Abdication: A Novel (32 page)

Everyone had noticed how Florence had recently been hanging around the kitchen, watching Cooky make junket. Florence had always made her hatred of junket clear, the slimy consistency reminding
her that the only time she was forced to eat it was when she was ill. A freshly made bowl of the slippery pudding had become a familiar sight in the Cuckmere kitchen since Lady Joan’s illness and despite Lady Joan’s recent absence in hospital, Cooky had continued to make quantities of the stuff just in case her ladyship returned at short notice. On the day before her departure on holiday Florence had been helping herself from Cooky’s mixing bowl. It was as if she wished to behave in a manner as contrary to her true self as possible.

Mrs. Cage had already issued her daughter with a warning that if she did not pull herself together she would remove Florence’s swimsuit from the suitcase and there would be no swimming at Pagham. There were girls who would give their ruddy eyeteeth to be taken on holiday, Mrs. Cage told her sharply. Florence didn’t know what a lucky girl she was. This reprimand resulted in a sullen look and a sharp kick of the green baize-covered door. Florence’s sulky restlessness continued right up until the moment of departure when May stood by the taxi to see them off.

“Have a lovely time, darling,” she said, bending down to kiss Florence, whose curly hair was for once free of restraining elastic bands and ribbons. “Enjoy the swimming, won’t you?”

Florence looked down at the driveway, refusing to catch May’s eye. Threaded through the loops of Florence’s shorts was a belt with an unusual but somehow familiar buckle, marked with a circle and a line like a pictorial flash of lightning inscribed through the centre of it.

“What a lovely belt!” May said. “Is it your special holiday belt?”

But Florence said nothing, and with a low-slung wave of her hand got into the car beside her mother looking miserable.

May went to her room to change into her chauffeur’s uniform. On her pillow was an envelope containing a photograph. The note that accompanied it was short.

“This is where I have got to go,
again
.”

May picked up the photograph. Florence, looking a little younger than she had a few moments ago, was standing on a pebbled beach surrounded by a group of smiling women dressed in black. Florence was wearing her shorts and the unusual belt was looped through the waistband of her shorts. May turned the picture over. “Pagham, 1935” was written in pencil on the back. She looked back at the picture, studying it closely. All at once she recognised the symbol on Florence’s belt. She had seen the same one on the Blackshirt belts at Mosley’s meeting in Oxford’s town hall. May put the picture in her trouser pocket and went down to the garage to fetch the car. For a moment she considered showing the photograph to Mr. Hooch. And then she remembered his response to Sir Oswald Mosley’s visit to Cuckmere and decided against the idea.

May and Evangeline arrived on the platform at Polegate just in time to see the train from London draw into the station. It had been Evangeline’s suggestion that they face Myrtle together from the beginning to the end of her visit, although it did not seem quite right to May. The proper thing would have been for May to meet Lady Myrtle in her capacity as chauffeur and for Miss Nettlefold to stay behind to greet Lady Myrtle as the acting lady of the house. However, Miss Nettlefold had insisted on coming to the station.

“It’s the sort of things friends do together,” she had said firmly.

The tall woman who came towards them with the same lengthy strides as Lady Joan was unmistakably a Bradley. But the similarity in carriage between the two sisters was not replicated in their choice of dress. Instead of the elegant silk and wool femininity of the woman who lay in a coma in a nearby hospital, here was a figure dressed for an afternoon on horseback or for a spot of weeding, in her tweed jacket, knee breeches and sturdy brown lace-up boots. With a copy of
Time and Tide
magazine tucked under her arm, in one hand Lady Myrtle held a thick walking stick and a metal birdcage in the other.

“Nice suit,” was her opening remark to May as her eyes travelled the length of May’s willowy body. “Glad to see you take your professional duties seriously. And who on earth are you?”

Myrtle’s deep voice was directed at Evangeline and had a strong hint of the northern accent that May had heard used by the sailors on the sugar consignment ship to Liverpool.

“I am Evangeline Nettlefold, your sister’s goddaughter from America,” Evangeline began.

“Oh yes. The overweight charity case.” Myrtle spoke in short truncated sentences as if she was economising within a telegram. “Well, make yourselves useful. The reading material. Remove it, please. Now,” she said, indicating to May that she expected her to retrieve the magazine from beneath her armpit. “Difficult business with my sister. Mind you, hardly ever see her. What a chatterbox she is. Relief to know she has shut up for a while.” And then, sensing disapproval, she rather surprisingly corrected herself. “Mustn’t speak ill of the ill, I suppose.”

In no time they reached the long driveway up to the house.

“Not a bad place. Typical of Philip not to be here to show me round. Hasn’t turned up to see me for years. And no sign of that stuck-up nephew of mine or his idiotic sister? Some things to be grateful for, I suppose. Hand me Dorothea,” Lady Myrtle said, indicating the birdcage on the backseat. “Don’t want her gnawing at the bars,” she added as she strode through the front door.

The canary was tossed from one side of the cage to the other, and May feared for its well-being within its hurdy-gurdy transport. Inside the hall Evangeline disappeared for a moment, only to reappear breathing heavily and pushing a trolley across the uneven flagstones. When Mrs. Cage was at home, the trolley was only used in the passages behind the kitchen baize door. But in the housekeeper’s absence Evangeline
had laid it with cups and saucers on the upper level and a large cake on the bottom shelf and brought it upstairs.

“Good gracious,” cried the visitor. “A hostess trolley? Whatever next? Permission to dunk pieces of cake in the tea, I suppose.”

