Crimson (14 page)

“She has Edward’s eyes,” Jane said proudly.

“Apart from that, she’s the image of you.” Jane was small and thin, pale and dark.

Although they were so young, Jane seemed perfect for Edward. They lived in a big house in north Oxford with Jane’s father, a widowed history professor, who didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t care what happened, provided nothing upset his routine.

To Billy’s disappointment, Elinor’s Elizabethan romance, Rebellious Princess, did not achieve the same level of success as the diary. No messenger appeared from Paramount or MGM, and although Billy personally delivered a copy of the book to Vivien Leigh’s London home he never received an acknowledgement.

The publishers were more pragmatic.

“You can hardly expect her to pull off a winner with her first non-fiction book and her first novel,” Mr. Stansfield said, over oysters at Wheeler’s.

“The book is selling well for a first novel, and we’re pleased with her progress.” Stansfield and Hart had purchased an option on Elinor’s next five novels.

“I’m only sorry that your wife couldn’t spare the time to have lunch, for I could then reassure her in person.”

“She hates to break up the day finds it stops her moment urn Billy murmured, having neglected to tell Elinor of the invitation.

“She’s already started on the next novel kept to the same period, as you suggested, which cuts down her research. She’s settling down in that period nicely. Shouldn’t be surprised if she started to wear padded sleeves and a farthingale.” Billy now spent his mornings reading the newspapers, and behaved as if Mr. Chamberlain relied on his advice which was to kick those German bastards out of Austria and back into their own country, before the British found themselves in another war. But Mr. Chamberlain didn’t listen, and by September, when baby Clare was nine months old, Britain and France declared war on Germany.

Jane was again pregnant.

“Just as well her mother left her a bit of money,” Billy said sourly. Elinor said nothing, although she secretly agreed with him. Edward had done the right thing when Jane first became pregnant, but they should both have been more responsible and taken precautions after Clare’s birth: two children were too much of a load for two kids of nineteen especially now, when Britain was at war.

“Appeasement,” Billy said, on the morning before Christmas.

“We should have been tougher with the bastards earlier. We were too aggressive the first time, and not aggressive enough this time. We should have rubbed their Nazi noses in it, like puppies, when they made their first little mess and marched into Austria.” That evening, Billy returned home late, only mildly drunk and very happy because of his new job; he was to work in an administrative capacity at the War Office, liaising with the RAF.

As he was telling Elinor about it, the telephone on the hall table rang. Billy picked it up, listened, and said in his new, clipped voice, “Well done, m’boy. I expect you’ll want to tell your mother … Edward and Jeremy, that friend of his, have joined up. They’ve been drafted into the intelligence service.” On the afternoon of Monday, i i March 1940, Edward telephoned his mother to tell her that Jane’s second baby, Annabel, had just been born, two weeks early.

Elinor was unable to reach Billy, as he was not in his log office, so she had to contain her excitement until that evening, when they had planned a rare night out to see Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka.

Outside Billy’s favourite pub, the Star and Garter at the top of Whitehall, people slowly groped their way through the blackout. As Elinor walked into the bar, a blast of fight and noise greeted her. A piano pounding “Roll Out the Barrel” was surrounded by a singing, khaki-clad crowd, their fists wrapped around tankards of beer. Elsewhere a group of sailors gathered round an accordionist were bawling, “All the nice girls love a sailor.” The place smelled of stale cigarettes, stale hops, and stale sweat, but nobody cared, and the atmosphere was one of cheerful euphoria. Elinor struggled through the crowd to a small corner table where she had spotted a couple of unoccupied seats.

When Billy appeared in the doorway, she stood up and waved until he saw her, then cradled an imaginary baby and gave him the thumbs-up sign.

“Boy?” he mouthed questioningly.

Elinor shook her head. Billy shrugged, smiled, then fought his way to the counter to buy drinks.

As he carried them from the bar, Elinor saw a young girl, hatless and slim as a bulrush in a dark brown coat, dash forward and tug at Billy’s sleeve; her face was anxious as she spoke to him.

Billy looked exasperated as the girl clung to his sleeve. With a sudden movement, she laid her head against his shoulder.

Billy angrily jerked his head towards Elinor. The girl looked her way and Elinor saw a freckled, oval face with short brown hair and large, tearful dark eyes.

