The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  ‘Oh. Can’t you read a thermometer, Nanny?’ asked Anne, sounding less wan than she had a few moments ago.

  In the end, Jean went to fetch Mrs Wallis.

  Mrs Wallis, it appeared, was about to go out. She was standing in the hallway pulling on her gloves and she looked blankly at Jean as Jean related the news of her daughter’s illness to her. Mrs Wallis picked up a spotted black and white silk head scarf and paused before the hallway mirror.

  ‘And in your opinion, Nanny, is it real or is she faking?’ she enquired.

  Jean was a little nonplussed.

  ‘I took her temperature,’ she replied carefully. ‘But these things, well, you never can tell—’

  ‘Yes, quite.’ Mrs Wallis replaced the scarf on the hall table and followed her. Upstairs, Anne lay curled up on her bed.

  ‘Anne, dear, what is it?’

  ‘Don’t feel well,’ Anne replied feebly.

  ‘Well, is it your head? Your throat? Your stomach?’

  ‘My … head,’ Anne replied after a moment’s consideration and she delicately touched that afflicted part of her anatomy.

  Mrs Wallis nodded as though she had expected this.

  ‘I suppose you had better stay home from school.’ The patient nodded meekly at this suggestion. ‘Nanny, please telephone the school and notify them that Anne will not be in today.’ And with that she turned and left the room.

  Jean followed her out and back down the stairs.

  ‘Are you going out, then, Mrs Wallis?’

  ‘Yes. I have an appointment,’ she replied, clearly surprised at the question.

  ‘Dr Rolley’s number is in the address book downstairs on the telephone table should Anne’s medical condition … deteriorate.’

  Mrs Wallis had now reached the hall mirror. Jean watched from her position on the stairs as she tied the scarf over her head and reached for a coat. ‘And of course Mr Wallis’s number at the office is in there too, should there be any kind of emergency,’ and she put on the coat, picked up her handbag and left.

  Jean went back upstairs and found Anne standing by the window, absorbed by something down below. She spun around as Jean came in, her eyes flew wide open and she raced back over to her bed.

  ‘I think it’s rude to come into a person’s room without knocking first,’ she declared from the safety of her bed.

  ‘Do you? And I think it’s rude to lie about being ill,’ and Jean marched over to the window.

  ‘I’m not lying! I am ill!’ Anne insisted, curling into a ball on her bed.

  Outside, Mrs Wallis could be seen walking purposefully along the opposite pavement. She wore gloves and a long raincoat and her face was almost hidden behind a pair of enormous sunglasses. She walked with her head down and her arms folded tightly over her chest. She stopped at the locked gate to the garden, pulled a key from her pocket and let herself in, locking the gate behind her and for a moment she was obscured by the tall privet hedges.

  Jean’s eyes swept ahead and from her viewpoint, two storeys up, the garden was spread out before her. An elderly lady sat on a bench on the far side, staring gloomily at a small white dog that sniffed at one of the rose beds. A young man in a hat and a dark grey raincoat sat on another bench opposite them. Mrs Wallis came into view and made straight for the young man who stood up and went to her. They embraced briefly and sat down side by side on the bench. They too sat staring gloomily at the same white dog that a moment earlier had preoccupied the elderly lady.

  Jean turned away and stared at Anne, who returned her gaze wordlessly.

  ‘Anne, get back into bed now,’ Jean said.

  Anne huffed moodily but did as she was told.

  Downstairs in the garden the young man turned towards Mrs Wallis and took her hand.

  A moment later Jean left the bedroom and went quickly down two flights of stairs to the hallway. She opened the address book and picked up the telephone, but it was not Doctor Rolley’s number that she dialled.

  Chapter Seven

  OCTOBER 1952

  At the newly relocated offices of Empire and Colonial Shipping Lines off Chancery Lane, Jeremy Rocastle’s office was still cordoned off. Yellow incident tape, of the variety one had got used to during the war, marked off an area around the doorway of his now vacant office. One expected such a thing around a bombsite filled with rubble and debris but here in the office, amid the soft olive-green carpet and the red leather armchairs and the forbidding portraits of former directors, it was incongruous. It was indecent.

