by Wendy Holden
“Will you marry me?” Peter blurted.
Marion crashed her cup down into the saucer and gripped the arms of her chair. She felt off balance, as if she had been drinking gin, not Earl Grey. Marry? She was only twenty-two. Life, with all its potential, stretched ahead like a shining road. “But you’re going to work at this school,” she said, stupidly.
“More tea, madam?” An obviously eavesdropping waitress hovered with a silver teapot.
“Yes! You’d come with me,” Peter said when she had gone. He looked relieved, as if he had let go of a burden. He bit happily into his egg sandwich. “We’d live at the school.”
Marion, to whom the burden had been passed, imagined the shining road of her life disappearing up the drive of some stuffy establishment surrounded by mountains, cut off by lochs, very possibly with the likes of Dr. Stone on its staff. And with Peter, whom she liked but could never love. There wasn’t an atom of physical attraction there.
“What do you say?” He was smiling encouragingly; a piece of cress was lodged between his teeth.
She took a deep breath. “I’m very flattered, Peter.”
She saw hope flash in his pale eyes and felt terrible. “But the truth is,” she added hurriedly, “I’m not thinking about marriage to anyone just yet. My work comes first and I’ve got another year of college to go.”
Peter looked down. “I understand. Your work’s very important to you. And you’re such a good teacher, Marion. You’re Miss Golspie’s best student, everyone knows that.”
She felt moved. He must be hurt, but he was being so generous. He was such a good man. If only she could love him. But love didn’t seem to work like that. The most suitable person wasn’t necessarily the one who attracted you. As a pair of wide dark eyes glowed in her mind, she reddened.
* * *
• • •
THEY PARTED OUTSIDE Jenners. She watched him walk off down Princes Street, gave him a few minutes and then set off home the back way. There was no danger of him seeing her there, and the back streets had cooling shadows.
As she passed the front of a pub, a familiar figure came out. “Maid Marion!”
His appearance was too sudden for her to stop an instinctive smile of joy.
He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. There was beard growth on his chin. The red scarf was still round his neck; the same blood-spattered shirt; the same mud-smeared jacket. But the energy she remembered was there too—the spark and the fizz and the black fire in his eyes. She was filled again with the sense that here was someone thrilling, unpredictable, exciting.
“How are you?” she asked. Better, by the looks of it. He had emerged from the pub with quite a spring in his step.
In reply, Valentine clutched his arm. “It comes and goes,” he said, wincing. “If you could help me back to my rooms, that would be great.”
She stared, wanting to laugh. He was ridiculously audacious. He seemed unabashed, however, staring back imploringly with wide round eyes. “Please?” he begged, looking suddenly so like a helpless little boy that resistance was useless. She groaned, and gave in.
“What were you doing in the pub?” she asked as she helped him along. The memory of her lost shillings was still raw. It had been embarrassing to let Peter pay for the tea instead of splitting the cost, especially after what she had said to him.
He had taken her arm and was leaning on her heavily, emitting the occasional soft moan as if in great pain. “Pub?”
Marion half turned, pointing with her free hand. “That one. Whose public bar I just saw you coming out of.”
He pushed a hand through his uncombed hair. “Oh, that pub,” he said, as if seeing it for the first time. “We weren’t in the bar, we were upstairs. Having a meeting.”
“We?” She looked at him closely, not entirely convinced.
He stared boldly back, his dark gaze unflinching. “The university Communist Party.”
“The pub lets you have Communist Party meetings upstairs?” It sounded most unlikely to her.
His hair flopped forward with the vigor of his nod. “Absolutely. Where we plot the death of imperialism and the epoch of international proletarian revolution. When men and women who struggle in their workplaces and in their communities for the defeat of capitalism will finally achieve a more just and equal society.”
