The Debutante (17 page)

Lord R has come back from Paris and today his office sent over the loveliest gown. I hardly knew what to say! I telephoned to say it must be a mistake but he came on and assured me that his wife wanted me to have it and that they should love to see me wear it at Wooton next weekend. The frightening thing is it fits like a dream. I simply cannot make him out.

Nick is leaving for Portofino soon and I am doing my very best not to throw myself in front of a train. I wonder how fast it has to be going to really be effective? Do you think it’s possible to expire from sheer physical longing? Of course, Muv won’t set foot out of England for at least another nine months so it’s up to me to try and wheedle an invitation from someone. Oh! And Pinky has proposed to Gloria Manning and, poor dear, she’s said yes! He looks utterly terrified, like a man permanently on his way to the dentist.

I wonder if she knows how wet his kisses are?

Plotting and Pining,

B xxx

Sitting in an Italian cafe, drinking strong cappuccino, Cate leafed through a book of Beaton photographs the librarian had recommended — page after page of high-society life between the wars. It was an undeniably golden era. They gazed back at her, these darlings of another age, with the confidence of youth and the steely arrogance of privilege. Protected by their wealth and beauty, they seemed untouchable; far removed from anything too real or too unpleasant.

Then she stopped.

Here was a photograph of several young men in bathing trunks, laughing beside a swimming pool on a bright summer’s day.

And one very familiar face.

She searched through the captions.
‘David Astor, Nicholas Warburton and Bill Farthing sunbathing, 1931.’

It was the young man — the sailor from the photograph in the shoebox. He was taller than the others; trim and well muscled with the same lively black eyes. There was something charismatic about him; not only was he incredibly good-looking but he appeared to have a natural ease and athleticism.

Cate stared at the photo a long time. Nicholas Warburton. He was her missing sailor, she was sure of it. And she recognised the name. Could the sailor in the picture be related to the Blythe sisters’ stepfather? Turning to the index, she searched for any more photographs. Unfortunately, there was only one.

Leaving her coffee half finished, she quickly paid her bill and headed back to the library, ducking and weaving through the lunchtime crowds.

Once there, she entered the name ‘Nicholas Warburton’ into the computer system and eagerly pressed return.

Up came a dental surgeon in Harley Street, a professor in Canada, a website for a hotel in Mayfair and a link to the Warburton Baked Goods site, extolling the virtues of Warburton’s Wholegrain.

She tried again. But again, nothing.

It didn’t make sense.

She typed in ‘HMS Vivid’, the name that had been stitched into his naval uniform.

Pages of Plymouth Naval History came up. ‘The Royal Navy Barracks at Keyham were first known as HMS Vivid but 1934 it was renamed HMS Drake.’

So Nicholas Warburton had been a naval officer sometime before 1934. Could he have served in the Great War? That would mean that he was considerably older than Diana.

She went back to the pages of Plymouth Naval History and made a note of a few names and the address of the naval base. Perhaps if she wrote to someone in the archives department, they might have some more information.

Sighing in frustration, she entered instead ‘Lord Alexander Warburton’.

Up came links to Warburton’s Wholegrain again, a
large National Trust estate in Hampshire, and some of the related links to Baby Blythe she’d already explored. She clicked onto the National Trust site.

Hargraves House is an extensive private estate and one of the pioneers of the organic farming movement in England. The land and late-Gothic-revival Victorian house were bequeathed to the nation by Lord Alexander Warburton upon the death of his wife, Lady Warburton, in 1972. Hargraves House was purchased as a retreat for Lady Warburton from the turmoil of London life between the wars and also played a pivotal role in her considerable charity work, providing accommodation for Catholic refugees from all over Europe. It was in fact her interest in nutrition and in particular her experience providing homes for evacuee children from the East End of London during the Second World War, many of whom were suffering from rickets and malnutrition, which, in her later years, inspired Lady Warburton to begin experimenting with the sustainability of natural farming techniques. Lord Warburton preferred to remain in London and spent his final years living an independent life centred around politics. His Mayfair mansion at 5 St James’s Square, is now the London headquarters of right-wing Conservative special-interest group, the Wednesday Club, and open to public viewing by appointment only. Today Hargraves House produces a wide range of organic products and houses a cafe, shop and is a much sought-after place for agricultural work experience in addition to playing host to regional agricultural events.

Cate paged through the many images of green, abundant fields and well-tended gardens, followed by interiors of the dark, mahogany-laden house and bright, contemporary cafe transformed from one of the barns.

Frowning, she worked her way back through the various screens she’d brought up.

Here was something odd.

She clicked on the link to the hotel in Mayfair.

It took her to a page devoted to the history of a small, privately owned boutique hotel in Hill Street.

