by Ken Follett
He looked forward to it all day.
He would go downstairs a few minutes after eight, when dinner in the mess was over and Daisy’s maid had left for the night. They would sit opposite one another in the two old armchairs. Lloyd would bring a book to study – there was always ‘homework’, with tests in the morning – and Daisy would read a novel; but mostly they talked. They related what had happened during the day, discussed whatever they were reading, and told each other the story of their lives.
He recounted his experiences at the Battle of Cable Street. ‘Standing there in a peaceful crowd, we were charged by mounted policemen screaming about dirty Jews,’ he told her. ‘They beat us with their truncheons and pushed us through the plate-glass windows.’
She had been quarantined with the Fascists in Tower Gardens, and had seen none of the fighting. ‘That wasn’t the way it was reported,’ she said. She had believed the newspapers that said it had been a street riot organized by hooligans.
Lloyd was not surprised. ‘My mother watched the newsreel at the Aldgate Essoldo a week later,’ he recalled. ‘That plummy-voiced commentator said: “From impartial observers the police received nothing but praise.” Mam said the entire audience burst out laughing.’
Daisy was shocked by his scepticism about the news. He told her that most British papers had suppressed stories of atrocities by Franco’s army in Spain, and exaggerated any report of bad behaviour by government forces. She admitted she had swallowed Earl Fitzherbert’s view that the rebels were high-minded Christians liberating Spain from the threat of Communism. She knew nothing of mass executions, rape and looting by Franco’s men.
It seemed never to have occurred to her that newspapers owned by capitalists might play down news that reflected badly on the Conservative government, the military or businessmen, and would seize upon any incident of bad behaviour by trade unionists or left-wing parties.
Lloyd and Daisy talked about the war. There was action at last. British and French troops had landed in Norway, and were contending for control with the Germans who had done the same. The newspapers could not quite conceal the fact that it was going badly for the Allies.
Her attitude to him had changed. She no longer flirted. She was always pleased to see him, and complained if he was late arriving in the evening, and she teased him sometimes; but she was never coquettish. She told him how disappointed everyone was about the baby she had lost: Boy, Fitz, Bea, her mother in Buffalo, even her father, Lev. She could not shake the irrational feeling that she had done something shameful, and she asked if he thought that was foolish. He did not. Nothing she did was foolish to him.
Their conversation was personal but they kept their distance from one another physically. He would not exploit the extraordinary intimacy of the night she miscarried. Of course, the scene would live in his heart for ever. Wiping the blood from her thighs and her belly had not been sexy – not in the least – but it had been unbearably tender. However, it had been a medical emergency, and it did not give him permission to take liberties later. He was so afraid of giving the wrong impression about this that he was careful never to touch her.
At ten o’clock she would make them cocoa, which he loved and she said she liked, though he wondered if she was just being nice. Then he would say goodnight and go upstairs to his attic bedroom.
They were like old friends. It was not what he wanted, but she was a married woman, and this was the best he was going to get.
He tended to forget Daisy’s status. He was startled, one evening, when she announced that she was going to pay a visit to the earl’s retired butler, Peel, who was living in a cottage just outside the grounds. ‘He’s eighty!’ she told Lloyd. ‘I’m sure Fitz has forgotten all about him. I should check on him.’
Lloyd raised his eyebrows in surprise, and she added: ‘I need to make sure he’s all right. It’s my duty as a member of the Fitzherbert clan. Taking care of your old retainers is an obligation of wealthy families – didn’t you know that?’
‘It had slipped my mind.’
‘Will you come with me?’
‘Of course.’
The next day was a Sunday, and they went in the morning, when Lloyd had no lectures. They were both shocked by the state of the little house. The paint was flaking, the wallpaper was peeling, and the curtains were grey with coal dust. The only decoration was a row of photographs cut from magazines and tacked to the wall: the King and Queen, Fitz and Bea, and other assorted members of the nobility. The place had not been properly cleaned for years, and there was a smell of urine and ash and decay. But Lloyd guessed it was not unusual for an old man on a small pension.
