The FitzOsbornes in Exile (24 page)

“Good afternoon, Lady Whittingham,” Simon said, giving Julia an unsmiling nod.

“Oh, Simon, don’t be so stuffy,” said Julia. “Call me Julia, for heaven’s sake, and sit down, I’ll ring for more tea—”

“I’m afraid we can’t stay, my lady,” he said. “The Princess Royal asked me to collect Her Highness, as the family has an early dinner engagement this evening. Your Highness? I have your umbrella here.”

“What was
that
all about?” I asked Simon once we were outside. “What early dinner engagement?”

“Why isn’t Veronica with you?” he said.

“She had to look up something in the Reading Room at the British Museum. Parker dropped her off on the way. She said she’d take a taxi home—”

Simon opened the door of the Lagonda for me.

“Why do you ask?” I added. “Isn’t she home yet?”

He went around to the driver’s side and slammed his own door shut.

“Simon?”

“I don’t think you ought to be visiting Julia Whittingham by yourself,” he said, starting the engine. I stared at him. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t think she’s a suitable companion for unchaperoned young ladies,” he said very stiffly.

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” I exclaimed. “Julia’s our
friend
! Our family’s known the Stanley-Rosses for years!”

“I have nothing against the Stanley-Rosses,” he said. “I’m merely pointing out that she’s … Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t want my younger sister associating with her.”

“I’m
not
your younger sister, so it’s none of your business whom I associate with!” I snapped. “And how
dare
you insinuate awful things about Julia! She’s a respectable married lady—”

“Really? So why were you the color of a beetroot when I walked in?”

“That’s—What were you
doing
, listening at the keyhole?” I spluttered. “Anyway, who are
you
to talk about reputations? I’m sick of the way everyone talks about girls when boys do much worse and no one says a word about
them
!”

Simon opened his mouth to respond, then pressed his lips together. He looked over his shoulder at the traffic and jerked the car out into the street, and we drove back to Montmaray House in heated silence.

Veronica was in the library, staring at a fresh pile of notes, when I stomped upstairs. I’d been bursting to tell her what a hypocritical, infuriating busybody Simon had become, but looking at her, I had second thoughts. She’d certainly agree with me, but what I really wanted was someone to argue me out of my bad mood. There was no point increasing the general level of hostility in our household. So, instead, I told her what I’d learned about avoiding having babies. She put down her pen and listened with interest.

“Yes, I thought it must be something like that,” she said after I’d finished. “What’s it called again? A
Dutch
cap? Why do the English persist in naming anything connected with sex after
other
countries? Like French letters—although did you know Casanova called them ‘English overcoats’?”

“Of course I didn’t know that,” I said. “I’m not even sure what they look like, and aren’t they meant to be … well, not very reliable? But anyway, Veronica, doesn’t the whole thing sound
too
disgusting? I mean, it makes me wonder whether Aunt Charlotte’s right when she’s so disapproving about the physical side of married life. It’d have to be utterly blissful to make up for all that mess.” I thought for a moment. “Of course, novels do seem to suggest it
is
blissful. Otherwise why would Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary have bothered with adultery?”

“Weren’t both those characters invented by men? It could just be propaganda, to make girls want to get married—or make them want to have affairs.”

“Mmm. Well, it doesn’t make
me
want to have affairs, look at what happened to poor them. Although if one believes romantic novels, a mere
kiss
is the height of ecstasy—”

“When, of course, it isn’t anything of the sort.”

“How would you know?” I asked. Then I looked at her more closely. “Veronica! Who … Oh, not Geoffrey Pemberton!”

“Ugh, no!” said Veronica. “Not that he didn’t try.”

“Then, who?” I demanded. “Daniel?”

“Er …,” said Veronica, checking to make sure the door was closed. “Yes.”

“When?” I gasped.

“Well … today, actually. He met me at the British Museum. He had some books he wanted to give me, and he was near there, anyway, had a meeting at the University of London.”

“And?” I prompted when she didn’t say anything more.

