The first year of which Rachel Patten had any clear recollection was the year of her fourth birthday – the year that handsome, funny Uncle Peter first came home on leave in his officer’s uniform, the year that wonderful Cousin Philippe came to stay. 1911 was, too, the year when she finally got Toby Smith to admit that she was no longer a baby, the year that Mama pestered Papa into buying a motor car. It was a year that built to a long, hot, blazing summer during which she, Mama and Nurse Winterbottom spent three blissful weeks in a small house by the sea, Nurse Winterbottom muttering darkly about something called ‘anarchy’ which was happening in London, whilst Mama – pretty as a picture in her wide hats and drifting pastel dresses – strolled along the front beneath a frilled parasol or took tea on the small verandah with her friends the Westons, and Rachel in her sailor-suit dress built and demolished sand castles, paddled in the sea, collected shells and generally had the best time of her short life. The only cloud on the summer horizon for the child had been the absence of her big, beloved Papa, though to be sure he had explained very carefully to her, for all the world as if she had been grown up, why he had not been able to stay at Brightsea with them. Even Mama, in those three happy weeks, had smiled at her, if rather absently, more often than usual. Oh yes, for little Rachel Patten 1911 was a very good year indeed.
But not so for everyone. In a country where real wages had fallen steadily for three years whilst unemployment had as steadily risen, where a constitutional crisis the year before – brought about by the House of Lords’ arrogant refusal to accept the elected Liberal Government’s so-called People’s Budget – had precipitated two General Elections and reduced the political life of the country to chaos and confrontation, where a king had died sincerely mourned by his people and another had come to the throne amidst seething industrial unrest and discontent, not everyone was going to remember Rachel’s fifth year with such pleasure.
For Hannah it was the year of her fourth term of imprisonment and of her first hunger strike. It was also her first experience of the savage and inhumane practice of forcible feeding. In the preceding three years the women had time and again been promised reform and time and again they had been betrayed. Their leaders had been gaoled, the treatment meted out by police to demonstrators had been markedly more brutal. In November 1910 there had been a confrontation outside the Houses of Parliament between the Pankhursts and their supporters, who had been trying to deliver a petition to the Government and a police force who, under the new Home Secretary Winston Churchill, had been instructed to stop them at all costs, to make as few arrests as possible and to discourage them from ever trying again. The resulting pitched battle had lasted for six hours and, predictably and many said deliberately, very many women had been injured. Hannah had found herself nursing a fractured arm and Sally had received nasty bruises when she had been trampled by a police horse. But such tactics worked no better against the women than they did against the brave and stubborn miners of the Rhondda. Under their WSPU banners of purple, white and green the suffragettes marched, obstinately heckled Cabinet Ministers at public meetings, drew up, signed and tried to deliver petitions. The fight went on.
For Sally Smith, who would ever afterwards remember this as a year that changed her life, it began quietly enough with Dan Dickson’s third proposal of marriage and her own third, still apparently firm, refusal. But she knew, and thought he might suspect, that faced with this endearing, stubborn devotion she was weakening. He was kind, he was strong, he was steady and he loved her: what more might she expect from anyone? They were good friends, and he respected her: what better basis than that for marriage? As she guessed, he sensed her wavering, and though he said nothing as the year moved on to that stifling summer in which the docklands of London were as much a tinderbox of near-revolution as were the mining valleys of Wales and the dark mill towns of the north, he watched her, and patiently he waited.
As did Ralph for a Hannah whose passions were so totally committed elsewhere that she did not notice.
Of passion between Charlotte and Ben Patten there was none. Their physical relationship had all but ceased; Charlotte had moved back into her own room and rare – and for her disagreeable – were the nights he sought her out. On those occasions that he did she would lie rigid beneath him, hatefully overwhelmed by the bulk and the strength of him, untouched and unmoved by the need that brought him to her; terrified of the possibility of pregnancy. Beyond the bedroom, however, the marriage was a fairly civilized affair, not too far removed from many others of the day, of polite and shallow friendship. It could not be said they cared nothing for each other: frivolous, discontented and self-centred she might be, but yet Charlotte in her prettiest mood, like a spoiled but appealing child, could be difficult entirely to resist. And Ben, whilst utterly lacking that handsome, easy and attentive charm that was almost the only quality that Charlotte looked for in a man was – at his best – neither unkind nor ungenerous. Mismatched they undoubtedly were, but each in their way was guardedly ready to make the best of it – Charlotte because now, in honesty, even the possibility that she might do anything but what the world expected of her never entered her head and Ben because his rocklike conception of his duty would not allow him to do anything else.
It was in early June with the London docks in seething unrest that threatened, like fire or fever, to spread uncontrolled through the other service industries of the capital, and with the distant rumblings of yet another war scare beginning to make themselves heard above the domestic din that Charlotte was more than happy to climb with Rachel, an openly nervous Nurse Winterbottom and enough luggage to accompany a royal progress to India into the new motor car and to be driven by Ben to the small house that he had after much persuasion rented for them on the Sussex coast.
