The Second-last Woman in England (30 page)

‘Come along, then,’ Mr Stephens had said, shepherding them off the train and flagging down a porter to take the luggage.

How she and Freddie had gazed about them in amazement at the railway station in which they now found themselves! It had been a fantastical place of domes and fascinating turrets and coloured glass windows that made one think more of a church than a station. Outside the station were ornate gardens and wide avenues and prettily dressed ladies and gentlemen wandered back and forth beneath white parasols. The harbour was directly ahead but the P&O landing place, explained Mr Stephens, was further south. Harriet had grabbed Freddie’s hand and they had climbed into a taxi and let themselves be taken to the docks.

The journey to the dock had been a slow stop-and-start affair and the ornate gardens and wide avenues outside the station had rapidly turned into a chaos of people teeming in every direction in every sort of dress, selling every sort of wares, riding every mode of transport and speaking in every language. The taxi had negotiated an overturned cart, then a fresh bullock carcass spurting blood in a wide crimson arc and finally a man with a bald head and red eyes who had leapt in front of the taxi shouting and waving his arms at them, his arms had ended in two shiney stumps.

‘All right, it’s quite all right,’ Mr Stephens had assured them, shielding Freddie’s eyes. ‘We’re quite safe in here,’ and indeed the taxi driver had steered a path through the chaos without batting an eye. Eventually the hull of a vast ocean liner had come into view at the end of a street—the
Tiberius
!—and they had been able to smell the sea, to taste it on their lips. Seagulls had dipped and swooped and shrieked and coolies had run this way and that carrying vast trunks and boxes of luggage.

‘Here we are,’ Mr Stephens had announced with some satisfaction, rapping the driver on the shoulder with his umbrella as they pulled up alongside the ship.

That umbrella. It had been a large black affair and someone in England must have told Mr Stephens about the monsoons as he never let it leave his side. He used it now to direct the unloading of luggage at the dockside and its stowage in their cabin. They had climbed excitedly up the steep gangway, a sailor in a white uniform had saluted them and Mr Stephens had shown him their tickets. They had inspected the cabin, the lavatory and the beds and opened all sorts of cleverly hidden little cupboards and drawers and found everything to their satisfaction.

‘Now,’ Mr Stephens had said, with the air of a job well done, ‘you don’t sail until ten o’clock this evening, so what do you say to tea and cakes at the yacht club? My treat.’

Freddie had sulked and said ‘No’ and Harriet had reprimanded him for his rudeness, pointing out that Mr Stephens had been extremely kind to them, and she had accepted the invitation on both their behalves. They had disembarked once more and walked along the harbour wall in the quickly thickening darkness.

His mission now complete, Mr Stephens had been in an enthusiastic and expansive mood, pointing out first the Gateway of India (‘Built in 1911 to commemorate the King’s visit’) and then the magnificent Taj Mahal Hotel.

‘Isn’t it magnificent?’ he said, indicating the vast building on their left, and they had nodded in agreement.

Housed beside the hotel was the splendid Royal Bombay Yacht Club in a building almost as grand. They had sat at a table on the lawn overlooking the water and the crowd of gently bobbing yachts. A white-coated Indian with a wide cummerbund had served them tea and Battenburg cake from silver trays. Mr Stephens himself had poured the tea.

Harriet had found it hard to concentrate or to eat. There had been so much to see, to take in—all the sounds, the sights, the smells. And she had had butterflies in her tummy at the impending departure. It was past six o’clock, which was very late for tea, almost Freddie’s bedtime, but everything, it had appeared, was now upside-down.

Mr Stephens had done most of the talking and had spent some time explaining to Freddie how he had gone to Oxford—he had made a point of mentioning which college—and how, because he had studied exceptionally hard, he had been one of only a few accepted into the Indian Civil Service. This had entailed a gruelling year of extensive training in Chatham before he had received his posting. Freddie had listened in polite silence before announcing that he intended to join the Indian Army and fight on the northwest frontier. Mr Stephens had replied—a little crossly it had seemed to Harriet—that of course we all had our different skills and destinies and that the Indian Army was always keen to recruit new officers.

