by Louisa Young
She said to him, ‘Sit down, Peter. Peter, if you proceed in this madness, I will make such a scandal. Such a scandal.’
‘What scandal?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t 1885. It’s not a Henry James novel. I’m an adult widower and Mabel is a free and single adult. There is no scandal.’
‘Oh Peter,’ she said. ‘You are so naive. You will call it off. You can imagine the headlines, surely? Negro Jazz Singer Entraps War Hero?’
His fury was rising.
‘I can’t imagine what the children would feel about that,’ she wailed. ‘Can you imagine, Peter? At school? And poor Nadine Waveney …’
‘Purefoy,’ he said. ‘They’ve been married since 1919.’
‘After all that family has done for you,’ she went on. ‘To shame them so. To shame your children and the memory of poor sweet Julia – Peter, you will of course call this off.’
He stared at her. Amazed, really. But perhaps that is foolish of me. Perhaps I should have expected this. Perhaps I have underestimated how much some people enjoy causing trouble for no reason at all.
‘Or I will make a scandal,’ she was saying. She had on an insufferable ‘for your own good’ expression.
He flung himself back into his chair and grinned, suddenly. A wolfish grin. ‘Waiter?’ he called. ‘Could you bring me a telephone?’
He stared at her and drummed his long fingers till it arrived, important on a tray, long black cable trailing. He picked up the receiver.
‘The Times, please,’ he said. ‘Thank you, operator.’ Grinning at her all the while. ‘Diary, please. Yes, hello? Is this the Diary? I have a person here who wants to announce a wedding. No, for a sort of gossip piece, I think – excuse me—’ he scarcely covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said, loudly: ‘Mrs Orris, do you want to put the wedding in as an announcement? Or was it as a bit of gossip? Scandal, wasn’t it you said?’ He turned back to the telephone. ‘Yes, hello. She wants to make a scandal. Can you help with that? No? Oh, wouldn’t you speak to her? No? Oh dear.’ He sounded genuinely disappointed. ‘Well, in that case, may I give you the wording for the official announcement? Here goes: The engagement is announced between Mr Peter Locke of Locke Hall, Sidcup, and Miss Mabel Zachary of New York and London W1. The wedding will take place in October. Will that do? Good-oh. Send the bill to Locke Hall, would you? Thank you so much.’
She was silent before him. Crumpled.
‘You’re not invited,’ he said. ‘If your grandchildren ever want to see you again that’s up to them. Goodbye.’
He left her quivering, an old blancmange in furs.
*
Peter walked furiously to Eaton Square, bashing the pavement with each step, shoulders taut and eyes blind. Stupid bloody bigoted old cow. As much as called Mabel a prostitute. Snobbery and bigotry and racial prejudice and hatred and fear and stupidity.
He let himself in and banged up the stairs. Iris was in the room which her mother had earmarked for her all those years before, reading.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, jumping up and coming into the sitting room.
‘Iris,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to see how the world can be nasty. I’m sorry. I – no don’t say anything—’ and she didn’t. ‘I refuse to be part of it, I refuse to engage with it. Now you know your mother and I are going to marry. And sort of put you right, for the future.’ Here he smiled, and she smiled. ‘That past business. We can get over that, I think – forgive each other and so on – you and I, your mother and I. You and your mother – I hope. All of us. But this black and white business, this negro or white business. Listen. We’re us. Is that all right?’
She blinked at him. ‘Well I hope so,’ she said. ‘But I can only speak for me.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I just want you to know that if it, um, affects you, if that hurts you, ever, I am here, and we are us.’
She blinked at him. ‘Pappa,’ she said, and he smiled at the word. ‘You do know you’re a white man?’
‘I am aware of that,’ he said. ‘My point is, if ever requested to take sides, I’m on our side.’
‘Well good,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said in turn. ‘Good,’ again, and patted her. ‘Where’s Mabel?’
‘In her flat, I suppose,’ Iris said, with a little hardness.
He gazed at the floor, his hand still on her shoulder.
‘It’s all right,’ Iris said. ‘We haven’t been fighting.’
‘This can’t go on, you know,’ he said. ‘I shall spend the night with her there, if you’re still insisting …’
‘She can come here,’ Iris said, drawing herself up. ‘I’ll just go where she isn’t.’
‘It can’t go on,’ he said again.
Iris picked up her book and headed to the sofa. ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘I could lie about it but I’d rather not.’
‘The point of our marrying,’ he said, ‘was to put things right, and now they’re wrong again!’
‘Sorry,’ she said, and her lip went out like a child’s, and he frowned. Had it been Kitty he would have hugged her, but this young almost woman was too much of a stranger to hug.
Oh God, Kitty.
‘You know I was married before,’ he said.
‘Mm.’
‘And that I have children.’
‘Mm.’
‘You should meet them,’ he said.
She stared at him, her face silhouetted against the window so he couldn’t see her expression.
‘I should?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Do they know about me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nor about your mother. I’m trying to see how to tell them.’
Oh God the announcement in The Times. He must cancel it.
‘Would you like me to?’ asked Iris drily. She moved her head a little and her smile, as it came into the light, was small and gentle, as if she’d lived for a thousand years.
