CHAPTER EIGHT

NUMBER 5
UPPER BROOK STREET
17 January 1930

It was TERRIBLE WEATHER on the day [wrote Susan Chudleigh to her cousin languishing in the Argyll wilderness], one of London’s best pea-soupers. Matilda wanted to get married in St James’s, but I put my foot down for St Margaret’s. Would you believe it, the wretched girl nearly collapsed with nerves, but we brought it off in the end. Still, the Verral diamonds looked impressive and the champagne was the best Ambrose could procure. (I must say, Maud, I am hugely relieved she is off my hands.)
     Daisy was ravishing in dark green, and very well behaved. Portlington’s son took a shine, I believe, and Tim Coats (very, very rich) is as keen as mustard. The bridegroom gave an excellent speech, and I wore mauve and white.
Whatever my feelings about Matilda, I have to tell you I managed a very smart wedding, despite Ambrose’s dire warnings about the need for economy, etc., etc., and the state of the stock market. During the reception a big crowd gathered outside No. 5 Stanhope Gate (where the reception was) but I gave orders not to turn them away. Why not let them enjoy the sight? Look out for the Tatler. They have gone to Devon for a few days. After that they are going East for several months while repairs are made to Hinton Dysart.
     Yes, Ambrose is worried about the financial situation, thank you for asking. Why America let itself get into such a state, I don’t know. It was very irresponsible and now everyone is suffering...

Susan stared at the muffled, gritty light filtering through the window, a moue of discontent and ill-temper pursing her mouth. Then she rang for the parlourmaid, pointed to the fire and watched in silence while the girl built the coals into a pyramid.

The fire hissed, smoke eddied up the chimney in puffs and Susan opened her account book, which she consulted every Monday morning. The ‘outgoings’ column now recorded a considerable sum. It was extraordinary how little things – flowers, stockings, confetti, teas at the Ritz – managed to add up to so much. Against the ‘incoming’ column there now existed an ominous blank. Matty would no longer be paying her aunt a contribution for her upkeep.

Susan very much regretted its absence.

SRFTON HOTEL,
DAWLISH
9 January 1930

Dear Aunt Susan,

       I am sorry not to have written sooner, but the journey here was exhausting and I have been in bed for the last two days recovering. But I wanted to thank you, first, for arranging the wedding. Second, for looking after me all these years. I also wanted to say I am sorry it was a duty for you rather than a pleasure.

There, she thought, I’ve said it.

The hotel is comfortable and well run by Mrs Peters. She is a rather lovely woman, with fair curls and an interesting aquiline profile. It is a great relief to be in a place which feels like a home and where we need not dress up. The view from our suite is enchanting, even at this time of year, and there are lots of birds. Kit goes out walking a lot and we meet for dinner...

The portable writing desk weighed heavily on Matty’s knees. She adjusted it and wriggled into a more comfortable position. It was tempting to write the truth, if only to unburden herself. Tempting but unwise.

The silences between Kit and her were sometimes so oppressive that several times Matty had been on the point of ordering her bags packed and returning to London. Then she became breathless and the world was reduced to concentration on releasing the band twisting around her chest. It was not that Kit was inattentive, far from it, but it was the attention and politeness of a stranger. Which he was, of course. Matty wondered what happened to famous people after they had brought off spectacular coups. Did a new prime minister wake up the morning after the election with a dragging feeling of ‘What now?’ as she did? Did Rembrandt apply the last brushstroke to Saskia and feel there was nothing more to do after the magnificence of his creation?

Matty picked up her pen. ‘The fish is excellent,’ she wrote and then inspected her nib. Nothing wrong with that piece of information. The trouble was there was nothing more she wished to say to her aunt.

Fish.

‘Your aunt is a piranha,’ Kit had informed her over sole coated in prawn sauce.

‘What’s that?’

‘A flesh-eating fish.’