‘I declare I intend not to read a single newspaper!’ she announced lightly. ‘Not one. If the tiresome Germans come, then they come – though it all sounds a most unlikely storm in a teacup to me. Why should we be concerned with a silly place in Africa? And as for unions, strikes and – picket-lines or whatever you call them – I’m tired to death of all of them. Why they can’t just take their wages and give a good day’s work as they used to do is completely beyond me. I intend to read, to stroll a little by the sea, to take tea in that darling little tea shop. I expect I shall make a friend or two. Rachel, pull your bonnet forward, for goodness’ sake. The sun’s in your face. You’ll end up looking like a little gipsy if you aren’t careful.’
Ben eyed her with some amusement. She looked undeniably fetching in her neat motoring outfit, a froth of pale silk at neck and wrist, her huge, veiled, flower-decked hat tied becomingly beneath her chin with a gauzy scarf.
‘I want to be back by the twenty-first, of course. I wouldn’t miss the Coronation for anything.’ She sounded for all the world as if she had been invited by King George in person to occupy the front pew at the Abbey.
‘Either Ralph or I will be down to fetch you on the eighteenth or nineteenth.’
She slanted a glance at him from beneath her veil. Really, sometimes he could look quite presentable. In his brown tweed motoring suit and cap he cut so much more of a dash than in his usual, rusty doctor’s black— ‘Is there any chance you’ll come to join us, for a day or so perhaps? A weekend?’
Rachel cocked sharp ears, fixed her father’s back with a fierce and longing eye.
‘Possibly. I’ll have to see what happens.’
‘You mean you’ll have to see if those stupid dockers cause trouble they can’t handle and need you to mend their heads,’ she said with unusual asperity and even more unusual perception.
He smiled.
The car bumped along the uneven road, clouds of dust billowing behind it. In the villages children ran beside them, shouting. Charlotte smiled graciously and waved at them. Rachel, a wary weather eye upon her mother’s back, poked her tongue out. Nurse Winterbottom was at that moment too openly terrified of the unnatural speed at which they were travelling to pose any kind of threat.
‘Really,’ Charlotte said lightly, obviously pleased, ‘one would think they had never seen a motor car before.’
Ben negotiated a bend designed – if that were the word – for nothing faster than a pony and trap. ‘That won’t take long to change. In America a chap named Ford’s building them quicker than he can sell them. Cars for everyone. Built cheap and fast on what they call an assembly line.’
‘Oh?’
Rachel hid a smile at the faintly offended tone of her mother’s voice. She shifted in her seat a little and lifted her teddy bear so that he too could see the green countryside as it swooped past them. She liked riding in the motor car. One day she would drive, like Aunt Hannah; but she would have a motor of her very own. She watched as her mother with a dainty gesture adjusted her hat against the wind. She could not imagine her mother ever taking the wheel of the car. The only thing, it seemed to Rachel, that Mama knew about this marvellous machine was that it was a lowly Rover and not the Lanchester she had wanted. About that for a short while she had talked endlessly. The child’s mind wandered pleasantly. When Uncle Peter had come home a few weeks before – wearing a most smart and splendid uniform of khaki and shining brown leather that Rachel had thought far more striking and handsome than the scarlet and gold of Toby’s silly toys, for all Mama’s disappointed complaints – he had talked to her about aeroplanes. Uncle Peter – wonderful, lucky Uncle Peter – had been in one, and had told her about it, spreading his arms like wings and zooming around the room until she had got hiccoughs from excitement and laughter.
‘They’ve flown the Channel, little one – it’ll be the Atlantic next, you’ll see. America next stop!’
She liked Uncle Peter. Sometimes she still wondered with interest about the fuss that had attended his typically capricious and sudden decision to join the army, and the family upset it had caused. Something had happened that neither Grandfather nor Mama or Papa had much cared for, though no one had ever got round to explaining the problem to the intrigued child. She well remembered the strange day when a man had called at the Bear and shouted about Uncle Peter. And a silly lady had cried. Rachel remembered that quite clearly too, because she had been so fascinated to see a grown-up woman sobbing in public – a thing Rachel herself would never be allowed to do – that she had quite forgotten her manners and stared. For which Nurse Winterbottom had slapped her soundly. She directed a small, triumphant glance at her companion in the back seat of the car. Nurse Winterbottom was not in a fit state to slap anyone at the moment. She was clinging to her seat in terror, her eyes shut. She was scared. Scared as a pussy cat. Scared as stupid little Bessie Harper had been when Toby had chased her with a spider – Rachel grinned at the thought.
‘Sit up straight, Rachel. Young ladies don’t slouch,’ Charlotte called over her shoulder, above the noise of the wind and the engine, and without turning her head.
