by Phillip Rock
“That’s horrible,” Charles whispered.
“Yes. A wasted life.”
“It seems so cruel to be disinherited for such a trivial thing . . . wanting to be an artist.”
“I guess it wasn’t a trivial thing to my grandfather. He expected obedience from his children. That was over twenty-five years ago, remember. A different age. And he was very Germanic. Never bothered to learn English properly or to assimilate American customs. I suppose he felt it was his duty as supreme head of the house to punish a prodigal son.”
Charles stood up abruptly, as though shaken by what he had heard.
“I’m glad you told me all this. I’ve always had the feeling that my mother wanted to tell me how her brother died. She started to tell me once. But perhaps she found me unreceptive . . . or the matter was too painful to discuss in any detail.”
“Could be,” Martin muttered into his glass.
“Anyway, I appreciate your candor.” He combed a stray lock of hair from his forehead with stiff fingers and began slowly pacing about the room. “One wonders what effect all that had on her. It must have been a shock to see her favorite brother destroyed by such a harsh, uncompromising directive and be unable to raise a voice in protest or, anyway, be unable to alter the outcome.”
“Being disinherited was a lousy break, but that wasn’t what destroyed my dad. If he had been a different sort of man—”
“Perhaps, perhaps,” Charles cut in, speaking rapidly. “Still, that patriarchal edict was the first blow. If that blow could have been softened . . . If there had been someone in the family willing to take your father’s side . . . to arbitrate . . . to conciliate—”
“But there wasn’t. Uncle Paul told me quite a lot about my grandfather. His word was law. But that was a long time ago. There’s not much point in talking about what could or could not have been done. Or is there? You won’t mind if I’m blunt, will you? A little Chicago spade-calling. Is there anything bothering you?”
Charles stood very still, eyes fixed on the windows, where the curtains fluttered in the night wind. Then he returned to the chair and slumped wearily into it.
“I asked a woman to marry me . . . a positive, irrevocable commitment.”
“Congratulations. But you don’t look very happy about it.”
Charles stared down at his hands, folded tightly in his lap. “It’s something we both want. Something we’ve talked over many times. The final decision rested with me . . . not in asking her, but in facing my father squarely and resolutely.”
“And did you?”
He looked up, his expression carved into a mask of firm resolution.
“I intend to tell him in a few weeks . . . on my birthday. It seems like the best moment. I’m terribly afraid that he might withhold his blessing. It’s not the girl—Father likes her—it’s what her father does, and what his political views are, that my father finds totally unacceptable. Having him as an in-law would be a constant source of embarrassment.” His resolution appeared to waver and Martin could detect a slight trembling of the lower lip. “I’m certain Father would resign from some of his clubs because of it. What else he might do I . . . I . . .” His voice trailed off into silence.
Martin bent down for the champagne. The bottle was half empty, and he divided the contents between his glass and his cousin’s.
“I think I understand what you’ve been driving at. Are you trying to say that your father might disinherit you? I mean, could something like that happen these days?”
“No, I can’t be legally disinherited, but he could turn his back on me, disclaim me as his son. That might sound harsh, but it could happen. There’s nothing to prevent him from doing that, except my mother. She’s always had a great influence over him and would probably take a firm stand. I think she’d remember your father, how he was cut off from the family and what it did to him—or what she believes it did to him. I’m banking on that.”
“Jesus,” Martin said softly. He took a swallow of champagne. “Maybe you’d better talk to her first.”
“No. She’d just tell me to think it over . . . to wait. She’s hoping my feelings for Lydia will undergo a change, or hers for me. That won’t happen.” He drained his glass and leaned forward. “God, she’s lovely. She’s leaving for London tomorrow, but when you get back from your trip I want you to meet her. When you do, you’ll understand my feelings about her. Lydia Foxe is the most beautiful, most captivating, most exquisite creature that God ever gave the breath of life to.”
Martin avoided looking Charles in the eye. He drank his champagne, the wine tasting musty all of a sudden. He was thinking of Jacob Golden and his remark to Fenton about seeing Lydia Foxe in Paris. Could there be two Lydia Foxes? It didn’t seem likely.
