Palace Circle (23 page)

“Land's sakes! You're not going to take any notice of such silliness, are you?”

“No,” he said, holding her even closer and kissing the top of her hair. “She's just stalling for time in the hope that one of us falls in love elsewhere. We know that isn't going to happen, so there isn't any sense in our spending three years apart.”

“What
are
we going to do?”

She stepped away from him a little and looked up into his face.

“I'm going to go to Cairo and speak to your father. I can't put your mother's objections in writing. He won't understand. The only difficulty is that I don't have any leave until the end of August.”

“That's only three weeks away. We can manage to see each other, without my mother knowing about it. And then Papa will make her see sense. When Papa really puts his foot down, everyone takes notice. Even King Fuad.”

With a decision made she felt a tad better, but only a tad. Her mother's response was so mystifying she didn't know how to begin to understand it. What if her father decided that a three-year separation was actually quite a good idea and rescinded his permission that they could marry? How on earth would they manage to live apart for three years? What if her mother was right, and Jack fell in love elsewhere during that time? He was wildly attractive and girls were always throwing themselves at him. It might be a temptation he couldn't resist.

Her fears only heightened the almost unbearable sexual excitement she felt every time she was with him. She wanted to bind him to her irrevocably.

As the weekend drew near—a weekend she had been invited
to Boudicca's country home in Hampshire—Jack said, “Do you think you could get away with chucking Heathlands?”

“Easily. Boo wouldn't mind. Why?”

“We could have a weekend by ourselves in Brighton. It may be the last chance we have of being alone together for a long time.”

She hugged his arm, knowing exactly what it was he had in mind and not having even the slightest reservation.

“Where will we stay?” she asked, her face radiant. “A hotel?”

“No. Archie has a small house on the seafront in The Lanes that his grandfather bequeathed to him. He tells me it's full of olde worlde charm and that there's a smashing little French restaurant only a few steps away.”

His voice changed, becoming concerned. “If you have the slightest doubt about this, Petra, tell me. Because, if necessary, I'll do the Old Testament Jacob and Rachel thing and wait seven years for you.”

She giggled throatily. “God, really? I'm very impressed, but a wedding at Christmas and a January honeymoon in Cairo is what I'm aiming for—and I don't want our plans put on the back burner for three years, let alone seven.”

“Neither do I,” he said grimly. “And I'm going to do everything in my power to see that they aren't.”

Afterward, when she looked back at that very special weekend, she was amazed at how little shyness she had felt, of how wonderfully right everything had been. He had brought a bottle of vintage champagne and red roses, so many roses that every room in the house was scented with their fragrance.

She had bought a new nightdress in Harrods. It wasn't blatantly erotic. It was a bridal nightdress in oyster-white silk
satin; the kind of nightdress she would have packed for her honeymoon.

And a honeymoon was how both of them regarded their stolen hours in Archie's little house.

The evening they arrived they dined in the candlelit French restaurant. Later, in Archie's low, oak-beamed sitting room, Jack put on a recording of Puccini's
Madama Butterfly
and the beautiful music drifted after them as he carried her up the stairs.

For the rest of her life, whenever she heard the heart-stopping strains of “Un bel di vedremo,” she was transported back to the night they became lovers, the window open to the sound of the sea.

Delia asked no questions when her daughter returned to Cadogan Square on Sunday night, saying merely, “How were the Pytchley clan? Blooming?” in a way that indicated she neither expected nor needed any real answer.

The following weekend—which was Magda and Suzi's last in England—was Annabel and Fedya's wedding day. It was a wonderfully grand and joyous occasion. Annabel's train was so long it stretched almost from the altar to the door of the Mowbray estate's fifteenth-century church.

Delia was there, of course, and so even though Jack was one of the grooms, they scrupulously avoided eye contact.

“Flirt with me,” Archie said helpfully. “I've always wanted to have a redhead looking adoringly at me. Jack tells me he's setting off for Cairo next Saturday, to enlist your father's help in smoothing some rather troubled water.”

