Abdication: A Novel (23 page)

“I have a terribly nosy habit of wanting to know every detail about everyone,” she had confided with a laugh, “especially someone with an exotic life like yours.”

May thought Julian quite right to have remarked on Mrs. Woolf’s beauty. She had been struck by that long, elegant face and also by the
movement of her large yet graceful hands as they adjusted the angle of her hat. Julian rattled off some more names associated with this illustrious bunch of writers and painters and thinkers but when he reached Morgan Forster, May stopped him.
A Passage to India
had been one of her mother’s favourite books. And in this roundabout way the conversation arrived at May’s recent tragedy.

Although they were only separated by a year in age, there could have been no two young women more different than Charlotte Bellowes and May Thomas. Julian had been watching May as she emerged from those recent grief-sodden days and he had been amazed by the resilience with which she had handled her mother’s terrible accident. He tried to imagine what he would feel if his own mother died and decided not to pursue the thought.

Shortly after Sam had arrived with the telegram at Cuckmere Park, the Blunts had insisted that May should take some time off in London with her brother and cousins but she had returned to Cuckmere the following Sunday at teatime, ready for the new week, assuring Sir Philip that she would prefer to be working than weeping. Joan had suggested that rather than stay behind alone in the house, May might like to come with them to evensong in the village church. Ever conscious of the healing power of a funeral, balm that she herself had once been denied, Joan thought that a service with some prayers might be of some help to May. For several generations, the Cuckmere custom had been for everyone at the house on Sunday evening—family, guests and staff—to go together to church. Mr. Hooch had given May’s arm a squeeze. This young woman who no longer looked away when he spoke as so many others did, reminded him of someone he had once loved and lost.

“Don’t mind me not coming with you tonight,” he said. “I used to believe in all that church and God rigmarole, although after this,” he gestured towards his face, “I can’t often think of much to be thankful for. But tonight, before I read
Puck of Pooks Hill
to Florence, as I have
promised her I will, I am going to break a twenty-year rule and have a quiet word with Him up there about keeping an eye on you down here,” he said, tipping his battered chin skywards.

At what the poetically minded locals called “the violet hour,” the time of day when a rich purplish light would enfold the curves of the Downs, the geese set out on their evening journey, their abrasive cawing at odds with the grace of their synchronised wings. Sunday evening walkers, out with their dogs on the banks of the river, looked upwards as the birds flew towards the sea, horizontal ballet dancers, in perfect formation. Beneath the flight path the Cuckmere Sunday household walked the short distance to church in procession. Florence was at the back, kicking at the white flints that littered the mossy ground, and holding tightly onto May’s hand. Inside the tiny church, not much more than a chapel, the Blunt family took their usual places in the front pew, bunching themselves up in order to make room for Evangeline. Mrs. Cage and Cooky turned into the pew behind the family, with Florence and May beside them. The congregation settled itself, disengaging the little needlepoint kneelers from the hooks, opening the hymn books at the right page, nodding across to the other side of the church to friends. The gentle sway of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” coming from the organ at the back of the church stilled the fidgeting. A late arrival, his honey-coloured hair hidden beneath a cap, hurried up the aisle. Seeing there was no room in the front, he squeezed in beside May. The service was short. The familiar words and tunes of “Lead Kindly Light,” and “O God our Help in Ages Past” sparked childhood memories in which May dared not indulge. Everyone had been so kind. Curiously enough, Miss Nettlefold had been the only person not to offer May more than a brief formal expression of “her condolences.” Whenever May found herself alone with Miss Nettlefold, the subject of Mrs. Thomas’s death was never mentioned. May knew that Miss Nettlefold’s mother had also died quite recently and assumed
that the reluctance to talk of the accident in Barbados stemmed from her own as yet unsettled grief.

