Abdication: A Novel

by Juliet Nicolson

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  May was looking forward to the summer. She had been missing the warmth that had been integral to her life until so recently. Her birthday month, for which she had been named, had delivered a welcome lift in temperature and she hoped June would bring more of the same.

  The weekend after May’s encounter with Mosley’s henchmen there had been a small celebration at Oak Street. Another Fuller’s cake, identical to the one that had been part of her and Sam’s original welcome to the house, had appeared on the parlour table, except this time the soft icing had been punctured by twenty candles.

  “Nothing like a moist bit of cake,” Rachel had remarked as May blew out the candles. “Try saying ‘pretty pussy’ with a mouthful of dry sponge and you’ll see what I mean,” she added, getting up to reach for a bottle of milk from the wall cupboard behind her.

  Simon rolled his eyes at his wife’s unmatchable way with words. But May was beyond care, existing in a state dictated by a slowly accumulating sense of anticipation at the way her friendship with Julian was developing, even though she kept the feeling hidden from everyone, especially Julian himself. He had forgotten to ask her to return the shirt he had lent her in Wigan and each night, in the secrecy of her bedroom, she slipped the shirt over her naked body, hugging her cotton-clad arms around herself.

  After returning from Oxford she had seen very little of Julian. He had remained there, working in the Bodleian library by day and in his college room at Magdalen by night, cramming for his final exams. But there had been one evening only two days after the drama of the fascist meeting when she had bumped into him in the hallway at St. John’s Wood and he had asked her what she was up to.

  “When?” she had asked him, willing her treacherous, flushing skin to remain dormant.

  “Now. Right now,” he replied. “I need to spend an evening when I am not thinking about dead philosophers or uniformed thugs or my nightmare of a mother. I must have covered hundreds of miles walking around Addison’s Walk. The college cloisters help to concentrate the mind and give me a new perspective on the eternally fascinating question of why a table is still in a room when I am not in the room.” He paused, noticing the puzzled expression on May’s face. “Such are the preoccupations of a philosophy undergraduate about to sit his finals,” he explained apologetically. “Anyway would you be a darling and save me from my thoughts by coming with me tonight to the Trocadero to see Mr. Deeds Goes to Town? Gary Cooper’s in it with Jean Arthur and she makes me laugh.”

  And so they had gone to the Trocadero cinema and watched the film and then agreed that because they were both starving they would go for something to eat at the next door Lyons Corner House at Piccadilly. The place was even more packed than on May’s earlier visit. But the maître d’ had spoken conspiratorially to Julian and they were shown upstairs to a less crowded section. At the adjoining table two men were holding hands as one applied crimson coloured lipstick to his friend’s mouth. Julian had already sat down with his back to the couple and was studying the menu. He ordered fish and chips from the nippy while May settled for a cheese omelette and decided, against her instinct, to say nothing about their neighbours. Half her concentration had been distracted by a decision that nothing was going to make her eat fish and chips out of choice, not even for the sake of someone who had sort of called her “darling.”

  They talked of Wigan and of films and of mothers and of Oxford. Julian told her about the politics don Frank Pakenham, who was still suffering from the terrible bruises inflicted by Mosley’s men. He told her how Frank’s three-year-old daughter—adorable and curly-headed and innocent—had seen her invincible father groaning with pain in the darkened spare room. Julian had of course confessed to Frank at once that he had uttered the phrase “Red Front,” the two words that had triggered the violence.

  “But Frank is one of the kindest men I have ever met,” Julian said. “He told me he was even glad I had spoken those words and that he was glad of the chance to help break the fascists’ power. And I too will do anything to help him in that effort.” There was a new determination in Julian’s face as he spoke. “You remember our friend Peter from Wigan?”

  Of course she did. Those had been the days when she and Julian had been alone together for hours at a stretch. Peter was not yet in Spain but had sent Julian a card to say he was planning to be there by the end of the year. The Communist Party needed all the help it could attract.

  “Are you going to join him?” May asked.

  Julian was undecided. He admitted he was tempted. But he needed to get through his final exams first. And he had not discussed any of this with Charlotte.

  “Not that she seems to be very interested whatever I do,” he muttered.