Billy yanked his sleeve free, then continued to batt1c through the crowd towards Elinor.

“Who was th at?” Elinor asked him when he reached her. “Oh, just a girl from the newspaper office. One of the secretaries! “What’s her nam eT “I forget, actually.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to ask her.”

“For Christ’s sake, Elinor, can’t we just once have a night out without your jealous imagination taking off like a Spitfire? I think she’s called Pat Kettle! “Why is she crying? And why did she ask you to help her?” That had been obvious.

“Some trouble at the office. Some documents are missing. She’s under suspicion. I can’t do anything about it, as I told her.”

“She’s in love with you I can see it.” Standing by the bar, the girl still gazed sadly at Billy; she wore an expression that Elinor knew well, the expression of a puppy that has just been kicked by its master.

“I can’t help that,” Billy said tersely.

“Drink up, or we’ll be late.”

“For heaven’s sake, Billy, she’s only a child,” Elinor said angrily.

“Couldn you have left her alon eT She watched as Miss Kettle turned despondently away, towards the door, and disappeared in the crowd.

“Be reasonable, old girl. Can I help it if some woman takes a shine to meT “Yes, you can help it,” Elinor replied bitterly. She put her untouched drink on the table.

“We’ve been married for twenty-two years and you’re nearly fifty, for heaven’s sake. How old is she? Nineteen? A young girl doesn’t fall for a man of your age unless she’s pursued and courted. I can just about remember your romantic approach, Billy. It was very effective! Billy laughed this off.

“No, darling you were always the romantic. Now tell me about my new granddaughter. And drink up. We’re already late for the cinema.”

III

SATURDAY, 8 MARCH 194 1

Almost three years after they were married, Edward and Jane were celebrating Jane’s birthday at the C06 de Paris in London, when two fifty-kilo German bombs fell down an air shaft in the nightclub, straight on to the dance floor. Edward and Jane were killed instantly, their bodies charred almost beyond recognition. Billy, silent and regretful, was kinder to Elinor than he had been since their marriage. Elinor, in a state of shock from which she felt she would never recover, took charge of the orphaned children and had to adapt quickly to the demands of a young family.

A few months after this tragedy, at closing time at the Star and Garter, Billy fell in the blackout, with a resultant compound fracture of his left fibula, which was slow to heal. He now found it difficult to walk and was unable to continue with his job. Eventually he joined Elinor in the country with the three little girls; everybody said how sad is was that Miranda had been born only a month before Jane and Edward were killed. The near-derelict cottage was on the Larkwood estate; there was no space at the big house, which now served as an officers” convalescent home.

Their new circumstances required new literary discipline. Billy now made Elinor get up in the dark, at five a.m.” to write until nine a.m.” seven days a week. But those few hours a day belonged only to Elinor, and during that time she forgot the cold, discomfort, and deprivation of war; she even forgot the loss of Edward, which otherwise was constantly present in her waking time, sapping the strength and hope from her body. As her pen detailed the rich clothes, splendid jewellery, and sybaritic banquets of delicious food with delicate wine, Elinor escaped back to the leisurely, bountiful, lyrical life of Elizabethan England.

The rest of her day was spent looking after the three baby girls, struggling to shop and cook for all of them, and coping with life without electricity, running water, or inside sanitation: there was a wooden shed at the end of the garden, and water was pumped from a well in the courtyard. Elinor ignored this lack of comfort. She was determined to see only the romantic charm of the cottage, which stood on the southern slope of a wooded hill, with a view of undulating fields beyond the small garden where Billy raised neat rows of vegetables. Elinor enjoyed the peace of the country, especially in winter on cold, clear, snowy days, and in summer when the wind rippled through the field of ripe wheat; then, she was always reminded ofherchildhood, although British wheat fields were tiny compared to those of Minnesota.

And Elinor quickly became a doting grandmother. Everybody said what pretty little girls they were: all three had Billy’s mesmeric aquamarine eyes, solemn and staring. Clare, the eldest, was dark and frail, a quiet child as her father had been. Annabel looked like Elinor as a child; she was a rosy-cheeked, chubby little thing, with thick fair hair and an unusually pretty face. Miranda, the youngest, had a pale, freckled face; she was skinny and small for her age.

