Death Sits Down to Dinner (3 page)

There was a bray of laughter from Hermione’s nephew, Trevor Tricklebank, who was enjoying the company of Marigold Meriwether at the far end of the table. Trevor was a good-natured but fatuous ass of a young man thoughtlessly dedicated to good living. She wondered what her husband would say if their unmarried daughter, Althea, were to fall in love with a drone like Trevor.

She glanced across the table to the upright figure of Captain Vetiver, Churchill’s chief aide at the Admiralty, who was seated next to Mrs. Churchill. Would they prefer perhaps someone as consciously perfect as Captain Vetiver for a son-in-law for their independent daughter? Captain, the Honourable Sir Parceval Vetiver, third son of the Duke of Andover, was impeccable in every aspect, but might be rather unforgiving if his wife was not quite as faultless as her husband. No, he would never do for independent Althea, always happier in the great outdoors than in the drawing room.

Her gaze traveled on down the table to the young man seated at the end. He was awfully young and handsome in the scarlet coat of his dress uniform.
What was his name again? Washington? No. Ah yes, Wildman-Lushington, Captain Gilbert Wildman-Lushington, Royal Marines.
She nodded to Sir Reginald Cholmondeley, on her right, as he launched into a prolonged explanation as to how the New Year’s Honors List was compiled; no doubt he expected to be elevated to the peerage in the New Year for his considerable efforts on behalf the Chimney Sweep Boys charity.

Sir Reginald is the sort of man to be congratulated rather than enjoyed.
Clementine felt her eyes swim a little with the effort of keeping them fixed on his face as he elucidated on his charitable obligations.

Deeply Anglican in his outlook, Sir Reginald was always ready to produce a ponderous moral fable to illustrate any aspect of human frailty, and this evening there were to be no exceptions. Countless dinner parties seated next to, or within earshot of, Sir Reginald had taught Clementine long ago to remind herself that the man worked only for the good of the deserving poor, which in this frivolous day and age demanded true beneficence and unrelenting hard work. Sir Reginald’s eyes were shining with the energy only the zealous possess, and she forced herself to pay attention.

“… Always so generous with his donations … Mr. Greenberg might not be of our faith … but God’s way are mysterious…” Sir Reginald’s pale blue eyes were fixed on her face, and having grasped the gist of his monologue, for the next several minutes Clementine allowed herself to mentally drift away.

Her conversation with Captain Wildman-Lushington had been far more interesting to her than any to be had with Sir Reginald or Churchill. He flew aeroplanes in the new Royal Naval Air Service, he had explained, his young face glowing with pride and enthusiasm. He flew a Farman-type pusher biplane, whatever that was, and he knew her son, Harry Talbot, Viscount Lord Haversham—not personally, he had hastened to assure her, but by reputation as a fellow pilot.

Clementine had never truly come to terms with what she hoped was her son’s passing infatuation with aircraft and flying. In fact, she had kicked up such a fuss about his involvement with Tom Sopwith and his aeroplane manufactory in Kingston last summer that when the dust had settled in the Talbot family and everyone was talking to one another again, Harry had asked her never to bring up the subjects of “safety” and “flying” in the same sentence again, since it caused her so much distress. Denying her the opportunity to learn exactly what happened when one launched oneself into the heavens in what she considered to be a badly wrapped brown paper parcel, tied with string.

The moment Captain Wildman-Lushington had introduced himself, she had deftly cut him away from Hermione’s other guests and interrogated him, using the words
safety
and
aeroplanes
as often as she wished. Their conversation had been illuminating once she had translated some of the strange terms the young pilot used, the vernacular of flying she supposed. Clearly delighted that someone in this eminent crowd actually wanted to talk to him at all, Captain Wildman-Lushington had been informative as he accounted for his invitation to dinner.

“I am here this evening as the guest of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lady Montfort. Today I was appointed his personal flying instructor.” He almost blushed with pride.

“Mr. Churchill went aloft?” Clementine realized that this was a term used for what you did in a hot-air balloon or when sailors scrambled up a ship’s rigging. She struggled for the right word. “I mean actually went…?” She lifted her hands upward.

