Abdication: A Novel (18 page)

Just inside the small hallway, and almost hidden under the stairwell, was a small open door. May had never noticed it before and was about to look inside when Florence appeared, sliding down the banister, throwing her arms wide and shouting dramatically, “Save me, save me,” as she flung her arms round May’s neck.

Releasing herself from the embrace, Florence slammed the open cupboard door shut with one hand while grabbing May’s with the other.

“Shall we go down to the lake?” she asked, pulling May towards the front door.

“I wish I could, Florence, but I must get back to work,” she said.

Neither of them mentioned the cupboard.

The following Saturday afternoon May was alone in the study at Cuckmere catching up on the filing. She had no time to answer a knock on the door before Mr. Julian came straight in. He appeared unusually nervous, clearing his throat, as he came straight over to her desk. He was standing so close to May that she could smell the smoke from a recently extinguished cigarette clinging to his blue suit jacket.

With her Anglepoise lamp tilted to shine directly onto her papers, she looked up, seeing bright spots dancing in front of her, the light momentarily dazzling her. Mr. Julian had a favour to ask. He began with a confession: he had not yet learned to drive although he had promised himself that after his final exams he would take lessons.

“The thing is, you see, I want to travel around a few of the towns up in the north of the country. I keep reading about these places where so many people are out of work, especially in the mining areas, and I want to see those towns for myself, stop where I want to, look about a bit, not be dependent on taxis or train times, you know?”

May moved the lamp to one side.

Mr. Julian continued. “Quite a few of my friends at Oxford have already been up there to take a look. Not Rupert’s crowd, obviously, but some of the others in my politics year. What I am trying to say is that I am beginning to feel like such a hypocrite. I mean, I keep talking about how awful it must be up there but actually I don’t really know what I am talking about.” The favour was turning into a ramble. “It
might sound odd but I am frightened that when I leave Oxford this term, my time won’t be mine anymore. I can see just as many obligations as opportunities, exciting but limiting. Maybe Philip, if he did not need you one day …?”

Mr. Julian paused.

May said nothing. He was leaning on his right hand on the desk. His second and third fingers were stained slightly yellow by tobacco. May stared at them.

“The thing is, perhaps I could see if Charlotte could come too? You could both chaperone me if …” he trailed off.

“Shall I see if Sir Philip can spare me during the Easter recess, Mr. Julian?’ May interrupted.

“Oh would you? Would you really?” he replied, pulling a packet of Woodbines out of his pocket and spilling the contents on the floor. “Oh and please don’t use the ‘Mr.’ bit. I’m Julian. Just Julian.”

Without waiting to hear her answer he bent down, gathered up the cigarettes, stuffed them in his pocket and walked out of the room. May could just hear his tuneless humming as he reached the garden door at the end of the corridor.

Hard as she tried, May found herself incapable of returning to work after her spontaneous suggestion to Julian. What had she been thinking of? Her concentration was all over the place. The beautiful spring weather shone through the window and, getting up from her desk, she went to find Florence. They had taken to spending time together whenever May was not working and Florence was home from school. On the first of these expeditions May had agreed to be introduced to the legendary Mrs. Jenkins, despite Mrs. Cage’s warning about the unpredictability of such a meeting. Florence had dragged a reluctant May through the post office door and up to the counter.

“This is my friend May. Don’t you think she’s beautiful, Mrs. Jenkins? My mother says all the men are cracky about her.”

“And I am not surprised to hear it,” Mrs. Jenkins replied, a severe but harmless-looking middle-aged woman, her hair caught back in a net. She was giving May a thorough once-over from her position behind the counter.

“She’s gorgeous, Florence darling. Mind you, she’s as dark as a cup of over-stewed tea. And that awful chopped-off hairstyle. She isn’t one of those frightful lesbians is she?”

A gleaming bicycle had appeared on Florence’s tenth birthday, a present from Lady Joan, accompanied by a very serviceable secondhand version for May. After twenty minutes of wobbles with May running behind, her hand on the seat to steady the machine, and Florence’s occasional violent kick of frustration at the spinning spokes as the machine fell to the ground beneath her, Florence had found her natural balance. As May left the study to go and find Florence, the sun falling in pools on the stone floor of the great hall, she knew that if there had ever been a day for bicycling this was the one.

