‘I am too,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘Are you really only eighteen?’
‘No. A little more.’
‘I thought so.’
They drank the brandy. ‘Come and sit here by me,’ she said, and started suddenly to cry.
‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘don’t. It’s all right. You’re so brave.’
‘I’m lonely,’ she said, ‘so lonely. And so hopeless.’
‘Don’t be. You’re not alone. And we can’t afford to lose hope,’ he said. And he took her in his arms, simply to comfort her, and suddenly there was another mood between them, urgent, almost shocking in its violence. He turned her face to kiss it.
‘No,’ she said, ‘not here. Maurice might come. Upstairs.’
It was the first time he had slept with anyone so sexually accomplished. He was not totally inexperienced, but the things Amelie showed him that night, a blend of gentleness and almost brutal passion, stayed with him always. They made love over and over again, until the dawn had broken, and they were both exhausted, and the world for both of them had narrowed entirely to one room, one bed; to piercing desire, to tender exploration, and again and again, the surging roar of release. In the morning she looked at him as they lay there, unable to feel anything any more but a sweet weariness, and she kissed him, all of him, first his lips, then his shoulders, his chest, his stomach, buried her face in his pubic hair, tongued his penis gently, and then raised herself on her elbow and smiled at him.
‘I haven’t done much of this sort of thing,’ he said, taking her fingers and kissing them tenderly, one by one, ‘not with anyone who – well, who knew so much. I’m not very practised.’
‘You did very beautifully,’ she said, in English, ‘you are a fine lover. Now,’ briskly, getting up from the bed and pulling on her robe, ‘get up. This is not a good idea. It would get out and they would be suspicious. It must not happen again.’
It never did.
In time Julian did more challenging and dangerous work. He became, amongst other things, quite a formidable forger, and spent a year in the house of a country postman, who produced a large percentage of the documents issued to escaping prisoners en route to the South or to England.
He developed a love of Northern France and its curiously English, lush countryside; he was captured, interrogated and escaped; he spent three months of the German occupation hiding, his cover finally blown, living rough, killing wild animals, catching fish; he made himself extremely ill eating poisonous fungi he mistook for mushrooms and lay for days in a cave, too weak and in too much pain even to crawl from his own vomit. But he recovered. And he escaped from all of it, returning home in 1945 hugely changed; the charming, flippant boy a complex man, his courage and his brilliance unquestionably established. He had learnt to live with solitude and with fear; he had learnt to fix his mind absolutely on the end and to disregard the means; he had learnt to be ruthless, cruel, devious and totally pragmatic; he had learnt to trust no one but himself; to set aside sentiment, personal loyalty, and perhaps most crucially self-doubt.
Letitia looked at him as he sat before the fire in the drawing room at Maltings the night he came home, his initial joy and pleasure lost in exhaustion and hurtful memories, and realized that he had aged not five years but a lifetime.
Before her sat an old man who had seen and faced the very worst and now had to remember and live with it for the rest of his life; and the fact that he was only twenty-five years old was absolutely irrelevant.
He had lost innocence, he had lost faith in human nature, he had lost trust and to a degree he had lost happiness. And what, she wondered, gazing into the fire with him, and trying to imagine what he saw there, had he found?
Julian turned to her and smiled suddenly; aware, as he always had been, of the drift of her thoughts. ‘It’s all right, Mother, I’m not going to crack up on you. You mustn’t worry about me. It’s not all been bad.’
‘Hasn’t it?’
‘No. A lot of it has been good.’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, the loyalty, the friendship. And seeing the sheer power of people’s courage. People were so brave. They risked not just death, that was the easy option; they risked terrible things: prison, torture, the capture of their families. But they went on. It was extraordinary.’
‘It’s a powerful thing, hope,’ said Letitia. Her eyes were bright with tears.
‘Yes, it is. So powerful that it worked. In the end. But it was a long time. And we couldn’t forget, any of us, ever.’
‘Will you go back, will you see any of them again?’