The drama and force of this speech, and the dazzling smile with which it ended, had the effect of stunning her from all further thought. By the time she had recovered her faculties and was framing more detailed questions, Valentine had begun to sing. It wasn’t a song Marion recognized, but the tune was catchy and the lyrics striking. Something about workers arising from their slumbers. She wondered what time Valentine had risen from his slumbers. He looked as if he had slept in his clothes.
The song had many verses, during which time they approached the university area. The streets became grander, more neoclassical, all domes and porticoes, fluted columns and elegant wide steps.
“And the last fight let us face/The Internationale/Unites the human race,” Valentine finished, with a wave of a clenched fist. “Ooh,” he groaned, as if suddenly remembering he was meant to be injured.
As they passed a porter’s lodge, a bowler-hatted figure within rose to his feet.
“Mackenzie!” Valentine slapped the college servant convivially on his dark-suited shoulder. “And how are you this fine evening?”
The college servant looked unmoved by this blast of charm. “I’d be better if you’d pay those fines you owe, sir.” He rolled a jaundiced eye up and down Marion. “No young ladies staying the night again either.”
Flashing him an uneasy smile, Valentine hurried off across the lawns, his limp miraculously eased. Marion hurried after him. “What does he mean, no young ladies staying the night again?”
“Haven’t the faintest idea. Got me confused with someone else,” Valentine threw over his shoulder as he picked up speed. They were practically running now. The grassy quadrangle was surrounded with imposing gray buildings. He hurried up the steps into one of them—a hall of residence, Marion guessed, seeing pigeonholes in the hallway. One seemed particularly stuffed with cards and invitations. Valentine paused and shoved the entire handful into his pocket before clattering up a flight of wooden stairs.
His room was disgusting. A wardrobe door hung open, revealing a confusion of papers. His actual clothes were on the floor, all looking more dirty and creased even than those he had been beaten up in. There were newspapers everywhere, empty bottles lying on their sides along the skirting board, heaps of books and overflowing ashtrays. Above it all hung the horrible vinegar stench of stale smoke.
“Can’t you open a window?” she asked, using the challenge to conceal her awkwardness. What was she doing here? She had vaguely intended to leave him at the porter’s lodge, but somehow she had followed him in.
He pushed back the half-drawn curtains. The way he rattled and struggled at the pane suggested this was the first time he had ever tried. She went over to help. “You have to move this back,” she said, operating the lever holding the sash down. “It won’t open otherwise.”
He seemed as unabashed by his lack of practical knowledge as he was about the general mess and lack of facilities. “I don’t have any tea,” he said, rummaging in the bottom of a half-open drawer, “but I can offer you this.” He produced a bottle of whisky and waved it at her.
She looked at it doubtfully. “Haven’t you got any glasses? Cups?”
He shook his head, airily. “They’re a bourgeois construct. We’ll just have to drink straight from the bottle.”
He passed it to her. She braced herself and took a swig. It was even worse than what they had drunk in the pub, but after the initial scorch of contact, a warm, relaxed feeling spread through her. Her awkwardness vanished. She looked around, taking it all in.
Beyond the mes
s, the prevailing aesthetic was Soviet culture. Posters of muscular peasants waving spades or sitting on tractors were stuck haphazardly on the walls.
“Do sit down.” Valentine interrupted her thoughts.
She glanced around and laughed. “Where? You don’t have any chairs.” They, too, were a bourgeois construct, presumably.
“Plenty of room here.” He was sitting on the bed, which was unmade, the sheets twisted, the blanket half-disappeared underneath. He patted the mattress beside him invitingly. “Come on.”
The outrage she felt was mild compared to the accompanying violent pang of longing. She backed against the wall, folding her arms tightly, trying to appear insouciant. “No young ladies staying the night again, remember.”
He rose to his feet, exasperated. “He got me confused with someone else, I tell you.”
“All the same, I’m going.”
He was close to her now, and, quite suddenly, he kissed her. No one had ever kissed her like this, with a tenderness that became urgency. She clung to him. When her lips left his, they felt twice their usual size. His already were, of course, thanks to the beating. “Didn’t that hurt?” she asked, when the power to speak returned.
