London Rain

by Nicola Upson

  ‘Making you some sandwiches.’

  ‘What’s brought that on? You don’t usually bother.’

  ‘It’s not usually the Coronation. You’ve got a long day ahead.’

  ‘But I can’t mess around with sandwiches. I’ve got enough to take as it is.’

  ‘Then I’ll bring them to you. I’m not sitting far away, and I hate waiting around. I’ll keep you company during the dull bits – God knows there’ll be a few of those.’ She finished what she was doing and wrapped the food in greaseproof paper.

  ‘Don’t overdo it, though, Viv. I need to concentrate on what I’m going to say.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that. Sit down and have some breakfast – there’s fresh tea in the pot.’ She pushed the toast rack towards him and took a slice herself. ‘It’s a ten fifteen start, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Snagge’s getting us underway – the crowds and the foreign dignitaries, that sort of thing, all building to the first glimpse of the King. I’m not sure that wasn’t the plum job, in hindsight – or Howard in the Abbey, of course.’ She watched as he poured his tea, intensely aware now of the way he held his cup and the movement of his lips as he talked; the thought of Anthony’s absence, it seemed, had magnified his presence in the room, and had made her more sensitive to all the physical things he would take with him when he left. ‘I’m not so sure that Constitution Hill was the best choice after all.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. The return to the palace of a newly crowned king? It’s what the whole day’s about. And your commentary is by far the longest section – they’re not going to waste you on anything less than the most crucial moments.’

  ‘I only hope those bloody television cameras don’t get in the way. It’s just my luck to have to compete with the novelty value and stand by while Freddie Grisewood steals the show. It’s going to be quite something, you know – the first glimpse of the carriage and the close-ups as it goes through Apsley Gate.’

  ‘But what’s left for Freddie to do? The pictures are already there for everyone to see. There’s no magic about television.’ Suddenly, Vivienne realised how tired she was of boosting her husband’s confidence all these years, of picking him up every time his ego received a knock from new developments at the BBC or the threat of a new voice on the scene. It would be nice to have some peace.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Actually, it’ll be handy to have you nearby just in case I need something. You can tell me what the mood is among the crowd and I can build that into the commentary. You’ve got your ticket?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Have some more tea.’

  ‘It seems funny to start such a momentous day in such an ordinary way.’

  Doesn’t it just, Vivienne thought. ‘The king’s probably saying the very same thing. How must they feel, I wonder – looking out at all those people in the Mall over their toast and eggs? It’s not even as if he was born to it. I imagine his brother’s ears are burning this morning, even if he is in France.’

  ‘Bloody stupid to give your life up for a woman, though.’

  Vivienne looked at him sharply but there was absolutely no hint of irony in the remark; she thought about the letter in the drawer upstairs, the sacrifice of his own career, and wondered why it had taken so long for her to realise that there was a fundamentally stupid streak in her husband. Not that she could talk; she had been aware of all his infidelities, but she had never dreamt that he would leave her – or that Millicent Gray would be the one to tempt him away. She could have understood it with some of the others, some of the women at work who had an intelligence to match their glamour – but not this one. She realised that Anthony was waiting for her to comment on something he had said. ‘I’m sorry, darling – I just remembered something that needs to be added to the new issue. What did you say?’

  ‘Just that we’ve come on so far in the last few years that it’s hard to believe this is the very first coronation broadcast. The whole world will be waiting to hear what we do today.’

  ‘Are you nervous?’

  ‘Not really. I just keep telling myself that it’s what we do all the time. Poor old Woody was beside himself, though – and I can’t say I’d want to trade places with him. If anything goes wrong in that control room at the Abbey, it’s not just our broadcast that’s at risk – it’s all the microphones along the route and the loudspeakers in the Abbey, not to mention the foreign broadcasts. If I were him, I’d be ill and take the day off.’

  ‘There must be a backup, surely?’

  ‘There’s a transmitter on the Abbey roof with a wireless link to BH, but even so.’

  ‘And what about you? What help will you have?’

  ‘I’ll have an engineer with me, but only while I’m broadcasting live.’