“And … it just seemed to happen, when we were saying goodbye.”

“But what was it like? What did you
feel
?”

She frowned. “Certainly not the heights of ecstasy. It wasn’t unpleasant, though. I think I was too surprised to feel much. He looked a bit shocked, too. He did apologize afterwards.”

“Well, he shouldn’t have done
that
,” I said.

“No, not in the middle of Montague Place,” she agreed.

“I meant, shouldn’t have apologized! But gosh, kissing in the
street
! Did anyone see?”

“Probably,” she said, not looking very concerned about that. I consoled myself with the thought that she was wearing her oldest skirt and jersey rather than one of her smart, expensive outfits—less chance she might have been recognized.

“So,” I said. “It seems he’s serious about you.”

“Do you really think so?” she said. “It might just have been the result of some temporary, physical urge—”

“Veronica,” I said firmly, “I’ve been saying that he likes you—is in
love
with you—for absolute ages. And Daniel doesn’t seem the sort to go around kissing girls without meaning it.”

“I suppose not,” she acknowledged.

“So you don’t … you don’t love him, then? Not even a little bit?”

“I was wondering about that,” she said, in the tones she might use when pondering, say, the causes of the Franco-Prussian War. “How does one tell? I certainly
like
him more than anyone outside the family. He’s so interesting to talk with, never boastful or patronizing the way men usually are. He’s about a hundred times more intelligent and amusing than any of the eligible bachelors Aunt Charlotte keeps pushing at me.”

“And he’s a good person,” I said.

“Yes,” she said with a little smile. “Yes, he is, isn’t he? And that’s the important thing, isn’t it?”

Daniel’s appearance—his unremarkable features, his shabby clothes, the
surface
of him—wasn’t even the smallest part of her considerations, and I wished
my
feelings were as unaffected by masculine beauty as hers. She made me feel rather superficial.

“Would you marry him?” I said. “If he asked you, I mean.”

“Sophie!” she exclaimed, her eyes widening. “He doesn’t want to
marry
me! He probably regards the very
concept
of marriage as an evil, bourgeois, capitalist plot! And in the event he did decide to marry, I’m sure his mother already has a nice Jewish girl picked out for him.”

“But … doesn’t that bother you?”

“What, you’re saying I
should
marry him?” She started to laugh. “Perhaps I ought to propose to
him
?”

I wasn’t quite sure
what
I was saying. Obviously, Veronica marrying Daniel was out of the question—yet I couldn’t help thinking he’d be perfect for her. If only he were the son of a viscount, had a bit more money (or was less opposed to money in general), had been born Christian rather than Jewish … that is, if he were a totally different person. In which case, he wouldn’t be perfect for her—in fact, probably wouldn’t even have met her.

“You know, I’m tempted to invite him round for tea and introduce him to Aunt Charlotte as my fiancé,” Veronica went on, still chortling. “Just to see her expression …”

I ought to be glad Veronica isn’t heartbroken about it, but I couldn’t help wishing that she
felt
more and
thought
less. I sincerely hope my first kiss is more exciting than hers. I’m not holding out for the heights of ecstasy, but a sensation other than surprise would be good. Somewhere less public than directly outside the British Museum would be nice, too.

Anyway, at least the conversation distracted me from my fury at Simon—for an hour or so. Toby noticed us both fuming throughout dinner and asked me what was going on. I refused to say anything, though, because I knew Toby would take Simon’s side, despite it being ALL SIMON’S FAULT!

9th August 1938

Another Season comes to an end, and neither Veronica nor I is engaged to be married. Nor is Toby. What a surprise. Everybody has scattered—Julia and Anthony to visit friends at Cap d’Antibes, the Kennedys to a rented villa in Cannes, and Rupert to stay with a Scotch uncle who breeds border collies. Aunt Charlotte also decided to remain in Sussex for another week or two after the Goodwood race meetings were over.

