The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  ‘Thanks ever so,’ she said, taking the cup Mrs Thompson pushed over to her. Dipping a teaspoon into the tea she heard the scrape of the sugar at the bottom of the cup.

  Mrs Thompson resumed her seat and reached for the cigarette.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Miss Corbett.’ she said unexpectedly. She let out a puff of smoke from the side of her mouth, angling it away from Jean. ‘You’ll find us a friendly enough household. Mr Wallis is a well-respected gentleman and a good father and Mrs Wallis is ever such a nice lady—sophisticated, if you know what I mean.’

  She raised an eyebrow significantly so that even though Jean had no idea what Mrs Thompson meant, she nodded wisely.

  ‘The children are well brought up—though sometimes they’re a bit too clever for their own good, if you get my meaning.’ Mrs Thompson leaned closer over the table. ‘Not like them delinquents you read about in the paper at least, going around in gangs with coshes and I don’t know what else.’

  Jean considered this. It seemed to her unlikely that there were many gangs of cosh-wielding delinquents roaming the back streets of South Kensington—but you could never tell.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, because she couldn’t think what else to say. She took a sip of the tea and felt her tongue tingle and her teeth ache as the hot sweetness filled her mouth.

  ‘Gotta fella, have you?’ said Mrs Thompson, removing the cigarette from her mouth and tapping it on the ash tray.

  Jean hesitated. It had been important to confirm her spinster status to Mrs Wallis—no employer wanted a nanny who was forever asking for evenings off to go dancing with her young man or, worse, running off after a month to get married—but the same question from Mrs Thompson required a different answer.

  ‘Well, there was a young man, but we no longer have an understanding.’ This wasn’t lying, it was merely a different way of telling something.

  ‘Shame,’ said Mrs Thompson striking a second match to re-light her cigarette. ‘Ditch you, did he?’

  Jean sat up indignantly. ‘No, he didn’t. As a matter of fact I ditched him. Told him I wasn’t ready for that sort of commitment.’

  ‘Oh, he wanted a bit of the other and you wouldn’t have it, eh?’ said Mrs Thompson, the cigarette wedged once more in the side of her mouth, nodding in a ‘what can you expect?’ kind of way.

  She eased herself to her feet, went over to the grill, and returned with a rack of toast. She selected a slice and proceeded to spread butter on it.

  ‘You’ll be wanting to know what the police were doing here yesterday morning,’ said Mrs Thompson, wiping the knife on her apron and sticking it into a jar of strawberry jam.

  Jean hesitated. She had almost forgotten about the two policemen but now a knot of something hard materialised in her stomach. Policemen meant bad things. Even those with an easy conscience felt that flicker of nerves when a policeman appeared in the street.

  ‘I’m sure it’s none of my business,’ she replied tartly, taking a sip of her tea and feeling that shock of sweetness again. But it wasn’t such a shock the second time.

  ‘Are you?’ said Mrs Thompson sharply and Jean started. ‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Your turning up and the police arriving not half an hour later.’

  Jean stared at her, her heart thudding loudly in her chest, the blood rushing in her ears. She could feel heat rising up her neck and suffusing her cheeks.

  Mrs Thompson suddenly burst out laughing, a laugh that quickly became a rasping cough, and for a moment she was bent double unable to speak. A bubble of spittle sprayed onto the table and glistened wetly. Jean gazed at it.

  ‘Your face! It was a picture!’ spluttered Mrs Thompson. ‘I was only jokin’, love.’

  Jean arranged her mouth into a smile and her eyes went to the large radio set on the table. She saw someone pick up the radio set and smash it into the laughing Mrs Thompson’s face and Mrs Thompson falling to the tiled floor in a mess of blood and mucus.

  She blinked and the image disappeared.

  ‘I think I might have some more sugar in my tea, Mrs Thompson.’

  ‘You go right ahead, dear.’ Mrs Thompson stood up, dabbing at her mouth. ‘You mustn’t mind me, dear; I’ve got what they call a wicked sense of humour. Your face!’

  ‘So what did the police come here for, then?’

  ‘It’ll be those delinquents, you can bet your life on it.’

  Jean said nothing. She helped herself to another spoonful of sugar and knew that the tea would be undrinkable.

