisy wondered how many other girls he had led across this bridge.

  She knew Boy had a motive for giving her this tour, and sure enough, he stopped in the darkness and put his hands on her shoulders. "I say, you looked jolly fetching in that outfit at dinner." His voice was throaty with excitement.

  "I'm glad you thought so." She knew the kiss was coming, and she felt aroused at the prospect, but she was not quite ready. She put a hand on his shirt front, palm flat, holding him at a distance. "I really want to be presented at the royal court," she said. "Is it difficult to arrange?"

  "Not difficult at all," he said. "Not for my family, at least. And not for someone as pretty as you." He dipped his head eagerly toward hers.

  She leaned away. "Would you do that for me? Will you fix it for me to be presented?"

  "Of course."

  She moved in closer, and felt the erection bulging at the front of his trousers. No, she thought, he doesn't prefer boys. "Promise?" she said.

  "I promise," he said breathlessly.

  "Thank you," she said, then she let him kiss her.

  iii

  The little house in Wellington Row, Aberowen, South Wales, was crowded at one o'clock on Saturday afternoon. Lloyd's grandfather sat at the kitchen table looking proud. On one side he had his son, Billy Williams, a coal miner who had become member of Parliament for Aberowen. On the other was his grandson, Lloyd, the Cambridge University student. Absent was his daughter, also a member of Parliament. It was the Williams dynasty. No one here would ever say that--the notion of a dynasty was undemocratic, and these people believed in democracy the way the pope believed in God--but just the same Lloyd suspected Granda was thinking it.

  Also at the table was Uncle Billy's lifelong friend and agent, Tom Griffiths. Lloyd was honored to sit with such men. Granda was a veteran of the miners' union; Uncle Billy had been court-martialed in 1919 for revealing Britain's secret war against the Bolsheviks; Tom had fought alongside Billy at the Battle of the Somme. This was more impressive than dining with royalty.

  Lloyd's grandmother, Cara Williams, had served them stewed beef with homemade bread, and now they sat drinking tea and smoking. Friends and neighbors had come in, as they always did when Billy was here, and half a dozen of them stood leaning against the walls, smoking pipes and hand-rolled cigarettes, filling the little kitchen with the smell of men and tobacco.

  Billy had the short stature and broad shoulders of many miners but, unlike the others, he was well dressed, in a navy blue suit with a clean white shirt and a red tie. Lloyd noticed that they all used his first name often, as if to emphasize that he was one of them, empowered by their votes. They called Lloyd "boyo," making it clear they were not overimpressed by a university student. But they addressed Granda as Mr. Williams: he was the one they truly respected.

  Through the open back door Lloyd could see the slag heap from the mine, an ever-growing mountain that had now reached the lane behind the house.

  Lloyd was spending the summer vacation as a low-paid organizer at a camp for unemployed colliers. Their project was to refurbish the Miners' Institute Library. Lloyd found the physical work of sanding and painting and building shelves a refreshing change from reading Schiller in German and Moliere in French. He enjoyed the banter among the men: he had inherited from his mother a love of the Welsh sense of humor.

  It was great, but it was not fighting Fascism. He winced every time he remembered how he had skulked in the Baptist chapel while Boy Fitzherbert and the other bullies chanted in the street and threw stones through the window. He wished he had gone outside and punched someone. It might have been stupid but he would have felt better. He thought about it every night before falling asleep.

  He also thought about Daisy Peshkov in a pink silk jacket with puffed sleeves.

  He had seen Daisy a second time in May Week. He had gone to a recital in the chapel of King's College, because the student in the room next to his at Emmanuel was playing the cello, and Daisy had been in the audience with the Westhamptons. She had been wearing a straw hat with a turned-up brim that made her look like a naughty schoolgirl. He had sought her out afterward, and asked her questions about America, where he had never been. He wanted to know about President Roosevelt's administration, and whether it had any lessons to teach Britain, but all Daisy talked about was tennis parties and polo matches and yacht clubs. Despite that, he had been captivated by her all over again. He liked her gay chatter all the more because it was punctuated, now and again, by unexpected darts of sarcastic wit. He had said: "I don't want to keep you from your friends--I just wanted to ask about the New Deal," and she had replied: "Oh, boy, you really know how to flatter a girl." But then, as they parted, she had said: "Call me when you come to London--Mayfair two four three four."

  Today he had come to his grandparents' house for the midday meal, on his way to the railway station. He had a few days off from the work camp, and he was taking the train to London for a short break. He was vaguely hoping he might run into Daisy, as if London were a little town like Aberowen.

  At the camp he was in charge of political education,
and he told his grandfather he had organized a series of lectures by left-wing dons from Cambridge. "I tell them it's their chance to get out of the ivory tower and meet the working class, and they find it hard to refuse me."

  Granda's pale blue eyes looked down his long, sharp nose. "I hope our lads teach them a thing or two about the real world."

  Lloyd pointed to Tom Griffiths's son, standing in the open back door and listening. At sixteen Lenny already had the characteristic Griffiths shadow of a black beard that never went away even when his cheeks were freshly shaved. "Lenny had an argument with a Marxist lecturer."

  "Good for you, Len," said Granda. Marxism was popular in South Wales, which was sometimes jokingly called Little Moscow, but Granda had always been fiercely anti-Communist.

  Lloyd said: "Tell Granda what you said, Lenny."

  Lenny grinned and said: "'In 1872 the anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin warned Karl Marx that Communists in power would be as oppressive as the aristocracy they replaced. After what has happened in Russia, can you honestly say Bakunin was wrong?'"

  Granda clapped his hands. A good debating point had always been relished around his kitchen table.

  Lloyd's grandmother poured him a fresh cup of tea. Cara Williams was gray, lined, and bent, like all the women of her age in Aberowen. She asked Lloyd: "Are you courting yet, my lovely?"

  The men grinned and winked.

  Lloyd blushed. "Too busy studying, Grandmam." But an image of Daisy Peshkov came into his mind, together with the phone number: Mayfair two four three four.

  His grandmother said: "Who's this Ruby Carter, then?"

  The men laughed, and Uncle Billy said: "Caught out, boyo!"

  Lloyd's mother had obviously been talking. "Ruby is membership officer of my local Labour Party in Cambridge, that's all," Lloyd protested.

  Billy said sarcastically: "Oh, aye, very convincing," and the men laughed again.

  "You wouldn't want me to go out with Ruby, Grandmam," Lloyd said. "You'd think she wears her clothes too tight."

  "She doesn't sound very suitable," Cara said. "You're a university man, now. You must set your sights higher."

  She was just as snobbish as Daisy, Lloyd perceived. "There's nothing wrong with Ruby Carter," he said. "But I'm not in love with her."