Searching for Pemberley

by Mary Lydon Simonsen

  All of this was very interesting, but after being gone for more than four hours, was that all he had learned?

  “No, there's a lot more, but it's mostly about the war. Do you really want to hear about it?” I could tell by the change in Rob's voice I probably didn't want to hear anything else.

  “No, not now.” I wanted to think of it as being Christmas 1914 with Beth playing the piano while her family and all the servants sang carols. It was to be their last Christmas together.

  Putting his arm around my shoulders, Rob pulled me close to him and asked, “Now, what's the deal with Michael Crowell?”

  Chapter 17

  THE WEATHER WAS BEAUTIFUL now that spring had arrived. Rob and I could open the window in his tiny flat, and when there was a breeze, the room was almost bearable. I wanted to talk about something that didn't involve my returning to Minooka or Rob's going to Atlanta. I asked what else Jack had said at the Engineer's Club, and he told me about how Jack and Beth had first gotten together. It would be interesting to hear the story from Jack's point of view.

  “This is what Jack said happened. 'I was walking home from the train station after finishing a term at The Tech, and Beth was out riding. Now, Beth and I had been flirting with each other for a while, but when she saw me that day, she jumped off her horse, ran up to me, and threw her arms around my neck. Naturally, I kissed her. This is the hard part to believe; I pushed off on her. This is 1913. It was not possible for the son of a butler, no matter how respected, to have any kind of a relationship with someone of Beth's class.' Jack said he was more afraid of his father finding out than the Laceys. 'My dad would have thrown me off the property. I've no doubt of it.'

  “Jack knew he had hurt Beth's feelings, but he wasn't going to embarrass himself by chasing after a girl who was beyond his reach. He tried to get out of being Reed and Beth's chauffeur for that 1913 motor tour, but Lady Lacey told him, 'I wasn't really asking, Jack. The children want to do this, and they can't if they don't have an experienced driver and mechanic.' He said he never felt more like a servant than he did at that moment. He also said, 'That was an example of how the household worked. You did what you were told, when you were told, but it was always put to you in a nice way.'”

  While I was listening to Rob, I had been standing near the window in my slip, and he started singing “You Can't Say No to a Soldier.” “But I can say 'no' to a civilian. Can we get back to the story?” Did all men think this much about sex?

  “After a rough start, they had a blast on that trip. When they finally found the Edwards/Garrison farm, they were sitting in the car just laughing their heads off. Mrs. Edwards came out and asked what they were doing in her drive laughing like school children. Beth explained that they were looking for her ancestors—the ones Jane Austen wrote about in Pride and Prejudice, and Mrs. Edwards said, 'Oh, Lord, not another one.' Seems other people had figured it out, too.

  “When Beth told Mrs. Edwards she was a blood relation of the Garrisons, she invited them in for tea and said that she had 'never owned to it before. You read that book and you'd think running a farm was like going on a picnic. We work from dawn to dusk here. And Lucy! The one Jane Austen called Lydia. Do you think my husband wants to admit that his great, great, however many greats, had knowledge of a man before they were married?' After lunch, Mrs. Edwards told them to go up to the attic and take whatever they wanted, and they packed up a ton of stuff.”

  “That was 1913. They didn't get married until 1916. What happened in between?” I asked.

  “After the car trip, Jack told Beth that things had to go back to the way they were before the trip because it would have been a disaster for both of them if they were found out. The next summer, Jack was working on a school project in the Highlands, and Beth was back on the marriage circuit. By the end of the 1914 season, Beth's suitors had been narrowed to Ginger Bramfield and Colin Matheson, the Irish guy. Because Beth and Ginger had been friends since they were kids, Jack couldn't see Beth marrying him. He figured she'd end up with Matheson.

  “When the war started in 1914, Jack realized if it went on for any length of time he would end up in the Army. He saw it as a way to get away from Montclair and Beth because he was convinced her engagement to Matheson would be announced at Christmas, and it was.”

