After the Party

by Cressida Connolly

  Naturally they thought it was a cistern in one of the attics. The husband went down to the servants’ quarters and fetched someone, while various others brought up buckets to put under the leaks. By then the house was waking up and Fergus appeared. He sprang up to the attic where the water tanks were and shone a torch around and couldn’t see anything amiss. Everyone was groggy with hangovers I suppose; anyway it took them quite a while to think of looking in the bathrooms.

  Sarita’s bathroom door was locked. Apparently she was in the habit of having a bath at night, before she got into bed – you may not remember, but big houses were so fearfully cold in those days. You’d get into bed and your feet would be freezing. Anyway. From the water coming through the floor it seemed likely it was still locked from the night before. By then the little girl had appeared and was by Sarita’s bedroom asking for her mother. A bleary gaggle of them had congregated on the landing outside her bathroom and hovering by her bedroom. It was lucky that Fergus had the presence of mind to guess what might have happened and he ordered them all off and got someone to take the child downstairs. It was just him and one of the servants. They had to break down the door.

  She was in the bath with the taps running. Everything was drenched. They had to lift her out. They carried her through to the bedroom and covered her up.

  Of course the doctor must have known. Women in their thirties don’t just die of nothing. They don’t just see their husband trying to get off with one of their great friends and then go upstairs and lie down politely in their bath and expire from a broken heart. It’s not like The Lady of Shalott. But I never thought of that at the time. I believed that she must have had a weak heart already and that the upset and the hot water brought on an attack. There may have been marks on her skin, from the syringe, I don’t know. If there were, they weren’t on her arms: I remember her arms in her evening dress and they were quite smooth and unmarked. Years afterwards, when I found out, I was told that something similar had happened during her first marriage when they were living in Paris, but she’d been found in time and they’d been able to revive her. That was why the child’s father didn’t want Sarita to be left alone with the little girl, at any time. Well, presumably it was all right in the daytime.

  I don’t know whether drug addicts observe some sort of sun-over-the-yard-arm ritual, like six o’clock drinks time, but I don’t suppose they’re taking things at all hours, are they? Although when I think back on it, there were times when she seemed very vague, even in the middle of the afternoon.

  I don’t know what I felt about the fact that she hadn’t told me, when we had confided with one another about so much else. I suppose it must have been something she wasn’t proud of. It’s pretty sordid, after all, and Sarita was the opposite of that in every other respect. She wouldn’t have wanted people to know. Anyway Fergus stopped it coming out and there was nothing in the papers. The official line was that she’d had heart failure and that that’s what killed her. I know I’ve said it before, but people of that kind observed a sort of code of silence, so that nothing ever got into the papers. Their GP would have been in cahoots as to the cause of death. No one would’ve wanted to upset the child or the servants.

  I only found out by accident, after the war. We were dining with my sister Patricia; it may have been one of the last times we went there. She put me next to her friend Pea-Brain and he let something slip about Sarita’s death. I think he assumed I already knew. Then he told me the whole story. He said Sarita and Fergus hadn’t been sleeping together for some time before then, which may explain why she’d taken to having baths at night – for a little comfort, perhaps. Of course it was a terrible shock.

  Afterwards, when we got home, I remembered the grey man in Paris and how he’d brought the box of sugared chestnuts to our hotel. It had always struck me as odd, the way she’d hardly spoken to him. I wondered if he’d really been bringing her morphia. It would have explained why she was so late coming down in the mornings.

  The awful thing is that in all the upset I did nothing for the little girl. I couldn’t face going to the house and I was so miserable and ashamed of myself … in those days people didn’t take children to funerals, so I don’t believe she was even there. I didn’t see her in the front pews and when Fergus followed the coffin out to the churchyard he walked alone, head bowed. I didn’t go back to the house afterwards, I just couldn’t bear to revisit the place without Sarita there. And I didn’t want to come face to face with Venetia and have to talk to her, either. I suppose the child must have gone to her father, perhaps before the funeral. I told myself that I’d get in touch with her in due course, once she was settled in her new life. I believed her father lived in London for at least some of the year, and I vaguely imagined I’d write and arrange to take her out for tea somewhere, perhaps taking Frances and Edwin with me.