“Yes.” Petra wasn't sure just how much Jack had told Archie, and she didn't want any of her mother's many friends overhearing their conversation.

“Tell me about the new car you've bought, Archie,” she
said, changing the subject. “Is it true you're going to start racing professionally?”

Two days later she was walking down Lower Sloane Street on her way to the hairdresser when she saw Theo Girlington walking toward her.

She ducked her head, hoping that he wouldn't recognize her and that, even if he did, he wouldn't stop.

There was no real reason why he should.

She knew him to speak to only because he was part of her parents’ social circle. Since Sylvia's announcement that she was divorcing Jerome, she doubted if her mother had spoken two words to him, though as he was a duke her mother wouldn't have cut him completely.

“What ho! It's Petronella Conisborough, isn't it?” He halted in front of her. “I saw your father earlier today.” He grinned at her like the Cheshire cat in
Alice in Wonderland.
“Not that I'm someone he likes to run into too often these days.”

She stared at him, remembering her mother's verdict that he was a screwball.

“You can't have,” she said, giving him a dismissive smile. “My father is in Cairo.”

“Not Conisborough.” His grin widened even further. “Your real father. Jerome Bazeljette.” There was absolutely no mischief in his voice, or his smile. He simply said it as a statement of fact—a fact of which he obviously thought she was aware. He gave a jolly laugh. “In a rum kind of way we're almost family. Not that I imagine Jack will ever call me ‘stepfather.’ Can't blame him. I'm only ten years his senior, after all. Give my regards to your mother, Petronella. Goodbye and toodle-oo.”

He sauntered off down the street, happily oblivious of the effect his words had had on her.

She stared after him in a daze. Jerome, her father? She wanted to laugh the idea off as too ridiculous for words, but she couldn't.

She remembered her aunt Gwen telling her of how Jerome had been at Cadogan Square the day she was born; how he had held her almost immediately after her birth. She remembered how he had always been there for her; of how, fond though he was of Davina, he had always singled her out. She remembered the interest he had taken in her education and that the Institut Mont-Fleuri had been so conveniently near to his villa at Nyon.

She remembered how, when she was sixteen, he had suggested that, if her mother had no objections, she put an end to calling him “uncle.” After a long, tension-filled pause, her mother had said, “Of course not. So silly to use it when you are most definitely not her uncle” and, when Jerome had responded drily, “No, indeed,” that her mother had blushed furiously.

She remembered how aghast her mother had been when she had suggested that Jerome should stand in for the traditional father-and-daughter waltz.

Other memories, too, fell into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Jerome's constant presence in her mother's life; the way that though she'd been brought up to believe Jerome was her father's friend, her father always had important business elsewhere whenever Jerome visited. The way her mother had made so many lone visits when Petra had been at school in Montreux, always staying with Jerome at Nyon when she had done so. She recalled how her mother's joie de vivre had vanished overnight when Jerome began paying attention to Magda. Most of all, there was her mother's horror when Jack told her they wanted to marry.

Last, but by no means least, she thought of the two nights she and Jack had spent together in Archie's cottage.

She couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. She had to know the
truth. And only two people could tell her. Her mother and Jerome.

She stared around, looking for a telephone booth. There wasn't one in sight and she began walking numbly toward the one in Sloane Square.

Once there she fumbled clumsily in her bag for money. Twice she dropped her sixpenny piece. By the time she fumbled it into the slot she was so terrified of what she was possibly about to hear she thought she would faint.

“Chelsea 3546,” Jerome's dearly familiar voice said. “Bazeljette speaking.”

She pressed button A. The coin fell into the box.

“It's Petra,” she said. “I have to ask you … I have to know … Are you and my mother lovers?”

There was a stunned silence at the other end of the line and then Jerome said in a voice almost as unsteady as hers, “Petra, my dear. This isn't a conversation we should be having over the telephone. You are obviously very distressed. Where are you? I'll come and meet you—”

“I don't want to meet you, I just want to know the truth.” Tears coursed down her face. “Are you and my mother lovers? Have you been lovers for years?”

