Park Lane

by Frances Osborne

  And she’s up, ringing the bell, striding into her dressing room. If she keeps moving then she won’t have the time to think of buckling. It would be a damn poor show, and she’d find it hard to look at herself in the glass. She’ll find it hard to look at herself either way. Get dressed, Beatrice, get on with the day.

  It’s Susan who comes in, bobbing as she steps through the door. Her skin is chalk, dark smudges under her eyes. Bea’s never liked Susan that much, the woman has a hardness to her, and this morning Bea needs a gentle touch.

  ‘Is Grace around?’ asks Bea.

  ‘She’s gone up to bed, Miss Beatrice.’

  ‘Bed?’ Bea’s eyebrows raise.

  ‘Do you want me to fetch her?’

  ‘No,’ says Bea. ‘Let the poor girl sleep. It’s a wonder everyone isn’t back there this morning.’

  If Grace isn’t here, Bea would rather do her own hair than set the other servants talking about what she might be up to on the Day After. It may not be ‘done’ to care about that sort of thing but, today, Bea doesn’t want anyone talking. And she has to get downstairs before lunch if she needs the car at three.

  At a quarter to one, Bea walks to the mews at the back of the house to check on the Calcott herself before joining the others upstairs. James is in the garage; how odd. Even odder, it looks as though Summers is having a go at him. The two men, man and boy, are staring at each other. They are almost two versions of the same man: how James will be in twenty years’ time, and how Summers was twenty years earlier. Can people, wonders Bea, grow to look so similar?

  Bea deliberately knocks a tin bucket sitting on the floor to draw attention to herself and the clatter breaks the conversation in front of her. James nods and excuses himself, stalking off like an animal that has lost territory. Summers brushes himself down with the relative self-composure of age. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Beatrice, good to see you here.’ And she tells him that she needs the Calcott, not on any account to take anyone in it, or let Edward or even Mother put their hands anywhere near the wheel. If necessary, say that it’s not running well.

  A look of horror appears on Summers’ face.

  ‘Or perhaps something more believable,’ she gushes.

  She turns to go, and reaches the door before she looks back.

  ‘It might be a good thing to give the brakes a really good go. Oh, and the car, don’t bother to wax it.’ She doesn’t want it to shine.

  He shakes his head slowly from side to side, his eyebrows pushing his hairline.

  Bea fidgets throughout lunch. And afterwards, as they have coffee in the still-furnished red drawing room, she is fidgeting still. For God’s sake let nobody ask her what she is up to today. In her head she practises rattling off ‘Oh, nothing much’, though replying to a real out-loud question might be a different matter altogether. However, nobody has shown a jot of interest so far. Tom is silent, smoking, head miles away, no doubt in some Gowden antechamber. Edward, goaded, Bea guesses, by a sore head, is in a merciless mood and seems to have forgotten all pledges of friendship. ‘Good Lord, Bea,’ he says, ‘you’re dressed practically. You could run in that serge it has so many folds in it. And to a funeral, it looks like. I’m on for a more dignified form of exercise – behind the steering wheel. Just a little bit of shut-eye first.’

  Bea is in the Calcott by half past two.

  It doesn’t start. Oh, God. Bea leans forwards on to the steering wheel and puts her head in her hands. One of the grooms is flinging his boy’s arms around the handle while Summers stands beside him, reddening as he urges him on. Bea has refused to let Summers take the wheel. Nobody else is climbing into this driving seat before she’s gone. And if she’s sitting here, it will be damn rude of the engine not to respond.

  ‘Wait,’ she tells them. Bea knows cars. She’s been into the bonnet and crawled under the engine of this machine half a dozen times. The Rolls and the Lagonda too. Down at Beauhurst, of course. Once she’s in a riding dress in the country, nobody blinks an eyelid as to whether she’s covered in mud or grease. But she can hardly do that here. In fact, she’s not sure she could see anything straight, but it doesn’t take much to know that these men are now so panicked they’re not letting the engine rest before they try the next time. ‘Wait a bit.’

  ‘One, two, three … now.’

  It starts.

