‘Nice seeing you again, Anderson,’ Prince George said, looking up from the jigsaw. ‘Baba and I could do with a bit if help here. I swear this damned puzzle has been waiting to be finished for over a month.’
Without pausing in her conversation with Wallis, and without indicating that he was welcome to join them, Thea raised her eyes to Kyle’s. He lifted an eyebrow queryingly. She shot him a look that told him they were going to be ‘on’ again and, with vast relief, he strolled across to join Prince George and Baba.
Half an hour later, when Dickie, Edwina and their host had joined them and they were all making their way from the drawing room to the dining room, he whispered, ‘You should always wear shot-silk taffeta, Thea. You look ravishing!’
This time it was her turn to quirk an eyebrow. ‘You don’t think it would suit a blonde better?’
‘No,’ he said, with the amusement she always aroused in him. ‘And I’m no longer on any kind of terms with a blonde. Blondes bore me.’
Their little tête-à-tête was interrupted by Baba, who said in a low undertone, ‘David’s wearing his kilt. It means we’ll be enduring the pipes ritual after dinner.’
Kyle shuddered. He found the sound of bagpipes agonizing even when they were being played by experienced pipers. What they would sound like when played by the Prince he couldn’t even begin to imagine. As they entered the dining room he saw Thea’s full-lipped mouth tug into a wide grin and knew she’d read his reaction perfectly.
The table seating ensured they could have no more privately snatched words together. Princess Marina was seated on Kyle’s left, Edwina on his right. Thea was diagonally across from him on the other side of the table, seated between Fruity Metcalfe and Chips Channon.
Over a first course of oysters the conversation turned almost immediately, as it always did when Edwina and Dickie were present, to Hollywood stars and Hollywood movies.
‘Why has your sister abandoned Hollywood for Berlin?’ Edwina demanded of Thea, in her habitually abrupt manner. ‘Charlie thinks she’d make a perfect gamine.’
Everyone around the table knew that ‘Charlie’ was the Mountbattens’ good friend, Charlie Chaplin.
‘Violet only does talkies,’ Thea said, ‘and so far Charlie hasn’t made one. Besides, I’m not sure Violet would relish playing the part of one of Charlie’s lost little urchins. She’s more of a Sheba and Cleopatra type of girl.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought there’d be much demand for a Sheba / Cleopatra type in Hitler’s new Nazi Germany,’ Wallis rasped tartly, to much laughter.
The conversation moved from Violet to Rozalind who, with the exception of Princess Marina, everyone knew, and of the splendid photographs she had taken of the Yorks and their children, and of how she was now in Spain photographing the civil unrest taking place there.
Kyle listened with only half an ear, unable to draw his attention away from Wallis. For the mistress of a man who was heir to the greatest throne in the world, she was not only middle-aged – somewhere in her late-thirties – but was also remarkably plain. Whippet-thin, her hairstyle severe, her only claim to beauty was her eyes, which were a remarkable violet-blue. If other people couldn’t see what attracted Edward to her, Kyle could. Quite simply, because she was an American, Wallis didn’t treat Edward with stultifying deference. She dared to disagree with him. She even teased him. It was obvious to Kyle that Edward loved her forthright manner, sheer vitality and the way she so easily made him laugh. She was making him laugh now, saying in a southern drawl to something he had asked of her, ‘Of course I will. God willing and the creek don’t rise!’
Her head was tilted towards Edward’s and the emeralds in her ears and at her throat caught in the candlelight. Jewels of such sumptuous size and quality couldn’t possibly have been bought for her by her husband, and he wondered how Ernest felt at his wife being given such gifts. He also wondered if the Simpsons had the remotest idea that Edward was fantasizing about them divorcing one day so that, when his father died, he could marry Wallis.
By now roast beef, with all its trimmings, had followed the oysters, and a sweet had followed the roast beef. Kyle looked down at his watch, trying to estimate how much longer it would be before the evening came to a close and everyone retired to bed.
