A Season of Secrets

by Margaret Pemberton

  She was aware, of course, that most people who knew of Roz and Max’s adulterous affair thought it a tragedy – or certainly did so where Roz was concerned. Because of the way Roz ran her life, Violet didn’t see it as a tragedy at all. Roz was an independent young woman who travelled the world as a press photographer. Every few months she and Max would meet up in New York, or in London. Once or twice they had met in Berlin – a city Roz had made very much her own, since Dieter had introduced her to the up-and-coming leaders of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and she had become their favoured and accepted foreign-press photographer.

  ‘The Nazis make rich pickings,’ Violet had heard Roz say to Thea, when Thea had queried why she was, yet again, en route to Berlin. ‘Of all the countless political parties fighting and arguing themselves to a standstill in Germany, the Nazis are the only party growing at a rate of knots – and their meetings are always accompanied by high drama. Pullman’s can’t get enough of the photographs I’m able to take.’

  She took other kinds of photographs when in Berlin – photographs that weren’t for her press agency. She loved the grandeur of the buildings. The neo-Romantic splendour of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church on Breitscheidplatz. The Italian Renaissance majesty of the Reichstag. The grandeur of the Brandenburg Gate surmounted by its statue of the Roman goddess of victory driving a four-horse chariot.

  She took photographs in the pearly light of early dawn and in the hazy dusk of twilight. As well as buildings, she took photographs of Berliners going about their daily life in the leafy acres of the Tiergarten, the great tree-studded park that lay at Berlin’s heart. In October 1929 there had been a small exhibition of these photographs in a prestigious Manhattan Lower East Side gallery. If anyone had been in any doubt about Roz’s professionalism, after the exhibition they had been so no longer.

  ‘Apart from Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, most films being shot at Babelsberg are of individuals battling against nature in the mountains,’ Dieter was saying wryly and in a way that, if Violet hadn’t known better, would have convinced even her that he was speaking from first-hand information.

  Whatever was going on at Babelsberg, her present ambitions lay in another geographic direction. For a film actress, Hollywood was the place to be, and it was Hollywood she had in her sights. It was, she knew, where Sárközy wanted to be, and it was why she had every intention of clinging to him like a limpet.

  She wondered what it would be like to be so far away from family and friends. She would miss Hal – whom she met up with in Fleet Street pubs quite often – far more than she would miss Carrie, for being at Outhwaite so rarely, she only saw Carrie two or three times a year. She would also miss Olivia far more than she would miss Thea.

  Ever since they had been children she and Thea had been incompatible. When she had been small she hadn’t understood why she irritated Thea so intensely. Now, however, she understood very well. It was because she was frivolous, and Thea didn’t have a frivolous bone in her body.

  Why Kyle Anderson – who was handsome enough to commit suicide for, and who could certainly have had a career in films if he had wanted to – was so besotted with a serious-minded bluestocking like Thea she couldn’t imagine. The only interesting aspect of Thea’s life was her long-standing friendship with the Prince of Wales, and even that friendship was built on the boring interest that the two of them had in social and economic wrongs. To listen to Thea, unemployment and hellish housing conditions were the only things the two of them ever talked about.

  Violet couldn’t imagine how both of them could be bothered with something so dreary, but when she had once said so to Hal, he had astounded her by saying in a hard, fierce voice, ‘Unlike you, Violet, Thea has a code of principles that she lives by. You can chatter idiotically to me about anyone else, but never about Thea. Understand?’

  She had been completely taken aback – but she had understood. What she had also understood was that there was never going to be any delicious naughtiness between her and Hal, which was, she still thought, a pity. Dieter, however, was another matter entirely.

  For nearly a year now Violet had sensed that Dieter was quite capable of being naughty – and probably was naughty – just as long as his beloved Olivia didn’t find out about it. By her own lights Violet had behaved very well about this. She had been flirtatious (it would have been impossible for her not to be), but had never given him blatant encouragement – a romantic romp with a brother-in-law seeming, even to her, a little excessive.

