by Maggie Ford
This evening, in a clinging, backless dinner dress of royal blue, her favourite colour, Mary knew she shone. Petite against Pamela’s height she might have been made to feel small, but she possessed far more power by virtue of having had to battle for what she had, and was thus more commanding of notice. Pamela would turn heads by the very casualness of poise born of wealth, but Mary knew she had the edge on her as guests migrated to her rather than Pam. She was known here. Pam, gallivanting about the continent, wasn’t. She was every bit as good as Geoffrey’s second wife, Mary told herself as she smiled and chatted and held her head high, ignoring the dark image of hate for the woman that would ever lurk beneath the surface of her triumph no matter how proudly she bore herself, manifesting itself in that constant need to say that Geoffrey was welcome to Pamela.
It irked that she’d had to scheme for the position of recognition she now held, people clustering around her. She deserved all this. It irked all the more that she had to keep telling herself so. It irked in repeatedly having to remind herself that she was as good as Pamela, despite the fact that while Geoffrey’s wife took all she had for granted, as Mary herself had once done, she’d had to resort to unnatural means, leaving Helen in the care of a nanny in order to reach the position she was for the first time enjoying this New Year’s Eve.
She hadn’t been able to spend the time she’d have liked with Helen before she’d started at nursery school in the spring; this most precious time for any mother with an only child, for it would never come again. This past year she had learned just how painfully precious it was, at any unpremeditated moment finding her thoughts wandering. Was Helen all right in Jenny’s care, was she missing her mother, did she have a stomach-ache or something and she not there to cuddle her? All the admiration, all this being on speaking terms with this famous name, that celebrity, was nothing at those times compared to one hour with her daughter.
Tonight they were all here, those famous names. With 1934 only minutes away, conversation and laughter worked up to a crescendo, coloured streamers, balloons and musical toys at the ready, American twang vying stridently with overcooked English, rapid Italian or smooth French. Shrieks of sudden laughter lifted above the sound of a six-piece band, comprising a trumpet, a clarionette, two saxophones, piano and drums, rendering hits of the last couple of years. Couples did slinky foxtrots to “Love is the Sweetest Thing” and “Stormy Weather”, or energetic quicksteps to “Forty-second Street” and “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”, a nasal hail directed from someone on one side of the thronged restaurant floor – the dining tables having been moved to around the edges to give more room – to someone on the far side. Letts had been modernised in art deco style these three years, the famous pillars lining the main restaurant painted with odd shapes and long-limbed, strained-postured figures and sucking in any echoes. Mirrors and pictures, the lighting, the domed stained-glass ceiling were stark and dramatic, promoting a sense of energy. And energy was what everyone possessed as they hung on the last stroke of midnight to break out into cries of over-zestful joy, as it sounded, to hug each other and kiss whoever was nearest to them, and fling about their coloured streamers as red, white and blue balloons descended from the net secured to the domed ceiling, while the band struck up with “Auld Lang Syne”.
None would have believed seeing this glittering throng that out there nearly three million were out of work, though the old year had seen that number beginning to drop as industry started slowly to recover, surely a sign that the worst of the depression was over. Those here as the minutes ticked on into the new year were giving no thought to whether the number of unemployed fell or rose. Dancing, laughing, spilling champagne all over each other, all other thoughts were swept away.
Only Mary, after William had kissed her joyfully, Henry adding his embrace to William’s – a little too ardent in front of everyone here – took herself off for a moment to a quiet recess behind the reception desk to think of Helen asleep at home, to think of the future, working here to make something of herself, the new year… the years stretching ahead… and what was it all for? She found her eyes moistening. While she should be happy over her achievement, she didn’t feel happy at all. It was all that champagne she had drunk—
“Are you all right, Mary?”
Hastily she scrubbed away the damp rim beneath her eyes with the heel of her hand, and turned as Henry came towards her.
“Are you OK?” he repeated.
“Fine.” She managed a smile. “The excitement’s got to me, I think.”