  In the time that followed, when I was in prison, I had plenty of cause to consider how much it mattered to me to believe that people were being kind to my children in my absence. It was the only thing I hoped for.

  But I wasn’t kind to Sarita’s child. It makes me feel awful to tell you this, but you may as well know the truth, for what it’s worth. I’d like to think I’d have more moral gumption, now. I didn’t go to see her or to offer her any comfort or consolation. The truth is I never saw her again and now I find I can’t even remember her name.

  11. Sussex, March 1940

  By the time war was declared, Phyllis was an altogether busier and more important person. Had she still had her women friends – Sarita, principally; but Venetia, too – she might still have been content with French conversation, with riding and lunches and picnics, with ferrying the children to and from their schools for half-terms and exeats, and with arrangements in the new house. As it was, she found herself perforce more and more involved with Nina and her political work. Seeing how low her sister was after Sarita’s death, Nina had taken Phyllis under her wing. She couldn’t just mope about in the house for ever; what she needed was something useful and constructive to do. It was all too easy to simply sit in the morning room, writing a letter or two; missing the fine open view she’d so loved at Bosham, missing the children now they were away at school for the greater part of the year, missing Sarita. It was Hugh who always proudly referred to it as the morning room, but it was really just a little sitting room, rather dark, on the east corner of the house.

  Privately Phyllis thought of it as the mourning room. In years to come, when she had so much more to mourn, she thought back on this and considered herself to have been very spoilt.

  There was a view that in these urgent times women must not be simply tea-makers and note-takers and general dogsbodies, but a great force within British Union. It was true that a quarter of Mosley’s supporters were women, more than in any other political party. As the threat of war with Germany became more real, that number grew, and then again, when war was declared, there was a surge of women members: many of the new recruits were wives and mothers who didn’t want to see another generation of their young men slaughtered in Europe. A good portion of the key speakers for the overall Party Peace Campaign were women. When the Party’s Women’s Peace Campaign was launched in February, Nina and Phyllis went up to London on the train for the meeting in Holborn, to sign up. The Leader had given the enterprise his blessing, even pledging to come and address them. There were rallies at weekends. At the Women’s Peace Meeting in April, there was a turnout of almost a thousand. Phyllis found it electrifying to be among such a number of fellow souls, all united in their passion for the cause. It was a wonderful feeling, to belong. When Sir Oswald took to the stage to address them, she joined the others in giving him a standing ovation. He brought such force, such hope! It was clear that he was the only politician who had the strength of character and of argument to redeem Britain from this futile and needless war. If, before she became involved in the Women’s Campaign, there had been some aspects of British Union policy Phyllis didn’t wholly appla
ud, now against the fervour of the peace initiative these reservations shrank away.

  Nina had already made something of a name for herself as a public speaker, so much so that she had been asked to address meetings in London, Birmingham and Manchester. She had spoken on a range of topics, and had caused something of a stir when she addressed a Kensington meeting on the nuisance of society women. Her contention was that such women contributed nothing to the wider world, but frittered their evenings in night-clubs and languished their mornings in bed, telephoning: whereas the industrious and resourceful women of BU put such useless females to shame. This was bold, given that such types abounded in the very constituency where she was speaking, and one or two Party eyebrows were raised, given that the Leader’s own wife was of the kind. Nevertheless, Nina gained a reputation for the force and reason of her speeches. Buoyed by her success, she encouraged her sister to obtain her own speaker’s licence, also. But Phyllis didn’t want to tread on her husband’s toes. Hugh was very proud of his platform position and she had no craving for the limelight. She preferred to work behind the scenes. She found plenty to occupy herself with. There were branch meetings in Chichester and Bognor and along the coast, all of which required organization. Study circles were set up. Speakers needed to be booked, halls hired, pamphlets written and distributed. Then there was the money side of things: subscriptions to be collected and sent on to London, printers to be paid.

