‘Ian?’ Liza repeated, dazed, as if the name was new to her.
‘Oh, my God,’ Henry breathed. ‘Oh, dear Christ.’
‘Do you know, I remember now,’ Liza said, after a pause, ‘when you got back from that party… it was a charity do, and you all had to present Queen Mary with a little purse filled with money… you said… Yes, I remember you complained of a stomach ache.’ She looked at Juliet, her face strained. ‘We kept you in bed for several days, because we thought you had ’flu or something. Oh, darling, if only you’d told us,’ she said, breaking down in tears. ‘I can’t bear to think how much you’ve suffered.’
Henry rose stiffly to his feet, as if he’d aged greatly in the last few minutes. ‘I’m going to call the police.’
‘No, Dads. I simply couldn’t bear to have to go through all that,’ Juliet said vehemently. ‘I’ve kept it to myself all these years, and I’d rather it stayed that way. God, haven’t I been through enough scandal in the past few years, without having this brought up?’ she added pleadingly.
Liza nodded. ‘She’s right, Henry. This is the last thing she needs.’
‘And it won’t undo the damage Ian’s done,’ Juliet pointed out. ‘It won’t stop the nightmares or my feelings of being worthless. And it won’t bring Daniel back,’ she added brokenly.
Henry dropped back wearily into his chair. ‘I’ll deal with Ian myself then,’ he added cryptically.
‘Let me take you down to Hartley, dearest,’ Liza coaxed. ‘Just for a few days. You’re not well enough to work, and I think some peace and quiet is just what you need. You know how Granny loves to spoil you.’
Juliet gave a deep sigh, as if some of the burden she’d been carrying for so long had been partly lifted. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. ‘I used to be terrified Ian would do something to the others. I was always watching out, to make sure they weren’t alone with him.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ Liza kept saying.
Henry said no more, but sat, silent and brooding, shocked to the core that he’d never realized what his lifelong friend had done. Everything was fitting into place, now. Including Juliet’s refusal to be at Hartley if Ian was coming to stay.
This was the most terrible blow Henry had ever received in his life, for Ian had not only assaulted Juliet, he’d betrayed over forty years of close friendship and trust.
‘I’m going out,’ he informed Liza and Juliet stiffly, as he got up and walked to the door.
‘When will I see you again, Henry?’ Liza called after him.
‘I’ll join you all at Hartley, at the weekend,’ he replied curtly. A minute later they heard the front door slam.
* * *
‘Have you heard about Uncle Ian?’ Rosie asked in a gossipy voice.
It was a hot June day, and once again various members of the family had drifted down to Hartley for the weekend, and they were having lunch on the terrace.
‘What about him?’ Liza asked crisply without looking up.
‘Haven’t you heard, Daddy?’ Rosie asked. ‘He’s been in St George’s Hospital.’
‘Oh, dear, what’s the matter with him?’ Lady Anne asked with genuine concern.
While Henry continued to eat without saying anything, Rosie continued, ‘He’s been in some kind of accident. I bumped into Aunt Helen in Peter Jones yesterday and she seemed very worried. I don’t know whether he was knocked down by a car or what, but she said his jaw had been badly broken, and it’s had to be wired, and most of his teeth have been knocked out.’
‘Fancy that,’ Juliet remarked drily, sipping her wine.
Rosie looked deflated that her news hadn’t caught her family’s imagination. ‘You ought to send him some flowers or something, Mummy,’ she said sulkily. ‘I suppose a basket of fruit would be no good, because Aunt Helen said he can only suck things through a straw.’
‘What… like milk?’ Charlotte asked, interested, as she waved away a bumble bee that was droning sleepily over the lunch table. ‘I’d hate to have to live on milk. He’ll get awfully thin.’
‘I’m sure he’ll survive,’ Liza observed briskly, avoiding eye contact with Henry. ‘Now, who would like some more potatoes?’
