Seven
February 1934, Chaddington
* * *
We were all devastated, Mama, Papa and me, but we were all devastated alone.
I felt numb. I felt as though I was floating six feet above everything in a daze. I didn’t cry for twenty-four hours. I was lost.
I didn’t hug my parents, and they didn’t hug me, or each other, from what I could tell. I’m ashamed to say I was polite to them. Polite! What was I thinking? What were we doing?
Papa crumpled. Everything about him sagged: his face, his shoulders, his spirit.
My mother was immediately angry. Her eyes were aflame. Every interaction with my father or me seemed to consume her with irritation, irritation which she could barely restrain with politeness. Whereas my politeness was a hazy indifference, hers was a fiery cold.
We needed Sarah to unlock our grief. We took too long to track her down and tell her, but when we eventually found her, at a friend’s house in Northamptonshire, she came at once. She hugged us all. She made us all cry. She made us talk about Hugh. I was so relieved to see her; we all were.
The other person who was a help was Roland Meeke. He helped my father with the practicalities. He helped my mother with her frustration. He helped me talk about my brother, explain him, remember him. There was no foxhunting for Roland, but he and I did go for a couple of long rides together.
Sarah and he organized the funeral, which was a major event. Hugh had had lots of friends, from school, from Cambridge, from all sorts of unlikely places. As did my parents from London, and then there were all the county people, and relatives young and old, some of whom I couldn’t remember ever meeting. Hugh’s death touched a multitude.
St Mary’s Chaddington was overflowing – barely a third of those present could fit in the church. The churchyard was heaving; I was glad that I had a place in the procession directly behind the coffin.
My family stood together, together really for the first time since his death, as we watched him go into the ground, dust to dust.
I was standing in the crowd in a daze, waiting for my parents to lead everyone back to the Hall, when I heard my name.
‘Emma?’
I turned to see a tall man with a slight stoop and fair hair brushed back from a high forehead.
‘Dick?’
‘That’s right. I had no trouble recognizing you. Though you must have been eleven when I last saw you.’ Dick Loxton had come to stay with us a couple of times during school half-terms.
‘Oh, I remember. You put up with me manfully.’ I recalled I had interrogated him about the hypocrisy of the Church of England. Dick’s father was a vicar.
He grinned. ‘You took me aback a bit.’
‘I warn you, I haven’t changed much.’
‘I know. Hugh talked about you a lot.’
‘Did he?’ For the first time in over a week, I could feel myself smiling. ‘Thank you for telling me that,’ I said.
Dick’s blue eyes looked on me kindly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And I’m sorry for you. You were friends for a long time.’
‘Yes.’ Dick took a deep breath. ‘He was my best friend. He made me see the world differently. Understand the world differently.’
‘I know what you mean.’
The crowd began to shift as Mama and Papa made their way stiffly along the path back to the Hall, Papa’s shoulders drooping, Mama standing erect, a good two feet distance between them.
Dick gave me his arm and we followed.
‘I must ask you something, Dick,’ I said. ‘Did Hugh say anything to you about renouncing communism?’
‘No,’ said Dick. ‘Mind you, I haven’t seen him for ages. Not since last summer. I’ve been stuck teaching history and scripture in a school in Leeds. But we have corresponded.’
‘Did he write to you about politics? The thing is, he was always so enthusiastic about Marxism. And after he came back from the Soviet Union, he seemed all the more excited about it. But then he said that you had persuaded him he was wrong. That the kulaks deserved to be let off.’
‘It wasn’t that, exactly. It was odd. Hugh, Freddie Pelham-Walsh and I all went on the same trip. We all saw the same things. But they thought they were experiencing a socialist paradise where everyone was equal and the government had worked out how to provide good jobs for all the workers.’
‘And you didn’t see that?’
‘I saw a massive prison, where everyone was being spied upon, everyone had to do what they were told, and people were starving in the streets.’
‘It sounds like you won him round. The other day he told me he had given up on communism completely. I thought it might have something to do with trying to get into the Foreign Office. I must admit, it upset me.’
