Alice knew that it would be a long time before a reply came to her letter. In her head she tried to keep track of the letter’s progress, from the village post office to the sorting office in Salisbury and then to a Royal Mail Steamer at Southampton, but there her experience reached its limit. As her letter made its journey across the fathomless miles of ocean, the closeness she’d felt to Mama as she’d written it receded again.
A heaviness lay over the days, caused in part by the death of the old king at the end of January. Blackwood felt a long way away from London, but the news made everyone sombre and the world seemed altered in some significant way: less safe, in the careless hands of the dandy prince. If death could claim the King himself surely it could come for anyone, at any time?
The bitter cold continued, but still it didn’t snow. The ground over which Alice trailed after Miss Lovelock each afternoon was frozen to flinty hardness, the grass brittle with frost. The hours between dawn and dusk were short and the sun barely managed to raise itself above the bare, black branches of the trees around the lake before the shadows on the nursery walls stretched and it slid downwards again, along with Alice’s spirits. The days themselves might be short, but the empty hours dragged like weeks. Instead of her homesickness easing, it settled more solidly inside her, as if her heart was gradually freezing like the lake’s murky waters.
But writing the letter had helped. There was the anticipation of a reply and, more importantly, the secret knowledge that she could write again which gave some small purpose to her days. She made it her business to look out for things to tell Mama; small details from her walks with Miss Lovelock, like the heron that they sometimes saw in the reeds by the lake, or the perfect pink sunset that, for a little while, had turned the hard, white world into a sugared confection of Turkish delight. Even the ordeal of Sunday lunch with The Grands (as Mama called them, though never to their faces) was made more bearable by knowing she could share it with Mama. She told her about the time Grandfather had caught her looking at one of the huge portraits on the dining room walls, and asked her if she recognized the young woman in the white dress. Alice had stared up at the painted peaches-and-cream complexion and piled-up, pale gold hair and felt her own face growing crimson with embarrassment as no answer presented itself. Grandmama’s voice had been icy as she’d informed Alice that the girl in the painting was she, in the year of her Coming Out.
Did Grandmama really look like that, she wrote to Mama that night, before she was cross all the time?
In fact, Mama’s reply came sooner than Alice had really dared hope. It wasn’t quite two weeks after Polly had posted the letter, when Alice imagined it might still be making its epic journey, that Polly came into the day nursery with Alice’s lunch tray and an air of suppressed excitement.
With a rustle of paper she slipped the letter out of her pocket and set it down on the table. There was only one word on the envelope, in Mama’s familiar handwriting and trademark turquoise ink. Alice. She and Polly had agreed it was safer if Mama wrote to Polly, enclosing a letter for Alice, in case Grandmama decided to check her letters too.
‘Well, aren’t you going to open it? It feels lovely and thick.’
Alice’s fingers itched to tear the letter open and let Mama’s jewelled words come spilling out, but instead she picked up her fork. After waiting all this time she wanted to savour the anticipation a bit longer.
‘I am, but later. After lunch.’
The oxtail and stewed prunes were rather less worth savouring than the anticipation, but she made herself eat slowly, sipping at her glass of water. When she had finished she stacked her plates onto the tray and took the letter to the window seat, settling an old, flattened needlepoint cushion with a pair of Noah’s elephants on it behind her back and half-drawing the curtain to cloak herself in privacy.
Finally, carefully, she slid her finger beneath the flap of the envelope.
S.S. Eastern Star
The Suez Canal
28th January 1936
Darling, darling Alice,
I got your letter just now, and I didn’t want to waste a moment before replying. It is the middle of the afternoon and fiercely hot, and we have just left Port Said where your letter was waiting for us. Papa has been terribly kind and said that he will try to get this letter sent back to England by airmail, which is as quick as the blink of an eye. Isn’t that smart?
Sweetheart, I am so desperately sorry that you are feeling sad and lonely. I know how confusing all this must seem to you, and how sudden. Papa tries to shield us from all his business concerns but this trouble at the mine is something that he can’t sort out from London and it will help tremendously to have a wife there to do the kind of social smoothing over that wives do, when the men have finished squabbling over their sheets of figures and legal small print. I would have simply adored to bring you with us, my darling – oh, the heaven of having your wonderful company – but it would have been extremely selfish. The heat is draining (hard for you to imagine, I know; how well I remember that Blackwood feels like the coldest corner of Christendom in the winter) and, once we arrive in Burma the mine business is sure to take up every waking hour, which means you would have to be left alone anyway, and without darling Polly to look after you. There’s no one in whose care I would rather leave you, sweetheart. Polly has kept many of my secrets over the years – I trust her with my life, and yours too, which is infinitely more precious. I know you will be safe with her, but I do so hope that we can sort things out quickly here and come home soon. Oh darling, I hope that with all my heart.