The fields around Cuckmere Park were bisected at many points by the meanders of a small river that led out to the open sea at Cuckmere Haven. One morning May and Florence had biked up onto the small rise above the house to see the winding river from above, finding themselves eyeball-to-eyeball with the thrice life-size figure of a white horse sketched into the chalky hillside. Florence’s new proficiency on wheels had coincided with the transformation of the rolling fields into a giant nursery. On this sunny spring day May and Florence went up onto the Downs to see the new lambs, the wool of their lithe week-old bodies like peaks of whipped egg white. Their drowsy mothers with their grey matted coats, the colour of the chalky flints that dotted the landscape around them, chewed rhythmically as beside them their lambs leapt into the air on all four legs. Florence imitated the young animals, jumping up and down on the spot like an escaped spring from a mattress.
Sometimes they would tire of bouncing off the earthy mole-made hillocks and come to nuzzle at the ever ready source of milk, their catkin tails waggling as they drank. Occasionally they would lie down on the warm earth, exhausted by their own energy, kneeling first, before tucking their forelegs neatly beneath their chests. The new mothers would stand shielding the whip of the wind from the young bodies, and every so often would gently touch their mouths to their offspring in a grassy kiss. On the periphery of the fields, at the foot of the newly green hedgerows lurked a kindergarten of young rabbits. Sentimentality was rationed and discouraged up here as May and Florence both knew that these young innocents would eventually end up in the large copper cooking pots of the Cuckmere kitchen. But May found a beauty and a peace in this place that excelled even the memories of the sandy, wave-lapped expanses on which she had walked as a child.

A few days later May was once again working in the study. She had changed her mind entirely about agreeing to drive Julian up north. Even though she had originally gone along with his proposal, she now felt the idea to have been quite mad, partly because of the alarming prospect of spending time alone with someone so clever and so, well, so different. She had a further reservation. She belonged to a different class of society and her experience of life in England had already taught her that different classes, like different nationalities, did not mix. If she was to keep her job, she should also know her place.

May pulled the typewriter nearer. There was an urgent letter to Sir Oswald Mosley to complete, suggesting a second overnight visit. The trust between May and her boss grew daily and confidential papers passed through her typewriter often without explanation.

“I was happy to discover during our enjoyable conversation recently here at Cuckmere that political differences can be laid aside most willingly
when matters affecting the constitutional roots of our nation are concerned,” Sir Philip had dictated.

Next there was a pressing call to be made to the editor of
The Daily Telegraph
, offering him a choice of dates to discuss what Sir Philip referred to as “the American problem.” May lifted the unwieldy mouthpiece, and was about to ask the exchange operator to put her through when the instrument rang.

“Is that May?” a familiar voice asked. “Oh, May. It
is
you. Can I come down and see you? Straight away? I have been given leave for the afternoon.”

Her brother Sam spoke with practical urgency. A mist of unreality descended as May was about to ask him why he wanted to come and yet realised she did not want to know. Not yet.

“I will take the train from Portsmouth and be with you in two hours.” And then, just before she replaced the earpiece back on its cradle, she heard his half whisper, “I love you.”

May sat at her small desk in the corner of Sir Philip’s study uncertain what to do next. She examined her hands. As usual, her fingers were covered in the inky film that rubbed off from the carbon paper. She had to use a scrubbing brush to get them properly clean. Today the sight of the smudgy ink stains did not trouble her. They felt like part of a normal working day. But still she sat, unable to get on with her work. The telephone call to the editor and the letter to Mosley would have to wait. The pile of correspondence that she had been about to reply to on Sir Philip’s behalf was in front of her, skewered through the middle on the dangerous-looking letter spike on the desk. The letters were a humdrum collection, typical of the Cuckmere post during the Easter parliamentary recess: early requests to attend two summer fetes in nearby villages, the weekly cigar bill. But there were also two envelopes marked “Strictly Private,” which she should put on Sir Philip’s desk but she could not bring herself to move.

At least two weeks had elapsed since May had received the letter from her mother in which she expressed her contentment at the news that May and Sam had both settled into their new life.

