A Season of Secrets (50 page)

‘And the Duchess most definitely needs a nurse,’ Dr Todd continued. ‘I don’t have one at my beck and call, but there’s a clinic in Richmond that may be able to
supply someone. I won’t be able to arrange it until the morning of course, and her lady’s maid should be in bed immediately. I wouldn’t like to answer for the consequences if she
isn’t.’

‘I can nurse the Duchess,’ Carrie said. ‘In my years at Monkswood I’ve nursed members of staff – and Lady Markham – through several illnesses.’

‘Splendid!’ Dr Todd hadn’t the least anxiety about leaving anyone – no matter what their rank – in Carrie’s tender, and obviously efficient, care. ‘Then
my advice to you both is to ensure the Duchess’s lady’s maid is put straight to bed and, like the Duchess, given plenty of liquids and plenty of rest. I’ll be back first thing in
the morning.’ He began walking away from them and then paused. Turning, he said as an afterthought, ‘The Duke has a nervous disposition and isn’t a man who is of any use in a
sickroom. I advise that you encourage him to leave it and get some sleep.’ And, with that, he continued on his way out of the house.

Gilbert’s amber-brown eyes held Carrie’s. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘Let us now apprise the Duke of how his wife is to be cared for.’

With Carrie by his side, the back of his hand almost brushing hers, he entered the guest suite, taking comfort from her presence, just as he had once taken comfort from Blanche’s.

‘Thank you, Mrs . . . ?’ Elizabeth said dazedly as she accepted the glass of lemon barley water Carrie offered her.

‘Mrs Thornton, Your Grace.’

‘And you are?’ Elizabeth asked, disorientated by her high temperature and forgetting their earlier introduction.

‘The housekeeper, Your Grace. I am caring for you, as your maid is ill also.’

Elizabeth closed her eyes, fatigued by the effort of talking, and Carrie carefully laid a cold, lavender-scented compress against her sweating forehead in an effort to begin bringing down her
temperature.

When morning broke and she went into the adjoining sitting room to speak to the Duke of York, Lord Fenton and Dr Todd, Carrie said, ‘The Duchess has had an uncomfortable, disturbed night,
but her condition hasn’t worsened.’

‘Nor has it, Carrie,’ Dr Todd said. He had known Carrie for years and had no intention of addressing her as Mrs Thornton. ‘Her temperature is still at one hundred and two, but
if you keep doing what you have been doing – encouraging her to drink plenty of lemon barley water and continually applying cold compresses to her forehead – I think we will see an
improvement by this evening.’

‘I s-s-sincerely hope so,’ Bertie said fervently. ‘In the past, her fevers have s-s-sometimes continued for days.’

Throughout the morning Carrie got the kitchen staff to supplement the lemon barley water by regularly bringing up to the bedroom a drink that had been her granny’s
solution for fevers and flu: grated ginger added to boiled water, strained, with a liberal spoonful of honey added.

‘That’s very comforting and soothing, Mrs Thornton,’ Elizabeth said weakly as she sipped it. ‘Thank you.’

By late afternoon Elizabeth, though still weak, was no longer disorientated and Carrie judged it safe to suggest to her that she had a bath in lukewarm water, to aid the process of lowering her
temperature.

Elizabeth, seeing the sense of it, agreed. Later, back in bed again, this time drinking an infusion of hot water, lemon juice and honey to which half a teaspoon of saffron had been added, she
said, ‘Did you say it was your grandmother, Mrs Thornton, who told you about adding saffron to lemon and honey?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’ Carrie was sitting by Elizabeth’s bedside, from where she could regularly apply cold compresses to her forehead. ‘My granny was very good at nursing
people. She was Lord Fenton’s nanny and nursed him through many childhood illnesses.’

‘Your grandmother was Lord Fenton’s nanny?’ Elizabeth’s eyes widened. ‘But how extraordinary!’

Though she thought it was probably inappropriate to explain, Carrie felt an explanation was needed. ‘When Lord Fenton was too old to need a nanny any more, she acted as nanny for other
members of his family, and then Lord Fenton retired her into a tied cottage in the village. That was where I grew up. So, you see, I’ve known Gorton – and the family – all my
life.’

