Abdication: A Novel (24 page)

“All women onto the platform at once!” May heard someone shout, but everyone, women included, was leaving the hall as quickly as possible by the main exit. May spotted Mosley vanishing through a side door escorted by two of his men, but there was no sign of the recently de-spectacled victim, nor of the familiar tweed jacket.

May was about to make her way back to the car when she turned round one more time to look at the empty platform. Something was moving beneath the piano, within three feet of where Mosley’s black boots had been defiantly planted only minutes earlier. As she watched Julian emerge slowly from his hiding place, his legs stiff from the awkward position into which they had been folded for the past half hour, his usually firm-cheeked face buckled.

“Frank, have you seen Frank? Fucking Nazis! What have they done to Frank?” he shouted as he stumbled across the hall towards her. “It was me that started the sign to attack!” Julian spluttered. “It was me that cried ‘Red Front.’ If Frank’s hurt it is all my fault.”

Tentatively, May put her arms around Julian as he buried his face in her shoulder. When Julian eventually pulled out of the embrace he looked up at May. His face was streaming with tears.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

M
ay was looking forward to the summer. She had been missing the warmth that had been integral to her life until so recently. Her birthday month, for which she had been named, had delivered a welcome lift in temperature and she hoped June would bring more of the same.

The weekend after May’s encounter with Mosley’s henchmen there had been a small celebration at Oak Street. Another Fuller’s cake, identical to the one that had been part of her and Sam’s original welcome to the house, had appeared on the parlour table, except this time the soft icing had been punctured by twenty candles.

“Nothing like a moist bit of cake,” Rachel had remarked as May blew out the candles. “Try saying ‘pretty pussy’ with a mouthful of dry sponge and you’ll see what I mean,” she added, getting up to reach for a bottle of milk from the wall cupboard behind her.

Simon rolled his eyes at his wife’s unmatchable way with words. But May was beyond care, existing in a state dictated by a slowly accumulating sense of anticipation at the way her friendship with Julian was developing, even though she kept the feeling hidden from everyone, especially Julian himself. He had forgotten to ask her to return the shirt he had lent her in Wigan and each night, in the secrecy of her bedroom, she slipped the shirt over her naked body, hugging her cotton-clad arms around herself.

After returning from Oxford she had seen very little of Julian. He had remained there, working in the Bodleian library by day and in his college room at Magdalen by night, cramming for his final exams. But there had been one evening only two days after the drama of the fascist meeting when she had bumped into him in the hallway at St. John’s Wood and he had asked her what she was up to.

“When?” she had asked him, willing her treacherous, flushing skin to remain dormant.

“Now. Right now,” he replied. “I need to spend an evening when I am not thinking about dead philosophers or uniformed thugs or my nightmare of a mother. I must have covered hundreds of miles walking around Addison’s Walk. The college cloisters help to concentrate the mind and give me a new perspective on the eternally fascinating question of why a table is still in a room when I am not in the room.” He paused, noticing the puzzled expression on May’s face. “Such are the preoccupations of a philosophy undergraduate about to sit his finals,” he explained apologetically. “Anyway would you be a darling and save me from my thoughts by coming with me tonight to the Trocadero to see
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
? Gary Cooper’s in it with Jean Arthur and she makes me laugh.”

And so they had gone to the Trocadero cinema and watched the film and then agreed that because they were both starving they would go for something to eat at the next door Lyons Corner House at Piccadilly. The place was even more packed than on May’s earlier visit. But the maître d’ had spoken conspiratorially to Julian and they were shown upstairs to a less crowded section. At the adjoining table two men were holding hands as one applied crimson coloured lipstick to his friend’s mouth. Julian had already sat down with his back to the couple and was studying the menu. He ordered fish and chips from the nippy while May settled for a cheese omelette and decided, against her instinct, to say nothing about their neighbours. Half her concentration
had been distracted by a decision that nothing was going to make her eat fish and chips out of choice, not even for the sake of someone who had sort of called her “darling.”

They talked of Wigan and of films and of mothers and of Oxford. Julian told her about the politics don Frank Pakenham, who was still suffering from the terrible bruises inflicted by Mosley’s men. He told her how Frank’s three-year-old daughter—adorable and curly-headed and innocent—had seen her invincible father groaning with pain in the darkened spare room. Julian had of course confessed to Frank at once that he had uttered the phrase “Red Front,” the two words that had triggered the violence.

“But Frank is one of the kindest men I have ever met,” Julian said. “He told me he was even
glad
I had spoken those words and that he was
glad
of the chance to help break the fascists’ power. And I too will do anything to help
him
in that effort.” There was a new determination in Julian’s face as he spoke. “You remember our friend Peter from Wigan?”

Of course she did. Those had been the days when she and Julian had been alone together for hours at a stretch. Peter was not yet in Spain but had sent Julian a card to say he was planning to be there by the end of the year. The Communist Party needed all the help it could attract.