  However, as Olivia quite obviously knew nothing about Dieter’s spats of unfaithfulness, and they consequently never upset the tenor of his own and Olivia’s marriage, she had decided she was being overly well-behaved. It had been Dieter’s suggestion that he drive out of London to visit her at Beaconsfield, ostensibly out of curiosity to be shown around a film studio. Violet hadn’t been fooled. He just wanted her on her own, away from the family. It was a situation she was entirely happy about. A girl could only be good for so long, and with Dieter no harm would be done.

  When Sárközy brought his tête-à-tête with Dieter to an end, she took Dieter on the tour they were both pretending was the reason for his visit.

  ‘We’ll go to the sound stages first,’ she said, still in her Delilah costume. ‘And then out to the back lot, where workmen are building a Dickensian asylum.’

  ‘Sounds grim. What film is it for?’

  ‘The Woman in White. It’s some kind of ghost thriller.’

  ‘If it’s from the book of the same name, it is. It seems Sárközy is right in that, where talkies are concerned, no one else is yet doing biblical epics. He’s a man with the market cornered.’ Dieter was enjoying himself. The sun was hot on his back. He had Violet all to himself, and striding around the studios with her he felt like a king – or, at the very least, like a film director.

  On the sound stages she introduced him to sound men, prop men, gaffers and focus boys. On the back lot she introduced him to a wizened little man, ‘Ginger’ Martin, who boasted that his ‘boys’ could build anything that was asked for – and that they could do so overnight, if need be. Dieter was duly impressed and even more impressed when, in the canteen, as well as introducing him to Basil Curtis and to the American actor who was playing the part of Samson opposite her Delilah, Violet also introduced him to Sybil Thorndike, an acclaimed actress he had seen in many West End stage productions.

  Miss Thorndike’s friendliness and lack of pretentiousness was, Dieter thought, extraordinary.

  ‘I saw her on-stage four or five years ago in a Bernard Shaw play,’ he said as he and Violet walked down a covered walkway towards her dressing room. ‘The play was Saint Joan, and Shaw wrote the part of St Joan specifically for her.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’d have a word with him and ask if he’d write a part specifically for me,’ Violet said as they came to a halt in front of a door bearing her name.

  She was only half-joking. To appear on the West End stage in a play written for her by Bernard Shaw would send her stock as an actress soaring into the stratosphere.

  She opened the door and Dieter followed her into a small, untidy room dominated by a large dressing table and an even larger, bulb-surrounded mirror.

  It was taken as a given by both of them that he should follow after her.

  She went straight to her dressing table and seated herself in front of it. He perched on the arm of a small sofa that was cluttered with clothes. ‘Sybil has an advantage you don’t have, where Shaw is concerned,’ he said, fighting to keep his desire for her under control for a little while longer, as Violet set about removing her Delilah make-up with cold cream. ‘She’s as passionately left-wing as he is.’

  Violet, who hadn’t the least interest in politics, rolled her eyes. ‘So she is. I’d forgotten. Do you know that during the first run of Saint Joan, when the General Strike was on and the strikers closed the theatre down, she gave them her support?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said, knowing tha
t when she had finished removing her make-up she would then remove her Philistine princess costume – and that, being Violet, she would do so in front of him.

  He shifted uncomfortably on the arm of the sofa, his erection so hard it was making his eyes water. Would she do so because she wanted the outcome that he already yearned for so badly? Or would she do so simply because she was naturally shameless – as shameless as the cabaret artistes in Berlin’s raunchy nightclubs?

  He missed his city’s nightlife. London nightlife was sophisticated, of course, but prudishly tame compared to Berlin’s sexually uninhibited nightlife. He remembered a night when he’d been with friends in the El Dorado, on the Ku’damm. A sensationally beautiful woman had walked into the club who was quite obviously naked beneath her white mink coat, a gold bracelet around her ankle and with a pet monkey sitting on her shoulder. In the El Dorado her arrival had caused barely a stir. In Bond Street’s Embassy Club she would have caused a riot.