But for the moment we must both try to be brave and cheerful, because if we feel brave and cheerful the time will go much more quickly than if we are gloomy and despondent. So, I shall tell you about where I am sitting right now, because that will make me pay proper attention to how beautiful it all is rather than dwelling on how far away from you. I am on the little private deck of our cabin, sitting in the shade of a green and white striped awning and our dear steward Ahmed has just brought me some peppermint tea in a silver teapot, served in the daintiest little pink glass etched with gold. It’s wonderful to be sailing again. In the harbour at Port Said the air was sweltering but out at sea the breeze is quite delicious. It carries the scent of spices out from the shore, which is just a dark blue line between the lighter blues of sea and sky. I swear I haven’t seen a single cloud since we left Marseilles, though that was where we heard of the dear old King’s death, so the blue skies felt all wrong. (Poor Grandmama – she danced with him in her youth, when he was the Duke of York and she a dazzling debutante. I expect she will be very saddened by the news.)
Papa managed to get us a rather lovely suite, which was jolly clever of him when the passage was booked at such short notice. My room is small, but very comfortable and modern, with lovely walnut panelling and the most sumptuous carpet and gold satin bedcover. There’s a dear little lamp above the bed for reading, though for two entire days I could barely open my eyes or lift my head from the pillow because of the dreaded seasickness. I’m much better now. Papa, being so much more used to sailing than I am, has been perfectly well. His cabin is on the other side of our little sitting room, and is decorated all in green. (I’m glad I didn’t have that one. I felt quite green enough.) The ship is terribly plush; there’s a swimming pool and a gymnasium I believe (though I have no intention of seeking it out myself!) and a library – so you see, my darling, I have no excuse to be bored and gloomy.
How I wish you had all the lovely distractions that I do, but since you only have Blackwood Park, and The Grands and Miss Lovelock (who sounds terrifying – I must ask Papa where he found her) I’ve been trying to think how we might make things more fun for you. You have Polly too, of course – and she is the best accomplice for any adventure – and don’t we always say that one can find treasure in the most unlikely places, if one looks carefully enough?
Blackwood Park might seem an unlikely place to find anything exciting. My darling, I know better than anyone that it can seem as still and silent as the sleeping castle in a fairy tale, and how time there seems to drag more slowly than anywhere else. But all old houses hold stories and Blackwood is no exception. It may be silent and empty, but it has its store of treasures to be discovered and secrets waiting to be revealed …
Please know, my dearest darling, how much I miss you – every moment – and how I’m longing to be back with you soon. Have courage, brave girl. In a world that is small enough for the same moon to hang over us both, we can’t ever be too far apart.
With love from my heart to yours, and a lipstick kiss
Mama xxxxx
A lipstick kiss. There it was at the bottom of the page – the scarlet stamp of her mother’s lips, just like she used to leave on the back of Alice’s hand before school in the morning, or in the evening when she was going out with Papa. She lifted the paper to her face and breathed in a faint trace of Mama’s scent, noticing as she did so that there was more writing on the other side of the paper.
She turned it over.
Where the sun’s first rays
Turn lilies to gold,
There’s a box in a drawer through a door.
Open it up
And the paper unfold,
And see if you want to know more.
‘Well, was it a nice letter?’
Polly’s voice behind her was soft and cautious. Alice turned and handed her the letter, curiosity quickening inside her. ‘It’s a poem, or a riddle. What do you think it means?’
Polly’s eyes skimmed the paper. She was smiling as she handed it back. ‘I’d say there’s only one way of answering that. You’ll just have to find this box, won’t you?’
Alice would never have believed that she might actually look forward to her afternoon walk, but as they set off there was something very close to excitement beating beneath her tightly buttoned coat. Putting on her outdoor boots she had asked if they might vary the route today and go through the kitchen garden, and when Miss Lovelock asked why on earth she wanted to do that, she was able to say quite truthfully that she wanted to see what was growing there. Miss Lovelock had seemed surprised, but taking it as a sign of some fledgling interest in botany or horticulture, grudgingly acquiesced.