“I sure hope it all works out for the best.”
“I have a strong feeling that it will,” Charles said a little too fervently. “Yes, I really believe it will.”
He became euphoric and wanted to go downstairs and bring back another bottle of champagne, but Martin talked him out of it and persuaded him to go to bed. He wasn’t in any mood for an all-night bull session. After Charles had gone, he turned out the light and flopped wearily into bed, but it was impossible to get to sleep.
“God damn it,” he whispered, staring at the ceiling. His father wasn’t a ghost that he couldn’t face; it was just that he preferred not thinking about him. The image was blurred by time. He thought of him as a tall man who had slipped in and out of the apartment on the rue Dupin like shadow and smoke.
He tossed and turned under the light blanket for a long time and then got out of bed and stood in front of the open window. He gazed down at the gardens, so ordered and geometric, so faultlessly pruned. Their serenity seemed ironic when he thought of his cousin’s problems. Perhaps that was symbolic of England. A carefully nurtured façade of grace and tranquillity, behind which emotions seethed as strongly as they did in New York or Chicago. He had been falling into an artful trap. England could do that to visiting Americans. The old stones and the imperial customs tended to overawe Yankee common sense and lull one into a misty shortsightedness. Even the perceptive Henry James had fallen into that trap at least once, writing a book that had been filled with rhapsodic descriptions of buildings and sylvan glades but devoid of people. England was more than Gothic spires and Roman ruins, Tudor castles and Georgian spas; it was a country of people, rich and poor, with all the vices and virtues that human flesh was heir to. He would keep that in mind when he wrote his articles for Jacob Golden’s paper. He would be a true reporter and write what he saw and felt and heard, and if the editors of the Daily Post didn’t like it, that was just too damn bad.
6
Jaimie Ross was happy to be in London. Every day there helped to brighten his spirits. Strolling up and down the narrow cobblestoned mews behind Stanmore House, he inhaled the aroma of burned petrol wafted by the morning wind from the motor traffic on the Bayswater Road and nearby Oxford Street. That aroma was sweeter to him than any country wind. London was motorcars and the company of his true peers, the men who drove those motorcars and made them run. London was a pub near Paddington station where chauffeurs, garagemen, and mechanics met over a pint or two and talked seriously about magnetos, carburetors, fuel pumps, and horsepower. London was also pretty girls, droves of nursemaids and housemaids, typists, and God knows what else in Hyde Park, Piccadilly, and the Strand. It was heaven for a bloke like him, he was thinking, as he walked up and down, the heels of his boots ringing sharply on the stones. He was wearing a new uniform of dove-gray serge, black boots and leggings, a gray cap with a black leather bill, and tight-fitting black leather gloves. He strutted a little, feeling certain that a maid or two would be peeking through the window curtains of the big house. Up and down he walked, past the old limestone buildings that had once been coach houses but were now garages with living quarters above them for the servants. The rear of Stanmore House rose four stories on the other side of the alleyway, a grim s
tone block of a building, its marble-columned front facing Park Lane.
One of the garages was open, its wooden doors folded back to reveal the Rolls-Royce parked there. Ross paused for a moment to look at it. A good car. Polished to a rich silver sheen. Fine bit of machinery beneath the bonnet, but it could be better. He had written a letter to the Rolls-Royce company suggesting a method for improving the carburetion system and had posted it that morning in the letter box on Brook Street. He wondered idly if anything would come of it.
“Morning, Ross. Care for a fag?”
He looked away from the car to see one of the elderly footmen coming toward him. The man was in his braces and wore carpet slippers. He took the offered Woodbine, and the footman lit it for him.
“Keepin’ banker’s hours, aren’t you?”
The footman made a sour face. “Didn’t get to me bed till after three this mornin’. They had thirty-five people for dinner last night. Nothin’ on for tonight, thank the Lord. Goin’ to the theater.”
“I know,” Ross said.
The footman sat down on a stone step and unfolded a newspaper that he had been carrying under his arm. Ross leaned against the edge of the garage door and looked over the man’s shoulder.
