Hollow Crown

by David Roberts

  ‘I don’t think I would be welcome. It’s not my fight and they would have every right to resent me pretending it was. Tell you what, when you all arrive in London and have presented your petition . . . I suppose there is a petition?’

  ‘Darn right there is!’

  ‘I’ll give you and Tommie, and anyone else you want to ask, a slap-up meal – a celebration.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Verity doubtfully. ‘I suppose that will be all right. We’ll have to see.’

  ‘Ungrateful little beast!’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Edward. You think it’s all a game, but it isn’t. It’s deadly serious.’

  ‘But that doesn’t stop you shopping your way through the West End?’

  ‘I’m allowed recreation but you’re on a permanent holiday.’

  ‘Touché,’ he said wryly.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be schoolmistressy but what are you doing now? Going to hobnob with a load of silly asses with more money than sense to kill a few innocent animals.’

  ‘Hey, steady on! I say, when do you go back to Spain, or don’t you?’

  ‘Soon,’ she said shortly.

  ‘It was bad out there?’ he asked, almost shyly.

  ‘Yep, bad.’ She shut her lips like a trap closing and the blood left her face. It was obviously too recent and too painful to talk about casually with a taxi waiting at the door. ‘Go on! You have to get to Coutts before they shut, you capitalist exploiter of the down-trodden masses. Do they still wear frock coats, by the way? I suppose it helps them kowtow to the bourgeoisie. Thanks for the rescue.’

  Edward grinned. ‘I’ll telephone . . . ’

  When the taxi had disappeared, Verity took off her hat and then stood in front of the little mirror in the hall and stared at herself. Suddenly, despite her friends, despite the Party, she felt very lonely. All the girls she knew were getting married and having babies. What was she doing playing at politics, dabbling in what most people considered to be men’s work? She would admit it to nobody but in Toledo she had been very frightened. Alongside her, men she knew well – comrades in arms – had died and died ignominiously She knew they had been betrayed by their leaders, and the Republicans had been made to look fools in front of the world’s press. When the city fell, Franco’s men had been allowed to rape and murder the townspeople unchecked. It was deliberate policy – to terrorize the people into submission.

  She leant forward and pressed her forehead against the cool of the glass and closed her eyes. How long could she go on? Was her idealism crumbling in the face of the brutal reality? All she wanted now was to rest and it occurred to her that the place she most wanted to rest was in the arms of the man whom she had so firmly dispatched in a taxi a few moments before.

  ‘Sometimes I think I’m the biggest fool on earth, Fenton.’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Stop pretending you don’t know why we’re bowling down the Great West Road when we might be enjoying the fleshpots of the metropolis.’

  Edward put his foot down on the accelerator pedal and the Lagonda responded like the thoroughbred she was. Despite everything he had said, it was a joy to feel the wind in his face and know that he had a job to do at journey’s end, however distasteful. He had been idle too long and had been seriously considering leaving for America and getting a job on a ranch in Texas or wherever was furthest from decadent, demoralized Europe.

  ‘I did happen to overhear your lordship on the telephone to Lord Weaver. Without wishing to eavesdrop, I understood that your visit to Haling Castle is not entirely a matter of pleasure.’

  Edward snorted and, to Fenton’s alarm, took both hands off the wheel to make a gesture of protest. ‘Pleasure! I might as well tell you all, Fenton, in order to avoid any misunderstandings. Before you entered my employment, when I was in Africa, I became a close friend of Mrs Raymond Harkness – Molly Harkness. She had a brute of a husband and, to cut a long story short, he did away with himself. Though I don’t like speaking ill of a woman, I have to say Molly had not proved to be the most loyal of wives. I took her away from Nairobi and the scandal surrounding her husband’s death and we were together for some months while she . . . recuperated.’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Fenton, but in this instance you would be wrong.’

  ‘My lord!’ said Fenton, shocked.

  ‘She’s a very beautiful woman – or she was then – but we stayed just good friends. It’s against my principles to take advantage of a woman when she’s at a low ebb and Molly was pretty down in the mouth I can tell you.’

