A Season of Secrets

by Margaret Pemberton

  The organist began to play and, to Handel’s ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’, Hermione stepped into the chapel on Gilbert Fenton’s arm.

  Tall and gaunt-framed, she wasn’t wearing white. Her narrow-skirted ankle-length silk gown was pewter-blue. With it she was wearing a matching straw hat with an upturned brim and matching silk gloves. Her wedding bouquet was a posy of white Yorkshire roses bred by Charlie and named ‘Hermione’ in her honour.

  Walking behind her was Violet, so ecstatic at being a bridesmaid that her smile was as broad as the Cheshire cat’s.

  The service began with the Methodist hymn ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling’.

  Halfway through it, instinct made Thea turn her head just as Roz stepped into the chapel. With the service in progress, Roz made no attempt to find a seat, but instead stood unobtrusively to one side of the open doorway, her camera-case slung over her shoulder.

  ‘Roz is here,’ Thea whispered to Olivia. ‘And she has her camera with her.’

  Now there was no longer Roz to worry about, Thea’s thoughts immediately returned to Hal. Because their distant pews were level with each other, she could only get a glimpse of him if, before looking in his direction, she leaned forward – but to do that would make her interest in him titillatingly obvious to those seated behind her.

  She wondered what Hal was thinking as Charlie and Hermione made their vows. She wondered if the beauty and solemnity of the simple service were making him think differently about marriage – but she only wanted him thinking differently about marriage if she was the girl he was thinking of marrying.

  The register was signed, with Miss Calvert and Jim acting as witnesses. Another hymn was sung. A final prayer was said. The organist began playing Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’, and Hermione and Charlie began their joyous walk out of the chapel as man and wife.

  The congregation fled into the aisles to follow them, and Hal’s head finally turned in her direction, his eyes meeting hers, hot and hard.

  She stumbled and Olivia said with a giggle. ‘Steady, Thea. You don’t want Hermione’s Methodist friends thinking you’re squiffy!’

  As she walked out of the chapel down the right-hand aisle she was parallel to Hal, now walking down the left-hand aisle. When they got outside he would speak to her – he had to – and one way or the other the suspense she felt would be over.

  Outside there was much happy jostling as people crowded onto the pavement to watch Rozalind taking photographs. Thea’s attention was elsewhere – on Hal, who was pushing a way through the throng towards her. She dug her nails into her palms, her heart racing so fast she felt giddy.

  Coming to a halt in front of her, he shot her the old familiar grin, but the hot, hard look she had surprised in his eyes was there no longer. It could have been Olivia he was speaking to. Or Rozalind.

  ‘You’re looking well, Thea,’ he said, as casually as he would have done in the old days; the days before he had first kissed her and had changed her world for what she’d been certain was forever. ‘The wedding breakfast is being held in the village hall, though I expect you know that.’

  It was so obvious he wasn’t going to make right what had gone wrong between them that it took every ounce of her self-control to feign equal nonchalance.

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a voice unrecognizable even to herself. ‘Hopefully everyone will be able to get in. I’ve never seen so many people at a local wedding.’

  There were limits to how long she could keep up the pretence that being just jolly good friends again was as acceptable to her as it evidently was for Hal, and where for hours she’d been counting the minutes until she was face-to-face with him, now she was desperate to get away before he should see how deep her heartbreak was.

  Confetti was being thrown, and beneath a shower of it Carrie threaded her way towards them. Hal threw an arm round her shoulders, and a local farmer standing cheek-by-jowl with them said, ‘So when are you and Carrie goin’ to name t’ day, Hal lad?’

  Hal roared with laughter. ‘When Carrie stops eyeing up t’ footmen at Monkswood.’

  His arm was still round Carrie’s shoulder and, looking at the two of them, Thea could understand why the remark had been made. Not only had Carrie and Hal been seen constantly in each other’s company since they were children, but they looked right together. There was a sense of unity between the two of them that was palpable. She wondered if anyone had ever thought the same thing about her and Hal, and doubted it. The only teasing remarks about Hal and anyone else had been Charlie’s and Jim’s sly references to his having a crush on Olivia – something they had been laughably wrong about.

