by Ken Follett
‘I remember. So her name is being romantically linked with yours.’
‘In the imagination of my mother, yes.’
Daisy laughed at his discomfiture. ‘So you’re not going to marry a housemaid.’
‘I’m not going to marry Ruby.’
‘She might suit you very well.’
Lloyd gave her a direct look. ‘We don’t always fall in love with the most suitable people, do we?’
She looked at the stage. The show was approaching its end, and the entire cast was beginning a familiar song. The audience joined in enthusiastically. The standing customers at the back linked arms and swayed in time, and Boy’s party did likewise.
When the curtain came down, Boy still had not reappeared. ‘I’ll look for him,’ Lloyd said. ‘I think I know where he might be.’ The Gaiety had a ladies’ toilet, but the men’s was a back yard with an earth closet and several halved oil drums. Lloyd found Boy puking into one of the drums.
He gave Boy a handkerchief to wipe his mouth, then took his arm and led him through the emptying theatre and outside to the Daimler limousine. The others were waiting. They all got in and Boy immediately fell asleep.
When they got back to the West End, Andy Fitzherbert told the driver to go first to the Murray house, in a modest street near Trafalgar Square. Getting out of the car with May, he said: ‘You lot go on. I’ll see May to her door then walk home.’ Lloyd presumed that Andy was planning a romantic goodnight on May’s doorstep.
They drove on to Mayfair. As the car was approaching Grosvenor Square, where Daisy and Eva were living, Jimmy told the chauffeur: ‘Just stop at the corner, please.’ Then he said quietly to Lloyd: ‘I say, Williams, would you mind taking Miss Peshkov to the door, and I’ll follow with Fräulein Rothmann in half a minute?’
‘Of course.’ Jimmy wanted to kiss Eva goodnight in the car, obviously. Boy would know nothing about it: he was snoring. The chauffeur would pretend to be oblivious in the expectation of a tip.
Lloyd got out of the car and handed Daisy out. When she grasped his hand he got a thrill like a mild electric shock. He took her arm and they walked slowly along the pavement. At the midpoint between two street lamps, where the light was dimmest, Daisy stopped. ‘Let’s give them time,’ she said.
Lloyd said: ‘I’m so glad Eva has a paramour.’
‘Me, too.’
He took a breath. ‘I can’t say the same about you and Boy Fitzherbert.’
‘He got me presented at court!’ Daisy said. ‘And I danced with the King in a nightclub – it was in all the American newspapers.’
‘And that’s why you’re courting him?’ Lloyd said incredulously.
‘Not only. He likes all the things I do – parties and racehorses and beautiful clothes. He’s such fun! He even has his own airplane.’
‘None of that means anything,’ Lloyd said. ‘Give him up. Be my girlfriend instead.’
She looked pleased, but she laughed. ‘You’re crazy,’ she said. ‘But I like you.’
‘I mean it,’ he said desperately. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you, even though you’re the last person in the world I should marry.’
She laughed again. ‘You say the rudest things! I don’t know why I talk to you. I guess I think you’re nice under your clumsy manners.’
‘I’m not really clumsy – only with you.’
‘I believe you. But I’m not going to marry a penniless socialist.’
Lloyd had opened his heart only to be charmingly rejected, and now he felt miserable. He looked back at the Daimler. ‘I wonder how long they’re going to be,’ he said disconsolately.
Daisy said: ‘I might kiss a socialist, though, just to see what it’s like.’
For a moment he did not react. He assumed she was speaking theoretically. But a girl would never say something like that theoretically. It was an invitation. He had almost been stupid enough to miss it.
He moved closer, putting his hands on her small waist. She tilted her face up, and her beauty took his breath away. He bent his head and kissed her mouth softly. She did not close her eyes, and neither did he. He felt tremendously aroused, staring into her blue eyes as he moved his lips against hers. She opened her mouth slightly, and he touched her parted lips with the tip of his tongue. A moment later he felt her tongue respond. She was still looking at him. He was in paradise, and he wanted to stay locked in this embrace for all eternity. She pressed her body to his. He had an erection, and he was embarrassed in case she might feel it, so he eased back – but she pushed forward again, and he understood, looking into her eyes, that she wanted to feel his penis pressed against her soft body. The realization heated him unbearably. He felt as if he was going to ejaculate, and it occurred to him that she might even want him to.