The drab park stretched away on all sides. Surely there were no lilies blooming at this time of year – had Mama forgotten what England was like in February? Alice thought of the wilderness that lay beyond the kitchen garden’s walls, closed up and out of bounds, and the great orangery, with the overgrown plants inside pressing like prisoners against the clouded glass. Were there lilies inside its jungly tangle?
She remembered going in there once, with Mama, on a long-ago summer visit to Blackwood. She remembered the hot, damp air and the unfamiliar smell of earth and vegetation and something sweet and rotten. The plants looked like they’d been stolen from a giant’s garden, towering above her with leaves as large as umbrellas. Little paths had wound between them and Alice remembered a fountain, tiled with tiny iridescent squares that shimmered beneath the splashing water like a mermaid’s tail. She had said that to Mama, she remembered, but Mama had hardly seemed to hear. She had been distracted – it stuck in Alice’s mind because it was so unlike her – as if she was listening to someone else. When she looked at Alice it felt as if it wasn’t her she saw.
They didn’t follow the carriage drive beneath the trees today, as they usually did, but turned under the archway into the stableyard. There used to be lots of horses at Blackwood, Alice remembered Mama telling her, but the stables were all empty now, with only the lingering horse smell and rows of saddles and harnesses – the leather now dull and cracked – to show that they had ever been there. Many of them had been taken by the army at the start of the war, Mama had said, and her voice had been flinty with blame and bitterness. There were no men to look after those that remained and so they were sold and the stables left empty.
The War. In Alice’s head it always had capital letters. It was barely spoken about at home, and never in front of Papa, but Alice felt that it had always been there, like a presence in the house, invisible and unwelcome. Sometimes she encountered it on the streets too, in men with missing limbs and rows of medals selling matches outside the underground, or shouting at nothing in the park. It’s The War, darling. Poor man. Don’t stare.
The kitchen garden was beyond the stables, reached through a door in a high wall of crumbling brick. Miss Lovelock led the way with her Sergeant Major march; she might not have instigated the change of routine but it appeared she certainly intended to take charge of it. She ushered Alice in, unnecessarily pointing out a large puddle in the path and speaking in a loud voice, as if she were marshalling a battalion instead of one small, quiet girl.
Alice hung back, looking around. The high walls were rosy in the weak winter sun and they enclosed its tentative warmth, hiding the bulk of the house and keeping the desolate expanse of parkland at bay. The earth beds were mostly brown and bare, she saw with a stab of disappointment. A row of glasshouses lined one wall, and beyond them, tucked into one corner was a neat cottage, as square and symmetrical as a picture in a storybook. A wisp of smoke curled out of the chimney and faded into the afternoon sky.
As Miss Lovelock lectured in a loud, know-it-all voice about the optimum conditions for seed germination a stooped figure emerged from one of the glasshouses. His clothes were worn to the same mossy colours as the walls and the soil and his face was creased like autumn leaves. Earth clung to his hands. Catching Alice’s eye, he nodded.
‘Afternoon.’
Miss Lovelock, who had been too preoccupied with airing her collection of horticultural facts to notice him, looked round in alarm, as if one of the winter cabbages had spoken. The gardener, coming over, gave Alice the ghost of a wink. ‘You must be Miss Selina’s girl. Heard you were staying.’
Miss Lovelock cleared her throat. ‘Alice expressed an interest in seeing the gardens, Mr…?’
‘Patterson.’
‘Very good.’ Miss Lovelock spoke as if addressing a soldier of inferior rank. ‘I did say there wouldn’t be much to see at this time of year, but she insisted.’ She turned to Alice. ‘Perhaps now your curiosity has been satisfied, child, we can resume our walk.’
‘Just because you can’t see things in the garden, doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on,’ Mr Patterson remarked, almost as if he was talking to himself. ‘That’s part of the magic, to my mind.’
Alice was intrigued, and emboldened enough to ask the question that had brought her here.
‘Are there any lilies?’
‘Lilies, child?’ Miss Lovelock gave an incredulous laugh and rolled her eyes. ‘Good heavens, I believe I could have told you that myself and saved us a wasted journey. Lilies don’t grow in February! Not in England, anyway.’
‘Well now, that’s not quite true…’ The old gardener rummaged unhurriedly in the gaping pocket of his jacket, unearthing seed packets and lengths of twine before eventually pulling out a pipe. ‘There are no lilies here now, but that’s not to say I haven’t had them blooming in winter before. Let me see –’ He peered thoughtfully into the bowl of the pipe, and gave it an experimental tap. ‘It’ll be eleven years ago, if I’m not mistaken. Your mama was a February bride, and I grew them for her wedding. It wasn’t easy mind – I had to keep the fire burning behind that glass-house wall day and night to make it warm enough, but it was worth it. The perfume in there was strong enough to make you swoon. And of course, she was a beautiful bride.’