  Her going isn’t perfect today. She stalls at Marble Arch and a riot of horn-blowing breaks out. As she goes on up the Edgware Road, she’s still stopping every couple of minutes. Pray God that it’s her and not the engine. Pray God she bucks up.

  This afternoon she’s not going to Lauderdale Mansions but to an address around the corner from it. Rather than a mansion block, it is a house. She pulls the bell, as instructed, twice, then pauses, then three more times. Bea can hear footsteps thumping their way down the stairs and a thickset woman whom she recognises from Lauderdale Mansions lets her in. Bea follows her up the narrow staircase and it occurs to her that she has never been in a house this narrow, or faded, before. When they reach the first floor there is a single locked door. The woman rat-a-tat-tats a sequence of long and short knocks, and the door opens to a smell of cat.

  Bea is led past a door opening onto a small bedroom dominated by a faded rose-print bedspread, and into the flat’s single sitting room. It too is small and the green flowered wallpaper above the dado rail browning. One of the several rugs on the floor has been knocked out of place to reveal the scratches in the floorboards it was hiding. Two other women, dressed in dark brown and navy blue, hats shielding their faces, are already occupying a pair of wooden chairs in silence. ‘We look like a church ladies’ walking group,’ jokes Bea. None of them replies. She’s seen them at meetings, but never heard them speak. Nor has Bea been given their names. She looks at them, and decides her own. Thickset, Skinny and Wiry. It is not clear to which of them these rooms belong, if any.

  Half past three. They are to leave at six, but come here early, Bea was told, just in case you are followed. The police will only wait so long on a hunch. Unlike when they are waiting for Mrs Pankhurst; then they waited in Glebe Place for a day and a half, but they knew she was in there.

  Bea brushes aside the cat hairs and sits in an empty armchair. There’s a black Gladstone bag on the floor in the middle of the room and Wiry keeps leaning over and inspecting the contents. Apart from this, they sit and say nothing, and a silent tension rises.

  Four o’clock. Yesterday’s newspaper is lying on a table in the corner of the room. Bea has read it but considers going over to pick it up and read yet another time the story of the suffragette smuggling a machete into the National Gallery and slashing the Rokeby Venus. It might offer some excitement to distract from the nervousness building up inside her. But none of the others is doing anything at all and taking the newspaper might mark her out as different, and possibly therefore not feeling as they do. Bea is the new girl, she needs to fit in, yet she’s not sure she can sit still for another minute for all she can think of is what she is about to do and whether she might funk it.

  So she offers tea. That, at least, she can do, and Thickset and Skinny accept.

  The kitchen is smaller than a downstairs lavatory in Park Lane. There’s a gas burner in the corner, a kettle sitting on the top. Bea shakes her way along the tins until she finds some tea. China. Hope they like it. Well, that’s all there is.

  Five o’clock, and she’s making her third pot. Even the action of raising the cup to her lips and down again has provided her with a degree of activity. The other women barely move. Bea feels far away from them, as though none of this is quite real. The tea, however, is scalding her mouth.

  Thickset looks up and across at Bea. ‘I wouldn’t have too many of those,’ she says. ‘There’s no stopping when we go. As you’ll know from the route.’

  No, Bea does not know the route. Where was she supposed to get it from? Has she, in the whirl of birthday and ball, or nervousness, simply forgotten? Thickset – Bea wonders whether she i
s in Mrs Pankhurst’s bodyguard – does not look as though she would be sympathetic to Bea’s situation. None of them in fact looks as if they might be sympathetic at all.

  ‘Can I see it again?’ Bea asks.

  ‘Here.’ Skinny pulls something out of her pocket and passes it over. ‘Take another look, just to get the gist of it. But don’t worry too much, I’ll tell you when and where to turn. Just concentrate on getting us out like the clappers once we’ve done our bit.’

  ‘What exactly are the plans?’ She hasn’t been told much, just the minimum, they said. The less that is known, the less the chance it’ll come out. Not, of course, that they think she would … but just in case she trips up. That’s why they don’t drive the route first. A woman in a motor catches an eye or two.

  ‘You’re driving,’ says Skinny. ‘Keep to that. Don’t worry about the rest.’

