‘That’s why they all have red or pale yellow hair?’
‘It’s called blond, darling.’
‘I like them,’ he said cautiously.
‘They are good people.’
‘Do I have to live here when I grow up?’ His thumb snaked towards his mouth, till he remembered he was far too old to suck it for comfort.
‘No.’ She and Nigel — and Lily — had talked about this often. ‘That’s why I own part of the estate, and Rose and Aunt Lily . . .’ and she may as well mention it now ‘. . . and Aunt Green and Mr Jones own some too. We will always look after Shillings, just like we will always look after Thuringa. But you don’t have to live here unless you want to.’
‘Everyone here thinks I’m going to.’
Ah, the heart of the matter. ‘I know. But times change. You might want to live here, or somewhere else, or come and stay here some of the time. There are all kinds of things that may happen. What matters is that people care for each other. That won’t change, for any of us.’
‘All right.’ Somehow, magically, she had reassured him. He gave her a sharp hug, and a splodge of a kiss on her cheek, then was gone, pattering on bare feet — he really must wear slippers here in England — down the corridor.
She slipped the book out, then into her bedside drawer. She would not read it now, not with her son’s kiss damp on her cheek. She turned off the lamp and fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 25
It is a cliché to say that every ending is a beginning. But has there ever been a time when one can truly say, ‘That was the second it ended and something else began?’ No life is as tidy as that.
Miss Lily, 1921
LONDON
Sophie had never particularly liked Vaile House. It was an excellent Mayfair address, efficient and well bathroomed but, she realised with some amusement, it had been bought by her mother-in-law, Nigel’s mother, a difficult woman she had thankfully never met. Perhaps it still had something of her meanness of spirit about it.
Nor was Vaile House part of the entail. She decided she would speak to Lily about selling it, once this affair — in both senses of the word — was completed. Lily did not seem to have any affection for it either. If Danny wished to have a London house he could choose his own — or his future wife could choose it for him.
Strange to think of her ten-year-old son with a wife. But earls did usually marry, given the amount of competition for their affections, and especially given Danny’s inherited wealth.
Hereward had travelled up with the most valued staff already. A rose-scented bath awaited her, Mrs Goodenough’s cherry cake and then a light luncheon. Lily had once again become Miss Lily — a slightly disconcerting transition — ordering poached sole in orange sauce with asparagus forced in the Shillings hothouses, followed by a small chocolate mousse.
‘But I don’t feel like chocolate mousse,’ said Sophie rebelliously, looking at the tray. Actually her feelings were neither pro- nor anti-mousse, but she suddenly did not like being commanded in her own home. Or her son’s home . . .
‘You need sustenance without bloating. Eat,’ said Miss Lily. Green’s niece was already ironing the garment Sophie would wear to Emily’s cocktail party, a daring one-piece, rich blue, silken overall that fell in a straight line but was definitely divided in the leg department, with tiny golden shower orchids embroidered at the high neckline, shoulders and hem. It was deeply feminine but also subtly reminiscent of naval uniforms, of slim young naval ratings . . .
High heels, strapped at the ankle. ‘To mitigate the stride just a little and so your hips sway.’ Miss Lily reminded her.
‘And also because it takes an hour to fasten or unfasten each shoe,’ added Green practically. ‘Which means that whatever happens tonight, you will be shod.’ The words ‘and can leave the room — fast’ remained unspoken.
Whatever would happen tonight?
She had read Krafft-Ebing with both fascination and repulsion; the thought that his diagnoses were plausibly applicable to England’s new king made David even less attractive to her than before. She had discussed possible sexual scenarios with Lily and Green, each of them using the most matter-of-fact terms possible. The thought of every one of them was impossible for thirty seconds, until she realised that each was possible and must be faced.
This was her duty, even more vital perhaps than her dash across the battlefields in the war. She had to try.
Her palms were wet with fear, but she dared not dry them on the silk. What if absolutely nothing happened? If David were not there? Or greeted her distantly and then avoided her? Or even talked to her as an old friend while keeping his arm around his lover? Or did not acknowledge her at all? She could not chase him around the room and tap him on the shoulder . . .
