“My grandfather.”
“And I thought you were so dignified,” he said, laughing now.
“And I knew I wasn’t . . . Quid pro quo,” I added, remembering one of Stanley Morton’s Latin terms.
“So that’s it—we’re finished?”
“Of course we’re finished.” I looked down at Ralph’s ring. “I may have lied, but I only lied to protect my daughter. It was never my intention to hurt anyone . . . And just because I invented a husband doesn’t mean I’m happy to be a lie myself. I’m not prepared to be anyone’s mistress.”
“That’s rich—considering you were someone’s tart once, and long before me.”
“You’re right,” I said, raising my eyes to him. “I was someone’s mistress, briefly.”
“And what if I tell you that you have been again?”
“I tell you I’m worth more than that.”
“More than thirty-five quid?”
I stared at him, his thin smile and lying eyes. And I was tempted to throw my gin and orange in his face. But I didn’t. Instead, I stood up, and as I put on my gloves and picked up my bag, I said, “Actually, you may as well know . . . It wasn’t thirty-five quid; it’s thirty-five thousand. That’s what Ottoline left us—Lila and me—thirty-five thousand pounds.” I was about to walk away, when I remembered Delnasay. “Oh, and also a castle in Scotland.”
I wished I’d had a camera, because his face really was a picture.
Chapter Twenty-five
I wasn’t sure what Leo would do after our meeting that day. I half wondered if he’d appear at my door, or come and find me in the store. But he didn’t. And I realized I’d made it difficult for him by telling him about Ottoline’s bequests. He might have been a charlatan, but he was also a proud man, and I knew the term adulterer was enough without the tawdry addition of opportunist.
Nor had I been sure about what to do regarding my job at the store. It seemed reckless—imprudent, Rodney would say—to give it up. Jobs were hard to come by, particularly jobs like mine—clean work, with regular hours and the added benefits of a free lunch and staff discount. But with so many unemployed and in need of work, it felt wrong to be paid money I didn’t need—and for a job I didn’t even enjoy. So I handed in my notice.
I knew all too well how a fool and his money were soon parted; and though I now had it, I wasn’t sure what to do with it, how best to use it. And I could have done with Leo Holland’s professional advice, but there was no way I was going to ask him, or Theodore Godley. And so I wondered if Amy might know of someone able to advise me.
“Every lady’s maid’s dream,” she said when I told her of my conundrum. “But good for her, I say. She didn’t forget you, Pearl—or Lila.”
We were sitting in the staff dining room, a place I’d avoided for a number of days for fear of running into Leo. And I hadn’t mentioned figures; I’d simply told Amy that Ottoline had left Lila and me a nice sum, and that I needed advice.
“It’s not a problem I’ve ever had myself,” said Amy, smiling. “Though I don’t suppose I’d have too much trouble spending anything that came my way . . . But you’re very sensible, you know, in adopting such a cautious approach.”
“But do you know of anyone?” I asked again.
“Well, I can think of one chap.” Her eyes twinkled. “He works here in accounts . . . and I’ve gotten to know him quite well,” she added.
“Not Leo Holland?”
“Yes! Do you know him?”
I didn’t answer her question. I took a moment, and then I said, “How well do you know him, Amy?”
She smiled. “Let’s just say we have a friendship.”
“A friendship? Has he taken you out?”
She nodded. Then she leaned over the table. “I didn’t tell you because I haven’t been seeing him long, only a few weeks,” she whispered. “And please keep it quiet. He says it wouldn’t do for it to get out. Not with him being in management and, you know, all those rules about fraternizing. Anyway, he’s as straight as a die—well, you have to be in that job, but I can ask him if you’d like.”
“No. I don’t want you to ask him,” I said quickly. “In fact, I’d rather you didn’t mention my name or anything at all about me to him.”
Her expression changed. She said, “Is there a particular reason?”
