A Set of Lies

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Only because I am not allowed to be. I find myself almost imprisoned. I am barely allowed to leave the Hall and the estate.”

  “You overstate your case. You will apologise.”

  “What for, Mother? Describing things as they are?”

  Lady Lucille knew she had an unreasonable attachment to her son. She did not like him but she did not want to lose him as she had lost his father, by letting him out of her sight for just one morning, by allowing him to walk alone through the streets of London.

  *

  Sir Bernard Lacey had dreamed, as he sat in his study in Oakridge Court, that his grandson, surrounded by his family, would read what he had written and would learn the secrets of their family.

  But the date on the notebook was to pass unremarked.

  The fifteenth day of July 1915, a Thursday, was a day like any other.

  Bertie was woken by his valet with a tray of tea and the morning paper. He spent an hour preparing himself for the day, worrying, as he always did, that he was doing nothing for the war effort. He glanced at the lists of casualties and felt guilt, as he always did, for being a coward and staying at home in Berkshire living life as he always had done.

  The household’s routine had not been changed one bit by the war as his mother kept up the charade she insisted on, that what was happening in France and the wider world was nothing to do with them.

  He breakfasted alone in the dining room, hardly touching the plates of food laid out for him. He had long given up wondering what happened to the fruit, eggs, kedgeree and pastries that he could not eat, making the assumption that they were consumed below stairs.

  He read the morning paper, which he found depressing, and then spent some time reading some of his childhood diaries that he kept in the wooden military-style chest Iain McFarlane had presented to him on his sixteenth birthday.

  He went for his morning ride, telling himself it was important that he kept an eye on the estate though he had no say in its running. On his return he ate a light luncheon on his own as his mother had not yet left her apartments.

  The weather that afternoon was fine and he was asked to join his mother to drink tea and eat delicate cucumber sandwiches in the garden. He was required to entertain the vicar and his wife by playing them at croquet. On his mother’s instructions, as always, he allowed his adversaries to win. After the guests had gone he spent some time alone in his rooms before dressing for dinner at six.

  As he sat at his desk writing his diary, as he did every night, he had no thought of his father’s chest, so like his own, stored in the attic two floors above his room. It had not been opened since it had been brought, along with that of Sir Henry, to Yattendon in the months before he was born and he had never been told of its existence.

  On the fifteenth day of July in the year 1915 no one read the letter or opened the notebook because no one knew of their existence. So no one questioned the meaning of the ciphers, no one found the note pressed inside, no one knew to what the words Josephine’s locket referred, no one found the locket and opened it to discover the words Mary Lettice and so no one could discover the existence of any diaries or seek to find out what they might contain.

  *

  It was over a year and a month later, August 1916, that Bertie’s routine was broken by the arrival of dinner guests.

  The acquaintance was a slight one, the lady was the daughter of an old friend of Lady Lucille’s mother and her husband was connected with General Swann and had known Gussie in South Africa.

  Dinner, Bertie knew, would be uncomfortable as unexpectedly included in the party was their son, on leave from the Western Front.

  Bertie could not answer the spoken and unspoken questions about why he was not fighting for his country. He could give no defence when they accused him of shirking his duty. His mother was no support, simply repeating that, “Bertie really isn’t up to it.” The dinner party broke up early with the guests returning to their hotel impolitely soon after the meal had finished.

  After they had gone Bertie said with the weight of a lifetime of resentment, “I am ‘up to it’ and I will do something.” The argument that ensued was the last between Bertie and his mother.

  The next morning he took a train into London where he met with Iain McFarlane, who was also the only person to whom he could talk, confident that his words would not be relayed to his mother.

  Bertie had known McFarlane all his life as his financial guardian whose formal role had ended twelve years earlier on his twenty-first birthday, but who continued to act for him on all matters of finance. They had met regularly when McFarlane visited the Hall but Bertie had never been to his offices and had never met him without Lady Lucille being a dominating presence.

  After the usual pleasantries Bertie blurted out the reason for his unexpected visit. “I really must do something.”

  Iain McFarlane did not seem surprised at the request. “Times are grim, indeed they are. Nothing seems to shift in France and we are all very weary of the lack of any breakthrough.”

  “What can I do? Should I join up?”

  The reply was not encouraging. “I wouldn’t think of joining up if I were you, Bertie. You would fail miserably as an officer I’m afraid, you have no command of what would be required and men would die because you would make mistakes.”

  “I could enlist?”

  “You would be torn to shreds by your comrades who would see you as a useless toff.”

  “That’s a bit harsh.”

  “But true. You would be set up as the first to go over the top and you wouldn’t last a day. And if you did last a day, through your incompetence you would have been responsible for so many deaths that you would not be allowed to last a day more. I speak as your friend, Bertie.”

  “There must be something I can do? How about working on a farm? Or in a factory? Even women are working as conductors on trams. I must do something. Mother wants to keep me tied to her but I will not be. The country needs every man who can help. I will not stay at home surrounded by her ridiculous cocoon of protection.”