Not that he would be retiring to his own bed, and neither would he be reduced to corridor-creeping. When a couple were known to be having an affair their bedrooms were always thoughtfully allocated close to each other. His bedroom and Thea’s would, he knew, be adjoining.
As white-gloved footmen served a savoury, he looked down the length of the candlelit table towards her. Whereas every other woman in the room was boasting sleek Marcel waves, Thea’s curly, chestnut hair was as short and boyish as when she had first had it bobbed a decade ago. It should have made her look a lot less chic than the women seated so close to her, but it didn’t. It merely made her look distinctively natural, and distinctively different.
He wanted to take her in his arms so badly it was a physical pain.
Once again he looked down at his watch. The meal was coming to a close, but after it there would be coffee in the drawing room and, if his previous weekend at the Fort was anything to go by, cards for those who wanted to play followed by late-night dancing to records.
He smiled at something Princess Marina had said to him, mentally calculating that it would be another three hours at least before he and Thea would at last be alone. Somehow he would get through the evening and, when he had, when he and Thea were again in each other’s arms, he would ask her – for the third time – if she would marry him, his reasoning being that there could be no better place for another shot at a proposal than a royal residence.
Having come to such a major decision, he felt almost buoyant.
The moment was fleeting.
‘Let me,’ his host said, rising eagerly to his feet, ‘play a little tune on the bagpipes that I composed myself.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
NOVEMBER 1935
‘And so I th-thought, what better place for the weekend than G-Gorton Hall.’
Gilbert was at Mount Street, and the person he had answered the telephone to was the Duke of York.
‘This summer’s Jubilee celebrations have quite taken it out of Elizabeth and she is v-very under the weather,’ Bertie continued. ‘She’s always wanted to visit Gorton and so I thought we would propose ourselves this coming weekend. No need for f-fancy arrangements, old chap. No other guests, you know. Just a quiet weekend en famille. Elizabeth is so fond of your girls.’
Gilbert said goodbye to him, his mind racing. The first difficulty was that he was in London, not Yorkshire, and Parliament was sitting. Other difficulties came thick and fast. Zephiniah was in Aix-les-Bains. Thea was in London, thank God, but Olivia was in Berlin. And Violet . . . Usually quite imperturbable, Gilbert ran a hand distractedly through his hair. Violet could be anywhere, but was most likely in Berlin. Wherever she was, the chances of his contacting her were so remote as to be negligible.
There was one thing he could accomplish immediately and that was to notify his household staff at Gorton that the Duke and Duchess of York would be staying over the weekend, as would the family.
He picked up the telephone receiver again and began making phone calls. It was a time-consuming task. Gorton could only be reached via three different telephone exchanges and, when he finally spoke to Mrs Huntley, Gorton’s latest housekeeper – under Zephiniah’s reign few members of the domestic staff stayed at Gorton for long – she sounded anything but confident at the prospect of having the house ready at such short notice for royal guests.
Next he tried to contact Zephiniah. If a telephone connection to Yorkshire had been time-consuming, the connection to Aix-les-Bains was a nightmare. When he finally got through to the hotel that he understood Zephiniah to be staying at, it was to discover she wasn’t a guest there. He severed the connection, tight-lipped.
That his marriage had deteriorated to the
point where he didn’t even know his wife’s whereabouts was a matter of deep shame to him – shame because he cared so little about where she was and who her companions were, when she was out of the country. He had married her as a young fool of a boy might have married: out of lust, not love. Whether she had ever loved him was something he very much doubted.
The sham that his marriage had become wasn’t something that could be paraded in front of the Yorks, and it wouldn’t be, for he had no intention of denying Zephiniah the heady pleasure she would take in finally having royal guests beneath Gorton’s roof.
Pausing only long enough to pour himself a stiff whiskey, he embarked on the long drawn-out process of contacting International Enquiries and obtaining the telephone numbers of all the hotels in Aix-les-Bains; then he embarked on the even longer process of telephoning them.
