A Season of Secrets (35 page)

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.

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.

‘It means I’ll be in the running for the post of deputy chief of mission in London when von Neurath is moved on,’ he’d said to her. ‘With personal contacts such as
I now have in Britain, how could I not be?’

The prospect of such an appointment when Dieter would be only in his thirties was dizzying – but, like Dieter, Olivia couldn’t see why it shouldn’t happen.

She put on a pair of sunglasses and, wondering who the other guests at the Fort would be, settled back to enjoy the fifty-minute journey out of the London suburbs and into Surrey. There was
always a possibility that Elizabeth and Bertie would be there, for as well as their home in London, they had a country retreat at nearby Royal Lodge. But it was more likely that another of
Edward’s brothers, Prince George, would be there. Unknown to the British public, George’s life was scandalously bohemian, and Edward far preferred his company to that of Bertie, whose
life was – in Edward’s eyes – one of dull propriety. Thelma Furness, Edward’s mistress, would certainly be there. Like Edward’s previous long-standing mistress, Freda
Dudley Ward, Thelma was married and sparky and full of fun.