  ‘So you’ll have plenty of peace and quiet to prepare?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Vivienne hesitated, knowing it was futile but wanting to give Anthony one last chance to save himself. ‘We should book a holiday when this is all over and Maurice is back. Somewhere nice, just the two of us. We haven’t been away for ages.’

  ‘Yes, well, I can’t think about that now. And you needn’t wait for me later. I’ll have to go back to the office for a debrief afterwards, and discuss the schedule for the rest of the week. Then there’s the King’s broadcast. I might be late.’ How easily the lies tumbled out of his mouth, she thought; she knew exactly where her husband planned to be later, and it had nothing to do with the King’s speech. ‘So I’ll see you back here?’ She caught her breath, struck for the first time by the finality of what she was about to do. ‘Viv? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly all right. I’ll go and get changed.’

  ‘Well, don’t take too long about it. I don’t want to be late. You can always come on later if you need more time.’

  ‘No, I want to collect something from Danny while you’re at the office. You’re leaving for the observation point at twelve, aren’t you?’ Anthony nodded. ‘Good. Give me five minutes.’

  She ran up the two flights of stairs to her dressing room and slipped into the outfit she had laid out the night before – a sober two-piece suit in an unmemorable dark blue, chosen specifically to blend easily into the crowd. She heard a car draw up outside and looked down into the street, where Billy was waiting in his usual place. Anthony’s voice drifted up to her, impatient now, and with a sharpness that revealed the lie in his denial of nerves. ‘The car’s here, Viv. I’m going to have to go without you if you’re not ready now.’

  ‘Coming, darling.’ She joined him in the hall, hoping that he wouldn’t comment on the lack of effort she had made with her clothes, but he barely looked at her. With a final glance back at the ordinariness she was leaving behind, Vivienne picked up the handbag which she had packed so carefully the day before and left the house with her husband for the very last time.

  3

  A temporary annexe had been built onto the front of Westminster Abbey, blending beautifully with the older fabric of the building. The doors, carved in light oak and reserved for members of the royal family, stood expectantly open and a scarlet-and-gold canopy added a touch of extravagance to an otherwise understated facade. The colours were mirrored in the Royal Standard which fluttered gently in the breeze above this new addition to the city’s architecture, and the skyline beyond was broken by tiny figures moving across the rooftops, keen to take advantage of their privileged view. Down below, cars bringing guests to the Abbey flowed in and out efficiently, and the handful of guests who had arrived in state coaches were welcomed by the crowd as an early piece of pageantry in what had so far been a very dull morning of forgettable comings and goings.

  Josephine looked at her watch and stifled a yawn. It was already ten minutes to seven, and the Motleys were pushing the strict rules of admittance to their limit. If they didn’t arrive soon, she would be tempted to stretch out on the three spare seats next to her and sleep through the whole damned thing. She listened idly to
the conversations going on around her, most of which seemed to be about the weather, and wondered if her inability to share a fascination with the subtlest change of cloud-colour revealed something lacking in her or in everyone else. Just as she had given up hope of more stimulating company, Lettice appeared at the entrance to the stand, dressed in a beautiful off-white suit which would have been the height of elegance had it not been unsettled by the weight of a large picnic hamper. The empty seats – a rarity now in the stand – drew her eye quickly to Josephine and she waved, then beckoned impatiently to the stragglers in her party. When Ronnie emerged in peacock-blue silk, Josephine would happily have bet all she had on the colour of Mrs Snipe’s outfit, and she wasn’t disappointed: the housekeeper brought up the rear in a triumphant red, which made her already majestic stature even more impressive. Josephine counted at least four more variously sized baskets as the trio made its stately progress up the steps towards her, and she did not have to be an expert in lip-reading to know that Ronnie’s reaction to being seated in the middle of a full row was less than gracious. In the end, Mrs Snipe took charge, positioning Ronnie and Lettice at intervals down the line and passing the baskets over the heads of those already seated. Realising that she was expected to act as the final link in the chain, and conscious of providing a welcome interlude for the crowd, Josephine stood to receive each basket in turn and somehow managed to wrestle them all into the space by her feet.

  ‘We haven’t missed anything, I hope,’ Lettice whispered, sitting down next to her.

  ‘On the contrary. Your entrance has been the only thing worth getting up for so far.’