However she declared herself satisfied with the chocolate cake that Cooky had baked before her departure, and ate two slices before asking to be shown the way to the garden.

“Would you like May to take you over to the hospital to see Joan?” Evangeline asked. “It’s only a mile down the road.”

“No, thank you very much. That particular engagement can wait a while,” Myrtle replied. “It’s not as if my sister’s going anywhere, is it? No, I am going out to the garden. It’s no good waiting around inside a stuffy house all day. I will see you later.”

Lady Myrtle walked onto the terrace, leaving Evangeline and May staring after her. She seemed to know her way through the garden as if she had studied a plan of it. Ducking under the rose arch, and turning left at the red-tiled dovecot, she strode off in the direction of the pond and disappeared from sight. Inside the house, Dorothea began to weep in her stuffy cage. May longed to open the door of the cage and release her. She could not imagine why Lady Myrtle kept such a bird, unless it was to derive pleasure from its beautiful singing voice, and May doubted whether Dorothea had sung freely for a long time.

Later that evening Evangeline and May waited with minimal enthusiasm for Myrtle’s reappearance. May was grateful she had often watched Rachel prepare her thick tomato soup and roast chicken for the Sabbath meal and now both dishes were sitting warming on the kitchen stove. Evangeline had mixed herself a strong and very dry cocktail in the manner in which she had often observed Wallis employ, coating the inner rim of the glass with vermouth before adding the ice-cold gin and finishing the glass with a slither of lemon and an olive. Half an hour later, Evangeline was halfway through her second drink
and there was still no sign of Lady Myrtle. A glance into the dining room laid for two, followed by a check in Myrtle’s bedroom, revealed that she was definitely not in the house. May had run to the end of the garden to see if there was any sign of her but had returned alone. As May passed through the stone hall she saw an envelope sitting on the table marked in green ink. The single sheet of paper was addressed to Evangeline. The message was brief.

“I will be otherwise engaged for dinner this evening. I will see you in the morning.”

Evangeline and May had been puzzled but not concerned. Myrtle seemed like a woman capable of taking care of herself. It was getting late. Evangeline went upstairs to her own bedroom, while May set off along the little lane that led to Mrs. Cage’s house. On her way she passed the small cottage that was home to Vera Borchby. Vera’s lace-up muddy gardening boots were sitting on the porch. The lights were still on; music and what sounded like two very low male voices drifted through the open bedroom window. May hurried home to bed.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

W
allis’s excitement about the forthcoming cruise on the
Nahlin
was proving infectious and for once Evangeline did not feel quite so left out.

“Of course, we have had to remove all the books from the ship’s library, in order to make enough space for everyone to have their privacy. But I don’t think anyone will mind sleeping in a slightly musty room and no one will miss those old books when there is so much else to do, don’t you agree, Vangey!”

Wallis had laughed, waving her hands in the air, drawing Evangeline’s attention to a charm bracelet from which dangled several different-coloured crosses. Noticing the direction of Evangeline’s gaze, Wallis explained.

“David inscribes the date on one of these crosses when something important happens that he wants me to remember. Look at this last one! Can you see that it says ‘God Save the King for Wallis 16.vii.36’ in his own handwriting? That’s to remember the day he avoided being shot at in the Mall! Isn’t he a hoot?”

Evangeline hoped without much conviction that the extra room on board the
Nahlin
had not been created to accommodate her. She loathed must. The yacht sounded wonderful though. She belonged to Lady Annie Henrietta Yule, the widow of a man who had made a colossal
sum of money in India out of tea, jute and paper. Lady Yule had asked John Brown, the famous Clydebank shipyard, to build her the first privately owned steamship.

There was no limit to the extravagance to which the king intended to go, in order that he and his guests should enjoy their summer holiday. The crew, the food, the drink, the opportunities for lazing, dancing, sleeping and loving were all to be of the highest standard.

“David has even ordered a huge supply of golf balls to be packed on the ship so that it doesn’t matter how many he drives into the ocean!” Wallis chuckled.

However, security rather than luxury was the uppermost consideration in the minds of the king’s advisors. The
Nahlin
was to be guarded by two destroyers, the
Glow Worm
and the
Grafton
and, by chance, May’s brother had been billeted to join Royal Navy officers on board. Sam had been impressing his superiors since the day he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and the responsibility for guarding this precious cargo, and for making sure that certain papers of state were delivered to the
Nahlin
on a daily basis, was only entrusted to the most promising and reliable of young recruits.

Among the crew were several lads who had grown up on the Western Isles of Scotland, the connection with his maternal homeland making Sam happier than he had been since the day before hearing the news of his mother’s death. The crew was informed that the
Nahlin
had been rented for the month of August by the reclusive Duke of Lancaster, who no one knew anything about and no one could remember having actually met. But whoever he was the joint crews of the destroyers would ensure there would be no security mishaps for the mysterious duke.

Evangeline had packed her black bathing suit with some misgivings. She had been troubled by her ignorance of cruise wardrobes especially after Wallis’s advice on what to pack had not been any help at
all, even though she was in no doubt that Wallis had planned her own shipboard trousseau with her usual meticulous flair and precision.

“Oh, just bring any old thing, Vangey!” Wallis had said airily. “I will be dressed most informally myself and David’s valet has only included one proper suit for the obligatory emergency royal funeral rig. Otherwise David plans to be as casual as he is at the Fort, and you know what that means?”