  At a quarter to six, Thickset asks Bea and Wiry to leave the flat and drive three streets away. Thickset and Skinny will meet them there at six. They will walk there another way. Wiry carries the Gladstone bag. She sits in the rear of the car, and places it very gently at her feet. Bea drives off, trying to make herself think of nothing but the motor. She is, she reflects, so tired of waiting that now she simply wants to go and get it over with.

  At six sharp the other two appear. Thickset climbs into the back behind Bea, and Skinny sits in the front passenger seat. Bea is sure she feels the side of the car dip as Thickset sits down. She wants to say something about balance and speed, but realises that the only way to improve the situation is for both women in the rear to move into the middle of the seat and for Wiry to sit on Thickset’s lap.

  Surrey, they are going to Surrey; Weybridge to be precise. This is where McKenna has chosen to have a retreat from the demands of high office. Bea begins to relax into being on the road but in Wimbledon she stalls, then almost as soon as she has started, stalls again. She feels disapproval dig into her from behind and she pushes her foot down more firmly on the accelerator. She does not stall from then on.

  Bea thinks they have been driving for about an hour and a quarter when Skinny directs her up a side road that rapidly disappears into a rough track. Engine off, says Skinny. Headlamps too, and everyone out. Bea obeys and is handed a rope and a yard of black cloth which she can barely see in the dark. There’s a moon up there somewhere this evening, but it is now behind a cloud. We’ll do the back, Skinny continues, looking at Bea and tilting her head towards the bonnet, you others the front. Skinny begins to stretch the cloth over the number plate and asks Bea to hold it in position. Bea hadn’t thought of this. Is that why they’ll take a newcomer to drive, so if this falls off, it’s Bea who will be tracked down?

  They tie up the covers and climb back into the car. Wiry, Bea notices, has become a little more jumpy; she doesn’t take her hand off the Gladstone.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Wiry asks Skinny.

  ‘Quarter of an hour,’ is the reply.

  This is the worst wait. Bea feels as though she’s pulled a tie too tight around her neck. What, what if part of the house is ready for occupation, and somebody is there? What if her car has been spotted? What if she stalls when trying to drive away, or the engine really is dicky? And what, what if, this is really a terribly wrong thing to do.

  She looks around her. Skinny, Wiry and Thickset. She has very little choice.

  A quarter of an hour later, the Calcott, lampless, rolls back on to the road.

  Bea has not driven in the dark without headlamps before. ‘Can you speed up,’ asks Skinny. Not without, Bea wants to say, embracing a hedge. But her eyes are adjusting a little and she moves up a gear. As soon as she does so, Skinny barks in her ear. ‘Left here.’

  Bea turns and slams on the brakes. There is a pair of gates on the driveway, a thin chain wrapped around them. ‘They’re mine,’ says Wiry, and leaps out clutching something pulled from the bag.

  ‘What does she have?’ asks Bea.

  ‘Hedgecutters,’ replies Thickset.

  Wiry swings the gates open and the Calcott crunches up the gravel.

  Not a light, not a single one. Bea thinks she can see a pile of bricks in front of the house. To the side rises the uneven shadow of a part-building without a roof. What can there be, Bea comforts herself with, to burn in here?

  ‘Stop,’ says Skinny. ‘A little further forward.’

  ‘Right,’ says Thickset.

  Pause, then ‘Yes,’ from Wiry.

  The two of them clamber out.

  Where are they going, asks Bea as the pair head to the back of the house. Why do they need to go round there to stick a petrol-soaked rag through a window? There are plenty of windows at the front.

  ‘Turn the car around and stop,’ says Skinny. ‘But keep the engine running.’

  As Bea does so, it seems that the gravel is suddenly crackling extraordinarily loudly and sharply. Then she realises it is the sound of breaking glass.

  Wiry and Thickset come running back to the car.

  ‘Drive, for God’s sake,’ screams Wiry. ‘I think we’ve only got forty seconds on it.’

  And Bea, a cloud thickening in her head, moves the car into full throttle and follows the pale gravel back to the gates.

  As they reach them she hears a sound behind her as loud as a twelve-gun salute.

  Forty seconds, that was the fuse.

  ‘Headlamps on,’ barks Skinny. ‘And as fast as you can.’

  And Bea drives, her head full of endings, and beginnings, and things that will never be quite the same again.

