A Season of Secrets (17 page)

Carrie put the boater on top of her wheat-gold hair. It was coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck – the only style allowed for servants at Monkswood. Despite the addition of the
buttercups, in comparison to Olivia – who hadn’t followed fashion by cropping her hair, and whose mahogany-red mane was worn carelessly loose – Carrie looked very prim and
proper.

She looked even more prim and proper as she said in alarm, ‘You haven’t let someone kiss you, have you?’

‘I most certainly have – and it was wonderful, Carrie. Absolutely blissful!’ Olivia hugged her knees even tighter to her chest. ‘He’s German. His name is Dieter von
Starhemberg, and he’s a count and a junior diplomat in the German Foreign Office. As soon as he saw me at Thea’s coming-out ball he asked me to dance, and he would have scored out every
other name on my dance card and danced with me the whole night long, if it wasn’t that it would have attracted Papa’s attention.’

Carrie didn’t know whether to be filled with admiration or alarm. Some of the maids at Monkswood, who were no older than Olivia, had followers and thought nothing of being kissed, but that
Olivia had behaved as a Monkswood kitchen maid or housemaid had behaved astounded her.

‘Does Count von Starhemberg live in London?’ she asked apprehensively. ‘And is he very old? He sounds old.’

‘Of course he’s not old!’ Olivia was outraged at the very thought. ‘He’s twenty-one. And he doesn’t live in London. He lives in Berlin.’

Carrie’s relief was vast. ‘Then how come he was one of Thea’s guests?’

‘Strictly speaking, he wasn’t. Thea doesn’t know him from Adam. Dieter’s father and Papa went to Eton together, and when Dieter’s father told Papa that Dieter was
in London in June, it was Papa who invited him.’

Carrie was wondering what Viscount Fenton would say and do if he was ever to find out the liberties that his friend’s son had taken with Olivia, when Olivia said, ‘And that’s
not the part of things that Thea knows. What Thea knows is that I’m going to finishing school.’

Grateful that Olivia had apparently changed the subject, and not unduly surprised by the news – the majority of girls of Olivia’s class and age spent a year at a finishing school
– Carrie said with interest, ‘One of Lady Markham’s daughters is at a finishing school in Switzerland. Is that where you are going?’

Olivia unclasped her hands from around her knees and stretched her arms rapturously high above her head. ‘No!’ she said gleefully. ‘I’m going to Berlin, Carrie! And when
I’m there I’ll be able to see Dieter all the time!’

Later, when a very unhappy Carrie had set off back to Richmond by bus, Olivia was still just as euphoric. Carrie hadn’t thought the Berlin finishing school a good idea at
all, but as Olivia took the shortcut across the fields to Gorton, she shrugged away Carrie’s concerns. Carrie was a village girl and couldn’t be expected to understand the kind of
sophisticated London world that she and Thea now spent so much time in. That Carrie had actually asked if Hal had danced with anyone at Thea’s coming-out ball showed how innocent she was.

Not for the first time over the last few weeks, Olivia thanked her lucky stars that her father had decided against a shared coming-out ball for herself and Thea. As her seventeenth birthday had
been in August, it had been a distinct possibility, but it hadn’t been something either she or Thea had wanted. Olivia having now asked if she could go to finishing school to fill in the time
until next year when she, too, would be presented at court seemed highly sensible, whereas if she had already been presented it would have seemed very odd indeed.

‘Hey up!’ a familiar voice shouted to her from the nearby lane. ‘Do you want a ride?’

‘Yes please, Jim,’ she shouted, beginning to run across the field to the spot where he had brought his horse and cart to a stop.

‘Gracious!’ She climbed up beside him, out of breath. ‘This isn’t as comfortable as the pony-trap – and even pony-traps are old-fashioned these days.’

‘They mebbe old-fashioned in London, but they’ll never be old-fashioned in Yorkshire.’ He pushed a battered flat cap to the back of hair that was still as thick, dark and
unruly as his nephew’s, saying as he clicked the reins and the horse moved off at a steady pace, ‘Have you seen much of our Hal lately?’

‘Not for ages, Jim. This is my first time back in Yorkshire since Easter.’