“
Up,
Lady Montfort.” He was beaming and trying not to swagger at the evident pride he felt at being connected to the First Lord of the Admiralty in such a dashing way. “Up, with me this afternoon, in my plane. He did frightfully well. Of course he’s been up before but this time he actually took the controls.”

“Great heavens, so it’s considered to be quite safe then?” She had actually seen an aeroplane and couldn’t imagine Mr. Churchill’s considerable bulk crammed into such a fragile container.

“Well, yes. But flying has its risks, even today.” He laughed the deprecating laugh of the truly brave or, perhaps, the completely unimaginative.

The captain was tall, fit, and alert, with clear, steady gray eyes in a firm, round face that shone with health as a result of wholesome food, untroubled sleep, and no doubt masses of exercise. Captain Wildman-Lushington personified anyone’s ideal of a young man of derring-do. Now here was someone she would have been delighted for Althea to be interested in. Like her daughter, the young man before her relished the active life of doing.
Yes,
she thought,
he is most certainly a doer before he is a deep thinker.

Now as she finished her duck and turned a listening face to Sir Reginald Cholmondeley, she cast a quick, assessing glance at Mr. Churchill.
How old is he? Older than I am, surely.
She calculated; yes, he was easily in his late forties. She was later to discover that he was celebrating his thirty-ninth year, making him a surprising three years younger than herself. Mr. Churchill was balding and his heavy-limbed body was going to fat. He had downed at least a bottle and a half of wine during the first part of dinner and was still eating and drinking with enthusiasm.

If a specimen as physically unfit and as unmuscled as Mr. Churchill could fly an aeroplane, then surely they must have ironed out all those wrinkles that made them such death traps only two short years ago?
Keeping her expression responsive to alterations in the conversational tone of Sir Reginald’s lecture on the importance of charitable giving, she went back in her thoughts to her earlier examination of the young flying officer.

“And how long have you been flying, Captain?”

“Ohhhhh…” He squinted one eye and struggled with the arithmetic. “Let’s see now. Ah yes, started in May. So that’s…”

“Six months! You’ve been doing it for just six months and you were appointed to take up one of England’s chief ministers! Why, Captain, that’s astounding!”

“Yes,” he agreed, struggling to look modest. “It is rather. Your son has been flying at least a year longer than I have, of course, and is far more competent. Mr. Churchill is awfully keen to sign Lord Haversham up to the RNAS soon as possible, so we can get this whole show on the road before we go to war with Germany.”

He was completely oblivious of her appalled silence.
I don’t know what’s going on in the world,
she thought as Captain Wildman-Lushington rhapsodized on about pusher biplanes.
Here I am thinking war with Germany is still a laughable bit of posturing, and people like Churchill, Vetiver, and apparently Harry are planning on taking battles into the air.
“Do you imagine, Captain, that there is a place in war for these machines?” she asked

“There most certainly is,” came the blithe unheeding reply. “Mr. Churchill believes all wars of the future will be fought in the air. Sea battles are a thing of the past really. And of course enemy reconnaissance is a piece of cake from an aeroplane.”

If there was to be war with Germany, and hopefully if they all kept their heads there wouldn’t be, then Harry would be careering around in the sky in something as unpredictable and fragile as a “kite”—Wildman-Lushington’s term. Clementine stared in horror at the bright young man in front of her and had nothing whatsoever to say.

Her preoccupation continued through to the end of dinner. Only self-discipline and a strong sense of social obligation helped her to contribute in the evening’s lighthearted chatter. But with Mr. Churchill on her left she had merely to incline her head in a parody of fascinated interest, as he talked inexhaustibly on any topic. He was now in the middle of an account of his near brush with what he called his “attempted assassination” by an enraged and militant suffragette at a country railway station in Hertfordshire.