  May changed the subject and began to talk about Cuckmere. Sir Philip had been busier than usual with more meetings and urgent parliamentary business than ever. He was worried about Lady Joan and her developing concern over Rupert’s intended visit to Berlin later in the summer. She could not help fearing the influences he might fall under over there. The son of one of Lady Joan’s friends had recently returned from Germany swearing loyalty to the führer. But May kept all this information to herself. Instead she described her pleasure in seeing the drama of Vera’s garden coming alive and how she and Florence had begun to explore the surrounding countryside together.

  “There is a small river near the house that leads out to the sea and the cliffs there are enormous. Florence says she swims there in the summer and as soon as the weather warms up we have promised each other we will jump into the water.”

  As May talked, Julian watched her intently and his encouraging smile emboldened her to a confidence, while making him swear on oath that he would not breathe a word of it to Rupert. The other day Miss Nettlefold had shown May her collection of wigs. There were looser ones for everyday wear, a cropped bob for the cocktail hour and an upswept chignon that was reserved for the occasional grand dinner, especially when royalty was present.

  “Wigs are part of my life,” she had told May. “Mind you, I make sure no one ever sees me without one. I think I would die of shame if that happened!”

  “She thinks we have a sort of friendship, you see,” May explained to Julian, after shifting her chair out of the line of sight of the two men beside them, one of whom had finished his chips and had now turned to the consumption of his friend’s ear. “She calls us ‘soulmates’ because we arrived in England on the same day. Of course, we can’t be proper friends what with her being Lady Joan’s goddaughter and me being the driver. But I feel sorry for her. I think she feels left alone on the outside of things.”

  “Soulmates, you say?”

  May wished she had not been so frank with him about the wigs.

  “Yes,” she replied defensively. “I do like her. She’s different.”

  “She’s certainly different,” Julian agreed. “But don’t you think there’s something not quite right about her? I mean apart from her size and her appetite? Not to mention those enormous teeth! Like tombstones, they are! To be quite honest she gives me the creeps.”

  May was irritated. She was damned if she was going to be lured into making unkind remarks about someone who had been so nice to her, despite the accident with Wiggle. They walked on in silence. What a prig he is, May thought to herself. Alarmed by how quickly she had found herself falling out with Julian she was relieved when they reached the underground. A sudden conviction that she was getting into something that perhaps she did not want to be part of engulfed her. She had intended to run down the stairs that led to the tunnel without looking back, but Julian caught her from behind, restraining her by both shoulders. Turning her to face him he kissed her hard on the lips, before releasing her.

  She clattered down the stairs, her hard-soled lace-ups clicking on the hard surfaces like a castanet. Before she disappeared into the tunnel she turned to see him waving his cap to her. To her surprise and irritation his tobacco tasted as delicious as it smelt. Fun
ny that, she thought. The power of taste. Uncooked cake and smoked tobacco. How strange that this most unlikely of the five senses could lead the way to new emotions. Afterwards she remained unaware whether he had removed his glasses to kiss her or had kept them on. All she did know was that they had managed the kiss without mishap and, despite her earlier misgivings, longed for a chance to do it again.

  Rachel was still up when May let herself in to Oak Street and with her usual unswerving directness took one look at May and said, “Don’t tell me you’re not cracky on someone.”

  Interrupting her scrutinising with a bone-fracturing sneeze, Rachel blew her nose long and hard into a large handkerchief before returning it to the pocket of her floral apron. “I can see it in your eyes, my girl,” she continued, looking hard at May, before giving her a wink.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rachel,” she replied. May did not feel up to an interrogation. She missed her mother. On most days the awareness of Edith’s death felt like a muted hum. Sometimes the hum was so low that it was almost inaudible, but then someone would say something about mothers, or she would come across a page in her book, or perhaps a line of poetry, or a familiar tune on the wireless and then the volume of the hum would be amplified. Sometimes she would wake from a particularly deep and satisfying sleep and for not much more than a second or two, halfway between semiconsciousness and wakefulness, she would experience the treacherous relief of thinking she had dreamt the whole thing. Her mother had not drowned at all. Edith was still there in her little book-lined room at the plantation, stretching out her hands and waiting for her children to take them. May would be overwhelmed with an urgency to go to her mother. In fact, she must go right now, today, this morning. But she had only to lie there in her bed, sometimes in London, but more often in the quiet of Cuckmere, to realise that she was still dreaming. May dreaded these occasions of happy delusion. The cruelty of this sort of waking meant that early mornings could be worse than any other part of her day.

