Lessons in Heartbreak (27 page)

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ breathed Jodi, enchanted.

And Izzie wondered exactly what was wrong with her, because all she felt was sadness in this place. Maybe she lacked the archaeology gene. Or maybe she was a lot more like her grandmother than she knew. She didn’t long to be in this grand house playing at being a lady, with servants running up and down the back stairs every time she rang a bell.

There was too much unbalance here. As if something had kept Rathnaree going unnaturally and, now that the cycle was over, all that was left was this beautiful, sad shell which had witnessed so much. Many people had lived their lives out in the house, yet the only stories people heard about Rathnaree concerned the wealthy people who’d lived here. The poor people of Tamarin who’d served them had been forgotten. That felt wrong to Izzie.

‘It’s a pity we don’t know more about the people who worked here,’ she said. ‘That’s the interesting story, isn’t it?’

‘I agree, both stories are interesting,’ Jodie said, surprising her. ‘It’s like there were two separate worlds here, independent and yet linking up: the aristocrats, and the servants. Two different stories at the same time, how interesting is that! Oh, I’m so glad we got to come in here. Thank you, Izzie, for arranging it.’

‘You’re going to work on it, then – the history from both sides?’ Izzie asked.

Jodi nodded. ‘I love uncovering the past, don’t you?’ she said happily. ‘It teaches us about ourselves: that’s what they told us in college, anyway.’

Izzie stood in front of the big fireplace the way the people in Jodi’s sepia-tinted photograph had stood and tried to imagine
herself back in their world. She’d read a novel about time travel once, where a woman from the twentieth century had been whisked back to the seventeenth. The idea had fascinated Izzie. What would she bring to the past if she was transported back to 1936 right now? Would her wisdom be of any use then? Or would she find that, instead of her bringing superior modern knowledge into the past, the past would turn out to be her teacher?

When she was older, Lily found that the seasons reminded her of different parts of her life. Spring was always Tamarin, when the bare trees were dotted with pouting acid-green buds of new life, and the fields changed from heavy umber to palest green dotted with velvety new lambs on shaky legs. Autumn was Rathnaree, when the staff toiled to get the great house ready for winter and when Sir Henry invited cronies to shoot or fish with him. Outside, the woods came alight with the russets and pale golds of autumn, while inside, apple logs burned in the grates and the kitchen steamed up with cooking for the parties of gentlemen.

But summer: summer would always be London during the war when the sun shone more brightly than ever before, and life was lived with far greater passion and ferocity than she’d imagined possible.

May 1944 was one of the hottest Mays on record, and on the rare occasions when they weren’t working, Lily, Diana and Maisie loved to sit on the tiny balcony on the third floor of the nurses’ home on Cubitt Street, faded and frayed cushions behind them, letting the heat sink into their tired bones.

They didn’t get too many opportunities to sit in the sun: time off was at a premium for third-year nursing students and Matron was an ardent believer in the mantra of the Devil making work for idle hands.

She would have been scandalised if she had seen them sitting on the balcony with their stockings off and their feet deliciously bare to the sun. But it had been a hard week, Lily thought, leaning back, and what Matron didn’t know, couldn’t harm her. In the delivery ward, Lily had been involved in the births of seventeen babies in that week alone.

She deserved a rest. That evening, she and the girls were going out to tea in Lyons Corner House, and afterwards to the Odeon to see
Gaslight.
She loved going to the cinema and immersing herself in the fantasy world onscreen. Joan Crawford was still her favourite film star, but she could see the lure of Ingrid Bergman. Maisie, who was prone to flights of imagination, said Lily had the same eyes as Ingrid.

‘Mysterious,’ Maisie insisted. ‘Like you’re thinking of a special man, somewhere.’

‘When she looks like that, she’s thinking of what’s for dinner,’ laughed Diana, who was much more prosaic and, like all of them, thought about food quite a lot.

Lily remembered the huge surplus of food at home, fresh eggs every day and her mother’s fragrant bread. She’d never realised how lucky she’d been. Now, the shortages had even spread to Ireland, where flour was in short supply. ‘We’re all eating black bread at the moment,’ her mother had written in her last letter. ‘Tastes like turf to my mind. Lady Irene’s got very thin on account of it.’

As the afternoon sun warmed her face, Lily wondered how she had ever lived anywhere other than here. It wasn’t just food that made her think back to Tamarin and Rathnaree: her mother working hard, never seeing anything but the bloody
Lochraven family, never thinking of more. Lily herself had seen so much now – she’d helped in theatre when the hospital was short-staffed and had stayed standing despite the stench of discarded splints and dressings from men wounded overseas. She’d spent many nights in the basement during air-raids, comforting patients while trying to remain calm herself, telling them it would be fine, that the hospital had never taken a direct hit and wouldn’t now, when she knew no such thing.

