‘Anyway,’ Tom said. ‘I feel pretty overwhelmed by what he’s doing for me already. Especially while he’s so unhappy.’
‘Well,’ said Laura slowly, after considering this, ‘I think you’ll make him feel less unhappy. Which is a wonderful thing.’
‘But what this is all leading up to is, Laura Leonard, I can now properly ask you to marry me. Why are you laughing?’
‘Because you’re so ridiculous. I’m marrying you anyway. You’ve already asked me, unless I was dreaming and this ring is some kind of apparition.’
‘Yes, but I can ask you to marry me now, at once! We can set a date, and I thought New Year’s Day – it would make a good start to the year – or as near as we can get. What do you say?’
‘I say,’ said Laura, ‘could we just leave that lovely stew stewing, and that cider getting colder, and could we pop next door to the bedroom just for a bit before supper, so I can show you how wonderful I think you are?’
Diana had finally found a solution to her boredom and sense of uselessness during the war; she wasn’t particularly proud of it, but it was the best she could manage. Johnathan had forbidden so many of the things she would have been prepared to do – but she still felt profoundly guilty at her lack of contribution. One of her friends – those drawn from the Johnathan circle as she thought of them – a chic sparky beauty called Wendelien Bellinger (‘You pronounce it like Gwendolyn without the G’) had set up a fortnightly event at her house in Knightsbridge, which she called a Bring and Give. ‘It’s sort of like a Bring and Buy, in that we collect all sorts of stuff – clothes, obviously, and blankets, but also books, gramophone records – from people we know mostly, and bring it all here, and then instead of selling it, we take it to people like the WVS Canteens, and the church shelters and so on. You get to see all your chums and have a really jolly afternoon, and it’s amazing what we persuade people to part with.’
Diana said she thought Wendelien could have persuaded the chief Beefeater at the Tower to part with the Crown Jewels if she’d put her mind to it.
‘Sweet of you to say so, but it really isn’t that difficult. The only rule is, we’re not allowed to keep anything for ourselves. Absolute agony I went through last week when Tilly Browning brought in the most gorgeous Jacques Fath coat; I longed to keep it, it really suited me, but of course that would be awfully bad form. Anyway, if you think you’d like to help, it would mean coming up to London once a fortnight. It’s not so dangerous any more, and we haven’t got anyone in your area so you’re bound to pick up lots of lovely stuff …’
Diana, who found the thought of getting up to London regularly exciting, said she would love to. And indeed, her life changed for ever; not only did she do rather well at the Bringing and Giving, as Wendelien had prophesied, but she also became part of her inner circle.
Anyone reading Wendelien’s pocket diary, which was so packed as to be almost illegible, would have found it hard to believe it was being lived out against a background of one of the most appalling wars in history. Dinners and cocktail dates were recorded nightly at the smartest of venues; even more surprisingly, most of the main London couturiers were open for business, encouraged to form an association by the Board of Trade. Wendelien took the bemused Diana on a round one afternoon, of Molyneux, Digby Morton, Norman Hartnell and Worth. Diana, who had been wearing her old clothes for three years, hardly daring to buy so much as a pair of gloves, found temptation beyond endurance there and ordered a suit from Digby Morton.
Wendelien absolutely refused to move from her pretty little house in Knightsbridge. ‘I would die if I had to leave it and move to some deathly dull suburb, so I might as well be bumped off by a bomb.’
In spite of her rather flippant protestations, she did display considerable bravery. Her street took a direct hit one night, and most of the surviving residents had moved away, including her neighbours on either side. She remained firm, taking Vogue’s advice at the time to offer baths, rather than drinks: Soap and water are a far more pleasing offer than any amount of gin.
‘I made lots of new friends – you’d be surprised,’ she said to Diana, who wasn’t at all.
Wendelien’s adored and extremely handsome husband was commander of a destroyer in the North Atlantic and living in extreme danger. ‘And there’s another reason, you see,’ Wendelien would say. ‘If he gets killed – and let’s face it, it is quite likely – I certainly don’t want to be left without him, so there’s another reason for taking on the bombers. I just know if I did move to the country, his ship would be torpedoed straight away. So much better to stay here, don’t you see? And at least I’m having fun, and don’t spend all my time with nothing to do except worry.’
