Hollow Crown (5 page)

‘I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . Hey! I thought you didn’t approve of kings?’

‘Not in principle but this one – whatever his politics – has a feeling for ordinary people in distress. Perhaps he knows what it’s like to be bullied.’

‘Please, Verity, you’re going to give me palpitations! If you start defending the monarchy I’ll start believing Colonel Lindbergh is Little Bo-Peep.’

‘Now that’s interesting. Why should such a brave man be a Fascist? Anyway, the point is the Jarrow marchers hope to shame all you lot who don’t give a tinker’s cuss how
the other half of the country lives or dies into some sort of action.’

‘You’re not marching?’

‘The last bit. A party of us is going to meet them at St Albans – or somewhere just outside London. But it’s going to take them three weeks to get here. Tommie’s coming,
and some of the others.’ Tommie Fox had been at Cambridge with Edward and was now vicar of a parish in Kilburn. He was one of the only truly
good
men Edward knew. ‘Why
don’t you join us?’

‘I don’t think I would be welcome. It’s not my fight and they would have every right to resent me pretending it was. Tell you what, when you all arrive in London and have
presented your petition . . . I suppose there is a petition?’

‘Darn right there is!’

‘I’ll give you and Tommie, and anyone else you want to ask, a slap-up meal – a celebration.’

‘Mmm,’ said Verity doubtfully. ‘I suppose that will be all right. We’ll have to see.’

‘Ungrateful little beast!’

‘Oh, do shut up, Edward. You think it’s all a game, but it isn’t. It’s deadly serious.’

‘But that doesn’t stop you shopping your way through the West End?’

‘I’m allowed recreation but you’re on a permanent holiday.’

‘
Touché
,’ he said wryly.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be schoolmistressy but what are you doing now? Going to hobnob with a load of silly asses with more money than sense to kill a few innocent
animals.’

‘Hey, steady on! I say, when do you go back to Spain, or don’t you?’

‘Soon,’ she said shortly.

‘It was bad out there?’ he asked, almost shyly.

‘Yep, bad.’ She shut her lips like a trap closing and the blood left her face. It was obviously too recent and too painful to talk about casually with a taxi waiting at the door.
‘Go on! You have to get to Coutts before they shut, you capitalist exploiter of the down-trodden masses. Do they still wear frock coats, by the way? I suppose it helps them kowtow to the
bourgeoisie. Thanks for the rescue.’

Edward grinned. ‘I’ll telephone . . . ’

When the taxi had disappeared, Verity took off her hat and then stood in front of the little mirror in the hall and stared at herself. Suddenly, despite her friends, despite the Party, she felt
very lonely. All the girls she knew were getting married and having babies. What was she doing playing at politics, dabbling in what most people considered to be men’s work? She would admit
it to nobody but in Toledo she had been very frightened. Alongside her, men she knew well – comrades in arms – had died and died ignominiously She knew they had been betrayed by their
leaders, and the Republicans had been made to look fools in front of the world’s press. When the city fell, Franco’s men had been allowed to rape and murder the townspeople unchecked.
It was deliberate policy – to terrorize the people into submission.

She leant forward and pressed her forehead against the cool of the glass and closed her eyes. How long could she go on? Was her idealism crumbling in the face of the brutal reality? All she
wanted now was to rest and it occurred to her that the place she most wanted to rest was in the arms of the man whom she had so firmly dispatched in a taxi a few moments before.

‘Sometimes I think I’m the biggest fool on earth, Fenton.’

‘My lord?’

‘Stop pretending you don’t know why we’re bowling down the Great West Road when we might be enjoying the fleshpots of the metropolis.’

Edward put his foot down on the accelerator pedal and the Lagonda responded like the thoroughbred she was. Despite everything he had said, it was a joy to feel the wind in his face and know that
he had a job to do at journey’s end, however distasteful. He had been idle too long and had been seriously considering leaving for America and getting a job on a ranch in Texas or wherever
was furthest from decadent, demoralized Europe.

‘I did happen to overhear your lordship on the telephone to Lord Weaver. Without wishing to eavesdrop, I understood that your visit to Haling Castle is not entirely a matter of
pleasure.’

