Chapter Twenty-Three
AUGUST 1932
With one arm pressed hard across her waist in a fierce noli me tángere kind of way, the other holding a long jade cigarette-holder and lighted cigarette, Zephiniah stared flinty-eyed through a French window streaked with heavy rain.
On the terrace late-summer roses in antique pedestal urns shed sodden petals. The copper beech in the centre of the lawn was so wet that its leaves had a metallic sheen. The lawn was saturated. Beyond the river, where the ground rose up and merged into moorland, sheep huddled grimly together, seeking what protection they could.
Zephiniah didn’t envy them, and nor did she envy herself.
Why was it that things never turned out as she’d thought they were going to? When she’d been seventeen – in what seemed a lifetime ago – she had been certain she was on the threshold of a glorious year as a debutante and that, at the end of it, she would be engaged to a member of the peerage – or at least to the son of a member of the peerage.
Instead, one little slip and what had followed had been the nightmare banishment to Vienna in the company of an unsympathetic aunt.
When she’d returned and found herself, in her mother’s words, ‘damaged goods’, she’d thought she’d found salvation when Reggie proposed marriage and whisked her off to Argentina.
Argentina!
She blew a plume of blue smoke through her nose. Argentina hadn’t turned out as she had thought it would, but at least – unlike Yorkshire – there had been sun and heat and the excitement of racetracks and casinos. She tapped the end of her cigarette, letting the ash fall carelessly to the Aubusson carpet.
Of all the disappointments, of all the times when she’d thought things were going to turn out well and they hadn’t, the biggest disappointment was the one she was now enduring. Nothing in her marriage to Gilbert had turned out as she had thought it was going to. She had believed her marriage would bring a dizzying social life in its wake; that her long-held dream of being part of the small and elite circle of people who were personal friends of the royals would, at last, be realized.
It had been a shattering blow to discover that Gilbert actively disliked socializing unless it was with fellow members of the government, all of whom had wives who were, in Zephiniah’s by now vast experience, frumpy and tediously boring.
What made the lack of her own and Gilbert’s social life even harder to bear was Thea and Olivia’s close friendship with the Prince of Wales and with his brother and his sister-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of York.
She removed the cigarette from the jade holder and crushed it out in a nearby ashtray and then, folding her arms and hugging them tight against her chest, continued to mull over the things that were so different from the way she’d thought they would be.
She had been looking forward to having three stepdaughters, not because she was maternal, but because where Thea and Olivia were concerned, she had imagined photographs of herself with them in the Tatler, carrying captions such as: The scintillating and beautiful Lady Fenton seen at the opening of this year’s Royal Academy Exhibition with her stepdaughters, the Honourable Thea Fenton and the Honourable Olivia Fenton.
Reality had ensured there’d been fat chance of any such photographs or mentions. She chewed the corner of her lip until she tasted blood. If Thea and Olivia had wanted, they could have engineered situations and invitations where she would have become as familiar with Prince Edward and the Yorks as they were. They hadn’t done so and, to her fury, Gilbert had been equally obstructive, refusing to patronize the nightclubs Edward patronized – where, if Edward had seen them, he might have invited them to join his table.
‘The Embassy Club and the Kit-Kat Club are far too noisy to be relaxing,’ he said in a voice of sweet reason every time she suggested they go. ‘It’s not only non-stop dancing these days, it’s non-stop jazz as well.’
Gilbert’s reluctance to draw attention to his disabled arm meant that dancing of any kind played little part in their social life. He was, she’d discovered within weeks of their marriage, a quiet man who preferred the company of a few tried and tested friends to raucous partying. The bottom line was that his idea of a good time was not hers.
Not only their social life, but their sex life too, was nothing like she had thought it would be. Gilbert was a tender, considerate lover. But after nineteen years of extra-marital Latin lovers in Argentina, tender consideration didn’t fire Zephiniah. Stormy, passionate, jealousy-fuelled relationships were what thrilled her; fighting and shouting and then falling into bed for glorious, uninhibited reconciliations. She hadn’t known it at the time, but she realized now how much she needed the heightened emotions of excitement and drama.