‘Why?’ said Dick.
‘Because I am just as much a communist as Hugh is. Was. And because I was afraid he was giving up on his principles because they were inconvenient to his new career.’
‘That sounds very unlike Hugh.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ I sighed. ‘I wish I could talk to him about it now.’ I swallowed. ‘The last time we spoke I shouted at him. And then I ignored him the next morning. The morning he died.’
Dick touched my arm. His kind blue eyes studied me. ‘Hugh was always so fond of you. Incredibly proud of you, actually. He was always a man of principle and he loved you. That’s all you need to remember.’
His words were immensely comforting. The tears I could feel coming receded.
Drinks were being served in the Hall: cups of tea, sherry or something stronger for those who needed it.
A very tall woman and a slightly shorter man made their way towards Dick and me, clutching glasses of what looked like brandy and soda.
‘Freddie!’ Dick pumped the hand of his old school friend, whom I had met briefly once or twice before. Freddie’s suit was much better cut than Dick’s, and a gold watch chain sneaked across the beginnings of a tiny bulge in his tummy. I noticed he was wearing pink socks. He shook Dick’s hand with a sad smile, the two red spots on his round cheeks glowing dully.
‘Hello, Kay,’ said Dick. ‘I am so sorry.’
Kay was the tall woman, slim, dark, aloof, a few years older than Freddie and Dick. ‘Thank you, Dick,’ she said.
I was puzzled. Why was Dick, Hugh’s oldest friend, proffering condolences to this strange woman and not the other way around?
‘Have you met Kay, Emma?’ Dick said.
Emma shook her head.
‘This is Kay Lesser. Kay, this is Emma, Hugh’s sister.’ Dick looked at me, seeming to understand something. ‘Kay was a . . . good friend of Hugh’s. We met her in Russia, but she is living in London now.’
What!
‘Hugh told me a lot about you,’ said Kay. Her accent was American. Rough American. There was a touch of haughtiness in the way she drew from her cigarette, looking down on me as she did so. I was taller than average myself; not many women looked down on me.
‘Well, he hasn’t told me anything about you,’ I said coldly. Who on earth was this woman, and what had she been doing with my brother?
Kay assessed me under thick eyebrows, taking in the hostility which I was making no attempt to hide. There was something odd about her, a dark unconventional beauty based upon intriguing imperfections of her features, imperfections that would have rendered her ugly if she had carried herself differently. I could see what Hugh might have seen in her – if indeed he had seen anything in her.
‘I’m not surprised. He told me his family wouldn’t like me.’
‘Why ever not? We are perfectly hospitable.’
‘I’m sure you are,’ said Kay. ‘Because I am a communist. And because of my race.’
‘Your race?’
‘I’m Jewish. And I’m American.’
‘So what?’ I said.
‘So Hugh thought your family would have difficulty with that.’
‘Why should I have difficulty with that?’ I said
.
‘I don’t think he meant you. I think he meant your parents.’
The frustrating thing was that she might well have been right.
‘Did you know Hugh well?’ I asked her. I both dreaded the answer and needed to know it.
Kay Lesser looked at me. I realised she was, in some ways, a kindred spirit. We both loved Hugh and we were both angry at his death. But, at that moment, I hated her, and I don’t think she liked me much either.
‘He asked me to marry him a couple of weeks ago,’ Kay said, quietly.
That, I wasn’t expecting. My mouth fell open in shock. Kay seemed to enjoy my confusion.
At last I managed to spit out the obvious question. ‘And what did you say?’
Before Kay could answer, Freddie Pelham-Walsh, who had been talking to Dick, interrupted. ‘Poor Emma,’ he said. ‘I know how close you and Hugh were. He was a good man. A bloody good man.’
Freddie was Irish, or Anglo-Irish, which was why he had been sent to an Anglican boarding school in Britain. His voice was a unique creation, deep, rich and plummy, with a touch of Irish in his ‘r’s and his ‘a’s. I thought I detected a slight slur and I suspected that he had drunk more than the half-glass of brandy and soda he was holding.
