by Parks, Adele
Lydia was being intractable. She repeatedly stated that she wanted to leave Lawrence and that she wanted to do so immediately. This was nonsense and Sarah refused to contemplate such a thing. She had initially thought that they could ask Lawrence to open up the London house and Lydia could possibly be persuaded to live there if she were allowed to continue to see her lover. Sarah knew of a number of very respectable couples who lived out their entire married lives in this way, quite separately. If the means were available to do so, it was by far the most elegant and acceptable solution, but Sarah soon realised it would not do in this case. There was a baby on the way. Lawrence would have to be made to think it was his, and if this was absolutely impossible – as Lydia insisted – then at the very least the world would have to think it was his. Lydia must return to Clarendale. There was no alternative.
Ava had allowed Lydia to stay with her for another forty-eight hours. She had used that time to summon Dickenson from the country. Friend and loyal maid bundled Lydia into a car and had her driven back to Clarendale. If Ava’s account was to be trusted – and Sarah found that she did trust her; it was a rare moment, but they found themselves in agreement – Lydia sat stony and silent for the entire journey. She refused to utter one word until she got out of the car at Clarendale, then she turned to Ava and muttered, ‘This is not over, and don’t make the mistake of thinking it is.’
Lydia’s friends saw the importance of not inflaming the situation. No one wanted hysteria. Although it was paramount to physically remove Lydia from the sergeant major’s home, it would be explosive if she was forced to be cooped up with Lawrence with no other company or distraction. They had considered and rejected the idea of her hosting a party. There was the issue of mourning for the old earl; it would be unseemly and, besides, Lydia could not be counted on to behave as expected. She might try to invite Edgar Trent. He might accept. She might drink too much. There would be a scene. Everyone was relieved when Lydia offered to bring the children home to Seaton Manor. Sarah naturally invited her to stay for a few days and Lydia immediately accepted. Lawrence remained blissfully unaware of both his wife’s infidelity and her pregnancy.
The summer continued to sweat. Sarah instructed the servants to set out four deckchairs and a large parasol on the patio. Bea had already departed for Oxfordshire to start her work with Georgina Vestry, but Sarah had hopes that Cecily and Samuel might join her and Lydia in the garden. There was a picnic rug and cushions for the children. Sandwiches and Scotch eggs were offered up, along with the promise of jelly and ice cream. Sarah and Cecily and Samuel’s children gambolled about the garden trailing sunhats, butterfly nets, hoops, bats and balls, their faces turning pink with exertion, their limbs turning brown with the sun. Sarah wondered whether she ought to insist that the girls, at least, cover up – no one had approved of freckles when she was a child – but she found that she really wasn’t vain enough to interrupt their merriment. Despite the lure of home-made lemonade and sunshine, Cecily and Samuel remained indoors, Sarah considered whether she had the energy to go inside and fish them out. An enormous amount of cajoling would be required. She decided against it. If Lydia ever settled for more than a moment, Sarah would like to speak with her, and privacy was necessary for that.
She watched as Lydia flitted about with the children. They were playing catch and Lydia seemed to be eternally ‘it’. She chased the elder children with vigour but they still outran her; with the little ones she faked an ineptitude that elicited giggles and whoops of delight. Lydia had always been a beauty, but Sarah now identified something more. She was radiant, joyful and free. Her movements seemed fluid yet powerful. Assured. Her lips were plump and promising, frequently wide apart framing a heartfelt laugh. Her glossy hair sparkled in the sunlight like a halo, which was ironic when one considered her behaviour. It irritated Sarah; she didn’t want to be confronted with physical evidence that Lydia’s transgression was anything other than ruinous.
The children’s nanny finally appeared from the house; no doubt she’d been skulking in the cool kitchen with Cook and the maid, taking advantage of the fact that Lydia was prepared to entertain the children. Her conscience must have got the better of her, or perhaps Cook had asked for some help in preparing supper, which had effectively expelled the indolent nanny; either way, her appearance meant that the children were peeled away from Lydia’s care and Lydia had no alternative other than to join Sarah.