“What happened at Newmarket yesterday?”
The footman turned the large pages of the newspaper. “Let’s see . . . Ah. Kennymore took the Prince of Wales stake. . . . No surprise there.”
“Who took the second race?”
“Sheba . . . Went off at seven to one.”
Ross whistled softly through his teeth. “Wish I’d had a quid on her.” He leaned closer to see the paper better. “That Jack Johnson. No one’s ever going to whip that lad.”
“Well, it’s for sure Frank Moran was never the one to try, but it says here the darkie was in poor form. He’s not what he used to be an’ that’s for certain.”
Ross squinted down at the sporting page through a haze of cigarette smoke. There was nothing much there that interested him. Cricket scores mostly: Winchester over Eton, Navy beating Army at Lords. He hated cricket, a bloody soppy boring game. America’s Cup trials at Torbay . . . Shamrock IV wins . . . Doubles play at Wimbledon . . . polo at Ranelagh. There would be nothing to interest him until football started. Queens Park Rangers . . . England versus Wales.
“Did you hear about the archduke?” the footman asked, turning the page.
“What archduke?”
“The Austrian one.”
“What about him?”
“Got scuppered yesterday. Him and his missus.”
Ross removed the cigarette from his mouth and tapped ash on the ground.
“Go on,” he said. “Who’d do a thing like that?”
“Anarchists. Tossed a bomb at him. Then shot the poor blighter dead . . . and her, too.”
“Get off it,” Ross said with a tone of disbelief.
“It’s in the paper.” The footman turned pages until he found the one with the archduke’s photograph on it. “See. Archduke Franz Ferdinand . . . heir to the Austrian throne—and his consort—murdered in Sarajevo. A student’s political crime, it says here.”
“I can read.” He leaned over the man’s shoulder. “Where’s Sarajevo?”
“Bosnia.”
“Never heard of it. One of them queer penny-farthing countries. Couldn’t happen here. Too bloody civilized.”
“The king’s puttin’ the court into mourning for eight days.”
“Our king? Why? The booger wasn’t a relative, was he?”
The footman closed the paper in disgust. “You don’t know a bleedin’ thing except motorcars . . . and care less. It’s just common courtesy, that’s all. Just plain common decency. One king to another.”
Ross straightened up and walked slowly away. “Thanks for the fag, mate.” He didn’t much like the footman—or any of the male staff, for that matter. Not a drop of spirit in any of them. Content. That was their problem. Content to walk around in knee breeches and powdered wigs like a packet of bleedin’ Drury Lane fairies. He took a final drag and flipped the cigarette away. It was starting to get hot, the sun bouncing off the walls of the old stable houses, their slate roofs intensifying the rays. The high, tight collar of his jacket was beginning to feel uncomfortable, and his hands felt sweaty in the gloves. Well, what the hell did he expect on the twenty-ninth of June, snowflakes? The church on South Audley Street began to toll the hour of eight.
“Thank God,” he muttered as he walked quickly to the open garage and got into the Rolls. Before the bell had finished ringing the hour, he had driven out of the mews and had turned onto Park Lane. Lord Stanmore was just coming out of the front door, preceded by a footman.
“Bloody good timing.” He drew the car up to the curb, the footman opened the rear door, and the earl got in.
“Good morning, Ross.”
“Good morning, your lordship.”
Lord Stanmore sank back against the seat with an audible sigh.
“Ah, a perfect morning, Ross.”
“Indeed it is, sir,” he said, watching the traffic streaming down from Marble Arch, waiting for his moment to slip the car into it without causing any other driver to brake or sound his Klaxon.
“Too nice a day to waste in the city. Should all be back in Abingdon, eh, Ross? Breathing that fresh country air.”
“Indeed we should, sir.”
“I have to go to the House, Ross. Shan’t be too long, though. Drafting a message of condolence. That beastly assassination of the Austrian archduke.”
“I was just now reading about it, m’lord. Told Mr. Picker that it would never have happened in England, sir.”