  Cecil averted his eyes from the sealed office door and its distasteful yellow tape.

  In the first week following Rocastle’s disappearance Scotland Yard had gone through the building like a bout of influenza and statements had been taken from everyone from Sir Maurice himself down to the fluctuating team of Jamaican women who nightly cleaned the offices.

  Cecil himself had been among the first to make his statement: Rocastle had worked in his department. He had known the man for a little over a year. He had trusted Rocastle, naturally. The man had dined at his house. He had met Rocastle’s wife. On the evening in question Cecil had noticed nothing unusual. He had left the office at around 6 pm and had not seen Rocastle since.

  It was a simple and truthful statement of fact. No one had asked: did Rocastle ever behave suspiciously? Did he ever do anything to make you question his honesty? Had you ever resolved to report his actions to a fellow director and then failed to do so?

  Cecil had signed the statement and it had been taken away in a cardboard box along with all the others.

  The investigation had continued, photographs had been taken, descriptions had been circulated, doorknobs, desks and the company safe had been coated in powder and dusted for fingerprints. Why? What was the point? They all knew who had perpetrated the crime.

  The share price had dropped, of course. It was only to be expected. Foolish to suppose a story like this would remain out of the press for long, and the newspapers had had a field day. And they hadn’t spared Rocastle: old Etonian, Cambridge man, a trusted position in a highly respected firm, a respectable wife. (‘Respectable’! That was the word the newspapers used when someone’s family origins were rather obscure. Poor Mrs Rocastle.) Any whiff of scandal was eagerly pounced upon. At least there was no question anyone else was involved; that anyone else in the firm had even the slightest idea what was going on.

  Cecil had stayed in his office each evening late into the night. If one worked extra hard, if one could prove one’s loyalty to the firm, to one’s colleagues, by excelling, by working through the night if need be—Lord knows, he had done it often enough during the war—if one could just do that, night after night—

  But he didn’t work. He simply sat and went over it all in his head, and in the end he got no work done at all. Night after night. And in the mornings Miss James looked at him oddly and gave timid smiles and said nothing.

  And then it had suddenly stopped. The police had packed up and gone. Now, two weeks later, all that remained was the yellow incident tape. Had the police simply forgotten to remove it? He must remember to get Miss James to telephone them.

  Rocastle’s name had been removed from his office door. There were four small holes where his name plate had been unscrewed. Cecil had passed this very door that Monday morning in August on his way to a hastily arranged meeting with Standforth. But one could not simply destroy another man’s career without at least warning him; without at least giving the fellow a chance to explain himself, to prepare some sort of defence. He had gone back and knocked on Rocastle’s door—

  ‘Morning, Wallis.’

  Cecil started as McAnley Stanforth, the senior director and Sir Maurice’s right-hand man, passed him in the corridor.

  ‘Morning, Standforth.’

  ‘Still trying to come to terms with our black sheep, are you?’ Standforth said, nodding towards the cordoned office.

  Cecil forced a smile.

  ‘Yes. Something like that.

/>   ‘Well, I shouldn’t worry too much about it, old man. Someone like that, a rotten apple if you like, well, they’re bad through and through. Chaps like you and I can’t imagine it. Makes it hard for us to spot them.’

  ‘Yes, no doubt you’re right,’ Cecil agreed, but as he watched Standforth stride down the corridor and disappear into his office, he thought: but I did spot it. And I knocked on this door and I confronted the man.

  Rocastle had been sitting at his desk when Cecil had entered, sipping a cup of tea and reading the Daily Mail. Well, that ought to have sounded warning bells straight away. The Daily Mail! At Empire and Colonial! Rocastle had looked up calmly enough, almost cheerfully, and there had been nothing in his face to indicate guilt. Nothing to even suggest he recalled the conversation he and Cecil had had the previous Friday about the erroneous entries in the wages ledger.