‘Come and have some lemonade,’ Sarah offered.
Lydia paused and looked about her. Sarah knew she’d been avoiding a one-to-one conversation from the moment she arrived; she’d played with the children, sat with Samuel and twice disappeared off to the village in the past twenty-four hours. Lydia looked helpless; she was without options. She flopped into the canvas deckchair and put on her sunhat, pulling it down over her eyes. It was unclear whether she was trying to avoid the sun’s glare or Sarah’s. Sarah continued to crochet. It wasn’t that the table doily was of paramount importance; it was just that she too had a need to try to keep busy, and the constant darting and stabbing of the crochet hook was absorbing. Lydia stared at the growing dangle of lace with something that looked a lot like resentment. Sarah stayed mute. She knew how to bide her time. To wait. It was something they’d all learned during the war. Some called it patience; others called it the art of killing time. Sarah thought it was a horror that they had to kill time, since, after all, that was the most precious thing, but she had become as proficient at doing so as anyone. She’d spent months waiting for Arthur’s leave, waiting for letters, waiting for news. Back then, she’d thought waiting was the worst thing, but it wasn’t. Enduring was worse. Enduring was waiting’s bigger, more ferocious brother. Once Arthur had been killed and Samuel was sent home mutilated, there was nothing for her to do but endure.
They sat silently for ten minutes, with only the click of the needles to distract. Sarah was impressed and frustrated by Lydia’s refusal to open the conversation, when the issue so clearly needed discussing. But she had known Lydia since she was born. She did not feel a preamble was necessary.
‘You mustn’t leave Lawrence.’
Lydia sighed. ‘I know what you think.’
Sarah’s heart was swollen with envy for everything Lydia had, and her head ached with anger that she might consider chucking it all away.
‘Do you honestly think you can divorce Lawrence and then marry this man?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are insane.’ She stated it plainly, as though it was an unequivocal truth. Lydia didn’t bother to argue. ‘You have everything a girl might dream of. Wealth, status, a husband, security.’
‘I know.’ Lydia bent her head so that her chin rested on her chest, and Sarah got a sense that she did at least understand what she was threatening to sacrifice.
‘A baby on the way,’ Sarah added tentatively.
‘It’s not Lawrence’s baby.’
‘You can’t be sure.’
‘I am sure.’
‘But Lawrence doesn’t have to know.’
Lydia shot Sarah a look that was a complicated mix of shock and pity. ‘I don’t want to deceive him.’
‘He’d have an heir. Your baby would be an earl.’
‘My baby might be a girl. Besides, either way, I want him, or her, to grow up with Edgar.’
‘And what does the sergeant major have to say on the subject of impending fatherhood?’
‘I haven’t told him yet,’ Lydia admitted.
‘You’re sure of him?’
‘Yes, and I’m sure of myself.’
‘But, Lydia, what can Edgar Trent offer?’
Lydia didn’t reply. She leaned towards the table and reached for the lemonade glass, beaded with condensation. She gulped down the drink in an unladylike manner. Sarah thought Lydia had become earthier, somehow, since this affair business. She didn’t like it.
‘What will you do, Lydia? Your father will disinherit you.’
‘I’ll get a job.’
‘What sort of job?’
‘I could teach.’
‘Don’t be silly. Married women are practically barred from most gainful employment. I can’t begin to imagine how a divorcée’s application might be received. Don’t you read the papers? Men, and at a push single women, have the first shout. A land for heroes, not loose women.’
‘I don’t imagine there are many ex-soldiers rushing to teach dancing or deportment.’
‘The baby. How will you work when you have a baby?’
Lydia put her hand on her stomach; it was still flat, no sign of the tiny miracle she was harbouring. A smile played on her lips. Her baby. She shrugged. ‘All right, I won’t work. I’ll stay at home, keep house. I’ll nurse the baby. Edgar has employment.’
