She got up from the chair and paced in circles about the rug in front of the fire, trying to focus on its pattern, trying to imagine a huddle of women in some hot tent in a desert making it. It was better to keep moving.
When Mrs. Wintrip stuck her head round the door in Iris’s old velveteen turban and said she’d be off now if that was all right, Daisy smiled and nodded. There was nothing else to say to the woman, not that night. Asking Mrs. Wintrip to confirm Stephen Jessop was her brother seemed as preposterous as it was pointless. And Daisy wasn’t sure she could bear to hear the facts confirmed out loud. Even at her most loquacious, Nellie Wintrip was fiercely loyal to Howard. She had told Daisy umpteen times that Mr. Forbes was a good man, though the woman’s respect and admiration were quite at odds with Daisy’s tarnished view of him.
But who was Stephen’s mother? And why was Mrs. Wintrip so full of admiration for Howard if he’d made some poor woman pregnant, then handed the child to her to look after? Surely he was no different from all those other “young rapscallions” Mrs. Wintrip had gone to such great lengths to warn her about? It didn’t make any sense . . . unless Howard had paid Mrs. Wintrip, and paid her handsomely.
The front door slammed shut, the building shook and another thought occurred: Was Mrs. Wintrip lying when she said the baby was not hers, and was Stephen in fact hers . . . her son with Howard? It was a bizarre notion, one that beggared belief. But Nellie Wintrip had once been young . . .
Daisy tried desperately to fire her imagination, to picture Mrs. Wintrip without the hairnet, without the burned-out cigarette stuck to her thin lip, without the wrinkled stockings and swollen ankles. But it was impossible to conjure the younger version, and the thought of her father and Nellie Wintrip—together—was too much, even for her imagination.
Muddled in with all of this, overriding everything else, was the now sickening remembrance of that moment in the lobby last Christmas, that moment she and Stephen had come so close—so very close—to consummating something illegal.
Daisy wasn’t sure what time it was or how long she had been sitting there, staring into space, when she felt the reverberation of the front door slam shut again, followed by the familiar sound of Iris bounding up the rickety stairs.
“You slammed the door,” Daisy said as soon as Iris appeared in the room.
“Oh God, I forgot . . .”
“Again.”
Iris threw down her bag and hat.
“There’s some stew on top of the stove—it might still be warm.”
“Stew?” repeated Iris, shuddering. “And on a day like this . . . Anyway, I’ve no time to eat. Piggy and the gang are picking me up in an hour or so. We’re going for cocktails at Tilda’s, then on to the Embassy—and probably to the Grafton after that. Want to come? It’ll be devastating.”
She had been to Marcel, Daisy could tell. It was a wonder Iris could fit in a job, even a dress shop type of job, between hair appointments and manicures and dancing.
When the telephone rang, Iris immediately picked it up. She laughed. “Oui, c’est moi,” she said, and then offered a succession of one-word replies: “Divine . . . Heavenly . . . Quite . . . Absolutely . . . Agreed . . . Eleven.” She laughed again, said good-bye, put down the receiver and turned to Daisy. “So, what do you think?”
“About what?”
“Oh, really! Are you going to get out of your dowdy bookshop garb and come dancing? Sitting in here every night reading tragic novels is going to shrivel you up, darling.”
“And not eating will shrivel you up—darling!”
“Ha. I don’t need to eat. Seriously, I never get hungry.”
Iris turned toward the door.
“I need to talk to you,” Daisy said quickly.
Iris stopped.
“I’ve discovered something quite . . . shocking.”
But it wasn’t shocking to Iris. And after Daisy had finished recounting the conversation she’d had earlier with Mrs. Wintrip, Iris merely nodded and said, “You know, I had wondered . . . He does rather resemble a young Howard . . .”
“Is that all you have to say?”
Iris shrugged. “What more is there to say? I think you’re right, and it seems the most likely answer. Stephen was born in his house, cared for by his servants. I can’t quite see our father in the role of benefactor to fallen women, can you?”