Gently she laid another cold compress on Elizabeth’s forehead.

‘And so when you left school you immediately came into service here?’

‘No, Your Grace. I couldn’t come here as a tweeny because I had become friends with Miss Thea and Miss Olivia – and with Miss Violet as well. Lady Fenton – the first Lady
Fenton – thought it best if I went into service for a friend of hers, Lady Markham, over at Richmond.’

Elizabeth pushed herself up against her pillows, wondering if she was still a little delirious. ‘But how did that all come about, Mrs Thornton? It sounds most unusual.’

‘Yes, I think it was.’ Carrie removed the compress and replaced the glass of lemon, honey and saffron with a tall glass of lemon barley water. ‘When I was eight my father was
killed in the Great War at the battle of Hooge. His company commander was Lord Fenton, and he suggested to Lady Fenton that it might help me get over my grief if I came to Gorton and played with
Thea and Olivia. Olivia is my age, and Thea a year older. I did, and we’ve been as close as sisters ever since.’

‘What a very nice story.’ Elizabeth was aware she was beginning to feel fractionally better. ‘And so was it when you were in service with Lady Markham that you met your
husband?’

Carrie smiled. ‘I’m not married, Your Grace. “Mrs” is a courtesy title. And I’m still in service with Lady Markham. I’m her under-housekeeper, and I’m
only at Gorton this weekend because Mrs Huntley, Lord Fenton’s housekeeper, has had to dash to Leeds Infirmary, where her daughter has been taken after being in a traffic accident.’

‘I’m beginning to feel as if I’m in a Hollywood movie.’ There was amusement in Elizabeth’s voice. ‘A dash to a hospital. A sick house-guest. A Mrs Thornton
who is a Miss Thornton. A housekeeper who isn’t actually the housekeeper at all. What else is going to turn out to be not what it seems?’

Carrie, aware that Elizabeth had turned a corner and was now on the way to recovery, said, ‘If you are beginning to feel a little better, would you like to try some clear chicken soup,
Your Grace?’

Elizabeth nodded.

When Carrie came back into the room after giving the order for the chicken soup to be brought upstairs, Elizabeth said, ‘What is your Christian name, Miss Thornton?’

‘Caroline, but everyone calls me Carrie. I don’t think I’ve ever been called Caroline in my life.’

‘You must have had a nice childhood, growing up in such a pretty part of the Yorkshire Dales.’

‘I did. Together with Thea and Olivia and another friend of mine, Hal, we would play down by the river and, in summer, paddle and swim in it. Sometimes we would watch the voles that live
in the river-bank, and when it was blackberry and bilberry time we would pick quarts and quarts of them for Cook to make jam and tarts with.’

Elizabeth said, ‘When I was a little girl we lived at St Paul’s Walden Bury, and my best friend was my brother David. In the summer we would get up very early to let our six
silver-blue Persian cats out. After that we would go and say good morning to the ponies, feed the chickens – there were more than three hundred of them – and collect eggs for our
breakfast. Like your childhood, doing simple country things was the best part of my childhood also.’

In the early evening Elizabeth had another lukewarm bath, but by then she, Carrie, and Dr Todd knew there would be no need of another one, and that her temperature was fast
returning to normal and a serious bout of influenza had been averted.

Carrie still kept up with the regime of cooling compresses, regular glasses of lemon barley water, and hot lemon, honey and saffron on the hour every hour.

Late in the evening Elizabeth said, ‘I’m beginning to feel much better, Carrie. Usually when I have a fever it’s days and days before I feel well again, so I’m very
grateful to you.’ She paused, and then said, ‘Will you be returning to Lady Markham next week?’

‘I expect so, Your Grace. Lord Fenton received a telephone call from Mrs Huntley at teatime saying that although her daughter has been badly injured, she no longer has a life-threatening
condition, and so I imagine she will be back by tomorrow, or the day after at the latest.’