  ‘Would that be the Mrs Harkness who is a close friend of the King, my lord? I have often seen her name in the society columns.’

  ‘No longer. Lord Weaver informs me she has been dropped like the proverbial hot potato. Between ourselves, I don’t think Mrs Simpson appreciated her.’

  ‘I understand, my lord. And when you dined with his lordship the other evening . . . ?’

  ‘I was informed that Molly, in what I can only assume was a fit of pique, had removed certain letters from Mrs Simpson’s room when both ladies were staying with Lord Brownlow and naturally she wants them back. I have been selected for that duty. As you can imagine, I do not relish the thought of trying to persuade Molly that it would be in her best interests to hand over the purloined letters.’

  ‘I quite understand, my lord. Might I inquire whether I can be of any assistance?’

  ‘Maybe, Fenton, maybe. I hope it won’t come to searching her room or anything so unpleasant but . . . well, I shall want to consult you, I am sure, and, if you can do so without embarrassment, it occurred to me that you might be able to elicit information from Mrs Harkness’s maid – I assume she will have her own maid with her – which might be of use. I trust I am not putting you in an awkward position? You can always say no. A word from you will be taken as a nolle prosequi and nothing more will be said on the subject.’

  ‘My lord, I will do whatever can be done.’

  ‘I’m most grateful. I need hardly say absolute discretion is called for. Our host, Mr Scannon, knows what we are about and,’ he added casually, ‘a Catherine Dannhorn, who is also staying at Haling and is a close friend of Lord Weaver, may also know something of what’s afoot, but no one else.’

  ‘I appreciate being taken into your confidence, my lord, and you can depend on me to be as silent as the grave.’

  ‘Very good! Ah, take a squint at that finger post will you? We can’t be far now.’

  Haling Castle proved to be not a castle but a large grey stone house covered in Virginia creeper – handsome but by no means beautiful. It was surrounded by a stone wall in bad repair, the gaps in it roughly filled with loose stone and barbed wire. A short gravel drive debouched on to the road through great stone pillars upon which hung two ornate iron gates. Scannon told Edward later that the house had been built by his father, a wealthy Birmingham industrialist, at the end of the last century. It had been fitted with every modern convenience including electric light and a primitive central heating system which banged and gurgled, only slightly warming massive brown-painted radiators. It now needed complete renovation but Scannon said he hadn’t the money to do it.

  Scannon himself came to the door to welcome Edward and tell him in a conspiratorial whisper that Molly had arrived the previous day.

  ‘I’ve said nothing, of course, but she seems nervy and unhappy. Anyway, come in and meet her. She’s very eager to see you. I don’t know what you did to her but she certainly thinks the sun shines out of . . . ah, there you are Pickering. Take Lord Edward’s bags to his room, will you.’

  Fenton went off with the butler and Scannon led Edward across a gloomy-looking hall through a gothic-style door into what was obviously the drawing-room. At the far end of this barn of a room several people were huddled round a huge open fire. Laid across great fire dogs, logs the size of small trees burned fiercely but the architect had so arranged it that most of the heat generated went stra
ight up the chimney. Only if one were standing very close to it could one be toasted and even charred.

  Edward was offered a cup of tea by a bespectacled female to whom he was not introduced. He sipped at the liquid gratefully and then turned to greet his fellow guests.

  ‘You know Boy, I gather,’ Scannon said, indicating a man of about forty with the lean, tanned look of someone who spent most of their life in hot climates.

  ‘Boy, yes of course,’ Edward said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  ‘Hello, old sport,’ Carstairs said, shaking his hand.

  Sir Richard Carstairs – always known as Boy for reasons lost in the mists of time – had been in Nairobi when Edward was there and they had been on safari together a couple of times. He was not exactly a popular figure in the colony but everyone knew him and he was thought to be in some unspecified way ‘useful’. He had no money himself but managed to live in the houses of the rich without their seeming to mind. In short, he was a sponger but he paid his way by being an amusing raconteur and a knowledgeable guide to what passed for fleshpots in Nairobi. He took English and American visitors on safari – he was a crack shot – and showed them the country in perfect safety while letting them feel they were being adventurous. Women liked him, and it was said he had serviced many bored wives, but there had never been any scandal and in Happy Valley that was what mattered. Boy was a bounder but he was discreet.