Meanwhile, Toby, Veronica, and I arrived back at Milford Park to discover that Henry had grown another two inches and driven her poor governess to the verge of physical and mental collapse. (Miss Bullock is now on her way to a well-deserved holiday in the Lake District.) Estella had also grown considerably, mostly because she’d taught herself how to open gates and unlatch kitchen doors. She was discovered last week in the pantry making her way through a basket of summer berries, having already polished off a pile of freshly picked lettuce. The cook threatened to turn her into bacon, so Estella has been banished to the Home Farm for her own protection. We thought Carlos might be upset about it—the two of them had been inseparable—but it seems he’s been making friends in the village. Henry reported that Mr. Herbert’s housekeeper’s dalmatian recently produced half a dozen puppies, all of them suspiciously jet-black and curly-haired.

“Carlos! You sly old dog!” said Toby.

Carlos looked up from attending to his paws and gave us a bashful grin.

“Mrs. Jones is awfully cross about it,” said Henry. “She thought Dotty was just getting a bit fat, but then she found Dotty sitting in the laundry basket on the clean sheets, snarling if anyone went within three feet of her. She’s usually so good-natured—Dotty, I mean, not Mrs. Jones. And then Mr. Herbert came back from evensong and found all these wet, wriggling puppies in the basket. They’re so sweet, just like Carlos, except smaller, of course. I bet they’ll be excellent swimmers—the biggest one’s already tried to climb in the water bowl. We
can
take one, can’t we? Jocko asked his dad if he could, and his dad said yes, as long as it wasn’t a bitch, because he didn’t want a pack of mangy dogs yowling round their house every six months.”

All this reminded me that I needed to have a chat with Henry about the Facts of Life now that she’s twelve, but it turned out she knew as much as I did, or possibly more, having spent so much time at the Home Farm watching the pigs and cows and horses. Henry is very unimpressed with the whole idea of periods (not that I blame her). If any girl manages to avoid them through sheer force of will, it’ll be Henry.

Anyway, it is lovely to be back in the country—not just to see Henry, Carlos, and everyone else but to be out of London, away from Society. I don’t get nearly as nervous about dances and dinner parties as I used to, but they’re still a chore, each event being full of people we need to impress, people who might be able to help our campaign. I must admit that, despite our collective disapproval of Toby leaving Oxford, he’s proving to be a real asset in this regard. For one thing, titles don’t get much more impressive than “His Majesty,” so even the most pompous civil servants, the stuffiest diplomats, the busiest Members of Parliament, pay attention to him. Between Toby’s title and his boyish charm, Veronica’s beauty and her encyclopedic knowledge of European history, and Simon’s … well, Simon being
Simon
, we’ve made more progress in the past month than in the previous six.

Firstly, we’ve established that the Germans are still at Montmaray—and worse, have built a proper airstrip on the Green and anchored some ships off South Head. A pair of British pilots reported this to the Defence department in May, according to Colonel Stanley-Ross’s sources. The pilots didn’t see any soldiers there, but how would a pilot be able to tell? The Germans could be camped in the village, they could have repaired the damaged parts of the castle and moved in—

Oh, it makes me so
furious
to think of them there! In
my
bedroom, pawing through my things! Through
all
our things: Henry’s old toys and Veronica’s books; Toby’s sketches; my mother’s wedding veil and the FitzOsborne christening gown, lovingly packed away in layers and layers of tissue paper inside the old sandalwood chest in the Blue Room … To
think
of those men rifling through our personal treasures, stomping through the Great Hall in their filthy jackboots, hanging their disgusting swastika banners over our tapestries! I hadn’t fully comprehended what their invasion
meant
till that moment in the Colonel’s flat when he told us what he’d found out. I’d tried my best
not
to think about it—or, when it was unavoidable, to consider Montmaray’s invasion only in the abstract. It was dreadful enough to remember the damage the bombs had caused, to know our poor animals had been killed, or worse, wounded and none of us there to help them.