Edward snorted and, to Fenton’s alarm, took both hands off the wheel to make a gesture of protest. ‘Pleasure! I might as well tell you all, Fenton, in order to avoid any
misunderstandings. Before you entered my employment, when I was in Africa, I became a close friend of Mrs Raymond Harkness – Molly Harkness. She had a brute of a husband and, to cut a long
story short, he did away with himself. Though I don’t like speaking ill of a woman, I have to say Molly had not proved to be the most loyal of wives. I took her away from Nairobi and the
scandal surrounding her husband’s death and we were together for some months while she . . . recuperated.’

‘My lord?’

‘I know what you’re thinking, Fenton, but in this instance you would be wrong.’

‘My lord!’ said Fenton, shocked.

‘She’s a very beautiful woman – or she was then – but we stayed just good friends. It’s against my principles to take advantage of a woman when she’s at a low
ebb and Molly was pretty down in the mouth I can tell you.’

‘Would that be the Mrs Harkness who is a close friend of the King, my lord? I have often seen her name in the society columns.’

‘No longer. Lord Weaver informs me she has been dropped like the proverbial hot potato. Between ourselves, I don’t think Mrs Simpson appreciated her.’

‘I understand, my lord. And when you dined with his lordship the other evening . . . ?’

‘I was informed that Molly, in what I can only assume was a fit of pique, had removed certain letters from Mrs Simpson’s room when both ladies were staying with Lord Brownlow and
naturally she wants them back. I have been selected for that duty. As you can imagine, I do not relish the thought of trying to persuade Molly that it would be in her best interests to hand over
the purloined letters.’

‘I quite understand, my lord. Might I inquire whether I can be of any assistance?’

‘Maybe, Fenton, maybe. I hope it won’t come to searching her room or anything so unpleasant but . . . well, I shall want to consult you, I am sure, and, if you can do so without
embarrassment, it occurred to me that you might be able to elicit information from Mrs Harkness’s maid – I assume she will have her own maid with her – which might be of use. I
trust I am not putting you in an awkward position? You can always say no. A word from you will be taken as a
nolle prosequi
and nothing more will be said on the subject.’

‘My lord, I will do whatever can be done.’

‘I’m most grateful. I need hardly say absolute discretion is called for. Our host, Mr Scannon, knows what we are about and,’ he added casually, ‘a Catherine Dannhorn, who
is also staying at Haling and is a close friend of Lord Weaver, may also know something of what’s afoot, but no one else.’

‘I appreciate being taken into your confidence, my lord, and you can depend on me to be as silent as the grave.’

‘Very good! Ah, take a squint at that finger post will you? We can’t be far now.’

Haling Castle proved to be not a castle but a large grey stone house covered in Virginia creeper – handsome but by no means beautiful. It was surrounded by a stone wall
in bad repair, the gaps in it roughly filled with loose stone and barbed wire. A short gravel drive debouched on to the road through great stone pillars upon which hung two ornate iron gates.
Scannon told Edward later that the house had been built by his father, a wealthy Birmingham industrialist, at the end of the last century. It had been fitted with every modern convenience including
electric light and a primitive central heating system which banged and gurgled, only slightly warming massive brown-painted radiators. It now needed complete renovation but Scannon said he
hadn’t the money to do it.

Scannon himself came to the door to welcome Edward and tell him in a conspiratorial whisper that Molly had arrived the previous day.

‘I’ve said nothing, of course, but she seems nervy and unhappy. Anyway, come in and meet her. She’s very eager to see you. I don’t know what you did to her but she
certainly thinks the sun shines out of . . . ah, there you are Pickering. Take Lord Edward’s bags to his room, will you.’

Fenton went off with the butler and Scannon led Edward across a gloomy-looking hall through a gothic-style door into what was obviously the drawing-room. At the far end of this barn of a room
several people were huddled round a huge open fire. Laid across great fire dogs, logs the size of small trees burned fiercely but the architect had so arranged it that most of the heat generated
went straight up the chimney. Only if one were standing very close to it could one be toasted and even charred.

Edward was offered a cup of tea by a bespectacled female to whom he was not introduced. He sipped at the liquid gratefully and then turned to greet his fellow guests.