Diana didn’t see, but she couldn’t quite formulate her argument.
Most of Wendelien’s evenings were spent at the big hotels; the Dorchester (‘the Dorch’ to its intimates) was probably the most sought out, and said to have the safest air-raid shelter in London, but the Savoy, Claridge’s and the Ritz were packed too.
There were the nightclubs, the Colony Club and the Café de Paris – also supposed to be the safest place in London – where people danced to the music of such luminaries as Snakehips Johnson and Lew Stone.
‘There are always a few chums home on leave,’ Wendelien said carelessly when Diana asked her who on earth she went with. ‘And then there are my parents and their friends – some of them are huge fun, and not too terribly over the hill.’
She was two years older than Diana, and had always moved in the most glittering circles; her mother, equally chic and beautiful, was rumoured to have had an affair with the Prince of Wales, briefly to become Edward VIII, and it was even more wildly rumoured that Wendelien was his child. ‘But of course as everyone knows, that’s completely impossible,’ she said to Diana, over cocktails at the Dorchester one evening.
Diana, excited by such infinite glamour touching her own life, asked why. Wendelien laughed. ‘Diana, you’re such an innocent. Because he couldn’ t – you know – just couldn’t, everyone knows that.’
‘Well, I didn’t,’ said Diana, slightly crossly. ‘And nor did anyone else I know.’
‘Well, darling, that’s exactly why I couldn’t bear to live in the country,’ said Wendelien. ‘Now don’t look like that. Let’s have another drink. And then I’ve just seen Ludo Manners – he must be home on leave. He’s just the most handsome man I’ve ever met, apart from my darling Ian, of course, and such fun, you’d absolutely love him – or do you know him already?’
Of course Diana didn’t.
‘Well, you must meet him. He didn’t get married for ages, and there were lots of people who said he was a fairy, but I never believed it, and he got married just a year before the war. To Cecily Johnson. She was in my year, a very sweet, bit unsophisticated, but terribly pretty, country girl like you. Don’t look so cross, I’m only teasing. Come on, let’s go over and you can meet him.’
Ludo Manners was indeed charming and, Diana thought, one of the nicest men she’d met. He was, in spite of his unarguably wonderful, blonde look, self-deprecating with beautiful manners, introducing them to his companions – his godfather and his uncle – expressing huge interest in Johnathan’s war, and volunteering great admiration for Ian Bellinger’s.
‘It really is the Senior Service – wish I’d joined them in a way.’
He was home convalescing. ‘I got in the way of a bit of shrapnel couple of months ago – so stupid – had to have some surgery on my leg, and then got incredibly lucky and got a couple of weeks at home. Going back next week.’
‘So where’s Cecily?’ asked Wendelien.
‘Oh, at home in the country.’ Wendelien shot Diana a glance of amused malice, at this. ‘We’ve got one little sprog, expect you heard, born just before the war, jolly little chap, and now there’s another on the way, so she doesn’t feel quite the thing. I had to come up, get details of my next posting, and – well, what do you do with a spare evening in London? Head
for the dear old Dorch.’
Chapter 9
1945
‘I can’t believe it.’
For the rest of his life, whenever Tom heard those words, he was back in the big shabby office at Pemberton & Marchant, staring at Betty Foxton as she stood in the doorway, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, her large bosom heaving.
‘It’s over,’ she said, her voice almost a shout. ‘The war’s over. I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it. My mother just telephoned, said she didn’t think Mr Pemberton would mind.’
Tom stared at her. ‘Really? Officially?’
‘Really. Mr Churchill’s just been on the wireless. Oh, I can’t believe it.’
‘Nor can I,’ said Tom. ‘Not really. Oh, God. How amazing.’ He was silent for a moment, oddly sober, ‘Oh, Betty. If only I was still out there with them all. Properly part of it.’
‘Now then, we don’t want any of that. You did your bit, more than most, so don’t go thinking you didn’t. Now, where are the other two?’