It turns me cold to write this, even as the sun pours down over me, here on the terrace at Milford Park. My hand is actually shaking …

No, I want to finish this. I don’t care how messy the writing is. So, yes, we have proof that the Germans have truly taken over Montmaray. But this is a
good
thing, it gives us ammunition for our fight. If it weren’t for the statements and photographs those pilots provided, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to meet with Winston Churchill. I expect it helped that Colonel Stanley-Ross is his first cousin, but still, Mr. Churchill seemed quite impressed with Simon and Veronica’s arguments. It’s a pity he’s not a minister in the government, or even very influential (apparently, the Prime Minister loathes him), but surely it must help to have such a clever, determined man on our side? The Colonel also reported that there are several senior officers in the defence forces who are sympathetic to our cause—or, at least, alarmed by this evidence of German military aggression so close to England, and therefore very keen to do something about it.

With this (tacit) support in mind, we have tackled the Foreign Office with fresh vigor. Our aim is to convince Britain to apply strong diplomatic pressure on the German government. There’s the usual bickering between Simon and Veronica over how to word our letters (especially difficult now, as we can’t give away the identity of our intelligence sources), but things
do
seem to be progressing better than before. I am still very annoyed with Simon, though, so the two of us aren’t really speaking to each other. It’s maddening that he believes he has the right to tell me what to do! And worse, regards me as so weak-willed that I’m likely to be corrupted into shameless depravity by simply having
tea
with a lady of questionable virtue (which does not describe Julia, anyway). The problem with Simon is that it is not in his nature ever to apologize or admit he was wrong. However,
I
am behaving with dignity and restraint—in admirable contrast to
his
complete pigheadedness.

Speak of the Devil, here he comes up the drive. Now he’s pulling boxes out of the car—he’s still sorting through Mr. Grenville’s files, but this must be the last of it, surely. How very irksome that Simon looks just as good with his sleeves rolled up and his hair tousled as when he strolls into a Mayfair drawing room in immaculate white tie and tails. Now Toby’s running down the steps to help him with the boxes. Well,
I’m
certainly not going to join them.

Oh, bother, Simon’s coming this way …

Later, in bed, unable to sleep. Spent an hour tossing and turning, then gave up and switched on the light again. There must be a word for this feeling. Tumult? Except that makes me think of tulips, which are very placid-looking flowers. It really isn’t fair that I should be forced to experience so many conflicting emotions in a single afternoon. Thank heavens I have the comfort of my journal, even if my vocabulary is not quite up to the task of describing my overwrought life.

Well, it turns out that Simon is able to bend a
little
. He presented me with a peace offering this afternoon, a souvenir of a past conversation, something he thought I’d find intriguing. Of course, he had no idea of its true significance—nor did I, at the time.

“I noticed it as I was packing the last box,” he said. “I took all the bundles of personal letters to Montmaray House and left them in the library, but I thought you might like to have a look at this.” He held out a slim volume, bound in cracked morocco, its edges nibbled by insects or mice. “I can’t make out much of the writing,” he went on, “but you’re better at reading French than I am. I’ve no idea who owned it, although I assume it was a girl, from the sketches. She must have been a FitzOsborne—look, you can see the family crest stamped into the leather.”

I took the journal with a token show of reluctance, but I felt a warm glow inside—due partly to this thawing of my relations with Simon and partly to being able to touch a tiny piece of Montmaray. It was as though I’d reached out across the ages and grasped the hand of one of my ancestors, a girl who’d slept in the same castle, perhaps even the same
room
, as I had. Turning to the first page, I gazed at the faded indigo ink with a rising excitement—which rapidly subsided. I couldn’t understand any of it. The writing was perfectly legible, in the sense that the letters were of a familiar alphabet and were formed in beautiful copperplate script. I could even recognize a word here and there—
pomme
and
chien
and
livre
. It looked French—just not any sort of French that I had seen before.

“Perhaps it’s an unusual dialect?” Simon suggested. “Or some ancient version of written French?”

“How old do you think the book is?” I asked, examining the cover.