What if they had come all this way, with so many hopes and plans and moral compromises, and tonight she wasted every one of them? If she failed, failed, failed . . .
Sophie Higgs-Vaile was not used to failing. But she had failed twice: she had failed to stop the horrors of mustard gas; she had failed to win a seat in parliament. She had been so sure she could do both.
Now she doubted even her ability to attract David in any way at all, a man already so in love he courted scandal and risked his throne for a twice-married divorcée. A man who might easily be embarrassed by the attentions of the widow of the friend he had sent to his death. A stupid man . . .
‘James is waiting for you,’ said Lily. For she was not going, and thank goodness — for to fail in front of Lily, to be gauche, to lapse into talk of stock market prices or fattening cattle or drop her cocktail fork in nervousness, would be almost worse than failing to even have a conversation with the king.
Lily kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘Remember: slowly. You are not Cyclone Sophie here. Speak slowly. Enchant him slowly. Lift your eyes up to him slowly. Count to ten before you answer, so he must focus on you alone. Wallis Simpson has too strong a hold on him to break it easily. Simply tug the strings a little tonight . . .’
‘Slowly. Yes, I understand.’
She walked down the stairs slowly, head high. I am a swan, she thought. I am a swan . . .
‘Mummy!’ Four small feet thundered behind her; two clean and two sticky hands grabbed her about the waist. ‘You look like a princess, Mummy,’ said Rose.
A sticky princess. Sophie looked aghast at the jam stains. But Green was there already, with a cloth impregnated with Fuller’s earth.
Sophie leaned down precariously in her high heels and kissed them both. ‘Uncle Daniel will read you an extra story tonight. And so will Aunt Lily.’ That would teach them both to send her out to seduce a king, she thought, a bit pointlessly as both loved reading to the children . . .
James kissed her cheek. ‘You look perfect. But then, you always have.’
Suddenly her terror faded. It always did with James. ‘So do you.’
She glanced up at Daniel, watching carefully but expressionlessly. This must be difficult for him, but it would be far easier for her to gain entrance to events where His Majesty would be present with James as her partner, rather than Daniel. James was invited everywhere. Let the world think Daniel accompanied them in hope. Or, just possibly, as a gigolo for Lily . . .
‘What were you smiling at?’ James handed her into the back seat of the car.
‘A silly thought.’
‘You have never had a silly thought in your life.’
‘I thought my governess was a mermaid when I was a child.’
James smiled. ‘Maybe she is. Where is she now?’
‘Living in far north Scotland married to a lovely laird, though I can’t visit them this time as they are in Swaziland at his nephew’s wedding.’
‘Ah, then she probably had selkie blood and that is why she lives up by the lochs.’ James paused, then asked, ‘What do you think our lives would have been like if we had married, Sophie?’
She smiled at him. ‘I think we might be exactly as we are now, in a
car on our way to Emily’s cocktail party, where you will offer me up on the altar of duty.’
He looked at the fog swirling outside the window: only smudges of yellow tonight. ‘You may be correct,’ he said at last.
‘I didn’t say there would not have been love,’ she added softly.
He turned to her. ‘Thank you for that.’ He gazed at the fog again. ‘Sophie, don’t expect too much tonight. If you can re-establish friendship, invite him to Vaile House tomorrow or the next day, where he will scarcely bring Simpson — that would be triumph tonight.’
She tried to smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not planning on seducing him on the tiger-skin rug by Emily’s fireplace.’ Not that Emily would have a tiger skin. Far too passé. James looked so alone in the far corner of the car. But too much had passed between them — and too much had not — for her to try to comfort him. She must also focus on the night ahead.
They rode in silence for the rest of the drive: a few blocks only, but it would have been totally impossible to be seen arriving on foot, as if one had lost everything in the stock market crash. The window between them and the driver shut out any sound and he would, in any case, be a trusted employee of James’s. But it was still better to be discreet. And what was there to say?
