Abdication: A Novel (36 page)

As well as Lady Joan’s unchanging condition and the effect it was having on her tense and overworked husband, several other things had seemed out of kilter to May during those few hot summer weeks. Florence’s
puzzling behaviour and the photograph of the beach at Pagham continued to trouble her. Julian had confirmed for her that the sign on the belt was indeed the symbol of the British fascists but although Mrs. Cage’s secret sympathies were now clear, both May and Julian agreed that for Florence’s sake it would be unwise to say anything to Sir Philip. However much they might condemn Mrs. Cage’s allegiance to Mosley’s party, no harm seemed to have been done, beyond Florence’s evident discomfort about her holiday. For the moment Mrs. Cage’s secret was safe.

But Florence’s absence meant there had been no one to accompany May on bike rides and Sam was away in the Mediterranean guarding the Duke of Lancaster, or so Sam had believed when he set off. Miss Nettlefold had divulged to May the duke’s real identity but May did not expect Sam to have any direct contact with the
Nahlin
passengers. The special nature of the cruise had not remained entirely confidential. A new titivating weekly publication had been left in Oak Street by one of Sarah’s clients and Rachel had been agog at photographs of the king walking down the narrow streets of a town somewhere in the Mediterranean. He was accompanied by a smartly dressed but unnamed lady and they were both laughing.

“I am glad to see the king enjoying himself,” Rachel remarked approvingly, flicking through the pages of the magazine. “Why don’t those other papers that Nat brings home show such nice pictures, I wonder?”

During those summer weeks May missed Julian more than anyone. But she was also furious with him. They had parted in unfortunate circumstances. After she had shown him the photograph of Florence at Pagham he had admitted that he was still planning to spend August in Berlin. He argued that he had no choice. Arrangements had been made. Somehow May had convinced herself that the conversations, the bicycle rides and above all the magical, heady, daring, surprising,
addictive hours they had spent secretly in the seaside hut together on probably half a dozen occasions meant that Julian’s relationship with Lottie must be at an end, even though they had never specifically discussed it. Whenever May felt brave enough to ask the question Julian had changed the subject. And yet an inadvertent remark made by Bettina had smashed her optimism. Perhaps men of that class and that upbringing just do things differently, she tried to reason, while all the time nearly broken with disappointment. But every time she vowed to think no more about him, the memory of his laugh and of the touch of his fingertips returned all the stronger.

On the morning before Rupert, Julian and Bettina’s departure by car for Berlin, Bettina had woken to find her stomach covered in red spots. By the time she had scratched them, covered them in thick calamine lotion to pretend they weren’t there and eaten her breakfast, the rash had spread to her arms. She could already feel her forehead and her back beginning to itch. In the practical absence of her mother, she went to find Mrs. Cage.

“Yes, my dear, those blasted chicken pox are the cause of the trouble, without any doubt. I heard from Mrs. Jenkins in the post office that there was an outbreak in the village. Shame you escaped it in childhood when Mr. Rupert came down with it. Grown-ups with chicken pox feel much sicker than children do. So I am afraid it is up to bed with you, my dear,” she instructed in her best no-nonsense tone as if Bettina was still the same age as her daughter.

Bettina was beginning to feel so sick that the thought of cool white sheets, a darkened room and the privacy and freedom in which to scratch seemed at that moment infinitely more enticing than a long journey in Rupert’s Talbot, accompanied by rations of dark beer and fatty German sausage.

“I didn’t want to play third wheel to Lottie and Julian anyway,” she muttered on her way up to bed as May sat at the kitchen table, listening
to every word. “Tongue sandwiches in the backseat?
Non, merci
. I will leave that role to Julian
avec grande plaisir
!”