  Once men began to be called up, women became ever more essential in keeping Party business going. The nearby Bournemouth branch was now run solely by women, who had been having a dreadful time of it: local thugs had daubed their office with paint and then returned to throw bricks through the windows. There was shattered glass all over the room, tiny splinters worked their way into files and the women complained of cut fingers for months afterwards. This was the trouble: people outside the Party were apt to mistake the Peace Campaign for a lack of patriotism, little understanding that those within it felt a passionate loyalty to the very notion of a Great Britain. A war with Germany was simply not in Britain’s interest. So long as the Kingdom and her Empire were unthreatened, it was folly to take up arms. Everyone Phyllis knew shared the conviction that Germany would never attack England. When ARP volunteers started to hand out gasmasks to use in the event of enemy gas attack, Nina and Eric refused to take them. Phyllis and Hugh followed suit. It was on the same grounds that Hugh declined to install an air-raid shelter in the garden of the new house, certain that such a thing would never be necessary. Covering the nearby beaches with barbed wire and defence lookouts was blatantly ridiculous.

  Hugh’s age meant he would not be required for National Service. Greville and Eric, though, were both called up; somehow Greville managed to land on his feet and secure a desk-job at the Ministry. Eric went into the Air Force – if the Flying Corps had been good enough for Sir Oswald during the last war, it was certainly good enough for him – and was sent off to somewhere-or-other for training.

  Phyllis could see that her husband was restless, now that work on the house was complete. There was the garden, of course, but his London post seemed to have fizzled out altogether. Phyllis did not like to enquire too closely, as Hugh was apt to become irritable. The logical thing for him to do, he now assured her, was to stand in a local council election as a Party candidate: this he intended to do as soon as a suitable seat became vacant. When Eric asked whether Hugh might be able to help out at the garage two or three days a week while he underwent his RAF training – strictly behind the desk, of course, not with the donkey work – he assented. Such work was rather beneath him, but at least it was local.

  In the second week of March, the telephone rang early one morning, while she and Hugh were having breakfast. It was Mrs Manville, to say that her father had died. She had gone up to take him his tray and found him stone dead in his bed. The words stone dead somehow struck Phyllis as absurdly funny and she struggled not to laugh out loud while Mrs Manville went on. The doctor had been called, but had not arrived as yet. Her mother had been told, but she was not having one of her better mornings and she appeared not to have been able to take it in. Phyllis said that she and Hugh would come at once. She thanked Mrs Manville, although it wasn’t clear to her what she was thanking her for. No sooner had she put the receiver down than the telephone went again. This time it was Patricia.

  ‘What on earth is going to happen about Mummy, now?’ she said, without preamble.

  ‘I know. She won’t be able to stay at the house, I shouldn’t have thought; not unless we engage a nurse,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘With the best will in the world, I can’t have her here. We’ve just got a new puppy.’

  ‘Have you? You never said. When?’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Oh, a fortnight or so. The Tuesday before last, we collected him. Don’t know that we’ve spoken since then, that’s why. Wire-coated fox terrier. Absolutely the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen, but I fear he’s going to be a yapper. Rex. Antonia chose the name, rather silly but there you are. Children are so fearfully unimaginative when it comes to naming their animals. When we got her a rabbit she wanted to call it Bunny. Anyway, I couldn’t possibly cope with Mummy as well.’

  ‘No,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Nina’s good at organizing things.’

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure she’d have the patience, though. Or the room, in that little house.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to talk it over. But I just thought I should make my position clear from the beginning.’

  ‘Poor Daddy. I shouldn’t think he ever said an unkind word to anyone, not in his whole life,’ said Phyllis. Now that she was talking to her sister, she felt as if a huge bubble of sorrow was beginning to rise through her chest and up into her throat.