  War

  1915

  17

  DOWNSTAIRS IS DREADING THE ARRIVAL OF THE refugees and there’s no other talk at dinner. Even when there’s silence, the silence is talking too. Most of them are still here, it’s only James and Joseph that are gone. The boot boy tried to go, too, but they sent him back from the recruiting station. ‘You’d have to be a good mile taller to look eighteen,’ said Susan when he came back in wearing his Sunday best, eyes to the floor. Now the maids – Grace, Susan and a slip of a girl who came when Mary left – have the footmen’s jobs to do as well as their own. That’s all the serving and clearing and the front door. Not that she minds doing it, Grace, for when women are doing men’s jobs, who knows what comes after. Look at Miss Beatrice in her breeches, even if she has to wear that long jacket. What, they’ll have Mrs Wainwright as butler next. Well, fancy that, Grace wants to giggle to herself as she pictures Mrs Wainwright in a tailcoat. But Grace is at table and she has to hold it in.

  It’s not long since he’s gone, Joseph; he made the decision at Christmas. And though he was gone by the end of January, it’s only April now. Ever so long, since it all began last summer, he’d been asking what Grace thought about him joining up, and what was she to say? Go, Joseph, so I can be proud of you? But it wasn’t quite like that yet, between them, proud of you. You can’t say proud of you unless you’re family, or almost, and there was that question always hovering an inch or so behind his lips. There’d been more than one moment when she’d thought it was coming and when the moment passed, she’d let her breath out with relief. Same thing when he was asking, should I go? For, though she’s soft on Joseph, and who wouldn’t be, there’s something in her that might like more than just married life, and she doesn’t want to have to come to a decision yet. Anyways, it’s not as though she sends home much, but she can’t stop, can she? She couldn’t have told Ma she was marrying, for what would Grace write when Ma asked her how she and Joseph had met? Michael would ask, too, and if he guessed, she can see his face thundercloud-dark before he turned and left. He doesn’t like to be lied to, Michael. He’d be gone from all their lives, because Grace is the only member of the family that he is still speaking to.

  When Grace sees that man, the editor of the Daily Herald, come into the house, her pride in her brother tastes sour. She doesn’t have much of a chance to read what he writes, they’d not have any of a newspaper like that downstairs, Mr Bellows’d put it str
aight on the fire, he would. But if Grace has time upstairs and none’s about, she’ll look through for Michael’s name and think how many’s reading his articles. Well, enough for Da to have read it, too.

  It was in Da’s note at the end of Ma’s letter to Grace. ‘Tell Michael that I no longer want his letters. Not while he’s still writing about the war like that. Other men’s sons are making their fathers proud. Tell him not to write until it is to tell me he’s going over.’

  Michael nodded when Bea told him, just a gesture of a nod but a nod it was as though he wasn’t surprised. He and Grace were sitting on one of the benches they liked in Kensington Gardens and she’d expected him to hang his head in his hands and say he’d stop writing, that he wished he’d never written. But he looked straight ahead, his face night. ‘They’ll learn,’ he said, ‘they’ll learn.’ And Grace didn’t know what to think. She wants Michael always to be right. But saying that the fighting’s wrong sticks in her throat. What does that mean for Joseph out there? And James, and Susan’s sweetheart, and Mr Bellows’ nephew; there’s no stopping the list. Mrs Wainwright must have someone out there too, not that she’d tell. Not that she ever tells anything about her life outside the house. It occurs to Grace that she may have none to talk of, and Grace hopes to God that it will never be her like that.

  Da wouldn’t have Michael’s money either, so Michael gives it to Grace to send home with hers. ‘Make something up, Grace,’ he said, ‘tell them you’re in charge of the office, now that the man who was there has gone.’ And it’s then she wants to boast to him that there’s no need to make it up, she’s doing a man’s job already.

  Ma and Da are doing all right on the money. Last week Ma wrote that they’ve enough spare to do a trip over into Scotland to see Aunt Ethel in Glasgow, where she’d moved to find work. ‘It’ll be a day out for the girls.’ Take the train first thing, they can, and be back the same evening. It’s not the Continent, is it, thinks Grace, but it is to them.