The FitzOsbornes in Exile (13 page)

He gave a small nod, and footmen began to move around the room with a variety of empty silver receptacles. Ladies delved into their evening bags and a few gentlemen patted their pockets.

“Every penny will go towards helping a hungry child,” Toby said, turning his sorrowful gaze upon a cluster of wide-eyed debutantes. Then, observing the scowls of the older, more recalcitrant members of his audience, he hurriedly went on. “Of course, the relief efforts so far have been run by … well, members of the
Labour
Party. And, ugh,
trade unionists
! Will we stand by and allow
them
to take all the credit? Will we stand silent while they claim the upper classes no longer
care
about the underprivileged? Let us prove them wrong!”

Toby jumped down from the table, grabbed a champagne bucket, and made a beeline for the debutantes. One of them flung her diamond bracelet into the bucket, earning a dazzling smile from Toby; at this, the others began stripping themselves of jewels as fast as they could. I could see Aunt Charlotte over by the doorway, staring frantically round the room and clutching her pearls as though a Basque peasant were about to snatch them from her neck. However, her horror at the situation was tempered by the fact that it was her beloved nephew at the center of it. In the end, she settled for pretending she’d been behind the whole thing.

“One does get tired of the
usual
sort of dinner and dance,” she agreed when several ladies congratulated her on turning the evening into a surprise charity ball. “A theme does make things seem less
tedious
.”

This morning, of course, we had dozens of telephone calls from young ladies desperate to retrieve earrings and bracelets and necklaces that they’d recklessly given away the previous evening, and which turned out to have been borrowed from their (now very irate) aunts and grandmothers. Fortunately, they all agreed to give hefty sums of cash in return.

“That’s better, anyway,” said Toby. “Saves us having to sell the jewelry.”

“You mean, saves
me
having to sell it,” said Simon rather grumpily (he’d been the one to deal with most of the telephone calls).

Toby patted his arm consolingly. “How much have we got, Veronica?”

She looked down at her piece of paper. “Two thousand three hundred and seventy-nine pounds and eight shillings,” she said. “Plus a couple of silver cigarette cases and a silk handkerchief—although I think the handkerchief fell in by accident. And I still think you could have at least
mentioned
Montmaray in your speech, Toby. We’ve been invaded, too, you know.”

“But that would have sounded as though we were asking for money for ourselves,” he explained. “It would have been terribly impolite. Not that we need money. We need … Actually, what
do
we need? I mean, what exactly are we supposed to be
doing
to get Montmaray back from the Germans?”

“I haven’t quite decided yet,” said Veronica, raising her chin. “Besides, the Basque children are our priority at the moment.”

“You mean, you haven’t got a clue where to start,” said Simon, curling his lip. “In
my
opinion—”

Veronica glared at him. “I don’t recall
asking
for your opinion.”

“Oh, here’s the post!” said Toby quickly. “Perhaps people have sent checks!”

There was silence as we opened dozens of thank-you letters, many of which had clearly been posted before the ball. There were no checks, but Veronica suddenly gave an exclamation of what sounded like disgust.

“What?” said Toby. “It’s not one of those poison-pen letters, is it?”

“Worse,”
said Veronica, thrusting a piece of paper at him. He stared at it a moment, then burst into peals of laughter.

“It’s not funny,” she said irritably. I reached over and took it from him. A company that made face cream was offering Veronica a small fortune if she’d agree to be photographed in her white ball gown for a newspaper advertisement.

“Think of all the Basque refugee children that would feed,” Toby managed to gasp.

“Really, Toby,” she snapped. “As if I’d do anything to encourage women to spend their money on such
rubbish
!”

“And Aunt Charlotte would think the whole thing too vulgar for words,” I said a little sadly. I could only dream of someone catching sight of me and wanting to take
my
photograph for a newspaper. At that point, a footman came in and announced there was a telephone call for me from Miss Stanley-Ross.

“Sorry, didn’t get you out of bed, did I?” said Julia. “But heavens, what a triumph last night was! You looked so sweet, and wasn’t
Toby
the hero! The expression on your aunt’s face when he jumped up on that table—but listen, Sophie, I have the most
enormous
favor to ask, and do say no if you can’t possibly, I’ll quite understand, but you see, my wretched little cousins have come down with measles, and the eldest was supposed to be one of my bridesmaids, but that’s out now, obviously, and the dress is almost done and I
can’t
have an uneven number of bridesmaids—imagine walking down the aisle of St. Margaret’s with five bridesmaids, it would look
too
ridiculous, and besides, there’d be thirteen in the bridal party, it simply won’t
do
, and she’s almost exactly your size, and would you please, please consider it?”

“You … you’d like me to be your bridesmaid?” I stuttered.

