by John Pearson
“It was no excuse.”
“Come and have dinner,” he said gently.
“Dinner!” she sobbed. “Oh, Richard, how could you?”
So Richard and Virginia dined alone. It was predictably a gloomy meal, but not for the reasons Richard had expected. Virginia refused to talk about the funeral and seemed angry that James and Georgina had refused to join them.
“But you must understand, Virginia,” he said. “They’re naturally upset.”
“And so are you. For that matter, Richard, so am I. But they have no call to carry on like this.”
“But they were very fond of her. James and Hazel had been married eight years—and she was like a mother to Georgina.”
“Fiddlesticks!” Virginia replied.
“What did you say, Virginia?” Richard was aghast.
“You heard me perfectly. I said fiddlesticks. You know as well as I do that almost until this time last week James was still treating Hazel quite appallingly. You also know that your precious ward, Georgina, couldn’t wait to get back into bed with him. Now that poor Hazel’s dead the two of them both wallow in their grief—and you feel sorry for them.”
“Virginia, how dare you?”
“How dare I, Richard? I’ll tell you how I dare. I dare because it’s the truth—and because I love you. I can’t stand by and watch that pair indulging in an orgy of self-pity at your expense, Richard Bellamy.”
But Richard shook his head. “You’re wrong, Virginia. Poor James has had a dreadful battering—his mother dying, then the war, now this. We must be understanding.”
“I think I understand him all too well. We all have our sorrows. After Michael died I thought my world was coming to an end—but it didn’t. With James you’re all so busy being sorry for him that he doesn’t have a chance. Let him stand on his own two feet. Stop giving so much sympathy.”
“But, Virginia, my dear. That is the least that we can do.”
She shook her head. She was no longer the demure Virginia but the embattled widow Hamilton.
“If that is what you really think,” she said, “perhaps we should forget about the wedding. I don’t think I could bear to see you going on playing the doting nanny to that son of yours—and getting torn to pieces in the process.”
Throughout the period of the engagement Virginia had insisted on staying in a modest but respectable hotel in Sloane Street. Richard drove her back in silence. Twice he attempted to take her hand, but she repulsed him—unemotionally but firmly.
“Richard, goodnight,” she said and kissed him on the cheek.
“Virginia,” he said imploringly.
“I said goodnight, Richard,” she replied with the quiet self-control so typical of her.
“When shall I be seeing you?” he asked.
“I think it’s time I got back to Scotland to the children,” she replied. “I’ll write.”
“Virginia!” he cried. But instead of answering, Virginia was gone.
Richard was simply not equipped for dealing with a woman like Virginia. There had been all sorts of women in his life—dominating ones like Marjorie, adoring ones like Cressida, daughterly ones like his Elizabeth, and tiresome ones like Pru. After his fashion he had coped with all of them, but with Virginia it was the first time he had ever had to deal with the rarest woman of them all, the one who means exactly what she says.
At first he couldn’t quite believe that this was what she was, but when he rang the small hotel next morning she had already left.
“Absurd! How perfectly absurd!” he muttered to himself. “She can’t just walk out on me like this. She’ll be back. She’s bound to be!”
But a small worried voice was already whispering that perhaps she wouldn’t.
“How could she behave like that?” he asked himself. “And after everything I’ve done for her.” He became angry at the thought of this, and anger led him to consider what a fool she’d make of him with his children, with his friends. She had been welcomed in his house, treated as a member of the family. Why, the servants were already regarding her as the future Lady Bellamy!
This made him angrier than ever, and by dinner time that night he was in such a state that everyone in 165 was wary of him. It was surprising the effect this change in the normally affable head of the house created. James at a flash seemed cured of his extremes of grief. Georgina too seemed rescued from remorse, as Richard took his place at table with a face of thunder.
“Georgina, I do wish you’d tell Mrs. Bridges that I’m sick to death of ox-tail soup,” he snapped at her.
“Of course. I’m sorry,” she said nervously, “but I always thought you rather liked it.”
“Well, I don’t,” he said and shoved his plate away.