Automatically Rachel straightened her back, sighing. She truly sometimes believed that Mama had eyes in the back of her head.
Ben’s thoughts, like Rachel’s, had turned to his scapegrace young brother. ‘Peter seems settled at last. Army life seems to suit him.’
‘I should think anything would suit him better than marriage to that milk and water miss who’d set her cap at him,’ she said a little waspishly.
He smiled a little. ‘You’re probably right. Not the marrying kind, our Peter. He certainly makes a dashing young lieutenant.’
‘Second lieutenant,’ she corrected him, still tart. ‘And, oh, Ben, do slow down a little! I declare I shall be quite sick if you don’t!’
Brightsea was a pleasant little place, as much a large village as a town, which straggled up low, chalky cliffs from a small sandy beach. Over the past few years several fair-sized and substantial houses had been built for those with fortune and time at their disposal to enjoy summer by the sea. There were too several very respectable boarding houses and a few villas and cottages to let. The main street contained perhaps a half dozen small shops and the tea shop, run by a genteel widow and her daughter, which had caught Charlotte’s eye when they had visited the place earlier in the year. It was, she thought, an agreeable enough place to spend a couple of weeks. Anywhere was better than Poplar, from where, for all her scheming and pleading, she could not persuade her stubborn husband to move.
The house they had rented looked out over the sea and was a mere five-minute stroll from the beach. A cook and housemaid came with the let, the rooms were large and comfortably furnished. She stood on the balcony and looked across the glittering space of the seascape. In the road below a handsome young couple glanced up, paused, then acknowledged her with smiles and slight bows. Graciously she nodded. Oh yes, Brightsea might really prove quite an entertaining break in a life that lately had been quite provokingly tedious.
Ben, knowing with neither surprise nor resentment that he would not be missed at least by his wife, motored back to a London where half the population strolled in the sunshine of the parks, rowed on the peaceful river or attended the summer race meetings in their new motor cars whilst the other half looked on with growing anger and discontent.
‘Real trouble coming if I’m any judge,’ Will commented that evening. He had aged in the past couple of years. His hair had thinned and his eyes, though still bright and sharp were tired.
‘You think so?’
He nodded, tamping down his pipe. ‘Been building for months. And the damned weather doesn’t help.’ He stopped as the parlour door opened and a harassed Sally popped her head around it.
‘Ah, there you are – could one of you come, please? The new little boy – Harry Potts – has fallen off the stable roof. I think his arm might be broken.’
Ben grabbed the bag that was never far from his hand, ‘I’ll come.’
She led him, hurrying, across the courtyard to the home, to where Bron sat in the schoolroom nursing a sobbing little boy. Ben dropped to his knees beside them, gently took the child’s arm. ‘Well, now, what’s all this?’
Dispassionately Sally watched him. There had been a time when she would have gone to almost any lengths to avoid this close a contact, but no more. How she had ever found courage to face him at all after that Christmas night three years before she had never known. The temptation to run away, to hide, never to come near nor by the Bear again had been so overwhelming that at first there had been no resisting it. She could not stay. She would not! But there had been Toby to consider – what would she tell him? How explain a decision to leave, to ruin all the plans they had laid for his future? And to a lesser degree there had been Hannah, who had extended the open and generous hand of friendship – how could she betray her trust by simply running away? She had lain the next day alone in her darkened room after a bitter and sleepless night, by turns savagely, defensively angry and filled with an intolerable humiliation. She had thrown herself at Ben Patten like any street walker: and like any street walker she had been roughly rejected. It served her right, she supposed, though it was a bleak and bitter thought. For twenty-four hours she had neither eaten nor slept. And when she emerged from her room it was with the decision made that, Toby or no Toby, Hannah or no Hannah, she would have to leave.
The first person she had met had been Ben Patten. Whether by design or accident she had never known, but his was the face she saw as she crossed the courtyard, his the voice that said calmly, ‘Ah – Sally – Bron was looking for you. There’s a crisis in the Seconds’ dormitory that seems quite beyond her.’
She had stared at him. Opened her mouth.
Very quickly he had held up his hand to prevent the words. Slowly and firmly he had shaken his head. ‘Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. There is no need.’ The granite face had been completely expressionless.
And so, after a moment’s hesitation, wordlessly she had pushed past him and taken up her responsibilities again, and though in the months that had followed she had avoided him as much as was humanly possible – as, she was certain, he had her – in a surprisingly short while she had mastered her emotions, though even now the sight of him could sometimes bring an unexpected twinge, a small, almost nauseous twist of humiliation and hurt that would quickly transmute itself into a welcome edge of resentment, almost of dislike, which she made little effort to hide. And, with the passing of time the wound had healed, as most wounds did: it was, after all, as she had told herself constantly during those first hard months, only her pride that had been hurt.