During the prayers, May was distracted first by Florence, who was dealing with her boredom by chewing the pew in front of her, and next by Julian’s insistent nudge at her elbow. Evangeline was struggling to raise herself from the tapestry hassock, onto which her fleshy knees had sunk some ten minutes earlier. Julian, caught between horror and mirth, leant over to offer his help. But Evangeline made one more breathy effort and a huge bottom loomed up only a foot from Julian and May’s noses before lowering itself onto the wooden bench. The pressure on May’s elbow increased and for the first time in many days she felt like laughing.

However, as Julian sat in the passenger seat on the way down south from Wigan, he was nervous about opening up the pain of memory again. At first May sounded willing, even eager to talk. The everincreasing remoteness of her mother’s physical presence was one of the worst things about it all. As the gap between the present and the accident grew, May found herself working harder to remember what it was like doing ordinary things with her mother: walking, eating, talking, laughing. She was reminded how as a child she had longed to chase the setting sun, willing it not to disappear over the horizon.

“Please don’t let it vanish forever,” she would beg her mother as the scarlet ball started to drop towards the smudgy line that distinguished sea from sky.

“Don’t be so worried,” her mother would say. “It will come back tomorrow before you are even awake.”

Appalled by the thought of infinite absence, May was abruptly resistant when Julian asked her about her father.

“I would rather not speak of him,” she looked up, her eyes angry.

“Of course, of course,” Julian replied, trying to calm her by resting his hand softly on hers. “Would you believe me if I told you how much
I envy you right now?” he asked. “Do you know Tennyson’s memorial poem to his friend Hallam? Sometimes the most hackneyed lines in poetry make the most sense. Everyone understands, I think, that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have had that experience. But there is another line that affects me more. Can I tell it to you?”

May nodded. Julian’s hand remained resting on hers.

“Well, it’s also from
In Memoriam
and is just this: ‘An infant crying for the light.’ My father died when I was three and although my mother is still alive she does not know how to love me. And so I have never known the light of parental love such as you have experienced. And,” he said simply “that is why I envy you.”

After May had dropped Julian off at Birmingham station to catch the train to Oxford he wondered if he had said too much. One of the two subjects that had not been discussed between them was one on which they were both sworn to secrecy. But if a disturbing love affair involving the head of state was taboo, then another matter, equally unspoken of, was forming between them. Even though he had removed his hand from hers soon after mentioning Tennyson and the nature of parental love, he had immediately wanted to put it back.

At the end of April Julian returned to Magdalen College for his final examination term and shortly afterwards, when the purple wisteria was trailing down the railings of Hamilton Terrace, May drove Sir Philip up to Oxford. After meeting with the master of Balliol, who was an old friend from undergraduate days and now also the vice-chancellor of the university, Sir Philip was staying on at his old college for the night. May was about to make the long drive home but after a moment’s thought she changed her mind. Somewhere within these ancient quadrangles and libraries, she knew she might find Julian.

She began her search at the café in the covered market where, according to Julian, they served the best homemade ginger beer known to
man. For forty years George’s had sat undisturbed among the hallways of the market, the smell of exotic coffee lingering in the air above the fruit stalls, the fish market and the first-class butcher, an entire village of enclosed shops in the heart of the city. May took a corner table near the door, which was pinned all over with notices advertising bicycle repairs, Mandarin lessons, spare rooms to let and all manner of activities including postings for amateur theatricals, film clubs, wine society tastings, a talk at Merton College by the Irish poet Louis MacNeice to the university literary society and the latest get-together of the Oxford hamster club.

One flyer in particular caught her eye. There was to be an open-to-all meeting of Oswald Mosley’s New Party at three that very afternoon at the Carfax Meeting Rooms, just at the junction of the city’s crossroads.

“Mosley here in Oxford in person!” the poster announced.