She’d delivered two babies all by herself, and had felt a surge of pride when she’d heard that the Queen said she was glad Buckingham Palace had been bombed so now she could look the East End in the eye. Lily liked the Queen: she cared, keeping the little princesses in London despite the bombing. They were on rationing too, which was only right. Lily would have bet her last shilling that, if the Lochravens had been running the country, they’d still be eating plover’s eggs and lobster thermidor.

‘Is it bad not to want to go home?’ she asked Maisie.

‘Depends on what there is to go home to,’ Maisie said pragmatically. ‘There’s nothing for me to go home to, ‘cept Terry’s wife, and she won’t be welcoming me with open arms.’ Maisie’s mother had been killed during the Blitz as she’d opened the front door of her flat to rush for the Underground. Only her brother, Terry, was left of their small family, and he’d married a year ago when his girlfriend, a platinum blonde named Ruby, became pregnant. Ruby and Maisie didn’t see eye to eye.

‘Yes, sorry,’ said Lily, angry with herself for thinking out loud. ‘But when the war’s over, what then?’

‘You got listening privileges in the War Office, then?’ Maisie asked. ‘How’d you know it’s going to be over?’

‘It can’t go on for ever.’

‘Says who?’ Maisie found her cigarettes and lit one.

‘Tea’s ready, girls.’ Diana put three cups of tea down beside them, then swung her long legs down so the sun could warm them.

‘Thanks.’

‘Thanks, Diana.’ Lily sipped her tea, still wrinkling her nose at the first taste. She missed sugar, but had decided it was far better to save her coupons for actual tea.

Diana had given up coffee altogether. ‘I can’t bear the taste of Camp,’ she’d said, shuddering at even the notion of the coffee substitute. She’d told them once about drinking delicious pre-war coffee in Juan Les Pins in the South of France where she’d gone with her parents and sister, Sybil, and stayed in a fabulous villa with its own swimming pool and blue-and-white umbrellas to shelter one from the sun.

‘Lily’s going all maudlin on us, Di,’ said Maisie. ‘Wants to know what we’re going to do after.’

Diana’s perfect nose wrinkled. ‘Darling, heaven knows. Daddy will want me to get married, I suppose, so I’ll be off his hands, like Sybil. That’s what he thinks war is about – defending the country so your daughters can still get married in the family chapel.’

‘You never said you had a chapel.’ Maisie sat up. ‘I thought Sybil was getting married in an ordinary church.’

‘It’s only a small one,’ Diana said apologetically. ‘Lots of people have them. Not just us.’

‘Keep your knickers on, Princess,’ Maisie sighed. ‘I’ve never seen a house with a chapel before. Christ Almighty, I s’pose I’ll have to be on my best behaviour for this bloody wedding.’

You’re not the only one, Lily thought. She still felt unsure about attending Diana’s sister’s wedding. It was easy to forget that Diana came from another world, the world of privilege. She shared their room and they saw her asleep with her mouth open, and had watched her cram a cheese sandwich into her face after a twelve-hour shift when they’d not had a second to
stop for a bite. But her family would be another matter. They’d already met Sybil, who was everything Diana was not: proud, sulky and keen to maintain the class divide.

Unlike Maisie, who was dying to see ‘how the other half lived’, Lily – who already knew exactly how they lived – was dreading the wedding. To Diana, she was a friend. To the Beltons, with their private chapel and grand house in London and pre-war holidays on the Riviera, she would be a servant girl. The war might have changed many things, but it hadn’t changed that much.

‘It’s going to be lovely,’ Maisie sighed happily.

At twenty-one, she was the youngest of the three and yet the one who tried everything first. She’d been first to go out with an American soldier.

‘Very polite, kept telling me about his mother,’ she said mournfully when she got back to the nurses’ home and the others pressed her for details. ‘Said English girls were ladies. We’d all be ladies if nobody ever put a hand on us.’

‘You’d be furious if he tried anything,’ pointed out Diana, who had finally got the measure of Maisie after almost three years of living in each other’s shadows.

‘Three hours hearing about his mother put me right off,’ snorted Maisie, not even bothering to respond to Diana’s remark. They were all so comfortable with each other: like sisters, they squabbled but always made up. They’d been through the fire together. It had created an unbreakable bond. ‘It was like having my Nan in the room, squawking, “If you let the dog see the rabbit, it’ll end in tears, my girl! Get the ring first!” And talkin’ of rings – I hope someone will take pictures of us at the wedding,’ Maisie added. ‘I want to see proof of me in my finery.’

“Course they will,’ Diana said. ‘Pictures for posterity.’

Lily didn’t know what they’d have done for clothes if it hadn’t been for Diana’s generosity. She had trunkloads of
stuff: evening gowns and day suits she’d donated to the Impoverished of Hampstead Fund, as they called it. Maisie’s nimble fingers could take in or let out any garment. As Diana and Lily were almost the same size, not much alteration was required, but a few inches had to be taken off all the hems so they’d fit her.

