Past Caring (11 page)

“And starved, until now, of an ideal companion.”

She demurred, but did not deflect the compliment with some
barbed bon mot, as she would have done the previous week. Later, in
a tea shop in Dorking, we clashed briefly over the question of
Suffragette hunger strikers. Just as I was about to point out that,
with buttered scones before her, she was poorly placed to comment,
she said the same herself. The absurdity of the militant campaigner
taking tea with the dedicated politician whilst, elsewhere, civil servants might be ascurry at some new outrage, suddenly struck us
and we dissolved into a laughter that drew disapproving glares
from neighbouring tables. That day in Dorking, we did not care.

We returned to Putney in good time and I was invited in to
meet Aunt Mercy. A small, spry, bright-eyed lady blissfully unaware of who I might be, met us in her conservatory and continued
to tend her chrysanthemums whilst hearing of our outing. She insisted that her niece should show me the garden. There I took the
opportunity of requesting Elizabeth’s company for dinner on
Friday. She accepted. This time there was no mention of curative
treatment for my blindness to suffragism. This time, I said goodbye
to Elizabeth, not Miss Latimer, and she to Edwin

, not Mr.

Strafford. The fences were coming down.

Yet not all caution with them. I shunned my normal haunts for
dinner, for fear of encountering a colleague, and took Elizabeth to
an establishment favoured by my brother on his rare visits to the
capital—The Baron in Piccadilly. I drove down to Putney on a fine
evening to collect her. A maid admitted me and Elizabeth appeared

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from upstairs, wearing a dark blue velvet dress and presenting an
appearance that is possibly my loveliest memory of her. She wore a
pearl necklace and a brooch at her breast, but no other jewellery.

Nor was any needed to enhance her beauty, the dark, lustrous hair
drawn back from her face and the large, clear eyes gazing upon
me. All in all, I felt, as we drove back towards Piccadilly, a very
lucky man.

The Baron did me proud for dinner, the head waiter being as
impressed by Elizabeth as I was. We spoke discursively and plea-surably, abandoning the rivalries of the suffrage for music, art and
literature, our very different lives now converged in our strangely
similar visions of the future. As we shared our thoughts, I found
myself thinking of sharing our lives. Easy as that was by candlelight, I realized that realism would come with daylight: the Home
Secretary and the Suffragette was not a viable partnership.

Something had to give.

And we both gave, a little. Elizabeth could not abandon her
cause, but, by eschewing militancy, she could avoid embarrassment
to me. I could not abandon office, but, by saying nothing in public
and telling the Cabinet in private that female suffrage must somehow be wrought, I could apply a little discreet pressure on her behalf. We did our best by each other. And for each other we seemed
surpassingly good. We drove and dined often , Elizabeth introduced
me to the opera and I her to cricket. We came to trust each other with
confidences about intrigues in the Cabinet and the suffragist movement. Elizabeth seemed to make of me a better person and this new-found completeness took the raw edge off my political ambition. It
had been charged with the difference Elizabeth made in me. And in
her accounts of altercations with Christabel Pankhurst over campaign tactics, there appeared the hint of a difference that I had
made in her.

With time, we became less cautious. I was down to speak in one
of that summer’s long, acrimonious Commons debates about the
Budget. Only when halfway through did I realize that Elizabeth
was in the public gallery, watching. I think it was her presence that
made me risk a joke—well-received as it turned out—to the effect
that, if the Chancellor’s proposed diversion of funds to the tarma-cadamming of roads came to pass, many who had coughed on the
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dust thrown up by my own vehicle would be duly grateful and that
they must include voters of both parties. That was, in a sense, a tribute to Elizabeth, who had told me “Never take yourself seriously—

only what you believe in” and had been , as on most subjects, wise
beyond her years.

I entertained her in the Members’ tea room after the debate and
she acknowledged the tribute, silently, over the teacups. We were
joined, unexpectedly, by Lloyd George. Perhaps he had seen
Elizabeth and headed in our direction as a result, being one famed
for his interest in the fair sex, especially a beautiful young representative of it. This fact made me slightly uneasy.

“Won’t you introduce me to your charming companion

,

Edwin?”

“Certainly, L.G. Miss Elizabeth Latimer, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.”

They shook hands, Lloyd George contriving to give Elizabeth
the glad eye as he bowed and smiled. In any other company, I would
have been amused by his incorrigibility; now I was irritated by it.

Not that I needed to be, for Elizabeth treated him almost with disdain , to which he was not accustomed and which only our growing
affection made it seem that he deserved. Still, it was not an uncongenial spectacle to one who had often enough seen the Prime Minister
shrink beneath his Chancellor’s wand.

Elizabeth betrayed a knowledge of politics over and above any
confidences of mine and joked that even the tea in her company was
Liberal (it was Earl Grey), which persuaded Lloyd George that she
was that dangerous phenomenon

, a beautiful and intelligent

woman. The beauty and intelligence I could never have doubted,
but of danger I saw no sign.

The summer passed in this carefree entrancement. Early in
August, I was persuaded to indulge Aunt Mercy’s passion for horse
racing: Elizabeth and I took her down to Goodwood for the day.

Aunt Mercy was the only one to win any money, but my sights were
set on a higher prize. Picnicking on the grass with the slope of the
South Downs behind us and Mercy lost somewhere in the press
round the betting tent, I mentioned the impending Parliamentary
recess, when I customarily got away to Barrowteign.