“It’s hard to say, but I don’t think it could be from earlier than the 1850s,” he said. “None of the records I saw dated to before that. And it could be much more recent, despite how it looks—it hadn’t been stored very carefully. Well, there’s a mystery for you to solve.”

“Thank you, Simon,” I said with a little smile.

“You’re very welcome,” he said. He stood up, took a step towards the house—then turned back. “So, you’re speaking with me again?”

“It appears so,” I said. “That is, I’ve been saying words out loud in your presence—and you may even have been listening to them.”

“Ah, Sophia, I
always
listen to you,” he said. “I’ve learned from experience that it’s very dangerous to ignore you.”

I sighed melodramatically. “What a pity,” I said. “It assists my plans for world domination, you see, if my rivals regard me as beneath their notice.”

“Oh, you’ve been reading Machiavelli again?” he said. Then he dropped his teasing tone. “But, Sophia, I hope you understand that when I give you advice, it’s not because I see you as weak or foolish or in any way less than me. It’s simply brotherly concern.”

“You’re
not
my brother—”

“No. But I can’t see
your
brother giving you any useful advice.” Before I had a chance to bridle at this, he crouched down beside my chair. “Oh, Sophie!” he said. “Please don’t be cross. It’s just that sometimes I have access to information that you don’t have. I can’t help that.”

“You were wrong about Julia,” I said. “Wrong and insulting.”

“I may have been insulting, but I know I’m correct in … in certain aspects. Look, how about we agree to disagree on the subject of Julia Whittingham? Can’t we stop talking about her? I can’t think of anything I’d like more, believe me.”

“All right,” I said. “And how about you agree to stop telling me what to do?”

“All right,” he said, grinning. “Seeing as it’s impossible to get you to do anything I want, anyway.”

We shook hands solemnly to seal our agreement, then he went off to unpack his boxes. I remained seated on the terrace for a while, gazing out at the lake and smiling to myself. Then I looked down at the book again. Each page was filled with the same careful handwriting, interrupted by occasional pen-and-ink sketches. These were all delicate, whimsical studies of flowers—full-blown roses with tumbling petals, cheerful clusters of daisies, a single violet dwarfed by a smiling bee. I scanned the lines of script, but nothing made sense. Even the punctuation was odd. Some letters had accents; some didn’t where they probably ought to have had them; capitals appeared in the middle of words; and there were no commas or full stops.

Finally, I got up, went inside to the library, and took down the oldest French dictionary from the shelves. I managed to decipher several more words, but the syntax was so bizarre, the words so unrelated in meaning, that I was no closer to comprehension than when I’d started—and I was certainly a great deal more frustrated. Then Veronica burst into the room, beaming and waving an envelope at me.

“From the Foreign Office, inviting us to a meeting next month!” she cried, dropping it on the table. “I really think we’re getting somewhere now! And look, another letter from Carmelita. She came top of her class this term, her father was thrilled. Look at her letter, not one spelling mistake, and English her third or fourth language! Henry ought to be ashamed of herself … Oh, what’s that you’ve got?”

I pushed the journal towards her. “Simon found it at Mr. Grenville’s, but I can’t work out the French.”

Veronica sat down across from me and looked at the first page. “It’s not French,” she said slowly. Her smile had vanished. She turned the page. “It’s in code.”

“A code!” I exclaimed. “How exciting! Rather frustrating, though—I’m longing to find out what it says.”

She gave me an odd look, far sadder and more sympathetic than I thought the situation merited, and continued to turn the pages.

“Well, perhaps we can decipher it,” I went on. “How old do you think the journal is?”

She gave me an even odder look. “I suppose … it depends when she wrote it. It was probably just before she got married.”

“
Married
? How do you know?”

“What?” Veronica said. “Well, I mean, she didn’t take it with her to Montmaray, obviously, and yet there’s the FitzOsborne crest on the cover. It must have been with her old things here in England. I imagine her family’s belongings were sent to Mr. Grenville, after both her parents had died—”