“Oh, but, Julia, I—”

“Oh, bless you, Sophie! You’re an absolute angel!” she cried. “I’d much rather have you than my horrid cousin, anyway—she pushed Rupert’s puppy in the fishpond years and years ago, and he still hasn’t forgiven her—Rupert, that is, not the dog, I’m sure the dog’s forgotten. Can you come for a fitting this afternoon? I’ll pick you up at three-ish, all right? Oh, and tell Toby I’ve posted him a check! Goodbye, darling!”

I stood there a moment, stunned, then went back to the drawing room and told the others.

“Well, we’re all invited, anyway, and now you don’t have to worry about what to wear,” said Toby.

“And stop imagining you’ll drop your bouquet or step on Julia’s train or whatever it is you’re thinking,” added Veronica, doing her usual mind-reading act. “You’ll be fine.”

“Yes, look at when you were presented at Court,” said Simon. “Last night went well, too.”

“That’s what I mean,” I said glumly. “Things have been going
too
well. It’s about time I tripped over my hem or did something really embarrassing.”

“All the better if you do, it’ll make the bride look extra-graceful in comparison,” said Toby, grinning.

On that comforting note, I came upstairs to write this down—and start fretting in earnest.

6th June 1937

If
only
tripping over my hem were the worst that could have happened at Julia’s wedding! I am beginning to think we FitzOsbornes have been hit with that “May you live in interesting times” curse. Perhaps one of us accidentally smashed a Ming vase in the Great Hall at Montmaray years ago, unleashing a malignant Chinese spirit that has pursued us across the seas—although I must say it wasn’t
all
our fault. A wedding day that begins with the bride in floods of tears is always going to struggle to turn out well.

“Now, that’s enough, Julia,” said Lady Astley, roused out of her habitual languor by the incessant weeping. “Goodness, Anthony will think you don’t
want
to marry him! And consider what it’s doing to your poor eyes!” Julia went on sobbing, and Lady Astley gazed around helplessly at the rest of us.

“Never mind. All brides get like this,” said the matron of honor briskly, marching in with a bottle of witch hazel and a handful of cotton wool. “I was sick in the chapel foyer myself, before
and
after. And one of my cousins came out in hives, red welts everywhere … Do sit up, Julia! Here, take my handkerchief. It’s nerves, that’s all, worrying about what married life will be like. But honestly, a week later and it seems as though one’s been married for
years
—it all seems quite normal and ordinary.”

It occurred to me that
that
was what was bothering Julia. Until this moment, her future had been a vast sweep of thrilling possibilities. Now it would narrow to being the wife of a devoted but rather dull man, and her life would go on getting narrower and narrower until she suffocated.

“It’s not that I don’t love him,” she whispered to me, after her makeup had been redone and her veil fixed in place, and the others had gone down to make sure the cars were ready. “And it’s not as though I love someone else
more
. It’s just …”

She sighed heavily.

“But then I imagined poor Ant standing there at the altar, waiting,” she went on. “And he
would
wait, wouldn’t he? For ages and ages, thinking the motorcar had had an accident or something. Oh, he
is
a dear, isn’t he, Sophie?”

“He’s a very nice man,” I said.

“I
know
,” she said. “Even if he sometimes … Oh, my eyelashes are falling off again. They really ought to make the glue waterproof.” She poked at her face for a moment. “There! How do I look?”

“Absolutely beautiful,” I said with complete sincerity. The clouds of white lace, the roses in her hair, the beaded ivory silk billowing across the carpet—all made any slight puffiness under her eyes quite unnoticeable.

“Now, tell me I’m doing the right thing,” she said.

I considered for a moment. “You’re doing the
sensible
thing,” I said.

She laughed till she choked. “Oh, bless you, Sophie!” she cried, hugging me and rumpling both our dresses. “Toby’s right, he always
said
you were the best listener—”

“Julia!” bellowed her father up the stairs.

“Coming!” she shouted back, and off she went, pausing only to wrench her skirt free of the chair leg.

“So she hasn’t changed her mind, after all,” said Toby when the bridal party eventually arrived at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. He and Rupert were ushers—I could see Rupert inching down the side aisle with an ancient female relative attached to his arm. “Floods, I suppose?”

“Mmm,” I said. “Anthony all right?”

Toby rolled his eyes. “I’ll leave it to your imagination. Heavens, why do people
put
themselves through this sort of thing? If I were them, I’d elope. Oh, and by the way, try to steer clear of Aunt C and Veronica till they’ve both calmed down. They had the most enormous row over Veronica’s dress.”

I sighed. “She did say last week that it didn’t fit.”

“Well, apparently it
does
fit, if one also wears some sort of laced-up whalebone thing that Barnes dug out of the depths of Aunt C’s wardrobe.”

“What, a
corset
?” I asked, starting to giggle.

