She gave him an indignant dig in the ribs, and they were both still laughing as they boarded the tram.
As the tram clanked and trundled on its rails, unimpeded by the rest of the busy traffic, he said, ‘I’ll be working through the day – and maybe some evenings as well – so you’ll likely see more of Olivia and Thea than you will of me, but that can’t be helped, Carrie love.’
‘I know. There’s no need to explain.’
He squeezed hold of her hand. Ever since he could remember there had never been a need for explanations between them, not about anything.
‘As you’ve put your foot down about not visiting Thea at Mount Street, she’ll be meeting up with you at Olivia’s. I’m going to drop you off there tomorrow morning before going in to work. You’ll soon get the hang of getting around London, though I don’t think Thea or Olivia will give you much opportunity for doing so on your own. Both of them want to spend every available minute with you.’
She hesitated and then said, ‘Are you and Thea still pretending nothing’s gone dreadfully wrong between the two of you?’
The laughter left his eyes and voice.
‘That’s a very sensitive way of putting things, Carrie lass.’ He pushed his cap back on his unruly hair, as if doing so would help him with his answer. After a pause he said, ‘Yes. I suppose we are. There doesn’t seem to be any other way for us to behave. We can’t be friends in the way we used to be, because it’s impossible for us to go back to that kind of friendship, and we can’t be anything else, because the class difference between us is too great to be overcome – and don’t go trying to tell me it isn’t, Carrie, or this will end in a row.’
She didn’t want a row, but she did want to know how he felt about Kyle Anderson.
‘Do you think Thea will marry Roz’s stepbrother?’ she asked, determined that not every subject should be a no-go area.
A muscle pulsed at the corner of his jaw. ‘She will, if she’s any sense. Olivia thinks there will be an engagement announcement at Christmas. English blue blood and American blue blood. The Tatler will love it.’
His voice was hard and tight, and Carrie knew that although the Tatler might love such an announcement, Hal would hate it – and would hate the groom-to-be, whoever he was. However far the romance between Hal and Thea had progressed, it was shatteringly clear to her that Hal still wasn’t over it.
When Carrie entered Olivia and Dieter’s Belgravia home the next morning, it was to find it just as grand as she had expected, but with the same distinctive touches with which Blanche had always made Gorton so comfortable. Instead of hothouse flower arrangements, exquisite vases held sprays of berries and burnished red and gold autumn leaves. In the large circular hall a large Japanese vase held a single, statuesque branch of sweet-smelling, yellow-flowering mahonia. Everywhere in the drawing room there were bowls filled with snow-white, late-flowering anemones.
The simplicity of them was so artless and perfect, and so like Blanche’s style of doing things, that for a moment Carrie’s throat closed with emotion. And then Olivia rushed towards her, hugging Carrie so enthusiastically she nearly knocked her off her feet, and from where she was perched on the arm of a deep-cushioned sofa, Thea said with a catch in her throat, ‘Welcome to London, Carrie. We’ve missed you like crazy.’
When Olivia finally allowed her to break free, Carrie and Thea hugged, and Thea said as they mutually plumped down together on the sofa, ‘So what are conditions like in darkest Deptford? Are you quite sure you want to remain there and not at Mount Street, or here with Olivia?’
‘Hal’s landlady runs a very clean lodging house. I’m going to be perfectly all right staying there. I now know the number of the trams I need to get from there to here and back again – and I have a map of London in my handbag, in case I should ever get lost.’
‘In which case,’ Thea said, ‘you’ll have to put our minds at rest on another matter. Someone in Outhwaite is having a baby and has asked Papa to stand as the baby’s godfather. He simply won’t part with who it is, though. He says he wants you to have the pleasure of telling us.’
‘We’re thinking Jim must have got married without letting anyone know.’ Seated in a nearby armchair, Olivia curled her legs beneath her. ‘Has he finally married one of the Pig and Whistle’s barmaids?’
‘No. Jim’s still heart-whole and fancy-free.’