“No Virginia tonight?” James inquired brightly. “What’s she up to? You’ll have to keep an eye on that young lady, Father.”
Richard glowered at him. “James,” he growled, “I’d be pleased if you would mind your own damn business and keep your insinuations to yourself.”
The next few days ranked among the most uncomfortable in the whole history of the Bellamys.
Rose gave in her notice after Richard shouted at her and made her drop a tray. Edward was mutinous with Richard, who was threatening to sell the Rolls. Mrs. Bridges hovered perpetually, it seemed, between tears and walking out.
Hudson did his best to keep the peace, but even he had to admit that his lordship’s temper was “distinctly edgy.” “Now, Mrs. Bridges,” he began consolingly, “we must make some allowances for our betters. Lord Bellamy has led a somewhat sheltered life. He has an attitude towards the fair sex which we, as servants, find it difficult to understand. He is a man of elevated sentiments, so naturally he suffers more than we would when he’s jilted by a lady such as Mrs. Hamilton.”
“Well, Mr. ‘Udson, that’s as may be,” Mrs. Bridges stolidly replied. “I speaks only as I finds, and I must say that I liked ’er. But ’owever badly she’s behaved, it never can excuse the things ’e said about my leg of mutton nor my caper sauce. In all my years in service I’ve never ’ad to endure such comments, Mr. ‘Udson. An’ I don’t see why I should.”
The grumbling went on upstairs as well, when it became quite evident that Richard’s black mood wasn’t, as James hopefully suggested to Georgina, “due to something he had for luncheon in the House of Lords.” The next day it was worse; the day after, worse still.
“What can we do about it, Jumbo?” asked Georgina.
“Lord alone knows. Old Virginia must have ditched him, but I can’t get through to him.”
“Well, you’d better think of something. Life here is not worth living. The servants are all on the point of leaving, and every time your father sees me he blows me up for something. Frankly, I’d rather bed and breakfast at the Y.W.C.A.”
The crisis deepened and for the first time James became really worried. Always in the past his father had been the one who solved the problems in the house, kept the servants happy, and generally ensured that life continued as it always had. Now, instead, he had become a problem on his own account.
At Hudson’s discreet suggestion, James had the task of tactfully placating Rose and persuading her to withdraw her notice. It was hard going.
“But I’m not used to being shouted at like that, Major Bellamy,” she said, sticking a small, determined chin up in the air.
He replied with all the charm he had, “Rose, you know how much we all rely on you. I’m sure you realise how big a strain these last few weeks have been on all of us. I’m sorry that it happened. Can’t you forget it, Rose?”
Reluctantly Rose agreed.
“For your sake, Major Bellamy,” she said, but afterwards James fumed at Georgina.
“Damn father, damn Rose and damn the lot of them! Why should I have to go down on my knees to servants in my own home and all because of Father?”
“And things are getting worse,” Georgina said. “Most of the time he ignores me now. I even heard him
shout at Hudson. Another month of this and we won’t have a servant left. For goodness’ sake do something, Jumbo!”
It was Lloyd George who gave them all a breathing space from Richard’s evil humour by calling an election with the ending of the war. Now that he was in the Lords, Richard was mercifully free from the worries of the hustings, on his own account at least, but as a former minister he was in some demand from the Party. Candidates needed all the help that they could find, particularly from a Conservative like Richard who had had an active part in winning the war.
“You’ve become, like me,” said Balfour in a voice that Richard wasn’t certain he appreciated, “one of the elders of the Tory Party.” And as a Party elder he dutifully embarked on a lightning speaking tour of the Midlands. He found it a sobering experience: everywhere he went, immense support for Lloyd George as “the Welsh wizard who won the war for us”; increased backing for the Labour Party from the returning servicemen; an end, or so it seemed to him, of the respectful old-style toryism he had grown up with during his thirty years in politics. In Birmingham a heckler in a cloth cap yelled, “Get back to yer old folks’ home, yer lordship!” and everybody laughed, except for Richard.