  My jaw dropped. At no time, in our many conversations about the obstacles that she and Jack had faced, did Beth mention she had been involved with anyone other than Jack. “What happened? Did she call it off? I wonder if he got killed?”

  “Jack didn't say another word about it, but it accounts for all of those missing months. But if Matheson was in the Army, and it's almost guaranteed that he was, then he may have gotten killed. Obviously, we're now into the war years, and with the exception of their marriage, nothing good happened.” Looking at me, he said, “Do you want to hear it anyway?”

  I nodded. “I care so much about them now that I have to know what happened.”

  “All right then. The war broke out in August 1914, and in September, some general raised a battalion of London stockbrokers, and Trevor volunteered and ended up serving in the Royal Fusiliers. While he was in training, the regular British army was nearly destroyed in Belgium. From that point on, most of the men who fought on the Western Front were raw recruits who were rushed in to fill the depleted ranks of the professional soldiers. Trevor was wounded at Loos in September 1915. His sergeant got him back behind the British lines, but he died at a clearing station.” With a grim face, Rob said, “The British used gas at Loos, but it blew back on their own troops. There is the possibility Trevor was gassed by his own guys.

  “When the telegram arrived at Montclair, Mrs. Crowell sent for Jack, who was at school in Manchester, and had him go out to Cambridge. So it was Jack who told Beth that her brother had been killed. He said it was one of the saddest moments of his life. When she came into the visitors' room and saw him, she looked as happy as he'd ever seen her. But then she asked him what he was doing there. Jack said, 'I didn't say anything, but she knew, and the tears just poured out of her.'

  “Jack and Beth went to the camp where Matt was training and said Matt wasn't surprised because word had reached the camp of the disaster at Loos. Sir Edward went down to Henley and took Reed out of school, and that was the end of his education. Jack said that was a big mistake. If he had stayed at Henley, Reed probably wouldn't have been called up. But he didn't explain how that would have kept him out of the Army seeing how he was old enough to fight.

  “Matt's leadership abilities were obvious from the start, and he was quickly promoted to captain. Tom Crowell served under him, and because Tom and Matt were so close, Jack assumed that Matt would want his brother for his assistant, what the Brits call a batman. But Matt told Jack, 'I've never treated your brother as a servant, and I'm not going to start now.'

  “Matt wanted his men to have every advantage possible, so he kept after them to stay in shape and did lots of inspections. He had his men scrounge around farms and villages looking for better food, which he paid for out of his own pocket. Matt was mentioned in dispatches to headquarters, which in the British Army is an official commendation for an act of bravery. It sounds like the guy was a born leader, and he had guts.

  “Jack said that people have a misconception about the war, thinking the men were in frontline trenches all of the time. The way it worked was the troops were rotated from the first line of trenches to reserve trenches. After that, they went to the rear for light duty so they could rest up and get ready mentally and physically for the next push. They played football and had cricket matches and went into nearby villages for dinner. In Jack's case, he'd sneak in a visit with Beth.

  “The Laceys received conflicting stories about how Matt was killed. Jack thinks he went over the top, was killed by a machine gun, but his body could not be recovered immediately. If it was lying out there in No Man's Land, it probably was hit by artillery shells and blown to bits. This created all kinds of problems for his mother beca
use she got it in her head that Matt had been taken prisoner. But when the Laceys got a letter from the Red Cross, saying they had eyewitness accounts that Matt had in fact been killed, Lady Lacey went into such a deep depression that Sir Edward talked her into going to a sanitarium for a rest. Jack's positive Reed's depression was inherited from his mother.

  “Tom Crowell died on July 1, 1916, and is buried at the Heilly Station British Cemetery. He was one of 20,000 killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. They went over the top and were mowed down by machine guns. Jack said very little about his brother. He was able to talk about Beth's brothers, but when it came to Tom, he just couldn't do it.