‘Darling Sophie!’ Emily’s butler moved discreetly sideways to allow his employer to embrace her guest. ‘You look divine!’
‘So do you!’ A loose gold velvet dress, with a green silk sash to mark a low waist when Emily’s own had vanished, and excellent diamonds. Emily had grown plump, though it suited her. Her previous slimness had made her appear predatory. Or perhaps she was predatory no longer.
‘It has been far too long! Embers, a drink for the countess. Darling, you will try a strawberry sling, won’t you? Made to my most special recipe!’
Which, in Sophie’s case, would be non-alcoholic. Emily had planned this well. ‘And you know Marmalade, don’t you? And dear Duckie and Foo Foo?’ Sophie took her glass, sipped, greeted old acquaintances and made new ones as James moved across the room. She could see him from the corner of her eye, talking to watchful Winston Churchill. James had already briefed her on the rooms on either side, which ones might contain guests and which would be private, if privacy was needed. Tonight is just a gentle introduction, she reminded herself. Little else would be possible with Simpson here. Lily and your James had planned an ‘accidental’ and hopefully much longer meeting at the palace tomorrow.
But this ‘gentle introduction’ had to strike a spark. It’s been too long since I was taught to be a lovely lady, she thought, panic rising. But then she lived with Lily, who gently guided all around her, even Violette. Nor, she realised, had she let her terror show. She was a swan, gathering looks of admiration, desire and envy as she floated through the room, meeting eyes, smiling deeply, but keeping moving, for she must not have to free herself from a conversation to meet the king. From the first second he must know he had her full attention.
Conversations flowed around her.
‘Jesse Owens! Oh, my word, that gorgeous body. Can you just imagine . . . darling, I don’t care what colour skin he has. He could be blue for all I care with muscles like that.’
‘They say Simpson was paid a king’s ransom to divorce her.’
Someone laughed. ‘The patriot who laid down his wife for his king.’
‘Shh, Emily says tonight is supposed to be in her honour. Do be discreet.’
‘The most divine coat . . .’
‘Mosley is a bit of an oik, but the man has a point. That Hitler chappie can organise . . .’
‘Spend January in Italy this year. We’ll give the Riviera a miss. They say the Italian trains actually run on time under Mussolini. I do love a masterful man, especially an Italian . . .’
‘Good fox-hunting country . . .’
A man with the vapid look of a professional ‘good conversationalist’ headed her way. Sophie deftly turned, blocking his approach, facing a group where Emily held court.
‘That Lintorn-Orman woman’s fascists have been remarkably successful, despite their lack of any platform whatsoever.’ Emily shook her head. ‘Lintorn-Orman doesn’t even seem to realise that in the fascist Italy she so admires she would be gaoled or, at best, told to go back to a woman’s place in the kitchen. Her sucessors are no better.’
Sophie managed a laugh, just as the door opened again.
And there was David. Incognito, of course, as he was not supposed to gallivant while in mourning. Smaller than she remembered, almost frail, his eyes dark with worry. He even seemed to stoop, although his posture was still the correct military erectness that had been beaten into him since childhood. And that skinny eagle-beak standing possessively next to him, so close their shoulders touched, which one simply did not do to a monarch, even if married to him, must be the one her detractors called ‘la Simpson’, clicking her fingers at David to light her cigarette even before the door was shut behind them, as if to signal to the room that she was the one who held the strings to the puppet.
Wallis Simpson surveyed the room, and smiled.
Suddenly terror fled, leaving only anger and a determination so bright Sophie felt the air about her glow. The plan for tonight’s gradual introduction, rekindled friendship, vanished.
How dare that woman click her fingers at the King of England? How dare any woman think she could dominate a room that also contained Sophie Higgs-Vaile?
She could do this. Would do this. Nor would she act slowly! Cyclone Sophie had built a chain of hospitals and a business empire. Wallis Simpson was not the only one who could break rules and win.
