The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  Funny how they never spoke about India, she and Simon.

  Her eyes were drawn again to that crest above the door and the hat that hung incongruously from it. Mother had been wearing a topi the last time she had seen her. She had been lying on a bed on the veranda of the bungalow in Jhelum, one of the punkah-wallahs cooling her half-heartedly. It had been early summer, perhaps May or June, and already crushingly hot. Usually Father would have removed the entire household to Murree by then. All the Europeans fled to the hill stations to escape the oppressive lowland summer. But this summer Mother had become ill and the journey to Murree—made on horseback and elephant—had been considered too risky. So Mother had lain on a bed on the veranda and Father had ordered ice to be sent up by train from Delhi, when usually the cost would have been prohibitive.

  Ice must have been the only luxury that was prohibitive. The bungalow they had lived in was enormous, rooms for all the family plus any number of servants. And yet sparsely furnished, as though they all knew it was only temporary. And most postings in India were temporary—though they had lived in that bungalow five or six years already by that summer. So many servants. It seemed ludicrous now. And in England one had practically no servants. And one got used to that, too, after a while.

  With Father away so much, Mother had spent a great deal of her time organising the servants and attempting to train various ayahs in the finer details of child rearing, about which she had had very precise and strongly held views. This had all changed dramatically when the Great War had ended and Simon had been packed off to school in England. It was as though Mother had put all her time, all her effort, into this one child and now that he had gone she simply gave up. Instead she had spent her time at the tennis club and at the Surrey Club, a large wooden hut in a clearing about five miles away with a makeshift bar and an ice box, where all the local Europeans congregated.

  Mother had become ill quite suddenly that May of ’24. She had appeared at breakfast one morning pale, feverish and listless and had retired to bed mid-morning. It was one of those lingering fevers that one got from time to time and that weakened the whole body almost overnight. Father had been at home that day, had been preparing the household for the move to Murree, but instead he had ordered the bed to be placed on the veranda and for someone to send for the doctor. There was a European doctor in the district, though he was half a day’s ride away. The doctor had come, had examined her, had spoken to Father and had ridden off. Father had looked concerned. The move to Murree would have to be delayed.

  But there was more at stake than the planned relocation. There was Freddie.

  Freddie had just turned eight. He needed to go to school. And Harriet herself, at twelve, needed to go to an English school sooner or later. Passages from Bombay to Liverpool had been booked weeks earlier and Mother was to accompany them on the month-long voyage in June.

  It must have been late May, then, that she had watched Mother lying on the bed on the veranda with the punkah-wallah sporadically fanning her and the bearer proffering tea on a silver tray from time to time. In the hallway, trunks and bags were stacked, awaiting loading onto the bullock cart, handwritten labels identifying a ship’s name and a school outside Chatham in Kent and another in Sussex. Freddie, she remembered, had been excited about the voyage, but eight-year-old boys got excited about anything. Harriet had watched her mother from the garden and wondered for about the hundredth time if they were going to postpone the voyage; if they could just stay here. Perhaps forever.

  Father had said not. Father had announced the previous evening that a man called Stephens, a junior subdivisional officer recently arrived from England, and whom they had met only once, would accompany them to Bombay and ensure they reached their ship in good time. They would be met by their grandparents at the other end.

  At the time it had seemed surreal. A dream. A two-day train journey, a ship, a voyage. A different country. A school. Harriet’s mind had simply baulked at it all. Refused to take it all in. It had simply shut down and concentrated on the matter in hand: Mother on her bed on the veranda.

  She had looked beautiful. But then didn’t every mother look beautiful on the last day that one saw them? Especially if one was a child. Mother was such a solid presence—more solid than Father, because she was always there. Built for colonial life, Father called it, and Mother would frown crossly because it implied she was stockier than she actually was. But that day she had been—what? Wispy. Insubstantial. Or was it merely with the wisdom of hindsight that one thought that? Certainly they were not accustomed to seeing Mother lying prostrate on a bed on the veranda in her thin white cotton dressing gown. Her wrists had been so thin, and the skin over her face pulled taut and shiny, not with the red glow of the summer heat but with a paleness than was unnerving.

