“I hope you like spaghetti, since you're married to an Italian,” I said.
“Actually, I do like it, which is a good thing, because that's all we eat. With the flour shortage, even spaghetti is hard to get. Angela goes to this Italian market in Finsbury, and the owner gives her enough for a few days. He doles it out in small amounts because he wants Angela to come back as often as possible. I went with her one time, and even with me standing right there, the owner was staring her up and down. Cheeky bastard.”
“I understand you got married in Italy?”
James nodded his head vigorously. “When Angela comes back to town, we'll have to get together so I can show you our wedding pictures. Everyone in the village came to the party, and we had a blast, especially Mike. All the girls were after him. It's a good thing he brought a lady friend from Malta, or he wouldn't have had a minute to himself.
“Mike's my best mate, but we're complete opposites. He's the man every mother wants her daughter to marry. He was born knowing you're supposed to hold a door open for a lady. I had to be taught those things, which I was in a deportment class that my mother signed us up for one summer. We also had ballroom dance lessons, which we took with our cousins, Geoff and Violet Alcott, and the four of us were tossed out of class for cutting up so much.”
“What did your parents say?”
“Dad didn't care at all, and Mum had three brothers, so nothing surprised her. Besides, she's not as prim and proper as you think. When we got older, Mum told us about going back and forth between Boulogne and Folkestone on the hospital ships in the First War, and the Tommies taught her these really vulgar music hall numbers. One time, she started singing one, and we nearly wet our pants we were laughing so hard. Put her and Freddie in the same room, and you've a night's entertainment.”
“Who's Freddie?” I asked.
“My God, Freddie! He's the guy who keeps Montclair running. The Pratts brought him from Australia when they moved to England. Mr. Pratt was on the board of a juvenile home, and that's where he found him. Freddie can fix anything. He's even better than my father, but he's far from your typical servant.
“At first, he made Grandpa Crowell crazy, but my grandmother loved him right off. Always said he reminded her of 'my Tom.' After a while, my grandfather saw Freddie's charm, especially since he's a comedian and loves to tell stories and jokes. When the Catons bought Montclair, Freddie was part of the package because he's brilliant at fixing things and saves them a ton of money. He's the one who taught Mike and me to play poker.”
“Do you mean he's still there?”
“I just saw him last week when I was in Crofton. Mike and I always visited him when we were between terms. When he's not on maintenance patrol, he's below stairs following the ponies. He has a motor scooter to go into town to place bets at the pub and play darts. The guy's brilliant.”
James leaned back into the chair. “My mother told me you'd sit there very quietly, and before I knew it, I'd be telling you my life story.”
I laughed and asked him, “What is your life story?”
“I was at Cambridge when I got called up. After basic and officer training, I was assigned to the 8th Army in Italy on the Adriatic side of the Gustav Line. I got there in December of '43, and everyone associated my arrival with terrible things happening, like our being sent to fight with the Americans at Anzio and in front of Monte Cassino. For a short time, I was billeted in a town south of Bologna with a fountain in the center and terraced vineyards—the whole scenic Italian village bit. That's where I met Angela.”
The tone of James's voice changed as soon as he mentioned his wife. He started to smile, and it was obvious he was thinking about the first time that they had seen each other.
“I was serving on the staff of the regimental HQ. I was told to go find the mayor, but he wasn't in his office, so I went to the office of the town's notario.” James asked if I knew what a notario was, and I shook my head “no.” “Neither does anyone else, except it seems that no piece of paper is signed in that town that hasn't passed through his hands. When I got there, Angela was bringing her father his lunch. That's all it took.”
“So you're a romantic like your brother?”
James shook his head. “I always thought I'd meet a girl from England at a dance or something like that. But when I saw Angela, I was completely bowled over. That's the difference between Mike and me. I was surprised at how weak at the knees I got; Mike would have been expecting it. That's what happens to a guy who read the Arthurian legends as a kid.
“When the shooting stopped, I went back to see Angela and asked her father for permission to court her. He agreed because, as long as I was in the Army, I could still get my hands on better food. The dating phase lasted five months, and we were always chaperoned, usually by her two widowed aunts, who walked behind us, arm in arm, dressed all in black. Kissing Angela was a challenge; anything more was an impossibility.
“After I got out of the Army, Angela and I were finally allowed to get married. I basically became her father's errand boy, but at least I learnt to speak Italian. Once Angela found out she was pregnant, we thought it best to move to England so the baby would be a British citizen. Italy was and is in terrible shape. Everyone in town had relatives in America sending them food parcels, including Angela and me. When the time came to leave, we practically floated out of the village with all her relatives crying.”
James stood up, put on his coat, and pointed to the envelope. “You know that's only a fraction of what my parents have stored away in an upstairs room. I know Dad worked on it during his convalescence, and Mom cataloged everything during the war when she wasn't at the hospital. It probably helped to take her mind off the war, especially since my brother was in Burma fighting Japs.”
“And you were in Italy fighting Germans,” I quickly added.
