A Season of Secrets

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Yes please, Jim,’ she shouted, beginning to run across the field to the spot where he had brought his horse and cart to a stop.

  ‘Gracious!’ She climbed up beside him, out of breath. ‘This isn’t as comfortable as the pony-trap – and even pony-traps are old-fashioned these days.’

  ‘They mebbe old-fashioned in London, but they’ll never be old-fashioned in Yorkshire.’ He pushed a battered flat cap to the back of hair that was still as thick, dark and unruly as his nephew’s, saying as he clicked the reins and the horse moved off at a steady pace, ‘Have you seen much of our Hal lately?’

  ‘Not for ages, Jim. This is my first time back in Yorkshire since Easter.’

  ‘Aye, I know that. I meant when Hal was jaunting down in London at Thea’s big do.’

  ‘I saw him, but every time I did I was dancing with someone, so I didn’t get a chance to speak with him.’

  She didn’t like to add that from the moment Dieter had asked her to dance she’d had no thoughts for anyone else.

  Jim thought over what she had said and decided there was no point in pursuing it. ‘And are you at Gorton now until Christmas?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ Excitement bubbled up in her throat as she thought of where she was going to be – not only until Christmas, but, if she had her way, for a long time afterwards. Perhaps forever after. ‘In two weeks’ time I’m going to a finishing school in Germany’

  ‘Germany?’ She now had Jim’s complete attention. ‘That’s a bit of a rum choice, Olivia lass.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ She was immediately defensive. ‘English girls have been going to German finishing schools ever since Queen Victoria’s day’

  ‘Mebbe they have, but I don’t reckon they’ve been going there since 1914. The war has only bin over six years – and I still think it’s a rum choice.’

  ‘Papa doesn’t. He speaks very good German and he’s pleased I want to be able to speak it. He thinks it very important that Britain and Germany are on good terms with each other, so that something as appalling as the Great War never happens again.’

  Jim cracked with mirthless laughter. ‘I doubt that little fella, ’itler, is too worried about being on good terms wi’ Britain. Seems to me ’e’s a bloke who doesn’t want to be on good terms wi’ anyone. You just be careful of yourself in Kraut-land. They’re ’aving a bad time of it over there. Food shortages. Unemployment. Inflation. It isn’t anywhere I’d care to be.’

  Olivia tried to think of a crushing reply, but couldn’t. All she knew of Hitler was that he was an Austrian corporal recently imprisoned for having led a failed uprising against the German government – and she only remembered that much because he and his followers had occupied a beer hall in Munich, and she found the connection between a beer hall and an uprising droll.

  As for food shortages and unemployment . . . Berlin was a capital city and surely too sophisticated and glamorous to be troubled by anything as horrid as that. The word ‘inflation’ was a little more troubling as she wasn’t sure what it meant – and she was furious that someone as uneducated as Jim did. Perhaps it was a word he’d picked up from Hal. It sounded like a word Hal might use when he was on his socialist hobbyhorse.

  ‘Charlie’s perked up since Miss C’s bin back,’ Jim said, knowing he’d put her in a huff and offering her a way out of it by changing the subject. ‘I saw ’im in t’ veg garden this morning, ’arvesting maincrop spuds and whistling like a young lad.’

  ‘And?’ Olivia didn’t see the point of the remark.

  ‘And I just wonder ’ow long it’s going to be afore ’e plucks up courage and pops t’ question.’

  ‘What question?’ Olivia was too mystified to remember that she was cross with him. ‘Why would Miss Cumberbatch be interested in potatoes?’

  Jim cracked with laughter again, this time with genuine mirth. ‘I doubt she is much interested in ’em, but she’s interested in Charlie – and ’e’s allus bin smitten wi’ ’er. The two of ’em just need to get their acts together.’

  Olivia stared at him. ‘You’re not making any sense, Jim. You surely can’t mean that Charlie and Miss Cumberbatch are . . . are . . .’