“Aunt C called it ‘stays,’ and Veronica called it ‘a medieval torture device’ and claims she can barely move in it—but look, the matron of honor is ordering you over. How much do you want to bet
she
was a prefect at school? Well, I suppose we’re starting, then.”

The ceremony went surprisingly smoothly, apart from Anthony dropping the ring, and the smallest page boy growing bored and crawling off under a pew. In an extremely short time, the newlyweds were wandering back down the aisle to the thundering chords of Mendelssohn, Anthony dazed with happiness, Julia clinging to his side and beaming round at the congregation. We spilled out into the gray London afternoon to find a small crowd of onlookers being held back by a harassed-looking policeman.

“Oo is it, then?”

“Lovely, ain’t she?”

They were all women, except for a single gentleman in a Burberry coat, who stood on tiptoe and craned his neck for a glimpse of the bridal party. A romantically minded passerby, I thought—unless he was one of Julia’s spurned suitors, come for a final, tragic look before he threw himself off Waterloo Bridge. Julia sailed down the red carpet, tugging Anthony in her wake, waving away confetti and the flash of the newspapermen’s cameras, and then the two of them were carried off by the chauffeur.

“Come on,” said Toby, appearing beside me. “We’re going in Rupert’s car.”

“You’d better drive,” said Rupert. “Hello, Sophie, you look very nice.”

“Thank you,” I said. The last time I’d spoken with him, I’d been bawling my eyes out, but it wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as I’d feared, seeing him again—probably because it had been so long, and also, we weren’t alone. I was about to compliment him on the Bible reading he’d done during the service when I was distracted by his top pocket, which had suddenly … 
twitched
. A small pink nose appeared, followed by some white whiskers. “Rupert, is that … is that a
rat
?”

“No, no, a dormouse,” he assured me. “She’s due for a feed.” He took a tiny medicine bottle from another pocket and shook it.

“Oh,” I said weakly. “Right.”

Veronica hurried up, clutching her side, as I was climbing into the car.

“Sorry, just wanted another look at that east door,” she panted. “There’s a marvelous window dedicated to William Caxton—he printed the very first English book, you know—and he’s said to have been buried in the churchyard.”

“Samuel Pepys and John Milton got married here, too,” said Rupert, now holding an eyedropper to the little flannel-wrapped bundle he’d propped up in one hand. “Er, not to each other, obviously.”

We moved off, surrounded by dozens of Rolls-Royces and Daimlers, as well as a couple of taxis, and made our slow way to the family’s town house, which they’d temporarily repossessed from their tenants. Veronica seemed to have recovered from any bad temper occasioned by the corset, and she chatted away cheerfully about whether the new Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, would be any better than Stanley Baldwin (probably not, she decided) and whether Mrs. Simpson was already regretting having married the abdicated King Edward (very likely, judging by their gloomy wedding photographs).

“Park over there, Toby,” said Rupert, tucking the baby dormouse back in his pocket as the house finally came in view. “We can go through the side gate.”

Now, I’ve been careful to write everything I can remember up till this point, no matter how trivial, but
this
is where it gets confusing. There were such a lot of people milling about, most of the ladies wearing enormous straw hats laden with flowers and feathers, and the gentlemen in tall top hats, all of which made it rather difficult to see. I know a taxi pulled up behind us and someone got out—but was it someone visiting a house further down the street, someone entirely unrelated to subsequent events, or was it someone who followed us inside? We pushed through the crowds and made our way to an empty corner of the main hall, where Toby tried unsuccessfully to flag down a waiter. Through an archway, I caught a brief glimpse of Julia surrounded by babbling aunts before the whole group of them moved into a large drawing room to inspect the wedding presents. Then Simon, who’d escorted Aunt Charlotte to the house, appeared halfway up the first flight of the main stairs, clearly looking for us. I waved, but he didn’t notice. At that moment, a harsh voice cried out.

“Veronica FitzOsborne!”

Veronica, slightly apart from the rest of us, turned. There was a sudden pop, like that of a champagne cork, and the smell of fireworks. Then Veronica staggered backwards.

“Oh,” she said, sounding more surprised than anything else. Her arm knocked against a marble pedestal, upon which was balanced a large and very ugly vase. Veronica and the vase hit the floor at the same time—the vase made rather more noise. There was a scream from near the front door, and then Simon’s voice, raised above everyone else’s, “Get him!”

But all I cared about right then was Veronica. I threw myself down beside her, although she was already starting to sit up.

“Veronica, are you all
right
?” I cried, taking her arm and helping her lean against the wall. She looked down at herself.

“Well, I think so,” she said. “I mean, I don’t seem to be bleeding or anything. What
was
that? It felt as though I’d been punched in the side by an invisible fist.”

“Good God,” said Toby, who’d gone white. “That’s a
bullet.
” He pointed at the floor with a trembling finger. We all stared. Then Veronica started shaking and gasping.