When he eventually tracked her down, Zephiniah went through the pretence of being apologetic that she hadn’t let him know she’d changed hotels. He cut her short, saying merely, ‘The Yorks have proposed themselves for this coming weekend. I’m assuming you will be with me at Gorton to greet them.’
‘Good God! Whyever . . . ? But of course I’ll be there! But who else are we going to be able to invite at such short notice? Would the Baldwins, d’you think? Or the Coopers?’
‘Bertie has expressly asked that the weekend is family only. Elizabeth is what he describes as being “under the weather”. She wants rest, not entertainment.’
Despite her elation at finally having royalty beneath her roof, Zephiniah couldn’t help being waspish. ‘Then he’s certainly chosen the right place for her,’ was the last thing he heard her say before their connection, through no fault of either of them, was abruptly severed.
‘How exciting!’ Olivia said when, over a lot of static, he told her that Bertie and Elizabeth were to be guests at Gorton that weekend. ‘We’ll both be there, Papa. It’s so helpful to Dieter’s career to be able to converse with members of our royal family on casual, intimate terms. Dieter’s friend, Ulrich von Ribbentrop, will be delighted. He’s to take over as Germany’s ambassador to Great Britain in a few months’ time.’ A little giggle of happy anticipation came over the line. ‘With luck, Dieter will eventually step into his shoes.’
With very mixed feelings Gilbert gave her his love and said goodbye. Ribbentrop was a businessman who often visited London and Gilbert had met him a couple of times, though only at large functions where he’d done no more than exchange a few polite words with him. Unlike most of the men who found favour with the Führer, Ribbentrop was a sophisticated man with excellent English and Gilbert was aware that Hitler had made a good choice. Ribbentrop would fit seamlessly into British high-society circles – and always, of course, with his ear to the ground.
That his son-in-law would also have his ear to the ground was something he was also painfully aware of. Anything beneficial obtained by Hitler’s rise to power as German’s leader – the reduction of unemployment, the curbing of communism – had long since been overshadowed by his obvious determination to plunge the world into another war. Only a day ago the Führer had declared that all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were to be called up as army reservists and, in typical crackpot fashion, that non-belief in Nazism was now to be grounds for divorce.
In the many private conversations Gilbert had had with his son-in-law, Dieter had clung fiercely to his belief that over and above the anti-Semitic laws that had been brought into place – and which Dieter believed were not of any real importance – Hitler’s greatness was in the way he was making Germans proud to be German again.
In the early days of their conversations Gilbert had been able to sympathize with Dieter’s resentment at the Versailles Treaty. What he wasn’t able to sympathize with was the way in which Hitler was defiantly breaking it. He had broken the clause about non-rearmament, increasing the size of his armed forces and creating an air force. Defensively Dieter had stressed that in all of Hitler’s speeches he proclaimed a desire for peace and spoke of the folly of war. Gilbert, a good judge of men, had believed Dieter sincere in his opinion that Hitler wasn’t a warmonger, but he didn’t share it, and it grieved him that not only Dieter, but Olivia too, should be so blind.
He poured himself another whiskey, reassured by the knowledge that Dieter was unlikely to overhear anything from Bertie and Elizabeth that it would be better he didn’t. Neither of the Yorks was political. The weekend was going to be exactly as Bertie wished it to be. A jolly, friendly, unpretentious, restful weekend en famille – or at least it would be, if he could rustle up enough members of his family.
‘How sensible of Bertie to think of Gorton as a restful weekend haven,’ Thea said, when she came home from her stint at the East End club for boys that she helped to run. She pulled a hat damp with rain from off her turbulent hair. ‘However, I’m afraid I won’t be part of the Fenton welcome party. Not if Olivia and Dieter are to be there.’
Her response was exactly as Gilbert had feared it would be. Taking a deep breath, he said, ‘I know there are great divisions between you and Olivia politically, but for my sake, just for three days, would you both try and forget them? From what Bertie said, Elizabeth is particularly looking forward to meeting up with the two of you again. She would also like to meet up with Violet, but I don’t even know which country she is in. One minute it’s America, the next it’s Germany.’