At that they had looked at each other across the table and laughed – for the first time – over the shared joke, which got them over the raw patch after Matty had inadvertently mentioned Daisy and Kit had gone silent.

Fish, Matty thought, and picked up her pen.

A CLIFF TOP
11 January 1930

Darling, beloved Daisy,

      I am writing this overlooking the sea in the only patch out of the wind that I can find. Forgive the scrawl. The sea is furious, the sky leaden and the rain of the most penetrating kind, but I want you to know that you looked more beautiful than I have ever seen you at the wedding, and it nearly killed me. I have never loved you so much. I will never feel for anyone like this again.
     This is the last time I will ever tell you that, and the last time I can or will write to you.

Kit.

Shivering and coughing, Kit eased himself to his feet. Rain was sweeping in from the sea and hit him squarely in the face. Then came the punch of the wind. He stuffed the letter into his mackintosh pocket, turned up his collar and began to pick his way along the sodden turf and patches of scree. The gulls screamed over the wind and, despite his collar, the rain seeped down his back. Again Kit coughed, felt the spider’s legs of fever run down his arms and legs, up into his head, and surrendered to them.

NUMBER 5
UPPER BROOK STREET
14 February 1930

Dear Kit,

Thank you for your letter.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything more.

Daisy.

The envelope was addressed to c/o Max Longborough, The Old Cataract Hotel, Assuan, in savage black letters. Daisy laid it on the salver in the hall, ready for the evening post, and picked up the corsage that had just been delivered. ‘With the compliments of Mr Turner’, read the legend on the card, and underneath, scrawled in black ink, ‘Dearest Girl, Do make a chap happy and come to dinner.’

A second, more elaborate, arrangement of orchids lay beside it. That card read: ‘Portlington’. Neither of the cards interested Daisy, but the corsages were exquisite and she studied them. Both would add a certain something to her well-aired evening gown, which required an extra touch here or there – else it and she would die of boredom. Perhaps Portlington’s orchids at her waist? On the other hand, Turner’s gardenia would lie just so on her shoulder and its scent was delicious. Daisy was not going to allow herself to think it did not matter one twopenny farthing what she wore to where.

She picked up the gardenia, smelt it, and her newly grown hair fell in a bright screen over her face. Breathing in the scent, she concentrated on assembling her scrambled will-power. Corsages and suchlike had to matter. She would make them matter. They were the pegs on which her future hung. Hats, dresses, fork teas, thés dansants... After all, if you considered something important, then so it was, and never mind that the wounds from her love affair were seeping blood.

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo. Daisy picked up Portlington’s orchids. ‘All right, old girl?’ called Marcus, from the safety of a whisky glass in the drawing room. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said.

‘It does no good to brood moodily over a mirror, you know. It induces instant panic and a highly expensive dash to Elizabeth Arden.’

Daisy laughed. ‘Marcus, you are a fool.’

THE OLD CATARACT HOTEL,
ASSUAN
21 April 1930

Dear Flora,

      Here we are back in Assuan after an exhausting trip. In fact, it was a bit too much so Kit left me behind in base camp while Max and he rode on into the desert, playing at being Bedouins or something. (Please don’t tell him I said that.) I was hoping to write to you with a piece of good news but it has come to nothing. Perhaps next time I write...
      But I am enjoying myself very much, far more than I imagined I would, and I remember so much more than I thought from my childhood. Anyway, we are going to spend a few days here, sightseeing, and then take a boat down the Nile and begin the leisurely journey back home via Damascus (because I want to see my old house) then on to the great theatre in Ephesus and motor up through Italy. We should miss the hottest weather.
      Kit is well, very sunburnt, and excited. He and Max talk for hours and I’m often asleep by the time he comes to bed.
      Assuan itself is fascinating. It was once one of the most important towns in Egypt because it lay on Nubia’s northern border and, apparently, there was once a brisk trade in gold, ivory, slaves and spices. I’ve been busy buying jewellery and one or two good paintings which I am looking forward to showing you. With all good wishes,

Matty.