  ‘I need to speak with Roz,’ she said, with a composure so false it occurred to her that she, and not Violet, was the born actress in the family.

  Sobs were rising in her throat and, keeping them in check with difficulty, she pushed a way through the crowd to where Roz was putting her camera back in its case.

  ‘Job done!’ Roz flashed her a wide smile. ‘Sorry about being so late – and, before you ask, Max isn’t with me. He’s had to hare off to a conference. Have we to walk to the hall, and have a catch-up of news over lemonade – or whatever else it is Methodists serve at wedding breakfasts?’

  ‘I’m not going to the reception.’ Thea’s voice cracked and broke. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen Hal since our falling-out and it hasn’t gone well.’

  Swiftly Roz tucked her arm in hers. ‘In that case I’ll give the reception a miss too. Where have we to go for a chat where we’ll be undisturbed? The vole place?’

  Thea nodded. The vole place would be perfect. No one else would be within a mile of it.

  Wedding guests were now streaming down the High Street in the wake of Hermione and Charlie, who were travelling the fifty yards to the village hall in a flower-decorated pony-trap.

  ‘Is the problem the same one it was a year ago?’ Roz asked as they fell into step at the rear of the procession.

  ‘I imagine so, but as we didn’t talk about it then, I don’t know.’

  ‘But if you didn’t talk about things, how can you know things aren’t going well?’

  ‘His attitude towards me.’ Thea’s voice was taut with the effort of maintaining her reputation for never crying. ‘He simply treated me as if all the long months of our being passionately in love had never happened – I could have been anyone. “You’re looking well,” he said, just as he might have said it to Mrs Lumsden or Mrs Mellor if he hadn’t seen them for more than a year. Then he said, “The wedding breakfast is being held in the village hall, though I expect you know that.” That’s what I mean about it not going well! It was so obvious he hadn’t been suffering over our break-up – as I’ve been suffering – that it was insulting.’

  In front of them people were disappearing through the doors of the village hall. Hal and Carrie were clearly visible, walking together as if they were a couple.

  ‘They’re not holding hands,’ Thea said, not needing to say who she was referring to. ‘But they might as well be.’

  ‘I thought Hal was sowing his wild oats with the Richmond barmaids?’

  ‘He probably is. It would be hard to sow them with Carrie, when she’s at Monkswood. You know what the rules are for household staff. No followers, no matter what the circumstances. A day like this is probably the most freedom Carrie has had in ages.’

  ‘Yes, well. I don’t think you have anything to worry about there. I think they’re simply just the very best of friends.’

  Thea took her hat off and ran her fingers through her short-cropped springy waves. ‘I just don’t understand why he’s letting the class difference ruin our lives,’ she said, bewildered and despairing. ‘Hal’s a socialist. He wants to see an end to class divisions. You would think our taking no notice of class divisions would be a statement he’d be eager to make.’

  ‘I don’t have an answer for you, Thea. Hal is Hal. He makes up his mind about something and then, if the past is anything to go by
, never changes it.’

  ‘You think he won’t change it now?’

  ‘If he did,’ Rozalind said as the river came into sight, ‘it would be a first.’

  Thea drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

  Disturbed that Thea was taking her altered relationship with Hal so much to heart, Rozalind said, ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll go out with other men: lots of other men. But none of them will be another Hal. How could they be? I’m never going to get over Hal, Roz. Never, never, never.’

  They didn’t speak again for a long time and, when they did, sitting in deep grass by the vole place, they deliberately talked of other things: of Max, of Charlie and Hermione’s wedding, of Olivia having finally returned for good from Berlin.

  ‘Though she’s bound to go back sometime in the future if she marries Dieter,’ Roz said. ‘Even taking into account Berlin’s hectic nightlife, I wouldn’t want to live there. Germany is too chaotic and unsettling.’

  ‘But inflation has stopped, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but political extremism hasn’t.’ Rozalind, who had been lying on her back, rolled over onto her tummy, with her weight on her elbows. ‘I wonder what political colour Dieter is? Olivia never gives politics a thought, so I don’t suppose she’s ever asked.’