“Yeah, but I always thought I was better off than Mike, working on planes in hot, humid, bug-infested Burma. Not only did he have to worry about the Japs, he also had to keep an eye on the locals, who preferred their Jap invaders to us. So much for making the world British.” Then he smiled and said, “And Italian girls are much prettier.”
Before I let him go, I wanted to ask him one question. “Is your Aunt Margie still living, the one who helped with some of the family research?”
A complete change of expression came over James's face. “I'm sorry,” I said quickly. I had said the wrong thing.
“No, no. It's all right. Aunt Margie. My God, I haven't thought about her in years.” He looked down and made a circular pattern on the carpet with his foot before saying, “She was married to my Uncle Reed. They had a cabin in Scotland west of Perth.” After a long pause, James said, “I've got to go.”
While buttoning his overcoat, he said, “My parents are very fond of you, and I think before all is said and done, you'll know more about my family than I do.”
Shortly after my evening with James Crowell, I stopped by the bookstall near my office building to pick up a newspaper, as I did every day before going to work. On the front page of The Times in big black letters was the headline that Lord Fitzwilliam and his companion, Lady Hartington, nee Kathleen Kennedy, had been killed in an airplane crash in France. The couple had been fodder for the tabloids for months, and now they were both dead.
I remembered Jack and Beth talking about Kathleen Kennedy's mother objecting to her marriage to the Duke of Devonshire because he was a Protestant. She must have been horrified when she learned that her daughter had taken up with another titled Protestant who wasn't yet divorced. Now, none of that mattered.
Chapter 19
ROB AND I TRIED to spend as much time together as possible, but occasionally we had to go our separate ways. I had been invited to a bridal shower for Pamela, who was shortly to be not only a bride but a mother. Troy seemed to be a very nice man, but like so many servicemen who had been “demobbed” out of the service, he could not find a job, and now there was a baby on the way.
&nb
sp; After returning home from the shower, I heard Rob's unmistakable Western drawl coming from the kitchen. Poking my head around the corner, I saw Rob and Mr. Dawkins sitting at the kitchen table drinking beer. Mr. Dawkins was a World War I veteran, whose hearing had been badly damaged in the war, which was why Rob was shouting. When Mr. Dawkins saw me, he jumped up, patted Rob on the back, and left.
“I didn't mean to chase him,” I said after my landlord went upstairs.
“He's embarrassed about his hearing loss. Everything has to be shouted. But Mrs. Dawkins and the boys have gone out to the movies, so I told him there was no one to hear the shouting except me. He was telling me about a village near Rouen in France he came to enjoy for a lot of reasons. He was quick to add he was not married at the time, and Mrs. Dawkins had never heard that particular story.”
“Do you have a story like that?” I asked in a teasing way.
“Yep,” he said as he pulled me tight against him. “I met this hussy when I was living in London after the war.”
I pushed him away and slid into Mr. Dawkins's vacant chair. “Then you had better go look her up.”
Jumping up, Rob took me by the hand and led me to the sitting room. Because Rob had worked his way into my landlady's good graces, we were allowed to use the room to go over all the papers Beth had sent to me.
“While you were out, I went to the library. Everyone who is anyone in Britain is listed in a book called Who's Who, which includes a short biography listing their titles, honors, and accomplishments. Everyone who was ever knighted or elevated to the peerage is in this book, including Will Lacey, who was knighted by George IV. He also served as a Justice of the Peace, which Mrs. Tobin, the librarian, told me was common practice because he was the Lord of the Manor.
“Will's son, Christopher, was also knighted because he was one of the founders of the Derwent Valley Manufacturing Corporation. Mrs. Tobin said that if you could point to one place in England where the factory system was born, 'for good or ill,' it was in the textile mills in the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire. Chris was a Member of Parliament for a decade from a 'safe' seat under the control of the Duke of Devonshire, and he supported Lord Ashley's 1840 Coal Mines Act, banning women and children from working underground.
“Andrew Lacey, Beth's grandfather, was honored for doing a lot of civic-type things in Stepton, like building a hospital, but the big news there was Andrew was made a baronet. It's a hereditary title between a baron and a knight, but baronets do not have a seat in the House of Lords.”
“Which means Beth's father was also a baronet,” I said.
“Yes, which made Beth's parents Sir Edward and Lady Lacey. And this is really interesting. Both were honored by George V in 1933 for their work on the War Graves Commission and the creation of the Thiepval War Memorial in Picardy, which is in northern France. There are 72,000 names listed on the Memorial of men who have no known graves. This is just for those killed at the Battle of the Somme, and in addition to honoring his work on the Memorial, Edward Lacey served on the Board of Directors of Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh.”
I about jumped out of my chair. “Jack said that Craiglockhart was where Reed went when he was sent home from France, and James told me Reed and his Aunt Margie lived in Scotland after they got married.”
“I think Reed was one of those shell-shocked soldiers, and they put him in that hospital. That's why no one talks about him.”
“No, that can't be it,” I said. “I mean he was at the hospital. We know that. But Reed had to be well enough to get married.”
Rob just shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, I asked the librarian if there was any information on shell-shocked vets, and she said there was a government report commissioned after the war on who served and who didn't serve, and if not, why not.”
“Catchy title.”