‘Is my maid recovering at the same speed that I am?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

Elizabeth’s eyes, the same midsummer-blue as Carrie’s, twinkled. ‘Then that must be because she’s having the same infusions and diligent care as I am receiving. Tell me
some more about your childhood, Carrie. Did you have other friends besides Lord Fenton’s daughters and Hal? When I was eight every friend I had was either a brother or a sister or a
cousin.’

Carrie handed her another glass of hot lemon, honey and saffron and began to tell her about Charlie and Jim, Hermione and Miss Calvert.

Elizabeth told her about another of her childhood homes, Glamis Castle in Scotland. ‘I remember once, when I was about ten,’ she said, in a room that was now lamplit, ‘when,
with a coachman by my side, I was driving a pair of horses and they started to run away with me. We were hanging on, making straight for the gates – which were shut – and I said to our
coachman, “What are we going to do?” and he took his bowler hat off and said, “We must trust in the Lord, Lady Elizabeth.” And with that we hung on and, do you know, as we
got nearer the gates they opened, and we flew through them at great speed. Wasn’t that amazing? I’ve trusted in the Lord ever since.’

Carrie told Elizabeth about Charlie. About how she and Violet had been in the post office when he was being name-called by the women queuing up in it, and of how Blanche had taken her in the
silver Rolls-Royce to Charlie’s home and offered him employment at Gorton. She told her of how Lord Fenton had arranged for Charlie to be treated by the great Mr Gillies, and of the silver
mask Charlie had worn in between his many facial reconstruction operations, and of how it had made him famous all over their part of the Dales.

That night Elizabeth slept soundly and in the morning, when Dr Todd came to see her, he announced that her temperature was back to normal.

‘I had a very good nurse,’ Elizabeth said to him.

‘I’m grateful to hear it, Your Grace,’ he said, with a smile in Carrie’s direction. ‘You are completely fit enough to travel, and may I take the liberty of wishing
you and your husband a safe journey.’

Assuming the role now of a lady’s maid, not a nurse, Carrie helped Elizabeth to dress. Standing behind Elizabeth as she sat at the dressing table, Carrie fastened the duchess’s
three-strand pearl necklace for her.

Elizabeth smiled at her through the mirror. ‘In all the times in my life that I have been unwell, I can never remember a happy side to it, as there has been this time. Talking to you
brought back so many good memories of my childhood, and I so enjoyed hearing all about Hal, and the voles, and men in silver masks.’ She lifted her hand, taking hold of Carrie’s.
‘Thank you so much for these last forty-eight hours, Carrie. When the day comes when you can legitimately be addressed as “Mrs”, please let me know so that I may send you my good
wishes.’

JULY 1936

‘In Spain the government has asked France for assistance in suppressing the Nationalist insurgents led by General Franco. The Nationalists have, in turn, asked for
assistance from Italy and Germany.’

Thea was in Mount Street, listening to the early-morning BBC news.

‘
Opinion at home is that the Republican government is unlikely to receive help from France, which is opposed to any intervention in Spain’s internal affairs. It remains to be seen
what the Nationalist emissaries will bring back from Rome and Berlin’.
There was a slight pause and then, in a different tone,
‘King Edward’s coronation is to take place on
May the twelfth next year.’

Thea turned the wireless off. King George had died in January and, incredible though it still seemed to her, her friend, Prince Edward, was now King Edward VIII.

She wondered if she would receive an invitation to the coronation. She wondered just what kind of status would be accorded at the coronation to Wallis. Most of all, though, she wondered what
help would be given to Spain’s left-wing government by Britain’s Labour Party and Communist Party.

The only person who would know what – if anything – was being planned was Hal. She had his telephone number, though pride ensured that she seldom rang it. She hesitated long enough
to smoke a cigarette, then dialled his number.

He was still living in his little flat in Orange Street at the back of the National Gallery and she could visualize the telephone ringing in his minute hallway, and Hal coming to answer it, from
where? The bedroom? The sitting room? The equally small kitchen?

‘Hal Crosby,’ he said abruptly, when he finally answered its insistent ringing.