A Question of Trust

by Penny Vincenzi

  There had been time on shore; that had been good. He’d caught a bit of shrapnel in his leg, been sent to Malta to recover. He hadn’t been badly injured, but it took a time to heal; hadn’t felt too bad, but some of the other chaps were in a really bad way. Seeing it as a mission to cheer them up, he’d organised polo matches in the ward with crutches and other such nonsense. They were an undoubted nuisance and the nurses got pretty browned off, but as a war effort, he felt it was pretty positive.

  There was a shout from the bar: ‘Hey, Welles! What’s the matter with you? Come on over, drinks on the house …’

  He went, smiling: he would continue to survive. Of course he would.

  Johnathan, still in Italy, spent the early part of the day writing to Diana, telling her how much he was longing to come home and be with her again. He made no mention of his decision; that was something too important to trust to paper. He knew she would find it difficult, but he was sure she would make the very best of it and indeed come to love the new life and the glorious countryside of Yorkshire.

  Tom and Laura returned home from the celebrations, first at Laura’s school, then at the recreation ground in Hilchester (another bonfire). They talked quite soberly about how the ending of the war, which had done so much to rid the country of its dreadful class distinction, must surely see a new dawn for socialism, for fairness, for true equality, and vowed they would do everything in their power to work towards that themselves.

  Chapter 10

  1945–6

  It was such a totally unsuitable setting to receive the news.

  She’d just been thinking she really was perfectly happy, that the war years and their long separation had ended exactly how she would have wished, sitting at a table in the River Room at the Savoy, after a marvellous dinner and a lot of very good champagne; a pianist playing Cole Porter and boats going past on the Thames below, their lights shining on the water. It was all so very lovely. He’d only been home a couple of days; gorgeous days they’d been, she’d been so very glad to see him, genuinely so, loving being with him, making him happy. They were actually spending two rather extravagant nights at the Savoy.

  But then he’d taken her hand and said he had something very important to tell her. She’d sat, trying not to show her horror as she heard what it was: that he wanted to give up his London life as a stockbroker and go and work on the estate in Yorkshire. His father wasn’t well, he said, had never recovered from Piers’s death, and his mother and Timothy had been struggling to cope since the end of the war. ‘Mother’s been amazing, Tim says, but she’s not young, and Tim – well, his heart’s not in the whole estate thing. He really wants to get back to London and his life as a barrister, and he has a real talent for that, Diana, it’s wrong for him to miss out.’

  She’d asked, floundering about for some sort of salvation, about Johnathan’s life as a stockbroker, and he’d said it seemed to him a rather stupid, vapid life, making rich people richer. Whereas running the estate, the farm, that really appealed to him, seemed an important thing to do. ‘I know it’s a big thing to ask, but I want to go back to Yorkshire, and make my life there. I’ll need you and your support desperately.’

  ‘But Johnathan …’

  ‘Darling, I can see it’s a bit of a shock, of course it is, and for that very reason you must take time to get used to the idea.’

  And if she didn’t, she wondered, what then? Clearly, she’d be going anyway.

  ‘I suggest you go and stay with your parents for a few days. I have to go up to Yorkshire tomorrow, to see Mother and Father and talk to them both, with Timothy, put our proposal to them. And then perhaps you’ll come up and join us? You’ve never spent much time there, and it’s so beautiful, I know you’ll learn to love it …’

  She waved him off gaily next day, and then went to meet Wendelien. She was truly horrified; horrified and afraid. How could she do it, leave everything and everyone she knew and loved and go to live hundreds of miles away, to that cold, ugly house, set in that harsh, hostile landscape? To live with a man she could see very clearly now she didn’t actually love at all. She would be exiled, alone, lost, friendless. She couldn’t do it, it was too much to ask, too much for her to give. She would never have agreed to marry Johnathan had she known of this gargantuan condition. She wept many tears, feeling she had been robbed of everything.