Miss Lovelock gave a dubious sniff. ‘Well, we mustn’t take up any more of your time. I’m sure you have a lot to be getting on with.’
‘You’re welcome to come here anytime,’ the old gardener said, looking at Alice. ‘I’m sorry I can’t show you any lilies, mind.’
As Alice followed Miss Lovelock back along the cinder path she peered through a pair of high iron gates that led to the rest of the garden. She caught a glimpse of tall hedges, dense and dark, and a pathway between them, twisting out of sight. She longed to linger, or to open the gates and follow the path into the abandoned kingdom beyond, but Miss Lovelock had already disappeared. Her voice swooped over the wall.
‘Come along, Alice!’
She looked back. Mr Patterson, standing at the door of the glasshouse, raised his hand in a solemn salute, and she waved shyly back, thinking about what he’d said.
She’d known Mama had had a bouquet of lilies when she got married. There was a photograph in a silver frame in the drawing room at home, of her in her white satin dress with the long sheaf of pale blooms over one arm. Her other arm was hooked through Papa’s, who looked as stern and distant as ever, as if he was going to a meeting at the bank rather than his own wedding. Alice loved looking at that snapshot of a moment before she existed, at Mama’s luminous eyes gazing straight out at her, as if to say ‘soon…’ and it made the back of her neck tingle to think that the flowers in the picture had been grown here, and that the old gardener had known Mama in that mysterious time. The Grands had the same photograph (beside a bigger one in a fancier frame, of Aunt Miranda and Uncle Lionel on their wedding day) on top of the piano in the drawing room, beneath the portrait of Uncle Howard in his soldier’s khaki. (There would be no wedding photograph for him.)
Alice’s heart gave an uneven thud. The lilies in the photograph – could they be the ones the clue referred to? Her mind raced, going over the lines again, trying to remember if the photograph was in a place where the morning sun might reach it, and if it was, where the door, the drawer and the box might fit in. The surge of excitement subsided as she realized how difficult it would be to go and check. Blackwood’s stately downstairs rooms were not part of her domain; she rarely ventured into them at all, except on Sundays, and then she was always under the chilly gaze of her grandparents and was forbidden from touching anything. Had Mama forgotten what it was like here?
She trailed along the carriage drive in Miss Lovelock’s brisk wake, listening to the shrill squabbling of the rooks in the bare branches above her. She could feel the house crouching at her back, its rows of windows like blank eyes, watching, and she turned round to meet its gaze.
The nursery corridor ran along the back of the house, so she couldn’t see her own bedroom window from here. To the right the shutters were closed behind all the windows on the upper floors, where the rooms that had once been occupied by guests had been closed up on corridors that were no longer used. To the left were the family rooms, and she wondered which one might be Mama’s old bedroom, trying to remember if it faced out to the front. She had slept in it once, with Mama, when she was quite small …
The memory began to emerge from the shadows at the back of her mind, taking shape, gathering colour. Aunt Miranda and Uncle Lionel had been at Blackwood too, with Cousin Archie who had been a tiny baby. Alice remembered the atmosphere, brittle with tension, and knew that some-how it had been her fault (she’d had a cough that had woken Cousin Archie and made him cry? Something like that …) Mama had come up to the nursery in the night and brought her down to sleep in her bed.
The exact reason might elude her, but she vividly remembered the delicious perfumed warmth after the hard little iron cot in the night nursery and the luxury of having Mama all to herself. She had woken up early the next morning and lain very still as the light glowed through the curtains, not wanting Mama to wake up and the ordinary day to begin.
The air left her lungs in a long, slow stream, making a pale garland around her head.
Of course.
Mama’s bedroom, where the walls were pale green and the curtains were patterned with columns of ivory lilies, which got the full flood of golden morning sun, rising over the lake. Alice felt goosebumps rise on her arms, caused not by the February cold but by the delicious sense of having slotted the vital piece of the puzzle into place.
Behind her Miss Lovelock called her name crossly. Alice immediately turned and ran, propelled by a sudden burst of exuberant energy – much to the governess’s obvious astonishment.
She knew she could have told Polly, but something held her back; a greedy impulse to keep the secret to herself perhaps. She drank her afternoon milk quickly, then tiptoed past Miss Lovelock’s door and down the servants’ stairs to the bedroom corridor below.