‘Not broken,’ Ben said now, straightening. ‘A bad sprain is all. Cold water compresses should sort it out – oh, and—’ he rummaged in his bag, ‘—a jelly baby. That should do the trick.’
The industrial unrest both in London and in the rest of the country did indeed, as Will had predicted, become steadily worse as the month progressed towards the Coronation of George the Fifth. By the time Ben arrived at Brightsea to pick up Charlotte and Rachel two days before the event, the ports of London, Hull and Southampton were crippled by strikes; a piece of information that did not impress Charlotte a jot compared to the other news Ben carried. ‘But Ben! Why didn’t someone let me know? When did he arrive?’
Ben piled the last piece of luggage into the boot of the car. ‘Only the day before yesterday. And we had no time to tell anyone. He telegraphed on Monday and arrived the next day. It’s partly a business trip – Aunt Alice has financial affairs in London that he keeps an eye on – and partly pleasure. He decided he wanted to be here for the Coronation.’
Charlotte clapped her hands like a child. ‘But that’s wonderful! Oh, what fun it will be showing him London!’
Rachel, eyeing her mother’s unusual excitement a little warily, tugged at her father’s sleeve. ‘Who’s come?’
He bent and scooped her into his arms. ‘Your Cousin Philippe from Belgium. Well – strictly speaking, your second cousin.’
‘Why is he only second? Who came first?’ the child asked, interested in an apparent pecking order she had never before come across.
He laughed. ‘No – Philippe is your mother’s and Uncle Ralph’s cousin. So that makes him your second cousin.’
‘Ben – do come!’ Charlotte was waiting impatiently to be handed into the car. ‘Or we’ll never get away!’
Ben deposited Rachel upon the back seat next to the already pale-faced Nurse Winterbottom and extended a hand to his wife. ‘So – you’ve enjoyed your holiday?’
‘Oh yes. Well enough, thank you.’ The words were light.
‘You weren’t lonely?’
‘No, not at all. We met a charming young woman. A Miss Weston. Holidaying with her mother. She made a most pleasant companion.’
Rachel cocked her head to one side. Odd that Mama had made no mention of Miss Weston’s brother who had, it seemed to Rachel, spent even more time with them than had Miss Weston or her mother. He had made the most splendid sand castles and had not seemed to mind a bit when she had jumped on them and knocked them down. In fact – astonishingly – even Mama had laughed. She had laughed quite a lot when young Mr Weston was with them.
Ben wound the handle and the engine jumped to life. Charlotte settled happily into her seat, delicately adjusting the brim of her hat. ‘Cousin Philippe! How marvellous. What a lovely surprise!’
They arrived in London, hot and tired, a little after tea time. Rachel, heavy-eyed and crumpled, held up her arms to her father. Charlotte, however, stepped brightly down, shaking out her skirts and untying the scarf that fastened her hat, looking round expectantly. ‘Where is everybody?’
‘Taken some of the youngsters to the park for a picnic. They’ll be back soon.’ Will stood at the door, leaning on a stick. ‘Welcome home, my dear.’ His old eyes sparkled as they always did at sight of her pretty face. ‘We’ve missed you.’
‘Thank you.’ She dropped a quick and slightly absent kiss upon his cheek. ‘And Cousin Philippe? Is he here?’
He shook his head. ‘No. He’s gone off with the others to Regent’s Park. In fact it was his idea. But they won’t be long now.’
‘Oh.’ Disappointment pulled down the corners of Charlotte’s mouth a little. Then she brightened. All the better, it gave her a chance to make herself especially pretty. ‘Ben – I really feel a terrible fright. I’ll bathe, I think, and change my clothes before we eat. Nurse – take Rachel to the nursery, please, for tea. And then straight to bed, if you please. She’s had a very tiring day.’
‘But Mama!’ Rachel was outraged. The only thing that had kept her cheerful during the long, hot journey back had been the thought of meeting her intriguing-sounding second cousin from Belgium, wherever that was. A sharp-eyed and quick-witted child, she had not missed her mother’s interest.
Charlotte quelled her with an irritated glance. ‘Bed,’ she said.
It was more than two hours later in the long June twilight that the picnic party returned.
Charlotte heard the singing before, looking out of her bedroom window, she saw a wide cart drawn by an ancient, shambling horse pull into the courtyard. Ralph held the reins, Hannah, laughing and dishevelled, beside him. The flat body of the cart was a tumble of children, in the midst of whom Sally Smith stood, swaying to the movement, hatless and breathless with laughter. ‘Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic!’ Seated upon a bale of hay in the corner of the vehicle sat a figure in straw hat and shirtsleeves, his jacket flung carelessly over one shoulder, the long, dark, amused face Charlotte remembered so well lifted to the singer. As she watched he unfolded his tall, oddly elegant frame, vaulted lightly over the shallow side of the cart and lifted a courteous hand to help Sally down.