Peel had white eyebrows. He looked at Lloyd and said: ‘Good morning, my lord – I thought you were dead!’
Lloyd smiled. ‘I’m just a visitor.’
‘Are you, sir? My poor brain is scrambled eggs. The old earl died, what, thirty-five or forty years ago? Well, then, who are you, young sir?’
‘I’m Lloyd Williams. You knew my mother, Ethel, years ago.’
‘You’re Eth’s boy? Well, in that case, of course . . .’
Daisy said: ‘In that case, what, Mr Peel?’
‘Oh, nothing. My brain’s scrambled eggs!’
They asked him if he needed anything, and he insisted he had everything a man could want. ‘I don’t eat much, and I rarely drink beer. I’ve got enough money to buy pipe tobacco, and the newspaper. Will Hitler invade us, do you think, young Lloyd? I hope I don’t live to see that.’
Daisy cleaned up his kitchen a bit, though housekeeping was not her forte. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said to Lloyd in a low voice. ‘Living here, like this, he says he’s got everything – he thinks he’s lucky!’
‘Many men his age are worse off,’ Lloyd said.
They talked to Peel for an hour. Before they left, he thought of something he did want. He looked at the row of pictures on the wall. ‘At the funeral of the old earl, there was a photograph took,’ he said. ‘I was a mere footman, then, not the butler. We all lined up alongside the hearse. There was a big old camera with a black cloth over it, not like the little modern ones. That was in 1906.’
‘I bet I know where that photograph is,’ said Daisy. ‘We’ll go and look.’
They returned to the big house and went down to the basement. The junk room, next to the wine cellar, was quite large. It was full of boxes and chests and useless ornaments: a ship in a bottle, a model of Tŷ Gwyn made of matchsticks, a miniature chest of drawers, a sword in an ornate scabbard.
They began to sort through old photographs and paintings. The dust made Daisy sneeze, but she insisted on continuing.
They found the photograph Peel wanted. In the box with it was an even older photo of the previous earl. Lloyd stared at it in some astonishment. The sepia picture was five inches high and three inches wide, and showed a young man in the uniform of a Victorian army officer.
He looked exactly like Lloyd.
‘Look at this,’ he said, handing the photo to Daisy.
‘It could be you, if you had side-whiskers,’ she said.
‘Perhaps the old earl had a romance with one of my ancestors,’ Lloyd said flippantly. ‘If she was a married woman, she might have passed off the earl’s child as her husband’s. I wouldn’t be very pleased, I can tell you, to learn that I was illegitimately descended from the aristocracy – a red-hot socialist like me!’
Daisy said: ‘Lloyd, how stupid are you?’
He could not tell whether she was serious. Besides, she had a smear of dust on her nose that looked so sweet that he longed to kiss it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve made a fool of myself more than once, but—’
‘Listen to me. Your mother was a maid in this house. Suddenly in 1914 she went to London and married a man called Teddy whom no one knows anything about except that his surname was Williams, the same as hers, so she did not have to change her name. The mysterious Mr Williams died before anyone met him and his life insurance bought her the hous
e she still lives in.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Then, after Mr Williams died, she gave birth to a son who happens to look remarkably like the late Earl Fitzherbert.’
He began to get a glimmer of what she might be saying. ‘Go on.’
‘Has it never occurred to you that there might be a completely different explanation for this whole story?’
‘Not until now . . .’
‘What does an aristocratic family do when one of their daughters gets pregnant? It happens all the time, you know.’
‘I suppose it does, but I don’t know how they handle it. You never hear about it.’
‘Exactly. The girl disappears for a few months – to Scotland, or Brittany, or Geneva – with her maid. When the two of them reappear, the maid has a little baby which, she says, she gave birth to during the holiday. The family treat her surprisingly kindly, even though she has admitted fornication, and send her to live a safe distance away, with a small pension.’
It seemed like a fairy story, nothing to do with real life; but all the same Lloyd was intrigued and troubled. ‘And you think I was the baby in some such pretence?’
