Chapter Forty-Three

London, October 1923

When they returned from their honeymoon, Eve and Brograve moved into a four-bedroom townhouse at 26 Charles Street in Mayfair, not far from her mother’s Seamore Place house. Brograve opened accounts at Heal’s and Harrods and Eve had fun choosing furniture and fittings there. She liked the Art Deco style, with its sweeping curves and colored inlays, its starbursts and elegant patterns in bold shades. They had only one maid and a cook to attend to their needs but Eve claimed to like doing domestic chores herself. She learned a few simple recipes to make on the cook’s night off—Brograve particularly loved her “chicken à la king,” a casserole of chicken with mushrooms in a sherry and cream sauce. Most of all, he liked coming home from his office to find her there every evening, waiting for him. He still couldn’t believe his luck that Eve had married him. Just looking at her made him smile.

In early December, he and Eve were the only guests at the registry office wedding of Almina to Ian Dennistoun, since Porchy had refused to attend. They signed the register as witnesses, then the four went for luncheon in an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge, an awkward occasion when the conversation was stilted and the gaiety seemed forced. Almina was giggly and girlish, and couldn’t stop pawing her groom, in a way that was embarrassing. Brograve agreed with Eve that she should have waited at least a year after her first husband’s death before remarrying. Their hurry left a bad taste in the mouth.

He didn’t say as much to Eve, but he didn’t like Ian. The man was a divorcé who, since leaving the army under a cloud, had made no attempt to find gainful employment. Now it seemed he planned to live off Almina’s Rothschild inheritance. For Brograve, it was hard to respect a man who fleeced his wife. It was certainly not the way he’d been brought up. Eve had inherited twenty-five thousand pounds from Alfred de Rothschild but that was her nest egg. Brograve would never have dreamed of touching it. His income from the copper cable company subsidized their lifestyle perfectly well; they were even planning to buy a bigger house before long.

Almina was still at loggerheads with Porchy over the death duties to be paid on Lord Carnarvon’s estate. The longer it dragged on, the more both became entrenched. Brograve warned Eve not to get involved, but she couldn’t help trying to “fix” things—that was her all over. She was terribly upset when Porchy refused to invite Almina to the christening of her first grandchild, a boy they named Henry, who was born in January 1924. Eve doted on the little lad. She couldn’t stop picking him up and cradling him, cooing and smiling, letting him grip her finger, tug her hair, and leave patches of dribble on her shoulder. It was clear she was desperate to have a child herself and Brograve was determined to give her one. He hoped nature would soon take its course.

They still had some difficulty in their marital relations: Eve was so small-boned, he had to be very gentle and restrained when they made love. Sometimes she flinched when he reached out to initiate lovemaking and he felt terrible about that. Occasionally he still wished he’d had some experience before marriage, enough to learn what women liked . . . but on the whole he was glad they had kept this most intimate of acts between the two of them.

Finally, in November 1924, the doctor telephoned with news that Eve was pregnant. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, then pranced around the sitting room singing, “You’re just as sweet as an angel.” Brograve cherished the memory; he could still picture it when he closed his eyes. She had been wearing a cornflower-blue dress and her expression was radiant, her dancing a mixture of foxtrot, tango, and her own made-up steps, her singing sweet and true.

Right from the start Eve was determined to be the best of mothers. She told Brograve she planned to shower their children with love, and let them pursue their own interests and become their own people, the way Pups had with her, and he agreed completely. She was already filled with love for this babe in the womb and overwhelmed by fierce protectiveness. As he stroked her belly, Brograve found it hard to think of the fetus as a human being, but he knew he would have killed with his bare hands if anyone threatened to harm Eve. It was his job to keep her safe—to keep them both safe.

Within a week of receiving the news, though, Eve complained of feeling nauseous. Soon she was throwing up from dawn till dusk and could scarcely keep any food or water down. Christmas Day was a wash-out, as the aroma of roasting goose made her retch uncontrollably and she had to withdraw to her bedroom with the door closed while he ate alone. She couldn’t leave the house, but lay on the sofa from morning till night with a bowl by her side. Brograve was helpless and frustrated. There was little he could do except hold her hair, rub her back, fetch glasses of water, and mutter reassurances. It was unbearable to watch her suffer. He would gladly have taken on the sickness himself, were that possible in some peculiar twist of nature.

The doctor was concerned as her weight started to drop. He prescribed meat jellies to build her up but she found the smell repulsive. Even the scent of flowers made her queasy. “The nausea will pass,” everyone kept saying, and Brograve knew it would eventually, but he worried that the baby might be harmed if she couldn’t keep down enough food to nourish it.

While all this was going on, any normal mother would have been expected to support her daughter, to reassure and encourage her. Instead, Almina was wrapped up in her own affairs. It transpired that—surprise, surprise—Ian Dennistoun had never been able to pay his first wife, Dorothy, the alimony a divorce court had determined he should pay. Once he married Almina, Dorothy saw her chance and demanded that she be recompensed from Almina’s fortune. Backed by Ian, Almina refused to give her a penny, and they both hired lawyers. Every evening, Almina telephoned Eve complaining about Dorothy’s latest demands, and never once considering her daughter’s fragile state.

It made Brograve increasingly furious as he watched Eve, gaunt and gray, trying to comfort her mother. He had to bite back acid comments on many an occasion. It wasn’t right that he should criticize Eve’s mother. It would only make things harder for Eve. And yet, there were times when he could cheerfully have throttled Almina.