A Season of Secrets (55 page)

Was that why Gilbert was prepared to be the first Fenton ever to divorce? Was it because, if she became pregnant, he would have no certainty the child was his? She was forty-four, an age when he
might have been expected to have no such fears, but even if he had, she could have put his mind at rest. Though she’d seen no need to tell him so, her periods had stopped two years ago.

When they had, she had thought she was pregnant – and by Roberto – and had immediately sought medical confirmation. The only confirmation she had received was that, like 10 per cent
of women, her menopause had begun earlier than might have been expected. It was news she had kept to herself.

So why was she still keeping it to herself?

She crossed to a small table and took a cigarette from a silver cigarette-case studded in one corner with a pleasingly large diamond. There was another diamond, albeit a little smaller, in the
corner of the lighter she lit the cigarette with.

The diamonds, and the lifestyle that went with them, would continue after the divorce. Gilbert had assured her of that and, as he was a man whose word could be trusted utterly, she would never
have financial worries.

She blew a plume of smoke into the air. Since Gilbert had dropped his bombshell and put divorce proceedings in hand, she’d had time to reconsider her first hysterical reaction to no longer
being Viscountess Fenton. For one thing, her title would change only slightly. Instead of being
The
Viscountess Fenton (which Gilbert’s third wife would hold, if he were to marry
again), she would be Zephiniah, Viscountess Fenton – a courtesy title.

A further realization, though, had been the clincher.

As Gilbert’s divorced wife, she would never again have to suffer being bored out of her mind.

There would be no more interminably tedious stays at Gorton. No more staring out of windows at nothing but sheep and moorland. No more having to face the future that Gilbert was so looking
forward to – a future where, after he ceased being active in politics, he would live permanently at Gorton.

None of the things she had hoped to gain by marrying Gilbert – apart from her title and financial security – had come to pass. Other than with his political friends, he hated
socializing. She’d had dreams of becoming part of a glamorous royal circle – as her stepdaughters, each in different ways, had been; and as Olivia, if she lived in London and not
Berlin, still would be.

It had never happened.

Another thing that had never happened was Gilbert becoming prime minister.

When she had first met him, the prospect had been spoken of so often, by so many people, that in her naivety she had thought it an event bound to happen.

It hadn’t.

The first general election after their marriage had been in 1929 and, to her surprise and intense disappointment, he’d made no attempt to stand for office. Instead of returning a
Conservative government, the great British public had voted for Labour in their droves. She had wondered if, anticipating such a result, Gilbert had decided to keep his powder dry until the next
general election when the public would, presumably, be disillusioned with Labour and anxious to vote Conservative once again.

Zephiniah had been right in assuming there would be enough disillusionment with Labour to vote a Conservative government back into office, but that government hadn’t been headed by
Gilbert. Instead Stanley Baldwin had bounced back like an indestructible rubber ball and had stayed in office long enough to ensure that, instead of Edward making Wallis his queen, he was doomed to
a life of exile as the Duke of Windsor.

The last general election had been a year ago. By then she’d long ago realized that Gilbert had no desire – and not enough ruthlessness –ever to want to lead his party. More to
the point, she’d also learned that British prime ministers led from the Commons, not the House of Lords, and that for him to be prime minister he would have had to renounce his peerage.

She walked back to the window, aware that her major disappointments with Gilbert wouldn’t have been so impossible to overcome, if it hadn’t been for the shoal of smaller, daily
disappointments and irritations.

Top of her list was that no force on Earth could tempt him into a nightclub. He could dance – in fact he was a very good dancer – but he danced only in the ballrooms of private
houses, and then not very often. It was the same with casinos, which were meat and drink to her.

The excitement and adrenalin-filled rush of gambling was totally lost on Gilbert. Rather than playing roulette, blackjack and baccarat in Monte Carlo, he preferred being in Yorkshire, tramping
the moors with a shotgun under his arm and his spaniels at his heels.

She couldn’t even enjoy a furious row with him, because he was always so God-damned reasonable and, unless the issues were cruelty and injustice – when he became white-lipped with
anger – he rarely lost his temper.

She, on the other hand, was so mercurial that she lost her temper at the drop of a hat, and enjoyed doing so. Her spectacular and frequent rows with Roberto often progressed into physical fights
– and always ended with the two of them making frantic, passionate love.

She was roused from her thoughts, and her present longing for Roberto, by a knock on her door. She wasn’t expecting a visitor, though it was just possible that her visitor was her
lawyer.

Crushing her cigarette out in the nearest ashtray she walked swiftly across the sitting room and into the small, wood-panelled hall. When she opened the door, it was to a bellboy.

‘Post, Lady Fenton,’ he said respectfully.

Without much interest she took the envelope from the silver salver and walked back into the sitting room. It had been forwarded from Mount Street, as most of her post was these days.

Without bothering to sit down she opened the envelope. Inside was a short letter and another envelope, one bearing foreign stamps. Stamps that looked to be German. Or Austrian.

The envelope had been opened and was addressed to the long-dead aunt with whom, a lifetime ago, she had travelled to Vienna.