  “As for Jack, when the war first broke out, so many men signed up that there was a shortage of skilled workmen. They had to cull the ranks for coal miners, steel workers, engineers, and other highly skilled workers. When Jack went before the registration board, they told him to stay in school because there would be a need for more engineers and mechanics down the line. At The Tech, he and the other engineering students had to practice digging frontline trenches, and the officials invited civilians to go through them so they could get the feel for what 'the boys' were experiencing in France and Belgium, which, of course, was total b.s. because the Tommies were living in filth with rats running everywhere because there was so much death. In January 1916, Jack was called up, and after he had finished his basic training, they got married, and Beth's parents never found out. When Jack went home on leave in 1919, Beth told her mother she was going to marry Jack, and Lady Lacey didn't object. Jack and his brother used to call her the dragon lady, but with all that happened during the war, the fire had gone out of her. Another reason why Lady Lacey didn't pitch a fit was because so many of the men who would have been Beth's suitors had been killed. Those guys tended to go into the Army as line officers, and their casualty rate was disproportionately high. It was Jack's father who had fits.

  “This is what Jack told me. 'You have to keep in mind that my father referred to the Laceys as 'our betters.' Servants were downstairs; our betters were upstairs. My father was an intelligent, capable man, but that was his view of the world until the day he died. My mother and Beth had a good relationship, but until the very end of his life, my father just could not relax around Beth. He never addressed her by her name because he didn't know what to call her.'

  “Jack and Beth were married at the church in Crofton like it was the first time, but Jack wasn't home for good yet. In France, he was assigned to a Graves Consolidation team. They had to disinter bodies that were scattered all over Northern France and rebury them in these large military cemeteries. If possible, the consolidation team marked the grave for the graves registration team, but a lot of them ended up with headstones that said 'Known Unto God,' including, possibly, Matt Lacey. It was worse than any job he had during the war. He said, 'When you're in war, you know shit's coming down the pike, and you're prepared for it. But once the guns go silent, you come out of that hard shell that's been protecting you. I had terrible nightmares the whole time I was assigned to Graves Consolidation.'

  “To be closer to Jack, Beth worked in a French hospital. She spoke French like a native, and they needed all the nurses they could get since the French took even more casualties than the British. After the war, Jack went on to receive his master's degree in engineering, and in the early '20s, he took a job in India building railroad bridges. He was very complimentary about Beth and how she adapted to wherever they were living, especially considering how she was brought up at Montclair. Everything Jack told me was voluntary,” Rob said. “I asked him questions about his career, but anything personal, he told me without me asking.”

  “Did he say anything about the younger brother after the father took him out of school?”

  “Yes. Reed was an orderly in a medical unit in Boulogne where the wounded waited for ships back to England. Jack took a belt of scotch and went quiet before finally saying, 'When the Germans broke through our lines in the spring of 1918 near Amiens, every man who could hold a rifle was thrown into the fight, including me and including Reed. We held the line until reinforcements arrived from England, but it was over for the boy. They sent him home to a hospital called Craiglockhart near Edinburgh where he was treated for shell shock.' Jack couldn't continue, so we changed the subject.”

  After thinking about all Jack had told him, Rob said, “Everyone has their breaking point. The difference is most guys recover over time, but it seems that after Reed went to the front, his mind snapped, and he never came out of it.”

  Chapter 18

  I ARRIVED HOME FROM work one evening to find my landlady waiting for me inside the front door, and in a voice that clearly showed her disapproval, Mrs. Dawkins informed me that I had a “gentleman caller.”

  I was carrying a brown bag full of Spam, Lorna Doone cookies, and Wonder Bread for the family. On payday, I tried to bring home something that was either unavailable or in short supply. For the first time in its history, including wartime, Great Britain had found it necessary to ration white flour. After Mrs. Dawkins saw what was in the bag, her attitude softened.

  “I'll get a pot of tea going, and I'll bring you in some biscuits. Go see what your visitor wants.”

  When I opened the sliding door to the family room, I immediately recognized my gentleman caller, even though I had never met him before.

