Whatever the truth, Alice was grateful. And particularly over the past three months, when Jillie, as her best friend, had needed so much companionship and comfort and she had had to leave him to play by himself as Jillie wept and talked and begged to be with her. More than once she had had to spend the night at number five, with Kit; Geraldine Curtis, grateful to have someone to share the burden of her distraught, humiliated, heartbroken daughter, had Jillie’s old cot brought out of the attic and fitted it with new covers, bought toys for him, stocked up with Cow & Gate and often gave him his bottle if Alice seemed stressed as she prepared it and said Jillie was crying and she wanted to get back to her.
She would never forget the wail of grief that came down the telephone from Jillie that dreadful evening: ‘Alice, something dreadful’s happened, you’ve got to come, got to. Get a taxi, I’ll pay. Is Tom in?’
‘Yes, of course. He’ll look after Kit. I’ll be over as soon as I possibly can. Is your mother there?’
‘Yes, but it’s you I need really. Oh, Alice –’ and then came the wail, like some animal in pain. Which of course, Alice thought afterwards, she was. A wounded animal.
Geraldine, white and drawn, let her in.
‘I’ll let her tell you what’s happened, Alice. It is dreadful. I – she’s coming, Jillie,’ she called, as Jillie appeared at the top of the stairs, swollen eyed, shivering with shock and pain.
‘I just don’t know how he could do it to me,’ she said to Alice, who sat frozen with horror listening to the dreadful news. ‘He says he loves me. How can he love me, Alice? He’s humiliated me, hurt me, deceived me for all this time.’
As the dreadful evening wore on, as Jillie tried to make sense of the situation, and her parents to decide what best to tell people, Alice cried quite a lot herself. This was cruelty beyond anything she could imagine. She could offer no comfort, beyond her company and her sympathy. She held Jillie in her arms while she sobbed and said how could she have been so stupid, so trusting?
‘Not so stupid,’ Alice said gently. ‘You were worried about the – the bed thing from the beginning, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ That appeared to steady her momentarily. ‘I suppose I’d tucked it away somewhere, decided not to think about it. Oh, Alice, what are we going to tell people? What are we going to say?’
Downstairs, Peter and Geraldine Curtis were trying to solve that very dilemma.
‘It’s not for us to tell people the real reason,’ Geraldine said.
‘No, of course not. That has to come from him. It’ll be the end of his career – he could even be arrested.’
‘Although I’d quite like to see him behind bars, in solitary confinement for the rest of his life,’ said Geraldine. ‘But not for that reason, of course. Just as a punishment for what he’s done to Jillie.’
She and Peter, intensely liberal minded, were appalled at the way homosexuals were treated by the laws, had joined one of the many campaigns to change them. It would be unthinkable to give the real reason for the cancellation of the wedding; but what one could they give?
Jillie had said she didn’t want the real reason known. ‘Not to save his skin,’ she added. ‘Just because it makes me look so stupid and naive.’
Geraldine went upstairs to Jillie, knocked on the door of her room. She was quiet now, lying on her bed, staring in front of her. Alice sat beside her looking helpless.
‘Alice – Jillie – I’m so sorry to press this, but we do have to get an announcement out, both in the form of personal letters to our friends, and in the press, tomorrow morning if possible. Certainly to our friends.’
‘I’ve got one suggestion,’ said Alice. ‘Couldn’t you just say that Jillie and Ned have decided, by mutual agreement, not to get married? Then it doesn’t sound as if Jillie is in any way a victim.’
‘I think that, or something like it, could well be the answer,’ said Geraldine slowly. ‘It will give rise to gossip, of course, but anything will. Jillie, what do you think?’
‘I think that would be all right. I keep telling you, say what you like.’
‘I’ll go and talk to Peter,’ said Geraldine. ‘Put the suggestion to him.’
Peter said he thought it was the best suggestion by far: ‘But we’ll have to tell Ned. Personally, I’d like to horsewhip him, but if he doesn’t know he may concoct some quite different explanation of his own. I’ll ring him.’
Ned answered at once.
‘Ned,’ said Peter, ‘I haven’t rung with recriminations – there’s nothing I can say that could possibly express my anger and disgust at what you’ve done to my daughter. I simply want your approval to this suggestion of the announcement we’d like to put out.’
‘I’ll approve anything. You can tell the truth if you like,’ said Ned wearily.
‘I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. No, this is the form of words –’
Ned agreed instantly.
‘Good. I’d only like to add that if I hear you are telling people anything else, I shall take you to court and sue you for breach of promise. Or rather Jillie will. And then it possibly would all come out. I’m not threatening you or blackmailing you, I’ve no interest whatsoever in your future. My only concern is for Jillie and her reputation and emotional well-being. Do I have your word?’
‘You do.’
‘Good.’ Peter put the phone down. And then sat thinking how much he liked Ned and had been looking forward to having him as a son-in-law. God, this was a damnable business.