PS I do hope the builders are getting on as fast as possible and it is not too dreadful. Kit wishes to know if they have started on the roof and if they received his instructions?

HINTON DYSART
30 June 1930

Dearest Brother,

       In plain words, this is torture. There is dust in monster heaps and no roof over the attics. Father is foaming at the mouth at the inconvenience and has retired to his room and won’t come out. Robbie is in the vilest of tempers with me, but is resolutely jolly with Father which he hates. I’m terrified by the pair of them and the staff are threatening to rebel. Meanwhile, I picture you and Matty tucked up in first class enjoying wonderful expeditions and I think it really is too bad. However, this is the fate of the Single Woman. Miss Glossop did warn me of its perils. Therefore, on Polly’s suggestion, I am sending Robbie to her on holiday (question: can looking after our screaming nephew be a holiday?), and I am dragging Father off to Ardtornish. By this stage of the letter, I hope you are feeling guilty.
      I can’t bear to see the house like this and it is certainly not fit for pigs and Mrs Dawes practically fainted into Ellen’s arms yesterday because she saw two rats! The Chief Builder with whom I have developed a Deep Friendship promises me that it will all be over by Christmas. Where have I heard that phrase before?

Exasperatedly,
Flora

PS The new doctor is really rather nice. It’s funny – although he comes from quite a poor family and his parents used to live up by Clare Park, you wouldn’t know that when you meet him as he is terrifically well presented and forward looking.

PPS I feel as though my whole world is being pulled apart and nobody cares.

Before the builders wrought more devastation, Flora and Mrs Dawes had agreed to clear out the old nursery rooms at the top of the house. Flora stood in the doorway of the schoolroom, where shadowy hands reached out and plucked her back into the small, often secret, world of childhood. The nursery floor had been the sisters’ domain, in which Kit, set apart by the superiority of boarding school, did not figure, and those silent, sometimes tedious, hours spent up there were imprinted like an X-ray onto Flora.

Nine a.m., lessons. Eleven a.m., milk and biscuits. Twelve o’clock sharp, a brisk walk. Luncheon at one o’clock, followed by half an hour lying flat on the floor, for the sake of their posture, while Miss Hunter/Glossop/whoever read to them, from which vantage point Polly and Flora played Spot-the-Pink-Knickers, and the furniture seemed huge and strangely angled. Three o’clock, lessons again. Five o’clock, tea. Bread and butter on a flowered china plate and plain cake.

Miss Glossop, Flora recollected, had not cared for the Hanoverians: history had been weighted in favour of the Plantagenets (‘so chivalrous’), the Tudors (‘so clever and so right for England’), and the Stuarts (‘so romantic and doomed’), and boiled down to a chronicle featuring a surfeit of lampreys, butts of Malmsey and little gentlemen in black velvet. In English lessons Miss Hunter concentrated on parsing, which sounded like a disease, but conferred the ability to single out an adjective from a noun. Geography was confined to twirling a globe.

As an education, it had not left Flora with many reserves. But that narrow, claustrophobic routine had been vital – for it had given her a childhood. It had been safe, and Flora and Polly had needed Miss Glossop, Miss Hunter and the others to get them through.

HOTEL ROMANA,
ROME
5 July 1930

Dear Flora,

    Did anyone ever tell you that patience is a virtue? Remind me to do so when I get back.
      Seriously, I am very sorry it has been so difficult for you at home, and I hope the Ardtornish solution worked. Keep Father there as long as possible. As soon as I am back on the 15th I will come and take over.
      Would you be very kind and ask Friendly Builder if he has received my letter about (a) replacing the drawing room windows, (b) if it is possible to put in the new kind of radiator? He has not replied on these points.
      Matty seems well and is busy sightseeing. She spends most of her time in art galleries while I tramp round ruins. Funnily enough, she seems quite a different person when travelling, almost animated – you remember how down she was in France? She tells me she is looking forward to coming home.