‘The war news is much better, isn’t it?’ Lady Anne observed diplomatically, sensing the tension in the atmosphere.
Amanda looked up, alerted by the thought of a more intelligent topic than stupid social gossip. ‘You mean we’ve landed in France? It could be the beginning of the end of the war, couldn’t it?’
‘The Allied forces have invaded Normandy,’ Henry corrected, the colour coming back to his tired face. ‘It is great news.’ He paused thoughtfully. Normally he’d have been discussing the state of the war with Ian, and that was something he missed now. On the other hand, there were things Ian had told Henry over the years that were surely state secrets and should not have been repeated. Betrayal and untrustworthiness seemed to be his forte.
‘Thank God for the Americans,’ agreed Rosie enthusiastically. ‘Without them I don’t know what we’d have done.’
She was happier these days, because Salton was coming round to the idea of their getting married in England at the beginning of the following year.
‘We must be grateful to the Russians, too,’ Lady Anne observed. ‘For a dreadful moment in 1940, I really feared we’d be invaded, and that would have been it.’
‘Will the war end this year?’ Charlotte asked hopefully.
‘We’ve a long way to go yet,’ Henry warned, ‘unless Germany surrenders, and I can’t see that happening.’
‘I reckon once the Allied forces get to Paris, we’ll be on the home straight,’ Juliet said.
Charlotte was determined to know more. ‘And then what will we do?’
‘Salton and I will go and live in Washington,’ Rosie affirmed.
‘I want to do a shorthand and typing course… if I’m not allowed to go to university,’ Amanda asserted, giving her parents a reproachful look, ‘and then I can get a secretarial job in the House of Commons.’
Henry looked at his fourth daughter with secret amusement, wondering how long this socialistic phase was going to last. Perhaps it would be cleverer not to oppose it.
‘We never said we wouldn’t allow you to go to university,’ he remarked mildly. ‘More and more young women go these days, and if you’re still interested in a couple of years, why don’t you try and get into Oxford, where I went?’
Amanda’s face was transfixed with excitement. ‘You mean it?’ she gasped. ‘You really wouldn’t mind?’
‘I want you to do what will make you happiest, darling.’
She leapt up from the table, and flung her arms around his neck. ‘Thank you, Daddy. Thank you. Thank you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, instead of being a silly débutante in an absurd fluffy white dress!’
Rosie and Juliet exchanged glances. Then Rosie turned to Amanda. ‘You won’t miss much.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Juliet remarked quietly. Her face still had a pinched look, and her eyes were sunken, as if she hadn’t slept for weeks. ‘Was it all so ghastly?’
She might never have met Daniel if she hadn’t Come Out.
‘It’s a cattle market!’ Amanda asserted. ‘It’s a competition for who can nab the most eligible man first!’
Henry laughed, but Liza looked pained.
‘You’re being unfair, Amanda,’ she said, hurt. ‘I know times have changed, but when I was a girl, and when Rosie and Juliet were eighteen, marriage was the best career open to a woman, no matter what her class or background. Being a wife and mother, and running a home was what women did.’
‘And there’s nothing wrong with that,’ Henry said firmly. ‘It’s what most women want, in the end, anyway, whether they admit it or not.’
‘It’s certainly not what I want,’ Amanda said scornfully. ‘I hate the idea of having squalling runny-nosed brats, and a husband who expects dinner on the table every night.�
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‘Then it is certainly wiser if you have a career, my dear,’ Lady Anne said calmly. ‘I think university life would suit you very well.’
‘I know what I want to do, when I’m older,’ Charlotte remarked, her exquisite face suddenly sparkling. ‘I want to be a film star.’
‘Many a true word is spoken in jest,’ Juliet quoted, with the hint of a smile. ‘If Churchill’s daughter Sarah can be an actress, why shouldn’t you?’
* * *
Things seemed to be rushing more quickly towards peace than they had towards war six years previously.
