Candida spoke to her mother with her usual cheerful conviction.
‘You’re coming to stay with me for a while, Mama. You need a change. This place is too full of memories for you to bear on your own.’
It was five months since Henry’s death, and two days ago King George VI had died, also in his sleep, bringing back with savage rawness their own personal anguish. Candida had driven to Hartley immediately, realizing how hard the news would hit her mother.
‘I’m all right, my dear,’ Lady Anne assured her, but her hands trembled, and she suddenly looked very small.
‘They say time is a great healer, and I’m not sure how true that is, but one’s just got to get on with it.’
‘Certainly, but not on your own,’ Candida expostulated. ‘Why isn’t Liza here, to look after you? She seems to spend all her time in London these days.’
‘I have enough people to look after me, far too many sometimes,’ her mother responded mildly.
‘But the others? Rosie? Juliet? Louise? Why aren’t they here more often? It really is too bad, leaving you in this great house, all on your own,’ Candida scolded crossly.
‘My dear, they’ve all got their own lives to lead. Juliet and Louise have husbands and houses to look after, not to mention children. And Rosie has to work very hard on her magazine column.’
‘I’m sure. Going to five parties a night must be a great strain,’ Candida snorted. ‘I’m sorry, Mama, but I’m worried about you.’
‘At least one of them comes down at the weekend, and it’s lovely to see all the children,’ Lady Anne assured her. ‘I can’t get over what a wonderful job Louise has done with Rupert, and Juliet’s step-children are really delightful and so polite. It’s not all gloom and doom, Candida. Of course the King’s death is a terrible blow, and poor Princess Elizabeth. What a terrible shock for her to find that not only has her father died, but she’s suddenly become Queen at the age of twenty-five and with two small children! But it does make one realize that we’re not alone in the world, with our grief.’
‘I know, Mama. Listen, why don’t you come and stay with Andrew and me, until the weather’s better?’ She glanced out of the window of her mother’s sitting room at the muddy bleakness of an English garden in February. ‘Come back here when the daffodils and tulips come out? When you can walk in the garden and the cherry blossom’s in bloom? I’m sure the family will be down a lot more when the weather improves, meanwhile my house is cosy, and we can take trips into Winchester and do a little shopping, and you know how Andrew loves talking to you!’
Lady Anne hesitated. She certainly wasn’t happy at Hartley these days. She kept thinking she heard Henry coming in the front door from the garden, or walking across the tiled hall floor. One night she awoke and thought she heard him walking along the corridor past her bedroom.
She’d even opened her mouth to call out ‘Henry?’ before remembering that her beloved only son would never come to her call again.
‘Perhaps you’re right, my dear,’ she said, her lips tightly compressed in an effort to control her emotions. ‘Just until the spring, then,’ she added, as if to prove Hartley was her home and she’d always return.
‘Capital!’ Candida boomed. ‘I’ll telephone Andrew with the good news, and then we’ll get Nanny to pack for you. You can be tucked up in front of a roaring log fire by this evening, with a glass of your favourite claret; how about that?’
Lady Anne smiled. ‘You’re very good to me, darling.’
‘What else are daughters for? Now, do you want your knitting? Are you reading something at the moment you want to take with you?’ Practical as always, Candida gave various instructions to the staff, before putting through a call to Liza in London.
‘I’m taking Mother home with me, to Hampshire,’ she informed her sister-in-law sturdily. ‘It’s not good for her to be alone here.’
Liza, on her way to a society wedding which was going ahead in spite of the King’s death, though the reception afterwards had been cancelled, felt thrown and wrong footed.
‘Does she want to stay with you?’ she asked almost accusingly.
‘Why shouldn’t she?’ Candida thundered.
‘I mean… she never leaves Hartley. I’d have brought her up to the flat here, if I’d known she wanted to get away.’
‘Living opposite Harrods is not among Mother’s priorities in life. She’s agreed to stay with me until the weather improves, and then she’ll return home.’
‘She never gave me the impression she wanted to get away,’ Liza remarked defensively. ‘In fact she’s been very brave about Henry’s death. I thought she wanted peace and quiet.’
‘She needs taking out of herself, Liza. Friends and neighbours are always dropping in to see us where we live and to meet new people will help to jolly her along a bit. At the moment she’s living with her memories and it’s not healthy. Anyway, I thought I’d let you know,’ Candida concluded firmly.