  ‘Dearest, do get me a drink,’ Mother had said that final day, her eyes half-closed, and Harriet had passed her the glass of water the bearer had left by her side. But Mother hadn’t taken it. She had waved it aside at the last minute as though she had lost interest in it, the same way she had lost interest in motherhood.

  Moments had passed. Harriet had thought, we are leaving soon. If Mother gets up now she could accompany us. There’s still time.

  ‘Are you off soon?’ Mother had said, suddenly opening her eyes, and the way she had said ‘Are you off?’ meant she had not been intending to come.

  ‘Soon, yes. The trunks are in the hallway. The men are loading them into the cart. Father says Stephens is to accompany us to Bombay.’

  ‘Good, dear. I’m sure Father knows best. I hear Stephens is a very good man … There were some Stephenses at Minehead. Mr Stephens was in tin, as I recall. I wonder if they are related.’ After this she had lain back again and closed her eyes. ‘This wretched heat,’ she had murmured, waving a hand over her face, and it had seemed as though she might not rouse herself even to say goodbye.

  The trunks had been secured and checked and Freddie had been marched past and placed in the cart and finally Harriet had stood beside the bed to say goodbye. She had put out a hand, instinctively, tentatively, to touch her mother’s face, but before she could do so Mother had opened her eyes very wide.

  ‘You’ll look after Freddie, dear, won’t you?’ she had said. ‘He is in your care.’

  Harriet had withdrawn her hand and looked over at Freddie, already in the cart, sucking on a stick of sugar-cane. She had taken him to church on her own once or twice, had held tightly on to his hand in the market, had read to him when he had been sick with a fever last year. But now he was in her care. All the way to England.

  What if she were to refuse?

  But one didn’t refuse. She had nodded, though Mother, by then, had already fallen asleep.

  So Harriet and Freddie and the man called Stephens had made the journey to Bombay on their own.

  ‘Would you care for some refreshments, madam?’

  Harriet looked up and half expected to see a bearer in his turban and white tunic standing there, offering her a planter’s punch. But it was the ancient waiter from the club in his black tailcoat and white gloves and with an unpleasantly swollen red nose and burst purple veins in his cheeks.

  ‘Yes, all right. Get me a vodka martini.’

  It was early to be drinking but, Lord knew, one needed some defence against this oppressive mausoleum.

  ‘Harriet.’

  Simon strode through the door of the Reading Room, dressed in his usual fashion—a tweed jacket, good quality, of course, but God, it made him made him look years older than 42, and those endless dreary brown trousers and a nondescript tie of indeterminate colour and design. It was almost as though he was at pains to disguise the fact he was a decorated Battle of Britain hero. He was still lean, his chin scrupulously clean-shaven, his hair recently cut and neatly parted. Once upon a time, in the years leading up to the war, he had been something of a catch. Cut quite a dash, one might say. And in those days he was simply a lowly clerk in a law firm. Now he had every reas
on to throw himself about and yet he kept himself tucked away. Perhaps it was the approach of middle age. Perhaps it was the war. Perhaps it was a hasty and unwise marriage and an even hastier divorce—the war again. Lord knew, it had enough to answer for. Still, there was no need to let oneself go.

  ‘How are you, old girl?’ he enquired mildly, stooping to kiss her. The kiss was somewhat stiff and awkward. Their relationship had never quite recovered from Simon being sent away to school at age eight. By the time she and Freddie had arrived in England Simon was fourteen and had had very little time for two younger siblings whom he barely knew.

  ‘I’m well. You?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Sorry I’m a bit late. There was a flap on at the Palace.’ He laughed suddenly and sat down. ‘Sorry. That’s the sort of nonsense we tell the press when a silver teaspoon has been mislaid before some dreadfully important State dinner. Actually, I lost track of the time, then it took an absolute age to fight one’s way through the hordes of tourists in The Mall.’