“I have always felt sure that Nat would look after you with the loving care that my sister would have given you both,” Edith had written, sounding reassured about the welfare of her children.

May began thinking about the last time she had looked closely at her mother’s face. She had been surprised to see a network of tiny lines running around her mouth and chin, which, when Edith concentrated or smiled, puckered into a crisscross pattern like a honeycomb. How could May not have noticed that her mother was growing older? Another existence away on the day of her departure from Barbados, as the Caribbean sun shone down on the Bridgetown quayside, May and her mother had tried to ignore the distant shouts.

“Anyone sailing better hurry now.”

But Sam had come dashing and panting over the gangplank and onto the jetty beside them.

“We really must get on board,” he said, looking pleadingly at May. He was wearing the uniform of the cargo ship’s management, even though the Thomas sugar consignment formed only a small percentage of the total number of crates packed into the vessel. Business was tough and the plantation managers had taken to sharing cargo ships between them.

It was time to leave. May’s hands were enclosed within those of her mother.

“All I want is for you to know true, enveloping happiness,” she said.

Edith’s tears were on the brink of falling. Her huge grey eyes had a recently washed but not quite dried haze about them, suggesting the weeping she might have done recently and alone.

“Stay safe,” her mother whispered, pressing a tiny black velvet pouch into May’s hand. “Whenever I think of you wearing this, I will know
that you are thinking of me. Stay safe, my darling girl. And look after Sam. You and Sam are more precious to me than anything.”

In the study the Anglepoise lamp flickered for a moment before returning to its full strength. May stroked the silver flowers of her forget-me-not bracelet. She willed Sam to arrive. Twice she thought the moment had come. Girlish shrieks could be heard a long time before Bettina actually burst into the study. She was, she said, “looking over
tout la terre
for her father. May told her he had bicycled over to Beddingham to see his friend Eric Ravilious. The artist had wanted to show Sir Philip his designs for souvenir mugs, commissioned for next year’s coronation.

Bettina left May alone. No wonder her voice drove Julian mad. He was always confiding things to May that they both knew he shouldn’t. The second time the door opened it was Mrs. Cage. Without actually entering the room, Mrs. Cage peered round from the cover of the door and wanted to know if there was anything she could fetch May. The unusual gentleness of her tone increased May’s sense of apprehension. Did Mrs. Cage know something? Had she spoken first to Sam on the kitchen telephone extension?

When Sam eventually walked into Sir Philip’s study, still wearing his naval volunteer’s uniform with its smart white collar, May momentarily forgot her anxiety. He came straight behind the desk and held his sister close. She was the first to speak. Somehow she already knew what he had come about, even before he produced the telegram from his pocket.

“It’s Mamma,” she said. He did not contradict her.

No one disturbed the brother and sister as they spent the afternoon alone together, trying to make sense of their tragedy. The telegram gave only the very basic details.

Regret to inform Sam and May Thomas. Edith Thomas drowned 21 March 1936, while swimming off Bathsheba Beach, Barbados, West Indies. R.I.P. Duncan Thomas

Over and over it all again and again they went, as if by imagining the exact circumstances and the exact manner and cause of their mother’s death the fact of it would seem real. May and Sam both knew the seductive beauty of Bathsheba Beach. It had been part of the landscape of their lives. They knew the easy temptation of racing out towards the water along its sandy expanse, always deserted (and for good reason). At one end of the beach there was a dramatic rock formation, a huge stone mass, the under-part whittled away by the remorseless pounding of the sea to form a sharply defined jaw. May and Sam had often risked leaving their towels on the rock just where the scrubby trees petered out, before running towards the spray that was thrown up high into the air when the colossal waves hit the shore. But the rule had always been never to go into the water itself. The riptides were deceptively powerful, carrying with them an undertow that was notoriously difficult to battle against. Years ago the locals had put up a huge red and white painted notice to warn strangers. But the sign had become part of the landscape of the beach and the urgency of the message had faded along with the paint of the letters. No one really noticed it anymore. In the absence of a witness, or any explanation from their father, they could only conclude that Edith Thomas must have been swept away in the strong current on the east coast of the island. Could their mother, who knew the power of those unpredictable waters so well, really have been so careless? Perhaps they would never know.