Lord Stanmore leaned forward to make conversation easier over the hum of the traffic. He was fond of young Ross. A bright, intelligent man. Bit of a diamond in the rough. A good example of what was admirable among the lower classes.
“Quite right, too. Jolly well put. We may have our anarchists in England, but they have a sense of fair play. And shooting the man on a Sunday, too. But the deed was done and that’s the end of it. I shall tell you something, Ross, that you won’t read in the newspapers. They won’t be shedding many tears in Vienna.”
“You don’t say so, m’lord.”
“The fellow was neither liked nor trusted.” He was about to add that the archduke’s morganatic wife had been déclasée, no better than a housekeeper, but thought better of it. “Well, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
Ross drove the earl to the Houses of Parliament and found a parking space in Parliament Square. He spent the next two hours in enjoyable conversation with the other drivers who had parked their cars there, and he told them about the carburetor fuel mixture device he had thought of and of the letter he had written to the Rolls-Royce company. Lord Curzon’s chauffeur, a tall, white-haired man, spoke up:
“I say, Ross. Did you take out a patent?”
“No. Why?”
“Why? To keep anyone from stealing your idea.”
Ross winked broadly at the other men. “Well, if someone does, I’ll know who to thank.”
“Don’t be daft,” Lord Curzon’s man said with some annoyance. “I hope you didn’t mail a set of drawings to Rolls-Royce.”
“No . . . just wrote ’em.” He was beginning to feel a bit uneasy. “Told ’em enough to wet their whistle like.”
“Good.” The man drew a piece of paper and pencil from his coat and leaned against a fender to write. “I’m going to give you the name of my brother-in-law and his establishment. He’s chief clerk for a firm of solicitors in New Fetter Lane near Lincoln’s Inn. Go have a chat with him soon as you can. He’ll tell you how to go about getting a patent.”
“I’ve got dozens and dozens of ideas.”
“Do you, Ross? Well, lad, put a patent on the best of them. It could turn out to be a good deal more rewarding than spending your money on skittles and beer.”
“Hop to it, lads,” a driver warned, flipping away his c
igarette. “Here they come.”
Lord Stanmore and a dozen other peers could be seen crossing Palace Yard, all of them smoking cigars and chatting away in high spirits. Hardly the proper mood for men who had just drafted a message of condolence, Ross was thinking. He straightened his cap and walked toward his car.
“Mind what I said,” Curzon’s chauffeur called out. “Go see him straightaway.”
There was a faint aroma of sherry as Lord Stanmore got into the back of the Rolls.
“Pall Mall, Ross. Drop me at the club and then see to her ladyship’s needs . . . or my daughter’s.” He chuckled wryly and contemplated the ash on his cigar. “I can well imagine how they’ve been keeping you hopping the past ten days or so.”
He doubted that, as he turned the gleaming silver car into Whitehall. The earl had only to attend the various parties that were almost a nightly feature at Stanmore House—he didn’t have to prepare for them. Ross estimated that he had been on duty an average of fourteen hours a day since the family and most of the servants had moved up from Abingdon Pryory. For the maids, cooks, and footmen, the hours had been even longer and more taxing. As he drove sedately toward the hurly-burly of Charing Cross, he wondered what the countess or the Right Honorable Miss Alexandra would have in store for him the rest of the day. The countess’s passion was for hand-delivered invitations. That meant driving all over London with one of the footmen, in full livery, powdered wig and all, seated beside him—to the hooting delight of every passing lorry driver. Miss Alexandra was party-mad, which meant long hours waiting outside the Cafe Royal or any number of houses in Belgravia and Chelsea, jawing with other chauffeurs while tango music drifted into the dark street. It was such a bloody waste of time. Somehow, he had to find a spare hour to visit the solicitors’ office in New Fetter Lane. A patent with his name on it. The thought awed him. Of course, it would take a bit of money, perhaps every penny he had saved up. He might be forced to sell his motorbike, but that was not a great sacrifice. And he’d have to give up his pleasures for a bit. No more walking out with girls and taking them to pictures. A penny saved was a penny earned.