“Not at all. Desire is an anesthetic. Don’t you find?”
“I’m . . . not sure.”
His dark eyes had a wolfish gleam. “Don’t you want to find out?”
She found herself being led back toward the twisted bed. Before she knew it, he had pulled her down and nudged her knees apart.
“Stop!” cried Marion, sitting up with difficulty. Her cheeks burned and her heart crashed in her chest. She glanced at him hotly from under her hair.
He grinned at her from the pillow, hands behind his head. “Sorry. My mistake. I thought you were an independent woman. Making your own decisions.”
“I am!” she said, crossly. “And one of my independent decisions is not to let you do that.”
She buttoned herself up and, flustered, stepped over the rubbish toward the door.
There was a small stone bust on the mantelpiece. Passing, she glanced at it. It was of a stern-looking bearded man.
“Vladimir Ilyich,” said Valentine, still lounging on the bed.
“Who?”
“Lenin. The greatest revolutionary leader the world has ever seen.”
She stared at the carved face. “Really? Why was he so great?” Lenin had been in charge when the czar and his family were shot in the cellar. She recalled the ghastly details: the diamonds sewn in the corsets, the girls’ shorn hair, the frightened little boy.
“It would,” Valentine said loftily, “take me far too long to explain.”
She glanced at him suspiciously, remembering the Fascist-Communist discussion. How much did Valentine really know about revolutionary politics?
“What was so great about murdering the Romanovs?” she asked.
“They were enemies of the people.”
“But why?” They had been teenage girls, most of them. The thought made her stomach churn.
“They just . . . were.”
She was about to impatiently accuse him of ignorant dogmatism when Miss Golspie slid into her mind, glowing scarves, green glasses and all. She recalled the conversation earlier that afternoon in which she had declared herself uninterested in teaching aristocrats. Perhaps she was guilty of dogmatism herself.
She stared into Lenin’s sharp little eyes. Perhaps she should take the job with the Leveson-Gowers. There were good reasons to do so: the money, the compliment from Miss Golspie it represented and all those earlier, ingenious arguments about how the children of the wealthy needed to know about the poor, for the benefit of society in general. She considered the Bolshevik leader’s hard, intransigent face. Had that happened in Russia, perhaps Lenin wouldn’t have been the greatest revolutionary leader the world had ever seen. If indeed he had been.
CHAPTER FIVE
She took the job with the Leveson-Gowers. It was a beautiful daily walk along the lochside to Rosyth, with the Forth flashing silver through the trees. The path through the woods was fringed with wildflowers: blue cranesbill, pink campion, white stitchwort, herb Robert. Marion loved the expectant way they turned their faces up as she passed. She liked to pick them and put them in her hat.
“You’re working for the oppressors of the poor,” Valentine had sneered, predictably. “The aristocratic overlords. The capitalist running dogs.”
Marion rolled her eyes. “They’re not like that at all,” she insisted. The Leveson-Gowers, in fact, seemed to lead a simple life. Good manners were high on the agenda and she had never heard a haughty remark from any of them. Nor had she heard anyone swear. None of which could be said of Valentine.
“They’ve got no idea how most people live,” he blustered. Marion looked him sternly in the eye.
“Yes, they have.” In line with Miss Golspie’s exhortations, she took her new responsibilities seriously. Her new pupil, Lady Mary Leveson-Gower, was as a consequence fully appraised of recent scientific, political and social developments.
“Don’t you feel like a servant?” he taunted next.
She laughed. “Actually, the servants at Admiralty House don’t feel like servants.”
He stared. “What do you mean?”
“They’re far grander than the family.”