Rupert made it clear that he was damned if he was going to allow his roommate to learn to drive before Rupert himself had mastered the skill. After all, the car belonged to Rupert and it had been galling enough to discover back in March that his father had lent Julian the Talbot even if it had been a woman driver in charge of the wheel. Rupert’s pride in his recently acquired expertise had been dented by the news of his sister’s illness and the subsequent unwelcome role of chaperone. Rupert found Lottie rather attractive and did not understand what she saw in his decent but terribly serious friend. But the small blue car had left Cuckmere in the final week of July, Bettina remaining behind in bed wreathed in the antiseptic aroma of calamine lotion. With Rupert at the wheel and Lottie and Julian in the backseat, the car had made its way to the nearby Channel ferry at Newhaven. The launch of the Olympic Games was to take place on 1 August, and May—hurt, angry and confused at what she had heard—had tried her best not to dwell on what might be happening over there.

May had been catching up on Sarah’s news for over an hour without Rachel’s inhibiting running commentary. For the moment, May kept her own hopes and worries to herself as she deferred to Sarah’s infectious excitement about the baby, which was due in about six weeks’ time. Gladys was the first choice of name for a girl. Indeed, it was May’s own middle name, chosen by her mother in memory of Edith’s sister.

“But if you have a boy?” May had asked.

“We think Joshua,” Sarah replied, and for a moment the two young women were silent as the long-awaited arrival of the baby suddenly seemed very near.

And then Sarah made May laugh describing how Rachel and Simon had reluctantly given the parents-to-be some time alone together before
the birth. Somewhat to their mutual surprise Sarah’s pregnant state had intensified Nat and Sarah’s insatiable physical desire for one another and the only drawback was finding time to be alone in the house to take full-voiced, uninhibited advantage of it. Rachel’s eyes and ears seemed to fill every corner of the house even when she wasn’t in it.

At first Rachel had been indignant when Nat had suggested his in-laws take a holiday on the south coast.

“I’ve heard about that Billy Butlin up in Skegness with his scheme for making everyone join in on games as if we were all part of a performing circus. I ask you? Whatever next?” Rachel asked him.

Holidays were unprecedented for the Greenfeld parents.

“Who is going to make sure the kitchen floor is swept, Nat? Sarah can’t see her feet anymore let alone bend over a broom. She even makes some of her clients stand all the way through their hair appointments. She says she can get at them more easily that way. And what is Simon going to do down there in the heat? Not much to eat at the coast either, I wouldn’t wonder. Simon says it’s a place for ships not chips. And how is number fifty-four going to manage without my leftovers? Did I say I was indispensible, Nat? Did you ever hear me say I was? But mark my words, Nat, this place would come to a standstill without me.”

Nat was undeterred and eventually found a bed and breakfast in Eastbourne with a view of the sea and round the corner from the gaiety of the pier. Even so, it had been Simon in the end who finally persuaded Rachel to go. One day he came back from Schein’s Gentleman’s Hairdressing Saloon on Bethnal Green Road having discovered that Mr. Schein had been to Eastbourne himself quite recently.

“I went with a ‘special friend,’ if you get my meaning, Mr. Greenfeld? Eastbourne’s a good place for what I like to call ‘discretionary assignations.’”

Simon assured Mr. Schein that all indiscretions were safe with him, and as Mr. Schein doused Simon’s thinning locks with Levy’s Patent
Hair Restorer, he described for Simon a concoction of ice cream, whipped cream, syrup and nuts known as a “knickerbocker glory” that was sold in a café on the famous pier.

“Nothing like a bit of whipped cream to get the heart fluttering is what I say, Mr. Greenfeld.”

There was also an excellent pub and a most accommodating betting shop with generous credit that Mr. Schein had discovered tucked far down the maze of Eastbourne’s genteel side streets. Simon walked out of Schein’s with his newly razored cheeks and a shining pate, feeling quite converted to the idea of himself and Rachel spending a few days at the coast.

The holiday was such a success that on their return Rachel urged her neighbours to take a few days of sea air down on the south coast where you could get ice cream in a container that resembled a small vase and the added bonus of all the fish and chips you could eat just on the doorstep. There was no mention of the betting shop. Simon had kept that information to himself.