  ‘Oh good. We were all ready to go, but Ronnie toyed with a last-minute change of colour.’

  ‘Not green, I hope. That would have given the wrong impression entirely.’

  ‘No, just a different shade of blue, something closer to the proper flag. Then she decided that was far too dull, so back we went to the peacock. By that time, it was gone six and the Snipe was beside herself.’ She redistributed the baskets along the row and glanced round at the crowd. ‘Haven’t they gone to a lot of trouble?’ she added, gesturing towards the plush red fabric on the chairs and the white-and-gold valances that draped each stand. ‘I wonder what they’re doing with the decorations when it’s all over? We’ve got a Henry V coming up at the New, and this would be perfect.’

  ‘Bugger Henry V. For God’s sake, get the flask out,’ Ronnie urged. ‘The early start I’ve had today will kill me.’ She peered at Josephine, who suddenly felt the inadequacies of her own makeup. ‘And you look awful. Has Marta kept you up all night?’

  ‘Yes, but not in the way you mean.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Lettice asked.

  Josephine glanced at Mrs Snipe, who sat at the other end of their quartet. The housekeeper was the soul of discretion and they had shared confidences in the past, but Josephine still did not feel quite liberated enough to discuss her love life openly in front of her. Fortunately, the housekeeper was engaged in fishing out a round of bacon sandwiches which seemed miraculously to have stayed warm in spite of Ronnie’s prevarications. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It’s my fault. I wanted things to change, but I think it might rather have backfired on me. Now isn’t the time to talk about it, though. I’ll tell you later.’ It was hard to say how much of the conversation Mrs Snipe had heard, but she smiled at Josephine and passed her a steaming cup of coffee laced heavily with brown sugar, just the way she liked it. Josephine took it gratefully, feeling as wretched as she looked, then changed her mind about the sandwich; she had skipped dinner the night before and left herself no time for breakfast, and the smell of bacon made her realise how hungry she was.

  Ronnie took the programme out of her bag. ‘Bloody long day, isn’t it?’ she said, flicking through the pages. ‘What are we all supposed to do while he’s in there being anointed? And how can it take three hours? It’s not as if he’s got anything to think about – he’s stuck with it now, whether he likes it or not.’ She looked apprehensively up at the sky. ‘Then there’s the weather to worry about. I’m beginning to think that Bridget was right, you know – we’d get all the good bits on the wireless.’

  ‘The weather will clear up soon, you mark my words,’ Mrs Snipe said confidently, and it amused Josephine to see that her down-to-earth attitude to life could cut through the Motley sisters’ nonsense as effectively now as it had when they were younger. Very few people could keep Ronnie in line, but the Snipe – who had virtually raised Lettice and Ronnie after their mother’s early death – managed to keep their love and respect while allowing them to get away with nothing.

  Her optimism about the day seemed justified, too; by the time the bacon had been followed by cheese scones, sausage rolls and another round of coffees, the skies had brightened a little and the crowd was in cheerful mood. Throughout the morning, police had allowed more people to filter through to different vantage points, and paper caps of red, white and blue began to appear in all directions; vendors selling cardboard periscopes seemed to be doing a particularly good trade, while others chose to gain their extra inches by paying sixpence for stilts – short lengths of sawn wood that said much about the British public’s eye for an opportunity but offered little practical benefit. The atmosphere inside the Abbey seemed relaxed; peers wandered in and out in their robes, exchanging a word or two with spectators, and shadowy figures moved around just inside the doors, checking small details that had, no doubt, been checked a hundred times before.

  ‘So what is wrong?’ Lettice asked, ignoring Josephine’s preference not to talk. ‘Can we help?’

  Josephine hesitated. Ronnie and Lettice were friends with Lydia as well as with her, but she trusted them to be impartial, even if that meant dishing out a few home truths that she didn’t want to hear. The person she longed to talk to was Archie, but there was no chance of getting him on his own for the next couple of days and this couldn’t wait. ‘Oh, it’s just Lydia,’ she said, trying not to speak too loudly over the hubbub of the crowd. ‘To be quite frank, I’m sick to death of her.’