He came closer, a small wall by the reception desk concealing them from those passing to and fro. Looking around furtively, he pressed her further back into the recess. His kiss was hungry, his hand on her breast hot through the silk crepe. Mary shivered, wanting him, then eased away. “Not here, Henry. We’ll be seen.”
“In the office,” he breathed.
They hadn’t made love there since he had begun to rent that room. Comfortably furnished, it still made her feel as though their love-making was designed, not spontaneous. To be made love to in that place where they had first begun to meet seemed just right at this moment.
“I’ll go first,” she whispered, feeling the excitement mounting. “Leave it five minutes before you follow.”
The key in her hand, she hurried along the balcony to the door that led off the small circular upper dance floor, below her the restaurant, now cleared of tables, a sea of moving heads as couples swayed to the lively dance music from the band above. She would hurry along the corridor behind the restaurant and up the stairs to her destination. Her heart was pounding.
“Where are you off to, darling? Surely not the office!” The door she had reached led only to the office, isolated from the rest of the restaurant. She came to a full stop and looked at Pamela.
“I was in there this afternoon,” she excused herself. “I left my lipstick there. I was going to get it.”
She saw Pam’s eyes flick towards the figure of Henry now leaving the reception area to watch her. The sight of Pam glancing towards him made him turn abruptly away, but not soon enough that she had not seen him staring after Mary. To Mary’s eyes, the move was weighted with guilt.
Pam let out a high, penetrating laugh, her white, even teeth and rosy gums appearing and then become hidden again as, still smiling, she caught her lips between those teeth in a speculative gesture, her deep blue eyes narrowing.
“Well, well. You do get around, Mary darling, don’t you just?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh, no, don’t be, darling. You go on to your little office. I’m sure you’ll probably be there all on your own, undisturbed, until you find where you left your lipstick. At least I expect so, now, don’t you?”
Of course she was right. Henry wouldn’t dare come to her now, aware of Pam’s look and the high laugh that had carried clear across the space above the dancers and the noise.
Their secret was out. Returning to the party, she spent the remaining small hours in torment wondering if Pam would let the cat out of the bag to someone. To Geoffrey? To Will? Or would she blackmail Henry, just for the sheer hell of it? She wouldn’t put anything past Pamela.
* * *
Pamela’s blue eyes sparkled like ice. “It has to be true, Geoffrey. She and your brother are having it off together.”
Geoffrey regarded her from his armchair. “You can’t be sure of that, you know. It’s only what you surmise, so don’t go blabbing it about until you’re a hundred per cent certain sure, or you’ll bum your fingers.”
“I’m not going blabbing it about. I’ve more sense. But you must admit it is intriguing.” Enjoying her agitation, Pam paced the massive lounge of their beautiful home on the edge of Epping Forest. “I wouldn’t put it past her. I wouldn’t put anything past that one. She’s a scheming little bitch. Why should Henry put her in charge of everything if there wasn’t something going on between them? She behaved as if she owned the place, the way she put herself about on New
Year’s Eve, grinning like a Cheshire cat, batting her eyelids at everyone, everyone flocking around her. By the sound of the laughter, I wouldn’t mind betting she was spilling a nice little risque joke or two. Came off the streets in the first place, didn’t she?”
Geoffrey was grinning at her. “Not off the streets, my love. From the streets. She was just a waif and stray in the beginning.”
“Yes, and it shows, for all her social climbing. She made sure of that – first you, now Henry. It seems that restaurant manager chap she married isn’t quite high enough up the ladder for her. She wants the top rung.”
Geoffrey’s grin had widened. “Looks like someone’s got their claws well and truly into her. You’re not letting her get to you, are you, darling?”
“Why on earth should I? Remember, you left her for me.”
“Yes, darling, I did.”