  However, during the demanding schedule of the working week, May’s mood remained buoyant. She was enjoying getting to know Sir Philip, whose extracurricular legal work had also increased twofold since the beginning of the year. He had been appointed to help advise the new king’s legal team and May felt the privilege of trust when handling the related documents. She looked forward to the evenings when she joined the other chauffeurs who waited for their bosses to emerge from the House of Commons. Many of the drivers had been initially dismissive of a woman in their line of work but May’s extensive knowledge of the machinery that formed the nuts and bolts of their profession soon silenced the sceptics among them. Even taxi drivers knew about Miss Thomas and occasionally wound down their window at a traffic light and invited her into one of the green-painted cabman’s shelters for a cup of tea. The elder drivers saw to it that no impropriety was ever ventured, although the level of flirtation was not insignificant. Between themselves all the drivers agreed that Miss Thomas was a bit of all right.

  Most evenings May would stand by the passenger door of the Rolls-Royce, her cap in hand, waiting for Sir Philip, who would rush out from the Commons main door, the Evening Standard under his arm, and almost fall onto the leather seat of the Rolls. When he was on his own he chose to sit up in the front beside May, who sometimes caught a look of surprise on the faces of passers-by. At times he would be consumed by a story in the newspaper, and at others he would look directly ahead in silence. May had come to interpret his moods. He could give the impression of aloofness, even arrogance. But there was nothing in him of the smug, self-satisfied ways of his children. He often asked how May was getting on. She had told him of her pride at how Sam had been selected as part of the naval volunteer team on the imminent maiden voyage of the Queen Mary. He was to join the crew of a naval launch bringing an admiral from Portsmouth to Southampton in preparation for his transatlantic voyage on the new liner.

  Sir Philip was delighted to hear the news of Sam’s advancement. The launching of the Queen Mary promised to be the last word in magnificence. Sir Philip had been discussing the ship with Duncan Grant at a recent party in Sussex. Grant was a most engaging man who lived near Cuckmere at Charleston, a farmhouse cocooned by the embracing sweep of the surrounding South Downs. He shared the house with the artist Vanessa Bell, and the Cunard directors had commissioned paintings from them both to decorate the vast amounts of wall space that lined every floor of the ship. As part of her contribution, Vanessa had painted a scene set near a fountain in London’s Kensington Gardens, inspired by a memory of that park near where she and her two brothers and her sister, Virginia, had grown up. The quintessentially English painting with two children and their nanny playing on a summer’s day at the foot of a fountain was to be hung in a private dining room on board the ship’s first-class accommodation. Mr. Grant, on the other hand, had fallen out badly with the Cunard authorities after they rejected his nude murals as “inappropriate for the elegant taste of the new vessel,” and at the party Sir Philip had been left in no doubt of the painter’s outrage at such censorship.

  On the day of Queen Mary’s maiden voyage May drove the Rolls-Royce down to the Southampton docks. Lady Joan had been invited as one of several MPs’ wives who were making up a party of distinguished guests. She had invited Evangeline to join her, knowing that the occasion promised to be the sort of British outing that Miss Nettlefold enjoyed so much.

  Mrs. Simpson regretted she would not be joining them in Southampton.

  “She is remaining in London to help the king put the finishing touches to an important dinner planned for tonight at York House,” Miss Nettlefold explained to Lady Joan in the car on the way to Harrods to collect their new hats for the ceremony. “Of course, I quite understand why at the last minute Wallis feels there is no room for me at the dinner. The king already has his full complement of guests, what with the Duff Coopers, the Mountbattens, Lady Cunard and the prime minister himself. But Wallis has told me that the king intends to introduce Mr. Baldwin to ‘his future wife’!”