  “Maggie, I'm James Crowell.” Handing me a large manila envelope, he said, “My mother wanted you to have this, and I decided to hand deliver it. After hearing all about you over the Easter holiday, I thought I should at least introduce myself since we both live in London.”

  Other than James Crowell being a couple of inches taller than his father, he looked so much like him that I felt as if I was seeing Jack when he was in his twenties.

  “Do you have time to stay for tea? My landlady has a pot brewing.”

  “That would be wonderful. My wife and daughter stayed behind with my parents for another week, and I don't like going home to an empty flat.”

  Carrying a tray with a teapot and Lorna Doones, Mrs. Dawkins gestured for us to go across the hall to the front parlor. I was being admitted into the holy of holies, and without Rob. After setting the tray down, she offered to “pour out.” I was finding this whole scene to be rather funny. It was obvious Mrs. Dawkins was trying to get an idea about who James was and whether Rob had some competition.

  “The boys will want to listen to their shows on the wireless, so you can visit in here.” Standing behind James, Mrs. Dawkins pointed to her ring finger and then to James, who was wearing a wedding band. I gave her a nod to let her know that James wasn't going to be able to put anything over on me.

  “I am so glad to finally get to meet you,” I told James. “I've heard so many stories about you and your beautiful wife, and I spent a lovely afternoon with Julia.”

  James talked for a few minutes about his daughter and how she had started crawling and was getting into everything before the conversation finally worked its way around to a discussion of his childhood in India.

  “Mike and I were really small when we went out to India. Like most Anglos, we spent most of our time inside the walls of a compound, including going to school. Everyone had a ridiculous number of servants, but a lot of that had to do with their own rules. We had a cook and an ayah, or nanny, who spoke only Hindi. We also had a bearer, the Indian version of a butler, named Kavi, who taught us martial arts.” Taking a sip of his tea, he added, “India was unique. I got to ride on elephants and camels, and we had a mongoose as a pet. But we also had mosquitoes, red ants, and birds that made noises at night that would scare the life out of you.

  “Early on, it was fun because there were lots of kids our own age. But that changed because most families sent their kids back to England to go to school when they were eight or nine. My mother refused to believe there was any benefit in sending a child off on their own at so young an age. I think she held us especially close because of losing her br
others in the war, so we didn't go to school in Glenkill in Scotland until we were twelve years old.

  “Our tutors were mostly graduates from Oxbridge—Cambridge or Oxford—who came out to India for a bit of an adventure. We went back to England about every other year. The problem for me was going back to India. After spending the summer in the English countryside, it was very difficult to return to the heat, the bugs, and the smells.

  “What I liked best was sailing home and going through the Suez Canal. One time when we were at Port Said, we saw a troop ship going back to England. It was a tradition for the soldiers to throw their topees, those tan helmets everyone wears in the tropics, into the water. If it sunk, you would never return to India. If it floated, you'd have to go back. It was a riot to see all the soldiers throwing their helmets into the air and to watch their faces when the blasted things wouldn't sink.”

  “What did you do when you didn't go back to England?”

  “One year, we went on safari in Kenya. We saw elephants, hippos, lions, and lots of other exotics. The whole time we're looking at these animals, we're standing there in the blazing heat, swatting flies. When we got back to England, we went to the London Zoo and saw the same animals without the heat. Now, you could set my brother down in the middle of a desert, and he'd find a way to adapt. Not me. My preferences are pretty girls, football, real ale, and cool weather, in that order.”

  I remembered Beth telling me that James had actually liked living abroad until he went to school in Scotland when he was twelve. After getting to know the other students, he resented that he had been denied a “normal” British childhood.

  “In India, you have to assume that everything is riddled with disease, and everything we drank was made with chlorinated water. When we went to the hill stations during the heat, my mother had to watch the man who milked the cow to make sure he washed his hands. At night, we practically lived under mosquito nets. I was glad when it was time for me to go to school. I'm British and proud of it. I like plain food—meat and potatoes—none of those curried dishes for me.”