Daisy shook her head. “No, but I’m going to find out where Stephen is and write to him,” she said. “He has a right to know.”
“What? You’re going to send him a letter and announce to him that he’s our brother? Then what? Tell Mummy? I said it seems the most likely answer, but we don’t know and might very well never know—because I’d lay a hundred pounds Nellie Wintrip shan’t tell you, and based on his track record, Howard’s hardly likely to come clean . . . And what on earth do you hope to achieve? You’ll be opening up a can of worms—for Mummy, for Stephen, for all of us. My advice—my sisterly advice to you—is to forget about it. It’s history, done and dusted.”
Daisy said nothing.
“Seriously, darling, let it go. Forget about it. Will you? Will you promise me that? Nothing good can come of it.”
“I think he should know, that’s all.”
Iris shook her head. “Sometimes it’s better, kinder, to leave sleeping dogs alone. And this is one of those times, Daisy.”
They remained silent for a moment; then Iris said, “One thing you may have forgotten in all of this is that there was another son, and he died, and when he died”—she paused, took a deep breath—“I think some small part of our mother died with Theo.”
Daisy turned. The name was like a scald, a burn, a jolt.
“Such teeny fingers,” she had said, her arms outstretched, eager and smiling as Mabel placed him into her arms.
“Gently now, hold up his head . . .”
“Like this, Mummy? Am I doing it right?”
“Yes, Daisy, like that.”
He smelled of Mummy, of lavender and roses, and his skin, so soft, so very soft, as she pressed her lips to it.
“It’s why she and Howard are the way they are,” Iris was saying. “Why they can’t look each other in the eye . . . or love each other. She’ll never forgive him for not having been there, at Theo’s birth, and then at his . . .” Iris paused. “His passing. That’s why I don’t want children,” she added. “I couldn’t bear it, you see . . . to love something so much and then lose it. It would kill me . . . kill me.”
Theo. Theo Forbes. He had died at a time when everyone else was losing their babies, their sons. But was that when everything had changed for Mabel, for Howard? Had their love been lost then, too? Daisy wondered. The news of baby Theo’s death had been delivered to Daisy by her nanny, over jelly and custard in the nursery tearoom.
“Little Theo has gone away with the angels . . . to heaven,” Nanny had said, frowning and smiling at the same time. “Tonight we shall say special prayers, and—”
Before Nanny had finished, Daisy had run from the room, into the corridor, down the stairs, right at the bottom and along the landing toward her mother. It was Nancy who stopped her, grabbed hold of her outside her mother’s bedroom door and then held her as she sobbed.
“There was never any funeral, was there?” Daisy asked now.
Iris looked away. “There was, but you were considered too young to attend.”
After a few minutes, Iris said, “You can’t tell anyone, Daisy . . . not Stephen, not Mrs. Jessop and certainly not Mummy. Do you understand?”
Daisy nodded. “Yes.”
Iris left the room, disappearing across the landing and up the stairs to change from one outfit into another and touch up her makeup. She was, had become, painfully thin, and the thinner she’d become the less she ate—and the more she went out dancing.
When a car screeched to a halt on the street
outside—horn honking as though it were Victory Day all over again—Daisy immediately thought of Mr. Beal and called up the stairs.
Iris’s head appeared over the banister. “Oh God, but I’m not ready . . . Can you go down and let them in? . . . And do take a look at Piggy’s new car,” she called down. “He’s just bought the most divine Bugatti.”
By the time Daisy reached the bottom of the stairs, the banging of a doorknocker had replaced the honking of a car horn. She flung open the door, and Paul Trotter—known to all as Piggy—smiled back at her.
“I say, look at you, what an absolute little fizzer you are.”
Daisy closed the door carefully and led him down the narrow passageway, hoping and praying Mr. Beal wouldn’t emerge from the shadows with a stick—or a gun—raging about the fucking door.
“So, staying in again, what?” Piggy bellowed as they ascended the stairs. “You really should come out, you know . . . I could teach you the black bottom . . . it’s an absolutely ripping dance. Iris adores it.”