‘I imagine his annual salary is less than you spend on shoes in a season. Do you know how close a bedfellow poverty is to doubt?’
‘We’re not talking about a reckless hand-to-mouth existence. We’ll buy a house in the suburbs.’
‘Oh, yes, I can just see you in suburbia. Its streets are beautifully monotonous; every front garden is a replica of its neighbours,’ snapped Sarah.
‘When did you develop such a condescending attitude?’
‘When did you develop such a laissez-faire one?’ The women stared at one another; frustration and disappointment stained the air. ‘Romantic irresponsibility is intensely attractive, but the reality will be quite different.’
‘I love him, Sarah.’
‘But you loved Lawrence once.’
‘No, not really. Not enough. I don’t think so.’ Lydia looked regretful.
This wasn’t the way Sarah had envisaged the conversation flowing. She didn’t understand her own bile and mounting frustration. Why couldn’t Lydia see what she had? Why would she dream of throwing it all away? There had been enough destruction. Too much. When would this war stop claiming victims? When would enough be enough? ‘Soon he will irk you.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know precisely. Perhaps his poverty, or his experience. The very things you love about him now.’
‘I don’t love his poverty; I’m not some deluded heroine. I do wish he was wealthier, but it isn’t enough to turn me off.’
Sarah sighed and tried another tack. ‘Do you remember your wedding?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘It was such a celebration.’
‘Please don’t.’ Lydia shifted uncomfortably on her seat.
‘You should. You should remember,’ Sarah urged. ‘You should think carefully about what you are throwing away. I admired, so heartily, your huge trousseau. The slips and knickers all trimmed with lace, each set fitted into perfumed pads and embroidered with L and L intertwined.’
‘Well, Dickenson has a gift with embroidery.’
‘Talking of gifts … the things you received! A sapphire pendant, a tiara, rings, bracelets, pins, clocks, candlesticks, cufflinks, wine coolers.’
‘But does any of it mean anything?’
‘First-edition books, ink stands, art.’
‘I don’t need any of it.’
‘Don’t you?’
Lydia shook her head. Sarah was beginning to feel desperate. She considered how else she might make her friend understand the gravity of her situation.
‘You think he’s marvellous because he fought in the war.’
‘Yes, yes, I do.’
‘He’s marvellous because he survived the war. That’s all. Lawrence survived too. There isn’t a real difference.’
‘How can you say that? You of all people. After what you lost.’
‘I’m trying to save you, Lydia. I have to be honest. Believe me, I don’t want to think so much. I know that deviating from the inherited wisdom, in any way, might hurt me. I need the disciplines of faith and valour, otherwise vicious bitterness will run unbridled. Questioning why and what for is a luxury I can ill afford, but for you, my friend, I’ll run that risk. There’s so much at stake.’
Sarah knew they’d fed her lies. She tried to pretend she didn’t know, because it was too much to have lost him and to have been lied to as well, but she did know. They’d returned Arthur’s uniform. It was horrifying. It was torn, back and front, where the bullet had entered and left. The khaki colour had all but disappeared; the uniform they returned to her was grey and brown, caked with mud and stiff with blood. It smelt not of him but of earth and death. It was worn and damp. Sarah had itched just having it in her parlour. There was blood on the trousers too, and they were torn at the leg. Cut away by the look of it. She didn’t understand that. She’d been told the bullet in the chest was clean and quick, but the uniform suggested three wounds: chest, leg and hip, all on his right-hand side. The torn trousers suggested an examination, maybe attempts at repair, which meant it had taken longer than they’d said for him to die. Sarah didn’t understand why they’d sent these garments of horror home. So shabby and vulnerable; that wasn’t how they’d been taught to think of their men. And then, a day or two later, a worse thought had struck her. If she had his uniform, what had they buried him in? Was there an immaculate spare? Oh God, she hoped so. But she’d never been able to ask anyone.