  ‘Sweethearts?’ Jim finished obligingly. ‘Mebbe not yet, but both of ’em want to be each other’s sweetheart. If you ’ad eyes in your ’ead, you’d ’ave seen it ages ago.’ He let the reins fall loose and lit a Woodbine. Blowing a plume of acrid-smelling smoke into the air, he said, ‘I think they make a right grand couple. When Charlie finally pops t’ question, I’m going to ask ’im if I can be ’is best man.’

  Olivia’s jaw dropped. ‘But . . . but Hermione Cumberbatch is a governess!’ she said, when she’d recovered her power of speech. ‘How can she marry a gardener? Especially when . . . when . . .’

  Once again words failed her, and again Jim obligingly finished her sentence for her. ‘When despite all t’ miracles done to ’is face, Charlie’s still far from being an oil-painting? His face has never bothered Miss C. Besides, she thinks ’e’s an ’ero – and ’e is. It only came out a while back, when a bloke ’e’d served wi’ paid ’im a visit and chatted in t’ Pig and Whistle, but Charlie received ’is injuries carrying a wounded pal to safety.’

  ‘Oh, Jim! How wonderfully brave of him!’

  ‘Aye, and ’ow typical of ’im never to ’ave said a word.’

  Olivia wondered if her father knew – and if Carrie knew. Hal would most certainly know, because Jim would have made sure he did. She said musingly, ‘If Miss Cumberbatch was to marry Charlie, I wonder who she would have as her bridesmaids? I’ve never heard her mention any nieces or god-daughters.’

  They had reached Gorton and Jim reined the horse in. ‘Daft question that, Olivia lass. She’d ’ave you, Thea and Violet.’ Then, at the horrified expression on Olivia’s face, he laughed so hard he nearly fell off the cart.

  Two weeks later, on a train rattling across northern Germany towards Berlin, Olivia said to her father, ‘Why is it, Papa, that when Charlie risked his life in order to save someone else’s, he didn’t get a medal?’

  ‘Probably because, in the heat of battle, only he and the pal he saved knew about it; or, if other people knew of it, they didn’t report it. Even if such an act had been reported, it doesn’t follow as night follows day that Charlie would have been recommended for a medal. In the nightmare of a full-scale battle such acts of heroism are unbelievably commonplace, especially in a Pals Battalion, which is the kind of battalion Charlie was serving in. It’s a pity, though. I can only say that if I’d been his commanding officer, I would have recommended him for a medal.’

  She looked out of the train window towards the blue haze of distant mountains and Gilbert said, ‘Those are the Harz: the highest mountain range in northern Germany. They are the setting for the fairy tales your mother used to tell you when you were little.’

  Her father frequently spoke about her mother, and she loved it when he did so. ‘Fairy tales such as “Red Riding Hood” and “Hansel and Gretel”?’ she asked, remembering the delicious feeling of being on her mother’s knee, the delicate fragrance of her rose perfume and the soft, gentle sound of her voice.

  ‘And “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty” and “Tom Thumb”.’

  Olivia glimpsed a small village half-hidden among a sweeping forest of fir and pine and said, ‘I can see why such stories came from this part of Germany. It looks as if it’s the home of wicked witches and dwarves digging in caverns under the earth, and poor woodcutters living in lonely cottages. I think it’s magical, Papa, and I’m going to love living in Germany. I just know I am.’

  A frown furrowed Gilbert’s forehead. ‘Germany isn’t much of a magical place any longer – and you must be prepared for that, Olivia. The financial reparations the country has been paying under the peace treaty have been crippling it, and Germans have been having a very bad time since the end of the war. It’s all about to change for the better, though. If it hadn’t been about to do so, I wouldn’t have allowe
d you to have your way in coming here.’

  ‘How do you know things are about to change, Papa?’

  They were in a private first-class carriage and Gilbert stretched his long legs out in front of him. ‘Because of something called the Dawes Plan. A little while ago ten expert financial advisers – two each from the USA, the UK, Italy, Belgium and France – met in committee to find a way of helping Germany restructure its economy to end the hyper-inflation caused by reparation payments. To bring this about, the present scale of payments is being temporarily reduced, American banks are loaning Germany a massive amount of capital and the Reichsbank is being reorganized under Allied supervision. So although things may appear far grimmer in Berlin than you had anticipated, there is no cause for alarm, Olivia. Thanks to the Dawes Plan, they are not going to remain that way.’