‘Good God, child,’ he said. ‘In some ways I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this.’
‘Why not?’ she asked, and so he went over and sat on the sofa with her, and found that he could pat her head with his long hand, and say, ‘How things change, my dear.’ Then, ‘Please, please, forgive your mother. Take your time, but please.’ His eyes slipped in and out of focus, and he said: ‘I shall give you two bits of wisdom, from the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Number one: Panta rei, which means, things change. Number two, Gnothi seauton, which means, know thyself. I don’t suppose you’ve been taught Greek.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I know they had gods. Grandma didn’t like them.’
‘Religious woman, was she?’
‘We all are,’ Iris said. ‘Except maybe Mumma.’
‘Quite right,’ Peter said. ‘Keep ahold of that as long as you can.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘If you lose religion, you may well look for something else to fill the gap.’
Again, she asked, ‘What do you mean?’
He smiled at her suddenly. ‘I like it that you say that,’ he said. ‘Would you like to learn Greek?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Would you like to hear me play the piano?’
‘Do you play the piano?’
‘I’m quite good,’ she said.
Peter thought about his cello, and the melodies he used to make up when he was young.
‘Please,’ he said.
*
Mrs Orris took her humiliation and fashioned poison from it, and she filled her pen with the poison and wrote a letter. The Times was not the only newspaper.
Dear Editor,
I wonder if you are aware that a negro jazz singer known as Mabel Zachary is attempting to entrap Peter Locke of Locke Hill, the war hero and director of Locke & Locke, the well-known law firm, into marriage? It might make an interesting story for your society pages.
Yours sincerely,
A Well Wisher.
It wasn’t enough, though. Peter had made his
point perfectly clear, but the children were a different matter. If Peter wasn’t prepared to see sense on their behalf, she would speak to them directly. In the meantime, she was going back to Berkshire to rewrite her will.
Part Five
1938–9
Chapter Thirteen
Soho and Rome, July 1938
Kitty was, and it felt most peculiar, happy.
Why? she wondered. It’s worth thinking it through, for the next time I am miserable. But perhaps that’s like sticking a pin through the butterfly, binding to myself a joy and thus the wingéd life destroying, when I should be kissing the joy as it flies and living in eternity’s sunrise.
No, I want to know why.
She was happy because she would never again have to go to school. Never again wear a horrible uniform and be told what to do. Tom had come and picked her up on the motorbike on the last day. She hauled her school skirt up around her thighs and straddled the bike like Boudicca on the run – Tom her chauffeur, not she his pillion. I’ll have my own motorcycle, she thought. Ride myself wherever I want to go, do whatever I want to do. Vrooming away through the gates of summer: there was never going to be any more maths or physics or biology or chemistry, and she had won the French Prize and was five foot six and she would never see any of those creeps again, except Susan Westenra of course because she, Kitty, had directed her, Susan, in Antigone – in French! – and she had been superb. They both had.
She was happy because she wasn’t going to university or anything like that. A typing course, if she had to – then work, money and life.
And she was happy because they were going to Italy again.
It had been very difficult to persuade Nadine. Kitty had tried over breakfast lunch and tea for weeks, and just got No No No. No reason given – or rather, a vast pile of reasons, none of them any good.
‘We’re not invited,’ Nadine said.
‘We soon will be, if we invite ourselves,’ Kitty replied smartly.
‘They may not want us.’
‘Of course they will.’
‘It’s been a long time.’
‘All the more reason to go!’
‘I don’t want to go travelling again without Riley.’
‘Riley can come too!’
‘No he can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why not.’
‘No I don’t.’
Short silence, small frown.
‘He doesn’t travel.’
Gleam of triumph from Kitty:
‘But he’s going to the Venice Film Festival! That’s travelling. That’s Italy even. And if he can go to Venice with Mr Hinchcliffe to see someone possibly get a prize then surely he can come to Rome with the two women who love him best in the world, to meet your family?’
Nadine was quiet, and Kitty delighted. The unlikely development of one of Hinchcliffe’s novels having been made into a film which was up for a prize was the star of her armoury.
‘We must ask him at least! Perhaps he’d like to! We could all go to Venice …’
Kitty could not see why Nadine was being so bullish. But then Kitty never read the papers, and wasn’t very good at putting things together.
‘I don’t want to go,’ Nadine said.
‘Then I shall go alone!’ said Kitty, her final arrow shot. ‘Tom did. I’m much older now than he was then.’
*
Nadine stewed with it. Stewed.
She stewed for a while with the various possible results of a reignition of the relationship between the families. Kitty might stir anything up there, if she went on her own. The risk of Riley finding out what Nadine had kept from him. The pash Tom had had on Nenna, for the decline of which Nadine couldn’t be more grateful, and which she did not want revived in any way. The affection she, Nadine, had had for them all, and had been so sad to have to quash, when it became apparent which way the wind was blowing. Poor dear Aldo, my blood relative. Pretty much my only one.
Thoughts like that made her rush to her darling old father, to sit beside him at the piano and kiss his white head and make sure he had no egg on his tie.
No, no no.