He was on his own, he said, because he had stupidly decided to pick up Iris first. “Should’ve known to collect her last!” He wore a canary yellow waistcoat and gray wide-legged trousers, so wide that only the very tips of his navy blue suede shoes were visible. He said they were going to pick up Valentine and O-reel-yah next, but there was room in the motor if she wanted to come along, too, he added, standing with her in the small sitting room, glancing at her up and down.
Iris had developed a firm friendship with Valentine. They had, they’d discovered, a number of friends in common. And Iris and Daisy had been to dinner at Flood Street; they had seen Margot again, and playing a quite different role, as mother and hostess in her own home. And while Iris got on enormously well with Val, Daisy had become friends with Val’s fiancée, Aurelia. Daisy liked Val too, but there remained some sort of unspoken stumbling block in their friendship; perhaps due to that silly kiss at Christmas, Daisy thought, or perhaps simply because he preferred Iris’s company to hers. And really, Iris was much more his type. They had, apparently, what Iris called “chemistry,” which made Daisy wonder if there was something more than friendship between them.
“Oh, I forgot to take a look at your new car,” said Daisy, moving over to the window. It did look splendid, even from that angle.
“She’s an absolute beast,” said Piggy, moving alongside her, reeking of sandalwood and patchouli cologne.
“Yes, I can imagine,” said Daisy, lying, because she couldn’t at all imagine a car being female or a beast, only to regret it because Piggy then went on and on in an alien language about its engine and horsepower, how he had taken the thing “up to” this or that speed, in this or that place.
When Iris appeared in a black, sequined, tubular dress and matching sequined beret and asked, “Opinions, please? This or my red satin?” Daisy and Piggy—in perfect unison—yelled, “This!”
“Are you quite sure you don’t want to come with us?” Iris asked, and Daisy detected some new tenderness in her voice.
“No, I’ve some reading I want to catch up on.”
“Well, if you change your mind, get a taxi and come and join us. You know where we’ll be.”
“Tallyho and into the night!” said Piggy. And sure enough, minutes later, Daisy stood at the dusty window and watched the beast roar off into the summer twilight.
It was a twilight bleached of color. Curtains weren’t yet drawn. Opposite, on the other side of the street, were squares of illuminated animation. Like silent films, random stories all running at once, Daisy thought, watching the shapes and moving figures at one window and then another. Below, the lamplighter was out with his pole, and a couple strolled arm in arm, laughing, then stopping to exchange a furtive kiss.
The room behind her was dark and silent, her thoughts now languid. She pictured Eden Hall, saw shafts of pink-yellow light streaming in through the oriel window onto her mother’s velvet sofas and chairs, onto the glossy patinas of mahogany and walnut and onto the polished oak floor: pools of shimmering, unfathomable color. She saw her mother, head bent over a framed tapestry; Mrs. Jessop, hair parted in the middle, pulled back into that tight bun and escaping in brittle strands about her ears and damp forehead; and she pictured Stephen, standing in the garden—a watering can in one hand, cigarette in the other.
But it wasn’t like that. Not anymore. Her mother wasn’t there; Stephen had gone.
And I don’t want him to be my brother . . .
She raised her eyes to the line of rooftops, ever darkening against the pale yellow sky, and lifted her hand to her newly shorn hair. “Never get your hair cut,” he’d said. Then, out of nowhere, she caught a glimpse of her snow globe: lying among the purple heather, its glass intact and glinting in the late evening sun. Discarded, abandoned, like Eden Hall.
I shall remember this day forever, she thought, turning away from the window. She glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf. She didn’t want to be there, thinking of dead brothers and new brothers and fathers who lied and how the older you got the more questions there were and how none of them ever seemed to have any answers.
Hours later, wearing one of Iris’s most daringly short dresses, clutching a glass of champagne and lost in the music, the heaving mass of bodies and energy, Daisy tried to forget about Stephen and everything else. And when a man she’d never seen before pulled her to him, she let him take her face in his hands and kiss her.