Smiling, Charlotte turned back to her mirror. Outside Sally’s distinctive, husky, slightly off-key voice was threaded with tiredness and laughter. ‘Down you get – Picnic time for teddy bears – the little teddy bears have had a lovely time today. Whoops!’ There came the sound of a tumble, a long, childishly aggrieved wail. The song broke off. ‘Ups-a-daisy,’ Sally said easily, ‘nothing broken.’
What very tiresome beings children were. Charlotte applied herself to her reflection. She did hope that her sojourn by the sea – enjoyable as it had been – had not put too much colour into her delicate complexion, which Philippe, in those weeks in Bruges, had so often commented upon.
London, despite her troubles, put on a brave face and gala dress for the Coronation of George the Fifth. The city was decked with flags and with flowers, the streets thronged with people dressed in their Sunday best, out in the sunshine to enjoy the pageantry of the occasion, the fairytale procession with its handsome coaches, prancing horses and brilliantly uniformed soldiers. It was a day for rejoicing, and many were ready to put aside their grievances for a while and enjoy it. Tomorrow they might be facing these very soldiers across a picket line or at a dock gate, but for today they were ready to cheer themselves hoarse as the trim and picturesque columns rode proudly by escorting their monarch to his crowning.
In common with the rest of the city the party from the Bear were up and about early. They took an omnibus through the gaily decorated streets to the Mall, the great thoroughfare that led to Buckingham Palace, where they staked their claim to a section of pavement in front of the park, spread their rugs and settled down to a picnic breakfast. Everyone was there with the exception of the very smallest children, the timid Maud who had stayed willingly behind to care for them, Mrs Briggs who had flatly refused – even for her sovereign – to brave crowded streets that she insisted were alive with thieves and vagabonds, and Doctor Will, who had insisted good naturedly that if someone had to stay behind and hold the fort it might as well be him. Rachel, sitting in triumphant elevation upon her father’s wide shoulders as they walked down the Mall, had a splendid view all the way down the grand, sweeping avenue to the palace at the end. Soldiers in bright red jackets glittering with brass that gleamed like gold, and with tall bearskins on their heads ceremoniously guarded the way. Rachel waved her Union Jack with enthusiasm. ‘When’s the King coming?’
‘Not for hours yet.’ A little peevishly Charlotte, before settling herself upon the rug, smoothed the skirt of the pretty white dress she had chosen for the day: high-waisted, slender-skirted, it showed off her figure to perfection. Red and blue flowers decorated her wide-brimmed hat and ribbons of the same colours fluttered from her narrow waist. She looked lovely and she knew it; but yet the set of her mouth was not happy. The day that had started in such hope and excitement was already, for Charlotte, turning sour. Around her were laughter and exhilaration, children shrieked and played under the indulgent eyes of their elders. A Punch and Judy man had set up in the park behind them and the squawks and squeals of the puppets and of their young audience added to the excited commotion. A flower seller with a basket of red, white and blue flowers sang her wares in a sweet and piercing voice. Somewhere not far away a barrel organ played. Charlotte twitched her skirt away from the sticky fingers of one of the orphanage children. Toby was organizing them into ranks, small ones at the front. ‘There. Now you’ll all be able to see. And don’t forget to wave your flags.’ The boy was resplendent in the smart school uniform that Ralph had, over Charlotte’s protests, bought for him in celebration of his gaining his scholarship to a school in the City.
A little way away Sally Smith stood with Hannah. She was dressed in cool pale green and white, a pretty hat that Charlotte had never seen before perched upon the piled soft brown hair, the wide brim shading her laughing face. As Charlotte watched, Philippe van Damme joined them, tall and striking in his elegantly casual slacks and striped blazer, his long, engagingly mobile face vivid with laughter and interest.
Charlotte turned away.
‘Mama – may I go to see the Punch and Judy?’
‘No,’ Charlotte said ill-temperedly, ‘stay here with us, or you’ll get lost. And I’ve no intention of spending my day looking for you.’ She could hear Philippe’s voice, and then Sally’s, husky and distinctive. Hannah let out a shout of unladylike laughter.
Upon her lap, folded in apparent calm, Charlotte’s laced fingers tightened to a painful grip upon each other. How could he? How could he prefer the company of – of that girl – to hers? For there could no longer be any denying it, he certainly did. From the first, light, cousinly kiss of greeting he had made it perfectly clear that she, Charlotte, had no special claim upon his time. He had, of course, in those moments he had spared her been charming and pleasant, the very soul of courtesy – he was Philippe, he could not be otherwise. But the warmth she so well remembered, the special, flattering interest – that, she had seen to her disbelief and mortification, had been bestowed elsewhere.