‘Thank you,’ Liza replied frostily as she hung up. How she hated it when Candida made her feel inadequate. For the past thirty-nine years her damned sister-in-law had made her feel middle-class, uneducated and shallow. Now she was making her look selfish, too, by coming to London during the week to see her friends and go to a few small and discreet gatherings. She was acutely aware it would not be seemly to socialize too openly so soon after Henry’s death, but surely she wasn’t expected to remain at Hartley, which these days was like an old-people’s home. It was the most depressing place in the world. Even the garden lay like a muddy barren wilderness under a permanently grey sky.
Deeply etched on her mind was the ghastly memory of living permanently at Hartley during the war. Especially in the winter. Fuel rationing meant the house was freezing, and she had to wear her mink coat indoors, and cardigans and woollen socks in bed; even hot water bottles were impossible to get hold of because rubber came from Burma. Decent food was scarce and so was drink, and the worst thing of all was only being allowed one bath a week, and that only six inches deep!
Liza shuddered as she recalled those dreadful days, and wondered how she’d survived them at all.
It was time to leave for the wedding, so she put on her little black hat with a veil and a pair of diamond earrings to brighten the deadening effect of black, which had never suited her. Lastly, she slung her silver fox fur over one shoulder to add a little touch of glamour.
It was a pity, she thought, as she hailed a passing taxi outside Princes Court, that the reception had been cancelled. Right and proper, of course, in view of the King’s death, but nevertheless a shame. It would have been very pleasant to have a glass of champagne and meet a few friends.
Rosie felt that the glorious days of being a debutante had returned. Of course she was seventeen years older now. No longer a girl but a twice married woman with a fifteen-year-old daughter and a twelve-year-old son. But she was enjoying herself more than she could have imagined. Juliet had been right when she’d said being a diary columnist on Society Magazine would be right up her street!
She reckoned she was the prettiest and most stylish of all the social columnists, too. Jennifer from Tatler was a fierce matron who refused to mingle with the other columnists on rival social magazines and the first time she bumped into Rosie at a ball, she put her nose in the air and refused to sit at the same table because she ‘never mixed with the press’.
I’ll give her press! Rosie thought, especially when she found out that when she’d been a debutante, Jennifer as she styled herself, had only been a dame at Eton.
The best part of it all was that she was only required to go to the magazine’s office once a month, to hand in her copy. With a telephone, some Society headed writing paper for her acceptance to invitations and following thank-you letters, which she wrote after every party, and a second-hand typewriter, at which she stabbed with two fingers, she could work from home.
As soon as word got around that the former Rosie Granville was Society’s new columnist, the invitations started pouring in.
‘Just like the old days, Mummy,’ she told Liza enthusiastically. ‘And I can choose which parties to write up, and which don’t pass muster.’
Liza went a pale shade of green with envy. Rosie’s mantelpiece was laden with stiff white engraved cards; and Liza was jealous of all the people she must be meeting. The grand houses she was going to. And the lavish parties she was attending. It was almost more than her mother could bear.
‘I also get asked to film premieres and first nights, and they send me two tickets; would you like to come with me sometimes?’ Rosie suggested.
‘I’m sure you’d rather take someone your own age,’ Liza protested, half-heartedly.
‘No, I’d love you to come.’ She riffled through a stack of mail on her desk, ‘I think I’ve got some tickets here.’
Liza leaned forward, trying to read the invitations to see who they were from.
‘Here we are!’ Rosie flourished a white envelope. ‘How about coming with me to the first night of South Pacific starring Mary Martin? It’s at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and everyone will be there.’
Feeling as if she were gratefully accepting crumbs from the rich man’s table, Liza accepted with alacrity. Of course an invitation to a ball at Blenheim Palace would have been better, but she had to remember she was still in mourning.
Rosie continued, ‘We might also go to a Chopin Recital by Malcuzynski at the Royal Albert Hall. These tickets are for the Grand Tier and cost twenty-one shillings each, so it ought to be good.’
‘Sounds lovely, darling.’
They were sitting in Rosie’s new flat in Holland Park, and although it wasn’t Mayfair or even Knightsbridge, it was a quiet elegant area, with some beautiful Edwardian white stucco houses. It had been quite tastefully decorated and furnished by the owners, and Liza’s discerning eye spotted some very nice antique pieces and a few charming landscape paintings. It would certainly do for Rosie for the time being, Liza having no doubts that her daughter was yet to make the perfect match to a man with money, and hopefully a title too. Her opportunities were boundless now that she was going about so much, even if only as a social journalist.