I looked away from her, across the packed room. And that was when I caught sight of him—or rather, the back of his head—seated next to a palm at the table reserved for management in the large alcove. A wife in Manchester, me, Amy . . . I wondered how many more he’d tricked. Then I stared at Amy.
“Come on, dear . . . You’re getting me worried now.” She opened her cigarette case, and I watched her place the cigarette in the holder and light it.
“If I knew something—something bad—about Leo Holland, would you want to know?”
“Of course I would.”
“Think, Amy, because not everyone does. Some prefer to live in ignorance.”
At first she didn’t say anything; she kept her eyes fixed on me as she raised a now shaky cigarette holder to her lips. Then, “I would most certainly want to know. Yes, I would want you to tell me,” she said, and exhaled a thick plume of smoke.
“Are you in love with him?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Then you’re not. You see, you know when you’re in love.”
And it made it easier, I thought, bracing myself. But she beat me to it.
“You’re going to tell me he’s married, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Manchester?”
I nodded again.
She glanced away from me. “Bastard,” she hissed. “Lying bloody bastard.” Then she turned to me. “But how do you know?” she asked. “No, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. I can guess . . . Yes, I can guess.”
“I think we may have overlapped, you and me. And who knows—maybe others as well.”
She stared at me. “That friend of yours, the one having the affair, Ellie what’s-her-name—it was you, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I lied, why I didn’t tell you . . . I suppose I felt ashamed, embarrassed.”
She lowered her eyes. “Men . . . What is it with them?”
I didn’t say anything.
She sighed heavily as she stubbed out her cigarette, decapitating it in the ashtray; then she shook her head and laughed. “You know what? I can’t bloody wait to see him.”
“You don’t have to—he’s over there.”
Where I had held back, Amy did not. She rose to her feet, stalked across to the palmed alcove, the management table, and in a voice loud enough to silence the entire room, she said, “I’m so pleased to find you and your colleagues here, Mr. Holland. You see, it saves me the bother of having to go up to the sixth floor to inform them that you’re a cheat, an adulterer and a liar.”
The gasps were audible. A few people had already risen to their feet. And as others dropped cutlery, craning their necks to peer round into the alcove, Leo Holland tried to stand up, too. But Amy pushed him back down. Then she picked up a bowl of something with custard and tipped it into his lap. “Enjoy your pudding,” she said, and walked out of the dining room.
For a moment or two the hush continued. Then, as people sat back down, and amidst murmuring and whispering, and as someone emerged from the kitchens with an armful of towels, I picked up my own bag and Amy’s and made for the powder room.
There, Amy and I grabbed hold of each other. We winced, screamed and laughed. And then—newly serious—Amy said, “That’ll be it for me. But I don’t care if I’m sacked. He had to have his comeuppance.”
“And your revenge was indeed sweet,” I said, and we both giggled again at the thought of Leo Holland’s custard-covered crotch.
It was only a sho
rt while later, I discovered, that Amy was summoned to the sixth floor. There, she was interviewed by two very senior managers, Mr. Selfridge’s right and left hands, she said. She told them what they almost certainly already knew: that Leo Holland was married. And then she told them what they almost certainly did not know: that he had actively pursued, lied to and seduced a number of female employees. She refused to give any names on grounds of confidentiality, and played her final hand well, assuring the two men that she would not go to the newspapers with such a damaging story. That was the clincher, she said.
And it was. For in the absence of war, certain newspaper editors seemed to be desperate and trawling the gutters for stories. And there was a new sort of magazine, salacious gossip and scandal its only interest, and what they couldn’t find, they invented. But certainly, within the store it was quite the talking point for a few days, and the rumors were rife and grew out of all proportion to the truth: Mr. Holland had defrauded the company, was a bigamist and had seduced dozens of female staff. I was almost tempted to feel sorry for the man, Leo Holland; a man I had allowed into my bed and introduced to my daughter. He had lost his job and returned to Manchester, I heard on the grapevine. But I hoped Amy was right, and that, having been served his comeuppance, he had learned something and would never again trick another woman.