‘Well, I’m going,’ Kitty said. ‘You can’t stop me. Why would you? You can’t. I’m eighteen. It’s just to visit my family. Peter will let me go.’ She said this a lot.
And at last Nadine lost her temper, and said: ‘Very well! Very well, we’ll go. You and I. While Riley is in Venice, and then we will go and meet him there. Venice! How lovely.’
Actually, it wasn’t the worst way out. She could at least keep the visit short; she could control a little what was going on, she could protect this dear but explosively naive smartypants from both her own folly and the attentions of the Roman male, and she could – she could be in Venice with Riley! The joy of that idea made her smile.
So that was the plan.
*
Tom walked up Berwick Street on a hot July morning a month after graduating. He was thinking about what you could control and what you couldn’t.
He had a summer job and a shared flat in Meard Street. Through his obsessions with flying and undergraduate journalism, he had achieved a shockingly bad degree, and so had turned from science with a humiliated nose-in-the-air shrug, and acquired a menial post as a junior reporter and, it sometimes seemed, as everyone on the Daily Chronicle’s personal researcher and slave. But today was his day off, so he was free to delight in the grubbiness and sophistication of summer city life. It was hot. Hot and grubby. This still only meant one thing to him: Rome. Which was on his mind anyway: for some inexplicable bloody reason that he could not fathom, Nadine, Kitty and Riley – Riley! – were all heading there at this very moment.
First Kitty had insisted she go again. Fair enough. No reason why she shouldn’t want to. Hitler’s visit in May, the Duce building a bloody railway station specially for him, and meeting him off the train with the King in tow, and laying bloody wreaths at the bloody Vittoriale monument and having bloody banquets at the Quirinale might put some people off, but Kitty’s life is her own. That Nadine felt she must go with Kitty was fair enough, under the circumstances. Their Venice plan made sense – and then this morning he received this telegram: ‘Riley arriving Rome please come can’t do this without you love’.
I have a job!
And, more quietly: I don’t go to Rome.
It was not that he blamed Nadine or Riley or – well, perhaps – Kitty for the situation. It was not that he didn’t have a locked and frozen love for his cousins and for Italy still tucked away in his heart. Far from it. A part of him remained paralysed between the rock of his love for them – for her – and the hard place of his disgust with Fascism. But nothing that had happened in the past three years had made Italy, or them, any more approachable. Quite the opposite. When that evil clown is gone, or my cousins see the light, then I’ll go back.
At the little specialist newsagent he picked up a handful of foreign newspapers including, for the sake of being well informed, the fascist rag Giornale d’Italia. He strolled on towards Gino’s Caffe. Coffee, the papers. A sunny London morning. Be of good cheer, he told himself – that sweet old phrase of Riley’s. He did not want to think about it all. He wanted coffee. And a nice lunch.
And he was, for a moment, of good cheer. But then after his lunch he picked up the Fascist rag, Giornale d’Italia. Page three was headed Manifesto degli scienziati razzisti. He made a face, and read it, translating as he went, over his coffee.
‘Manifesto of the racist scientists.’ He took a sip.
‘One: Human races exist. The existence of the human races is no longer an abstraction of our spirit, but corresponds to a reality that is material and perceptible with our senses … To say that human races exist does not mean a priori that superior or inferior races exist, but only that different human races exist.’
I wonder where they’re going with that, he thought.
‘Two,’ it continued. ‘There exist large races and small races.
It is necessary not only to admit that the large classifications which are commonly called races and which are identified only by a few characteristics exist, but it is also necessary to admit that smaller classifications exist (as for example the Nordics, the Mediterraneans, the Dinarics – Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins) – identified by a larger number of common characteristics. From a biological point of view, these groups constitute the true races, the existence of which is an evident truth.’
He really didn’t know what that meant, in Italian or English. It certainly wasn’t any biology he’d been taught.
‘Three. The concept of race is a biological concept. It is therefore based on other considerations than the concepts of a people and of a nation, founded essentially on historic, linguistic, and religious considerations. So, the differences of peoples and of nations are based on differences of race. If the Italians are different from the French, the Germans, the Turks, the Greeks, etc., it is not only because they have a different language and a different history, but because the racial constitution of these peoples is different.’
But Italy’s only been a united country for seventy years – what about before? And why are the Milanese generally tall and fair and the Sicilians short and dark? And what about the rearrangements of the northern border after the war? What about the Trentino, and Alsace Lorraine? What about Nadine, half French, half English, and Jewish? This is idiotically simplistic.
‘There have been different relationships of different races, which from very ancient times have constituted the diverse peoples. Either one race might have absolute dominance over the others, or all became harmoniously blended, or, finally, one might have persisted unassimilated into the other diverse races.’
‘Blah blah blah,’ he murmured.
‘Four: The majority of the population of contemporary Italy is Aryan in origin and its civilisation is Aryan …
‘Five: The influx of huge masses of men in historical times is a legend. After the invasion of the Lombards, there were not in Italy any other notable movements of people capable of influencing the racial physiognomy of the nation … while for other European nations the racial composition has varied notably even in modern times … the forty-four million Italians of today have arisen … in the absolute majority from families which have inhabited Italy for almost a millennium.