She glanced at the laughing group again. She had not been wrong. Philippe was watching the animated Sally in a way that tightened the line of Charlotte’s mouth still further. Sally, apparently unaware, was talking to Hannah. Eyes narrowed, Charlotte stared at her: the girl could never be described as pretty. Her face was all bone, her skin dark as a gipsy’s in the sun, and those odd eyes and slanting brows made her look like nothing in Charlotte’s opinion so much as a skinny stray cat.
So why was Philippe, who had hardly spoken a word to Charlotte all morning, watching Sally with such open delight? Why had he spent so much time in her company these past few days? Why had he sought her out so openly – as now – whilst she, Charlotte, was ignored and neglected?
‘Rachel – will you stop fidgeting, or I’ll slap you!’
Rachel looked aggrieved. Ben looked at Charlotte, surprised. Charlotte looked away.
The morning was a long one.
When the Coronation procession at last wound its way out of the palace gates, however, and down the wide boulevard of the Mall, even Charlotte had to admit it was the most magnificent sight she had ever seen. The children cheered themselves into a frenzy as, harness jangling musically, the cavalry troops rode by, breastplates gleaming bravely in the sunshine.
Of the serious-faced King sitting in his coach of gold, the handsome palace servants and outriders accompanying him, Rachel asked her father, ‘Why isn’t he smiling?’
‘Because it’s a very solemn thing to be crowned a king. And I believe he’s a man to take his duties to heart. It’s no picnic to be King of England nowadays.’
The procession jingled into the distance. Rachel, fingers buried in her father’s mop of hair, squirmed to get down. ‘May we have lunch now? Mrs Briggs has made pork pie.’
They ate their lunch upon the pavement, not wanting to give up their favoured position by moving on to the grass in the park. The hurdy-gurdy man had moved nearer to them and the children capered to the music. Irritably Charlotte rubbed her forehead. ‘Do tell him to move on, Ben. The noise is quite making my head split.’
‘Ah, but Charlotte – see – the children are enjoying it so very much.’ Philippe folded his long legs and settled upon the rug beside her like a light and elegant crane-fly. ‘Let them dance – hmm?’ He cocked his head in a characteristic gesture, his eyes warm and smiling.
Pleased, she smiled sweetly and bravely. ‘Of course. My head really isn’t too dreadful. And you’re right – the children are enjoying it.’
He looked at her in unassumed concern. ‘A walk perhaps? Ben – Charlotte needs a walk – in the park perhaps, to clear her poor head?’
‘No, no.’ Charlotte said hastily as Ben glanced at her enquiringly. The last thing she wanted, having got Philippe by her side at last, was to be squired about the park by her husband. ‘I shall be perfectly all right, I promise you. I should have brought a parasol – but with so much to think about—’ she gestured with pretty diffidence at the group gathered about them as if only her own efforts had planned the campaign that had brought them here, ‘I quite forgot.’
‘But Sally has one. She’ll lend it to you, I’m sure.’ The young man leapt obligingly to his feet and within moments was back carrying a small, frilled parasol. ‘There.’ He opened it, shook out the frills and handed it to her.
She thanked him prettily, set the parasol at a becoming angle upon her shoulder, thus effectively blocking out the rest of the party, and patted the rug beside her invitingly. ‘Do please come and tell me all about your lovely Bruges. I declare that since we came back from the sea I’ve been so very busy I’ve had simply no time at all to talk to you. I feel positively guilty for neglecting you so! You must let me make it up to you.’
And so the time until the anointed King returned to his palace and the plaudits of his people passed pleasantly after all, in shared reminiscences, gentle, entertaining banter and – balm to Charlotte’s sore heart – compliments upon her appearance, upon the glow of health that Philippe perceived about her and, a little less pleasing, upon the grace and good behaviour of her beautiful daughter. And when Sally and Hannah declared their intention of going off to find the gingerbread lady as a treat for the children, Philippe did not move and it was Ralph, Charlotte saw with satisfaction, who jumped to his feet to accompany them.
‘Oh, I should so love to see Bruges again – and your dear Mama – and Annette – why, her little boy must be nearly three years old and I’ve never met him!’
‘Ah, yes. You must come. Mama speaks of you often. You are a great favourite of hers.’
And so it was a better-tempered Charlotte who made her way with the others to the omnibus stop later that afternoon and boarded the vehicle to return to Poplar. The streets were full of revellers and the journey was slow. Charlotte had contrived to sit next to Philippe, leaving Ben with Rachel. Sally, as was only fit, was somewhere in the midst of the children. When they arrived in the East India Dock Road the tired youngsters were ushered into crocodile file with Toby at the head and a brisk Sally bringing up the rear.
Hannah joined her. ‘They’ve been so very good. We should take them out more. Most of the poor little devils have never seen anything but their own back yard.’
Sally, who had not seen much more herself, grinned and nodded.
‘I’ve been thinking—’ as always when she became animated Hannah’s plain face lit with enthusiasm, ‘—what about an excursion? A day at the seaside?’