The Princes Court flat, Liza decided, was really too small for comfort. How could one give style and character to a series of square box-like rooms in a modern red brick block of flats? How could she show off her talent for creating rooms that make guests gasp with delight when they entered? Now that new fabrics from France were becoming available for the first time since before the war, and bright rich colours had become fashionable, how she longed to do up a place for herself in London, so that she could eventually start entertaining properly again?
The idea took hold and grew. She decided to pop into Harrods on her way home and have another look at the exquisite curtain material she’d seen there last week. It was very Buckingham Palace.
Nearby, at the Queen’s Gate Private Clinic, Juliet bit down hard on her thumb to control her desire to groan, as increasing waves of pain swept through her body. Although this was her third baby, giving birth never seemed to get any easier, and she’d lain here for what seemed like hours, and still she hadn’t gone into labour. Mr Snyder, her gynaecologist, kept dropping into her room to see her, and question her progress from the midwife who was massaging her back.
‘Not long now, Juliet,’ he told her cheerfully, ‘and then you’ll really have to do some hard work!’
She tried to grin back but the agony of another birth pang took her breath away.
Daniel had insisted that this time she go to the private clinic, instead of St Georges’s Hospital. ‘I can visit you at any time, and stay with you all day if you like, instead of adhering to visiting hours,’ he assured her. ‘They have excellent room service, too!’
‘You don’t want to be present at the birth, though,’ Juliet said firmly.
‘I will if Mr Snyder would allow it, but he won’t, will he?’
She shook her head. ‘He says fathers get terribly in the way. You wait at home with Tristan, darling, and we’ll let you know when the baby arrives.’
Lying on her back now, wondering how much more pain she could endure, she was thankful Daniel wasn’t with her. She’d have hated him to see her like this, with her hands gripping the iron bedstead above her head, her legs inelegantly akimbo and sweat pouring down her swollen body, as she pushed until she was purple in the face.
‘Come on, push…!’ Mr Snyder commanded. ‘You’re nearly there.’
Juliet grabbed the air and gas mask and held it over her nose and mouth as she gave another almighty push.
‘Good! Come on, Juliet. Push!’
Just when she thought she couldn’t bear another second and that she was being ripped apart, she was rewarded by the sound of a tiny wail.
‘You’ve got a beautiful daughter!’ she heard the midwife exclaim. A moment or two later, the baby, wrapped in white sheeting, was placed in Juliet’s arms.
She looked down adoringly into the baby’s little pink face which was dominated by dark eyes. Thick silky black hair covered her tiny head.
Juliet started laughing. ‘She’s the spit and image of her father, just like Tristan,’ she crowed delightedly. ‘Oh, my precious little girl. Wait until your daddy sees you.’
‘Your daddy thinks you’re beautiful,’ she heard a strong deep voice speaking from the doorway of her room.
A moment later Daniel was by her side, his arms encircling both of them, as he kissed the baby’s head, and then turning to Juliet, gave her a long lingering kiss.
‘Well done, my darling.’
‘I didn’t know you were here,’ she said, weak with exhaustion but wallowing in her new found happiness.
‘I’ve been sitting in the corridor for the past couple of hours. I couldn’t bear to be at home, thinking of you all on your own here.’
Juliet looked down at the baby. ‘She’s just like you, isn’t she?’
Daniel chuckled. ‘Poor kid! But she’ll get over it.’
‘Would you like to wait outside, Mr Lawrence,’ the midwife told him cheerfully. ‘Just while we tidy up in here? Then you can come back and sit with your wife.’
When Daniel returned an hour later he was carrying an enormous bouquet of white roses in one hand, and a bottle of champagne in the other.
Juliet was by now sitting up in bed, her hair brushed and red lipstick enhancing her mouth.
‘You’re incorrigible, sweetheart,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘Where’s the diamond necklace and the drop earrings?’
Juliet smiled lazily. ‘I believe in keeping up appearances, and when the most handsome man in London comes to visit me, I want to look my best.’
Although she’d spoken jokingly, Daniel was moved by her words.
‘You’ve no idea how much I love you,’ he said, his voice rough with emotion. He kissed her deeply, lovingly, running his hand over her soft pulpy stomach. ‘I can’t wait to take you home with me.’
‘I can’t wait to get home.’ She gave a soft little sigh. ‘I wish I could go to sleep now, and wake up beside you in our silver bed.’
‘You will, sweetheart, soon.’
Later, Daniel tiptoed away, as Juliet lay fast asleep. When he arrived back at the house, Dudley was doing one of his hovering-by-the-flowers-in-the-hall acts. He looked up as anxiously as if he were a part of the family.