The house at Hellensborough wasn’t difficult to find. It was a trim grey double-fronted villa facing across the pewter-coloured waters of the Firth of Clyde. After the all-night train from London, and the slow branch line on from Glasgow, James was grateful for the exercise of walking from the station. Although he still had a limp and the doctors still occasionally dug out small bits of shrapnel from his thigh, his wound was really healed and he had been told that he should have “all of the exercise that you can bear.”
He rang the bell and a maid with a thatch of carrot-coloured hair answered the door to him.
“Mrs. Hamilton?” he asked.
“Och, she’d be away in Glasgee for the day.”
“She’s where?” asked James.
“As I was sayin’, she’s in Glasgee.”
“Oh, in Glasgow!” The maid smiled indulgently, rather as people do with backward children.
“And when will she be back?” he asked.
“She dinna say.”
So James spent the day in Hellensborough, and an extremely long, cold day it was. He walked beside the Clyde until his leg began to ache. He lunched at a hotel by the railway station. He read the local papers, then had tea. And then, when he returned to the grey villa by the sea, Virginia was there. She didn’t seem particularly surprised to see him, nor for that matter was she particularly welcoming.
“I’ve come from London specially to see you.”
“So I see, James,” she said. Her drawing room was chintzy, comfortable, rather prim. She was looking rosy-cheeked and far too pert and healthy to be pining.
“And how is everyone in Eaton Place?” she asked brightly. Picking his words with unaccustomed care, James began to tell her.
“Good morning, James, morning, Georgina. Lovely morning, isn’t it?”
The two glanced up at Richard in alarm. True, a watery December sun was dribbling through the windows of the breakfast room, but that was no excuse for such unheard of heartiness from the master of the house at this time of the day. He helped himself to bacon, fried bread, eggs and kidneys and walked, humming cheerfully, towards the table.
“Terrible news about this damned election,” said James convivially from the deepest folds of the Times.
“Only to be expected,” said Richard philosophically. “Lloyd George is bound to win. Taking the long view, probably as well. He’ll come unstuck. That sort of bounder always does.”
“You can afford to talk like that, now that you’re in the Lords,” said James. “If you were out there scavenging for votes it’d be rather different.”
“Indeed it would,” said Richard, tucking his napkin into his collar and smiling with extreme benevolence at James. “One of the few real benefits of privilege and age, to find yourself above such things.”
There was silence then, save for the rustling of James’s paper and the happy sounds of Richard eating. Georgina got up to go.
“Ah, my dear,” said Richard, “would you be good enough to have a word with Mrs. Bridges? Something has obviously been upsetting her lately, I can’t think what. But I’m most anxious to have something rather special for dinner tonight. Perhaps some pheasant, or better still, some grouse. I’ve a surprise for both of you.”
Virginia returned that night to Eaton Place as something of a conqueror. If nothing else her month-long absence had proved one thing quite decisively—that 165 simply could not function properly without her. Now, from the moment a radiant Hudson opened the front door to her, the house appeared to be transformed.
“Wonderful to see you back again, if I may say so, madam. And how was Scotland?”
“Well, it’s still there, and still as cold as ever, Hudson. You must go back and visit it one day.”
“I think not, madam. I’m really quite a cockney now, you know.”
Encouraged by Georgina, Mrs. Bridges had excelled herself—delicious lobster mousse, grouse cooked to perfection, a tarte aux pommes as fine as any in the grandest Paris restaurants. It was the perfect gastronomic setting for an exultant Richard Bellamy.
“James, Georgina,” he said finally, “Virginia and I have something we must tell you. I’m sorry to launch it on you both like this, but we’ve just got married.”
“You’ve what?” said James.
“Got married, Virginia and I. This afternoon at four o’clock in the Chelsea Register Office. I do apologise for not inviting you but I simply couldn’t risk her changing her mind again.”
Virginia laughed. “You make me sound extremely fickle, Richard.”
“Oh, but you are, my dear. And quite right, too.”
“But why not ask us, Richard?” said Georgina. “After all, James and I are your closest relatives. We’re very fond of you. You might have let us be there if only to throw confetti.”
