Mr. Churchill's Secretary (11 page)

Edith had seemed relieved when Maggie took to math and science. It was something she could understand, as she herself preferred Bunsen burners, singed notepads, and periodic tables to the messy, uncontrolled variables of so-called real life. “At least if you blow things up in the lab, you know it’s your own damned fault,” she’d say with mock severity.

Maggie had always thought of Aunt Edith as Queen Elizabeth—powerful and alone, imperious and sad. As she grew up, she tried never to ask for things, tried to make as little disruption in Edith’s life as possible. Other girls might have clamored for new clothes and complained about never going anywhere or having to cook dinner. Her peers embarrassed her. Didn’t they know how much their very presence cost, both financially and emotionally? Didn’t they ever worry that whoever took care of them just might have enough one day? Didn’t they see how easy it would be for resentment to set in and grow?

What she did know was only the most basic of facts: Her father, Edmund Hope, was Aunt Edith’s brother, a
professor at the London School of Economics. Her mother, Clara, was his wife and an accomplished pianist. They had died in a car accident not long after she was born. “Just like newlyweds! Too busy kissing at the damned stoplight to pay any attention to the world around them,” she’d overheard Aunt Edith say, with more tenderness than anything else. Still, she’d never known anything about her grandmother.

“I had a grandmother? And you neglected to tell me this for twenty-two years?” Maggie had asked, half joking. But Aunt Edith’s face was resolved. This was no joke.

“We didn’t speak. She disapproved of certain … choices I made in life,” she said, picking imaginary lint off her skirt. They’d been in Edith’s tidy, book-filled office in Science Hall at Wellesley, a crimson-brick building covered in glossy green ivy. “She—well, it’s a long story. One that’s long since closed.”

Maggie was silent, thinking.

“Margaret, are you all right?” Even though Edith had lived in the States for almost thirty years, her accent was still clipped and British. Maggie sat in a straight-backed chair in front of Aunt Edith’s desk. It was late June, and outside the window, high, lacy clouds moved quickly across the blue sky.
A grandmother
, she thought. Her hands felt cold and clammy.

“Was it because of Olive?” Olive Collins was one of the Wellesley economics professors; some people called Aunt Edith’s relationship with her a “Boston marriage.”

Aunt Edith ignored the question. “Your grandmother left everything to you. I’ve had Mr. Davis, our lawyer, go over the will, and it seems while there isn’t much in the way of money, she did leave you the family house.” Maggie must have looked blank. “In London.”

“Well …” Maggie searched for the right words. Nothing. She was speechless.

“I think the best course of action is to sell the place and put the money into an account for your graduate studies. Mr. Davis has let me know the name of a reputable estate agent in London.”

“You’re going to London?” As shocking as the idea of a long-lost grandmother was, the idea of Aunt Edith in London was even more unnerving. She rarely left campus, let alone the town of Wellesley. Boston might as well have been oceans away. London was the equivalent of outer space.

“No,” she said, her face tight. “
You
will go. The property is in your name, after all. I feel guilty sometimes that your life with me has been so narrow, that you know nothing of the place where your parents grew up. Spending some time in London will do you a world of good. Consider it your year abroad.”

A year? Defer my admission for a year?
And then it hit her. London.
England
. The homeland of Isaac Newton and Shakespeare, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. It was somewhere she’d always wanted to go—but someday. Not now. Not for a year.

“I couldn’t possibly go to London. I—I’m starting M.I.T. in the fall. You know how important that is.”
A dead grandmother? No, no, no. This doesn’t figure into my plans at all
.

“You’d only have to defer for a year at the very most, Margaret. Mr. Davis thinks it’s important someone representing the family goes to appraise the property, clean out the house, and oversee the sale. I don’t trust any agent to get the best possible price without someone around to represent the seller. I’ve already spoken with the dean himself. There won’t be any problem with your matriculating next fall.”

Impossible. If this lawyer thinks it’s so important, let him go himself
. But when Maggie looked into Edith’s
eyes, she realized there would be no use arguing. Maggie hated Aunt Edith for that moment.

