CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The king’s Silver Jubilee was approaching. It seemed singularly ill-timed to Marion. Marking it with lavish celebrations seemed a positive risk.

The Kents’ wedding had been lavish, but it had had at its center Princess Marina, a glamorous young woman. Moreover, it was confined to London. This would be nationwide, and would be centered on an irascible old man.

Marion was nervous. If there was to be a revolution, then surely it would be now. The country, riven by poverty and unemployment, could hardly be expected to praise a man who had everything. And his subjects, of course, only knew the half of it. They hadn’t the first idea about the tensions in the family, and how an American divorcée threatened to blow the lot sky-high. What if they found out?

Surprisingly, however, the nation seemed to view the anniversary as a welcome distraction. An opportunity to put aside their woes.

The authorities, it had to be said, provided a magnificent setting in which to do this. The Mall was lined with huge flagpoles topped with gold imperial crowns. An eighty-foot statue of Britannia, flanked by golden lions, stood on top of Selfridge’s in Oxford Street. Floodlighting, appearing for the first time, made a sensational nightly spectacle of the royal palaces, Westminster Abbey, County Hall and the fronts of the Tate and National Galleries.

The king’s four sons had been all over the kingdom, Gloucester to Ireland, York to Scotland and Wales of course to the principality. They had received rapturous welcomes in each. The king himself, along with Queen Mary, had gone on four great carriage drives through London—north, south, east and west. His Majesty had told Lilibet, who had passed it on to Marion, that the East End streets had been the gayest of all, with bunting, paper flowers, flags and streamers disguising the mean brick terraces and the sun bouncing off the brass helmets of the local fire brigades. There had been pianos in the roads, groups having singsongs, neighbors lending tea urns and trestle tables.

“Grandpapa said he had no idea they felt like that about him,” Lilibet excitedly reported. “He said that, after all, he’s only a very ordinary sort of fellow.”

The centerpiece for the ordinary sort of fellow was a thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s. The princesses were to drive in procession from Buckingham Palace with their parents and grandparents. Marion had promised Lilibet she would stand in the crowd and wave. “I’ll wave back to you, Crawfie,” Lilibet assured her.

It was still only midmorning, but the heat was already powerful. Against the simmering blue sky, the gold crowns atop the flagpoles blazed. She had planned to walk to the cathedral, taking the route down the Mall, but it was immediately evident how hopeless this was. There were far too many people; the Mall’s pavements were tight-packed. Even the smallest progress involved twisting, sidling, ducking and squeezing between the pressing masses.

Marion looked at them. Battered shoes, patched elbows and pinched features were much in evidence. These were the unemployed, the means-tested, the angry citizens. What if they suddenly realized the unfairness of it all and rose up against their oppressors, as Valentine always put it?

Fear tightened within her. It had been a long time since she had been in a crowd. Even when she was out with Lilibet, Cameron was always close by. But now she was on her own.

A great shout now erupted, followed by a silence. She stiffened. Was this it? The moment when everything turned? She glanced about her apprehensively, trying to read the stiff faces. She thought of Lilibet and Margaret in their open carriage. Against a rampaging mob they would have no chance. She looked at the bright red line of Grenadier Guards. Would they turn and start firing into the crowds?

The silence dinned in her ears. Into it came a clatter of hooves and a jingling of harness. Above the shoulders and between the hats Marion caught flashes of red and gold, the tossing head of a horse, the wave of a gloved hand. Queen Mary’s meringue-like toque appeared, its feather swaying with the movement of the carriage. Marion saw part of the king’s beard, an explosion of braid and medals and then the bored, contemptuous profile of his son and heir. Would people see him for what he was?

“God bless the Prince of Wales!” screamed the mob.

Lilibet now came into view, smiling and waving with her little white gloves. The crowd went wild with delight. “God bless the little princesses! God bless Princess Elizabeth!”

Marion felt that she would burst with pride. This child that they were all cheering—she was her work. Lilibet’s natural manner, her ease with this great mass of people, must have something to do with all the trips they had taken together, out into the city. Operation Normal had been a success. The sacrifice had been worth it. Happy tears blurred her vision and she rummaged in her pocket for her handkerchief.

It was then, as she glanced about, that she saw him. He was a few yards away, his face turned toward the carriages. There was no doubt it was him. He looked exactly the same, even though three years had passed since last she saw him. A pair of wide dark eyes with a shining wave of black hair above. A red scarf dancing like a flame.

Alarm juddered through her, mixed with warning. This man had hurt her terribly. She should avoid him, and nothing would be easier than to duck away in such a vast crowd. On the other hand, his treatment of her had led to Lilibet, whom she so loved and who loved her back, and to an important job at which she had been successful, as the events now unfolding showed. Perhaps they were even, after all.

But as she sidled her way toward him through the roaring masses, she was aware of another motive. She was curious. What was he doing here, an avowed revolutionary, in a crowd cheering the monarchy? Had he changed his mind?

“Valentine!”

He turned. She had half wondered if he would even remember her, and was gratified to see his face light up. “Marion. You look fantastic.”

Norman’s early work on the suit had since been augmented by work on dresses and skirts. Today she was wearing a yellow frock bought for a song in a sale, but transformed by Hartnell’s clever needle and accessorized with bold red buttons.

