After Louisa had been discharged from hospital, she returned to work, with the agreement that she would attend to Diana when she was in London but would no longer travel down to Biddesden. The excuse given was Louisa’s need to recover but the truth was they both knew that Louisa would not work for her for much longer. This seemed a gentler way to end things while Louisa tried to work out what she would do next. (And there was an increasing realisation that Diana was also thinking about what she would do next.) Louisa still wanted to work, and Guy supported this, the difficulty being that while she did not want to be a servant or shop girl, she had no school qualifications to speak of. As it was, jobs of any kind were hard to come by but it looked as if the worst of the depression in America and its consequent effects in Europe, might be coming to an end; there was hope that opportunities would improve soon. In this respect, of course, they were wrong.
Louisa, still basking in her romance with Guy, was increasingly disturbed by Diana’s involvement with Mosley. She had come to recognize the daily letter that arrived from him, eagerly opened by Diana when she received her breakfast tray and which was replied to by the second post. Newspapers were scoured daily front to back – ‘I must understand everything that is going on’ – and Louisa overheard Diana tell several friends that the Leader was a prime minister-in-waiting: ‘They all say it in the House.’ Bryan, who preferred to discuss the novel he was reading or a play he had seen the night before, was sidelined by his wife’s political discussions on how the National Government was failing the country. They both shared a love of their children but if Diana was at home, her mind was constantly restless unless she knew when she would next see Mosley. It did not make for a very relaxing atmosphere for anyone. Yet, Diana’s social whirlwind did not ease up – she became more ravishingly beautiful by the day, it seemed, and had been painted by several leading portrait artists. She was even rather unexpectedly asked to play the part of Perdita in a production of The Winter’s Tale but turned it down.
In this feverish state of romantic angst and social dervish, it was predictable that Diana should decide that she and Bryan would hold a huge party at Cheyne Walk for her twenty-second birthday in June. Louisa’s instinct for the disruption that felt imminent was heightened when she saw that Mosley and his wife were on the three-hundred-strong guest list. Louisa was not invited to the party but Diana had asked if she might attend in the capacity of chaperone to Decca, now fourteen years old. ‘Strictly speaking she can’t officially be there but it would be such a shame for her to miss out,’ said Diana. ‘I thought perhaps if you were with her, you could take her off to bed at a reasonable hour and then she will be perfectly happy, and so will Muv.’
Louisa agreed, and so on the night she was there as the sisters and Tom gathered at the start of the party to wish Diana a happy birthday before the evening officially began. Lined up together they were an exceptional collection of beauty and personality. Nancy with her dark hair and green eyes, confident now with her growing reputation as a witty writer, if troubled that Hamish and she had still yet to marry; Pamela, with healthy colour in her cheeks and happy with her farm life; Unity, now in her own debutante season, with large hooded eyes and red lips; Tom, tall and attractive; Decca, who looked most like Nancy with high forehead and short chin, but a kinder, more inquisitive soul. And the birthday girl herself, who drew gasps of delight from even her own siblings.
‘I’m wearing as many diamonds as I could get my hands on,’ she had teased, dressed in pale grey chiffon and tulle that fell to the floor as softly as whipped egg whites.
‘It’s not just that,’ said Nancy suspiciously. ‘You look as if you’ve eaten lightbulbs. You’re radiating happiness. It’s positively sick-making. What’s going on?’
Diana had waved this off. ‘Absolutely nothing. I’m happy to see you all here. We’re going to have a wonderful night.’
Decca, feeling shy, had sat with Louisa in the long garden, scented by the full bloom of the roses and with a Russian orchestra playing outside for those who preferred to dance in the open air, rather than the panelled drawing room inside. They watched as the waves of beautiful people arrived, each one more expensively, divinely dressed than the one before – Louisa knew some of them and Decca pointed others out: Winston Churchill, Augustus John, Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh. The maids were dressed in green and white flowered dresses instead of a uniform, and there seemed to be enough champagne to fill the Thames over again. It was an intoxicating sensation, teasing all her senses, but it felt somehow unreal. As if it were a perfect painting of how life should be but could not be, a screen that hid the grotesque figures and darkening skies behind.
At eleven o’clock, Louisa took Decca inside and saw she went to bed. They could still hear the strains of music coming through the upstairs window. Decca was not in the least bit tired and asked a thousand questions about who the people were and what did they do, and why were there poor people in the world and could they not share some of the food that was left uneaten at the end of the party, none of which Louisa felt she could answer. They were both unsettled by it all, so when Decca asked Louisa if she could find Unity, just to come up and say good night to her, she agreed.
Through the house Louisa wandered, trying to find Unity but there was no sign of her. She saw Nancy, attempting to pull Hamish into the dancing, him resisting but not crossly. Tom was endlessly, smoothly moving in circles with various beauties in blue feathered boas and silver lamé dresses. Pamela was sitting on a bench talking intently to a man who looked swarthy and serious. The air inside was heavy with cigarette smoke, cigar smoke and scent; Louisa went into the garden, to look for Unity there but saw Luke instead. He had recovered from the poisoning – confirmed to have been arsenic – and looked his handsome, curly-haired self again.
‘Hello, you,’ he said. He had been holding court in a group of three or four people but broke away to greet his friend.
Louisa smiled at him. ‘I’m trying to find Unity. Decca wants her to go and say good night.’
Luke grimaced. ‘I saw her, talking to Diana and that awful man. I thought Diana admired him the most but Unity knocks her into a cocked hat. She was practically gaping.’
‘You can never resist a gossipy remark, can you?’ But she was only gently teasing. Luke had recently been appointed London correspondent for a newspaper in Berlin. ‘Where were they?’
‘At the bottom of the garden, I think. Hiding in the trees.’
Louisa padded softly on the grass, in between the people talking and drinking. No one noticed her. There was no sign of Unity, so she kept on until she had almost reached the tree that marked the end and there was no further to go. Underneath it stood two figures, close together. Without meaning to and yet without stopping herself, Louisa slipped behind a rose bush in the dark, and listened to what they were saying. She knew no good ever came of eavesdropping but she felt as if so much hung in the balance of what was said on this evening with its charged atmosphere that she could not afford to miss it.
Diana and the Leader were declaring their love for each other.
‘Darling, you know I shall leave Bryan. I can no longer be married to him, not now I feel this way and you do, too.’
Mosley kissed her. ‘I think you should. So long as you understand that I cannot ever leave Cimmie.’
‘I do understand,’ Diana said softly. ‘But somehow, the idea of being quite alone for the rest of my life does not frighten me. Not if I know you love me. I will put you first in everything I do.’
‘Everything, my darling?’
Diana nodded and Louisa turned away, unable to bear it any longer. She walked up the garden, through the house and out of the front gate, on to the street where men and women impatiently pushed past to wherever they were headed. In amongst all those thousands in London, Louisa only needed one person. She was going to find him and this time she wasn’t going to let go.