May looked at her watch. The meeting was to begin in half an hour. Asking directions from the waitress she made her way through the narrow streets, dodging cyclists in gowns and women with shopping until ten minutes later she reached the hall. Although the large room was almost full she found an empty metal-framed chair three rows from the front and sat down. Men were standing around the perimeter of the hall like sentinels, their arms folded across tightly fitting fencing shirts, their trousers tucked into the top of long boots and held up by belts with shiny buckles imprinted with an encircled jagged line. Despite the uniform, the men did not look particularly menacing and May could not help thinking that there was something rather attractive about their severe dress code. The woman beside May caught her admiring look.

“You wouldn’t think much of them if you was married to a Cowley man,” she said with a sniff of disapproval. “Can’t get work for love or money, my Clive can’t. We want to know what Mosley plans to do about the unemployment at the Morris works. It’s all right for some, isn’t it?”

May started at her accusing look, as the woman took in the smart chauffeur’s uniform, relieved that she had parked the Rolls far out of sight of the hall. On the other side of the aisle just ahead of her, she spotted a familiar figure in a tweed jacket with his back to her, deep in conversation with a youngish bespectacled man with wild-looking hair. But there was no time to go up to the pair as all at once a loud burst of marching music announced the arrival of the speaker. May recognised the tall figure of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, as he strode up the central aisle of the hall accompanied by two of his black-suited consorts. May shuddered inwardly, feeling yet again a disturbing physical excitement in this man’s presence.

As Mosley reached the stage and saluted his audience, his elbow bent and his palm facing outwards as if directing the traffic, May took in every detail of the man. His hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place beneath its smooth, oiled pomade, just as it had been when he had passed by so close to her in the hall at Cuckmere several weeks before. Now that she had time to scrutinise him more closely, she saw that his small moustache looked as if it had been pencilled on and given the same greased-down treatment as his hair. His taut, athletic build reinforced his authority. May was near enough to see that instead of the thick, side-fastening cotton shirt favoured by his escorts, Mosley was wearing a far sleeker version made from silk. His eyes shone black. The audience was mesmerised, silenced and stilled by this dynamite combination of haughtiness and sexuality. A woman behind May whispered to her companion, “My word, Glenda, what a virile animal!”

May knew exactly what she meant. She wondered what would happen if one was quite alone in a room with Oswald Mosley. She might as well ask Mrs. Cage, who would have discovered the answer when she took up the breakfast tray to the flowered spare room at Cuckmere and had returned so flustered.

Lifting his arms above him for silence and taking a deep breath, Oswald Mosley’s chest expanded like a swimmer about to take an Olympic dive. As he began to speak, several dozen people raised their newspapers and, pretending to read, produced a synchronised rustling that filled the room. The sentinels shifted on their feet. From behind a screen of
Daily Worker
s came a barrage of offensive remarks as Mosley continued speaking to a wall of newsprint. After little more than half a minute of sustained interruption, Mosley paused in his attack on the Jewish financiers of the Labour Party, warning that any disturbance in the hall would be firmly dealt with. The heckling continued from behind the anonymous protection of the newspapers.

“Red Front” came a cry from the back of the room, followed by a burst of enthusiastic applause. Two or three Blackshirts moved into the central aisle.

“If anyone repeats those words they will be evicted from the room,” Mosley thundered, adding the single word “forthwith” to emphasise there would be no delay to his threat. His exaggerated vowels rang around the room.

“Stand fast!” he shouted.

The bespectacled man, his hair by now sticking up in disarray, pushed his way into the centre of the hall to find himself trapped in a thicket of raised chairs and fists.

“Red Front!” came the cry once again from the back.

A steel chain held by one of the Blackshirts was brought down in one stroke onto the spectacled man’s face, while at the same time May saw a hefty knee rammed between his thighs. The spectacles tumbled to the ground. The noise in the room was fantastic. Another of Mosley’s men had removed his belt, revealing the sharp, upright spikes that had up until then lain dormant behind the shiny buckle. Whirling the belt round his head the Blackshirt brought it down with a whack on the buttocks of one of the Cowley men. And just as the confrontation
began to escalate into something truly frightening, half a dozen policemen broke into the room.