During their absence Sarah and Nat had been left alone for the first time in their marriage and she and Nat had fallen in love all over again. However, a tragedy had occurred next door at number 54 that had blighted those happy days. Mrs. Smith, the mother of ten, had recently discovered herself to be pregnant. One evening after their tea, Mr. Smith had taken two of the youngest children “out for some river air.” Neighbours had noticed how anxious he had been looking in recent days after the discovery that yet another mouth to feed was on the way. Times were already hard enough, with paid work still so scarce. Mr. Smith was at his wits’ end with worry. He must have concluded that the only solution to reducing the weekly food bill was by eliminating the need to fill hungry mouths. His actions had shocked the Oak Street neighbourhood.

According to a witness, the three members of the Smith family had been holding hands when they jumped from Blackfriars Bridge.
In seeking to reassure Mrs. Smith the policemen said the little ones would probably have thought they were playing a game. They would have hit the water with such a smack, said the report in the
Hackney Gazette
, that death would have come very quickly. A black ribbon hung from the door knocker at number 54, indicating that visitors were not encouraged. Knots of shaken neighbours had stood outside talking in low voices about how anyone could reach such a level of despair as Mr. Smith must have done. The cloud of grief billowed out from behind their closed front door.

As Sarah told May this terrible story, her hand stroked her distended belly.
What a lot of luck you need to be born into happiness
, May thought. She wondered, not for the first time, whether she had already met someone who could sustain her as Nat did Sarah. She was still hesitant to confide to Sarah about what was happening between her and Julian and her persistent fear that his relationship with Lottie had been reignited in Berlin. So instead she talked about Florence. Sarah listened carefully as May described how much she had come to care for the child and how Florence had recently appeared so unsettled. The unusual belt Florence had reluctantly been wearing on the day she left for the beach gave the biggest clue to the nature of Florence’s strange mood.

“There was a mark on the belt that I discovered to be the symbol for Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirt party and I think her mother might be a Mosley follower,” May explained.

She was about to describe Mrs. Cage’s badly disguised excitement at the Blackshirt leader’s visit to Cuckmere but stopped herself. She was sworn to secrecy, of course, but she also knew that Sarah would have been horrified. The Greenfelds would not begin to understand the reason for Mosley’s visit to Cuckmere. Sir Philip would not have tolerated such a guest under his own roof were it not to discuss a matter of national importance: the king’s relationship with a married woman. May
wondered what Sarah, a Jewish woman, would make of Mosley and felt dreadfully ashamed of the physical attraction she had felt for a man whose actions threatened the very London family with whom she spent her time. Racial and religious prejudice was not something of which May was ignorant. In Barbados, and outside their own plantation, there had been some notorious racists among the white community and the experience in Oxford’s town hall was still vivid in her mind. She remembered the angry wife of the Cowley motorcar worker, she remembered the noise of the clashing steel chairs and she remembered the blood that had oozed from the cuts on the face of Julian’s friend. And then she thought again of the tall dark figure that had crossed the stone floor at Cuckmere and vanished upstairs with Lady Joan. And she remembered the sight of Mrs. Cage carrying the tray with its vase of delicate flowers. The current of anti-Semitism was running fast even through May’s small world. May said nothing.

But as if she was reading May’s mind Sarah brought the very subject up herself. “I don’t expect you have come across the rumours while you have been down in Sussex,” she began, “but Nat has been reading reports in the newspaper and talking to several tailors he works with and the word is that Mosley is planning a march through the East End any day now.”

Sarah returned her hand to rest on the swell of her stomach.

“If he comes I would like to be here with you,” May said.

“Oh good. Mum will be pleased. She says she is not worried but I know she is.” And with that Sarah and May moved back to the subject of motherhood and on to Lady Joan.

“She looks so old now,” May said. “Her hair is completely white and her skin is almost transparent.”

May and Sarah both struggled to imagine what it felt like to have more of one’s life behind one than in front, reaching a level of such
closeness between them that May at last felt ready to talk to Sarah about her confused feelings for Julian.