‘He was,’ I said. Although I knew Freddie genuinely meant what he said, I was irritated that he had shown up to my brother’s funeral tight.
‘Have you noticed the socks?’ Freddie said, raising his ankle. ‘Hugh and I used to wear pink silk socks at school. Our little bit of rebellion.’
‘I remember those socks!’ I said, smiling now. ‘Papa hated them.’
‘So did our housemaster. But I always thought they were rather fine. I gave Hugh his for his sixteenth birthday.’
One of those uncomfortable funeral-conversation silences descended on us. Freddie crashed into it. He leaned in towards me, and spoke in a loud stage whisper. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘Are they sure it was an accident?’
‘Of course they are sure,’ I said. But I was thinking of the lack of ice on the road and Hugh’s strange decision to take the back lane instead of the simpler, straighter and much quicker Tavistock Road to come home from Okehampton.
‘Maybe he was killed. Have they thought of that?’
‘Killed?’ I said. ‘Who would kill him? And why?’
‘That’s easy,’ Freddie said. ‘The secret service. Because he was a Russian spy.’
‘Don’t be an ass, Freddie,’ said Dick. ‘Hugh wasn’t a spy. He wasn’t even a real communist. Emma says he had given it up.’
‘What do you think, Kay?’ Freddie said. ‘Am I right? Some spook killed poor Hugh and made it look like a car smash?’
Kay sighed. ‘You’re just making that up.’ She glanced at me with the first glimmer of sympathy. ‘You are a dumb son of a bitch, Freddie.’
But . . . I wondered.
Eight
June 1979, Chaddington
* * *
‘Have you got a photo of Hugh?’ Phil asked.
‘I have, as a matter of fact,’ Emma said. Phil had known she would. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a dog-eared black-and-white photograph of a man of about twenty wearing a cricket sweater and a blazer, staring at the camera with a broad friendly grin.
He reminded Phil of someone. With a start he realized who it was.
‘Looks a bit like me, doesn’t he?’
Emma smiled and took the photo back. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He does. I noticed that about you from when you were five.’
‘Was Hugh a spy?’
Emma stood up and smoothed her dress. ‘Shall we go?’
Phil shouldn’t have expected his grandmother to answer such a straightforward question. But he was confident she would tell him. In time.
‘Where to next?’ he asked.
‘The ferry.’
‘We’re going all the way to Dover tonight?’
‘Not Dover. Plymouth. I’ve booked a night crossing to Brittany.’
So they left Chaddington and drove the twenty-five miles to Plymouth, in plenty of time for the ferry. As the boat pulled away from the ferry terminal and steamed through the Sound and past Plymouth Hoe out into the English Channel, Phil thought of how he had been looking forward to this moment for nine months, since he and Mike had cooked up their European trip one break time after German. It was supposed to have been an adventure, marking the transition from childhood to adulthood, or at least to studenthood. Instead of which, he was babysitting his old gran around the more staid parts of two European capitals.
And yet. Phil liked his old gran, who wasn’t even really that old. And he had a feeling that this might turn into an adventure after all.
They were sitting on deck, watching the land recede. He heard a thump and a yell behind him, and he turned to see a man who looked rather like Frank Stapleton, the Arsenal striker, tripping into an English family eating sandwiches. It was the ten-year-old daughter who had yelped and she looked cross. The man apologized, and the mum smoothed things over. On closer inspection, Phil could see that the guy was not really that much like Frank Stapleton after all – he was shorter and his hair was a bit longer. But he was no doubt doing the same thing Phil was doing, but in reverse. He didn’t look English – probably German or Dutch. A student going around Europe on his own. Maybe he had been hitch-hiking in England? Phil wondered how England would seem to a foreign student. Could the oh-so-familiar Chiltern Hills seem exotic?
Perhaps.
‘Did you know you used to be able fly a car to France?’ Emma said. ‘In the fifties. Roland and I did it a couple of times. From Lydd Aerodrome to Le Touquet. Very luxurious.’