There was precious little excitement and drama at Gorton.
She stared with loathing at the view of sodden lawn, sodden moorland and sodden sheep. On the evening she had met Gilbert, her cousin had told her that, as well as being spoken of as a future prime minister, he owned a divine country estate in Yorkshire. The vision those words had conjured up hadn’t proved to be the reality. Though other people – Winston Churchill and the prime minister, for instance – rhapsodized about Gorton, she thought it mediocre. Its ballroom was small compared to what she had expected. It wasn’t – as she felt she’d been wrongly led to believe – a stately home on a par with Chatsworth or Knole, both of which had more than a hundred rooms. It wasn’t even an historical jewel, such as Hever. It was simply an unpretentious Georgian mansion in what most people – though not her – deemed to be an idyllic setting.
It was the tedium of her marriage, and the tedium of every parliamentary recess being spent at Gorton, that had driven her into taking trips abroad. She said these were for the good of her health – which in a way they were, for if she hadn’t taken them she was convinced she would have lost her reason. Fortunately most spa towns boasted casinos, and in the racy, adrenalin-fuelled atmosphere of a casino she no longer felt half-alive. A lucky and a habitual gambler, she felt like her old self.
She put another of her favourite Camel cigarettes in her holder and lit it. Until the beginning of summer her system of maintaining her sanity had worked wonderfully well. Then, in June, in the Casino Grand Cercle, in Aix-les-Bains, she had run into Roberto Di Stéfano, a lover from her Buenos Aires days, and her trips had taken on a new, dangerous dimension.
Extramarital affairs in British aristocratic circles were just as common as they were in Argentina. The rules were, though, that a woman didn’t indulge in one until she had given her husband a son and heir. Then, duty done, she could look elsewhere for entertainment, as her husband was no doubt already doing. The rule wasn’t, of course, universal. Winston and Clementine Churchill were renowned for their faithfulness to each other, and Gilbert had the same reputation as Winston for fidelity. Which meant that even if she had already given Gilbert a son and heir, the usual modus operandi would not have been acceptable to him and, knowing Gilbert as she did, she knew it never would be. All of which ensured that her revived affair with Roberto was a secret that was going to have to be very carefully kept.
She blew a jet of smoke towards the ceiling irritably. She was good at keeping secrets. It was something at which she’d had an awful lot of experience. As a child the big secret had been her mother’s Jewishness. She had grown up knowing it was never to be referred to. Not until she was in her twenties had she realized that, as Jewishness was passed down in the female line, she was also Jewish.
It wasn’t something that had ever troubled her. Her father’s family had seen to it that she had been christened an Anglican, and though she only ever stepped inside a church at society weddings and funerals, that was most definitely how she thought of herself. Only in Vienna, when it had been cautiously mentioned to her that perhaps the arranged adoptive parents weren’t so suitable after all, being Jewish, had she been reminded of it.
‘The Zimmermann family are a respectable family, aren’t they?’ she’d said waspishly to her aunt,
wanting to have the matter done and dealt with, so that she could return hot-foot to London. ‘What the devil does it matter whether they are Jewish or not?’
‘Then the Zimmermanns would like the baby given a suitably Jewish name,’ her aunt had said, thin-lipped at the distastefulness of it all. ‘Something on the lines of Sarah or Miriam.’
‘Judith,’ she had said. It had been her mother’s second name and, as far as Zephiniah was concerned, was as good a name as any.
Ever since then she had barely given Vienna – or the daughter she had given birth to there – a thought. It was in the past, and simply another secret that had to be kept.
Only when she had acquired three stepdaughters had she sometimes wondered about Judith. She would be twenty-one now, three years younger than Violet, though Zephiniah rather thought a Jewish upbringing would have resulted in Judith being far different from Violet in both personality and behaviour.
The rain had begun to ease and, as a glimmer of sun touched the tops of the hills, three shooting brakes could be seen in the distance, coming down from the moor and heading towards the bridge.