“And you,” she said, smiling back, “look exactly the same. But why are you here?”

Valentine had accessorized too, she saw. With a placard, which he now raised in the air. It read “Nobody Voted for the Monarchy.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you mad?”

“No, unlike everyone else in this deluded crowd.” He grinned, the same flashing grin she remembered. “This is Decca, by the way.”

A toothy girl with thin, arched eyebrows and shining blonde hair popped her head round Valentine’s shoulder. “Hellair!” Decca’s accent was jauntily upper-class. She too was waving a placard. Marion stared, confused.

“Oh, it’s not what you think.” Valentine grinned. “Decca’s with Esmond.”

Marion glared at him, annoyed by his casual assumption that she gave a hoot about his romances. She also now remembered, with a speed that amazed her, the schoolboy editor, japester and iconoclast whom Valentine had hero-worshipped. Here he was, in the flesh. His solid, rather square head had appeared beside Decca’s. He waved his placard. “Hellair.”

“And I’m Philip.” A gaunt young man with glasses and bad skin, as well as the inevitable placard, popped his head round the other side.

Marion nodded. “Hellair. I mean, hello.”

She felt suddenly confused, as if what had been certain a minute ago no longer was. Here she was in a crowd of London’s poorest who were cheering London’s richest. And in the middle of that, a pocket of privileged upper-class youth disguised as left-wing egalitarians—one of whom had betrayed her in the past. It felt too much to cope with. “I’d better go.” She turned to head into the crowd.

“No, stay!” insisted Valentine. “Or let me take you for a cup of tea.”

“No,” she muttered, pulling away from his hand, which held her shoulder in a way her body seemed to remember fondly.

She expected him to pull her back, but instead he began to sing, raising his fist in the air. “Arise, ye workers, from your slumbers!”

People in the crowd were looking at him suspiciously. She twisted back. “Stop it!”

He was still singing. There was a teasing look in his eye. Around him eyes were narrowing. She pictured dirty fists curling, toes flexing in steel-toed boots, ready to kick. The narrow Edinburgh passage of long ago flashed into her memory, Valentine slumped on the ground.

He shook his placard. “Workers of the world unite! Join the revolution!”

“Stop it,” Marion pleaded. Two thuggish men had exchanged glances before looking back meaningfully at Valentine.

She grasped his wrist in terror. “They’ll . . .”

“Tear me limb from limb?”

“Something like that.”

“And you’d care?” A dark flame danced in the back of his eyes. She felt the old rush of longing, and pushed it back, fiercely.

“No. Of course not.” But as he raised his placard yet again, she grabbed his wrist.

He shook his head. A hank of hair flopped into one eye, quite in the old way, and made her melt, quite in the old way. “If you want me to stop,” he warned, “you’ll have to come for a cuppa.”

She groaned. “Just one.”

Because everyone was watching the procession, the nearest Lyons Corner House was practically empty. They sat by the bow window. “Are you married?” It was his first question. Men always asked her that, she thought. Although for different reasons. Peter had asked it to discover if he yet had a chance of being her husband, while Valentine, she had no doubt, was asking it to see if there was a husband in the way.

“None of your business,” she told him.

He had left Edinburgh, he told her, soon after she had gone. “It was no fun without you.” He pulled a mock-mournful face.

She eyed him disbelievingly. “And that was really the reason, was it?”

“Well, that and the university throwing me out for failing my exams. So now I’m down here, fomenting international proletarian revolution and the end of imperialism.”

“And it’s going really well, I can see.” Marion snorted, gesturing toward the windows, where passing crowds were waving pictures of the king-emperor.

He spoke through a mouthful of Victoria sandwich. “They just need their consciousness raised. The triumph of the workers over the ruling classes is historically inevitable.” He waved the cake in his hand. “On the glorious day, this will be Stalin sandwich.”

She shook her head. She was surprised how little rancor she felt. Now she had come to terms with what he had done, weighed it against her gains, she could appreciate once again his stupid jokes, his ridiculous Communist rhetoric. “And just where in London are you plotting the defeat of capitalism?”

“Rotherhithe. By the river. It’s a blast. Our house belongs to a friend of Esmond and Decca’s.”

“They live there too?”

Cake bulged in his cheek as he nodded. “She’s run away from her family. Her father’s an earl,” he added proudly.

“How strange,” said Marion. It sounded complicated and intriguing, but she was resolved not to seem over-interested in Decca.

“‘Strange’ is the word,” Valentine enthusiastically agreed. “Her sisters are all completely different. Ideologically, I mean. Diana’s a Fascist, Unity’s a Hitler fan and Debo just wants to be a duchess.” He spoke as if he knew them all intimately.

“Hitler? Fascist?” Marion gasped, her resolve vanished.

“And Decca is a Communist, obviously. Crazy mixed-up bunch,” Valentine concluded fondly.

Marion stared at him. “I don’t believe you. No one has a family as mad as that.”

He laughed. “What about the one you work for?”

She scowled at him. He took an unrepentant swig of tea. “Why don’t you come round? We have amazing parties. We’re having one tomorrow, as a matter of fact.” He shoved in the last of the cake. “You should swing by.”