  Cecil had felt a moment of disquiet. Had he made a mistake? Was he about to make an even bigger mistake and, in the process, jeopardise this young man’s career?

  But there had been a principle at stake.

  ‘Rocastle, I have given the incident we discussed on Friday a great deal of thought,’ he had announced, ‘and I feel it incumbent upon me to advise you that I have resolved to report it to Standforth.’

  He had seen the slightest flicker of something—fear? surprise?—pass across Rocastle’s face, but otherwise the fellow had remained remarkably cool. Cecil had pressed on.

  ‘An error has been made—whether purposely or by accident—and it needs to be reported. And as Standforth is director of finance, he needs to be advised. It is, I am sure you understand, nothing more than a precaution. There can be no question of fraud. Everything must be out in the open.’

  As he had outlined this course of action Cecil had had every intention of carrying it out. And yet he had not done so.

  ‘Oh, Mr Wallis. Mr Sayid telephoned while you were out. I took down his number. He’s staying at the Ritz and asks that you telephone him there this afternoon.’

  Cecil looked up to see Miss James rising from her station, a modest teak desk outside his own office, her shorthand pad and her pencil stub poised to record his reply.

  And here was the antidote, he realised; here was the cure to the yellow incident tape and the unsteady share price and the unwelcome boots of Scotland Yard in the corridors and the rotten apples like Rocastle: Miss James. Steady, reliable, faithful secretary of more than fifteen years standing, still manning her station with that same effortless determination, that stalwart and flawless professionalism, that utter dependability. Why didn’t the blasted newspapers ever report that?

  ‘Thank you, Miss James,’ he replied. And then because he could think of nothing to add he smiled.

  Miss James blushed a deep red and sat down still flourishing her pad and pencil as though she didn’t quite know what to do with them.

  Cecil stepped into his office and closed the door, pausing to draw breath. The sense of calm order that his office provided had been a steady comfort over the years but in the past two weeks it had become almost a craving. The office door was shut and Miss James was a formidable barrier against the world and the worst that it could throw at him.

  He crossed the office and settled himself in the large leather chair at his desk. It was a rosewood partner’s desk, Victorian, though not as old as the desk in his study. This was a functional desk, a daily desk. The rich rust-brown rosewood shone pleasantly in the late October sunlight. The telephone, an ink-well, the in- and out-trays and a large leather writing pad were precisely positioned. That morning’s Times was the only thing that spoilt the order. Nothing about the Rocastle affair in it, thank God. (How had it got to the point where he viewed his morning paper with a sinking feeling that did not abate until he had passed the editorial and letters pages?) Today all there had been was a story on Peter Goodfellow resigning from the Ministry, which was surprising—well, it seemed to have surprised Harriet, at any rate, who had rushed off to telephone Valerie for the gossip—but it was not a story that was going to affect the firm’s share price. He picked up the Times and deposited it in the bin.

  Photographs of the fleet lined his office: the Tostig which had made the run to New York in five days in 1910; the Harold which had shipped troops to Cape Town during the Boer War; the Ethulwulf, which had done the Peninsular mail run at the turn of the century and was now in dry dock at Plymouth awaiting break up; and the Alfred and the Eadred, which had been sunk by enemy action in the North Atlantic in ’41 and ’43. Above his head was the Swane, flagship of the Empire and Colonial fleet, taken by a New York Times photographer at the climax of that final record-breaking crossing in ’38. Four days, one hour and eight minutes! It had been thrilling—even Harriet had been caught up in the excitement of the moment.

  Then the following month the Queen Mary had done it in three days and twenty hours.

  He frowned. It seemed odd now to imagine Harriet excited. Perhaps his own excitement had carried them both along. And now, looking back, even his own excitement seemed to belong to another person.

  It had not been Harriet’s first Atlantic crossing, of course. More than a year before the Swane’s triumph she had visited New York to stay with an aunt and uncle, a voyage that had ended with the King’s abdication and Harriet’s arrival at his office one cold morning in December ’36, where she had sat before this very desk in a cherry-red coat and hat.