“Don’t worry!” shouted Simon, running up. “There’s a doctor coming. We just need to—Someone get a blanket, she’s gone into shock!”

“Don’t be an idiot!” spluttered Veronica, and I realized she was laughing. “It’s this
corset
. The bullet bounced off!”

“It’s nothing to laugh at!” snapped Simon. “You could have been
killed
!”

Rupert appeared with a cashmere wrap, which he tucked around Veronica, then he and Toby raised her to her feet—with some difficulty, as she was weak with mirth. Leaving her to Toby and me, Rupert darted off to unlock an empty drawing room. There we sat Veronica down on a chaise longue and she examined herself more carefully. There was a small charred hole in the left side of her dress, just above where her ribs ended.

“Look, you can see where the whalebone’s cracked,” she said. “But the bullet can’t have been traveling very fast, otherwise it would have gone straight through. Let me see, Toby.” He held out his hand—he’d scooped up the bullet in his handkerchief before it could get lost. “Yes, the front bit is flattened. Isn’t it
tiny
? I always imagined bullets were bigger than that.”

“You mustn’t touch it, there might be fingerprints,” said Simon. “I’ve marked the spot where it fell, and the butler’s roping off the area. The police have been called—no one caught that man.”

“What exactly did you see?” I asked.

He pushed his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “Just someone who seemed out of place. He wasn’t wearing a morning suit, just a coat and an ordinary hat, and he was looking around for someone. Then he shouted and pulled a gun out of his pocket—”

Rupert came back in with a maid, who carried a robe of Julia’s and a silver ice bucket. “There’s a powder room through that door there,” he said. “You ought to put some ice on that, Veronica, you’ll have an awful bruise otherwise. I brought some arnica, too.” He pulled a bottle from his pocket, and the dormouse poked her nose out hopefully at the clink of glass. “Oh, and, Toby, your aunt wants to know what’s going on,” Rupert added apologetically. “She doesn’t know it involved Veronica, just that there’s been some sort of incident …”

“Oh dear, I’d better try and head her off,” Toby said. “Can we keep all this from Julia, do you think? It’s hardly what one wants to hear about on one’s wedding day.”

“That’ll be difficult,” said Rupert. “There are ladies fainting all over the place, now that they’ve found out what happened.”

“At least they’ll give the doctor something to do,” said Toby. “Veronica, are you sure you don’t need him to—”

“Of course not,” came Veronica’s muffled reply from the powder room. “I’m perfectly—Ow! No, don’t worry, I just stabbed myself with a bit of whalebone. Sophie, can you give us a hand with this thing?”

Aunt Charlotte stormed in five minutes later, just as we emerged from the powder room. Toby followed, sending us rueful looks from behind her back.

“Really, Veronica!” our aunt said crossly. “If it’s not
one
scandal, it’s another! First Communism, then refugees—and now
this
!”

“She didn’t do anything!” I cried indignantly. “It’s not
her
fault that—”

We were interrupted by a portly policeman, who introduced himself as Inspector Sykes.

“Who?” said Aunt Charlotte, glaring at the hapless inspector. “I’ve never
heard
of you. Where’s the Chief Inspector? In any case, I
refuse
to allow my niece to be interviewed. If you
must
ask questions, you may address them to me. She’s in shock, in a delicate frame of mind—”

“I most certainly am not,” said Veronica, pulling Julia’s dragon-embroidered black-and-gold silk robe tighter around herself and sitting down on the chaise longue. The two constables who’d appeared behind the inspector goggled at her.

“And is in a state of
undress
,” hissed Aunt Charlotte in Veronica’s direction.

“Do have a seat, Inspector,” said Veronica, ignoring her.

“Well, Your Highness, if you could explain—in your own words—the events as they transpired,” said the inspector.
“Ahem!”
He turned around and glowered at the constables, who stopped gaping at Veronica and hurriedly flipped open their notebooks.

They took a statement from her, then from Toby, Rupert, Simon, and me. Phoebe was summoned by Aunt Charlotte to bring a change of clothes for Veronica and arrived looking far more upset and fearful than the victim of the crime. The policemen interrogated the waiters, the Stanley-Ross butler, and the two gentlemen who’d unsuccessfully pursued the mysterious assailant down the street. A footman handed round mushroom vol-au-vents, smoked salmon sandwiches, and glasses of champagne. Lord Astley came in to see how Veronica was and said
he
was no expert, but the bullet looked to him like a .41 rimfire cartridge, fired from one of those Remington double-barreled derringers. More policemen arrived to inspect the scene of the crime. Julia discovered what had happened after overhearing some waiters, rushed in, and threw herself upon Veronica with shrieks of alarm, until she was finally persuaded by everyone to go back upstairs for the wedding speeches.