Then he heard the door of the Daimler open, and Jimmy Murray speaking with slightly unnatural loudness, as if giving a warning. Lloyd broke the embrace with Daisy.
‘Well,’ she murmured in a surprised tone, ‘that was an unexpected pleasure.’
Lloyd said hoarsely: ‘More than a pleasure.’
Then Jimmy and Eva were beside them, and they all walked to the door of Mrs Peshkov’s house. It was a grand building with steps up to a covered porch. Lloyd wondered if the porch might give shelter enough for another kiss, but as they climbed the steps the door was opened from the inside by a man in evening dress, probably the butler Lloyd had spoken to earlier. How glad he was that he had made that phone call!
The two girls said goodnight demurely, giving no hint that only seconds ago they both had been locked in passionate embraces; then the door closed and they were gone.
Lloyd and Jimmy went back down the steps.
‘I’m going to walk from here,’ Jimmy said. ‘Shall I tell the chauffeur to drive you back to the East End? You must be three or four miles from home. And Boy won’t care – he’ll sleep until breakfast-time, I should think.’
‘That’s thoughtful of you, Murray, and I appreciate it; but, believe it or not, I feel like walking. Lots to think about.’
‘As you wish. Goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight,’ said Lloyd; and, with his mind in a whirl and his erection slowly deflating, he turned east and headed for home.
(iv)
London’s social season ended in the middle of August, and still Boy Fitzherbert had not proposed marriage to Daisy Peshkov.
Daisy was hurt and puzzled. Everyone knew they were courting. They saw one another almost every day. Earl Fitzherbert talked to Daisy like a daughter, and even the suspicious Princess Bea had warmed to her. Boy kissed her whenever he got the chance, but said nothing about the future.
The long series of lavish lunches and dinners, glittering parties and balls, traditional sporting events and champagne picnics that made up the London season came to an abrupt end. Many of the new friends Daisy had made suddenly left town. Most of them went to country houses where, as far as she could gather, they would spend their time hunting foxes, stalking deer, and shooting birds.
Daisy and Olga stayed for Eva Rothmann’s wedding. Unlike Boy, Jimmy Murray was in a rush to marry the woman he loved. The ceremony was held at his parents’ parish church in Chelsea.
Daisy felt she had done a great job with Eva. She had taught her friend how to choose clothes that suited her, smart styles without frills, in plain, strong colours that flattered her dark hair and brown eyes. Gaining in confidence, Eva had learned how to use her natural warmth and quick intelligence to charm men and women. And Jimmy had fallen in love with her. He was no movie star, but he was tall and craggily attractive. He came from a military family with a modest fortune, so Eva would be comfortable, though not rich.
The British were as prejudiced as anyone else, and at first General Murray and Mrs Murray had not been thrilled at the prospect of their son marrying a half-Jewish German refugee. Eva had won them over quickly, but many of their friends still expressed coded doubts. At the wedding Daisy had been told that Eva was ‘exotic’, Jimmy was
‘courageous’, and the Murrays were ‘marvellously broad-minded’, all ways of making the best of an unsuitable match.
Jimmy had written formally to Dr Rothmann in Berlin, and had received permission to ask Eva for her hand in marriage; but the German authorities had refused to let the Rothmann family come to the wedding. Eva had said tearfully: ‘They hate Jews so much, you’d think they’d be happy to see them leave the country!’
Boy’s father, Fitz, had heard this remark, and had later spoken to Daisy about it. ‘Tell your friend Eva not to say too much about Jews, if she can avoid it,’ he had said, in the tone of one who gives a friendly warning. ‘Having a half-Jewish wife is not going to help Jimmy’s army career, you know.’ Daisy had not passed on this unpleasant counsel.