‘Aye, I know that. I meant when Hal was jaunting down in London at Thea’s big do.’

‘I saw him, but every time I did I was dancing with someone, so I didn’t get a chance to speak with him.’

She didn’t like to add that from the moment Dieter had asked her to dance she’d had no thoughts for anyone else.

Jim thought over what she had said and decided there was no point in pursuing it. ‘And are you at Gorton now until Christmas?’

‘Good heavens, no!’ Excitement bubbled up in her throat as she thought of where she was going to be – not only until Christmas, but, if she had her way, for a long time
afterwards. Perhaps forever after. ‘In two weeks’ time I’m going to a finishing school in Germany’

‘Germany?’ She now had Jim’s complete attention. ‘That’s a bit of a rum choice, Olivia lass.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ She was immediately defensive. ‘English girls have been going to German finishing schools ever since Queen Victoria’s day’

‘Mebbe they have, but I don’t reckon they’ve been going there since 1914. The war has only bin over six years – and I still think it’s a rum choice.’

‘Papa doesn’t. He speaks very good German and he’s pleased I want to be able to speak it. He thinks it very important that Britain and Germany are on good terms with each
other, so that something as appalling as the Great War never happens again.’

Jim cracked with mirthless laughter. ‘I doubt that little fella, ’itler, is too worried about being on good terms wi’ Britain. Seems to me ’e’s a bloke who
doesn’t want to be on good terms wi’ anyone. You just be careful of yourself in Kraut-land. They’re ’aving a bad time of it over there. Food shortages. Unemployment.
Inflation. It isn’t anywhere I’d care to be.’

Olivia tried to think of a crushing reply, but couldn’t. All she knew of Hitler was that he was an Austrian corporal recently imprisoned for having led a failed uprising against the German
government – and she only remembered that much because he and his followers had occupied a beer hall in Munich, and she found the connection between a beer hall and an uprising droll.

As for food shortages and unemployment . . . Berlin was a capital city and surely too sophisticated and glamorous to be troubled by anything as horrid as that. The word ‘inflation’
was a little more troubling as she wasn’t sure what it meant – and she was furious that someone as uneducated as Jim did. Perhaps it was a word he’d picked up from Hal. It sounded
like a word Hal might use when he was on his socialist hobbyhorse.

‘Charlie’s perked up since Miss C’s bin back,’ Jim said, knowing he’d put her in a huff and offering her a way out of it by changing the subject. ‘I saw
’im in t’ veg garden this morning, ’arvesting maincrop spuds and whistling like a young lad.’

‘And?’ Olivia didn’t see the point of the remark.

‘And I just wonder ’ow long it’s going to be afore ’e plucks up courage and pops t’ question.’

‘What question?’ Olivia was too mystified to remember that she was cross with him. ‘Why would Miss Cumberbatch be interested in potatoes?’

Jim cracked with laughter again, this time with genuine mirth. ‘I doubt she is much interested in ’em, but she’s interested in Charlie – and ’e’s allus bin
smitten wi’ ’er. The two of ’em just need to get their acts together.’

Olivia stared at him. ‘You’re not making any sense, Jim. You surely can’t mean that Charlie and Miss Cumberbatch are . . . are . . .’

‘Sweethearts?’ Jim finished obligingly. ‘Mebbe not yet, but both of ’em
want
to be each other’s sweetheart. If you ’ad eyes in your ’ead,
you’d ’ave seen it ages ago.’ He let the reins fall loose and lit a Woodbine. Blowing a plume of acrid-smelling smoke into the air, he said, ‘I think they make a right grand
couple. When Charlie finally pops t’ question, I’m going to ask ’im if I can be ’is best man.’

Olivia’s jaw dropped. ‘But . . . but Hermione Cumberbatch is a governess!’ she said, when she’d recovered her power of speech. ‘How can she marry a gardener?
Especially when . . . when . . .’

Once again words failed her, and again Jim obligingly finished her sentence for her. ‘When despite all t’ miracles done to ’is face, Charlie’s still far from being an
oil-painting? His face has never bothered Miss C. Besides, she thinks ’e’s an ’ero – and ’e is. It only came out a while back, when a bloke ’e’d served
wi’ paid ’im a visit and chatted in t’ Pig and Whistle, but Charlie received ’is injuries carrying a wounded pal to safety.’