A silence had fallen.

‘Well, time we were off,’ Mr Stephens had announced at last.

The dense tropical night had long fallen when she and Freddie had made their way back to their cabin and Mr Stephens was gone. Freddie had slept almost at once and Harriet had sat by herself listening as the mooring ropes were untied and the ship’s funnel boomed over and over. Most of the passengers had crowded the ship’s side to wave goodbye to friends and family, but Harriet had preferred to stay in the cabin with Freddie.

She had pulled out a sheet of paper from the little desk and begun her first letter.

Dearest Mother and Father,
I hope you are both well and that Mother is feeling much better. I am writing from the cabin of the Tiberius as it disembarks. A lot of people are up on deck waving and cheering and dear Mr Stephens is standing at the dockside waving to us. He was so kind to bring us here and he looked after both Freddie and I most attentively …

The letter she had received in reply from Father, two months later, had reached her during her first term at Maldeville. The letter had been to announce Mother’s death some weeks earlier.

She had never returned to India. Father had retired five years later and installed himself in the flat in Belgravia, and neither she nor Freddie nor Simon had ever visited Mother’s grave. India was full of European graves. Or perhaps, now, it wasn’t. Perhaps many had been destroyed during Independence and the Partition. Either way, everything had changed. There was no reason to go back, nothing to go back to.

And here was Cecil coming towards her across the small park, side-stepping a stubborn pigeon.

‘Harriet,’ he said as he approached and she was acutely aware they had hardly exchanged two words since she had brought Freddie to the house three weeks ago. Cecil paused at the bench upon which she was sitting, surveyed it dubiously, pulled out a handkerchief and gave the bench a cursory flick, then sat down, lifting his trousers at the knee at the last moment. He produced the bright smile he gave when he wanted to appear relaxed and wasn’t.

‘What brings you here?’ he said.

He knew of, course, hence the smile. In the car on the drive home from White Gables she had mentioned the conversation with Trixie, and he had said nothing. He said nothing now.

Harriet smiled suddenly. ‘Cecil, do you remember that little park outside the old Moorgate office? Where we went for sandwiches sometimes in your lunch hour, and that little man was often there feeding that bird. What was it? Some kind of parrot?’

She glanced sideways and saw him smile, despite himself.

‘A cockatoo. White with a sort of yellow quiff on its head.’

‘That was it. How it used to squawk!’

They sat for a moment in silence, remembering—not the squawking cockatoo but the young couple sharing their packet of sandwiches side by side on a bench so many years ago.

‘I used to bring you lemon curd in your sandwiches, do you remember? And it must have been months before you could bring yourself to tell me you didn’t like lemon curd.’

Cecil smiled. ‘Still ate them though, didn’t I?’

They watched the two children playing, the girl and her little brother.

‘Cecil, Freddie has a good chance of a position with Home Counties.’ Well, there was no use delaying it. ‘Nobby Caruthers has agreed to a meeting. This is Freddie’s chance to—’

She paused. She had lived with Freddie’s desertion for so long it seemed odd to imagine it finally being all over.

‘His chance to start again. To fix everything.’

Cecil remained silent. A pigeon walked over, its head bobbing in step with its feet. It was a dirty, scruffy-looking specimen, but so were most of its fellows. Cecil joggled his foot at the pigeon and it swayed away and set off in another direction.

‘By which you mean,’ he said at last, ‘that this is
our
chance to fix everything.’

‘Yes, if you like.’ Harriet narrowed her eyes as she drew on her cigarette. He was going to make this as hard for her as he could. But if that meant he would do it, so be it.

‘And never mind that, by lying to Caruthers in this way, we—by which I mean,
I
—would be compromising my own moral standards.’