‘They went to lunch very late,’ said Tom. ‘They won’t be long, I’m sure.’
‘Oh well, Mr Pemberton, do you think he’s heard? Should I go in, do you think? As Miss Forshaw’s away today.’
‘I – I don’t know.’ And then, looking at Mr Pemberton’s closed door, reflecting on his own regret, contemplating a far greater one, he said, ‘Tell you what, Betty, I’ll tell him. I’ve got to go in anyway.’
Tom felt that possibly the last thing Mr Pemberton would welcome at that moment was an overexcited Betty.
Mr Pemberton was sitting at his desk, staring out of the window. He was very pale. He looked at Tom and half smiled.
‘Hello, Tom. And yes, I have heard the news. My wife telephoned. My goodness, what a wonderful …’ And then his voice tailed off, and he looked down at his hands, and when he looked up, his pale blue eyes were very bright. He tried to smile, his mouth oddly distorted; and then a tear rolled down his face. He wiped it away, took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ he said, ‘sorry, it’ s – it’ s –’
And he put his head down on his arms on the desk, and began to sob heavily. And Tom, considering his own regret, considered Mr Pemberton’s own, infinitely greater one, considered his embarrassment too, and very quietly left the room.
It was actually something of a fiction that peace exploded that day in May on an unsuspecting public, and especially in London. It had been awaited for months. The Home Guard had been disbanded, celebrated by a parade down Whitehall as early as the autumn of 1944, followed in February by the part-time firefighters. The closure of the public air-raid shelters and the removal of the bunks in the London underground stations caused surprising sadness: of the six thousand people who had slept in them for years, only a quarter of them did so from genuine necessity. They’d just got used to it and they liked it.
‘My dear old char loves it down there,’ Wendelien said to Diana. ‘Says it’s home. Now she’s got to go and live with her daughter, and she says she’s losing lots of friends. They had a high old time in the middle of the war, you know, concert parties used to put on shows and everybody used to sing and dance. Oh, and listen to this, it says in The Times there’s a run on bunting for when the celebrations really get going.’
Diana and Wendelien had become very close; Diana often stayed with Wendelien, and wondered sometimes what Johnathan would say if he had known that forbidding her to join the WVS or work in a munitions factory had led her into arguably far greater danger. She decided she didn’t care.
She had even been at the little house in Knightsbridge through some at least of the Little Blitz. ‘Not so little, darling,’ Wendelien said, as they took shelter under her heavy dining table one night when St James’s came under fire. ‘Honestly, to have survived for so long, so annoying to get done for now. Here, pass me the brandy. God, if we survive we’ll have hangovers in the morning.’ They did survive; and the hangovers were predictably bad.
And then it was over officially: 8 May took off. Perhaps the greatest moment, one Diana would have loved to have experienced, was when Mr Churchill had stood on a balcony in Whitehall. ‘This is your victory,’ he said to the crowds below. His car was then pushed by them all the way to Buckingham Palace. They had listened to him on the wireless; then contemplated going to the Mall to see him and the Royal Family on the balcony and decided they couldn’t face the crowds.
Wendelien gave a party at her house instead. They drank the last of Ian Bellinger’s claret, and a magnum of vintage champagne (he had had two, one being kept for his return), and as darkness fell, they all went on to the Ritz, fighting their way through the crowds, clinging to one another, terrified of becoming separated. It was an extraordinary night. London was quite literally heaving, and every so often the women were lifted off their feet. People were singing, dancing, climbing anything there was to climb – lamp posts, pub signs, statues – sitting on upper-storey windowsills, kissing complete strangers. The pubs had run dry by eight p.m. but the Ritz did better.
Now, Diana thought as she fell, swirling headed, into bed in Wendelien’s house, now she had to face real life again, make a marriage, be a good wife. And even mother. Which would be wonderful. Wouldn’t it?