  Wendelien’s response had been very straightforward. ‘Just don’t go, darling, say you’d be useless and miserable and he shouldn’t ask you.’ Her parents’ response had been quite different, especially her father’s. He had told her he was ashamed of her reaction, that Johnathan was a very fine chap, who loved her, and it was her duty as a wife to stand by him and do whatever he wanted. Her mother had said much the same, in a gentler way: ‘It’s true, darling, you marry the man, not the life—’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Diana had said angrily. ‘The life is part of the man, and this just isn’t fair, not what I was led to expect.’

  ‘Diana, this is real life, not some fairy tale,’ her mother had said. ‘You were delighted to marry Johnathan, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘No buts. Not now. I do think, Diana, it’s time you grew up a little and realised you don’t live in a romantic novel. Marriage isn’t all about one person, it’s about two.’

  Diana had fled to her room and refused to come down for supper. Later Caroline Southcott went up to see her, relented a little, told her she did understand and she hadn’t been all that keen to leave London herself as a young bride. ‘But that was what your father wanted, and I went along with it.’

  Diana didn’t even try to explain that Hampshire was very near London, that they still had a lot of very jolly friends, and for a time, a little flat in London. As for Johnathan’s mother, Vanessa Gunning was a nightmare, and she would, at first at any rate, be her most constant companion. She didn’t like Diana, it had been obvious from the very first meeting; she saw her as a most unsuitable wife for Johnathan. But she listened to her parents and realised she had no option, apart from leaving Johnathan which was clearly unthinkable and so, with the very best grace that she could muster, she told him that of course she would come up to Yorkshire and be as supportive and helpful as she could manage.

  He had been touchingly grateful, had said he realised it would be hard for her and not what she had expected. ‘But hopefully, darling, there’ll be little ones about soon, and they’ll be fun and keep you busy, and if there’s one thing I can offer you it’s a jolly nice house.’

  That was true; they would have the Dower House, a seventeenth-century, six-bedroomed, beautifully proportioned place built by an unusually civilised and artistic Gunning for a wife, who had perhaps, Diana thought, been a refugee from the south like herself. It had huge fireplaces, a lovely staircase rising from the stone-flagged hall, and tall shuttered windows: but it was still grey, built of Yorkshire stone, and cold, so cold. Nothing grew up its rather forbidding frontage; it stood there, unadorned, stark and demanding. She could not love it, or even like it at first, but it was hers now and it gave her something to do. She had a talent for houses; she got rid of much of the heavy, seventeenth-century furniture – to Lady Gunning’s clear disapproval – and went eighteenth instead, moving some charming sofas and chairs and pretty side tables into the drawing room, and a lovely table for sixteen, with matching chairs for entertaining, into the dining room. She hung heavy curtains in the windows, a protest against the cold as much as the very plain shutters, installed two modern bathrooms upstairs, and even put carpets down in the bedrooms.

  Guildford was half a mile from the Dower House; one of Diana’s first demands had been for a car of her own, and she bought a pretty little Austin 7 which became her lifeline so she could potter backwards and forwards to the house, down into the village and – she had hoped – to visit friends. But they had proved a bit of a mirage; as had the social life she had hoped for. Johnathan was always busy on the farm and estate, and too exhauste
d to host dinner parties. So the lovely table remained unused, and the drawing room was deserted as a place for Diana to pursue her (very limited) hobbies. She would sit in the kitchen by the Aga, listening to the radio and devouring any novels she could get her hands on.

  She tried; she really tried. She offered to do the paperwork for the farm, knowing that she was efficient and would do it well. Johnathan, initially enthusiastic, consulted his mother and came back to Diana rather shamefaced to say that his mother said she was already doing it perfectly well. She made overtures to the other young women, joined their committees, helped with their charities, but she found no friends among them. She was an outsider, and they did not seem to like her enough to make an effort for her.