  It had been Miss James’s predecessor, the elderly Miss Clough, who had knocked on his office door—the old office, then, over at Moorgate—and he had started up from this desk feeling guilty because he had been staring at the wall for the last half hour trying to take in the news from the Palace.

  ‘There’s a Miss Paget to see you,’ Miss Clough had calmly announced, standing in the doorway, so that for a brief second or two one could believe that all was right with the world and one’s King had not just abdicated. But two red patches stood out on Miss Clough’s cheeks.

  Miss Paget? Oh dear Lord, yes.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Clough. Please show her in.’

  Duty called and one must put the abdication to one side, for this particular interview was going to be tricky.

  This Miss Paget, even now waiting outside his office, had just returned from New York aboard the Swane, which had docked the previous evening. According to Miss Clough, she had been travelling with her elderly father and unfortunately the father had died about two days out from Southampton. Heart failure, a natural death, but any death on board was a diplomatic and bureaucratic nightmare. Empire and Colonial Lines definitely frowned upon it. But sometimes it could not be avoided. And today was just such a day—and what a day to be dealing with such matters!

  The young lady who came into Cecil’s office and who had just lost her father in such distressing circumstances was not dressed in mourning. Mourning clothes were already going out of fashion by then, particularly so amongst the young, so perhaps the cherry-red winter coat was not so very remarkable, and yet he remembered so well the impression the young lady made as she strode into his suddenly rather stuffy and shabby office. She had been wearing a fur tippet, he recalled—though every lady wore furs in those days—and a small hat, cherry red to match the coat. And long black gloves. It was 1936, of course—December, so Harriet had been 24.

  He came quickly out from behind his desk holding out both hands in a way that was both greeting and discreet sympathy.

  ‘Miss Paget. How do you do? I am Mr Wallis. Cecil Wallis. Thank you for making this journey to our office at such a difficult time.’

  Miss Paget shook his hand with a tight smile as though she was uncertain whether he was referring to her father’s sudden demise or to the abdication of the King. Cecil realised he wasn’t sure himself. He hovered for a moment, hands clasped before him.

  ‘Please do sit down.’ He indicated the padded Edwardian chair before his desk. ‘May I start by offering my sympathy to you at this distressing time?’

  Miss Paget
shrugged. ‘Oh, well. These things happen. No use crying over spilt milk. Do you mind if I smoke?’

  Cecil blinked, a little flustered by her off-hand response. ‘No, indeed. Please do.’

  Actually, he loathed the habit, but had trained himself to prepare for every social eventuality. He opened a desk drawer and produced a silver ashtray. It was a little too chilly to think of opening the window. Besides, that would have been rude.

  She really was a striking-looking young lady. Strong features, dark eyes—what colour? One couldn’t really see, but dark, and her face had colour to it as though she had returned, not from New York where it was currently 20 degrees, but from South Africa or the West Indies. She was very self-assured, didn’t look at him at all as she concentrated on lighting her cigarette. Perhaps she was keeping a tight rein over her feelings; persons in a state of shock often did.

  Miss Paget’s father was not Cecil’s first trans-Atlantic death.

  ‘May we offer you a cup of tea, Miss Paget? I find tea often helps in these circumstances.’ He smiled in a way that offered both friendship and comfort.

  Miss Paget raised a curious eyebrow.

  ‘Does it?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Do you get a lot of this on your ships, Mr …?’

  ‘Wallis. Not a lot, no. But I’m afraid it is probably a lot more common than the average passenger would expect. We don’t advertise the fact, naturally. That would alarm our passengers. Nevertheless, we are prepared for all circumstances and I trust that we may offer a swift and, where possible, painless resolution to ease your distress.’

  The eyebrow raised a second time.

  ‘Well. You amaze me, Mr Wallis.’ She drew on her cigarette. ‘Shall we get on with it? I have an engagement at the Café Royal in one hour.’

  She certainly was a cool customer. But no doubt the young lady had not been close to her father, one often read of such things … Indeed he recalled when his own father had passed away …