  ‘Will there be blood?’ enquired Anne as she buckled up her shoes in preparation for the trip to church.

  They were in the child’s bedroom, which was on the second floor at the front of the house overlooking the quiet Sunday morning street. It was a smallish room, the walls lined with shelves and the shelves straining under the weight of dozens of books. Above the bed was another shelf, from which a row of teddy bears and other toys observed them indifferently.

  They were off to church. Julius had toyed with the idea too, purely, he had been at pains to explain, out of academic interest. But in the end the pull of the Latin verbs had proved too strong and he had mooched off and shut himself in his bedroom.

  ‘Blood? Certainly not! We’re not the Catholics,’ Jean replied, indignantly. ‘And there won’t be incense or candles or worshipping of idols either,’ she added, in case Anne was expecting any or all of these. ‘Come along, or we shall be late.’

  The church, according to Julius, who seemed to be a mine of information on practically any subject, was five minutes’ walk away and if there was a ten o’clock service they would just make it. If there wasn’t, they would have a long wait.

  They got as far as the first floor when a door opened and a man who could only be Mr Wallis came out. Jean almost walked right into him. She had an impression of a brown knitted cardigan over a white shirt, grey flannel trousers—neatly pressed—and loose brown slippers. His hair was greying and had receded a little at his temples. He was perhaps early or mid-forties, clean-shaven, a longish face, nose quite large and a little beaked. A normal, unassuming otherwise unmemorable face. She had seen a photograph of Mr Wallis once—he was something important in shipping, after all—but he looked less formal, somehow less like the director of a large firm, than she had expected. He wasn’t wearing a suit, of course; that made all the difference. He was just a man, quite well-to-do, but normal looking, in his home on a Sunday morning in September.

  He was also wearing a pair of reading glasses which he now took off in order to survey them with a curious frown.

  ‘Oh, hello, I suppose you must be the new nanny?’

  ‘Yes—Miss Corbett. How do you do?’

  ‘Oh, quite well, quite well.’ There was a silence. ‘Off to the park, are we?’

  ‘We’re going to church,’ explained Anne. ‘But there won’t be any blood.’

  ‘Church, eh?’ said Mr Wallis, somewhat astonished.

  ‘It being Sunday,’ explained Jean, because an explanation seemed necessary.

  ‘Well. Very good. Carry on, Nanny,’ and he turned and went back into his study.

  He seemed just like a normal gentleman.

  ‘Ow!’ said Anne resentfully. ‘You hold hands too tight, Nanny! It hurts.’

  Chapter Five

  SEPTEMBER 1952

  ‘You’ve heard the rumour Princess Margaret might turn up? Of course, there’s always a rumour Princess Margaret might turn up. She never does. Or rather, she turns up everywhere if The Times is to be believed, but never at the place that one actually happens to be. One always chooses the wrong party, visits the wrong the house, lunches at the restaurant a day too early. Of course, one pretends not to mind, but it is galling, there’s no denying it. Pass me a cigarette, darling.’

  Harriet opened her cigarette case and offered it to Valerie Swanbridge, who stood beside her at lunch.

  ‘You really are the most terrific snob, Valerie,’ she observed, snapping shut the case and producing
a small flame from her lighter. Her hand, she realised, was shaking. She clenched it into a fist to stop it.

  Valerie lit her cigarette and took an exploratory puff.

  ‘Darling, what else is there?’ she declared solemnly.

  ‘I seem to recall at school you were full of all sorts of ideas and ambitions. What ever happened to you?’

  ‘My sole ambition at school was to own a white pony. I got one for my thirteenth birthday,’ replied Valerie, pausing to blow out a trail of smoke. ‘It’s a terrible thing, you know, Harri, to realise all of your ambitions at such a tender age. What does one do then?’

  Harriet selected a cigarette herself and silently lit it. One threw a luncheon to celebrate one’s husband’s recent OBE and to which one invited royalty, that’s what one did. Princess Margaret wouldn’t turn up, of course, there was never any real danger of that, but it was impressive to be able to start such a rumour and have people speculate.

  And a few days ago, Harriet realised, she herself might have joined in that speculation. Now her hand shook as she drew on her cigarette. It was the police, of course, coming to the house yesterday.