She immediately noticed how much warmer it was; how the thick carpet muffled the sound of her footsteps completely and made the thud of her heart seem louder. For a dizzying moment she couldn’t think which room was Mama’s, but some long-dormant memory resurfaced of a tall blue and white jar on a polished table, and she knew that the door opposite was the right one.
At least, she thought it was. She hesitated, her fingers clasping the handle, her courage faltering as her imagination tormented her with the image of Grandmama waiting on the other side of the door with an expression of thunderous rage. It was only the thought of Mama, who wasn’t scared of anything – least of all rules – that stopped her from fleeing back to the Spartan safety of the nursery.
She turned the handle.
She had expected it to be dark inside, but it wasn’t. The shutters and the lily-strewn curtains were open and the room was filled with the last dusky light of the winter afternoon; a melancholy glow, that seemed full of Mama’s absence. The sadness that had retreated since the letter arrived curled its fingers around Alice’s throat again. She tried to push it away, steering her mind back to the clue.
A box, in a drawer, through a door.
Did that mean the bedroom door? She turned round, uncertain, until she glimpsed her own ghostly reflection in the mirrored door of the wardrobe and another piece of the puzzle slotted into place. Inside, dresses still hung on the rails, their colours muddied by the fading day. As she ran her hand down them tears stung suddenly at the back of Alice’s eyes. This was the closest she’d felt to her mother since she’d arrived in this cavernous, shadowy, silent house; the most vivid and personal evidence she had to remind her that Mama had lived here. Caressing the velvet sleeve of an evening coat she wondered if that had been Mama’s intention; if, knowing how much Alice was missing her, she had deliberately brought her to where comfort would be found amongst her things. It would be just like Mama to think of that.
She had intended to search out what she was looking for and leave as quickly as possible, but now she was here, surrounded by things that still carried a hint of Mama’s perfume, she found she didn’t want to go back up to the cold and comfortless nursery. Had Mama worn these dresses to parties and balls? Had young, beautiful Selina Lennox danced with Rupert Carew in those tissue-shrouded shoes and known he was the man she was going to marry? Had she loved him then?
The bedroom door opened in a sudden fan of electric light, catapulting Alice out of wistful imagining and into pure terror. She was hidden from view by the open door of the wardrobe, but that meant she couldn’t see who had come in either and what they were doing. Dizzy with panic she shrank back between the folds of silk and tweed, drawing them around her in the hope of avoiding discovery, even though she knew it was futile. A second later a figure peered around the door. Alice gave a whimper of relief as she recognized Polly.
‘I suppose I don’t need to ask what you’re doing in here…’ Her arms were folded, but she didn’t sound cross.
‘There are lilies on the curtains.’ Alice’s voice was a breathless croak. ‘I woke up in here with Mama once, and the sun came through … And look – drawers.’ There was a row of them, beneath the shelves on which the shoes stood. ‘The box in the clue must be in one of those.’
Polly grinned. ‘Well, you’d better check quick then, before anyone notices that neither of us are where we’re supposed to be.’
Alice started at the top, pulling the drawers open quickly. Handkerchiefs, stockings, a stack of neatly folded white blouses with girlish Peter Pan collars, stiff cotton nightdresses with frilled lace at the neck … And then, in the bottommost drawer, a box.
With Polly watching, she lifted it out and carried it over to the bed. It was made of cardboard, not heavy, and when she set it down on the lily-strewn counterpane she could just about make out a label on the lid in furling Art-Nouveau style.
‘Maison D’Or,’ Polly said softly, tracing a finger over the lettering. ‘It was a dressmaking studio in London where your mama and Miss Miranda used to get a lot of their things made. The studio was all done out in ivory and gold – I only went there a couple of times to pick things up, but I was that nervous about trailing mud in off the street or making a mess. I wonder if it’s still there now?’
‘I didn’t know you’d lived in London.’ Somehow Polly, with her buttery west-country accent and wheat-coloured hair was part of Blackwood. It was impossible to imagine her amongst motorcars and trams and sooty streets.
‘I didn’t – not really. Sir Robert and Lady Lennox had a house there back then – in Chester Square it was – and I used to go up during the Season. They had separate household staff, but personal servants used to travel with the family. I went for a few years, from the time your mama had her Coming Out to when she married…’ Polly became brisk again. ‘Here, are you going to look inside this box or not?’
Alice lifted the lid and laid it aside. The first thing she saw was a piece of paper, folded in half. She opened it, tilting it to catch the words in the fading light.