  “Leaving out such suggestions as you have just made, what activities would you say your skills would allow?”

  “I will do anything. I am not quite as stupid as my mother imagines. At least I sincerely hope not. I can at the very least read and write.” Bertie tried to smile.

  “I will see what I can do. There are some who still remember your grandfather, and, of course, your father. He had no experience at anything but made himself very useful in South Africa, I remember.”

  “Tell me something of my father. Mother never speaks of him other than in the most unlikely glowing terms.”

  “We met in the Cape. We spent much time together…”

  For half an hour Bertie learned more about his father than in all the previous years of his life. He listened as Iain McFarlane told him of the interests and enthusiasms of his father. He wondered how it was that he had inherited so little of his father’s energy.

  “My life would have been very different had he lived.”

  “Indeed it would. He was an interesting man, fascinated by new developments in science and geography.”

  “And I could have learned from him. I would have done the things I dreamed of but never have had the wit to do.”

  “ “You must remember it has been difficult for your mother. Your grandmother, Lady Mary, was a very imposing lady who set the rules of your life very early on and your mother never had the confidence to stand up to her. It was sad watching the lively, inquisitive, attractive young lady your mother had been turn into a carbon copy of her mother-in-law.”

  As his father’s friend spoke Bertie detected a certain affection for the young Lucille Swann in Iain McFarlane’s description.

  “Yes, your mother was a wonderful young lady and all of Society was in love with her. But she only had eyes for your father and then, when he was murdered, she was whisked away to Berkshire while the courts decided her future.”

&n
bsp; “You were in love with her?” Bertie spoke with a confidence he wasn’t sure he possessed.

  “I suppose I was. But that is a long time ago and I have done my best for you out of love for your father, not his wife.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried. I had no idea.”

  “Why would you? And there is never a need to apologise for something over which you have no control and about which you could have no knowledge. That is a lesson your father would have taught you.” Iain McFarlane straightened his back and twitched his neck as if to change not only the subject but also the mood. “But let us come back to the present. I’ve been concerned about you and felt the time had come to act.”

  “Act?”

  “You don’t think it’s a coincidence that an old acquaintance of your grandmother happened to call and invite herself to dinner, do you?”

  “You?”

  “Any move had to come from you and something had to jolt you out of your complacency.”

  “You knew I would be shamed into coming to see you?”

  “Let us just say I had hopes.”

  “You have something in mind?”

  McFarlane nodded. “If you trust that I have your best interests at heart you should return to Yattendon and tell your mother that you are moving to London and that you will take absolutely no notice of her histrionics.”

  “I do, I will and I won’t.” Bertie smiled, believing for the first time that he might gain some control over his life. In a relaxation of tension Bertie and Iain McFarlane exchanged a conspiratorial smile that very quickly turned into laughter.

  *

  On the first Monday of September 1916 Bertie moved to London and a week later took possession of his desk at the headquarters of his father’s regiment. He was a happy man as he would now be able to live the life he had long envied, that of a man of purpose.

  Every day he would walk from the house Iain had arranged for him to the offices housed in one of the less ostentatious buildings that lined Northumberland Avenue.

  “Good morning Millie.” He was always careful to greet the young lady who every morning not only provided him with a cup of tea but also handed him a sheaf of papers. “A bad butcher’s bill today?” He had very quickly picked up the Napoleonic euphemism from his colleagues.

  “It is not a good time Sir Albert.”

  She always gave him an encouraging smile as she left him alone to face the details of men of the regiment who had died and the people who had claimed their outstanding pay and pension. His job, to prove the validity or otherwise of such claims, was sometimes straightforward but at other times was worthy of one of the detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that he loved to read. His days passed quickly as he immersed himself in his work.

  It was some weeks before he acknowledged to himself how much he looked forward to the tea, the smile and the short chat he had with Millie each morning, and a further few weeks before he had the courage to say anything other than the most basic of pleasantries.

  “I do wish you’d call me Bertie, Millie, there really is no need for all this formality,” he said one morning just before Christmas 1916.

  “My father would kill me if he thought I wasn’t maintaining what he would call the common courtesies,” she answered with a grin that showed how much she believed in her father’s wisdom.

  “He’s not going to know is he?”

  One morning in early February 1917 Millie did not turn on her heel and leave him as she had done every previous day. Instead she sat down with as much confidence as if they were meeting in her mother’s drawing room. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. You are still young. Why haven’t you joined up?”

  “You mean why am I not at the front being killed along with these poor young men?” He waved the bundle of papers she had just handed to him.

  “Well yes. I suppose I do mean that.”

  “I’m perfectly fit and well.” He spoke with a tone Millie thought was rather defensive.

  “You look it.” He was a little disturbed at the look of appraisal she gave him. “Are you a conchie?”