“Are you going to join him?” May asked.

Julian was undecided. He admitted he was tempted. But he needed to get through his final exams first. And he had not discussed any of this with Charlotte.

“Not that she seems to be very interested whatever I do,” he muttered.

May changed the subject and began to talk about Cuckmere. Sir Philip had been busier than usual with more meetings and urgent parliamentary business than ever. He was worried about Lady Joan and her developing concern over Rupert’s intended visit to Berlin later in the summer. She could not help fearing the influences he might fall under over there. The son of one of Lady Joan’s friends had recently returned
from Germany swearing loyalty to the führer. But May kept all this information to herself. Instead she described her pleasure in seeing the drama of Vera’s garden coming alive and how she and Florence had begun to explore the surrounding countryside together.

“There is a small river near the house that leads out to the sea and the cliffs there are enormous. Florence says she swims there in the summer and as soon as the weather warms up we have promised each other we will jump into the water.”

As May talked, Julian watched her intently and his encouraging smile emboldened her to a confidence, while making him swear on oath that he would not breathe a word of it to Rupert. The other day Miss Nettlefold had shown May her collection of wigs. There were looser ones for everyday wear, a cropped bob for the cocktail hour and an upswept chignon that was reserved for the occasional grand dinner, especially when royalty was present.

“Wigs are part of my life,” she had told May. “Mind you, I make sure no one ever sees me without one. I think I would
die
of shame if that happened!”

“She thinks we have a sort of friendship, you see,” May explained to Julian, after shifting her chair out of the line of sight of the two men beside them, one of whom had finished his chips and had now turned to the consumption of his friend’s ear. “She calls us ‘soulmates’ because we arrived in England on the same day. Of course, we can’t be proper friends what with her being Lady Joan’s goddaughter and me being the driver. But I feel sorry for her. I think she feels left alone on the outside of things.”

“Soulmates, you say?”

May wished she had not been so frank with him about the wigs.

“Yes,” she replied defensively. “I do like her. She’s different.”

“She’s certainly different,” Julian agreed. “But don’t you think there’s something not quite right about her? I mean apart from her size
and
her appetite? Not to mention those enormous teeth! Like tombstones, they are! To be quite honest she gives me the creeps.”

May was irritated. She was damned if she was going to be lured into making unkind remarks about someone who had been so nice to her, despite the accident with Wiggle. They walked on in silence.
What a prig he is
, May thought to herself. Alarmed by how quickly she had found herself falling out with Julian she was relieved when they reached the underground. A sudden conviction that she was getting into something that perhaps she did not want to be part of engulfed her. She had intended to run down the stairs that led to the tunnel without looking back, but Julian caught her from behind, restraining her by both shoulders. Turning her to face him he kissed her hard on the lips, before releasing her.

She clattered down the stairs, her hard-soled lace-ups clicking on the hard surfaces like a castanet. Before she disappeared into the tunnel she turned to see him waving his cap to her. To her surprise and irritation his tobacco tasted as delicious as it smelt.
Funny that
, she thought. The power of taste. Uncooked cake and smoked tobacco. How strange that this most unlikely of the five senses could lead the way to new emotions. Afterwards she remained unaware whether he had removed his glasses to kiss her or had kept them on. All she did know was that they had managed the kiss without mishap and, despite her earlier misgivings, longed for a chance to do it again.

Rachel was still up when May let herself in to Oak Street and with her usual unswerving directness took one look at May and said, “Don’t tell me you’re not cracky on someone.”

Interrupting her scrutinising with a bone-fracturing sneeze, Rachel blew her nose long and hard into a large handkerchief before returning it to the pocket of her floral apron. “I can see it in your eyes, my girl,” she continued, looking hard at May, before giving her a wink.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rachel,” she replied. May did not feel up to an interrogation. She missed her mother. On most days the awareness of Edith’s death felt like a muted hum. Sometimes the hum was so low that it was almost inaudible, but then someone would say something about mothers, or she would come across a page in her book, or perhaps a line of poetry, or a familiar tune on the wireless and then the volume of the hum would be amplified. Sometimes she would wake from a particularly deep and satisfying sleep and for not much more than a second or two, halfway between semiconsciousness and wakefulness, she would experience the treacherous relief of thinking she had dreamt the whole thing. Her mother had not drowned at all. Edith was still there in her little book-lined room at the plantation, stretching out her hands and waiting for her children to take them. May would be overwhelmed with an urgency to go to her mother. In fact, she must go right now, today, this morning. But she had only to lie there in her bed, sometimes in London, but more often in the quiet of Cuckmere, to realise that she was still dreaming. May dreaded these occasions of happy delusion. The cruelty of this sort of waking meant that early mornings could be worse than any other part of her day.