The happy couple went off to Nice for their honeymoon. Daisy realized with a pang of guilt that she was relieved to get Eva off her hands. Boy and his political pals disliked Jews so much that Eva was becoming a problem. Already the friendship between Boy and Jimmy had ended – Boy had refused to be Jimmy’s best man.
After the wedding, Daisy and Olga were invited by the Fitzherberts to a shooting party at their country house in Wales. Daisy’s hopes rose. Now that Eva was out of the way, there was nothing to stop Boy proposing. The earl and princess must surely assume he was on the point of it. Perhaps they planned for him to do so this weekend.
Daisy and Olga went to Paddington station on a Friday morning and took a train west. They crossed the heart of England, rich rolling farmland dotted with hamlets, each with its stone church spire rising from a stand of ancient trees. They had a first-class carriage to themselves, and Olga asked Daisy what she thought Boy might do. ‘He must know I like him,’ Daisy said. ‘I’ve let him kiss me enough times.’
‘Have you shown any interest in anyone else?’ her mother asked shrewdly.
Daisy suppressed the guilty memory of that brief moment of foolishness with Lloyd Williams. Boy could not possibly know about that and, anyway, she had not seen Lloyd again, nor had she replied to the three letters he had sent her. ‘No one,’ she said.
‘Then it’s because of Eva,’ said Olga. ‘And now she’s gone.’
The train went through a long tunnel under the estuary of the River Severn, and when it emerged, they were in Wales. Bedraggled sheep grazed the hills, and in the cleft of each valley was a small mining town, its pithead winding gear rising from a scatter of ugly industrial buildings.
Earl Fitzherbert’s black-and-cream Rolls-Royce was waiting for them at Aberowen station. The town was dismal, Daisy thought, with small grey stone houses in rows along the steep hillsides. They drove a mile or so out of town to the house, Tŷ Gwyn.
Daisy gasped with pleasure as they passed through the gates. Tŷ Gwyn was enormous and elegant, with long rows of tall windows in a perfectly classical façade. It was set in elaborate gardens of flowers, shrubs and specimen trees that clearly were the pride of the earl himself. What a joy it would be to be mistress of this house, she thought. The British aristocracy might no longer rule the world, but they had perfected the art of living, and Daisy longed to be one of them.
Tŷ Gwyn meant White House, but the place was actually grey, and Daisy learned why when she touched the stonework with her hand and got coal dust on her fingertips.
She was given a room called the Gardenia Suite.
That evening, she and Boy sat on the terrace before dinner and watched the sun go down over the purple mountaintop, Boy smoking a cigar and Daisy sipping champagne. They were alone for a while, but Boy said nothing about marriage.
Over the weekend her anxiety grew. Boy had plenty more chances to speak to her alone – she made sure of that. On Saturday the men went shooting, but Daisy went out to meet them at the end of the afternoon, and she and Boy walked back through the woods together. On Sunday morning the Fitzherberts and most of their guests went to the Anglican church in the town. After the service, Boy took Daisy to a pub called The Two Crowns, where squat, broad-shouldered miners in flat caps stared at her in her lavender cashmere coat as if Boy had brought in a leopard on a leash.
She told him that she and her mother would soon have to go back to Buffalo, but he did not take the hint.
Could it simply be that he liked her, but not enough to marry her?
By lunch on Sunday she was desperate. Tomorrow she and her mother were to return to London. If Boy had not proposed by then, his parents would begin to think he was not serious, and there would be no more invitations to Tŷ Gwyn.
That prospect frightened Daisy. She had made up her mind to marry Boy. She wanted to be Viscountess Aberowen, and then one day Countess Fitzherbert. She had always been rich, but she craved the respect and deference that went with social status. She longed to be addressed as ‘Your Ladyship’. She coveted Princess Bea’s diamond tiara. She wanted to count royalty among her friends.
She knew Boy liked her, and there was no doubt about his desire when he kissed her. ‘He needs something to spur him on,’ Olga murmured to Daisy as they drank their after-lunch coffee with the other ladies in the morning room.
‘But what?’
‘There is one thing that never fails with men.’
Daisy raised her eyebrows. ‘Sex?’ She and her mother talked about most things, but generally skirted around this subject.