Sucking in her breath, Zephiniah’s eyes flew to the accompanying letter. It was short and to the point:

Slowly Zephiniah sat down, stupefyingly aware that the long-ago past was about to tumble around her. With a fast-beating heart she withdrew a letter from the envelope. A photograph fell out of
it onto her lap.

It was a photograph of a young woman. She was slim and petite and looked very much as Zephiniah herself had looked in her mid-twenties. The photograph had been taken in a park. In the distance
she could see Vienna’s famous Ferris wheel.

She knew without reading the letter that the photograph was of her daughter. It was the first photograph of her she had ever seen.

She stared down at it for a long time and then, at last, she began to read the letter Judith had written:

With a trembling hand Zephiniah laid the letter down even more slowly than she had picked it up, aware that she was experiencing an epiphany. For twenty-seven years she had barely spared the
child she had given birth to a thought and, when she had thought about it, it had only been in connection with the way it had ruined not only her debutante year but, in her opinion, her life.

She had never thought of the baby as being a person. She had never marked the tenth of April in a diary, or been aware each year of how old the child would be. She had never, until now, even
thought of the child by the name she had chosen for it.

Judith.

She looked down at the photograph. The young woman in it – her daughter – was lovely; and not only lovely, but fiercely intelligent. She had to be fiercely intelligent if, at
twenty-seven, she was a qualified doctor.

She thought of Thea, running off to Spain with the son of one of Gilbert’s tenant farmers; of Olivia, married to a Nazi; of Violet, consorting with the likes of the Nazi hierarchy. And she
experienced an emotion she had never felt before. She experienced a deep, overwhelming upsurge of maternal pride.

Unlike the stepdaughters with whom she had never been able to forge satisfactory relationships, Judith was a daughter to be proud of.

She looked down at the letter again. How could she not have realized how drastically the German annexation of Austria would affect Judith’s adoptive parents, and Judith herself? What was
going on in Austria that people could be executed for objecting to having their property and home taken away from them, for no other reason than that they were Jews?

Gilbert would know, of course. And Gilbert would know exactly how to go about arranging for Judith’s immigration to Britain.

An hour later, in the drawing room at Mount Street, Gilbert stared at his estranged wife in stupefaction.

‘You have a
daughter?
God in heaven, Zephiniah! Why did you never tell me? Why was she adopted? Where is she now?’

‘I never told you because it was something I never thought about.’ Even though she was about to ask him for a vitally important favour, Zephiniah couldn’t help being
short-tempered with him. ‘She was born in 1911, fourteen years before we met. Why would I have told you? As for why she was adopted, I would have thought that was obvious. I was seventeen,
unmarried and, as the father had no intention of putting a ring on my finger, adoption was the only viable solution.’

Gilbert ran a hand over hair that was no longer quite as fierce a red as it had once been. ‘But why are you telling me now, Zephiniah? And where is your daughter? What’s her
name?’

‘I’ll tell you when we both have a strong drink in our hands.’

A strong drink was exactly what Gilbert was in need of. He crossed the room to the drinks cabinet and poured two generous whiskey and sodas.

He handed her one of them, saying, ‘I don’t see that where she lives can be more of a shock than the one you’ve already delivered.’

Zephiniah, certain the shock was going to be a good deal greater, took a sip of her drink and then said, ‘She lives in Vienna. Her name is Judith.’

‘
Vienna?
But why on earth . . . ?’

‘She’s Jewish, and so it was thought best that her adopted parents should also be Jewish.’

Gilbert wondered if he was suffering from the onset of early dementia. Surely what Zephiniah had just said couldn’t be what she’d really said.

‘I’m sorry, Zephiniah. I’ve obviously misunderstood you. Who is it that’s Jewish?’

‘I am. By right of having a Jewish mother. And if Jewishness is passed down in the female line, then so, I presume, is Judith. Whether I’m right or not, she believes herself to be
Jewish. She’s been brought up as a Jew and is being treated by the Nazis as a Jew.’

With a kid-gloved hand she held out the letter Judith had sent to her late aunt, the photograph that had accompanied it and the covering letter sent by her cousin.

Hardly able to believe she’d kept two such major secrets from him, Gilbert took them from her. One glance at the photograph was enough to convince him that Zephiniah was speaking the
truth.

He read the covering letter. Then, his jaw hardening, he read Judith’s letter.

When he had finished he looked up, his brown-gold eyes holding hers. ‘And so you want me to provide Judith with the written assurance she needs in order to enter Britain?’

Zephiniah nodded.

His face was grimmer than she had ever seen it. ‘I wish to God you’d told me about her existence in the months leading up to the
Anschluss
. You must have realized the kind of
treatment she and her adoptive parents would receive when Hitler got his way over Austria?’

‘I dare say if I was interested in world events and politics, I would have realized, but I’m not, and I didn’t. As I’ve already made clear, there has never been any
contact between me and the Zimmermanns. Everything was all so long ago that there were years and years when I didn’t even remember I’d once had a baby. I’ve never been one to live
in the past, and she was way back in my past.’