She knew who was in them. It was mid-August and three days earlier the grouse-shooting season had opened. Gilbert and a group of male friends were returning from a shoot – and were no doubt just as sodden as the sheep.
She turned away from the window, knowing that all the evening ahead held was conversation about who had performed best with a shotgun that day and, when that palled, that it would be politics, politics, politics.
‘This recent election victory of Hitler’s means his National Socialist Party is now the biggest in the Reichstag.’
They were in their bedroom and Gilbert was tying his bow-tie. There was concern in his voice, and Zephiniah, mindful of how she needed Gilbert to be in a good mood for when she told him she was leaving again soon for Aix-les-Bains, said, ‘And is that so very bad, darling? I was always under the impression you thought the National Socialists could be a good thing for Germany.’
‘I did. They’re fervently anti-communist and, with the German economy in mind, that has to be a good thing. Herr Hitler has also said – and I have to agree with him – that if Germany fell to the communists, we in Britain would have to look to our laurels.’
Zephiniah was on the verge of asking tartly how he felt about that, considering that he had a daughter who was as near to being a communist as made no difference. But, remembering how desperately she wanted to be in Aix-les-Bains before the month was out, she bit back the words.
‘And now?’ she asked, as her maid finished zipping her into an emerald chiffon, ankle-swirling dress.
‘And now it’s not only the communists and the Versailles Peace Treaty that he’s blaming for Germany’s ills, it’s German Jews – and that sort of thing will increase instability in Germany, not ease it.’
Zephiniah took a satisfying look at herself in her cheval-glass and dismissed her maid. Gilbert’s interest in Germany arose, she knew, because of his onetime involvement on a committee that had sought to ease Germany’s war debt liabilities. To Zephiniah, committees and Germany were subjects just as boring as grouse-shooting and sheep, and the effort of feigning interest was more than she could be bothered with.
Gilbert’s bow-tie was fastened now and, before he reached for his dinner jacket, she stepped towards him, sliding her arms up and around his neck.
‘The lack of sunshine this summer is affecting my health, Gillie. I’m sure it’s one of the reasons I’m having such difficulty in conceiving. Would you mind awfully, darling, if I left next week for a week or two’s rest at Aix-les-Bains? It’s a bore for both of us, I know, but I do so want to conceive, and the doctors all suggest rest.’
She kissed the end of his nose and managed a smile that was both winning and regretful.
His shoulders slumped in bitter disappointment. ‘You’ve only been back less than a month, Zephiniah. Couldn’t you stay on here, at Gorton, when Parliament reconvenes? At least then the two of us would be in the same country.’
She gave a light, dismissive laugh. ‘It’s a rest in sunshine I need, and I think I’ve little chance of finding sunshine in Yorkshire. So far the summer has been ghastly and it looks as if it’s going to continue being so.’
After his soaking earlier in the day, it was a statement Gilbert couldn’t argue with.
He said sadly, but with wry humour, ‘Perhaps the doctors could take into account that you’re very unlikely to conceive if we’re constantly on opposite sides of the English Channel.’
She lowered her arms and put them around his waist, hugging him tight, her cheek pressed close against his chest so that he was no longer looking into her eyes.
In Argentina a cervical cap had ensured that she’d never had to face a second, unwanted pregnancy. On her marriage to Gilbert she had jettisoned it as being obsolete. Now she realized she was going to have to get herself fitted with a new one, for if she became pregnant by Roberto, she would never be able to pass the baby off as Gilbert’s. Like all redheads, Gilbert’s skin was almost unnaturally pale, and Roberto, as well as having raven-black hair, was olive-complexioned.
When she was quite sure that none of her thoughts were showing in her eyes, she eased herself away from him. ‘Then, although it will break my heart to do so, I’ll leave Gorton for Aix-les-Bains at the weekend – and every minute that I’m away I’ll be thinking of you.’
Without calling his valet back into the room, Gilbert eased himself into his dinner jacket.