Sally glanced at her, interested but rather more than a little doubtful. ‘You mean it? Could we?’
‘I don’t see why not. We could go to Southend – or Clacton. That’s it – Clacton – the beach is better for the children. They run daily excursion trains from Liverpool Street – oh, Sal it would be such fun for them.’
And not just for them. Sally sucked her lower lip, trying to keep her own excitement down. She had never seen the sea. ‘You sure we could manage it? With all of them?’
Hannah’s enthusiasm roused was no easy thing to quench. ‘Why of course we could. With Toby there are fifteen children. Rachel makes it sixteen. There are—’ she counted, ‘—two – four – six adults. And Bron and the other two girls would probably want to come as well. Good Lord, that’s less than two children apiece. We’ll take a picnic, and bats and balls and we’ll buy buckets and spades—’ She turned. ‘Listen everyone – I’ve had the most splendid idea!’
Charlotte, suspecting rightly that she would be expected to help like everyone else, was not so sure it was so splendid; but she was overruled. ‘Philippe doesn’t want to be dragged to the seaside with a lot of children!’
‘Oh, but yes! At home we do it often.’ Philippe was delighted by the idea.
Even Ben was amused by the notion. ‘It might be fun, yes. And the fresh air would most certainly do the children good.’
‘It’s settled then. Tomorrow I shall make enquiries. Clacton. We’ll all go to Clacton.’ Beaming happily at her own inspiration, Hannah deftly caught a hairpin as it tried to escape from beneath the brim of her hat, ‘I really can’t think why we haven’t done it before!’
With Hannah, as usual, it was a case of no sooner the word than the deed. Quickly and efficiently she made the arrangements, whilst Sally cajoled and bullied Mrs Briggs into producing and packing the biggest picnic any of them had ever seen.
They were going to the seaside.
Most of the party that boarded the early morning excursion train at Liverpool Street the following Wednesday were excited to the point of explosion. True to form little Bessie had been thoroughly sick. Rachel, the only one of the children to have had first-hand experience of the seaside, had lorded it over them all until someone had surreptitiously but firmly pinched her and caused floods of tears and a reading of the Riot Act by Hannah. Yet still the journey was a gay one, and trouble-free – the children on the whole being so absorbed in the wonders of the countryside that flew past the windows that even the most graceless had no time for mischief. The party being so big, they were split between two separate compartments which they had to themselves. Sally, her own intense excitement, she hoped, severely controlled, found herself with Hannah, Philippe and Bron. As she organized rotas of children to sit by the window, checked the baskets and bags upon the netted racks above their heads, separated the quarrelsome from the timid, put the tongue-tied amongst the talkers, Philippe watched her, smiling.
He smiled, too, when he held out a hand to help her from the train when they reached their destination. And as they tumbled on to the already crowded beach, squabbling and shrieking, fetching deck chairs, spreading rugs. They settled themselves between the pier and the small stage – empty at the moment – where a notice proclaimed that later in the day Popplewell and Pullan’s Yorkshire pierrots would perform. Though even in these relatively calm Essex waters there could be no question of the inexperienced children bathing, shoes and stockings flew as they were unceremoniously pulled off and dumped in a heap. Then the youngsters, who had gazed in amazement at the great, moving mass of water that lapped the sand and shingle beach, rushed to the water’s edge to paddle.
Rachel, shrieking with the best of them and clinging to Toby’s hand, was pulled up painfully short by her mother’s fierce grip on her arm.
‘And where do you think you’re going, young lady?’
Wise beyond her years, and for good reason, she swallowed childish temper. ‘To paddle, please, Mama.’
‘I think it best not.’
‘Oh, let the child go, Charlotte,’ Ben said easily. ‘You can’t keep her here with the rest up to their knees in the sea. Let her go.’
Charlotte released her grip. Toby and Rachel flew after the others. ‘She plays too much with that boy,’ Charlotte said coolly. ‘He’s too old for her. And besides—’ she stopped. Suddenly Sally’s eyes were on her, narrowed and sharp.
Ben had not caught her words. ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte? What did you say?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
Sally sat back, relaxing. The sun sparkled on the sea like light on gemstones. From a row of huts further up the beach a group of young men and women emerged dressed in bathing costumes, the men in body-hugging, knee-length suits, the girls in bloomers or calf-length skirts, short puffed sleeves, bodices ruched and ribboned, many of them with their hair stuffed into frilled mob caps. Sally stared, taken aback. Giggled a little, beneath her breath.
‘Do you swim?’
The young man was beside her again, as he so often had been in these past few days, his dark eyes with that warm, confusing light glinting humorously in their depths fixed upon hers.
She shook her head. ‘Not me. I’ve never even seen the sea before.’
The young people splashed into the waves, squealing as the cold water washed upon their sun-warmed skin. She watched them, her face turned from him: but yet she was acutely, almost painfully aware of the regard of those dark, steady eyes.