  Harriet smiled vaguely. He was going to give an update on preparations for the Coronation if she didn’t cut him off at once. But he didn’t give an update on the preparations for the Coronation. Instead he said, ‘There’s a great deal about Emp and Col in the press. Is Cecil at all concerned?’

  Harriet sighed crossly. Of course Cecil was concerned. This blasted business with the stolen money and the absconding employee didn’t seem to want to go away. The police had returned, twice, to the house to talk to him. A ‘talk’, apparently, was not an interview; it was less serious than an interview. It suggested they were asking for Cecil’s advice, picking his brains, rather than accusing him of anything. At least his name had been kept out of the newspapers.

  ‘He’s not concerned, no,’ she replied. ‘That silly affair with the ex-employee has all but blown over.’

  ‘I thought they’d uncovered all sorts of fraud? And the chap’s still at large, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’ve really no idea.’

  ‘Is anyone else implicated?’

  Harriet reached for a cigarette. Everyone asked about it, of course, everywhere one went. It was rather as though Cecil had been caught out in some lurid affair that had been splashed across the tabloids—everyone falling over themselves to feign sympathy with the poor wife but privately agog with curiosity. And the wife, naturally, held her head high and smiled and never, never betrayed her husband.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  Simon frowned. ‘But that’s why you wanted to meet, isn’t it? Because of Cecil?’

  Well. Here it was. She took a deep breath.

  ‘No. It’s nothing to do with Cecil.’ She opened her cigarette case and took out a cigarette. ‘Freddie’s back. He’s been back a couple of months. I thought you ought to know.’

  She closed the cigarette case and it was only when the cigarette was in her mouth and alight that she allowed herself to notice Simon’s reaction.

  He was observing her silently and his face was expressionless. Quite expressionless, but she could see now that his hands, resting on the arms of the ancient leather armchair, were rigid, his entire body tense.

  ‘I see. When did he arrive?’ he asked finally. ‘And who knows he’s here?’

  Yes, that was Simon. She could almost see the questions, the implications, flitting across his brain, one after another. Harriet drew on her cigarette. The smoke from its tip drifted in a single column towards the once ornate ceiling.

  ‘August. And no one knows.’

  ‘August!’ The fingers clenched tightly together for a moment then carefully stretched out again on the armrests. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘He asked me not to. Thought you might feel … compromised.’

  ‘Compromised! Too damned right! Good Lord.’ Simon fell silent, mulling this over. Finally he took a deep breath. ‘All right. But why now? What does he hope to accomplish?’

  ‘For God’s sake, he wanted to come home. Is that so hard to understand?’

  ‘Yes, damn it!’ and now Simon got to his feet, walked over to the window. Walked back again. Sat down. ‘He’s forfeited any right to come home. It’s not his decision to make. He can never come home.’

  ‘Well, he has.’

  The silence that followed was lengthy.

  Finally Simon spoke.

  ‘Have you assisted him?’

  His eyes locked onto hers and Harriet wordlessly returned the look. Would Simon know if she were lying? He would think he would, but Harriet rather doubted it.

  ‘You sound like a barrister, Simon. No. I did not assist him. He didn’t ask me to. He telephoned me one morning in September after Cecil had gone to work and the children were at school.’

  ‘You mean he’s been to the house?’

  ‘No, I do not.’ She spoke slowly and calmly. ‘I’m hardly going to risk letting him come to the house, am I?’ She crushed her cigarette in the ashtray and searched for another. ‘I met him in the garden.’

  ‘But good God, Harri, anyone could have seen him—could have seen the two of you!’

  ‘It’s a private garden, only residents have a key. You know that. And it’s secluded. Besides, what the hell would it matter if someone did see him? He’s perfectly anonymous. He looks just like every other young man in London, Simon. Or did you think he’d have a mark on his forehead?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘Madam?’ The ancient waiter appeared with a martini glass on a silver tray. He bowed stiffly and placed the glass on the table beside Harriet. ‘Good morning, Group Captain Paget. Your usual, sir?’