‘I don’t know. I might. It’s hard to know. Nothing would be the same. After being so close, knowing such trust, such – well, love I suppose. Could you go back just on an idle visit? I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe not.’ She was silent. ‘Where did you live? How did you live?’
‘Oh, all kinds of places. All over Northern France. With Amelie Dessange, I told you about her, for a long time. I stayed on a farm for a while, labouring, towards the end. I lived rough for a while, as you know. Most recently I was further up the coast, quite near Deauville, lodging with a funny old chap. You’d have liked him. He was a chemist. Still is, of course. He escaped. God knows how. Only one in his family who did.’ He was quiet suddenly, his jaw tightening; he took a gulp of whisky and then looked at her and tried to smile.
‘Knowing him was very good for me. It’s given me lots of ideas. In fact I know what I want to do now. With my life, I mean.’
‘What, my darling?’ said Letitia, turning the evening determinedly back into a positive occasion. ‘Tell me. I’ve thought about it so much, I do hope it’s not a career in the Foreign Office. Or the army.’
‘God forbid,’ said Julian, ‘they both require a degree of self-abnegation, and I’ve had quite enough of that. No, I want to go into the pharmaceutical business. And possibly cosmetics.’
‘Julian, darling,’ said Letitia, half amused, half astonished, ‘whatever gave you that idea?’
‘Oh,’ said Julian, his eyes dancing, enjoying her slight unease with the situation and this rather unmasculine notion. ‘This old boy. I worked in his lab with him quite a lot. You know I loved chemistry at school. I’d have read it at Oxford if the war hadn’t happened.’
‘Do you think you’ll ever want to go now?’ said Letitia. ‘They said they’d keep your place.’
‘No. Fooling around with a lot of kids. Couldn’t possibly.’
‘It’s a pity in a way.’
‘So are lots of things.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, anyway, you’d be surprised what I learnt. I can make all kinds of things. A jolly good cough mixture. A sleeping draught. Anti-inflammatory medicine. All sorts. And then I started fiddling around with creams and lotions and that sort of thing.’
‘Do you mean skin creams?’
‘Yes.’
‘Darling,’ said Letitia, patting his hand, ‘I’d sell my soul for something like that. All you can buy now is Pond’s Cold Cream. Too awful. You didn’t bring any of your creams back with you, did you?’
‘Fraid not. But I have got the formulas. And when I’ve settled down a bit I thought I’d fix up some sort of lab in one of the outhouses and play about a bit. It’s fascinating stuff, Mother. I know it’s an odd thing to bring back with you from the war, but there it is. I think I could make a business of it. It must be better than an addiction to pornography, or the burning desire to write a manual on fifty-five new ways to kill a man. So many of the chaps got bitter and defeated.’
‘Weren’t you afraid of that?’ said Letitia.
‘No, not at all. I knew I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t allow it.’
It was an extraordinarily revealing remark. Letitia took it in, put it temporarily aside, and then turned back to the future.
‘I love the idea, Julian, but how are you going to get started? It’s not a world that either of us knows a lot about.’
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br /> ‘No,’ said Julian, accepting her involvement without question, ‘but we can learn. Would you like to help?’
‘Of course I would. I’d love to. But I haven’t got any money. Not on the scale you’d need, anyway. And James certainly hasn’t. It’s no use looking here for backing. And I can’t imagine there will be any about for quite a long while.’
‘I didn’t mean money. You can always find money if you’ve got ideas. And I’ve got lots. And anyway there’s going to be a big boom in a year or two, you see. People will be spending money like there’s no tomorrow. Or rather there was no yesterday. To annihilate. To forget.’ Another silence. ‘So I do think it’s an excellent time. Both to raise money and to start new ventures. And I really would appreciate your help. I know you’d be very good at it all. Where are you going?’
‘To get a bottle of wine. To toast your future.’
‘Our future,’ said Julian firmly. ‘Our company.’