A slim, fair girl in a navy and white costume gave a small scream as a wave lifted her from her feet and deposited her, neatly and with grace, into the waiting arms of the young man beside her.
‘You should try it. It’s a lot of fun.’ Philippe’s voice too held that undertone of humour, as if there were nothing in this life that he could bring himself to take entirely seriously. She stole a glance at him. When first she had seen him she had been disconcerted to find herself thinking that she had never seen a more attractive young man. She still thought so. Not that he had the startling, almost beautiful good looks of Jackie Pilgrim, which were steadily making themselves so embarrassingly apparent in Rachel, nor yet the fair handsomeness of Peter Patten. To some eyes, she supposed, he might appear a perfectly ordinary young man. He was tall and very slim. Everything about him was long; the sensitive face, the mobile hands, the lean body, the lanky legs. Yet there was an unflawed grace about the way he moved; and there was the humour, gentle, mocking, never far beneath the surface. These things were Philippe van Damme – and Sally, to her consternation, had discovered that they added up to a quite ridiculously disturbing whole.
‘Sally—’ he said. And, absolutely on cue, a shriek echoed from the waterside.
‘Oh, Lord.’ To her own amazement her voice sounded perfectly and placidly composed, ‘It looks as if Tommy’s trying to drown young Beggar. I really should try to stop him.’
They built sandcastles – supervised by Rachel – they played a game of cricket, though with some difficulty on the crowded beach, during which Toby managed to lose two balls by hitting them with such lofty power that no one saw where they went. After a picnic lunch those that wished paid their pennies to sit on the benches with Hannah and watch the pierrots. Bessie was lost and found, Toby disappeared for an hour or more and came back with a suspiciously angelic look on his face. Both the absence and the look – which no one else had noticed – Sally chose to ignore. It was three o’clock and an hour or so before they were due to pack up and leave that Philippe took her arm and said, ‘Mrs Briggs’s sausage rolls are wonderful, but so filling! Come for a stroll with me to – ah, what do you say in English? – to walk them off. I hear music. Shall we go to listen to the band?’
‘Oh, but—’ In some confusion Sally gestured to the chaos of children, rumpled rugs, buckets and spades and discarded shoes and stockings about them. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Nonsense. There are enough and more than enough to take care of the children. Bron?’ The girl looked at him, smiling shyly. ‘I shall take Sally to hear the band. You can manage without her for a moment, can’t you?’
Bron’s eyes flicked to Sally and the girl giggled a little. ‘Oh yes, sir. Of course.’
He pulled Sally to her feet. Her face was flushed with sunshine, her skirt sandy. Smiling, he offered his arm. Suddenly laughing she took it with a small flourish, and with an equally light-hearted show of perfectly silly gallantry he escorted her across the hot beach to the promenade.
Neither of them noticed the tightening of Charlotte’s mouth as they left. And not even Charlotte noticed the cool light in her husband’s eyes as he watched them stroll, laughing, across the sand.
The ornate bandstand where the band was playing was on the greensward beyond the beach. They stood for a moment listening, humming the pompous Sousa march. When Sally had tried to disengage her arm when the walking had become easier he had gently but very firmly resisted, so she stood with her arm linked in happy harmony in his, her head barely coming to his narrow shoulder. A soft breeze blew now, welcome and cool, ruffling the hair that had drifted from beneath the brim of her hat. The music changed. Philippe smiled, swayed a little to the music. ‘Oh, Danube so blue—’
Sally stood absolutely still. She hated that tune. Oh, how she hated it. Suddenly all the joy of the afternoon evaporated as if it had never been. ‘We should be getting back.’
He glanced at her in surprise, but with that sure instinct that was so much a part of him he gauged her sudden change of mood, shrugged and surrendered gracefully. ‘If you wish. But see—’ Across the road a brightly coloured barrow stood, festooned with balloons. ‘Ice cream. It is my passion. I insist – before we go back – that you let me treat you to one.’
They bought ice cream from the voluble Italian vendor, perched upon a bench to eat it. In the distance the band played again, oom-pa-pa, oom-pa-pa – Sally relaxed suddenly. How very silly. A tune, that was all. A stupid tune.
She turned to find his eyes full on her, and an expression in them that brought a sudden and uncontrollable flush to her face. For a long and disarming moment they looked at one another before, oddly enough, it was Philippe who turned his eyes away. ‘Shall we ask the ice-cream man to move a little down the beach? I should like to treat the children.’
They travelled home, sunflushed and tired, Hannah with her head unexpectedly on Ralph’s shoulders, sound asleep, Ben and Charlotte bolt upright each in their own corner, Rachel dead to the world upon her father’s lap. In the other carriage Sally sat, head back, eyes half closed, a tousled sleepy head in her lap, Toby leaning heavily upon her shoulder, and upon her lips a small, almost unconsciously happy smile.