  ‘No surprise there,’ Ronnie said, with an irritating retrospective wisdom. ‘I don’t know how you ever thought that little arrangement was going to work, darling.’ She drained her coffee and smiled provocatively. ‘But if it’s any consolation, I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.’

  ‘It’s certainly that,’ Josephine agreed, and told them what had happened at Broadcasting House, relieved to share the conversation after a long night of soul-searching.

  ‘So Lydia saw what was coming and got in first,’ Lettice said. ‘That’s tricky.’

  ‘I know, and it’s my fault as well. Marta wanted to talk to her as soon as we got back from Suffolk, but I made her wait.’

  ‘So what do you actually want?’ Ronnie asked. ‘I’m not sure I quite understand.’

  ‘I just want it to be simple,’ Josephine said, and cut Ronnie off before she had time to argue. ‘All right, I know it never will be and there are a thousand and one things that make it complicated, but I can live with all the distance and the secrecy and the pretence because we deal with those together. Lydia’s different, though. She divides us, and she always will.’ She sighed, wishing that everything she was trying to explain did not boil down quite so transparently to a straightforward case of jealousy. ‘I thought it was enough to know that Marta loves me and that what we have comes first, even if we can’t be together as often as we’d like to be. But it isn’t. In the early days, whenever I had to go back to Scotland, I missed Marta dreadfully and that was hard, but it was all part of the love. Now when we’re apart, I spend as much time thinking about Lydia and what she’s getting up to as I do about Marta, and that’s got nothing to do with love. Resentment and suspicion and paranoia, perhaps, but not love. And it’s not like me. It’s not who I thought I was.’

  ‘You mean you’ve become someone you don’t even recognise, and you hate yourself for it.’

  Josephine looked
at Lettice, surprised by how much feeling she had put into the observation, but something in her friend’s expression told her not to probe any further. ‘Yes,’ she said curiously, ‘that’s exactly it. And something’s changed. I can’t put my finger on it, but I know Lydia’s suddenly making more effort with Marta. Perhaps it’s the cottage. At last, we’ve got somewhere to go that Lydia doesn’t feel she can just walk into at any time, and perhaps that’s made her more vulnerable. I know she never entirely forgave Marta for leaving her at Christmas.’

  ‘The trouble with you, Josephine, is that you’re just not pushy enough,’ Ronnie said, with sufficient exasperation in her voice to suggest that the problem was obvious to the point of banality. ‘Say what you like about Lydia, but she doesn’t give up. You need to fight much harder and much dirtier if you want Marta to yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was a military operation,’ Josephine said huffily.

  ‘Of course it’s a military operation. Sex always is.’

  ‘She’s right, you know,’ Mrs Snipe said, and all three of them turned to stare at her in surprise. The housekeeper carried on looking through her binoculars, apparently finding a particular fascination in the pigeons on the roof of the annexe. ‘You need to put your back into it, Miss Tey. No woman likes to be messed about. If Miss Fox thinks you’re not bothered, then why should she be?’

  The Snipe’s wisdom silenced everyone for a few moments. ‘Well, that’s me told,’ Josephine muttered eventually. ‘Now can we please change the subject?’

  Lettice squeezed her hand in solidarity. ‘We won’t say another word about it. Does anybody fancy something sweet?’

  The first procession of royal cars arrived just after nine, carrying relatives of the royal family and heads of state from across the Empire. Then, at last, some picturesque carriages came into view, headed by the prime minister and Mrs Baldwin who received the first truly rousing cheer of the morning. Their escort of mounted police was a restrained introduction to the day’s pageantry, but the familiarity of the uniform did nothing to diminish its impact; in fact, its ordinariness brought a human touch to the ceremony, making it easier for people to believe that the moment belonged to them as well as to history. A whisper passed through the crowd, hints of something more significant at last, and when the head of a longer, more colourful procession appeared in the distance, the sudden, collective elevation of periscopes suggested a Wellsian fantasy of another world. As if in response, a shaft of light broke free from a sullen sky and the sun shook off the clouds for the first time, coaxing a new and indefinable glory from the polished metals and heraldic colours which suddenly filled the streets. ‘See?’ Mrs Snipe said, her faith in a benevolent world justified. ‘It’s kings’ weather after all.’