  Simon nodded curtly. When the waiter had gone he turned again to Harriet.

  ‘I still fail to understand what Freddie hopes to achieve by coming back. And what on earth is he living on?’

  ‘The money Father left him? What he saved working overseas? Lord, I don’t know.’ Harriet shrugged impatiently. Why did Simon always get so caught up in the unnecessary details? Perhaps it was working at the Palace that did it. No doubt every minute of every day was timetabled, every item of one’s wardrobe was worked out in advance, every meal, every occasion, planned down to the finest detail.

  Simon looked aghast.

  ‘You mean he’s just walked into his bank and made a withdrawal?’

  ‘How the devil should I know?’

  ‘Well, didn’t you ask him?’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  From the Reading Room came the sound of a particularly unpleasant fit of coughing. While it lasted Harriet took the opportunity to knock back her Martini. She grimaced. It was hideous—drowning in vermouth. A small and wrinkled olive rolled about at the bottom of the glass, looking as though it dated from before the war.

  ‘Your scotch and soda, sir.’

  Simon took the drink and nodded at the ancient waiter without looking at him, a frown creasing his brow and a vein twitching on his left temple. Harriet watched him through the haze of cigarette smoke, aware a similar frown had appeared on her own face.

  ‘May I?’

  Simon reached over and took a cigarette from her case and lit it silently.

  I shouldn’t have come, Harriet realised. It had been a mistake. She had come here for Simon’s sake because surely he had the right to know; would want to know? But now she realised the opposite was true: Simon would rather not know.

  She looked around for the waiter, but he had vanished and perhaps that was just as well: she felt bloody-minded enough to inform him just how undrinkable his martini was. She placed her glass on the table and sank back into the uncomfortable leather upholstery of the chair. She had come here, she realised, not for Simon’s sake at all, but because she needed his help. Help that Simon did not have, and had never had, any intention of giving.

  ‘And not even Cecil knows?’ said Simon, leaning forward and speaking in a low tone.

  ‘No. I haven’t said anything.’

  ‘Well don’t, for God’s sake. The fewer people who know�
��’

  ‘No one knows! God, you can be so bloody conventional sometimes, Simon.’

  He glared at her and they smoked in silence.

  ‘All right, then, where has he been? Where was he living all this time?’

  ‘Canada, I understand. I think he was in the States for a while, too, but mostly Canada. Toronto, Alberta, Vancouver. He appears to have moved around.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘All kinds of things. Clerical. I think he said he was a clerk for a railway company out west. And for a shipping company in Hudson Bay.’

  Simon nodded, then he sighed.

  ‘But what does he intend to do here? Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘He thinks it has.’

  ‘Then he’s mistaken.’

  ‘No, he believes there’ll be an amnesty. Soon.’

  Simon picked up the scotch and soda again and swirled it around in the tumbler. His eye was caught by the folded copy of The Times that Harriet had discarded. The headline about Peter Goodfellow lay between them in bold, 18-point serif typeface.

  ‘Perhaps there will be,’ Simon replied at last. ‘But it changes nothing. Don’t you see that, Harriet? He’s a deserter. That can’t be changed, amnesty or no amnesty. ’

  Chapter Eleven

  NOVEMBER 1952

  He would wait for Harriet to tell him herself about Freddie’s return.

  Cecil reached for his cufflinks and fixed them to his shirt cuffs. He had made this resolution two weeks ago, when he had come home from the office during his lunch-hour and seen Freddie in the garden, and, so far, Harriet had not said a word. Instead, she continued to make polite conversation over breakfast and dinner and was always ready with his scotch and water each evening. She appeared to be attending the usual number of committees, charity events, lunches, dinners, appointments with her dressmaker, gallery openings and first nights. Indeed, here they were off to Sadler’s Wells to see Don Giovanni just like any other married couple. Just as though Freddie had not come back.