Palace Circle (31 page)

“All that matters is that we're happy. Or at least
I'm
happy,” she said, not at all sure that Petra was.

Her mother made a sound that could have meant anything and continued with the letter she was writing to Wallis Simpson.

At the end of January her mother announced she was returning to London for three months, King George died peacefully at Sandringham, and a spate of anti-British demonstrations rocked Cairo.

“There was a battle between students and police in Ezbekiya Gardens,” her father said. “Twenty youths have been arrested. All university students.”

An hour or so later Adjo asked Davina if he could have a word with her.

“I was there when the trouble started, Missy Davina,” he said, keeping his voice low. “One of the leaders of the demonstration was Zubair Pasha's son.”

“Darius?”

He nodded, and something small and tight turned over in her stomach.

“You could have made a mistake, Adjo. There were a lot of people and it must have been chaotic …”

Adjo shook his shiny head. “It was Darius, Missy Davina. I have known him since he was a small child. I could not have made a mistake.”

“Well I think it best that no one else is told, Adjo. It would cause great distress to Zubair Pasha. Darius could be arrested. He might even go to jail. And the students were just expressing what many Egyptians feel.”

Adjo's face was grave. “People could have been hurt. The police could have started shooting.”

“But they didn't.” Her mouth was dry. “I'll speak to Darius. I'm sure it won't happen again.”

Three days later Darius told her that it would most certainly happen again; that demonstrating was his democratic right.

“If he was in love with me,” she had written to Aileen, “there's a chance he would listen when I say that being a member of Wafd is one thing and inciting acts of violence is quite another. But since I am not his girlfriend, I don't have that kind of influence.”

“Dear Davina,” Aileen had written back. “Who is his girlfriend? From everything you've told me, there must be one. He doesn't sound the sort of man to live like a monk.”

Davina had written back, hardly able to believe the pain it cost her. “He dates lots of girls and they are nearly always members of what Cairo calls the ‘fishing fleet.’ Debs who come out from England in the hope of snaring a wealthy husband. They are glamorous and sophisticated and I'm not. And as I've no desire to date anyone else, it looks as if I'm on the way to becoming an old maid.”

Davina was also in constant touch with her mother, whose main topic, now that David was King, was his love affair with Wallis.

“Things are moving ahead fast,” her mother wrote at the end of February. “Gossip is now rife within the palace circle. The King now never holds a party without Wallis acting as his hostess. She's such a straight-forward kind of gal she doesn't realize the animosity this is causing at court. And if David realizes, he obviously doesn't care. As far as he is concerned, Wallis is his sun, moon, and stars.”

“I cannot understand your mother sharing such tittle-tattle,” her father said when Davina told him her mother's news. “She seems to forget you're still only nineteen.”

“Lots of girls are married at nineteen.”

It was late evening and she had come into his study to say good night.

“Well, I'm glad you're not. I like having you and Petra around.”

“That's not the impression Mummy gives. She seems to think that not ending our season with an engagement was a crushing disappointment.”

He chuckled. “No, she doesn't. She just wants to keep abreast with her London friends. And of course she likes to have her daughters close by.”

“It's you she wants living back in London, Papa. She thought you would be home last year and yet here you are, still in Cairo.”

“Yes… and the odd thing is, after years of hoping to be recalled to London, I no longer want to leave Egypt. So many of my best friends in London are dead—George Curzon, Herbert Asquith, Cuthbert Digby. And your mother has a whole new circle all her own age. I can't see me fitting into the King's playboy set, can you?”

She slid her arm around his shoulders and dropped a kiss on the top of his head. His hair had receded at the temples, but it was still the same pale-gold color as her own.

“No,” she said with a giggle, “but not all your closest friends are dead. Uncle Jerome is very much alive and kicking.”

“Jerome?” He looked startled, as if the thought of Jerome being in London hadn't occurred to him. After a pause, he said, “Jerome is actually far more your mother's friend than mine, Davina. He's a good bit younger than me, you know.” He frowned. “I feel sorry for him. If he hadn't taken the blame for his divorce he would be in the cabinet. Instead he's languishing on the back benches.”

Since becoming a duchess, Sylvia's name had never been
mentioned at Nile House. Remembering seeing her at Olympia, Davina was grateful for her father's silence.

The doorbell rang and moments later Adjo announced Kate Gunn.

“Ah, yes.” Ivor rose to his feet. “I was expecting her.”

To Davina, he said, “I have a report that needs typing up pretty urgently and Kate will make short work of it.”

She nodded, well aware of how reliant on Kate he had become. Nearly everywhere he went, Kate went with him.

“If Delia doesn't mind, I don't see why you should,” Petra said dismissively when she had voiced her concern. “And our mother is very, very fond of Kate. She's become family.”

It was true. She had been part of their lives since they were small.

All the same, Davina couldn't help but wonder if Kate was one of the reasons her father wanted to stay in Cairo.

A week later Davina received another letter from Aileen. She was sitting on a bench in the Citadel, near the Muhammad Ali Mosque. To the right of her the Citadel's ramparts fell away with dizzying steepness, affording a view she loved more than any other.

Cairo in all its turbulent, noisy density lay spread out before her. Amid the jumble of narrow streets and bazaars she could see the roof of the orphanage where she had done so much volunteer work and, farther away, the roofs of the Coptic churches of Babylon. Everywhere else there was a sea of domes and minarets spreading down to the broad glitter of the Nile. Though the heat haze was heavy she could see Garden City, the Kasr el-Nil Bridge, and Gezira Island. Most wonderful of all was the sight of Giza's three pyramids in the far distance. The most substantial, enduring monuments of all time,
they looked ethereally insubstantial in the heat haze, almost as if they were floating in the air.