  The only woman he had met in London whom he could imagine effortlessly dressing and behaving in such a way was Violet. Violet was fun – and having fun with her would, he knew, come with no strings. She would never expect, or want, a serious commitment from him. She would never be clinging. She would never tell Olivia and, best of all, she would be very, very naughty in bed.

  Naughtiness had been lacking in his life since his marriage.

  Olivia was passionate – she was, after all, as deeply in love with him as he was with her – but she wasn’t naughty, and nor did he want her to be. Naughty women did not, in his book, make good, faithful wives. Violet, he was quite sure, would one day make some man an appalling wife.

  For romps in the hay – which is all she would ever want from him – she would, though, be mesmerizing.

  She removed the last of the cream from her face and he walked across to her, saying thickly, ‘I’ll help with your zip.’

  Through the mirror she shot him a bright, wicked smile and rose to her feet.

  He stood behind her, his mouth dry with sexual tension. Still holding her eyes through the glass, his fingers closed on the zipper tab and then, slowly, he ran it down to the base of her spine.

  With no help from either of them, the emerald silk gown slithered from her shoulders, falling into a pool around her feet.

  Beneath it she was stark naked.

  He sucked in his breath. Her tousle of pubic hair curled even more tightly than the hair that streamed waist-length down her back, but it was the same spicy fox-red. Until now he’d always considered himself married to a redhead, but Olivia’s bush was a dark, burnished mahogany and his excitement spiralled to unbearable proportions as he realized he was about to have his first experience of sex with a true redhead.

  Violet forestalled him.

  ‘Not here,’ she said throatily, stepping swiftly away from him in the direction of the sofa and unearthing a yellow polka-dot dress from the mayhem of tumbled clothes. ‘There’s a darling small hotel this side of Gerrards Cross on the way back to London, and if you’re thinking of problems at home, booking in for the night doesn’t mean we have to stay for the night.’

  She stepped into the dress and then, still minus lingerie, into a pair of high-heeled shoes. Impishly she looked across at him. ‘I’m ready, if you are,’ she said, picking up a pair of white gloves and not feeling a twinge of guilt. ‘Let’s go and have some fun!’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Two months after Violet had embarked on her casual, reckless affair with Dieter, Carrie was on a train bound for London. It was a dull misty day in mid-November, but as the train steamed out of Yorkshire and into Derbyshire her spirits were high. All domestic staff at Monkswood were allowed an annual week’s holiday so that they could spend time with their families. Family, to Carrie, meant Hal, Thea, Olivia, Violet, Roz and Lord Fenton.

  After finishing a British film in which she had a leading role, Violet was in Hollywood and Roz was in Kenya, photographing the wildlife and native inhabitants. Hal, Thea, Olivia and Lord Fenton were all in London, and although November was an unseasonal time of year for a precious few days’ holiday, Carrie was unconcerned about this. All that mattered was that she would be spending time with three – and possibly four – of the most important people in the world to her.

  Hal’s landlady, Mrs Dabner, was happy to put her up for seven nights, on the strict understanding that they would keep to their separate rooms and that, in her words, there would be no ‘funny business’ going on between them. Hal had written to her:

  She can’t believe we’re friends, not sweethearts, but she’s a kind old stick and she’ll make you very welcome.

  When she had written to Thea about her plans, Carrie had received quite a cross letter back:

  Why are you staying with Hal’s landlady when you could be at Mount Street? The wicked witch isn’t in residence and, even if she were, it was Gorton she barred you from, not Mount Street. Do change your mind, Carrie.

  Carrie hadn’t changed her mind. Zephiniah Fenton hadn’t wanted someone who was in service as a guest in her home, and just as Carrie would never have taken advantage of Zephiniah’s absence to step inside Gorton, so she had no intention of stepping inside her London home. She had far too much pride and, even if she hadn’t, deceit of any kind was alien to her.