Alice read it through twice. There were words that were unfamiliar, but the message was clear. And thrilling. She looked up at Polly.
‘A treasure hunt? A proper treasure hunt, for grown-ups?’
Polly laughed. Her hair gleamed palely in the dusk but her face was in deep shadow so Alice couldn’t see her expression. ‘I suppose they were grown-ups, though they didn’t behave like them most of the time. If they’d been just a few years older the boys would have been through the war in France, but these were the ones who just missed it.’
‘Papa went.’
‘I know, pet.’
‘Mama said that’s why he’s like he is.’ It was The War’s fault. Not Alice’s. Never Alice’s.
Polly sighed. ‘I daresay she’s right. It left its mark on all of those that went through it, but it had an effect on the ones who came after too.’ The flimsy paper leaflet crackled softly as she smoothed it flat. ‘It made them a bit giddy, I think, like they wanted to grab as many opportunities to enjoy themselves as they could, and never mind about rules and respectability – all the things that had mattered so much before. They were always doing madcap things – fancy dress parties and daft dares, pranks and practical jokes. Treasure hunts were quite the thing for a while – all of them tearing around the city at night in their motorcars, making a terrific racket and getting themselves into the newspapers.’
‘Did Mama get into the newspapers?’
‘Oh yes – far too often, for your grandparents’ liking. And your Aunt Miranda’s. Your mama was part of a very glamorous set which lots of people disapproved of, but couldn’t help being fascinated by too.’
‘Do you think Mama is going to do a treasure hunt for me? Is this a clue?’
‘I think it might very well be. Why don’t you take this box up to the nursery and have a look through it? There might be some more clues in there.’
So she did, and while Polly went back downstairs Alice settled herself on the draughty window seat with Noah’s elephants and lifted the flimsy cardboard lid. They had learned in school about Lord Carnarvon discovering the pharaoh’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and she imagined this must have been what it felt like. She took things out, one at a time, examining them in the feeble light of the nursery lamp, marvelling over the mysteries they hinted at. A black silk bow tie. A navy blue spotted handkerchief. A tarnished brass key with a geometric pattern at the top. An invitation card, gold edged and elaborately lettered, to a costume ball – Grosvenor Square, 24th July 1925 … Come as a Work of Art. Questions rose and writhed like smoke inside her mind, dissipating as she came to an envelope with her name on the front.
Another clue?
She felt as if she had been running after Mama along winding passageways, trying to catch up with her, listening to the echo of her voice but unable to make out the words. And now she had appeared in front of her, and her voice was soft and clear.
Darling Alice,
If you’re reading this it means you must have found the box – well done! It was the one my bridesmaid dress for Aunt Miranda’s wedding was delivered in, which I swiped to stow away my treasures after the big day had passed.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that summer lately. (I suppose it’s because I’m on a long and rather arduous journey, and journeys always make one look back at the places one has been before and view them with the clarity of perspective.) I can see now that it was a sort of turning point in all sorts of ways; a time of beginnings and of goodbyes. Of course, when I arrived in London in May it was with no clue that anything other than the usual parties and events of the Season lay ahead and no thought of doing anything but having as much fun as possible with darling Flick and Theo and the rest of our crowd (many of whom you know now as respectable married people and pillars of public life – how you would gasp to see them as they were then!)
To us, in that damp spring of 1925, it was just another Season, and we embarked on it with the casual arrogance of those blessed with money (though I was always notably less blessed in that department than my friends), privilege and time, and no sense that any of those things could be taken from us. We didn’t know it, but the wild days of our youth were fast running out. By the time the next Season came round the following year, everything had changed in ways we could never have imagined.
Ah – but I’m getting ahead of myself, and if I’m to tell you the story of that summer I need to begin at the beginning. You might be wondering why on earth I’m telling you this story at all, of people you don’t know in a time before you were born, and thinking you’d rather have one about a singing fish or a box of wishes – or no story at all and another clue instead! But be patient, my darling. This journey is long, so the treasure hunt mustn’t be rushed and the next clue will arrive in its own good time. One of the things I miss most on this endless voyage is sitting on your bed in the soft, sleepy evenings at home and making up stories for you. I can’t promise that there will be beautiful princesses and grumpy talking camels (remember him?) in this one, but it’s the story of how you came to be, and so it has the happiest ending of all.
But that bit is a long way off yet and there will be a lot of clues to discover before we get there! Let’s go back to the beginning of that last Season, in the cool, blossom-strewn May of 1925. It all started with the treasure hunt …