“She was a big woman.” Churchill gestured from the center of his chest outward with both hands. “She had an unattractive flat straw hat perched on her huge head.” His alert eyes glanced around the table and he lifted his voice so all could enjoy the joke as he paused to finish the last of the wine in his glass which was immediately replenished by the footman. “I was waiting on the platform at Tring station for the half-past-four with my wife.” Here he bowed his head to Mrs. Churchill, seated farther down the table, next to Sir Vivian Hussey. “We were anxious to be home: our youngest had chicken pox, we were tired and in need of our dinner. Well, long story short, this buffalo of a woman came up behind me as the train came steaming in at a fast clip. Just as it started to slow down she gave me this terrific buffet from behind. Of course I wasn’t expecting to be booted off the platform and I went staggering forward, completely caught off-balance. I remember seeing the pistons of the engine turning in front of my nose and fully expected to go down on the rails and be squashed quite flat.” Here he laughed—a big man’s laugh; a genial man’s laugh.
The laugh,
Clementine thought,
of the truly successful, who always get what they want.

“My life, as they say, flashed before me. And as my body reached a tipping point,” he seesawed his outstretched arms to encourage them to join in the joke against him, “I felt this reassuring grip on my shoulder. A powerful heave and I was righted in an instant and dragged to safety by my vigilant, coolheaded, and remarkable wife. And as of course you know, Mrs. Churchill is in favor of the franchise for women.” He smiled down the table at his wife, who had been listening attentively.
How many times has she heard this story?
Clementine wondered in sympathy, as Mr. Churchill’s anecdote was greeted by huge laughter, and a little smatter of applause from the sycophants in the group. She glanced across at her husband, whose face was set as he stared down at his plate.

“What happened to your assassin?” Sir Vivian, who knew what it was like to be pursued by angry women, asked to further laughter.

“She was arrested for assault with malice and sent to Holloway Prison, where I believe she set fire to her cell!” Winston sat back in his chair. His eyes glistened as he took generous sips from his glass. “Quite batty of course, these women, and as they age they get battier and take bigger risks, and not just with
my
life,”
he has become the politician again,
thought Clementine, “but with the lives of all of us. It’s an unnatural lust for power in womankind, and a power that … will … not …
be given
.” She noticed that he had a way of intoning his words almost through clenched teeth as he spaced out each one and then grouped the last two together in a rhythmic and emphatic pattern, and if she listened carefully she could still detect his tendency to lisp. She sat back in her chair, fascinated. He wasn’t exactly likable, she thought, but he was impressive. He had effortlessly dominated a gathering of at least eighteen people throughout dinner with deft and wicked wit. He had certainly gained her preoccupied attention.

A footman pulled back Hermione Kingsley’s chair so she might stand up from the table.

“Dear Winston.” Their elderly hostess smiled at the incorrigible charmer seated at the end of her dining-room table. “We will leave you all to enjoy your port and cigars.”

Clementine regarded the upright old lady with affection. Hermione had all the fearsome traits of her mother’s generation. Her angular frame looked incongruous and gaunt in a gown of pink satin and deep lace ruffles, and her iron-gray hair was swept up in the pouf that had been fashionable at the end of the last century. Hermione waved an imperious hand, telling, not inviting, the women to join her.

Chapter Three

There are those among us who enjoy that brief interlude after dinner when we women leave the men to their port and cigars and disappear to powder our noses and relax among friends to indulge in topics exclusive to feminine interest. And that all depends on who those women are,
thought Clementine, as they left the dining room in chattering groups and crossed the spacious inner hall to the wide marble staircase that climbed to the second floor. She caught the tail end of Lady Cunard’s laying down the law to Hermione and Lady Wentworth about the merits of employing Rosa Lewis, London’s most celebrated chef and owner of the Cavendish Hotel, to organize one’s dinner party, instead of employing a full-time French chef and butler, and felt this part of the evening might wear a little.

But, to her delight, on arriving in the salon, Clementine found herself immediately engaged by the more amiable of her husband’s dinner companions. Lady Ryderwood’s dark eyes lit up as Clementine approached her and she deftly steered her off so that they might talk alone.

When Clementine had first met Veda Ryderwood she had been instantly drawn to her, finding her to be a woman comfortably at ease with herself no matter what the occasion. She had a low, unhurried and musical quality to her voice, a quick, bright mind and a well-developed sense of humor.