  A soon as he decently could, Edward turned to greet Molly and they kissed with genuine warmth.

  ‘Molly, my dear, I had heard you were in England and I kept on meaning to telephone you but I didn’t know where you were living.’

  ‘I know, Edward darling. It’s my fault. Why is it one never sees one’s real friends and spends all one’s time with bores.’

  ‘Tut-tut,’ Scannon said, ‘I think you’re being hard on me.’

  ‘Oh Leo, I don’t mean you of course, but . . . ’

  Fortunately, perhaps, Edward’s attention was drawn by Scannon to the other couple standing beside the fire.

  ‘Edward, let me introduce you to Lord and Lady Benyon. I don’t believe you have ever met, have you?’

  ‘I’m delighted to meet you, sir, at last. When I was in Madrid a few months back they said you had been there giving a lecture. I was very sorry to have missed it.’

  Edward was immensely pleased to meet the distinguished economist and his Russian wife. He had long thought Benyon was one of the few economists who made sense and moreover was, at least in his private life, an outsider and a rebel. His interests were not the usual pursuits of the English upper class – hunting, shooting and fishing – but books, theatre, painting and ballet. Inna – Lady Benyon – had been a dancer with the Russian Ballet and Diaghilev had been almost a father to her. Benyon had seen her perform at Covent Garden just before the war and had fallen passionately in love with her. He had bombarded her with flowers and, as they say, swept her off her feet. Despite being told by all their friends that the affair would be short-lived and ‘end in tears’ they had married and lived – as far as anyone knew – happily ever after. Inna was still very lovely – petite, very slim, with the kind of heart-shaped face rare in Englishwomen. Edward guessed she must have been exquisite when she had danced with Nijinsky before the war and he could quite understand why Benyon had fallen in love with her.

  Edward had read several of Benyon’s books and, though he knew very little of economics, thought he knew good sense when he came across it. Now in his mid-fifties, Benyon – unlike his books which were lean and muscular – was physically unprepossessing. He was thin, round-shouldered and had a limp, the result of a childhood illness. His skin was bad, he was almost bald and his moustache was wispy and illnourished but his eyes glittered with intelligence and he had a smile which illuminated his face. Apart from being an academic and a member of several influential commissions, he was also a patron of the arts and he had even managed to squeeze out of the government a little money for the Opera House.

  Edward was about to ask Benyon for his views on the depression which still gripped towns like Jarrow when the drawing-room door opened and Dannie entered. Though he knew she was to be a guest of Scannon’s, her loveliness again took him by surprise. Benyon was amused to see Edward so obviously bouleversé, and even Molly, who was nervous and impatient to get Edward on his own, had to smile despite being rather jealous. Dannie kissed Edward and then threw herself into a large, battered armchair and demanded tea and muffins.

  ‘You English . . . ’ she said in her dark, husky voice with its trace of an accent, ‘you English cannot cook – you do not know the meaning of good food! I’m sorry, Leo, but it is only the simple truth. But your afternoon tea – that is a good thing you have invented.’

  ‘Dannie treats this place as though she owned it,’ Scannon said in mock exasperation. ‘I’ll have you know, my dear child, that chair you threw yourself in is Louis Quinze and valuable.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Leo. There’s nothing worth anything in this house. You’re too mean to put in proper heating even. I’m freezing.’ She wrapped herself in her arms dramatically.

  ‘Well, you should wear more clothes. Our fathers and grandfathers dressed in several layers of good English worsted before they ventured out so they did not need mollycoddling with heated pipes and radiators.’

  Edward thought the conversation was getting a little too acerbic for comfort – no one likes being called mean – so he hurriedly broke in with a story of how as a child his father had allowed them all to freeze in sympathy with the troops at the front. It was ridiculous, Edward knew, but all the time he was talking he was imagining what it would be like to take Dannie in his arms and make violent, passionate love to her. This woman had only to utter a few banalities and it made the blood pump through his veins and all powers of intelligent conversation left him. There was something pagan . . . elemental about her which intrigued and baffled him. He thought of Rider Haggard’s She, a favourite book of his when he had been a child.