He got up, came and put his arms about her slim figure. “You know I see more in you than I ever saw in her. I’d been wasting my life until I met you. If I hadn’t met you…”
“Poor darling,” Pam murmured, tilting back her chin so that he could kiss her neck. “You had to marry her, didn’t you? Getting herself pregnant.” She conveniently forgot the fact that she too had been pregnant when Geoffrey married her. “It shows what a scheming bitch she was from the start. Now you’ve done with her, she’s after Henry. And he’s falling for it. He should be warned.”
Geoffrey’s lips moved down from her neck towards the gentle swelling of her small breasts showing above her negligee. His breath was warm on her skin. “Let’s forget her. I’m beginning to feel just a bit randy, sweetheart. Don’t let’s spoil it.”
* * *
Pamela gazed with distaste through the window at the dull January morning as she dressed slowly. The cold was practically visible, clouds yellow, heavy with snow yet to fall and cover the dismal parkland attached to the house. Not a solitary thing moved out there. The lake was frozen, the stark branches of trees like dead sticks, the grass still white with frost even at midday. Through a gap between the trees, horizon blended with overcast sky in a uniform wash of yellow. Abysmal. Four weeks since New Year’s Eve. Four weeks of tedium. Little happening on the social scene, recovering from Christmas and the New Year celebrations. London was a bore. Being closeted here was a bore for all they’d thrown a couple of weekend house parties. But tomorrow they’d be off to Kisbuhel, escaping the slush of a British winter, at the Grand Hotel in the dry air of the Austrian Alps, skiing, spending some of their time at the exclusive Schloss Mittersill, if they were lucky finding the Prince of Wales there, certainly people like Lady Birley and Lady Diana Cooper, everyone in peasant costume – dirndl skirts, embroidered aprons, lederhosen, Tyrolean hats – all having great fun. It would have been more enjoyable were she not aware that Geoffrey’s first wife had also been to such places, on his arm, first.
And there was Henry, another fly in the ointment. Returning home around mid-March, bronzed from the neck up by the clear, strong sunshine despite snow-laden peaks, Geoffrey faced his brother’s displeasure.
“It all costs money,” he reminded them monotonously. But it was hers and Geoffrey’s life to do with as they pleased. It was hers and Geoffrey’s money paying for these trips, not the restaurant’s. And what was the point being a wealthy restauranteur if there was no pleasure got out of it? At least they’d come back in time for Geoffrey to be with Henry for their end-of-financial-year meeting with their auditor and the new accountant, that fool Percival Beevish finally retired, though the astute young accountant was a pain in the neck with an eye on every last penny, siding with Henry in that ploughing money back into the business was preferable to throwing it to the four winds – alluding to hers and Geoffrey’s behaviour, of course.
With the London scene livening up, Pam put aside the business of Mary. That summer in Salzburg, already sizzling hot, she was again having too good a time to concern herself about Mary, and put it back to some later date. Mingling with all the smart people, she and Geoffrey found themselves invited to parties thrown by Max Reinhart in the Rococo Palace of the Prince Archbishop, everyone there: the Mitfords, the Sitwells, William Walton, Lord Berners, Harold Acton. At the Festspielhaus, Mozart operas bored Geoffrey to death, but it was the place where everyone interesting and influential met, and when they finally left for home, Pam felt ready to face dull Britain again, until next year’s winter holiday.
Except that coming home via Munich, everywhere Pam looked was marred by the sight of the SS guards of the German chancellor Adolf Hitler. So much ominous news had been filtering out of Germany this year – news of shootings, Jewish persecution, the business of what had been termed the Night of the Long Knives with thousands, including some of Hitler’s own so-called close associates, dragged from their homes and executed. All these sinister, black-uniformed guards unnerved her.
“I’d rather stay away from Europe for a while,” she told Geoffrey when they arrived home.
But it was hardly better in England with Mosley confident of himself once more, he and his fascist supporters putting people’s backs up, lauding the German chancellor’s actions in clearing the country of upstart Jews and Communists. There were reports of running battles between Mosley’s blackshirts and Communists, fist-fights and stink bombs thrown, fascists and anti-fascists alike arrested by the police, London an upheaval in places.