Your loving brother,
Kit

PS What’s this nonsense about being unmarried? What do you think the performance next year is in aid of?

What Kit did not add to his letter was how much easier it was to get through the days when he and Matty made separate plans.

115 BRYANSTON COURT,
LONDON W1
23 October 1930

Dear Matty,

        Are you feeling any better? I hope so. Dr Lofts promised me he would keep a strict eye on you.
      As you see from the above I’ve left the club and I am now installed in our new London flat. It is reasonably spacious, with a good drawing room for entertaining. Certainly it is big enough for your luncheon parties when we launch Flora next year. I think you will find it comfortable.
      I have engaged a cook-housekeeper, but I leave you to choose the maid. Mrs Waters assures me that there is a good registry in the Edgware Road. (I hope you are impressed by this grasp of domestic matters.) However, for the flat to be properly shipshape we must wait until you are well enough to come up here yourself. It needs your touch.
      We were lucky to leave Egypt when we did as a nasty situation appears to be blowing up. There were anti-British riots in Cairo which left six dead. Let’s hope that things don’t get too inflamed.
      Which reminds me, I saw a man walking up and down the street by Marble Arch yesterday and I was very struck by the message on the placard.

I KNOW THREE TRADES
I SPEAK THREE LANGUAGES
FOUGHT FOR THREE YEARS
HAVE THREE CHILDREN
AND NO WORK FOR THREE MONTHS
I ONLY WANT ONE JOB

I watched him for a long time and his predicament made me boil with anger and pity. It can’t be right that this is happening.

Yours affectionately,
Kit

PS A piece of gossip that might amuse you. The Prince of Wales has been spotted leaving the building after cocktails. Perhaps he has a friend here?

Mrs Christopher Dysart, Kit wrote, aware that it took a conscious application of will to do so. He had a wife, but although that was undisputable it did not register with him: he was wearing his marriage like a new suit that had not worn in. He placed the envelope on the stack awaiting the post and readdressed himself to an unfinished letter to a Mr Raby, a man of affairs who had been recommended to him and possessed the advantage of being independent of any previous dealings with the Dysarts.

     To put you in the picture, the family has recently suffered from the effects of bad investments and this has resulted in serious embarrassment. My wife, however, is anxious to put to use the portion of her capital to which she is entitled by her trust. I would like your ideas as to where it would be both safe and productive.
      As to myself, would you consult the Dysart portfolio and assess if anything is salvageable. If it is, I would like it to remain separate from my wife’s account. I am interested in the development of the wireless which I am convinced will become a household item, and the recent formation of the British Broadcasting Company bears out this opinion. I would like to invest in a company developing a machine that will plug into the electricity mains and incorporate the loud-speaker into the design...

There was comfort to be had in the business of re-orchestrating the family fortunes and Kit was making every effort to keep himself occupied. One year and twenty-three days since he had said goodbye to Daisy, there were now days, welcome days, when he did not think about her at all.

WHAT IS ALL THIS ABOUT DAMNFOOL WIRELESSES STOP CONSULT ME BEFORE TAKING DECISIONS STOP WHY AREN’T YOU USING OUR MAN STOP REPEAT YOU MUST CONSULT ME STOP RUPERT STOP PS COME HOME

NUMBER 5
UPPER BROOK STREET
26 November 1930

Matty,

      Goodness! You are brave to invite the Chudleigh family down to Hinton Dysart for Christmas, and I salute your courage, or is it your thick-skinnedness? You will see it’s impossible. Of course we will meet from time to time, and I will be polite, but I don’t really want to see you or Kit, still less at Hinton. I have also persuaded Mother not to come either.
        Selfish and self-obsessed this might seem to you, but it is what I feel, and I must be honest.
      Don’t worry, I am joining Tim Coats’s skiing party in Bavaria which promises to be huge fun. I am quite looking forward to sniffing out this new Germany that I have been told about.
     I could never bring myself to say this before as you never struck me as possessing the gift for happiness, but be happy if you can and take care of him.