‘You know Boy, I gather,’ Scannon said, indicating a man of about forty with the lean, tanned look of someone who spent most of their life in hot climates.

‘Boy, yes of course,’ Edward said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

‘Hello, old sport,’ Carstairs said, shaking his hand.

Sir Richard Carstairs – always known as Boy for reasons lost in the mists of time – had been in Nairobi when Edward was there and they had been on safari together a couple of times.
He was not exactly a popular figure in the colony but everyone knew him and he was thought to be in some unspecified way ‘useful’. He had no money himself but managed to live in the
houses of the rich without their seeming to mind. In short, he was a sponger but he paid his way by being an amusing raconteur and a knowledgeable guide to what passed for fleshpots in Nairobi. He
took English and American visitors on safari – he was a crack shot – and showed them the country in perfect safety while letting them feel they were being adventurous. Women liked him,
and it was said he had serviced many bored wives, but there had never been any scandal and in Happy Valley that was what mattered. Boy was a bounder but he was discreet.

A soon as he decently could, Edward turned to greet Molly and they kissed with genuine warmth.

‘Molly, my dear, I had heard you were in England and I kept on meaning to telephone you but I didn’t know where you were living.’

‘I know, Edward darling. It’s my fault. Why is it one never sees one’s real friends and spends all one’s time with bores.’

‘Tut-tut,’ Scannon said, ‘I think you’re being hard on me.’

‘Oh Leo, I don’t mean you of course, but . . . ’

Fortunately, perhaps, Edward’s attention was drawn by Scannon to the other couple standing beside the fire.

‘Edward, let me introduce you to Lord and Lady Benyon. I don’t believe you have ever met, have you?’

‘I’m delighted to meet you, sir, at last. When I was in Madrid a few months back they said you had been there giving a lecture. I was very sorry to have missed it.’

Edward was immensely pleased to meet the distinguished economist and his Russian wife. He had long thought Benyon was one of the few economists who made sense and moreover was, at least in his
private life, an outsider and a rebel. His interests were not the usual pursuits of the English upper class – hunting, shooting and fishing – but books, theatre, painting and ballet.
Inna – Lady Benyon – had been a dancer with the Russian Ballet and Diaghilev had been almost a father to her. Benyon had seen her perform at Covent Garden just before the war and had
fallen passionately in love with her. He had bombarded her with flowers and, as they say, swept her off her feet. Despite being told by all their friends that the affair would be short-lived and
‘end in tears’ they had married and lived – as far as anyone knew – happily ever after. Inna was still very lovely – petite, very slim, with the kind of heart-shaped
face rare in Englishwomen. Edward guessed she must have been exquisite when she had danced with Nijinsky before the war and he could quite understand why Benyon had fallen in love with her.

Edward had read several of Benyon’s books and, though he knew very little of economics, thought he knew good sense when he came across it. Now in his mid-fifties, Benyon – unlike his
books which were lean and muscular – was physically unprepossessing. He was thin, round-shouldered and had a limp, the result of a childhood illness. His skin was bad, he was almost bald and
his moustache was wispy and illnourished but his eyes glittered with intelligence and he had a smile which illuminated his face. Apart from being an academic and a member of several influential
commissions, he was also a patron of the arts and he had even managed to squeeze out of the government a little money for the Opera House.

Edward was about to ask Benyon for his views on the depression which still gripped towns like Jarrow when the drawing-room door opened and Dannie entered. Though he knew she was to be a guest of
Scannon’s, her loveliness again took him by surprise. Benyon was amused to see Edward so obviously
bouleversé
, and even Molly, who was nervous and impatient to get Edward on his
own, had to smile despite being rather jealous. Dannie kissed Edward and then threw herself into a large, battered armchair and demanded tea and muffins.

‘You English . . . ’ she said in her dark, husky voice with its trace of an accent, ‘you English cannot cook – you do not know the meaning of good food! I’m sorry,
Leo, but it is only the simple truth. But your afternoon tea – that is a good thing you have invented.’

‘Dannie treats this place as though she owned it,’ Scannon said in mock exasperation. ‘I’ll have you know, my dear child, that chair you threw yourself in is Louis Quinze
and valuable.’