  Johnathan was also too exhausted to want to have sex with her very often. That was a relief, in its way – it hadn’t really got much better – but she couldn’t help feeling rejected in another; it also of necessity lessened her chances of becoming pregnant. The first year came and went and she experienced her first Yorkshire winter, which created in her a true hatred of the place, with its violent raw winds, its long grey seemingly endless days, its icy daybreaks, its dreadful silence, devoid of birdsong or sunlight. She couldn’t walk, she couldn’t ride; it was too hostile, it seemed turned against her. She tried but she would return from some expedition almost before it had begun, defeated, raging silently, angry with Johnathan, and worse, with herself.

  Occasionally she went to stay with her mother, in the sweet chill which was what the Hampshire winter seemed, and cried and railed against her fate. Her mother, worried about how thin she had become, how unlike her sparkling self, would allow her to stay an extra day or two, and then found herself insisting she go home again, literally forcing her onto the train.

  ‘Spring is coming, darling,’ she would say. She would prepare a parcel for her, packing copies of Vogue and Tatler, bottles of Dior scent, her favourite Coty make-up, some pretty lace hankies, novels by her favourite authors, Georgette Heyer and Angela Thirkell. Then she would drive home to West Hilton having dropped Diana at the station, weeping all the way. It was a dreadful thing to see your child so helplessly – and she was beginning to fear hopelessly – unhappy.

  Laura was marking books when Tom came in. It was something she actually enjoyed, unlike so many of her colleagues. She spent a lot of time and trouble on it, adding comments to her ticks and crosses, even in maths books, so that the children could learn from them, rather than just look for the mark at the bottom of each piece of work, and move on. Like all the best teachers, Laura’s desire was to enthuse her pupils and expand their interest in subjects, rather than simply inform them; and although she was not always successful, she knew she did well. She particularly enjoyed the older children’s work, the nine-and ten-year-olds. The older pupils were gearing up for their examinations into the grammar schools; and while the subjects didn’t include anything more basic than English, arithmetic and the general paper, she knew that a child who had been enthused by a study of how the North Americans lived (other than fighting one another as cowboys and Indians) or was intrigued by how exactly the marriage of Henry VIII had changed the religious character of England was more likely to bring an intelligence and clear-sightedness to the hardest part of the eleven-plus.

  Even as she coached her pupils, some considerable part of her fretted over this disparity and wished there could be some more equable solution so that all children might have access to the advantages of the grammar schools and not be cast aside into the limbo of the Secondary Moderns, failures for all the world, including themselves, to recognise at the age of eleven.

  She had already finished one pile and was embarking on history, when Tom appeared. She never failed to be slightly surprised at the way her heart seemed to lift when he returned to her each evening. It wasn’t of course that she expected him not to do so, it was that she loved him so much and never felt that things were quite in order until he was there. She often wondered if their relationship was rare in its happiness; listening to her fellow teachers who were married, and her friends as well, come to that, she felt extraordinarily fortunate.

  They had married in the little church at West Hilton, just a few friends, their families – rather more of his than hers, of course, but her sister Babs and her husband Dick Carter with their four children were there. And her mother, the redoubtable Edith, now physically frail. It was the prettiest wedding, the church filled with jugs of wild flowers, Laura in a simple blue dress made by her mother. ‘Well, I can hardly wear white now, can I?’ she said to Tom, laughing. When Tom turned and looked at her as she reached him, and she smiled at him and, rather irregularly it was felt although nobody particularly minded, reached up to kiss him, love seemed to fill the little church, as visible as the flowers and as audible as the strains of ‘Love Divine’ ringing down from the organ loft.

  Later that night, as the guests danced to the Hiltons Village Band, a more than slightly inebriated Jack said to Mary that he’d had his doubts about Laura; she was a bit of a forward piece, and now he had met her mother he could see where it came from. He had to admit, however, that she had her good points and he had come to the opinion that she was going to make Tom very happy.