She strode to the door, hips swaying above those magnificent heels. ‘David!’ She stopped a yard away, and held out her cheek for a kiss. He responded automatically, stepping forward to press his lips to her face, which took him from Simpson’s side. She could see his moment of recognition, followed by admiration, then apprehension at what either she or Wallis Simpson might say.
So she said nothing. She smiled up into his face before he could glance back at his companion, a smile of such joy that he began to smile too. She took his hand — a small hand, and cold — which one did not do either to royalty.
‘David, darling, you are freezing. Come and warm up.’ Sophie’s gaze did not acknowledge that there was any other person in the room.
‘David, come her at once!’ The voice behind was sharp, but muffled — James and two women with high, loud voices chattering about fur coats had already moved between them and Wallis Simpson. Troops in position, thought Sophie. She doubted David had even heard Simpson’s command.
One did not lead the king to a fireplace, not unless one was ignorant, or deliberately, provocatively, breaking the rules. Nor did one stand there, still with a smile of joy, holding both his hands, so that he must face her, not the room, as well as feeling what must be the welcome heat. Vaguely she was aware of Emily, a velvet clothed battleship, blocking Wallis Simpson’s path, and a waiter with a tray of drinks hemming Simpson between a sofa and Emily.
Simpson could either accept a drink and exchange words with her hostess, or leap over the sofa, showing her stocking tops and suspenders. Oh, excellent strategy, Emily. She had given Sophie at least a few minutes to focus solely on the king.
She lifted one of his hands, so that he automatically kissed hers before realising what he was doing. His eyes were still trapped by hers.
‘Now you must apologise,’ she ordered, letting her smile fade, but the look of old affection remain. This was nanny, saying you had been naughty, but loving you, always forgiving you, despite it. A small space had cleared around them. Emily and James evidently had several guests at work here tonight. A portly man blocked the direct line of sight to Simpson. But the king did not even look for her.
‘Sophie —’
‘Yes. Sophie. Nigel died and you didn’t even write me a letter of condolence.’ She saw the moment of relief when David realised she would not blame him for Nigel’s death. ‘Y
ou forgot me the moment I left England! I thought we were friends, David. Close friends.’
‘We are. Of course we are!’ He automatically kissed her other hand as she held it up to him.
‘Oh, David, I am so glad.’ She spoke slowly now, as Miss Lily had taught her girls so many years ago at Shillings. Speak slowly and softly and a man must listen to catch each word. And if they are the right words, he will listen to them. ‘I do understand why you didn’t write. It has all been terrible for you, the responsibility, the impossibility of all the people you must deal with. But I am so glad we are still friends.’ She gazed at him, pausing long enough for him to look beyond her. But Simpson was still hidden behind strategically placed guests of sufficient girth and height. Oh, brilliant Emily, to have found and marshalled enough of those.
All David saw was a room of men enviously watching him dazzle the most beautiful and exotic woman in the room — and in less than a minute. I am beautiful, thought Sophie. It has been so long since I remembered. I have become a businesswoman, a mother, a friend. But tonight, dressed by Green and Lily, she was even more lovely than she had been as a debutante. Eyes lingered on her tonight, with desire or jealousy.
David might not have conventional sexual yearnings, but he did have the very common male desire to acquire the most desired woman in the room, and to be admired and envied for achieving that. He straightened. For a few minutes, at least, Wallis Simpson was blocked from his thoughts as well as his sight. She must take advantage of it.
She drew closer, her voice almost a whisper. ‘David, darling, do you remember how we first met?’
‘You literally dropped from the sky!’
It had been a small aircraft piloted by Ethel’s nephew, but his version was far more dramatic. ‘And then you saved me from a zebra and Nigel from his terrible cousins? Oh, David, you were wonderful!’ She let her face show nostalgia, regret, and above all, admiration.
‘I do remember that dashed zebra!’ They exchanged a look of laughter.
‘I am perhaps the only woman in the world who has ever had a hero save her from a zebra!’ declared Sophie, carefully not glancing away.
Lilies, Lies and Love Page 13