It was strange but true that those working for the Leveson-Gowers seemed to appropriate their employers’ status to themselves. The cook especially never missed an opportunity to trumpet the family’s grand connections. As Marion passed through the kitchen on her way in and out of the house, Cook regaled her with gossipy snippets. Did Marion know that Lady Rose Leveson-Gower’s sister was the Duchess of York? She did not. Did Marion know that Lady Rose called her sister “Buffy”? She did not care. Did Marion know that Lady Rose’s husband, the Hon. William Spencer Leveson-Gower, was “Wisp” to his friends? Actually, this was quite funny. “Wisp” suggested insubstantial, and the admiral was easily seventeen stone.
According to Cook, Lady Rose could have done even better than the Commanding Admiral at Rosyth. This was not hard to believe. Lady Rose was a lush, romantic beauty with a full, oval face and skin like thick cream. She had elegant dark brows, a slim, straight nose and shining blonde hair. Her eyes were especially extraordinary—a dewy violet.
“Oh yes!” Cook’s round eyes bulged with excitement. “They say Her Ladyship was proposed to more than twenty times! They say that she used to be admired by the Prince of Wales himself!”
“Gosh,” said Marion, knowing Cook would completely miss the irony.
Her mother, agog for details about aristocratic goings-on, loved all this, however. And so Marion told her as much as she could remember. After Mrs. Crawford’s despair at Peter’s departure—she had never known about the proposal, fortunately—it was a relief to see her basking in the warm sun of near-royal association. No friend, neighbor or butcher’s queue was ignorant of her daughter’s new proximity to the great and the good.
Her daughter’s new proximity to Valentine was rather less cause for celebration. Mrs. Crawford was not only impervious to his charm but resented his familiar manner. Peter would never have dreamed of breezing in without warning, addressing her as “Mrs. C” and helping himself to whatever was in the larder. Marion would listen to her complaints while thinking that there were many other things Valentine did that Peter would never have dreamed of, all of them entirely delightful.
She had still not given in to him, although by now it was virtually a technicality. As they kissed, his hand would find its way beneath her blouse or up her skirt almost without her realizing. She had never really believed in love before, not in the head-spinning, lightning-bolt sense of romantic novels. But now she wondered whether heart-thumping passion was real, after all. She would drift dreamily about the house, her mother’s grumbles having as little impact as w
ater on the back of the proverbial duck.
“He talks all the time about the working classes but he’s never done a day’s work in his life.”
While Marion thought this exact same thing, she felt compelled to defend him. “He’s a student, Mother.”
“But what are his intentions?” demanded Mrs. Crawford.
The defeat of capitalism would obviously not be an acceptable answer. Marion turned to bluster instead. “Mother! This is 1932. Girls don’t need men with intentions. They have intentions of their own.”
But Valentine’s intentions were not of the sort Mrs. Crawford would approve of. The fact that she did not approve of him either drove the two of them for walks in the hills in all weathers. Here the intentions revealed themselves on sunny beds of heather, or in caves during sudden bursts of rain. Marion fended them off—with increasing reluctance, it had to be said.
One afternoon they had taken a picnic and were following a sandy path through scented heather and sun-warmed boulders. Their way wound up past silver birch trees and flaming yellow gorse. They stopped for lunch under cerulean skies, in which birds wheeled and a warm sun shone. Below them stretched the Firth of Forth, its surface wrinkled like blue silk and shuddering at the touch of the wind.
“I’ve got a present for you,” Valentine announced. She was surprised. She was the gift-giver, normally. Fresh shirts, a new pair of trousers, two secondhand chairs for his room.
He rummaged in his jacket pocket and produced a brown paper bag containing something hard and rectangular. “I hope you’ll find it useful.” His face was serious but he was obviously suppressing laughter.
Marion slid out a small book with a pale gray cover. The Complete Book of Etiquette.
“Now that you’re moving in such elevated circles, you need to know which class of butter knife to use with which class of bishop.”
She knew it was victory of a sort that he had lowered his attacks to jokes. And this was a good one. She turned a couple of pages and laughed. “A gentleman should never wear a lounge suit on the beach.”