  Beside her, Valerie sent a stream of smoke upwards, glancing sideways at Harriet’s yellow dress as she did so.

  ‘Norman Hartnell?’

  Harriet nodded, not removing her own cigarette.

  ‘Thought so. Unmistakeable.’

  ‘Darling, you came with me when I went for the fitting.’

  Valerie raised a single eyebrow. ‘Did I?’ Then she peered over Harriet’s left shoulder. ‘Don’t look now. There’s Daphne Goodfellow. She and Peter are getting a divorce.’

  Harriet turned discreetly in time to see Daphne Goodfellow, in a Pierre Balmain bell-shaped skirt and a stole, followed a moment later by Peter Goodfellow in grey flannels, step into the garden, he smiling and shaking hands with everyone, she bestowing kisses and exclaiming. Peter was MP for Hertfordshire South and widely disliked. He had been tipped for a Cabinet post, yet the reshuffle had come and gone and no appointment had been forthcoming. Daphne, like Harriet and Valerie, was a Maldeville Old Girl, attending their old school briefly until her parents had transferred her to a more expensive establishment in Geneva.

  One ran into the Maldeville Old Girls every now and then; it was inevitable. The Maud Maldeville College for Young Ladies, an antiquated establishment that had closed its doors forever just before the war, had once been populated with the daughters of the Empire, young girls whose parents resided—whose early childhood had been spent—in some pink-shaded area of the globe, far away from the pleasantly rolling hills of the South Downs where they had all, inexplicably, found themselves. Harriet did not dwell on that period of her life—couldn’t, really, as much of that first year at school was a fog. Both her own and Valerie’s parents had been in India; perhaps that was why they had become friends. A single bright flame in what was otherwise a dark time.

  But today she had a role to play.

  ‘Daphne, a divorce? Not really!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. Ssh! No one’s supposed to know,’ hissed Valerie. ‘She told me in strictest confidence at the Hensons’ last week.’ She observed Daphne through narrowed eyes and a haze of cigarette smoke. ‘Damned foolish, if you ask me.’

  ‘The divorce? Why? What do you know?’

  ‘No, silly. Her telling me in confidence. Surely she knows I’ll blab to all and sundry?’

  Daphne chose that moment to look over and smile and wave and they both smiled and waved back.

  ‘Actually, I’ve been very good,’ Valerie resumed. ‘You’re only the third person I’ve told—not including David, of course. Marjory! How are you? And Geoffrey. You both look divine.’

  They kissed the Hensons, who had themselves just arrived. Marjory Henson was in some sort of fluffy white thing so that she resembled a giant meringue. Geoffrey was in his usual tweeds, though as it was seventy-five degrees outside, his face, normally a dull pink, was now the hue and shininess of a Royal Mail pillar box.

  ‘Their eldest daughter has just debuted,’ Valerie remarked in an aside, once the Hensons were out of earshot. ‘I don’t believe she was a great success.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that you told two other people about the Goodfellows before you told me?’ demanded Harriet.

  ‘Darling, I haven’t seen you.’

  ‘There’s such a thing as a telephone.’

  ‘It’s hardly the sort of thing one says over the telephone.’

  ‘I would have thought it was exactly the sort of thing one would say over the telephone. What else is a telephone for?’

  ‘I’m rather afraid the ice sculpture is melting!’

  Valerie’s husband David strode over, beaming cheerfully, as though a vast sculpture melting all over his expensive drawing room floor was part of the entertainment. ‘Harri! It’s marvellous to see you! You look radiant!’

  ‘On the contrary. I look like someone whose glass is empty and who is wondering when they’re going to get a refill.’

  As David signalled to one of the hired waiters who was floating around balancing a tray of glasses, Harriet stole a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was a little after three o’clock. Cecil had said he was going in to the office this afternoon. Surely they would have to leave soon?

  What if the police returned while they were out?

  Beside her, David drained the last of his champagne and reached for two fresh glasses.

  ‘Harri, what the devil’s going on over at Emp and Col?’ and Harriet froze, a cigarette halfway to her lips. ‘The share price is wobblier than a bowl of raspberry jelly. Is Cecil at all concerned?’