  Even with Hal, Olivia had never been interested in politics – and she wasn’t interested now. It was nice to know, though, that despite Germany’s massive problems, the future was bright and there was no real cause for concern.

  The train was passing a small town and she looked out of the window at a sea of cobbled streets and pretty half-timbered houses. On a nearby crag a turreted castle was perched, looking as if it had just stepped from the pages of a Grimms’ fairy tale. Like so much else she had seen on their journey across Germany, it captured Olivia’s imagination, and she was grateful to the men who had sat on the Dawes Plan committee and had put in place plans to stabilize the country’s economy. With a passion she was quite unused to feeling, she wanted Germany to be a country in which she could happily live indefinitely; a country in which, if her daydreams about Dieter came true, she could quite possibly find herself living for the rest of her life.

  Chapter Eleven

  MAY 1925

  Rozalind strode up the gangplank of the Aquitania with a spring in her step and a large hand-stitched leather camera-case slung over one shoulder. She passionately loved the city that she was yet again leaving behind her, but she also loved crossing the Atlantic to stay in London or Yorkshire – and this time she had something extra to look forward to, for as well as England she was also going to Germany, where, in Berlin, she would be shown around by Olivia.

  Though the first-class gangplank was crowded, at five foot eight and wearing lizard-skin shoes with teeteringly high heels, Rozalind was effortlessly turning heads. Her bobbed night-black hair was crowned by a brilliant orange cloche hat, and the light tweed of her Poiret tailored suit – bought nearly a year ago when she had been in Europe for Thea’s coming-out ball – was a vivid chartreuse. She exuded youthful vitality and joie de vivre and something else as well, for her luxuriant eyelashes were darkly mascaraed and her generously curved, voluptuous mouth was painted a glossy garnet-red.

  As she neared the point where a uniformed officer stood at the top of the gangplank, welcoming the wealthy aboard, she was jostled on her left-hand side by a heavily built woman wearing a foxtail cape. As a consequence, Rozalind was thrown off-balance and her camera-case bumped the hip of the gentleman on her right-hand side.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said automatically, flashing him an apologetic smile.

  ‘No problem,’ he said, smiling in return. He looked down at the offending camera-case and, on seeing the name embossed in the leather, quirked an eyebrow. ‘A Leica I? Would you mind my asking how you got hold of one of those so fast? I was at the Leipzig Spring Fair when it was shown for the first time. I didn’t know they were on sale yet in the States.’

  His accent was that of a cultured Bostonian and, side by side, they moved a few steps nearer the welcoming officer.

  ‘My father read about the Leica I in the New York Times and asked my cousin, who lives in Berlin, if she would send me one.’

  She looked at him properly for the first time and liked what she saw. Wearing heels, she generally towered over most men, but he was well over six foot tall, which meant she didn’t have a bird’s-eye view of the top of his head. He was wearing a camel-hair coat with a beaver collar and a homburg. Lightly moustached and broad-shouldered, he looked to be in his late thirties or early forties – which to Rozalind was middle-aged – and, despite deep, humorous lines around an attractively straight mouth, seemed a man accustomed to authority and the use of it.

  She was proved right in her assumption a few moments later, for as she stepped away after being courteously and admiringly welcomed aboard, she overheard the officer say, ‘It’s a pleasure to have you sailing with us again, Congressman Bradley.’

  Idly wondering why a US Congressman was making regular trips across the Atlantic and whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, Rozalind made her way to her cabin in the happy certainty that her trunks would already be there, waiting to be unpacked.

  The Atlantic crossing was one she had been making regularly ever since she was a child, but she never tired of it, especially now, travelling unaccompanied by any kind of minder or chaperone. Because her father took little interest in her, soothing his conscience by ensuring that she had easy access to his vast wealth, and because her stepfather didn’t regard her welfare as being any of his concern, she enjoyed a startling amount of freedom for a girl of nineteen and, travelling by choice without a maid, it was freedom she was accustomed to making the most of.