He was right: there was a boom. But it was a little longer coming than he had anticipated. The first two years after the war were almost as austere as the preceding five. Companies were manufacturing as fast as they could but the Attlee Government was obsessed with economic recovery and everything worth having was being exported. One of the more enraging sights of 1946 was a windowful of desirable things bearing the message ‘for export only’. Everything the heart and indeed the stomach could desire was still rationed; and without the patriotic fervour of war to ease the pangs, people were growing immensely irritable.
One night James Morell, who had become increasingly estranged from his brother, came in from the farm, sat down and ate his supper without a word, and then, taking a deep breath, announced that he would like Julian to move out of Maltings; he was planning on getting married, he said, and sharing a home with anyone, however agreeable, was not a good beginning to any marriage. The house was his, he ran the farm, Julian had been talking for months about how he was going to start his own business; it was time, James felt, that he went and got on with it. He had some money, after all; James was tired of supporting him.
Julian, first amused, became irritable; his outrage increased when Letitia took James’ side and said she quite agreed, that he should go, and that she had no intention of encroaching on James’ marital status either.
‘We shall go to London together, and start a new life,’ she said, somewhat dramatically, adding that James was perfectly right in his view, that Julian had been talking about his plans for quite long enough and that it was time he put them into practice.
‘It’s all very well,’ said Julian, reeling slightly at this double onslaught, ‘but I don’t have any money, I can’t get a house in London. Or start a business. There’s no money to be had anywhere.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Letitia, ‘have you not heard of the mortgage? And you have some money your father left you. You said yourself only the other day that it was melting away, as if that fact had nothing to do with you. Very silly. I’ve thought so for a long time. And anyway, I’ve got a little money. We’ll manage.’
James, relieved that the interview with his mother and brother had been less embarrassing and painful than he had feared, said he thought he would go and visit Caroline Reever Smith, the noisily good-natured object of his affections, and hurriedly left; Julian looked at Letitia over the supper table a trifle darkly.
‘Thanks for your support,’ he said. ‘I hope you realize you’ve just talked us out of a home.’
‘Oh, Julian, don’t be so ridiculous. You sound like a spoilt child. Of course I haven’t. Where is your spirit of adventure? I’ve talked us into a new one. It’ll be the greatest fun. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a long time, as a matter of fact. Now, I think we should live in Chelsea. In fact I don’t want to contemplate living anywhere else. Goodness, I can’t even begin to believe it after all these years. Just off Walton Street, I think: Harrods round the corner, Peter Jones down the road, Harvey Nichols, Woolland’s.’
‘You sound as if you’re reciting a litany,’ said Julian, laughing.
‘I am. I feel exactly like someone who’s been excommunicated, and just been allowed back into the fold.’
‘All right, I don’t care where we go. Lots of pretty girls in Chelsea anyway.’
‘Lots. Now darling, you’ve also got to think about premises. For your business. Let’s forget about starting big and waiting for the banks, and just start. All you need is something very modest, a big garage even would do for now, which you could fit out as a lab. I expect you could contract out any kind of bottling and labelling. The thing to do at this stage is get the biggest mortgage available on the house, and keep your capital for the business. You’ll find that harder to raise money for, and you’ll get a bigger tax concession on a personal mortgage than anything. Anyway, I’ll put in any money I can rake up. I’ve been meaning to sell a few shares anyway, they’re just beginning to recover nicely. Only I’ll leave it as long as I can.’
‘Mother, you really are full of surprises,’ said Julian looking at her in genuine admiration, ‘first cash-flow forecasting for the farm, then capital investment programme for Morell Pharmaceuticals, all in one evening. You will be financial director, won’t you? And my factory manager as well?’
‘Until I get a better offer,’ said Letitia. ‘Of course I will, Julian, I’ve always loved the idea of money and business and making more. It excites me. Only it’s something I’ve never had much of a chance to do anything about in the wilds of Wiltshire. I’ve often tried to suggest improvements and investment on the farm, but James and your father would never listen to me.’