“The truth is, Margaret, money is tight right now. Tighter than I’ve let on. I need
—you
need—the money from the sale of the house to help pay for M.I.T. I know it must be frustrating, but in a way, it’s a godsend.”

Oh
. This was different. Since she’d been a faculty brat at Wellesley, the concept of tuition had never really surfaced. Of course, M.I.T. would be an entirely different situation. Maggie knew that she’d be ineligible for the few stipends and teaching-assistant positions that were available—they went to the men. But still—England? “I still don’t understand why I have to go. Can’t we just have this Mr.—”

“Davis. Mr. Davis.”

“Mr.
Davis
just sell the place, then? Why do I need to be there at all?”

Aunt Edith sighed. That was never a good sign. “Maggie, as it turns out, there was a stipulation to your grandmother’s will. It specified that should you decide to sell the house, you must oversee the sale. In person. I’ve done everything I can to try and get you out of it, but legally, it seems—”

“
You
were doing everything?” Maggie was struck with the obviousness of it. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you? You were just going to arrange the sale and hand over the money, letting me think it was your money, never mind telling me that I had a grandmother, that she
just
died, and that she’d willed me her house!” She looked at Aunt Edith in shock. “I can’t believe this!”

“Maggie, there’s more history here than you can possibly appreciate. I just wanted to save you from this … unpleasantness.”

“ ‘Unpleasantness’? That’s how you’re summing up this situation—an ‘unpleasantness’? I think that Grandmother
Hope made that condition in the will because she knew you would lie to me about her. And you did.”

Edith looked down at her hands. They were thin, and in the late-afternoon sunlight, the veins ran blue under a scattering of freckles and age spots; she never was one for gloves. Maggie had a moment of sympathy for her but then reconsidered. She’d lied. She’d kept secret the knowledge that she’d had any family outside of herself. She lied about said grandmother’s death. And if she could have, she would have lied about the inheritance.

“Look, I’m a college graduate now. Don’t you think it’s time to start treating me like an adult?”

“I’m well aware of your age, Margaret. And if you want me to treat you like a grown-up, you will need to behave like one. Unless you go to London and sell the house, you won’t be able to go to M.I.T. I’m sorry, but there it is.” She used her lecture-hall voice.

“All right.” Maggie crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll see the house, pick up a teacup or two, and sell the place. You’re sure M.I.T. will hold my place?”

“I have the dean’s word.”

She locked eyes with Aunt Edith. “Fine. I’ll go.”

And that was that.

But in London that year, as the elm trees had turned yellow and the house didn’t sell, Maggie couldn’t help worrying. The structure had fast become her albatross; under its cornices and cupolas, she’d felt herself reduced to duncelike immobility. Across the Atlantic, school, with its predictable rhythms and routines, had started without her for the first time. It was disconcerting. If she wasn’t in a classroom, if she wasn’t solving math problems, then who was she?

Of course she’d had to stay in London. She’d had no choice. And with war imminent and then declared, no one had been interested in buying such a large and old-fashioned
place, with its outdated fixtures, rusty water pipes, and leaking roof. The heavy and hopelessly Victorian decor hadn’t helped, nor the smoke-tinged wallpaper and dusty, moth-eaten silk draperies.

She’d been lonely that fall, rattling around the big house by herself. She kept the wireless on for company and haunted the postman for letters from home.

But she still couldn’t help feeling sentimental about the place; it had been her grandmother’s, and now—no matter how cruel and horrible she might have been to Aunt Edith—it was Maggie’s. She’d found a few yellowed and crumbling letters her father had sent home to her grandmother during the war, even one where he described his first meeting with her mother—family history she otherwise never would have known about and was grateful to have. She couldn’t help but look around and wonder what life would have been like if she’d grown up in London, with two parents and a grandmother, possibly a few brothers and sisters—as a proper English girl. The letters and house were her only link with that alternate existence.

But it had been rough going. The roof was the first thing to be fixed. It wasn’t easy to watch the small amount of money she’d inherited from her parents, so prudently invested and guarded by Aunt Edith, dwindle away as the roof-repair project grew exponentially. Just as one spot was patched, another would spring a leak. Maggie reasoned she’d make it back and more when the house sold, but it was hard not to worry in the early hours of the morning.