  After checking that everything was as it should be in her cabin, she set off for the boat deck, eager to take photographs of the New York skyline. Until the arrival of her new Leica, doing so would have been a near-impossibility because all previous cameras had not only been too bulky to be easily carried, but had required the use of a heavy tripod. The Leica I was the first camera to be easily portable, and that she was now able to take outdoor photographs with true spontaneity filled Rozalind with a dizzying euphoria.

  From the vantage point of the Aquitania, New York’s skyline was a vista of soaring, needle-thin spires etched against the piercing blue of a late-afternoon sky. All the buildings she knew so well – the crystalline-white Singer Building, once the tallest in the city, the Gothic-inspired Woolworth Building, one of the earliest, and the gold-trimmed American Radiator Building, one of the newest – looked dramatically different when seen from the Hudson and through her camera lens. Instead of the reality of towering gigantic solidity, what she was capturing was image after image of buildings that were ethereal in their shining beauty.

  From a yard or so away a voice she instantly recognized said, ‘Do you mind my asking if you do your own developing?’

  She was screwing a different lens into the Leica and, without looking up, said fervently, ‘You bet your life I do.’

  He didn’t move away, and she didn’t mind his not doing so. With the new lens safely in position, she turned towards him.

  He said affably, ‘As there is no one to introduce us, perhaps we should take the task upon ourselves? My name is Bradley. Maxwell Bradley.’

  ‘And mine is Rozalind Duveen.’ She liked it that he hadn’t prefaced his name with the title of ‘Congresssman’ and that he wasn’t using his self-introduction as an excuse to stand closer to her. If it was a pick-up, it didn’t feel like one, and if all he wanted was to talk photography, then she was quite happy to oblige him.

  He watched her as she returned her attention to her camera, saying, ‘Most amateur photographers take photographs of people, Miss Duveen. You seem to be concentrating on buildings.’

  ‘I’m not an amateur, Mr Bradley,’ she said, looking into her viewfinder. ‘I’ve sold quite a few of my photographs to provincial magazines.’

  ‘And were they photographs of buildings?’

  For the next few minutes she was concentrating too hard to reply. It was nearly five o’clock and the light wasn’t good for the kind of photographic effect she was aiming for. When she’d finally taken the shot, she put the Leica back in its case and said, ‘Most of them, but not all. One was of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.’

  ‘The Bethesda is one of my favourite New York landmarks.’ It seemed quite natural that the
y should begin strolling down the busy deck together. ‘Was it the stupendous bronze angel that attracted you?’

  ‘That and the fact that the angel is the city’s first public artwork by a woman.’

  ‘Emma Stebbins,’ he said, as it became obvious from the excitement of people now crowding the deck rails and by the frenzied activity on the dockside that the Aquitania was about to get under way. ‘Have you seen her statue of Horace Mann? It overlooks the lawn at the Old State House in Boston.’

  The Aquitania’s great engines were throbbing. Ropes were being cast off. The people standing at the deck rails were shouting goodbyes to the friends and relatives waving to them.

  Raising her voice in order to be heard over the din, Rozalind shouted, ‘I don’t know as much as I ought about Horace Mann!’

  The Aquitania’s whistle blew – and blew again. Over the cacophony, Maxwell Bradley shouted back, ‘Mann is a hero of mine! Why don’t we have a coffee and I’ll tell you whatever it is about him you still don’t know?’

  It was a tempting proposition, but Rozalind wanted to be taking photographs as they steamed down the Hudson and into the Bay, not drinking coffee.

  ‘Another time!’ she shouted, patting her camera-case to indicate what it was she would be doing instead. He gave a slight nod of his head to show he had understood and then, as he came to a halt, quite obviously about to take his leave of her, she said impulsively, ‘Perhaps you could tell me more about Horace Mann over dinner, Mr Bradley?’

  It was an outrageously forward suggestion for a respectable young woman to make to a man she had not been properly introduced to, and about whom she knew next to nothing, but Rozalind didn’t care. Shipboard life was removed from the normal run of things; and besides, it was 1925, not 1905, and she was a modern young woman and he was a cultured, intelligent, personable man. Dining with him – even though he was probably old enough to be her father – would be far more interesting than dining alone.