‘I think Lady Maud Fitzherbert had a love affair with a gardener, or a coal miner, or perhaps a charming rogue in London; and she got pregnant. She went away somewhere to give birth in secret. Your mother agreed to pretend the baby was hers, and in exchange she was given a house.’
Lloyd was struck by a corroborating thought. ‘She’s always been evasive whenever I’ve asked about my real father.’ That now seemed suspicious.
‘There you are! There never was a Teddy Williams. To maintain her respectability, your mother said she was a widow. She called her fictional late husband Williams to avoid the problem of changing her name.’
Lloyd shook his head in disbelief. ‘It seems too fantastic.’
‘She and Maud continued friends, and Maud helped raise you. In 1933 your mother took you to Berlin because your real mother wanted to see you again.’
Lloyd felt as if he were either dreaming or just waking up. ‘You think I’m Maud’s child?’ he said incredulously.
Daisy tapped the frame of the picture she was still holding. ‘And you look just like your grandfather!’
Lloyd was bewildered. It could not be true – yet it made sense. ‘I’m used to Bernie not being my real father,’ he said. ‘Is Ethel not my real mother?’
Daisy must have seen a look of helplessness on his face, for she leaned forward and touched him – something she did not generally do – and said: ‘I’m sorry, have I been brutal? I just want you to see what’s in front of your eyes. If Peel suspects the truth, don’t you think others may too? It’s the kind of news you want to hear from someone who . . . from a friend.’
A gong sounded distantly. Lloyd said mechanically: ‘I’d better go to the mess for lunch.’ He took the photograph out of its frame and slipped it into a pocket of his uniform jacket.
‘You’re upset,’ Daisy said anxiously.
‘No, no. Just . . . astonished.’
‘Men always deny that they’re upset. Please come and see me later.’
‘All right.’
‘Don’t go to bed without talking to me again.’
‘I won’t.’
He left the junk room and made his way upstairs to the grand dining room, now the mess. He ate his canned beef mince automatically, his mind in turmoil. He took no part in the discussion at table about the battle raging in Norway.
‘Having a daydream, Williams?’ said Major Lowther.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Lloyd said mechanically. He improvised an excuse. ‘I was trying to remember which was the higher German rank, Generalleutnant or Generalmajor.’
Lowther said: ‘Generalleutnant is higher.’ Then he added quietly: ‘Just don’t forget the difference between meine Frau and deine Frau.’
Lloyd felt himself blush. So his friendship with Daisy was not as discreet as he had imagined. It had even come to Lowther’s notice. He felt indignant: he and Daisy had done nothing improper. Yet he did not protest. He felt guilty, even though he was not. He could not put his hand on his heart and swear that his intentions were pure. He knew what Granda would say: ‘Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ That was the no-bullshit teaching of Jesus and there was a lot of truth in it.
Thinking of his grandparents led him to wonder if they knew about his real parents. Being in doubt about his real father and mother gave him a lost feeling, like a dream about falling from a height. If he had been told lies about that, he might have been misled about anything.
He decided he would question Granda and Grandmam. He could do it today, as it was Sunday. As soon as he could decently excuse himself from the mess, he walked downhill to Wellington Row.
It occurred to him that if he asked them outright whether he was Maud’s son they might simply deny everything point-blank. Perhaps a more gradual approach would be more likely to elicit information.
He found them sitting in their kitchen. To them Sunday was the Lord’s Day, devoted to religion, and they would not read newspapers or listen to the radio. But they were pleased to see him, and Grandmam made tea, as always.
Lloyd began: ‘I wish I knew more about my real father. Mam says that Teddy Williams was in the Welsh Rifles, did you know that?’
Grandmam said: ‘Oh, why do you want to go digging up the past? Bernie’s your father.’
Lloyd did not contradict her. ‘Bernie Leckwith has been everything a father should be to me.’
Granda nodded. ‘A Jew, but a good man, there’s no doubt.’ He imagined he was being magnanimously tolerant.
Lloyd let it pass. ‘All the same, I’m curious. Did you meet Teddy Williams?’