  And indeed she had; and moreover, equally importantly, he made her so. Incredibly, beautifully happy.

  This evening, Tom was late, having been to London, dispatched for the day by Mr Pemberton to visit the reference section at the Law Society, and making a detour – without Mr Pemberton’s permission or knowledge, but reflecting that what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him – to Transport House to purchase a couple of books, one for himself on the history of trades union law, and one that Laura had requested on the suffragettes. Books were very cheap at Transport House as they considered it immoral to charge any price above what they had paid the publisher or supplier. He had only been there once before and he had loved it, been surprised and impressed by its rather splendid appearance, walking literally, he felt, into the history of all he most cared about.

  He was looking quite extraordinarily excited now, his green eyes shining; he was carrying several books and a newspaper – normally agreed by them both to be an extravagance – and a bottle of pale ale.

  ‘My goodness, Tom, whatever’s happened? You look as if you’ve seen a vision.’

  ‘I have,’ he said, coming over to her, dropping the books onto the table, and giving her a kiss. ‘No, much, much better than a vision. A real person. A man. Well, not just a man. Someone incredibly special.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You won’t believe it when I tell you. You really won’t.’

  ‘Tom, who, for heaven’s sake … ?’ Laura put down her pen and screwed the top onto the ink bottle. This was clearly a serious matter.

  ‘Well. I went into the lift, just for the ride really, and you know it’s a great big open thing and you can see who’s in it when you decide to get in or not?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘And I’d waited because the one before me was a bit crowded and this one came down and – well, oh, Laura he was there, in the lift.’

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘Bevan. Aneurin Bevan. He stood right next to me. Right next to me, there, in the lift. Can you believe that?’

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Laura. Bevan was Tom’s hero, his god. He saw in him the embodiment of all his dreams and hopes for the new Britain, recovering so slowly from the ravages of war. He and Laura had rejoiced when the Labour Party under Clement Attlee won their victory at the polls in July 1945. They had worked tirelessly for the local branch, delivering leaflets; persuading people to put up posters in their windows; urging them to attend meetings, where they served endless cups of tea, set out and put away chairs, and helped to welcome people at the door. On polling day they helped old people to get to the polling stations, pushing wheelchairs, organising lifts. The party was offering an irresistible promise to a tired and disillusioned nation, of nationalisation of all the major
industries, comprehensive national insurance and dearest to Tom’s heart, a national health service, health care free to everybody in the country – to be brought to fruition by his idol, Aneurin Bevan, appointed Minister of Health in Attlee’s cabinet.

  There was little Tom didn’t know about Bevan, from his childhood in a mining village where a mother of extraordinary energies raised her large brood in the tiny cottage, turning at night when her other work was done to her own trade as dressmaker and tailoress; and a father of extraordinary grace, who as well as feeding his family by a lifetime underground, toiling in the mines, instilled in them all a love of music and literature and he and Aneurin would sing together for many hours and miles as they walked over the Welsh hills.

  He was indeed one of Tom’s favourite topics of conversation. He would regale an audience – usually the long-suffering Laura – with the tales that Aneurin was a troublemaker at school, and that, extraordinarily, for so brilliant an orator, he had a very bad stutter which he only with huge difficulty learned to overcome; that he had a passion for comics which his father finally banned, and that he was considered too stupid to try for the eleven-plus – despite his prodigious reading and his talent for writing poetry – that he always spoke without notes, even his early and passionate work for the trades union, and at fourteen went down the pits with his father.

  Indeed, Laura had been forced to ban discussion of Mr Bevan at mealtimes, for she said she was extremely weary of the subject. ‘If you tell me once more he was chairman of his lodge at nineteen, the youngest ever, I shall throw your supper in the dustbin.’

  But this was truly special, Tom being in the lift with him, and even she could not get enough of it. ‘What does he really look like? Did you speak to him? What did he say?’