‘Oh, Jim! How wonderfully brave of him!’

‘Aye, and ’ow typical of ’im never to ’ave said a word.’

Olivia wondered if her father knew – and if Carrie knew. Hal would most certainly know, because Jim would have made sure he did. She said musingly, ‘If Miss Cumberbatch was to marry
Charlie, I wonder who she would have as her bridesmaids? I’ve never heard her mention any nieces or god-daughters.’

They had reached Gorton and Jim reined the horse in. ‘Daft question that, Olivia lass. She’d ’ave you, Thea and Violet.’ Then, at the horrified expression on
Olivia’s face, he laughed so hard he nearly fell off the cart.

Two weeks later, on a train rattling across northern Germany towards Berlin, Olivia said to her father, ‘Why is it, Papa, that when Charlie risked his life in order to
save someone else’s, he didn’t get a medal?’

‘Probably because, in the heat of battle, only he and the pal he saved knew about it; or, if other people knew of it, they didn’t report it. Even if such an act had been reported, it
doesn’t follow as night follows day that Charlie would have been recommended for a medal. In the nightmare of a full-scale battle such acts of heroism are unbelievably commonplace, especially
in a Pals Battalion, which is the kind of battalion Charlie was serving in. It’s a pity, though. I can only say that if I’d been his commanding officer, I would have recommended him for
a medal.’

She looked out of the train window towards the blue haze of distant mountains and Gilbert said, ‘Those are the Harz: the highest mountain range in northern Germany. They are the setting
for the fairy tales your mother used to tell you when you were little.’

Her father frequently spoke about her mother, and she loved it when he did so. ‘Fairy tales such as “Red Riding Hood” and “Hansel and Gretel”?’ she asked,
remembering the delicious feeling of being on her mother’s knee, the delicate fragrance of her rose perfume and the soft, gentle sound of her voice.

‘And “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty” and “Tom Thumb”.’

Olivia glimpsed a small village half-hidden among a sweeping forest of fir and pine and said, ‘I can see why such stories came from this part of Germany. It looks as if it’s the home
of wicked witches and dwarves digging in caverns under the earth, and poor woodcutters living in lonely cottages. I think it’s magical, Papa, and I’m going to love living in Germany. I
just know I am.’

A frown furrowed Gilbert’s forehead. ‘Germany isn’t much of a magical place any longer – and you must be prepared for that, Olivia. The financial reparations the country
has been paying under the peace treaty have been crippling it, and Germans have been having a very bad time since the end of the war. It’s all about to change for the better, though. If it
hadn’t been about to do so, I wouldn’t have allowed you to have your way in coming here.’

‘How do you know things are about to change, Papa?’

They were in a private first-class carriage and Gilbert stretched his long legs out in front of him. ‘Because of something called the Dawes Plan. A little while ago ten expert financial
advisers – two each from the USA, the UK, Italy, Belgium and France – met in committee to find a way of helping Germany restructure its economy to end the hyper-inflation caused by
reparation payments. To bring this about, the present scale of payments is being temporarily reduced, American banks are loaning Germany a massive amount of capital and the Reichsbank is being
reorganized under Allied supervision. So although things may appear far grimmer in Berlin than you had anticipated, there is no cause for alarm, Olivia. Thanks to the Dawes Plan, they are not going
to remain that way.’

Even with Hal, Olivia had never been interested in politics – and she wasn’t interested now. It was nice to know, though, that despite Germany’s massive problems, the future
was bright and there was no real cause for concern.

The train was passing a small town and she looked out of the window at a sea of cobbled streets and pretty half-timbered houses. On a nearby crag a turreted castle was perched, looking as if it
had just stepped from the pages of a Grimms’ fairy tale. Like so much else she had seen on their journey across Germany, it captured Olivia’s imagination, and she was grateful to the
men who had sat on the Dawes Plan committee and had put in place plans to stabilize the country’s economy. With a passion she was quite unused to feeling, she wanted Germany to be a country
in which she could happily live indefinitely; a country in which, if her daydreams about Dieter came true, she could quite possibly find herself living for the rest of her life.