Daisy

CLIFTON COTTAGE,
NETHER HINDTON
5 December 1930

Dear Betty [Ellen licked the tip of the pencil which had worn down to an inch and a half.]

       I hope you are well and your veins are not hurting too bad. I would like to see you very much and your Dad and I wondered if we could come over on New Year’s Day when I will have a day off?
      Big things have taken place here. With Master Kit marrying and all that, and the house being done up. Quite different it is now, you would not recognize it, spanking fresh paint, a new roof, new windows. It does look nice and now she is back from the honeymoon Mrs Dysart is starting to do the inside up. I can’t say her taste appeals to me though.

Displayed in isolation on the mantelpiece above the range, Betty’s photograph seemed to nod at Ellen. At least, that is what she imagined, even if Ned did tell her she had lost her marbles. Ellen always wrote letters to her daughter facing the plump, rather blurred image. She liked to feel they were in direct contact, as if those years with the little girl, her two plaits and print pinafore, were not quite so far behind.

She turned over the paper and described Matty on the verso. After a paragraph she looked up. ‘You know, I don’t think it’s right with those two,’ she told Ned.

‘What’s new? The master never had any time for his missus.’

‘You mean the other way round. She couldn’t abide him, Ned.’ Ellen paused while she weighed up the benefits of being virtuous and remaining silent against the satisfaction of airing gossip. ‘Did I tell you what Madge heard?’

Ned enjoyed chewing the cud as much as Ellen, but he did not let it worry him. ‘Tell me, girl.’

Ellen chose her words. ‘Well. Between you and me, Madge says Lady D. had something going for her brother. Nasty, really,’ she added, in an attempt to clear her conscience.

‘And I say don’t poke your nose in what ain’t your business, Ellen.’

Your Dad says [Ellen knew Ned was quite right. Again she licked the pencil and was rewarded by a watery outline on the page.] I’m poking my nose in but I don’t think Miss Polly or Miss Flora were very pleased when Mr Kit married Mrs Dysart. Despite the money. And Mr Kit is a restless one and Mrs Dawes says he wanted to marry someone else. There.

‘Isn’t it tea-time?’ Ned got to his feet. He stood behind his wife and massaged gently at the nape of her neck where he knew it ached.

Ellen dropped the pencil and stared at the photograph. ‘I look awful, Ned, nowadays. Don’t I?’ Her daughter’s young face nodded back. ‘I’m growing old.’

‘So you are,’ said Ned, giving his wife’s shoulders a quick squeeze.

In panic, Ellen swung round. ‘Ned, do you really think so?’

‘It’s true, my girl.’ Face hidden, Ned bent over to stoke up the coal in the range and put the kettle on the hob. ‘You’ll be knocking at the pearly gates any minute.’

‘Get off, Ned.’

‘True, girl.’

‘Not yet awhile,’ said Ellen grimly, and rubbed her still swollen knee. ‘You’ll have to put up with me for a time yet.’

‘Tea?’ Ned leant the poker against the stove and peered at the pie inside the top oven. ‘Or have you gone on strike?’

The smell of cooked meat and pastry filled the room and the kettle began to do a steam dance.

That reminds me [wrote Ellen to Betty], the recipe for rook pie. Use only skinned breasts, otherwise the pie will be bitter, and layer with the best beef and a bit of fat bacon. Season. Add some liquid. Cover with pastry...

HINDTON DYSART,
NETHER HINTON,
HAMPSHIRE
10 December 1930

Dear Dr Hurley,

      Your name has been recommended to me by Lady Foxton and Mrs d’Arborfield. I have had one or two disappointments recently and I wish to consult someone such as yourself as soon as possible in the New Year.
      Could your secretary contact me at the above address in order to arrange this? I would like to emphasize again the urgency.

Yours sincerely,
Matilda Dysart