She’d found the amenities to be old-fashioned compared to Aunt Edith’s. In the evenings, Maggie read, wrote in her journal, or worked on a few problem sets in a soft circle of lamplight at the wooden kitchen table as she listened to
It’s That Man Again
on the wireless.

The kitchen had been updated in the late twenties.
The floor was tiled with a checkerboard of blue and black squares, and the walls were painted lemon-yellow, stained and shadowed by years of smoke from the small stove in the corner. Flower-sprigged muslin curtains hung from windows that opened onto the back garden, overgrown with weeds and a tangle of red and pink tea-scented roses.

It had been in the kitchen that Maggie had begun to feel at home, waiting for her coffee to brew and listening to the wireless or eating supper and reading a book at the round, well-worn wooden table. The dining room was too intimidating for one person alone—although she’d been sure her grandmother would have been appalled at her casual American ways.

It was hard to believe, but she’d spent almost an entire year in London living alone. That was before Paige, who’d resigned from her job with Ambassador Kennedy, moved in with her. Chuck followed after, then the twins, and finally Sarah, who’d moved in last week.

Maggie took out the heavy iron key and let herself into Grandmother Hope’s house, wiping her feet on the mat. The sight of the front hall still took her breath away. An ornate curved wooden staircase dominated the foyer, a grand dining room to the left, the parlor to the right. Sliding doors fitted with stained-glass peacocks in brilliant blues, emeralds, and violets divided the parlor in two.

Adjacent to the parlor was the library, two stories high with a stairway to the second level and a curved stepladder for reaching the higher shelves; each wall was lined floor-to-ceiling with dusty leather-bound books. A massive cherry desk stood in one corner, and various couches and chairs covered in protective sheets were scattered throughout. The rest of the house was crammed full of threadbare Persian and Chinese carpets,
oil paintings of misty green English countrysides, and dusty Victorian bric-a-brac.

When she heard Maggie come in the door, Paige came running in her powder-blue quilted robe, giving her a peck on the cheek. “There, now, you must be exhausted!” Paige said, giving her a big hug, smelling of sleep and sugar.

Maggie set her battered leather valise down and allowed Paige to lead her into the kitchen, where the twins greeted her with enthusiasm. “You’re too sweet,” Maggie said to all three of them. “What would I do without you?” She slumped into a worn wooden chair with a sigh and looked around in gratitude. The delicious smell of baking hung in the air.

Just then, Sarah staggered through the door in her red-satin dressing gown.

When Sarah’s flatmate had left the ballet after getting married and moving out of London, Sarah had moved in, choosing a small pink bedroom on the second floor between Maggie’s and Paige’s. Maggie hardly even knew she was there. She usually left for class early in the morning and then rehearsed all day, grabbed a quick bite, and then performed in the evenings, coming home well after midnight.

She hadn’t brought much with her, just a suitcase jammed with clothes and a big bag of pink-satin toe shoes and silk seamed stockings. “I’m a gypsy, darling, what can I say?” she’d said, shrugging. Maggie really saw her only on Mondays, the company’s day off.

“Maggie!” she said in her froggy voice, her face brightening. Her long brown hair was tangled, and there were black smudges under her eyes—remains of the previous evening’s performance makeup. “Darling, you’re back!”

“Just to wash out a few things in the bathroom sink
and pack up again, but it’s good to see you. I’ve missed you all so much.”

Paige said, “I’m making scones, and then there’s the ubiquitous National Loaf—”

“Blech.” Annabelle made a face.

“Forget bombs,” Clarabelle added, “just drop a few loaves on the Germans.”

“—and homemade strawberry jam, from our victory garden. There’s some tea and—voilà!” Paige opened up the icebox with a flourish. “An egg! We all saved it for you.” She carefully cracked it into a pot of boiling water.

“Thank you. And how are you doing, Sarah? How are things at the Wells?” Maggie asked, pouring a cup of weak tea. Still, it was hot.

“Fabulous—working on the
Swan Lake
act two pas de deux in case I get tapped for Odile anytime soon.”

“How are you doing with the rationing? You must get so hungry doing all that dancing.”