On New Year’s Eve, the atmosphere already seemed to hold a promise of peace. The Café de Paris had been restored to its former glory, although it was a place of entertainment for the troops now. Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years was playing to packed houses. Racing had been resumed at Newmarket, and Chips Channon, doyen of the social scene for over a decade, was once again entertaining on an unimaginable scale, as if food rationing was already a thing of the past.
What was different now was that people had changed, and in the Granville family the clock could never be turned back.
They were no longer rich, Henry having lost a fortune in overseas investments. He was deeply tired, too. The years of hard work and sleepless nights had taken their toll, and all he wanted to do was to retire and settle at Hartley.
As for Juliet, living alone in the enormous house in Park Lane, the future looked so frighteningly empty and lonely she almost dreaded the day when the war ended and she’d have to leave the camaraderie of the First Aid Post, for the last time.
‘Everyone seems to have a future except me,’ she said wistfully when she was lunching with Henry one day. ‘You and Mummy will soon be at Hartley all the time. Rosie is off to the States with Salton. Louise and Shane are buying a house in Chelsea, now that she’s pregnant; and as for Amanda and Charlotte, one’s going to become a bluestocking at Cambridge, and the other’s planning to take Hollywood by storm!’ she added, with a little laugh.
Henry smiled, glad to see her laughing again, although the pain had never left her eyes since Daniel’s death.
‘… And even Aunt Candida is marrying that old bloke she brought to lunch – what was his name? Oh, yes, Andrew Pemberton,’ she added.
Henry chuckled. ‘All we need now is for Granny to announce she’s about to dash off with some heroic cavalry officer!’ he joked.
Juliet’s face softened. ‘Granny’s going to be seventy-five on May the seventh, isn’t she? She’s been so marvellous, right through the war.’
‘Knitting for England!’
‘Refusing to get anything on the black market.’
‘Changing for dinner every night, even if we’re only having a poached egg on toast!’
‘Listening to our woes.’
‘Keeping up standards,’ Henry observed robustly.
‘And never, ever, complaining.’
‘You’re right.’
‘We should give a party for her birthday, Dads.’
‘Yes. I think she’d like an elegant, formal dinner at Hartley, black tie and all that, don’t you? Like we used to have in the old days.’
Juliet nodded. ‘And black market or no black market, if Chips Channon can get hold of oysters, lobsters, salmon, venison, and God knows what else, so can Dudley! I’ll be responsible for the food, Dads, if you do the drink.’
Henry grinned, his face lighting up so that for a moment he looked like the handsome young man he’d once been. ‘Vintage champagne, of course.’
‘What else?’
* * *
Events were overtaking them as March quickly merged into April. The dinner party was to be a surprise for Lady Anne, and Warwick was secretly cleaning all the silver that had been packed away for several years, while Liza unpacked the Crown Derby dinner service, which had been kept in boxes in the stables, since it had been brought down from Green Street.
‘Let’s hide it in the pantry cupboard,’ she whispered to Warwick, ‘We don’t want Lady Anne to see it until the night of the party.’
Even Nanny got involved, washing an Edwardian white damask table cloth that seemed as big as a tennis court when it came to ironing it. Two dozen damask napkins also had to be laundered.
‘What shall I wear?’ Charlotte kept bleating. ‘And am I old enough to borrow some of your diamonds, Mummy?’
‘A string of pearls, perhaps,’ Liza replied judiciously.
There was a growing feeling of excitement in the family as the date drew nearer. And when they heard Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt and Stalin had held a secret summit of the Grand Alliance at Yalta, to discuss the last stages of the war and the plan to share power after it, everyone became ecstatic.
After the long dark tunnel of fear and apprehension, they were moving towards the light; peace was in sight.
Then Juliet, asleep in her bedroom, with the Blitz seemingly over, was awakened one night when a rocket dropped near Marble Arch, causing great damage.
‘Can you bloody believe it?’ she raged on the telephone to Henry the next morning. ‘I’ve been in this house throughout the entire Blitz, without even a cracked pane, and now this goddamn rocket had blown in all my front windows!’