Thea lit a cigarette and blew a plume of blue smoke into the air. ‘Then who is it? Papa’s adamant it’s someone in Outhwaite, but who else there is on the kind of terms with him that they could ask him to stand as godfather to one of their children? Even more to the point, who is there in Outhwaite whose child he would agree to be godfather to? The only people in that category are Hester Calvert and Charlie and Hermione.’
‘And Hester isn’t married,’ Olivia said helpfully, ‘and Charlie and Hermione . . .’
She saw the expression on Carrie’s face and came to a halt.
‘No!’ she said. ‘It can’t be true. It can’t be.’
‘It is,’ Carrie said with immense satisfaction. ‘Charlie and Hermione are expecting a baby in March. Isn’t it wonderful? Hal is so thrilled he says he’s going to be at the christening.’
With the hand holding her cigarette stationary with shock in mid-air, Thea said in a stunned voice, ‘It’s unbelievable. Hermione’s forty-two!’
Unsure as to whether Thea was referring to news of the baby or the thought of Hal at a christening, Carrie said, ‘Unbelievable or not, it’s happened, and gossip in the village is that your father is to give them a baby carriage from Harrods.’
‘Well, that I can believe,’ Olivia said, ‘and I think your news is so magnificent it should be celebrated with champagne.’
‘It’s a little early in the day. It’s only just gone ten o’clock.’
‘We can have it with orange juice. We have to wet the baby’s head. It’s traditional.’
Thea said caustically, ‘You can only wet the baby’s head after it’s been born, Olivia.’
Olivia, who had already jumped to her feet and pressed the bell to summon a maid, said crossly, ‘Do you have to be so pedantic? We’re celebrating something, and champagne is what you drink when you’re celebrating. You’d like champagne, wouldn’t you, Carrie?’
Carrie, aware that Thea and Olivia were on the verge of having one of their regular disagreements, said, with her fingers crossed because it was a fib, ‘I’d love to celebrate news of the baby with champagne.’
For the next two hours they exchanged news and gossip as avidly as they had once done in Gorton’s playroom.
‘I want to know everything about Violet,’ Carrie said. ‘There was a piece in the Richmond Times about her having gone to Hollywood, and the whole of Outhwaite is agog as to what she’s doing there and what film stars she’s mixing with.’
Thea gave a rude snort.
Olivia said, ‘She’s making a film for a director called Alexander Korda. He used to make films in England and he’s a friend of Zsigmund Sárközy, who directed her last picture, Samson and Delilah. When Korda was last in London, Sárközy showed him some uncut footage of Samson and Delilah – which will be shown in cinemas all over the country in the spring – and he was so impressed that he invited her to Hollywood to star in a film he’s making about the Queen of Sheba.’
‘And is Violet to be the Queen of Sheba?’
Before Olivia could answer, Thea said, ‘Apparently. Knowing Violet, she wouldn’t have left Sárközy unless it was for something bigger and better than he could provide for her.’
Her voice was so disparaging that Carrie sprang to Violet’s defence. ‘But surely it was a sensible thing for her to do?’
‘Not when she has a contract with Sárközy and he’s suing her.’
Carrie looked stricken, and Olivia said, ‘Violet has no sense of right and wrong, Carrie. She never has had.’
‘It isn’t that she’s no sense of right or wrong – it’s that she’s got no sense at
all.’ There was barely controlled anger in Thea’s voice. ‘The hat-shop photograph business was the last straw, as far as I’m concerned. She doesn’t give a damn if people are upset by what she does. If she wants to do something, then she goes ahead and does it, no matter how outrageous it is and how much pain she causes. In this case it was Papa she distressed the most, and for that I’ll never forgive her.’
Carrie struggled to understand. ‘How could a photograph taken in a hat shop cause him distress? It sounds very tasteful.’
Thea breathed in so hard that her nostrils were white. ‘Apart from a hat, she was stark naked.’
Carrie gaped at her, stupefied.
Olivia said, ‘She had the photograph taken in order to be noticed by Zsigmund Sárközy. We only found out about it by accident. I don’t think there are many copies.’