“Geoffrey, let’s get right away from it all,” Pam pleaded at the end of September. “We could go on a cruise to somewhere where it’s nice and warm and there’s no conflict. We could go on the Queen Mary’s maiden voyage.”
Two days earlier the new British liner, the largest in the world, had at last been launched. For so long she had been known only as “number 534” while she lay unfinished at Clydebank with the work held up all the while unemployment was rife, but now the depression had finally lost some of its grip, and Her Majesty Queen Mary had named the great ship after herself. In Pam’s mind was the fact that Geoffrey had once taken his ex-wife on a cruise. He’d never yet taken her. She was sure it had been a ship’s maiden voyage too. The Mauretania?
“Don’t you think enough of me, Geoffrey,” she demanded, “to at least consider it? There is bound to be a rush to book. You managed to go on a cruise to New York once, didn’t you?”
Geoffrey, taking the dig, cuddled her and to make her feel better said he’d look into it very seriously. But a spring and summer of high living had been a drain on his bank balance and there were bills to be settled, servants’ wages to be paid and a host of other expenses. Christmas and New Year would take their toll as well. Although it’d be a long time before the Queen Mary was fitted out, bookings, even this far ahead, would have to be paid for on the nose for something so popular. First class of course. Plus there would be expenses, hotel bills, and naturally, paying for all the clothes and jewellery Pam would buy – he remembered how Mary had spent and spent. And the way he and Pam lived, it wasn’t going to be easy putting by for it all. There was nothing for it but to see Henry about money. He had always paid up in the past. But there’s ever that one straw that will break the camel’s back.
“I’m sick of you coming asking for hand-outs,” he said when Geoffrey visited Swift House. “I give myself the same director’s salary as you, yet you are always broke, and we both know why. Why can’t you learn to live more modestly? The upkeep of that damned mansion of yours must cost you a fortune in itself. You’re never in the country. You pay a bloody great staff to look after it when you’re not even there. I’m sorry, Geoffrey, I can’t allow you any more advances. You owe the company enough now. And I bet you’re in debt to the bank too. I suggest you draw in your horns, because I’m not going to pay your debts for you. I’ve done that too often. I’m afraid you’re going to have to learn to manage from now on. We’re not that far out of the depression to start throwing money about. I’ve not forgotten our last venture when we nearly lost everything.”
Geoffrey cut hotly through the flow.
“That was your idea, not mine.”
“But you went along with it eagerly enough.”
“What would you have said if I had objected?”
“That’s all water under the bridge now.” Anger made Henry reach for a cigarette, a lifeline as always. “Speaking of water, it’ll be a good year or more before the Queen Mary’s fitted out. I suggest you take a chance on booking in six months’ time and until then try to recuperate some of your expenses so you can pay with ready cash. That’s all I have to say.”
Geoffrey was glaring at him across the table. “Is that your last word?”
“You have to understand.” Henry blinked appeasement through the blue haze of cigarette smoke, betraying his loathing of treating his brother this way. “The restaurant’s not a bottomless well. I have to be careful. Or at least know not to throw money about. So should you.”
Geoffrey’s eyes narrowed but he said nothing and came abruptly away. Pam would be furious.
Eleven
He should have known something was wrong when Pam and Geoffrey did not appear at Letts’ New Year’s Eve party this year, offering no good excuse, only saying offhandedly that they were thinking of having a small private party at their own home. Henry guessed immediately what it was over, especially having heard nothing from them since then.
They had gone off on a winter skiing trip to Austria, that he knew. So much for saving to sail on the Queen Mary, he’d thought scathingly. They’d be back in two weeks, Geoffrey’s butler informed him – it was just a short break. Henry had moderated his unkind cynicism and silently forgave them, Geoffrey no doubt having taken his advice to save for his ocean voyage after all.