It was, in fact, the last bomb ever to fall on London.
* * *
Events moved so swiftly that, apart from worse food shortages than ever, the emotional suffering of the war seemed to recede with astonishing haste as peace drew ever nearer.
In April the blackout came to an end, and a few days later it was announced that Hitler was dead.
The whole Granville family descended on Hartley, wanting to be together at this historic moment. They hadn’t long to wait.
On the morning of Lady Anne’s birthday they gathered in the drawing room to listen to Winston Churchill’s announcement to the nation on the wireless. His great voice, which had brought inspiration and assurance to everyone for the past five years, boomed no less dramatically.
‘The German war is at an end. The evildoers now lie prostrate before us…’
Lady Anne sat very upright, blinking back the tears; it was the first time she’d allowed herself to show any emotion since the outbreak of hostilities. She’d heard earlier, from Candida, that Gaston was home, safe and well, from the dangerous but successful espionage work he’d been doing behind the German lines with the Special Operations Executive. She was proud of him and she longed to tell him his father would have been very proud of him, too.
Liza wept quietly, a tiny lace edged handkerchief pressed to her mouth. ‘Thank God it’s over at last,’ she murmured at the end of Churchill’s speech.
‘Not quite,’ Henry reminded her. ‘We’re still fighting in the Far East.’
‘At least there’ll be no more bombing,’ Louise pointed out as she sat holding Shane’s hand.
Rosie looked hopefully at Salton. ‘And we can fly to Washington, soon, can’t we?’
‘I was going to tell you,’ he said grinning, ‘we’re not going to Washington, after all.’
She blanched nervously. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re staying put. I’ve been offered a swell job in London, as legal adviser to the American Embassy…’
Rosie flung herself at him before he’d finished speaking.
‘That’s the best news ever!’ she squealed with excitement. ‘Mummy, Daddy, did you hear that? Salton and I are going to be living in London!’
Juliet asked Warwick to serve champagne – ‘Yes, Charlotte, you can have some, too, darling’ – and they toasted the end of the war.
‘And here’s to Mother!’ Henry said, raising his glass again. ‘Happy Birthday… and what a wonderful day to be celebrating it on.’ Amid a feeling of ecstatic euphoria, they all toasted Lady Anne, and made her promise she wouldn’t go near the dining room.
‘We have a little surprise for you this evening,’ Henry told her fondly.
* * *
That night Juliet play
ed her part to perfection; she was the loving daughter, granddaughter and sister, the twenty-seven-year-old beautiful Duchess, who lived in a magnificent Mayfair house and had a fortune in money and jewels. She played the part so well she fooled her immediate family into thinking she was back to her happy carefree self; independent, adventurous, and out for a good time.
It was only when she returned to London the next day that the veneer cracked, splitting wide and exposing the depths of her grief and loneliness.
She cried as she had never allowed herself to cry before. She sobbed over the death of Daniel, of their baby, of all the people who had died in the Blitz, and the heart-rending scenes of horror she’d witnessed. She felt scarred, broken and devastated, because for too long she’d suppressed her emotions, for too long she’d gone back on duty and been forced to face yet more scenes of carnage.
Inconsolable, she refused to take any phone calls and stayed in her room, wanting to shut herself away from the world, which had become a cold and bleak place.
Trays of delicious food were returned untouched, and Dudley began to worry that she was having a nervous breakdown. She hadn’t left the house for weeks, hadn’t even bothered to get dressed, or put on any make-up.
Hour after hour she lay on the chaise longue in her bedroom, gazing out at Hyde Park.
One day Dudley tapped on her door. ‘Your Grace, I’m sorry to disturb you, but there’s a gentleman downstairs who insists on seeing you.’
‘I’m not seeing anyone,’ Juliet replied shortly, without even looking at Dudley. ‘I don’t care who it is, send him away.’
The Granville Affaire Page 29