‘Though what copies there are, are probably changing hands for astronomical amounts.’ Thea’s fury was deep, and for once Carrie understood it.
Olivia said in a strained voice, ‘She’s behaving very badly, Carrie. Especially with men. Dieter keeps all of his married men friends well away from her.’
Not wanting to talk about Violet for a second longer, Thea jumped to her feet. ‘Let’s go for lunch at the Ritz. While we’re on our way there I want you to tell us all about life at Monkswood. Have you got a gentleman friend, or aren’t there any opportunities?’
‘And what are your duties as under-housekeeper?’ Olivia said, forestalling Carrie from saying that she couldn’t possibly go to the Ritz for lunch; that her serviceable hat and coat weren’t smart enough. ‘Do you get to hire and fire people, and do you carry a huge bunch of keys around all day? Do tell.’
Ten minutes later, as the three of them made the short journey to Piccadilly and the Ritz in the back of a chauffeured motor car, Carrie said, ‘I’m far too busy to have any gentleman friends, and no, I don’t hire and fire staff. Mrs Appleby still discharges that duty. I do carry a bunch of keys, though. I have to, because I oversee the storerooms, still room, linen cupboard and china closet, and I keep the household account book. Mrs Appleby said it was a job that made her head hurt, and I’m good at figures.’
‘And you oversee all the female staff?’
‘In theory Mrs Appleby still does that, but in practice, yes, I oversee all female staff other than the cook.’
Thea took her gloved hand in hers. ‘And you’re happy, Carrie? You would tell me if you weren’t?’
‘I’m happy because I know how fortunate I am to be under-housekeeper at twenty-four at a house like Monkswood.’ She didn’t answer Thea’s second question because she’d schooled herself to keep to herself the loneliness that often made her very unhappy. Instead she said, ‘I do miss you and Olivia, though. And Hal.’
At the mention of Hal – and because Thea was still holding her hand – Carrie felt Thea wince. She’d known from the way Hal had reacted to the prospect of Thea becoming engaged that his feelings for her were still strong and deep, but because of Thea’s long-standing romance with Kyle, she’d believed Thea wasn’t suffering in the same way. Now, knowing differently, she was appalled. How could Thea become engaged to anyone if she still had such strong feelings for Hal? The answer was that she couldn’t, and Carrie knew that she was going to have to tell her so.
The opportunity didn’t come that day, or the next, because just as they had done as children, they remained a firm threesome, and when Carrie spoke to Thea about Hal, she wanted to do so when it was just the two of them together.
By now when she left Deptford on a morning for Belgravia Square, she did so unaccompanied by Hal, whose working hours as a journalist were, she’d soon realized, chaotic. She had wanted to sightsee while in London, and Thea and Olivia were happily taking her wherever it was she wanted to go. By her third morning she had seen the Houses of Parliament and been to the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral and Madame Tussaud’s. Now, this morning, she was hoping to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and go to the National Gallery.
Seconds after the butler opened the door to her and she entered the house, all thoughts of Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery vanished from her mind.
‘How wonderful – if a little strange – it is to see you in London and not in Outhwaite,’ Gilbert Fenton said as he strode from the drawing room to greet her, a beaming smile on his face.
Carrie didn’t blush now as much as she had when younger, but heat flooded her cheeks and, as she shook hands with him, her legs felt wobbly with surprise and pleasure.
He was wearing a grey suit and his spicy red hair was neatly parted on one side and slicked back as straight as the natural kinks in it would allow. His moustache was a little narrower than when she had last seen him, but the effect he had on her was exactly the same. She thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen, and the kindest man she had ever known.
‘Olivia told me last night that she and Thea were going to take you to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery today,’ he said as they walked into the drawing room together, ‘but as today is the only time I have a few hours free this week – and as I wanted to see you – I do hope you won’t mind that I’ve scuppered their plans with plans of my own?’
‘Oh no, of course I don’t mind!’ Carrie was overcome at his having set aside precious free time to see her. Her one fear, though she hadn’t expressed it to Thea and Olivia, was that in staying at Hal’s digs, instead of Mount Street, she perhaps wouldn’t see him at all.