“I know,” said Richard unrepentantly, “I know, I know. Quite dreadful of us both! And yet, quite honestly, my dear, I seem to have been worrying about the two of you for far too long. Will this upset Georgina? Will James be furious at that? Today, for once, I simply pleased myself. And also, I hope, Virginia.”
“Of course,” she said. “I’d never realised how easy getting married can be.”
“Or how enjoyable,” Richard added. “It was the most exciting thing I’ve done for years.”
There was a brief, shocked silence then, and finally James said, “Congratulations, Father. Virginia, I couldn’t be more delighted.”
He got up from his place and kissed her, a trifle warily perhaps, on the cheek.
Georgina followed.
“So we’re forgiven, are we Georgina?” Richard asked.
“Just this once,” she said. “But don’t do it again, either of you.”
“I think we should celebrate our being forgiven then,” said Richard. “You know, the year the war broke out I put aside six bottles of extremely good champagne to drink that Christmas when James came home on leave. You never got your leave, James, and the bottles are still there. Perhaps we should try one, so that we can toast Virginia and peace and happiness for all of us.”
“And about time,” said Virginia.
“Indeed yes!” Richard said and smiled towards his son.
“I gather I’ve a lot to thank you for,” Richard said slowly. The ladies had retired and James and Richard were enjoying a glass of excellent port before rejoining them.
“Don’t mention it. How much did she tell you?”
“Enough. I’m very touched that you took my happiness so seriously.”
“Pure self-interest, Father. Couldn’t have you going on as you were. Life was impossible.”
“I’m sorry, James,” said Richard, looking nothing of the kind.
“Not at all. But one thing worries me. Have you decided where you’ll live?”
Richard shook his
head. “Please give us time. We’ve only just got married.”
“I know,” said James. “I know. But when I saw Virginia I told her very firmly that I wanted you both to stay here in this house.”
“She never told me.”
“She didn’t, eh? That’s bad.”
Richard sniffed his port judiciously. “Delicious,” he said quietly. “Quite delicious.” Then he looked up at James. “I’m very touched that you should want us here,” he said. “It’s very kind of you. But I’m afraid that it’s impossible.”
“But, Father, why on earth? I know that legally the place belongs to me, but you know as well as I do that you’re the centre of it all. It’s your house, really. You’d be lost away from it.”
“I’m not certain that I would,” he said. “It might be rather nice to have a change. Somewhere smaller, easier to run. Times have changed. Servants are like gold-dust since the war. When Virginia has sold the house in Scotland I think we’ll buy a little place in Chelsea, or even on the far side of the Park.”
“You mean Bayswater?”
“One could do worse.”
“Now, Father, really!” Richard was smiling, James was becoming angry.
“Listen.” he said. “There’s absolutely no question of you and Virginia setting up home away from Eaton Place. You can state your terms. Servants, expenses, food—I’ll pay them all. Virginia’s two children can have the old nursery when they’re home from school. Virginia can redecorate the house exactly as she wants. Heaven knows it’s big enough for all of us.”
“But why are you so desperate to keep us?”
“I’ll tell you why. Ever since Hazel died I’ve realised that this house and what it stands for is really all I’ve got. When I was out in France I used to dream about it every night. All my memories of Mother are here, and of Elizabeth and you. Southwold’s gone. Everything worthwhile seems to have vanished with the war. I want this house to continue as it always has—and that means with you and Virginia at the head of it.”
Richard was far more touched by James’s speech than he admitted. Also, to be quite honest, Bayswater did not appeal to him. (That was Virginia’s idea. After Hellensborough, even Kilburn would have seemed luxurious.) No, for someone who had spent the greater part of his existence yielding to other people’s offers of an easy life, the thought of quietly continuing at Eaton Place was tempting. Most of the things that made Richard’s life agreeable were here—his library, his cellar, the servants. Also, like James, he felt a deep affection for the place. It was a part of him. It was convenient for getting to the House of Lords, and now that the war was over Mrs. Bridges showed signs of recovering her position as the best cook in Belgravia. (Virginia was threatening to bring down her red-headed treasure from the Clyde. Richard’s inner man was worried.)