Rob smiled before continuing. “When war was declared, tens of thousands of volunteers showed up, but when the Army gave them their physicals, they found out that many of them, especially those from the cities, were physically unfit because of tuberculosis, chronic skin diseases, malnutrition, etc. This was an ongoing problem. In the last two years, the Army had a difficult time filling its ranks, even with conscription. So if you were a healthy young man, well-nourished because you were rich, and not totally crazy, you almost certainly would have been drafted.
“Mrs. Tobin, who knows everything about everything, said Craiglockhart is famous because two poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, both stayed there for a while. Sassoon did some heroic things in France, including single-handedly capturing a German trench, but he also wrote a letter to his commanding officer protesting the war, which was read by a Member of Parliament and published in the press. That took balls to do that. It was then that the Army sent him to Craiglockhart. He wasn't shell-shocked, just crazy enough to tell the truth. Owen met Sassoon at the hospital, and Sassoon was so impressed by his poetry that he gave him an introduction to some heavyweights in the publishing world, but he was killed in France one week before the war ended.
“Mrs. Tobin dug out a newspaper editorial that was published late in the war. It was critical of the way some of the shell-shocked soldiers were being treated. The best these guys could hope for was to be ignored, but many were taunted or even beaten up. There were these women who went around handing out white feathers to men dressed in civilian clothes because they must be cowards, or they would have been in uniform, even though many of them were employed in critical war industries and had legitimate deferments. Keep in mind men were being shot for cowardice in France. England's back was against the wall, and things were getting ugly at home.”
I thought about all Rob had said, especially the Battle of the Somme and its tens of thousands of dead. At home, in Minooka, thirteen men from my small town had died in World War I. When the bullets stopped flying, many questioned whether we should have been in France in the first place, and the second-guessing began. What had the United States gotten for its one hundred thousand dead and two hundred thousand wounded? As difficult as it was to deal with so many American deaths, what must it have been like in the villages and cities of Britain and Ireland when the second-guessing began there? What had Britain and Ireland gotten for their one million dead and the loss of a whole generation of young men?
“Oh, by the way,” Rob said, interrupting my thoughts, “James called me at work to let me know his father is bringing Angela and the baby back to London, and Jack wanted to know if we would be available for dinner.”
“Do you think we should mention this research about Craiglockhart to Jack?” I asked.
“If we can work it into the conversation, but if Reed went over the edge because of his experiences in the war, I don't know if Jack would want to share that with anyone.”
“Especially since Reed is not Jack's brother, and Beth has been very careful about not mentioning what happened to him,” I reminded him.
When we arrived at Lucca's for dinner, we could see that Jack was in a particularly good mood. He had gone on a job interview in Manchester for a full-time position, and he believed it had gone well. If he was hired, he would be a consultant to a major contractor who did construction work in the Midlands. Although he would have to travel, he'd be reasonably close to home.
Jack updated us on the progress being made at Montclair. He found Mrs. Caton to be too snooty for his liking, but he admitted she had excellent taste in decorating. “She's redoing Beth's room as we speak. She's trying to keep it as close to the original colors and wallpaper as possible.
“The first time I was home from France, we stayed in her room. I can't begin to tell you how odd it was to sleep above stairs. Beth and I had been married for three years, which, of course, they didn't know, but when I got into bed with her that first time, it felt more like we were having an affair, except that Beth was six months pregnant. Lying there, I kept waiting for my father to burst into the room and drag me down the stairs. I bloody well couldn't sleep.
; “Lady Lacey, Beth's grandmother, tried her best to make me feel at home, and Sir Edward and Lady Lacey invited my parents to have dinner with them because they were Beth's in-laws. My mother did, but my father never would. The only thing he would agree to was lunch in the breakfast room.”
I asked Jack about his mother. All I knew about her was that her name was Jenny Moore.
“My mother was an orphan and attended a girls' school in Sheffield run by a Quaker family, the Menlos. They made their money in locomotive engines but were known for their philanthropy. The teachers were former governesses, and their goal was to train these little girls to be future governesses and keep them from falling into poverty. A teacher brought my mother to Mrs. Menlo's attention, so they took her into their home, and Mum was able to stay in school until she was seventeen. When she finished, she was hired by the Menlo School as a teacher.
“When Lady Marianne Lacey decided that Mrs. Philbin, the housekeeper, needed help, she went to the school and was introduced to my mother. Mum had excellent management skills and could speak French and play the piano. After Lady Lacey hired her, she served as under housekeeper for a few years, even after she married my father, but as soon as she got pregnant, she had to resign her position.
“Once it became clear that Mum wasn't going to have any more children, Lady Lacey reinstated her as under housekeeper because Mrs. Philbin was older than Stonehenge and was starting to make mistakes. The head housekeeper has a lot of power downstairs, and Mrs. Philbin wasn't about to give up any of it. It finally came down to Lady Lacey telling Mrs. Philbin, 'Either you agree to work with Mrs. Crowell or you retire.' The old bat had to give in, but she did her best to make my mother's life as unpleasant as possible. Mum put up with that old crank for a couple of years before Mrs. Philbin finally popped her clogs.
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