Thanks to Diana’s capacious trunks, Maisie would be wearing a grey linen and silk suit and a dashing little silver feathered hat for Sybil’s wedding. Diana was to be a bridesmaid in one of her mother’s old Mainbocher gowns in a sea blue that made her English cream and roses complexion look even more beautiful, and Lily was to wear a crêpe de Chine navy spotted dress with a Chinese collar, a nipped-in waist that made her look like a very slender hourglass, and a swirling skirt. The only fly in the sartorial ointment was the lack of shoes. Diana’s feet were much bigger than Lily’s, too big for them to share shoes, so Lily would have to wear her hospital shoes, a pair of brown lace-ups sturdy enough to walk from London to the church.

‘You’ll still look smashing,’ Maisie had said loyally when they’d tried on their respective outfits.

With Diana’s great-aunt’s jade earrings bringing out the hints of viridian in her eyes, and her chestnut hair a mass of glossy curls, Lily knew she would look her best. But the shoes would not be the only thing to give it away.

Servants were far greater snobs than their masters and the person who’d said a good butler could ascertain a person’s social class from just one glance had not been lying. Lily knew that her background would be immediately apparent to all below stairs at Beltonward.

‘Come on, girls,’ she said now, getting up from her seat in the sun. ‘Let’s go out for tea: I’m starving.’

Beltonward was Lily’s worst nightmare. From the moment the old truck they’d got a lift on lurched over a hill and Diana
cried: ‘Look, there it is,’ pride overcoming the politeness that made her play down her family’s wealth, Lily felt her heart sink to the soles of her shoes. Beltonward was a vast mansion, built along the lines of the huge houses commandeered by the Army, Navy and Air Force as bases for their operations. The only factor that had left Beltonward in private hands was its location far from anywhere. It was perfect as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, having acres of land for men to roam about and try to forget what they’d seen.

‘Christ Almighty,’ Maisie said. ‘You must be a bleedin’ princess, love, ‘cos your dad would need to be a king to keep this place going.’

‘Oh, Maisie, shut up,’ snapped Diana, with an unheard-of irritability that showed Lily that she wasn’t the only one anxious about the wedding.

Maisie shut up.

When the truck deposited them at the huge front door, two elderly gentlemen appeared.

‘Daddy,’ said Diana, leaping forward to hug the shabbier of the two. At least seventy, with a few strands of silver hair on his brown, liver-spotted head, he wore a much-darned knitted waistcoat, a pale blue shirt and silk foulard, and an amiable expression on his lined, bespectacled face.

‘Maisie and Lily, this is Daddy, Sir Archibald Belton, and Wilson.’

Try as she might, Lily couldn’t bring herself to call a man older than her father by his surname without some prefix.
Wilson.
No, couldn’t do it.

‘Hello, Sir Archibald, how do you do, Mr Wilson,’ she said.

Sir Archibald’s face didn’t flicker but Wilson looked marginally shocked.

Oh well, thought Lily, in for a penny, in for a pound.

She picked up her small valise.

‘Wilson can take your bags, m’dear,’ said the genial Sir Archibald.

‘Not at all,’ Lily said cheerfully. ‘I’ll carry it myself.’

Beltonward might have been stripped of most of its artwork (the valuable stuff was in the enormous cellar, along with the dwindling collection of wine – Sir Archie was said to be desolate that all his precious hock was gone), but the building itself still held treasures. As Sir Archie led them inside, chatting happily to his daughter, linking arms with her, Maisie and Lily were able to look around a vestibule – far too grand to be a hall, Lily grinned to herself – with a huge staircase stretching elegantly in front of them. A few portraits still hung on the faded damask red walls. Men with long Borzoi noses like Sir Archie, and powdered and berib-boned women like poor horse-faced Sybil, stared down at them, saying
Yes, we’re rich and powerful and masters of all we survey.

Plasterwork picked out in tattered gold leaf caught the light and the vast vaulted ceiling was painted with frolicking cherubs and goddesses scampering through sun-lit clouds.

Two giant cracked blue-and-white vases decorated with peeping Chinese girls stood at the turn of the stairs and Lily knew enough from Rathnaree to recognise that they were worth something.

‘Christ Almighty,’ whispered Maisie as they climbed the marble steps, ‘I was never interested in marrying a toff, but I can see the attraction now.’

‘Not if you had to clean the steps yourself, you wouldn’t,’ Lily whispered back, thinking of the yards of marble at Rathnaree and knowing that, no matter how much money she had, she’d still hate to get another human being to clean her floors.

‘Good point.’

Maisie and Lily were to share a room and when they were alone, Lily sat down on one of the twin beds. The coverlet was pure white, quilted cotton. It was the newest thing in the room. Everything else was very old and faded, including the heavy floral curtains and the threadbare carpet.

‘Gawd, not quite the Ritz up here, is it?’ Maisie said.

‘Family rooms,’ Lily explained. ‘These are where family and friends of the children stay. The proper guest suites would be better, but nothing too showy. It’s bad taste to have the place too grand.’