Thea shrugged herself out of her coat. ‘My advice is not even to try and locate her. Violet is too racy for the Yorks, and as she’s so brain-dead as to be spending time in Nazi Germany when she doesn’t need to, then I’ve no desire to see her – not now and not at any time in the future.’
Wearily Gilbert pinched the top of his nose and then said sombrely, ‘This isn’t how a family is supposed to be, Thea. If your mother could see you three girls now, all at odds with each other, it would break her heart.’
‘If we are at odds with each other, Papa, it isn’t my fault. If Olivia hadn’t married a German – or, having married one, had kept a mind of her own – then we’d get along perfectly well together. I can’t say the same for Violet.’ She was about to say that Violet was absolutely impossible, and then saw the deep unhappiness written in every line of her father’s face.
She checked herself, aware of how much more the deep divide between herself and Olivia meant to him than it did to her, and of how painful it must be to him that Violet travelled between Germany and America and yet so seldom spent time with him – or with anyone else in the family. It wasn’t as if he even had the comfort of a happy relationship with Zephiniah. The family life that meant so much to him, and that they had all enjoyed when her mother was alive, was nothing but a much-loved memory. His hopes of re-creating it with Zephiniah had failed and now, when he needed a show of support from her, she was letting him down badly.
Overcome with remorse, she slid her arm through his and hugged it. ‘Sorry, Papa. I didn’t mean to upset you. Of course I can be civil to the family’s two Nazis for three days. I’ll even be civil to Zephiniah.’ She paused, adding as an afterthought, ‘Have you contacted her? She is going to be at Gorton, isn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ He patted her hand, knowing how hard it always was for her to go back on any decision she had taken, and grateful for the effort she was making. ‘It’s a shame Rozalind is still in Spain. I believe both Bertie and Elizabeth took to her when she had her photographic session with them.’
‘She shouldn’t still be there. Did you see the piece Hal wrote about the civil disturbances taking place in Madrid and Granada? If she stays much longer she’s going to find herself there as a war photographer – and, unlike the war we seem to be heading towards, Spain’s war will be a civil war, the most hideous kind of war of all.’
Three days later, travelling by train with Thea to Yorkshire, Gilbert had plenty of time to ponder the depressing political situation in Europe. Earlier in the year, and in defiance of the League of Nations, Italy had invaded Abyssini
a. Spain was in deep crisis and, like Thea, he could foresee the military’s determination to overthrow the government ending in disaster. Germany, of course, was the chief anxiety. Baldwin believed that appeasement and the League of Nations would contain Hitler. Gilbert gravely doubted it, and had frankly told the prime minister that if Mussolini had got away with riding roughshod over the League, then there was little possibility of Hitler taking any notice of it.
As the train neared Darlington he put all thoughts of fascist dictators and would-be dictators to the back of his mind. The weekend ahead was going to be a relaxing one full of jollity – how could it not be, if Elizabeth was to be there – and, because of the Yorks’ presence, there would, for once, be family harmony.
Zephiniah would be so full of triumph that she would be virtually exploding with it. Olivia would be her usual lovely self, totally oblivious to why her acceptance of the political situation in Germany should be such a cause of concern to anyone. Thea had vowed not to bring up the subject of Germany with either Olivia or Dieter and, having arranged by telephone to meet up with Carrie on the Sunday afternoon, was looking forward to the weekend, instead of viewing it as a duty that had to be undergone.
The thought of how much he, too, would have liked to be meeting up with Carrie overwhelmed him and he was still thinking of her as they changed trains at Darlington for a connection to Richmond.
At Richmond his chauffeured Rolls was waiting to meet them.
‘Lady Fenton arrived yesterday, and Count and Countess von Starhemberg arrived an hour or so after her,’ his chauffeur said in answer to his immediate query.
A Season of Secrets Page 35