Chapter Twenty-two
After days of unsettled, ominous skies, the clouds had cleared and Chelsea’s pavements glistened in the sunshine. Everyone smiled: the uniformed nannies with their cumbersome perambulators, the Chelsea pensioners sitting on the bench beneath the horse chestnut trees, the butcher standing in his sawdust-strewn doorway and everyone on the bus.
As Daisy rose from her seat and pulled on the cord, she saw Ben, standing in the shaded doorway of the department store in his pale blue shirt, dark tie and trilby hat, his hands in his pockets, his jacket folded over an arm. They had chosen to meet there, because it was easier—easier for him, because it was beside the tube station and meant he didn’t have to take a bus to the other end of the King’s Road.
“Like the hat,” Ben said when he saw her, and then he asked her if she wanted to go to the restaurant inside the store or try somewhere else.
“I don’t have very long,” Daisy replied, “so it’s probably best if we just go here.”
The hat was new. Daisy had bought it only days before—and in that very same store. Eyeing herself in the millinery department’s mirror, she had for a moment—a very fleeting moment—caught a glimpse of someone quite beautiful, with a heart-shaped face and large almond eyes of gray-green. The girl in the mirror had stared back at her, blinking through wisps of mouse-colored hair with a quizzical, slightly forlorn expression. She had a smallish nose, a pronounced cupid’s bow to her top lip. She smiled back at Daisy, lifting one side of her mouth to reveal a crescent-shaped dimple on her cheek. Daisy wasn’t sure what to make of her, but she rather liked her in that hat.
Inside the store, as they waited for the lift, Ben asked Daisy how she was, if she had sold many books that day. As the lift attendant pulled back the grille, he whispered, “I’m sorry if I was a bit sharp with you on the telephone last night.”
He had been sharp, but she, too, was feeling guilty, about the nightclub, about that foolish, reckless kiss and also because she knew things at the wharf were bad. A fire earlier in the month had been devastating, according to Ben. Luckily it had happened at night, when only a few night-shift workers and night watchmen were there, and they had all escaped unharmed. But the stocks of highly flammable paints and varnishes and oils had turned the fire to an inferno that had razed the factory to the ground. This was bad enough, but then Ben had discovered that Forbes and Sons was underinsured, and that money to rebuild the factory would have to be found elsewhere, which would mean H
oward’s private money. The house in Clanricarde Gardens had just been sold, and Ben had presumed Howard would have the funds available . . .
“But he hasn’t,” Ben said.
They had taken their seats at a table for two in a corner, next to an aspidistra and an elderly couple loudly slurping from soup spoons.
“What do you mean—‘he hasn’t’?”
Ben sighed. He stared at the menu lying open on the table in front of him. “He claims that Mr. Lutyens got carried away when he built Eden Hall, told me that the feller must’ve thought he was made of money and that—”
“But what’s all this got to do with Eden Hall?” Daisy interrupted. “The place was built over twenty-five years ago.”
The waitress appeared again, taking a tiny pencil from behind her ear, licking it and then noting their order on her small notepad. “And to drink?” she asked without looking at either of them. “Two cups of tea, please,” said Ben. The woman picked up the menus and moved away, and Ben continued.
“It seems your father had to borrow money against the property in London to pay for Eden Hall. Both properties were in fact mortgaged, but also,” he said, pausing, looking at Daisy, “he claims he has a few other personal debts.”
“Personal debts?”
Ben shrugged, shook his head. “I’ve no idea. He didn’t elaborate. But it’s quite clear to me that he has no interest in the business anymore.”
“I don’t believe that. It’s his inheritance; it’s a family business.”
Ben said nothing.
“So can the money for the factory not be found?”
Ben said he wasn’t sure. He’d already had to lay off some of the workforce; the rest were waiting, or working as best they could from the makeshift building hastily erected, using machinery and equipment that had been salvaged or borrowed. And because they hadn’t been able to fulfill their orders—had had to cancel them—they had lost many of their long-standing clients, who had gone elsewhere. This, added to the steady decline in the business anyway, meant that unless money could be found, unless cash flow improved—and fast—Ben would have to lay off more men.
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