  Olivia, of course, had been adamant that she should stay with her and Dieter in their Belgravia Square home, but although Dieter had been faultlessly courteous to her when he had met her at Charlie and Hermione’s, she had known that he thought bizarre his wife’s friendship with someone who was under-housekeeper to one of her father’s friends. Not only that, but Olivia led a super-sophisticated life, mixing with royals such as the Duke and Duchess of York as easily and regularly as Carrie mixed with her Outhwaite friends. She couldn’t be certain, of course, but she rather thought staying with Olivia and Dieter could be a little too nerve-racking for comfort.

  The train drew into Newark. A scattering of passengers got off the train. A much larger number boarded.

  Watching them, Carrie pondered why Thea being good friends with the Prince of Wales didn’t unnerve her in the same way that Olivia’s friendship with the Yorks did. And then she realized that it was because Thea was friends with lots and lots of ordinary working-class people as well – people that she, Carrie, would be instantly comfortable with.

  She opened the magazine she had bought while waiting for the train and turned to the classified section, where scores of domestic positions were advertised. As always, she read the columns advertising vacant positions for maids and footmen with interest, curious to see how the pay and conditions being offered compared with those of the staff at Monkswood.

  There was a separate section for housekeeper vacancies, but she didn’t bother to read them. What was the point, when she wasn’t interested in looking for a new position? Monkswood was the nearest house of its size to Gorton, and even though she could no longer visit Gorton itself, she didn’t want to be even a mile further away from it than she presently was.

  Gorton . . . The rhythmic movement of the train had made her sleepy and, as her eyelids closed, she remembered the first time she had entered it. She remembered the feeling of safety and warmth she had felt as Blanche had taken hold of her hand and led her down blue-carpeted corridors lined with marble busts, and then up the grand balustraded main staircase, just as if she was a very special guest – a princess guest. She remembered again the light rose fragrance of Blanche’s perfume and the gentle tones of her voice. From that moment on, until Lord Fenton’s second marriage, Gorton had been a second home to her and, because the people who lived in it were people she loved, she had loved it. Forbidden to enter it now, she loved it still and, as she dreamed herself back there, her mouth curved in a deep smile.

  Hal was waiting for her at the barrier when the train steamed into King’s Cross station. It was a damply chill day. His coat collar was turned up and he was wearing a shabby flat cap, as if to advertise to everyone that h
e was a northerner and proud of it.

  She hurried towards him, her suitcase in one hand, a wide sunny smile on her face.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Hal! I’ve never seen so many people crowded on a station platform before, and I kept thinking of what to do if you’d been delayed by work.’

  He hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, took her case from her and said, ‘You’d have done the sensible thing, just as you always do, love. You’d have waited for twenty minutes and, if I still hadn’t turned up, you’d have made your own way to Deptford and Mrs Dabner’s.’

  She giggled. ‘I would certainly have waited for twenty minutes, but though I could have found my own way to Mrs Dabner’s – I made a note of the tram numbers you sent – I wouldn’t have wanted to find my own way there, not going for the first time.’

  ‘It’s a simple enough journey, once you know the tram stops.’

  They were out of the station now and on the pavement of a road so heavy with traffic it made Carrie’s head spin.

  ‘First off, we get a tram from here to Trafalgar Square, and then in Trafalgar Square we catch the 392 tram to Deptford.’ He shot her a broad smile. ‘I’m going to settle you in at the digs, and then we’re going to a cafe for some fish and chips. London fish and chips aren’t a patch on Yorkshire fish and chips, but they’re better than nowt.’

  ‘What’s with the “nowt”?’ she asked teasingly. ‘I thought you spoke the Queen’s English, now you were a journalist on a posh national newspaper?’

  ‘I do.’ He flashed her another smile, happy as a proverbial pig in muck at spending time with her again. ‘I was just trying to make you feel at home.’