‘Pregnancy would do it,’ Olga said. ‘But that only happens for sure when you don’t want it.’
‘What, then?’
‘You need to give him a glimpse of the Promised Land, but not let him in.’
Daisy shook her head. ‘I’m not certain, but I think he may have already been to the Promised Land with someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know – a maid, an actress, a widow . . . I’m guessing, but he just doesn’t have that virginal air.’
‘You’re right, he doesn’t. That means you have to offer him something he can’t get from the others. Something he’d do anything for.’
Daisy wondered briefly where her mother had got this wisdom, having spent her life in a cold marriage. Perhaps she had done a lot of thinking about how her husband, Lev, had been stolen from her by his mistress, Marga. Anyway, there was nothing Daisy could offer Boy that he couldn’t get from another girl, was there?
The women were finishing their coffee and heading to their bedrooms for the afternoon nap. The men were still in the dining room, smoking their cigars, but they would follow in a quarter of an hour. Daisy stood up.
Olga said: ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’ll think of something.’
She left the room. She was going to go to Boy’s room, she had decided, but she did not want to say so in case her mother objected. She would be waiting for him when he came for his nap. The servants also took a break at that time of day, so it was unlikely that anyone would come into the room.
She would have Boy on his own, then. But what would she say or do? She did not know. She would have to improvise.
She went to the Gardenia Suite, brushed her teeth, dabbed Jean Naté cologne on her neck, and walked quietly along the corridor to Boy’s room.
No one saw her go in.
He had a spacious bedroom with a view of misty mountaintops. It felt as if it might have been his for many years. There were masculine leather chairs, pictures of airplanes and racehorses on the wall, a cedar wood humidor full of fragrant cigars, and a side table with decanters of whisky and brandy and a tray of crystal glasses.
She pulled open a drawer and saw Tŷ Gwyn writing paper, a bottle of ink, and pens and pencils. The paper was blue with the Fitzherbert crest. Would that one day be her crest?
She wondered what Boy would say when he found her here. Would he be pleased, take her in his arms, and kiss her? Or would he be angry that his privacy had been invaded, and accuse her of snooping? She had to take the risk.
She went into the adjoining dressing room. There was a small washbasin with a mirror over it. His shaving tackl
e was on the marble surround. Daisy thought she would like to learn to shave her husband. How intimate that would be.
She opened the wardrobe doors and looked at his clothes: formal morning dress, tweed suits, riding clothes, a leather pilot’s jacket with a fur lining, and two evening suits.
That gave her an idea.
She recalled how aroused Boy had been, at Bing Westhampton’s house back in June, by the sight of her and the other girls dressed as men. That evening had been the first time he had kissed her. She was not sure why he had been so excited – such things were generally inexplicable. Lizzie Westhampton said some men liked women to spank their bottoms: how could you account for that?
Perhaps she should dress in his clothes now.
Something he’d do anything for, her mother had said. Was this it?
She stared at the row of suits on hangers, the stack of folded white shirts, the polished leather shoes each with its wooden tree inside. Would it work? Did she have time?
Did she have anything to lose?
She could pick the clothes she needed, take them to the Gardenia Suite, change there, and then hurry back, hoping that no one saw her on the way . . .
No. There was no time for that. His cigar was not long enough. She had to change here, and fast – or not at all.
She made up her mind.
She pulled her dress off.
She was in danger now. Until this moment, she might have explained her presence here, just about plausibly, by pretending that she had lost her bearings in Tŷ Gwyn’s miles of corridors and gone into the wrong room by mistake. But no girl’s reputation could survive being found in a man’s room in her underwear.
She took the top shirt off the pile. The collar had to be attached with a stud, she saw with a groan. She found a dozen starched collars in a drawer with a box of studs, and fixed one to the shirt, then pulled the shirt over her head.
She heard a man’s heavy footsteps in the corridor outside, and froze, her heart beating like a big drum; but the steps went by.
She decided to wear formal morning dress. The striped trousers had no suspenders attached, but she found some in another drawer. She figured out how to button the suspenders to the trousers, then pulled the trousers on. The waist was big enough for two of her.