  ‘It’s been expected,’ said Patricia.

  ‘Yes,’ said Phyllis. The grief was forming itself into a sob. She felt she might choke on it at any moment. She rang off abruptly and stood by the telephone table and wept, her face in her hands.

  Nina and Eric were already installed in the kitchen at the Grange by the time Phyllis and Hugh arrived. An armchair had been brought through from the sitting room and placed in a corner, near the stove. In it sat their mother, her swollen feet as ever encased in a shabby pair of slippers. She looked no sadder than the last time Phyllis had seen her, when her father had been alive. Phyllis did not know whether to feel relieved or exasperated that her mother seemed so blithely unaware of her own widowhood.

  ‘Where’s Mrs Manville?’ asked Hugh.

  ‘Gone into the village,’ said Nina.

  ‘Should you like a cup of tea? I daresay you’re thirsty, after your journey?’ asked Eric.

  ‘We’ve only come from home, not halfway across Europe. It’s hardly an ordeal,’ snapped Hugh. His wife knew that he found Nina and Eric’s habit of drinking tea at all hours of the day an annoyance. Tea was for tea-time, in his view.

  ‘That would be lovely, thank you so much,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘We stopped at an hotel for a sandwich, in any case,’ said Hugh, relenting.

  It felt peculiar to watch someone other than Mrs Manville fill the kettle and use the old tea-tin, the pattern on its lid almost worn away from years of handling. She realized that the kitchen was a room she never lingered in, generally. It was just the place where trays were collected and deposited. She noticed, now, how shabby it looked. Half the things in here were chipped or dented.

  ‘What’s that chair doing there?’ asked Hugh.

  ‘I think Mrs Manville brought it in,’ said Nina. ‘So she can keep an eye on Mummy while she’s cooking. And anyway, it’s warmer in here. Might as well.’

  ‘Are you all right, there?’ Hugh asked his mother-in-law. He raised his voice as if to be heard over the noise of a loud engine and said the words very deliberately, as he always had when talking to a foreigner.

  ‘Very nice,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what Patricia will say,’ muttered Hugh.
r />   ‘Patricia doesn’t have the last word on everything, you know,’ said Nina.

  ‘Is … is Daddy still upstairs?’ Phyllis asked Nina, in a whisper. She didn’t want to alarm their mother.

  ‘Yes, of course. They’re not coming to take him until later this afternoon. The doctor’s already been, though.’

  ‘Have you been up?’

  ‘Yes. He looks very peaceful.’

  ‘Oh dear, will I be able to face it, d’you think?’ Phyllis caught her sister by the arm. ‘I’ve never … well, you know.’

  ‘Honestly, there’s nothing to fear. He doesn’t look spooky, or anything. I’ll come in with you, if you like.’

  ‘Did you say it was time to get ready for dinner?’ asked their mother. She looked worried by the thought.

  ‘No, Mummy, it’s only just after lunch,’ said Nina.

  ‘Patricia will be here shortly,’ Hugh told his mother-in-law, in the same loud voice he had used before. This was intended to console her, for her eldest daughter had always been thought to be her mother’s favourite. She laughed wanly in response, as if humouring a stranger.

  In the event, Patricia did not arrive until after nightfall: Greville had been in London and they hadn’t been able to set off until he got home. The undertakers had been told – by Mrs Manville, presumably – not to remove the body until such a time as all the daughters of the house had had the chance to pay their last respects, and so Eric had telephoned to postpone them until the morning.

  After supper, once their mother had been installed in her bedroom for the night, Nina suggested it might be the moment for Patricia to go up to her father’s room. But she told her sisters quite bluntly that she had no intention of doing so.

  ‘I just can’t manage it,’ she said with a shudder.

  ‘He looks a bit like something from Madame Tussauds,’ said Phyllis. ‘Not really like Daddy at all. Not frightening, but just not the same.’