The same day I finished at the store, Amy was promoted to manager of the French Salon. After work, we went out for a drink to celebrate. It was a Friday evening, and the pub round the corner was packed, too noisy to hear ourselves speak—even in the saloon bar. So we quickly moved on, to “somewhere more civilized,” Amy said, a hotel off Bond Street she had once been to with Leo.
We sat on a plush velvet couch in the cocktail bar, and when the waiter came up, Amy put on a voice and asked for the wine list. She pored over it for some time, then ordered two glasses of something called hyse wayte. As the waiter walked off, as she rifled in her bag for her cigarette case, she whispered to me that gin and orange was a bit common—all right in pubs perhaps, but not in posh places.
I whispered back, “Well, now you’re in management, Miss Patrick, it really wouldn’t do for you to be seen doing anything common . . . And I’m sure public houses are a thing of the past. It’ll be cocktail bars and posh places for you from now on.”
She threw back her head and laughed. Then, after she lit her cigarette, she said, “Seriously, isn’t it strange to think that not so very long ago we couldn’t have done this?”
“You mean coming out for a drink—unaccompanied?”
“Yes! My father would turn in his grave to think of me entering a public house—or even sitting here in this bar with you.”
I nodded. “My aunt, too. She’d think we needed rescuing.”
The waiter placed our wine on the table; we clinked glasses. “To a new era,” said Amy.
“You know, the first time I ever got drunk was at Delnasay. Just after I met you.”
“No.”
“It was my birthday. I was twenty-four. They organized a party for me . . . champagne,” I said, remembering as I glanced across the softly lit room.
“Champagne in the servants’ hall?”
“No, I was with Ottoline, and Billy, and Felix Cowper . . . and Ralph.”
“Ralph? Now remind me again—which one was he?”
“He was Ottoline’s cousin . . . the painter.”
“Ah, the one from India—the one mentioned in dispatches?”
I nodded. “He didn’t stay at the house. Preferred to stay at a cottage on the estate.”
“So where exactly was this little soiree?”
I looked at her and smiled. “That’s funny. That’s what he called it—a soiree. A soiree with a few reprobates.”
“Who?”
“Ralph.”
She leaned toward me. “You’ve gone a bit misty-eyed, if you don’t mind me saying . . . Were you frightfully smitten?” she asked, sounding more like one of them than us.
Vaguely, I nodded.
“Don’t tell me you were in love with him?”
I didn’t say anything. Amy was my friend, and yet I still hadn’t told her about Ralph. Like everyone else, she believed I’d been married to a man called Henry. A man who’d died in the war.
“If you don’t wish to tell me, that’s fine. We all have our little secrets,” she said.
But it wasn’t a little secret. It was a once-gaping wound that had, over time, scabbed and healed, and then left a scar—hidden from view. And it was, along with my mother’s suicide and her abandonment of me, something pushed down so deep that it was terrifying to contemplate speaking of.
So I shrugged. “It was nothing,” I said. “A little flirtation, that’s all.”
But Amy, wily Amy, must have seen something in my eyes, or heard it in my voice. Because the atmosphere in the bar changed, and when a man sat down at the piano and began to play something familiar—something sad and familiar—Amy offered me a cigarette. And as I took it, as she held out her lighter, as I raised my eyes to hers, she said, “It was him, wasn’t it? Ralph was the one—not Henry.”
I’m not sure what I said first, what order it all came out in, but over the next hour—and another glass of wine—Amy heard everything. She was the first person I’d told, and the relief was immense. To say his name, be able to talk about him at last—my love, my one and only experience of real love—was extraordinary, liberating and cathartic.
Eventually, I said, “So that’s it. And now you know.”
Amy sat in silence for a while. Then she reached over the table, took hold of my hand and squeezed it. “Dear Pearl, you’ve been through so much . . . so much more than I ever knew. But at least you’ve known real love.”