There was a long silence and she knew he was trying to think of the right words. “Petra, sweetheart,” he said at last. “The answer is yes. You are old enough now to understand and I suppose someone who should have known better has told you. I love your mother dearly. I've loved her from the very first moment I met her and—”

With a cry of anguish she dropped the receiver and pushed blindly against the telephone-booth door.

Jerome's voice calling her name followed her as the receiver dangled in midair. She hadn't asked her next question, “Are you my father?,” because there was someone else she wanted to hear answer the question. And that someone was her mother.

Tears still raining down her face, she walked the short distance from Sloane Square to Cadogan Square.

Her mother was in the drawing room, seated at her pretty Chippendale writing desk. She was wearing a pale-mauve voile dress and her favorite item of jewelry, a three-string pearl necklace.

As Petra entered the room her mother turned to greet her but the instant she saw Petra's face her smile vanished.

“What on earth has happened, honey?” she said, jumping to her feet.

“I ran into Theo Girlington in Lower Sloane Street.” Petra put her hands up, to forestall her mother from hugging her. “He told me he'd just seen my father.”

Delia stopped, her face whitening. “Unless Theo was hotfoot from Cairo he has bats in the belfry.”

“He wasn't referring to Ivor, Mama.” Petra's voice sounded to her as if it were coming from a million miles away. “He was referring to Jerome.”

Her mother tried to speak but couldn't.

“I spoke to Jerome, Mama. He told me that you and he are … that for years you and he have been …” She tried to say the word “lovers” but she could not utter it. “Is he my father?” she managed at last, her voice breaking. “Is what Theo Girlington said true?”

Her mother's lips were now as white as her face. She looked as if she were in the seventh circle of hell, impaled on the past, paralyzed by the present, and unable to conceive of the future. “I don't know,” she said at last. “It's a possibility, Petra. There was one instance, in the early spring of 1914, when I went to Jerome for comfort just after I had returned from a trip to America. It was an isolated instance. Our affair didn't truly start until much later, after Davina was born. I'm so sorry, Petra. I never dreamt that there would be such complications.” She made a helpless motion with her hands. “That Jerome may
be your father is something Jerome and I have never talked about… never openly acknowledged … and he may not be, Petra. Under the circumstances, though, I couldn't allow you and Jack to become engaged. Not when there was even the faintest possibility that Jack was your half—”

“Don't say it!” Petra clapped her hands over her ears,
“Don't say it!”

She struggled to breathe, numb with pain. She had lost not only Jack but her mother, too, for things could never be the same between them, just as things would never be the same between her and Jack.

“I'm going back to Cairo,” she said, fighting to keep hysteria out of her voice. “And I don't want Jack to ever know about this. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Petra dear, but you have to listen to me. You have to let me explain the circumstances—”

“No.” Petra's voice was hoarse. “I don't have to listen to another word about you and Jerome. Not now. Not ever.” And turning her back on her mother she ran from the room.

She didn't stop running until she was once again in Sloane Street, and when she did, she had three thoughts clear in her mind. First, she couldn't possibly see Jack again, for it would be an agony she would never survive. Second, because Jack would follow her to Cairo, she would stay not at Nile House but with Kate. And third, she had two letters to write: one to Jack, breaking off their relationship; and one to her father telling him she had turned down Jack's proposal for private reasons, and informing him that she was returning to Cairo but would be staying with Kate and on no account wanted Jack told.

On the far side of the street was a travel agent. Hardly able to believe that the world was still turning exactly as it had been doing when she had seen Lord Girlington striding toward her half an hour earlier, she crossed the street.

Minutes later, in a voice she could barely recognize, she booked a Channel crossing and a train first to Paris, then Marseille, and passage on a ship sailing to Alexandria. Unable to face returning home, she walked into Hyde Park and sat on a bench beside the Serpentine and sobbed until she could sob no longer.

1934–1939