  Lord Benyon, half annoyed and half amused, saw what was happening and relinquished Edward to the siren with some degree of disappointment. He hoped the young man, whom he had liked on sight, was not going to be led astray by this strange-looking woman. He would ask Inna what she thought. He usually found his wife percipient about the love lives of their friends. Molly too watched Edward intently. Her face was drawn and her brow furrowed. She was clearly unhappy. Edward caught her eye and his heart almost failed him as he remembered why he was here at Haling. He shivered. How pale and wan Englishwomen, even Molly Harkness, seemed in Dannie’s presence.

  Before long, Scannon dismissed the party to rest and change for dinner. ‘Pickering will show you your room, Corinth,’ he said, escorting him to the foot of the stairs where a grave, bespectacled man awaited him. ‘The gong goes at seven and we foregather here for cocktails. It’s my custom to take anyone who wishes it on a guided tour of the house after dinner. In spite of what Dannie says, I do at least have a picture or two which might interest you. Oh, by the way, the party’s not yet complete. We’re being joined by Sir Geoffrey and Lady Hepple-Keen and Mr Larry Harbin, the American millionaire. Harbin’s a most interesting man. I met him in New York last year and we found we had much in common. He’s a close friend of President Roosevelt. I shall be interested to hear what you make of him.’

  ‘And Hepple-Keen? He’s one of your lot, isn’t he, Leo?’ Edward said.

  ‘My lot? Oh, yes. He’s MP for Leicester North and a coming man. The PM thinks well of him.’

  ‘No, I mean he’s an admirer of the Führer, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he was one of our little party in Berlin for the Games. Does that bother you? I know you do not share our admiration for what the Reich Chancellor has achieved. Hepple-Keen had a very good war, you know, Corinth. He knows what it is to have Germany as an enemy but, like me, he now thinks we ought to make it our friend and ally.’

  ‘I understand the Führer also had “a good wa
r”, as you put it. So good he wishes to repeat it.’

  Scannon looked at Edward with distaste. He hoped his guest was not going to be a bore about politics. He said, ‘That’s nonsense. The Führer wants to be our friend if only warmongers like you would let him. He admires the British Empire. His enemies should be ours.’

  Realizing he was becoming shrill, Scannon said more quietly, ‘By the way, I make it a rule in this house to keep off politics when the ladies are present. Perhaps over a cigar and a brandy we might try and convert you, Corinth, but . . . ’ he lowered his voice so only Edward could hear, ‘we mustn’t let anything distract you from . . . from your real reason for being here.’

  Pickering escorted him to his bedroom on the front of the house. Fenton had unpacked and laid out his clothes for the evening. ‘Arctic, eh, Fenton?’ he said, rubbing his hands.

  ‘My lord?’ Fenton inquired.

  ‘This room . . . it’s icy. Is that all the heating there is?’ He pointed to a single bar electric fire which glowed feebly in the fireplace.

  ‘Yes, my lord. I inquired whether it might not be possible to light a fire in the grate . . . ’

  ‘It’s big enough.’ The electric fire was lost in a gaping aperture in which a huge metal grid, resembling some instrument of medieval torture, stood gleaming with lack of use.

  ‘Yes, my lord. Unfortunately, Mr Pickering informed me the bedroom fires are never lit for fear of causing a conflagration which might endanger the house.’

  ‘Well, we don’t want that, I suppose. Throw me my dressing gown, will you,’ he said, taking off his jacket. ‘I suppose one can have a bath?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. There is a bathroom at the end of the passage. I deferred drawing a bath for you, my lord, until you came up as I understand it is shared with two other guests on this corridor, Mrs Harkness and Mr Harbin. If I may say so, I would advocate having your bath in good time, my lord. Mr Pickering indicated to me that the plumbing is . . . antiquated and the hot water is not to be relied upon.’