And at that moment I felt guilty. I realized how much I’d had by comparison. Because Amy was right: I had known love, real love; and I had my daughter—the living embodiment of that love. And what did she have? Oh, she had a title at work—and, unlike me, that meant a lot to her—but she had little else. And she had already admitted, accepted the fact, that she would probably never marry or have children. “Not enough men to go round,” she’d said, without any trace of self-pity.
And it was true. No matter how cruel it seemed, there probably weren’t—simply couldn’t be—enough men to go round. Those who had survived, and who were fit and able, had their pick of bright young things, younger women—gay with unspent energy, untarnished by deprivation and loss. We Victorian daughters were destined to be the wallflowers. Even then, I think we knew that.
Later that evening, as we linked arms and walked back onto Oxford Street, toward the bus stop, Amy said, “To be honest, I’m a bit fed up with love. I suppose it’s been all the waiting . . . Waiting since I was sixteen, seventeen—whatever. Now it just makes me angry. It makes me so angry, Pearl, to know that I’ve waited for nothing, that the man I was destined for was probably killed in the war.”
Amy’s bus came first, and as it approached, she said, “Are you going to the funeral?”
“Funeral? Whose funeral?”
“The soldier they’re bringing back from France. The unknown soldier.”
Myrtle wasn’t bothered. It would be too crowded anyway, she said; there’d be nothing to see. So it was agreed; she’d come a little earlier to look after Lila.
The procession was to begin at Victoria station, where the soldier’s body had arrived the previous day and had been guarded overnight. From there, it was to head via Whitehall—where the King would be, and the new monument unveiled—to Westminster Abbey for burial.
It was shortly after seven when I walked out into the pale morning light. I followed the others on foot, silent and solemn, some carrying wreaths and flowers, all of us dressed in black. Heading east and then southward toward Belgravia, picking up more on the way. At intervals, the throng thinned and then swelled again, some heading f
or the Mall, Trafalgar Square and Whitehall. I went in the direction of Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey, where Amy had said she’d be and look out for me.
I heard the gun salute signaling the start of the procession, and nearer the abbey, where the crowd bulged and thickened, policemen and soldiers lined the roadside. A few people tried to get ahead, elbowing their way forward as others called out after them about pushing in. Using a megaphone, a policeman asked for respect, and seeing the look of alarm on the face of an elderly woman walking alongside me, I took her arm. The policeman must have seen her panic, too, and perhaps thought we were together, because he came forward and led us both through the crowd to a spot opposite a door to the abbey.
For almost two hours, I watched and waited. I listened to the intermittent chatter around me, the speculation as to the identity of the soldier—for whom we had all shaken out our mothballed mourning clothes and traveled miles to pay our respects. And I, too, wondered who he was—this soldier all of London and beyond had come together for. Was it little Harry Rankin? Or one of Mrs. Lister’s boys? Or was he Billy Campbell? Or Ralph? It was a soldier who’d fallen in the early days of the war, someone said. But what were the early days—the first weeks, first months or first years? And did it matter—when and who and how? In death, he belonged to every one of us.
Toward eleven, the chatter abated, and there came the muffled sound of drums and the heartbreaking strains of a funeral march. Then, the clip-clop of hooves brought into view the gun carriage, borne by six black stallions and carrying the flag-draped coffin. Alongside it walked the pallbearers, those field marshals and generals who’d escaped death—in the fight for King and Country. And following the cortège, there came the man himself, the King, and behind him, a sea of uniformed ex-servicemen.
Someone nudged me. “See that one over there? That’s Field Marshal Haig, that is.”
I knew the name, of course, but I had no idea to which of the uniformed men he referred. They all looked the same—and all equally guilty.
I watched the coffin as it was lifted onto medaled shoulders, and as Big Ben began to strike eleven, I heard someone quietly sobbing. And I realized it was me.
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