‘A little girl, Dudley,’ Daniel said, grinning. ‘A beautiful little girl with dark hair and eyes.’
‘And madam? How is madam?’
Daniel’s expression softened. He’d hated Dudley always being around when he’d first married Juliet. He was even jealous that she seemed to depend on him so much, almost as if he were her friend and confidant. But over the past few years he’d come to like and respect the rather eccentric butler, with his little garden-gnome face. His loyalty to Juliet and his discretion as he went about his business were qualities Daniel now admired.
‘She’s fine, thank you, Dudley. Already looking forward to coming home. Why don’t we drink a toast to the new baby? Open a bottle of Crystal, will you? And bring it up to the drawing room with a couple of glasses.’
Flushing with delight, Dudley scuttled off to the wine cellar.
Daniel poured the chilled champagne into the glasses, the sparkling beads shimmering up to the edge of the rims.
‘Here’s to my daughter!’ Daniel said, raising his glass.
‘Your daughter!’ Dudley exclaimed, his button eyes blazing with excitement. ‘Have you and madam chosen a name for her, sir?’
‘Yes, we have.’ Daniel seated himself in an easy chair by the fireplace. ‘She’s to be called Cathryn.’
‘Cathryn.’ The butler, remaining standing, repeated the name softly. ‘That’s a beautiful name, sir. I’m sure Master Tristan will be very thrilled to have a little companion.’
‘Yes, I think he will.’ Daniel looked at his watch. ‘What time is dinner, Dudley?’
‘Eight o’clock, if that’s convenient, sir.’
‘Perfect. It’ll give me time to have a bath first, and then telephone everyone in the family, to tell them the good news.’
Daniel tried Liza’s number a second time, but there was still no answer. Although it was Tuesday it struck him she might be spending an extended weekend at Hartley so he dialled the Guildford number, knowing she’d be furious if she found out she hadn’t been immediately informed of the baby’s birth.
One of the daily cleaners from the village answered the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Is Mrs Granville there? I’d like to speak to her, please.’
‘Who’s that?’ the woman asked cautiously.
‘Mr Lawrence.’
There was a long silence on the line, almost as if the cleaner was listening to someone’s instructions. Eventually she spoke. ‘Mrs Granville isn’t here.’ Her tone was final, curt.
‘Is she in London, then?’ Daniel inquired.
‘I couldn’t say. Sorry I can’t help.’ There was a click and she hung up.
‘Well… I’ Daniel said aloud as he replaced the receiver. If Liza cursed him for not telling her of Cathryn’s arrival, he’d at least be able to say he’d done his best.
He’d sat down to dinner a few minutes later when the phone rang. Dudley answered it and then came into the dining room to tell Daniel it was Mrs Lawrence on the phone.
Frowning, he jumped to his feet and grabbed the receiver in the hall. ‘Juliet?’ he said anxiously.
‘Hello, darling.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, fine. I just had a call from my mother.’
Relief washed over Daniel like a warm comforting wave. For a ghastly moment he’d thought there was something wrong with the baby.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of her all evening,’ he explained.
‘Really? She rang to say she had a premonition I’d had the baby, and was ringing to check. I told her we’d had a little girl…’
‘Why didn’t she ring here?’ Daniel asked puzzled. ‘Why did she ring the clinic? No one knew you’d been admitted yesterday.’
‘I don’t know.’ Juliet sounded tired. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d let you know, so you can cross her off your list of people to ring.’
‘Thank you, sweetheart. Now get a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you first thing in the morning.’
Once they’d said a lingering goodbye, Daniel returned to the dining room, wondering what Liza was up to. He was certain she must be at Hartley, and she’d told the cleaner who’d answered the phone to say she wasn’t there. But why? She knew Juliet’s baby was imminent and she’d probably guessed he was calling to say the baby had arrived, but she didn’t want him to know she was at Hartley.
He felt disturbed and uneasy, although common sense told him he was making a fuss over nothing. Why shouldn’t Liza still be at Hartley during the week? As if to prove a point, although he didn’t know why, he dialled the Princes Court number once more. There was still no answer. He shrugged, and after drinking a night cap before the crackling drawing-room fire, he went to bed.
It was none of his business what Liza did, and he soon fell asleep, thinking how wonderful it was going to be when, in ten days’ time, Juliet lay close by his side once more, her breath fanning his cheek, her slim limbs entangled with his.