Still standing, and not suggesting that she sit or allow someone to take her coat, he said, ‘I understand you’ve seen the Houses of Parliament, but haven’t been inside them?’
‘Yes.’ At the thought that he was perhaps going to offer to take her there, her mouth was dry.
‘Then I’d like to show you around them. Would you mind very much if we left for the House now? We can have coffee when we get there.’
‘Yes,’ she said again, wondering where Thea and Olivia were and then realizing that it didn’t matter; one or other of them had probably asked their father if he would take her to the Palace of Westminster, and they had probably known days ago what it was she would be doing today.
Together they walked back out into the hall. A maid handed him a homburg and minutes later, to her absolute incredulity, Carrie found herself seated beside him in the back of a big black car as it sped down Victoria Street, heading for the river.
‘It was amazing, incredible,’ she said late that night to Hal as they sat in the kitchen at Mrs Dabner’s, eating fish and chips out of newspaper. ‘Lord Fenton offered me his arm as we went into the House of Lords, and I felt like a queen. We sat in the gallery of the debating chamber and he explained to me everything that was taking place. Afterwards we had lunch in the peers’ dining room and he introduced me to the Speaker and to the government chief whip as Miss Carrie Thornton, a close family friend, visiting from Yorkshire.’
‘Well, of course he did,’ Hal said, amused. ‘That’s who you are.’
‘I didn’t feel like me – or rather I did, but a different me. I felt . . .’ Ignoring her fish and chips, she struggled for words that would sum up her feelings.
They came, and her cheeks grew hot.
She’d felt loved and cherished – and the sensation had awoken other feelings, feelings she’d never experienced before. Knowing she couldn’t possibly say this to Hal, she said instead, ‘I felt proud and happy.’
But proud and happy didn’t come close to describing how Lord Fenton had made her feel.
It didn’t come close by a long way.
Chapter Twenty-Two
JUNE 1931
‘Come on, Olivia!’ Dieter shouted impatiently up the main staircase of their Belgravia Square home. ‘We don’t want to be the last to arrive! You know how impatient Edward can be.’
‘Coming, darling!’ Olivia ran out of their bedroom and, still clipping on her earrings, ran down the broad sweep of stairs. ‘There,’ she said a little breathlessly
as she reached the foot of them. ‘Will I do?’
‘Ja, meine Liebling,’ he said in fond exasperation. ‘You’ll always do.’ She was wearing an ivory silk, halter-necked summer dress that would, he knew, be perfect for the kind of afternoon they would be spending at the Fort, where informality was the name of the game.
Taking her by the arm, Dieter ushered her swiftly out of the house and across the pavement to where his two-seater sports car was parked, saying, ‘You and the rest of the girls will be able to lounge in the sun, while we chaps work like navvies clearing laurels and planting rhododendrons.’
As she seated herself in the car, Olivia giggled. Fort Belvedere was situated on Crown land in Windsor Great Park near Sunningdale, and Prince Edward’s acquisition of it a little over a year ago had resulted in him taking up gardening with a passion. An eighteenth-century pseudo-Gothic castellated folly complete with tower, battlements, cannon and cannon-balls, the Fort had gardens that had been left untended for years and were a wilderness of dense undergrowth and impenetrable laurel. Edward had set about clearing the land himself, and male guests, much to their startled astonishment, were expected to strip to the waist – as he did – and work alongside him, armed with billhooks or scythes.
Dieter sped out of the square, heading west towards the busy King’s Road, and Olivia glanced across at him with a loving smile. A superb athlete, he was in peak physical condition and, despite his grumble about navvying, she knew he secretly enjoyed showing off his well-toned body and putting his muscles to good use.
Becoming part of Prince Edward’s close circle of friends was something that was relatively recent and was important to him. Dieter’s governmental superiors in Berlin had been delighted at his royal friendship with the Duke of York, but friendship with the heir to Britain’s throne was in a different bracket entirely, and the Reich’s foreign minister’s delight was sky-high.
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