‘Well, I’ll listen. Gratefully. And as often as I can. And now while we’re in such communicative mood, Mother, and I’ve sat so politely while you put me just ever so gently in my place, will you tell me something? Something I’ve always wanted to know?’
‘I can’t imagine what,’ said Letitia, just a trifle too lightly.
‘Yes, you can. The twins.’
‘What about the twins?’
‘Well, I don’t know, I just know there was more to that than you’ve ever admitted. Some mystery. Something strange.’
‘Nonsense. Nothing of the sort. They were born . . . prematurely. They died. Nothing more to tell than that.’ But her eyes shadowed, and her jaw tightened; Julian watching her felt the emotion struggling in her.
‘Mother, please tell me, If it’s something that concerns me in some way, I have a right to know what it is. And I can find out anyway. I think James has some idea about it.’
‘Why?’ said Letitia sharply.
‘Oh, the odd thing he’s said. One night, when we were talking, just after I got home. About how there seemed to be a mystery about it all. How various people still gossiped about it. About all of us. He clammed up after that, wouldn’t say any more. But I shall just pester him if you won’t tell me.’
Letitia looked at him for a long time. Then she sighed and stood up.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To pour myself a stiff drink,’ she said. ‘And one for you. I will tell you. If only to stop you worrying James with it. I had no idea that gossip was still going on. Of course he would never ask me, he’s much too shy. You do have a right to know, I suppose. And it does concern you. You, but not James. So I would much rather you didn’t talk to him about it. Will you promise me that, Julian?’
‘Of course.’ He watched her as she sat down again. ‘I’m very intrigued now, Mother,’ he said, as lightly as he could, knowing, sensing what he was to hear was hugely important for both of them. ‘I can’t imagine what you’re going to tell me.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘no you couldn’t possibly.’
He listened, as she told him, in complete silence; afterwards he sat for a long time, just holding her hand and watching the fire, marvelling at her courage and at the human capacity for love and its power to keep silent.
Chapter Two
London, 1948–51
> JULIAN AND LETITIA Morell settled into life in London with a kind of joyous relief, falling hungrily on its pleasures and feeling they were both for the first time in their proper habitat. They bought a pretty little terrace house in First Street, just off Walton Street (‘I can smell Harrods,’ said Letitia contentedly), four tiny floors, one above the other. Property prices were just setting off on their dizzy postwar course and they got it just in time; it cost two thousand pounds and they were lucky. It was charmingly shabby, but quite unspoilt; it had belonged to an old lady, who had resolutely refused to leave it until the very last All Clear sounded, when she had finally agreed to join her family in the depths of Somerset and promptly died. They acquired much of her furniture along with the house, some of it treasures, including some extremely valuable Indian and Persian carpets, but for the most part rather too heavily Victorian for the light sunny little house. Almost everything at Maltings was too big and although James was guiltily generous, urging them to take anything they wanted, neither of them felt they should bring too many remnants of their old life into the new. Letitia brought the Sheraton escritoire and four exquisite eighteenth-century drawing room chairs left to her by her grandmother and Julian salvaged a Regency card table which had belonged to his father before his marriage and an ornate seventeenth-century bracket clock which had always looked rather overdressed on the fireplace at Maltings. ‘It’s a towny clock,’ he said to Letitia, ‘we should take it where it will feel more at home.’ Apart from that, he left everything, except a set of first-edition prints of the Just So Stories which had been a present from his godfather, and which he said reminded him of one of the happier episodes in the war.
They managed to find a few pretty things – a brass-headed bed for Letitia, who said she had always longed for one, a small Hepplewhite-style sideboard, and an enchanting love seat for the drawing room – all at country-house sales. The London shops were beginning to look a little less stark, but there was nothing either Julian or Letitia really felt right for their playhouse, as Letitia called it, so they hunted for curtains and fabrics as well. Letitia rescued her old Singer machine from Maltings and set to work, cutting down and adapting huge dusty brocades they acquired at a sale, and hanging them at her new drawing room windows.
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