As they were about to leave the room he paused at the door. Turning her towards him, he said gravely, ‘You do love me, don’t you, Zephiniah? You’re not unhappy with me, are you? Because if you are—’
‘Of course I’m happy with you!’ The lie was off her lips as fast as light. The last thing she wanted to hear was any suggestion of what he might do if she wasn’t happy. Divorce, once such a no-no, was becoming increasingly common, and she didn’t want to be divorced. Unless a better offer came along, she wanted to continue being Viscountess Fenton.
She slid her evening-gloved hand into the crook of his arm. ‘I’m deliriously, passionately, happy with you.’ And with her thoughts once again on Roberto and Aix-les-Bains, she accompanied him along the corridor and down the grand curving staircase to where their weekend guests were waiting for them in the drawing room.
Chapter Twenty-Four
In a Kensington mansion flat Thea and Kyle lay entwined in a tangle of sheets, their skin warm and flushed, their hearts racing, pulses pounding. Thea lifted a hand to the nape of Kyle’s neck and slid her fingers caressingly into his dark, silkily straight hair.
‘Wonderful,’ she said dreamily, every atom of her body in a state of heavenly sexual satisfaction. Then, in amusement, ‘Thank God for Marie Stopes and Whitfield Street.’
Instead of grunting agreement, Kyle rolled off her and onto his side. Resting his weight on his elbow he said, looking down at her, ‘Why does the Whitfield Street clinic make such a difference?’
‘Because, without the clinic, I wouldn’t be in bed with you. Or,’ she added teasingly, ‘with anyone else.’
Kyle let the ‘anyone else’ tease pass. Thea wasn’t promiscuous. He knew that unless Hal Crosby was taken into account, there wasn’t anyone else. And he also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she wasn’t sleeping with Hal, rarely saw him and, when she did, it was only in passing.
He said reasonably, ‘If we were married you wouldn’t have to take precautions against becoming pregnant.’
She untangled her legs from the twisted sheet and pushed herself up against the pillows. ‘We’ve had this conversation before, Kyle. Why are we having it yet again?’
It was the middle of the day. His Hornton Street flat was a penthouse and neither of them had bothered to lower the blinds. Though the October sun wasn’t strong, as he got out of bed it cast a gleam on the well-toned muscles of his arms and legs.
‘Because we might be having it for the last
time,’ he said, yanking on a pair of trousers. ‘I’m thirty. You’re twenty-six. We’ve been in love for five years, maybe six. We’re both single and I’ve been asking you to marry me for the last four years. What’s going to happen when I’m recalled to Washington, or when I’m posted elsewhere? Is it going to be a case of “Thanks a lot, Kyle. It’s been nice. Look me up next time you have an odd couple of days in London?”’
‘You’re being childish!’ Crossly she swung her legs from the bed and reached for silk cami-knickers. Once she was wearing them she didn’t feel at quite such a disadvantage in what was obviously going to be a serious argument. ‘I simply don’t see being a diplomat’s wife as part of my future,’ she said, as he began buttoning up a shirt. ‘And just think what a hindrance I’d be to your career if we were married.’ She stepped into her skirt. ‘Can you imagine ever being offered an ambassadorship if you had a British wife with a track record of left-wing political activism?’
‘You’ve never been arrested. You’re not a card-carrying communist.’
She put on her bra. ‘That’s not to say I might not be one in the future.’
He fastened his tie and slicked back his hair. Hot electric-blue eyes held hers. ‘Let’s not reduce this to a point-scoring slanging match, Thea. I sincerely want to know where the two of us are going.’ The anger had gone from his voice. It was simply a flat, unhappy statement.
She pulled on a tawny-coloured jumper that emphasized the red lights in her hair.
With the fire now gone from her own voice she said, ‘Why can’t we just continue as we are? We’re happy together, aren’t we? We’re good together in bed. Being married wouldn’t make it any better. It couldn’t. It would be impossible.’
His eyes continued to hold hers. ‘If we were married, we’d have children. And I want children, Thea. I want to be a reasonably young father, not an old one. I want to share in what they do. I want to be able to play baseball and football with them.’
A Season of Secrets Page 28