‘I can’t imagine that,’ Phil said.
‘Yes. They just opened up the front of the aeroplane, and drove your car up a ramp. Much quicker than a crane winching it on to a boat.’
‘You married Mr Meeke, then,’ Phil said. ‘Grandpa.’
‘I did. It was not at all surprising I fell in love with him. He was intelligent, good-looking, charming. He treated me seriously. I was bereft with the loss of Hugh. There was an enormous gap in my life, and Roland was there to fill it. He knew about life. He knew about many of the things I was interested in. He listened to me.
‘What was less clear to everyone – except me – was why he liked me. He was as eligible as they come. A successful diplomat with a promising career, he was thirty-two, thirteen years older than me, but of eminently marriageable age. He could have had his pick, and he chose the strange Brearton girl – me.
‘I thought I understood it. I had my own vanity: I thought I was intelligent and fascinating. I believed that the reason none of the young men had shown any interest in me so far was that they were too stupid to realize it. Chumps. All it took was for a man of the intelligence of Hugh to meet me, and he would be smitten. Roland was that man.’ Emma smiled ruefully at Phil. ‘My brother was right – I was naive.’
‘Sounds to me you got it about right,’ Phil said.
‘We saw a lot of each other in the couple of weeks after Hugh’s death. Then Roland headed off for Paris, but he came back to Devon as soon as he could get some leave. The next time I saw him was in London. He had invited me to dinner at Boulestin, and I had gone up to town with Mama. He proposed! I accepted. Mama was thrilled.
‘Roland’s father had died, but I met his mother, who was almost as dark-skinned as he was. It turned out that she was Anglo-Indian, her mother had been the daughter of a Rajput maharajah. Papa was a little taken aback by this, but Mama persuaded him that royal blood, however minor, was on the whole a good thing, even if it was Indian. We were married five months later in the village church, and I was off the books.’
‘And you went to Paris?’
‘And I went to Paris. Where we are going tomorrow.’
Hold on a moment, Phil thought. ‘So that means my, er, great-grandmother was an Indian princess?’
‘Great-great-grandmother, I think,’ said Emma.
; ‘Oh yes,’ Phil said, doing the calculation. ‘That’s quite a long way back, isn’t it? It doesn’t exactly make me a prince. But I like the idea.’
Another thing his mother had omitted to tell him.
Emma winced. For a moment, Phil thought he had said something wrong, but then she touched her forehead.
‘You OK, Grams?’
‘I don’t know. Wait a moment.’
Phil waited. Emma winced again. ‘I think I’m getting a headache. Do you mind if we go in?’
They left the deck and entered one of the lounges, sitting on a plastic seat looking out at the grey Channel.
The headache got worse. ‘I think I’m going to have to turn in,’ Emma said.
‘Here, I’ll come with you.’ Phil led her to the cabin Emma had booked. She had reserved one for each of them; Phil was quite sure that he and Mike would have just kipped on the seats in the lounge.
Emma emitted a groan as she flopped on her bunk.
‘Is it a migraine?’ Phil asked.
‘No.’
‘Shall I see if there is a ship’s doctor?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I know what it is, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Apart from take a pill. Can you look in my bag? There’s a box of pills.’
Phil opened Emma’s suitcase and began rummaging.
‘Not my suitcase, you idiot, I said my bag. My handbag!’
He turned to see his grandmother glaring at him. He snapped the suitcase shut.
‘Did you see anything?’ Emma demanded.
Phil blushed. ‘I saw your underwear. I’m sorry, Grams. I just got a bit flustered.’
‘You cannot afford to get flustered on this trip, Philip!’ said Emma. ‘Now look in my handbag.’
Phil swiftly found the pills, and gave her two with a glass of water. He offered to stay with her while she slept – there was an empty bunk – but she told him to go and get himself some supper. He did so, promising to return to check on her.
Her headache worried him.
The Diplomat's Wife Page 5