“Yes, we’re very lucky,” Elinor would smile when anybody complimented her on the three sisters. But no number of adorable grandchildren could replace Edward. Like most mothers, she had thought of her own child as still flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood, still a part of her own body, joined by an invisible umbilical cord that could never be cut; and so now she felt bereft, as if a part of her had been amputated.

Every time Elinor saw aquamarine eyes staring up at her, in her mind’s eye again she saw Edward as a child and felt poignant, wistful regret. She wished that she had not been so careless of those ordinary hours when he had been in the room while she ironed, or darned, or listened to the radio. Every time she remembered her beloved only son, Elinor’s heart seemed to shrivel and she felt a physical pain in her breast. Rather than give in and break down in tears before the frightened little girls, she would make an effort of will and turn her mind to her plot problems with her book, a diversion that was always successful.

SUNDAY, 5 AUGUST 1945

Nearly two years after starting it, Elinor finished her fourth novel. She had enjoyed almost every moment of it; she had even persuaded herself that getting up in the dark was exciting, although the past winter had been so cold that she wore her coat at her desk, draped blankets around her legs, and propped her feet on a hot-water bottle.

Elinor worked all day on the novel. Billy, knowing that the rhythm and crescendo of the ending should be uninterrupted, saw that she was undisturbed. He brought fresh cups of tea and soup to her desk and took away the cold, untouched ones as she scribbled, oblivious to his presence.

Just after eleven o’clock that night, Elinor put down her pen, removed her spectacles, rubbed her eyes, stretched, and, like any novelist, started to have doubts.

Perhaps it should not be called Deadly Fortune but Fatal Fortune. Elinor didn’t want it to sound like a detective story, although that was exactly what the novel was a series of murders in one Elizabethan family, in order to gain control of an estate.

Elinor stretched again. She felt as if she needed a walk. She felt as if she wanted a drink. She felt hungry. She felt wide awake. She felt light-headed.

A bottle of cider stood on the kitchen dresser, a lamb chop lay in the metal-mesh meat safe that hung outside the kitchen door; she cooked the chop and drank the cider. For the moment, she felt completely alone in the world, and comfortable. She picked up the Daily Telegraph from the kitchen table, folded it at the crossword, then decided not to do it, because she could never finish the thing and it made her feel inadequate. She looked at the headlines once again: nothing much was happening.

Far away on the other side of the world, where it was early morning, a small parachute was floating down from a B bomber. At eight-fifteen a.m.” a nuclear chain reaction in the bomb built up a temperature of several million degrees centigrade, which created a fireball that seemed brighter than the sun. This fireball expanded to measure two hundred and fifty yards in diameter. One second after it had been detonated over Hiroshima, the world’s first atomic bomb signalled the end of the war.

TUESDAY, 9 JULY 1946

Joe Grant’s office in Carey Street, immediately behind the assizes court, was almost a replica of his study in the country.” with its dark green leather appointments. Joe looked older than fifty-one, Elinor thought as she sat in a wing chair by the side of the empty fireplace. She suspected that he carefully cultivated his Pickwickian traditional-lawyer look.

Joe smiled and said, “You haven’t changed at all, Elinor. A touch older, as we all are, but you haven’t changed.” He basked in her wide, delighted smile.

“What flattery,” said Elinor, now forty-six.

“How’s your family, Joe?” “Ethel has a touch of arthritis, but the boys are fine. Michael has finally settled down at Eton it helps if your elder brother is already there.”

Elinor briefly reflected that, while Joe’s children had benefited from their mother’s money, she was glad Edward had not been brought up as strictly as Adam and Michael Grant. Their mother five years older than Joe had been forty years old in 1930, when Adam was born. After the difficult birth, she had suffered badly from what was not then recognized as postpartum depression, and seemed never to have forgiven Adam for her misery; Ethel was more lenient with Michael, who was born two years later, although she had not welcomed either pregnancy. Elinor had never seen Ethel Grant kiss her children; even at bedtime she merely offered a cool cheek to be kissed by them. They had been restricted to the nursery by a severe and strict nanny and had been expected to behave as little adults rather than as children. At least in Edward’s too short LIFE he had known the warmth of a mother’s love.