* * *
The announcement was made, the presents sent back, and after the inevitable tidal wave of gossip and shock, everyone got on with their lives and forgot about it. Except, of course, the main players in the drama, who continued to grieve and to withdraw from human contact as best they could. Geraldine’s friends tried to wheedle another explanation out of her; she told them firmly there was none, and if they raised the subject again, their friendship would be at an end. Mercifully, there was no conjecture in the press as to any other reason, although reporters haunted number five for a few days, trying to find one.
Nobody in the world, outside the immediate closed circle, knew the real reason – apart from Ludo Manners, and of course Ned’s mother who had been fearing that something of the sort might happen for many months. She too kept silent. There was a fairly distressing scene when she telephoned Jillie and asked if she might come and see her; Jillie told her that she would rather be fed to the lions than have Persephone in the house.
‘I cannot think you have anything to say to me that I would wish to hear. Please leave me alone in future.’
Persephone travelled from Cornwall to see Ned the day after the announcement was made.
‘Well,’ she said, looking around at the disarrayed house, littered with whisky bottles, and at his white face, his eyes red rimmed with exhaustion and grief. ‘At least you had the courage to do it in the end. For which I have to admire you. But oh, Ned, why, why did you ask her to be your wife?’
‘Because I was afraid,’ said Ned, his anger at the laws that had driven him to it dispersed briefly to Persephone. ‘Afraid of being found out, branded, of imprisonment, although I believe one can opt for what’s known as chemical castration, given a fairly liberal judge. It has a very unfortunate effect on the brain, and indeed the whole of one’s body, as a side effect. I’d be afraid of losing the position in my profession I have worked so hard for, and indeed of losing most of my social circle. And I genuinely love Jillie so very much I thought it would be all right. I longed to spend the rest of my life with her, to have children. But it was not to be.’
‘Well, they’ve let you off very lightly,’ said Persephone, ‘with that announcement. They’d have been within their rights to tell the truth.’
‘I know that. I told them if they did I would not deny it. But they are an intensely liberal family. One evening at dinner I remember Peter raging at the iniquity of the laws against homosexuality. They had some QC present, who of course di
sagreed with him; I remained as silent as I could, but I said I agreed with Peter. He asked me if I had any homosexual friends, and of course I said I didn’t. Which I don’t.’
‘Not even Ludo Manners?’ said Persephone.
Ned looked at her in wonder. God, her antennae were effective.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘For God’s sake, Mother, he has four children, been married to Cecily for fifteen years.’
‘I know,’ said Persephone. ‘And wasn’t that precisely what you were planning?’
He was silent; then said quite savagely, ‘If you ever utter one word of suspicion about Ludo I swear I shall kill you.’
‘Darling, don’t be so ridiculous. Now, I’m going to clear this place up and then we are going out to dinner. I’ve booked a table at the Caprice.’
‘Mother, I can’t go to the Caprice. I can’t go anywhere. I’m an outcast.’
‘Well, you can’t stay here for the rest of your life. Otherwise, all the sacrifices you’ve forced on poor Jillie will be in vain. You are becoming a well-known paediatrician – don’t squander that as well. Go and have a bath, shave, put on a decent suit and drive me to the restaurant.’
It was probably the most difficult and the bravest thing Ned had ever done, apart from telling Jillie he couldn’t marry her; but Persephone was right, he had to do it sometime. Most people there that evening who knew him nodded a little coolly, but then ignored him, clearly afraid of some involvement. Persephone met a couple of friends there, who joined them for coffee and brandy, and even made
* * *
Ned laugh. He went back to work at St Peter’s and opened his rooms in Welbeck Street the following Monday.
Jillie went to see Miss Moran and asked her for a further month’s leave; Miss Moran said her attendance levels had been so execrable she was of a mind to ask her to leave altogether. ‘There are many, many girls who would give all they had to be in your position here. You have abused it disgracefully. However, you don’t look well, I have to admit. Take one month from now. You will return then and work as you certainly haven’t worked this summer.’
‘Miss Moran, thank you. I can promise you, I am about to become one of your best pupils.’
‘I really don’t think that is remotely possible,’ said Miss Moran. She paused, clearly in thought, then turned and said, ‘I was sorry to hear about your marriage. But really, I’m sure you’ll come to see in time one is much better on one’s own. Men are such a brake on one’s life.’
And then she was gone.
For the first time in weeks, Jillie laughed.
Chapter 33
1953–4
‘I simply don’t understand it,’ said Tom. ‘It really is quite beyond me. ‘I’m with John Osborne –’
‘Who’s John Osborne?’
‘This brilliant new playwright,’ said Tom slightly irritably. ‘Surely you know he wrote Look Back in Anger. He calls the Royal Family a fatuous industry. My view exactly.’
‘Well, you’d better not let any of your Labour voters hear you say that. They’d lynch you.’
It was true. Coronation fever gripped the nation and royal fervour was at its peak. It had begun with the death of George VI. The lovely young Queen Elizabeth, mother of two small children, and her absurdly handsome husband became the darlings of the press. The New Elizabethan Age was written about every day. The date was set for the coronation, 2 June. A national holiday was declared; every town had street parties and carnivals planned.