Alice had won. Just as the British and Mr Churchill had won. In much the same way, really, just doggedly refusing to be beaten. What she’d actually done had been quite clever actually, Alice thought – she’d just threatened to run away, which would mean she’d be expelled anyway, and that would have completely destroyed her parents. And so they’d relented, and she was home in Sunningdale, back at her day school, and today was VE Day and the war was over and she was celebrating with her family at a bonfire party. It was terribly exciting.
There were a lot of bonfires, she’d heard, a symbol of the country’s release from the darkness of war. Alice had a strong sense of living in history that day; she could see it was something that would be wonderful to tell her children and her grandchildren about.
They’d all been in lessons in the early afternoon and they’d been summoned into the hall and Miss Thompson, the headmistress, had stood on the platform at her lectern and said, ‘Girls, this is a wonderful day and one none of us must ever forget. Mr Churchill has announced on the wireless that there is at last victory in Europe; this long terrible war is over. Against all the odds of the first years, when we stood alone and refused to surrender, we have won. Many sacrifices have been made, many lives have been lost, and I would remind you, even in our joy, that there is scarcely a family in the land, and indeed in this school, that has not lost a member, often several. But right has conquered, with God’s help, and I would ask you now to put your hands together in prayer and offer our thanks for the great victory that has been granted us today.’
Silly old bat, Alice thought, she obviously feels she’s made some huge contribution herself; but even so, as they all sang the school hymn, she did find a sentiment approaching pride herself. It was awfully special to be British today.
After that they were sent home, Alice accompanied by her best friend, Jillie Curtis, a friendship formed at boarding school, and cemented by their common hatred of the place. ‘My parents are raving socialists, I don’t know what they’re doing sending me here,’ Jillie had said.
Alice had looked at her in awe; she’d never met a socialist or anyone related to one before.
Jillie was very clever, and not conventionally pretty, but extremely attractive, tall and very slim, with long straight brown hair and green eyes. She lived in London; her father was at Sotheby’s and her mother worked as an art critic, whatever that might mean. ‘She goes to endless exhibitions and writes books and articles about art.’
‘So who looked after you, when you were little?’
‘Oh, a nanny, and now we have a housekeeper who’s there and gives me lunch and stuff. Mummy works at home a lot but I get left to my own devices most of the time, don’t really mind at all.�
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It sounded wonderful to Alice.
‘And now,’ she said, smiling at Jillie in the darkness, looking at the sparks flying through the air, past the big apple tree, up towards the stars, ‘now we can take our Higher Cert and leave school and get on with our lives.’
‘What are you going to do, do you think?’ asked Jillie.
‘I’m going to be a nurse – a really, really good nurse. In a really, really good hospital in London. Probably even become a matron. And nobody is ever going to dare to suggest I’ve got to marry some stupid rich, important man. In fact, if I do ever get married, I’ll be the most important person in the family. How about you?’
‘I thought I might be a doctor,’ said Jillie.
It was over. Over. All that agony. All over. Ned found it hard even to begin to know what he felt.
He was in Malta on the day itself. The war had been crumbling to an end for months, in the Med at least. He sat in the mess, staring out to sea, listening to his fellow officers whooping, trying to share their excitement – and completely failing. It was the biggest anticlimax of his life. He had seen death and fear and courage and the loss of so much – millions of lives, undreamed-of horrors. And for what? Victory. It should have been enough. But for him at least, it wasn’t.
Now he had the peacetime world to face, not the easy escape of war.
He had actually had a successful war, personally. He’d been given command of three vessels, he’d been mentioned in dispatches, he’d fought bravely. But he’d made mistakes. They were what he remembered now, even as he downed one whisky, and then another. Hitting a mine one night, the boat blown up, losing half the crew. Men he’d lived with for over a year, his friends, some of them still alive, wounded in the water. He knew he’d hear their cries for the rest of his life, knowing there was nothing he could do. If there was a hell, he had thought, he had entered it then.
But some of it he’d enjoyed: the camaraderie, a recognition that he was becoming a useful and competent member of the team and its operations, earning the respect of his men. He had always been popular, even at school, but this had been less easily won; it was not enough simply to be charming and amusing. He had not only to be brave and decisive, but also seen to be those things.
A Question of Trust Page 9