  Thea hugged her knees, her eyes on the familiar spot where the voles might appear at any moment. ‘He’ll be a monarchist who wants the Kaiser back,’ she said, knowing that in talking about politics Roz was trying to give her something other than Hal to think about. ‘Anyone whose family is listed in the Almanach de Gotha is bound to be a monarchist.’

  Two bright eyes and a quivering nose and whiskers appeared at the entrance of the vole hole, and for a long time all talk ended as they vole-watched as raptly as they had when they were children.

  Later, walking along the river-bank towards the bridge and Gorton, Rozalind returned to the subject of Dieter von Starhemberg and his probable politics. ‘The way Germany is at the moment, Dieter could well be anything – even an admirer of Hitler, the man who tried to overthrow the German government last year. It could be quite interesting. Just think how politically varied we already are as a family. Your father is a Conservative who sits in the House of Lords and is a government minister. You are a socialist. Max is a Republican. Kyle, who is due to take up his post at the American Embassy any day now, is a Democrat. Olivia is apolitical. Goodness only knows what Violet is going to be, and we’ve no idea of Lady Pyke’s political persuasion.’

  ‘Having seen her photograph, I imagine she’ll be a little to the right of Attila the Hun.’

  Thea came to a sudden halt, knee-deep in buttercups. ‘Before we get back to Gorton I have to talk to you some more about Hal, Roz. I have to tell you something you don’t know. It’s something that happened the night of my coming-out ball – something that, if I’d behaved differently, might have made all the difference.’

  Rozalind waited, and Thea said very fast, ‘When I left the dinner table before the ball, it was to go and find him so that I could tell him he needn’t attend the ball in order to write about it – not if being there would make him uncomfortable. He’d been given one of the valets’ rooms to change in. When I walked in on him he was naked to the waist and there were water droplets on his chest, and when he kissed me I wanted him so much, Roz – so much that I didn’t care about losing my virginity or what would happen if I became pregnant – and the bed was so near and he swept me up in his arms to carry me across to it and then . . . and then . . .’

  Tears she’d held at bay for so long scalded the backs of her eyes.

  ‘There was hardly any time left before my guests arrived, and I had to be at the head of the grand staircase with Papa in order to greet them. If I wasn’t beside him, I knew how mortified Papa would be and I just couldn’t do that to him, Roz. I just couldn’t. And so we didn’t make love. I made Hal drop me to my feet, hurled at him the stupid reason I was there and ran. I ran all the way along the corridor and down the stairs and back through a baize door and down other stairs, until I reached Papa’s side – and I was only just in time, for moments later Prince Edward arrived. But oh, Roz! I can’t help wondering how different things might be now, if we’d gone to bed together that night – and I wish and wish and wish that we had!’

  Tears poured down her face and Rozalind closed the space between them, giving her a fierce, comforting hug. ‘Things might now be different, Thea. Or they might not be. But think how much worse you’d feel if the two of you had made love and he’d still said the things to you that he said later that night.’

  ‘Would I feel any worse? I don’t think I could, Roz. And at least it would have been something to remember.’ Thea wiped her face with her hands, saying in a flat, bleak voice, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve shocked you.’

  ‘Shocked me? No, you haven’t shocked me. But I may be just about to shock you.’ They began walking again in the direction of the bridge and Roz said, ‘Just as there are things you hadn’t previously told me about you and Hal, so there are things I haven’t told you about Max and me.’

  ‘You’re lovers?’

  ‘We are indeed. But what will shock you is the lie I told in order for us to become lovers.’

  ‘A lie? But why on earth did you have to lie?’ Thea was so intrigued that for the first time in hours Hal was no longer in her thoughts. ‘I’m sorry, Roz. I don’t understand.’

  ‘He’d made it quite clear to me that, as a point of honour, he never seduces virgins – and he quite correctly assumed that was what I was. And so I told him I wasn’t.’

  They had reached the bridge now, and Thea was so shell-shocked she once again stopped walking. ‘You did what?’