  May listened to Miss Nettlefold’s newly animated chatter through the not-quite-closed glass partition. The American woman had been noticeably subdued over the past few weeks, her buoyant mood dipping at the same rate as the number of visits to the Fort had dwindled. She confided to May that she had looked into the price of a ticket to sail back to New York on the new ship but that it was beyond her reach, and anyway there wasn’t really anything to return to America for. Her brother wrote her the occasional postcard, but the cards never convinced her that her family were missing her very much. Looking on the bright side, however, Mrs. Simpson had mentioned something about spending a few weeks in the Mediterranean later on in the summer and Miss Nettlefold was hoping the invitation would soon be confirmed.

  “I always say it is the things that you don’t do in life that you regret, May,” she had said with a girlish little jump before climbing into the backseat of the car beside Joan.

  They had reached the outskirts of Southampton in good time. May had eased the car onto the narrow wooden deck of the Woolston Floating Bridge and to the sound of clanking chains and the hiss of steam, the Blunt party had remained in the car as they floated across the River Itchen to the port on the opposite bank. The Queen Mary was scheduled to depart at 4:30 p.m., allowing time for lunch beneath the Tudor beams of the old Court Room in the Red Lion Inn. A table had been reserved in the very room where, five hundred years earlier, traitors plotting against the life of Henry V had been found guilty and sentenced to death.

  “How quaint this is!” Miss Nettlefold had exclaimed. “Don’t you applaud a grim death for those who deserve it, May?” she continued, as Lady Joan teased her for looking in the corners for signs of dried blood.

  “Shall we have a good talk about everything when we get home, Evangeline, darling?” May heard Lady Joan ask. “You seem worried about something, and I want to help if I can.”

  May saw Miss Nettlefold nod and rest her hand gently
on Lady Joan’s arm.

  “I would like that very much,” Miss Nettlefold replied quickly. “The sooner the better. I do feel a bit uncertain about things.”

  After leaving the women to their lunch, sisterly pride fluttered through May as she watched her brother march smartly along the dock towards her, smoothing down the front of his blue naval trousers. The cut was difficult to get used to but he had found that the uniform with its white, sharp-edged collar and side fastening buttons had an instant effect on girls. Sam had been given half an hour of free time to meet up with his sister before rejoining his colleagues for the moment of the sailing. An hour earlier he had stood to attention at the bottom of the gangplank with the rest of the small naval party, as the admiral had boarded the ship. Sam had been permitted to take the suitcases to the admiral’s first-class stateroom and his glimpse of the grandeur and comfort inside the ship was, he told his sister, something he had never seen before.

  “Bit of a change from what we sailors are used to. Not a bunk in sight!”

  Now the brother and sister stood side by side on the quayside staring up at the two thousand inaugural passengers who were already leaning elbow to elbow along the upper rails. Even at a distance their faces demonstrated the novelty of being celebrities for one afternoon.

  At a thousand feet long, the word was that if one of the three funnels was placed on its side six locomotive engines would be able to pass through abreast. May wondered what their father would think of the vessel people were calling “not so much a ship as a gesture.” The newspapers had been full of extravagant statistics for days and May, whose interest in machines did not stop at cars, had been gobbling up every detail she came across. Nat had been given a hand-me-on copy of the Illustrated London News by his butler friend and last week’s full-colour commemorative issue had been devoted to the anticipation of the maiden voyage. Not only did the ship weigh more than that of the combined fleet of the Spanish Armada but the throb of the engines was so powerful that reporters feared that a well-shaken martini would spill over the edge of its glass with the vibrations. There were decks as long as entire village streets. As well as including hundreds of photographs of the interior, the magazine had commissioned drawings of the layout of the different classes of accommodation. A side view section of the ship indicated not only the whereabouts of the sleeping cabins, the libraries, and the drawing rooms but also the position of the two acres of sports and recreation decks, the garage with its capacity for three dozen cars, the two swimming pools, the hospital, the printers’ shop (for the daily newspaper, the menus and entertainment programmes), the cinema and the hairdresser. The ship’s gardener was to make sure that the hundreds of potted plants were well watered while the promenade deck for pets came complete with a convenient lamppost, although curiously the kennels were to be overseen by the ship’s butchers. The memory of Wiggle momentarily interrupted May’s concentration. But turning to the next page of the magazine she came to the diverting charts that showed the huge quantities of linen on board, including twenty-one thousand table cloths and thiry-one thousand pillow cases, and a larder containing vats of caviar.