  “What a horrid term that is. No, I am not a conscientious objector.” He spoke circumspectly, wondering what she was leading up to.

  “But you have chosen not to be one of the boys?”

  “I did want to.”

  “Then why haven’t you?”

  He knew it would sound weak but he decided attack was the best form of defence. “Are you about to give me a white feather?”

  “Do you think you deserve one?”

  “I probably do. More so than those horribly wounded and honourably discharged who are being handed the wretched things in the street.”

  “Then what are you going to do about it?”

  “Why would you care whether I enlist or not?”

  “I care about the reason you haven’t. I mean… Well… You come from a good family…”

  “Yes, Millie, I come from a good family, and I am fit and well and the reason I’m not dead with all these poor men,” again he waved the sheets of paper, “is that my mother has always thought that I am not up to normal life. She didn’t allow me to go to school, I have never mixed with others of any station, I have no knowledge of how the world operates, I have no understanding of people, I have been told I would have made a most dreadful and dangerous officer and certainly I could not have been an enlisted man. So the short answer to your question is that I am inadequate. Every single one of these men is a far, far better man than I.”

  They were both surprised at the bitterness in his voice.

  “Oh,” was all Millie could say as they sat in embarrassed silence. She was wondering how she could help this rather gauche and vulnerable yet attractive man, and he was wondering how he could have spoken to Millie of things he had never admitted to himself.

  Bertie collected himself first. “When one of those ladies accosts me in the street asking me, usually in a withering tone and with a superior manner, why I am not in uniform doing my bit for my country I try to explain but it always seems a little weak.”

  “What do you tell them?”

  “I try to look them directly in the eye and speak with something approaching authority. I tell them that there are sometimes more important things to do for one’s King and Country than to die for them.”

  “Well, I would agree with that. But this…” She pointed to the papers on Bertie’s desk.

  “I believe this job to be important, I really do. Certainly it is to the people we trace. What would some of these people live on if we couldn’t confirm their right to a grant or a pension? They have to deal with the death of one close to them, a brother, a husband, a son, the very least we can do is help them avoid penury and starvation.”

  “You are right, sometimes it is easy to forget the living in the face of so much death.”

  That she seemed to understand touched Bertie to the core.

  “Would you like to take me to tea on Sunday?” she asked with a deceptively demure smile.

  “I would. But,” he smiled conspiratorially, “I wouldn’t have the first idea of where to take you. The Savoy?” He ventured the place he had heard others of his colleagues mention.

  “Definitely not.”

  “So where?”

  “In the interests of welcoming you to the real world I suggest the Corner House, opposite Charing Cross Station.”

  “Very stylish.”

  “Also a lot of fun.”

  *

  That first Sunday he had approached the Strand Corner House with some trepidation and had been welcomed by a table of smiling female faces. He thought that everyone seemed very jolly. He knew he would never remember their names but he did remember how much he enjoyed that afternoon.

  As the grim winter months of the war passed and the war news of the early months of 1917 was as depressing as that of 1916, the Sunday teas became a regular and necessary recreation. Some afternoons he would sit back, listening to the conversation of th
e young ladies, and occasionally younger gentlemen, who had been educated at schools and read newspapers and had views, some of which he agreed with.

  Sometimes, when he went to the Corner House during the week, he would sit alone and watch couples together and found himself making up their lives for them. That man is not married to that woman, he would speculate. They are in love but she is married to an older man who probably beats her. Their story will not end happily. On those occasions he began to wonder at how little he knew about his own family.

  All his life he had been surrounded by members of the Swann family. The portraits of generations of Swanns lined the corridors and staircases of the Hall they had occupied over a period of three hundred years. But what did he know of his Lacey heritage? He knew nothing other than that he was the last of the line. He had been told that it was his duty, as fourth baronet, to marry and to have a son and continue the line. But if he did not, would there be a fifth? Perhaps he had a distant cousin desperate for the line to pass to him. He telephoned Iain McFarlane and asked him to investigate who his current heir might be. But he never had the opportunity to hear the results of McFarlane’s enquiries.

  Three days later he was walking Millie home when they heard the sounds of an air raid.

  “Don’t worry, it’s undoubtedly another false alarm.”

  “No, Bertie, there’s definitely something.”

  After a few moments listening to dull thuds and then sharp gunfire he put his arm around her. “I think you’re right, come on, let’s find somewhere to shelter.”

  The driver of the motorcar was distracted and didn’t see them in the gloom of the blackout.

  He drove for only a short distance on the pavement, but that distance was sufficient to take the two lives.

  *

  Lady Lucille accepted the news with resignation.

  She had done her best to keep her son safe but that had not been enough. However, faced with the enormity of war losses, she felt unable to make too much of her son’s death. To be run over by a motorcar seemed, to her, too ignominious an end.

  “I did my best to protect him,” she told Iain McFarlane after the funeral, “but he insisted on doing his bit for his country.”