Harriet closed her eyes for a moment. Then she turned to him.

‘Cecil, I am asking you, politely, as your wife—the mother of your children—to put in a good word for my brother. Is that so onerous?’

She had spoken more sharply than she intended, but his suggestion that what she was asking was somehow immoral, was beyond the pale.

A silence settled over them and lengthened uncomfortably.

‘What you are asking me to do is unfair.’ Cecil sat very upright on the bench, looking straight ahead at the buses turning into Holborn and Fleet Street. His voice was as calm and level as always. Harriet sat up straight beside him, her eyes fixed firmly on the traffic.

‘Unfair?’ she repeated quite pleasantly. ‘Cecil, Freddie is my brother.’

‘Of course. And I am your husband. The father of your children.’

A well-dressed nanny turned into the little park pushing a large black pram and leading a small child by the hand. They stopped at the statue in the centre of the park and the small child began chasing the pigeons. The nanny lit a cigarette and rocked the pram with her foot.

‘Does Felicity ever come to you when she’s in trouble?’ said Harriet after a moment.

‘What does Felicity have to do with this?’

‘Does she ever come to you for help?’

She could feel Cecil stir uneasily beside her.

‘Naturally, were she ever in trouble, I should like to believe that she felt she could always turn to me for assistance, yes. However, as she never—’

‘You’re wrong, Cecil. She came to me. She was in trouble. She’s pregnant. She didn’t know what to do so she came to me.’

The small child slid over and began to howl, and the nanny hastily put out her cigarette and knelt down beside him, asking soothing questions and rubbing the afflicted limb.

Beside her Cecil was silent and Harriet knew she should feel bad; after all, she had betrayed a confidence, and on top of that she had implied that she had, in fact, come to Felicity’s aid when she had not. But she didn’t feel bad. She felt angry.

‘Naturally, Felicity would know there was nothing I could do to help,’ Cecil replied at last, his voice quiet. ‘Not in that kind of situation. What could I do? I know nothing of such things. That’s a woman’s world.’

‘And this is a man’s world, Cecil. Will you help?’

After a long moment he nodded.

Chapter Nineteen

MARCH 1953

‘It’s Nanny Peters!’ shrieked Anne, pointing an astonished finger at a woman on the far side of the playground.

Anne was standing at the top of the slide where she had lately taken to presiding, perhaps because it provided such an excellent vantage point over the rest of the playground in the park they occasionally visited after school. If other, smaller, children attempted to use the slide she could usually frighten them off with a look, but she was not averse to using physical persuasion if required.

Jean, watching from a nearby bench, usually found it best to let nature take its course. But at these words, she got at once to her feet and looked to where Anne was pointing. A young woman in a long raincoat, with a green silk headscarf tied around her head and a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, was standing beside a small child on a red tricycle. She looked up as Anne waved and called to her, but she not did wave back.

‘Anne, come down from there. It’s time we went back home,’ Jean ordered, beckoning to her, but Anne was already scrambling backwards down the slide, thrusting another child bodily out of the way. Jean swooped to rescue the child—a little girl in pigtails who was too stunned to burst into tears—and placed her on the ground.

‘Look, it’s Nanny Peters,’ said Anne again and set off towards the woman in the raincoat.

‘
Anne
!’

Jean started after her, then hesitated. Ought she to follow or remain where she was? She couldn’t think. She would wait here behind the slide, almost, in fact, hidden by it, and eventually Anne would return, would come looking for her and they could leave.

‘Nanny! Nanny Peters!’ Anne called again, and this time, Anne having skidded to a halt in front of her, the woman acknowledged her.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ the woman remarked with a single jerk of her head and without removing her cigarette from her mouth.

‘What are you doing here?’ Anne demanded. ‘We were told you had gone to Leicester.’ Her tone was accusing, as though ‘gone to Leicester’ was a euphemism for prison or a home for wayward girls.