The carnage had damned Sarah to live the rest of her life in a world devoid of assurance or sanctuary; a world in which everything and everyone she loved existed under a heavy and dreadful cloak of fearfulness. What if there was another war and her son, John, had to fight? What if Molly died in childbirth, or they were both lost in an automobile accident? Love was continually besmirched by the threat of death. Joy and pleasure were without duration. She longed for a sense of security. Since losing Arthur, she’d only ever had the briefest of hints that it existed anywhere, and that was when she was at Clarendale, in Lawrence’s safe, steady and practical company. How could Lydia even consider giving that up?
‘Do you remember the day I received the telegram?’ Both women received telegrams on a regular basis. News of births, party invitations and train delays were all communicated this way; however, they knew exactly which telegram Sarah referred to. Some things were enormous.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I was on my way out of the house. Delivering jam to a neighbour or some such.’
‘Right.’
‘I was wearing my blue taffeta. The one I’d bought on our trip together to Paris, before, when one could buy pretty frocks.’
‘I know the dress you mean. I’ve always admired it.’
‘Do you know what I thought, after the postboy brought the news?’ Sarah met her friend’s gaze; Lydia moved her head an infinitesimal amount from left to right. ‘I thought, if only I’d left the house an hour earlier. Or ten minutes earlier. If I hadn’t been there to receive him.’
‘He’d have left the telegram. The news would have been there when you got home.’
‘Yes, but I’d have been a wife, with a husband, for a day longer; the children would have had a father a day longer. We’d have had an extra day even if he hadn’t. Do you see?’
Once he was dead, she’d had nothing to do. Even though the war had continued to rage, for her it was all over. The worst had happened. It was, at least, the end of trepidation, although it was the beginning of profound and unrelenting grief. An unfathomable, abolishing void. She was swallowed by a sense of walking in a dense fog, which hid all there was to see and stifled all there was to hear. Her grief was aloof and rigid.
‘I’d do anything to buy another day, another hour, ten more minutes. I’d give up every possession I own; I’d sell my soul. I’d certainly get over a ridiculous notion that my man had somehow dodged it.’
Lydia looked saddened and sorry. ‘It’s not Lawrence I want to buy time with. You say you’d give up every possession.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you think it’s strange that I’m prepared to do so.’
‘I’m saying I’d give it all up for Arthur. Arthur was my husband.’
‘Arthur was the man you loved.’
&nbs
p; Sarah pulled her eyebrows together, causing her forehead to fold like a fan as she expressed her displeasure. ‘It won’t do.’
‘But it is.’
‘Is what?’
‘It is what it is. And it’s impossible to be anything else.’
Sarah tutted, vexed. ‘You must hate yourself.’
‘Sometimes, but never when I’m with him.’
44
AVA HAD HAD a long day. She’d spent it at Marie Stopes’s mothers’ clinic in Holloway. The family planning clinic had opened (with much hullabaloo) in March, and Ava worked there in a voluntary capacity, as a secretary, two or three days a month. She told herself that the voluntary position allowed her an advantageous degree of flexibility so she could pursue other interests; truthfully she’d have liked a more permanent role. Not that she needed an income, but she enjoyed being at the forefront of this social change; it was so unquestionably useful. However, as she wasn’t a qualified doctor or nurse, there wasn’t a suitable post for her, especially as, unlike practically every other establishment in Britain, the family planning clinic preferred to hire married women. If they employed single women to officially advise on contraception, they ran the risk of attracting more adverse publicity. The secretaries were seen by many as powdered hussies and were often described as ‘no better than they ought to be’. Ava would have confronted any controversy – some thought she courted it – but Dr Stopes and her husband felt differently and would not make her a permanent offer. Besides, the clinic had not been the roaring success Dr Stopes had anticipated. The numbers that attended were modest. Since March, just ninety women had sought advice on contraception and fourteen more had wanted advice on how to become pregnant. With an average of just one or two clients a day, the time spent at the clinic could drag. Ava always managed to read The Times from cover to cover.