She rested her eyes on them for a few moments and then withdrew the envelope from her pocket.

Deeply happy for her friend, Davina rested the letter on her knee, wishing that Cairo was closer to Britain and that she could give Andrew Fergus a hug and a kiss; wondering if the day would ever come when she, too, would have a son.

At Easter Davina began nursing training.

Her way of life and Petra's couldn't have been more different. When she came home from the hospital, Petra's social life was just beginning. Swimming parties at the Mena House Hotel were followed by picnics in the shadow of the Saqqara pyramid. There were tea dances at Shepheard's and evening dances at the Continental. She never missed a polo match at the Gezira Sporting Club and played tennis there several times week.

The tidbits of gossip she brought home were often political. In early summer Petra said with unusual seriousness, “You must end your friendship with Darius, Davvy. He's joined an anti-British group that are little more than terrorists. Even Fawzia has given up on him.”

“I know.”

“How?” They were sharing a quick breakfast together. “You hardly ever see Fawzia these days. You're always either at the hospital or at Bayram el-Tonsi Street.”

“Jack mentioned it in his last letter to me.” She poured herself a glass of mango juice. “And Darius told me that he's no longer speaking to his father.”

Petra picked up a slice of toast. “How,” she asked with a different expression in her voice, “does Jack know?”

“Because Fawzia writes to him all the time.”

“Oh!” Petra said frowning, and then, ignoring her toast, she hastily pushed her chair away from the table. “I must get off. I'm going to be late. Bye, Davvy.”

Petra began mentioning the name of Sholto Monck, a diplomat recently stationed in Cairo.

“He's Anglo-Irish. Very dishy. I rather like him, Davvy,” she said, looking happier than Davina had seen her in a long time.

In August, they were married in London, at St. Margaret's.

Davina, Fawzia, and Sholto's younger sister were bridesmaids.

Though the Conisboroughs were short on close relatives, her father had done his best to see that their side of the church was impressively represented with an army of distinguished friends.

Walking down the aisle, Davina recognized the aged figure of Lady Asquith, swathed in her perpetual black; Winston Churchill and Clementine; Sir John Simon; and—to her surprise—Wallis Simpson.

With difficulty she tore her eyes away from Wallis's beautifully dressed figure. From being a woman whom only a few royal insiders had known about, Wallis had become a woman the whole of high society now gossiped about.

“Which wouldn't be the case if King George were alive,” her mother had said. “Now that David is king, he keeps Wallis in the public eye every chance he gets. Insisting she act as hostess for an official function was sheer stupidity. Poor Wallis's nerves are in shreds. She doesn't particularly want to divorce Ernest, but that is what the King is pushing her to do. And when
that
becomes public knowledge the jig really will be up!”

Aware that nearly as many eyes were on Wallis as on Petra, Davina continued walking to the strains of Mendelssohn. She passed Aunt Gwen, Pugh, and her mother in the front row and wondered if Delia was already crying.

Her father and Petra were now at the foot of the altar. With Sholto on her right, his best man next to him, Petra took her hand from Ivor's arm and handed Davina her bouquet.

And then Sholto and Petra stepped up to the altar.

Remaining in the nave with Fawzia, Davina focused on the man who, in another few minutes, would be her brother-in-law.

He wasn't the brother-in-law she had wanted and seeing Jerome in a pew set aside for family had only made Jack's absence more obvious.

“Of course I've invited him,” Petra had said tartly when Davina had inquired whether Jack would be at the wedding. “But he can't come. He has another commitment.”

Davina hadn't pushed it, but she'd been quite sure that if Jack
had
been invited, it had only been with the knowledge that he wouldn't attend.

“Dearly beloved,” the bishop intoned, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony …”

From the back, Sholto looked unnervingly like her father, being tall—at least six foot three—and slender. Their coloring, too, was similar. Like her father, his hair was fair, though not fair enough to be truly blond—and like her father's hair, Sholto's was glassily sleek and smooth. His eyes, though, were not gray. They were a quite startling blue. He had a wide, mobile mouth and the kind of charm that so often goes with being Irish.

It had won her parents over instantly, but for some reason it hadn't won Davina over. There was something about him
just a little too glib. Petra, though, was happy and so, for her sister's sake, she was determined to get along with him.

“… which is an honorable estate,” the bishop continued, “instituted of God, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and His Church …”

She looked across at Fawzia. Over the last few months Fawzia, always obedient, had begun to show that beneath her delicate beauty there was a streak of steel.

“I shan't be returning to Cairo after Petra's wedding,” she had said when they had gone for the last fitting of their bridesmaid dresses. “Your mother has said I can stay on at Cadogan Square for as long as I want. My father is livid, but I'm twenty-two. I've pleased him for long enough and now I'm going to please myself.”

Though Fawzia hadn't mentioned Jack's name, Davina was certain he was the reason she wanted to remain in London. Davina wondered what would happen if Jack were to propose. As an Egyptian Copt, Zubair Pasha would want only an Egyptian as a son-in-law. She suspected Fawzia would be quite uncaring of his wishes. Like Darius, she would do as she wanted.

“Into this holy estate,” continued the bishop, “these two persons present come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.”

In the silence that followed she noticed that Petra had tensed, as if she was expecting Jack to interrupt, but nothing happened.

The bishop concluded, joining Petra's and Sholto's right hands together, saying, “Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”

It was over. Petra was Mrs. Sholto Monck.

A month later Delia wrote Davina to say that the King's affair was becoming public knowledge.