‘This little bundle of letters is from Uncle Mark. Granny’s labelled them “Mark’s letters, 1915 to 1918”.’
‘You liked Uncle Mark, didn’t you?’
‘I loved him when I was very young. He used to make me laugh and laugh when everyone else frightened me – I mean my English relations. Mark spoke beautiful German, and he was very clever, he would talk to me in German and then use some English words and then a few more and after a while I was prattling away in English. He was the first person in London I really trusted, and when I grew to like him, it was easier to like the others. Mark used to come and visit us in Hampshire, I remember it very well. I think it was a subtle technique of his.’
‘What d’you mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘All in good time.’ She looks teasingly at her daughter. ‘Yes, Mark was delightful with children, it was as though they brought out the real Mark.’
‘He gave me a large duck once, out of the blue, for my birthday.’
‘Muck the Duck.’
‘Yes, Muck the Duck. So there are no secrets here.’
‘Well. . .’ Dorothea hesitates. ‘Why are you so interested in secrets, Pandora?’
‘We all like secrets.’
‘I suppose we do.’ She yawns and stretches. ‘Of course, things today are quite different to what they were when I was a girl, you can’t imagine.’
‘What do you mean, Mum?’
‘About men. And men.’
‘About men and men?’
‘About men loving other men, about queers. When I was your age, no man who wanted to be a success could possibly admit to being attracted to other men, unless they worked in the theatre and even in that world only a bit. It was considered disgraceful. People would say, “Men like that” – that was the expression they used – “Men like that are not capable of having a happy relationship with anyone. Queer men are only attracted to real men, and no real man wants to be loved by a queer.”’
‘It’s better now. We think that what is important is who you care about, and whether they care about you, and it doesn’t matter who they are. Anyway, why are you telling me all this?’
‘Well, Uncle Mark, you know.’
‘Uncle Mark?’
‘Yes, Uncle Mark.’ Dorothea laughs, and leans back against the cushions. ‘When he was being pompous as an old man, I used to think, Oh, you silly old thing, I know all about you.’
‘Yes?’
Dorothea laughs again. ‘You see, in his early days, the irreproachable Sir Mark Benson CMG was much more interested in young men than in young women. Nothing about that in The Times obituary, of course. I remember my parents talking about it when I was a child, they thought I couldn’t understand. It amused them that he was so secretive – people in Berlin were quite uninhibited about sex. But Mark would never admit to anything out of the ordinary, and of course he became a model citizen and I believe he was rather horrid when his own son showed the same tendencies – so Margaret told me. I suppose his children might be upset if anything came into the open. Anyway, it won’t come into the open, it’s private, isn’t it? Thank goodness he had such an understanding wife.’