An argument raged about televising the event. A fairly new phenomenon, television had been pronounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury as ‘potentially one of the great dangers of the world’. The Duke of Norfolk, who was masterminding the whole thing, was also opposed to it, believing it would rob the ceremony of its mystique. The press wanted it; it was a little-known fact that the Queen, young, shy and already nervous at the prospect of what would be a huge ordeal, did not. But in the end, the cameras were in the Abbey, and the reverently respectful voice of Richard Dimbleby provided the commentary.
The country drowned in a red, white and blue sea of flags and bunting. People came to the capital in their thousands to celebrate, and on the morning of 2 June, when it was announced that the Union Jack had been set on the very top of Mount Everest, it was as if some benign force was guiding the day, ensuring its place in history. Anybody who was anybody had a balcony, or at least a window to watch the procession from; tickets were sold for the stands in the Mall, changing hands on the black market for as much as £50, while seats on balconies that lined the route cost as much as £3,500.
People dressed up in their very best clothes simply to watch it on television; those who were not among the privileged few who owned a set were invited into their friends’ and neighbours’ homes. The hit song of the day, crooned by one Mr Donald Peers, was entitled ‘In a Golden Coach’.
But as if begrudging the people total euphoria, it rained. Hard. On the many thousands who had come to camp out, all along the route, and indeed on the long, long procession of foreign kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, princes and princesses. The star of the procession, apart from the Queen, radiantly beautiful, was undoubtedly Queen Salote of Tonga, who insisted on having the roof of her carriage open and sat waving, smiling determinedly, and getting extremely wet.
The coronation also brought into the public eye one of the great royal romances of all time: that of Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend, equerry to the King and, after his death, to the new Queen. Townsend, who had been a fighter pilot in the war, was extraordinarily handsome, exceptionally charming – and divorced. Margaret, less troubled by the rigours of her royal duties than her sister, more beautiful, more glamorous, and certainly more spoilt, could see no reason why she and the group captain should not marry; and the press saw a new royal drama to fill their pages, sending the curtain up on the unarguably intimate evidence of the way the Princess picked a bit of fluff from the group captain’s uniform, stroking the lapel as she did so. A new fever, more thrilling than any since the abdication of King Edward VIII, seized people’s imagination. The Daily Mirror ran a poll by way of a voting form on its front page as to whether Margaret should be allowed to marry her great love; there were seventy thousand replies and only just over two thousand said she should not. Other papers took a more serious and respectful approach, debating the matter carefully. The Daily News adopted a middle road, giving a male columnist a whole page to come down against the marriage, and on the opposite page, the women’s editor rhapsodised in her inimitable way on its golden possibilities.
The palace, and indeed the church and the government, were in a flat spin. A temporary solution was found; Townsend was sent to Brussels, the Regency Act was changed, and Margaret was given the two years until her twenty-fifth birthday to make up her mind.
Tom’s first words, when Alice told him she was pregnant again, were, ‘I hope that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to come to the conference in October.’
‘Tom!’
‘Well, it’s important, I –’ And then he realised he had overstepped the mark as her eyes filled with the easy, hormone-induced tears.
‘I’m sorry, Alice. I’m a brute. I sound like a nineteen thirties husband.’
‘Yes, you do. A very bad example of one, I’d say.’
‘I’m truly sorry. It’s wonderful news. But I thought –’
‘That I was being careful. Well, I am, usually. But if I could just say “caravan” to you –’
‘It would stir up some pretty good memories,’ said Tom, grinning reluctantly.
They had rented a caravan in August, and driven it to Hampshire, settling in a caravan park not far from Sandbanks, the glorious stretch of golden beach opposite the Isle of Wight. They were lucky with the weather, seven days of sunshine; Kit was ecstatic, displaying his building skills as he patted his bucket prior to tipping out what Alice decided must have been a hundred sand pies. They also got him a rubber ring and he bobbed about i
n the warm water, laughing, his fists beating up waves, his feet thrashing up and down, propelling him along.
They were so happy, sated with sunshine, and the sun acted on them like an aphrodisiac; after supper the first night, Tom put his arm round her, and kissed her shoulder.
‘You taste of salt,’ he said.
‘So do you.’
‘How about a new experience?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Shall we call it carasex?’
‘We could. Kit’s very fast asleep. Now look, I’ll just get my –’
That was when she discovered she had failed to pack her Dutch cap.
Saying no was unthinkable – she was drenched with desire. She cast a quick review of her cycle, decided she was at a point when conception was almost impossible, or so Jillie had told her, long ago, and went back to Tom.
It was glorious, a tangle of entirely new sensations, it seemed, created by the sun and the wind and the freedom from everyday anxieties, for Tom as much as for her.
‘Crikey,’ he said, when finally she came with a huge wild cry, ‘they’ll hear you on the Isle of Wight.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing. Except they’ll be jealous. Oh, Alice. I love you.’
‘And I love you. And I’m so happy.’
It happened, twice more that week, Alice continuing to put her faith in Jillie’s doctrine.
Jillie, it turned out, was wrong.
She had arranged for her mother to look after Kit so that she could go to the conference; and had been looking forward to it. Now it loomed over her, a horrible ordeal. She just couldn’t face it. As for Mrs Higgins’s breakfasts: the very thought made her heave.
A Question of Trust Page 32