  ‘I told him I wasn’t. And he believed me.’

  ‘But what about . . . I mean, when you did go to bed together, surely he must have realized?’

  ‘Oh, he realized all right, but by the time he did, it was too late to change anything. The deed was done. I was well and truly deflowered.’

  ‘Dear Heaven!’ Thea began giggling. ‘You’re right, Roz. You’ve shocked me. And you’ve no regrets?’

  ‘Do I look as if I have regrets?’ They began walking again, arm-in-arm. ‘There was a time, though, when I thought I might have some, because when he realized how I’d lied, he was furious with me.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And now I’m just back after spending three idyllic days with him in Paris.’

  ‘Don’t let Olivia know, because I’m sure she can’t wait to lose her virginity as well, and I believe German aristocracy is even hotter about virginity before marriage than we are – which is saying something. I don’t want her queering her pitch. Not if Dieter von Starhemberg really is “the one”.’

  Grateful for the miracle of having been made to giggle even when she was heartbroken, Thea entered Gorton with Roz fifteen minutes later to be met by her father, still in his morning suit and with a telegram in his hand.

  ‘Wonderful news,’ he said ebulliently, striding towards them. ‘Zephiniah has sent a cable from the Laconia. She will be in England in just under two weeks!’

  Chapter Fifteen

  JANUARY 1926

  It was the second week of a freezing-cold New Year, and Olivia, a large diamond encircled by sapphires sparkling on the ring finger of her left hand, was cosily ensconced in the drawing room of Curzon House in Curzon Street, enjoying a long-overdue gossip with the Duchess of York.

  ‘It’s been such ages and ages since I’ve seen you that I really don’t know where we should start,’ Elizabeth said, pouring tea for them both from a silver teapot. ‘The last time we had this kind of meeting together, you weren’t engaged, Bertie and I hadn’t left for our East Africa tour and I wasn’t even pregnant – now look at me!’ She gave a delicious giggle. ‘I’ve still three months to go and Bertie thinks I’ll be as round as a ball by then.’

  She put the teapot down.

  ‘Milk or lemon? You will have to
forgive me, but I can’t remember. Apparently it’s what happens when you are enceinte. The most ordinary everyday things simply fly out of your head.’

  ‘Lemon, please.’ Because so many months had gone by since their last meeting, Olivia had been nervous that the first few minutes of their reunion would be a little awkward, but she had forgotten Elizabeth’s natural warmth and unaffected nature.

  ‘I want to know all about Count von Starhemberg,’ Elizabeth said now, dropping a slice of lemon into Olivia’s teacup with a lemon-fork. ‘Thea tells me he is very Berlinerisch.’

  Her voice was full of happy interest and, remembering how many of Bertie’s German relatives could be similarly described, Olivia knew the remark carried no criticism. ‘He is,’ she said as Elizabeth handed her a cup and saucer. ‘He does all those old-fashioned Berlinerisch things, such as clicking his heels and bowing when being introduced to a lady. He’s very blond and very tall and utterly, utterly wonderful. The very best thing about him is that he is now Third Secretary at the German Embassy, and so we still see each other just as often as we did when I was in Berlin.’

  ‘And are you going to have a long engagement or a short one?’

  ‘A short one. Though Papa did say we would have to wait until my nineteenth birthday – which isn’t until August – he’s now agreed we can marry at Easter.’

  ‘Wonderful! I think short engagements are so much more romantic. Bertie and I were engaged from January to the end of April, which is nearly exactly the same length of time. And oh my goodness, what a rush and a whirl everything was.’

  Olivia giggled. ‘Mine isn’t a royal wedding, Elizabeth.’

  ‘For which you can thank your lucky stars. You have no idea the number of family members that a royal family can drum up, when it comes to a wedding. I read in the Morning Post afterwards that there were one thousand seven hundred and eighty people squeezed into the Abbey, including,’ Elizabeth – always a good mimic – adopted mock-stentorian tones, ‘many leading personages of the nation and Empire. But d’you know my mother had to haggle like a fishwife to ensure that all my Bowes-Lyon cousins were included on the guest list?’