  ‘He’s not concerned, no,’ Harriet replied. ‘The share price always goes up and down. That’s what share prices do.’

  David had said that himself at some function or in some interview. But it seemed to Harriet that Empire and Colonial’s share prices tended to go down while David’s company’s share price went up.

  ‘Sounds like time to get out of the shipping business,’ David remarked as casually as one’s nanny might suggest it was time to get out of the bath.

  And for someone like David it was as easy as getting out of the bath. But for Cecil—no. She could no more imagine Cecil working in some other office, in some other industry, than she could imagine Queen Elizabeth landing a job at a Lyons tea shop. She could see Cecil through the French doors, standing with the Hensons in the garden, making some point, putting his glass down to make the point better—some voyage he had been on, some new ship about to be built. Or not built. It seemed embarrassing suddenly to have a husband who was unable to get out of shipping.

  ‘He likes shipping,’ she said, because that was the truth. ‘Oh, is that Princess Margaret?’

  She hadn’t spoken in a particularly loud voice yet at her words every conversation halted, every raised glass hung suspended in midair and hands in the act of reaching for a morsel of smoked salmon froze as a room full of people far too well bred to do anything as crude as stare, were, nonetheless, instantly alert.

  Royalty was in their midst.

  ‘Oh, no, my mistake,’ murmured Harriet as a rather large young girl in a last-season Dior frock and clutching an ugly red handbag came into the room. There was a general sort of sigh and the talking and drinking and nibbling resumed.

  ‘It’s Stella,’ said Valerie, obviously disappointed. ‘David’s niece. They live in Bromley.’ She sighed and reached for another cigarette. ‘Oh, how’s that dashing brother of yours, Harri?’

  There was a pause. Valerie frowned and leaned closer.

  ‘What is it, darling? What have I said?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Harriet brightly. She took a mouthful of champagne. ‘As a matter of fact I saw Simon yesterday. At Leo Mumford’s. And he was with some deb fifteen years his junior!’

  ‘Not really!’

  ‘Yes. Can’t say I conversed with her. Cecil did and reported that she seemed rather idiotic.’


  ‘Oh well, one tends to be at that age. Lord knows, we were.’ Valerie laughed.

  Harriet was silent. She remembered her debutante year and the years immediately afterwards as being a constant, anxious round of parties and luncheons and balls that everyone had tried so hard to enjoy, but underneath it all there had been that constant, panic-stricken fear: What if I don’t find a husband? What if no one wants me? Most of the girls had had their mothers, of course, to see them through it. She had had father once or twice until he had become too ill; Simon on occasion, when she had begged him. In the end she had learnt to do things on her own. Indeed, she had done so since she had come to England as a twelve-year-old. It had been a watershed. In India she had still been a child. If she had appeared idiotic after that it had, she realised, been a front.

  ‘I’m rather afraid it looks as if Princess Margaret isn’t coming,’ she observed.

  ‘Was that Peter Goodfellow I saw talking to David?’

  Harriet nodded. ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  It was almost four o’clock. They had left the Swanbridges’ and Cecil had suggested they walk the short distance northwards to Athelstan Gardens instead of hailing a cab.

  ‘I understood he was tipped for a Cabinet post, but nothing happened in the reshuffle.’

  ‘No.’ Harriet slowed her pace as she was already a step ahead of Cecil. Why had he insisted on walking? Hadn’t he said he was going to the office?

  Kings Road was quiet and sultry in a summer Sunday afternoon way. Few cars drove past and the only people out walking were nannies with small children and a scattering of elderly Eastern European migrants dragging reluctant pugs.

  Perhaps Cecil was no longer thinking of going to the office? Perhaps he had decided the Rocastle thing was not an urgent matter? So far he had said nothing about the policemen who had come to the house the day before. After dinner the previous evening he had retired to his study and had not emerged until after she had gone to bed. This morning over breakfast the talk had chiefly been of the televising of the Coronation—Julius had overheard something yesterday at Leo’s. Cecil had had plenty to say on the matter and a rather tense exchange had followed, resulting in them all finishing their breakfasts in silence. Cecil had retired once more to his study. Did he think she had simply forgotten? Did he think she would accept no explanation? It was a man’s prerogative, he would have said, had she questioned him, to keep his business to himself.