Granda looked angry. ‘No,’ he said. ‘And it was a sorrow to us.’
Grandmam said: ‘He came to Tŷ Gwyn as a valet to a guest. We never knew your mother was sweet on him till she went to London to marry him.’
‘Why didn’t you go to the wedding?’
They were both silent. Then Granda said: ‘Tell him the truth, Cara. No good ever comes of lies.’
‘Your mother yielded to temptation,’ Grandmam said. ‘After the valet left Tŷ Gwyn, she found she was with child.’ Lloyd had suspected that, and thought it might account for her evasiveness. ‘Your Granda was very angry,’ Grandmam added.
‘Too angry,’ Granda said. ‘I forgot that Jesus said: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Her sin was lust, but mine was pride.’ Lloyd was astonished to see tears in his grandfather’s pale-blue eyes. ‘God forgave her, but I didn’t, not for a long time. By then my son-in-law was dead, killed in France.’
Lloyd was more bewildered than before. Here was another detailed story, somewhat different from what he had been told by his mother and completely different from Daisy’s theory. Was Granda weeping for a son-in-law who had never existed?
He persisted. ‘And the family of Teddy Williams? Mam said he came from Swansea. He probably had parents, brothers and sisters . . .’
Grandmam said: ‘Your mother never talked about his family. I think she was ashamed. Whatever the reason, she didn’t want to know them. And it wasn’t our place to go against her in that.’
‘But I might have two more grandparents in Swansea. And uncles and aunts and cousins I’ve never met.’
‘Aye,’ said Granda. ‘But we don’t know.’
‘My mother knows, though.’
‘I suppose she does.’
‘I’ll ask her, then,’ said Lloyd.
(iv)
Daisy was in love.
She knew, now, that she had never loved anyone before Lloyd. She had never truly loved Boy, though she had been excited by him. As for poor Charlie Farquharson, she had been at most fond of him. She had believed that love was something she could bestow upon whomever she liked, and that her main responsibility was to choose cleverly. Now she knew that wa
s all wrong. Cleverness had nothing to do with it, and she had no choice. Love was an earthquake.
Life was empty but for the two hours she spent with Lloyd each evening. The rest of the day was anticipation; the night was recollection.
Lloyd was the pillow she put her cheek on. He was the towel with which she patted her breasts when she got out of the bathtub. He was the knuckle she put into her mouth and sucked thoughtfully.
How could she have ignored him for four years? The love of her life had appeared before her at the Trinity Ball, and she had noticed only that he appeared to be wearing someone else’s dress clothes! Why had she not taken him in her arms and kissed him and insisted they get married immediately?
He had known all along, she surmised. He must have fallen in love with her from the start. He had begged her to throw Boy over. ‘Give him up,’ he had said the night they went to the Gaiety music hall. ‘Be my girlfriend instead.’ And she had laughed at him. But he had seen the truth to which she had been blind.
However, some intuition deep within her had told her to kiss him, there on the Mayfair pavement in the darkness between two street lights. At the time she had regarded it as a self-indulgent whim; but, in fact, it was the smartest thing she had ever done, for it had probably sealed his devotion.
Now, at Tŷ Gwyn, she refused to think about what would happen next. She was living from day to day, walking on air, smiling at nothing. She got an anxious letter from her mother in Buffalo, worrying about her health and her state of mind after the miscarriage, and she sent back a reassuring reply. Olga included titbits of news: Dave Rouzrokh had died in Palm Beach; Muffie Dixon had married Philip Renshaw; Senator Dewar’s wife, Rosa, had written a bestseller called Behind the Scenes at the White House, with photographs by Woody. A month ago this would have made her homesick; now she was just mildly interested.
She felt sad only when she thought of the baby she had lost. The pain had gone immediately, and the bleeding had stopped after a week, but the loss grieved her. She no longer cried about it, but occasionally she found herself staring into empty space, thinking about whether it would have been a girl or a boy, and what it would have looked like; and then realized with a shock that she had not moved for an hour.