“I shall miss you while you’re away,” Elizabeth said.

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“And I you. That is why I should be so very pleased if you
would consent to accompany me.”

“To Barrowteign?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, you would be in excellent hands. There is
my mother and my brother, his wife and their son. And I could
show you the delights of Devon.”

“And your ancestral home?”

“It’s hardly that, but it is where my roots are. Won’t you come?”

“If you think I would not be intruding.”

“Certainly not.”

“And if Aunt Mercy agreed.”

“We’ll ask her, but I’m sure she will.”

“Then I’d very much like to go with you.”

“You don’t look quite certain.”

“Oh, I’m certain. It’s just that . . . oh, Edwin , sometimes I’m so
nervous.”

“There’s no need to be. Just trust me.”

And she said that she did. There was no need to say that I
trusted her. Aunt Mercy, flushed with her winnings, expressed un-constrained enthusiasm for the proposal. A letter to my mother
elicited equal enthusiasm and plans were swiftly made. Elizabeth
reported qualms in her suffragist circle about such a long absence
for undisclosed reasons, but she was not to be swayed by them. As
soon as my official duties would permit, we were off.

The clock behind me struck seven and drew me forward nearly seventy years from the Sussex Downs to Madeira on an April evening. It was growing dark in Strafford’s study now. If I’d not been so absorbed in his narrative, I’d have put the light on, but the gathering gloom seemed appropriate when I considered the bright promise of that distant summer and set it against an old man’s desk far from home, with only photographs left of those he’d once held so dear.

Downstairs, Tomás sounded the dinner gong—I’d missed aperitifs. From Strafford’s lost world, where I’d been all afternoon, it was a long way back to the present. So it came as a wrench to close the book and take it with me from the room.

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In the drawing room, I met Alec coming in from the verandah, with Sellick behind him.

“We were wondering where you’d got to,” Alec said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t notice the time until just now.”

“Leo’s been telling me about your deal. I believe congratulations are in order. Welcome back to the rat race.”

“Thanks. I’m hoping it’ll prove a more civilized race than the one with Millennium.”

“Sure to be. You’ve done better out of Leo than I have. I think he’s making a habit of rescuing English intellectuals down on their luck.”

“How could I deny journalism Alec’s wonderful turns of phrase?” said Sellick, smiling broadly.

“Nevertheless,” I said, “we are both indebted to you, Leo. I hope you won’t have cause to regret your generosity.”

“I’m sure I shan’t. And besides, am I not a hard taskmaster? It is Saturday, and I have let you go on working. But even the avid researcher must be fed. Shall we eat?”

Dinner was as excellent as the night before: succulent Porto Santo melon followed by roasted local rabbit, washed down with more of Sellick’s fine dão. He and Alec talked of the next issue of the magazine—and a few after that—but I said little. I was impatient to return to the Memoir. For the moment, Strafford’s world interested me more than my own and dinner, even in civilized company, was no competition. My distracted state was not lost on Sellick. While he sipped malmsey and I picked at some cheese, he finally drew my attention to it.

“I think your thoughts are elsewhere, Martin.”

“You’re right and I’m sorry. The meal’s superb.”

“But your mind is on the Memoir.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Don’t apologize. As sponsor, I’m delighted to see it. How’s it going?”

“Very well. Strafford is about to take Elizabeth Latimer down to Barrowteign.”

“Ah, yes. All is well at that stage.”

“But not for much longer?”

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“No, but don’t let me spoil your reading.”

“I don’t think you will. Besides, such a work’s bound to have an unsatisfactory ending.”

“Why so?”

“In the sense that it’s the story of Strafford’s life written before his death and therefore incomplete. Tell me, is he buried near here or in Funchal?”

“Neither. He is buried in England, in the village of Dewford, near Barrowteign, with the rest of his family.”

“He wasn’t completely forgotten then, if they took him home to be buried?”

“He did not have to be taken. Strafford died at Barrowteign.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I swiftly established that he was not buried on Madeira.

The British Consul then made enquiries for me in London. It transpired that Strafford returned to England in the spring of 1951 and went to Barrowteign to stay with his nephew.”

“What did he die of ?”

“He was hit by a train on a level crossing where a railway line traversed the Barrowteign estate. That’s all they could tell me.”

“I see.”

“Though, as you’ll read for yourself, that has a curious paral-lel with events in the Memoir. But I’d better say no more at present.”

Beyond that, Sellick would not be drawn. His smile was sphinxlike in the candlelight, his sudden revelation and as sudden reticence all too convenient. I knew then that I wasn’t the only one holding back information. In Sellick’s case, he was letting it slip at intervals. Now, I was to understand that Strafford hadn’t ended his days in exile, but back in England, by accident, in search of . . . what? The truth after forty years? A last sight of Barrowteign? Or something else Sellick wasn’t telling me about yet? But no, he’d said the mystery of Strafford’s fall was intact. I had to assume he didn’t know either, yet I couldn’t any longer be certain.

We went through to the drawing room for coffee. There, on a card table, stood a solitary, dark bottle of madeira.

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“What’s this?” said Alec. “Something special?”

“You might say so,” replied Sellick. “I asked Tomás to put it out for us.”

“But there are no glasses.”