Opened in 1923, the Belmont was originally built as a series of small but luxurious bachelor apartments with a restaurant and concierge service on the ground floor. It functioned like a private gentlemen’s club and members had to be referred. Ladies were strictly forbidden on the premises except in the basement bar, which became popular as an exclusive after-hours club and casino, where one founding member, the baked-goods heir Nicholas Warburton, famously lost £20,000 on a bet on what colour tie Edward VIII would wear to his abdication. ‘Whatever colour it is,’ he remarked, ‘you can be sure he won’t have chosen it himself.’ Today, although the Belmont has become a leading luxury hotel in London’s exclusive Mayfair, the club, known simply as ‘106’, remains a private members’ casino and cigar room, which all guests are automatically invited to join upon registration.

Cate reread the passage again. So Nicholas Warburton was Lord Warburton’s son and heir — and Baby Blythe’s stepbrother by marriage!

When she’d found the box, she felt sure it was filled with the mementoes of a love affair. Had she got it wrong? Or had Baby Blythe and Nicholas Warburton crossed a very delicate social boundary? Perhaps that was why the box was hidden. Maybe the entire relationship had been a secret.

But if that were true, why was it hidden at Endsleigh?

She cradled her hand in her chin, concentrating.

Lord Warburton had a son. And yet he left both his vast properties to the nation.

Why? Had Nicholas died in the war?

It was almost as if someone had wanted to erase all trace of him entirely; to pretend he’d never existed.

5 St James’s Square
London

14 September 1934

My darling,
So lovely to hear from you. I’m sorry if I gave you offence by dancing in the fountain at Piccadilly Circus but the truth is I can’t remember any of it. If it weren’t for all the photographs in the papers I should’ve sworn I was tucked up in bed. But I do recall it was a hot night and there was absolutely no place to go after the Café de Paris closed. I suppose now that you are a rising MP’s wife such behaviour reflects badly but perhaps you can console yourself that the more outrageous I am, the more respectable you seem by comparison. So I’m really doing you the most enormous favour. We are all off to Goodwood this weekend and then to Nice after so you can relax for a few weeks at least and read The Times in peace.

I know you’re only trying to be sensible when you suggest that I should consider the amorous advances of Geoffrey Tynedale and it’s true that he is good fun and very well off. He’s also as ugly as two toads. And you’d be mistaken if you thought that I didn’t have to listen to advice like that from Muv every second of the day. Some day soon I will marry but right now life is too gay and exciting to be spent wandering down aisles wrapped in tulle. And I think we both know who I have in mind for the job when I do accept!

Please let’s do be friends, darling. You really will laugh when I tell you that I saw Eleanor in Purdy’s last week ordering safari clothes and stacks of new guns; she’s agreed to marry some decrepit old coffee plantation owner in deepest, darkest Kenya — some friend of her father’s she last met when she was six. I’ve really never seen her so animated, though she’ll look like a giant tent kitted out in so much khaki. I shouldn’t think she’ll need a gun — any lion would be terrified to go anywhere near her. And Anne has renounced communism entirely after she came back to the flat early one afternoon to hide a new hat and caught Paul in flagrante with some impossibly hairy lady writer from The Week. Apparently they were lowing like cows and didn’t hear her come in. Poor darling. She is devastated but at the same time one could tell she was longing to eat caviar and read Vogue again and take off those dreadful sensible shoes and go out dancing. I took her immediately to Scott’s for a truly decadent bourgeoisie lunch and then we tottered over to Simpson’s in a champagne haze and bought her the most killing new coat in peacock blue. Her father’s already contacted the lawyers even though Paul’s written four times to ask her to come back. But she says she’ll have nightmares till the end of her days, remembering that moment when she was standing in the doorway, trying to work out what it was he was doing to that small dark man with the moustache and the flabby chest.

I’m thinking of you all the time — opening fetes, giving speeches and cutting ribbons at local libraries. How good you are! I’ve only seen Malcolm in London very briefly as he dashes from one room to the next, a kind of pinstriped blur. As you can imagine, we travel in very different sets. I’m sure he disapproves of me, despite what you say. And he will keep going on about the ‘ruling classes’. No wonder the Consort turns pink with delight every time he sees him. (Quite seriously, he does blush! I think he may have the tiniest crush which is perhaps understandable given that he’s married to Muv.) We were meant to have supper one night at the Dorchester months ago and I’m sure I was in for a stern moral lecture but there was a vote at Parliament and he was called away at the last minute. I know he’s dear to you but I can’t say I was disappointed.

But my angel, if I can’t tell you the secrets of my soul … who can I tell? You who know me best of anyone.

All my dearest love,

B xxxx

The National Portrait Gallery was not as daunting as its neighbour, the National Gallery. It was smaller, narrow; less all-encompassing. Room after room of famous faces wound upwards in a meandering sprawl, in every conceivable style, from Tudor portraits to modern paintings, photographs and sketches. All tastes were catered for — royally, celebrities, statesmen, women and men of the arts and sciences, politicians, film stars. They gazed out, some confident, others defiant or self-deprecating, still others oblivious and unaware. It was a complex record of centuries of shifting social standards and fashions; of accomplishments, controversy, self-promotion, heroism, humility; unfolding in an ever-expanding Vanity Fair.

It always struck Cate as a distinctly English institution designed for a people who found looking at one another or, worse still, being seen, anathema. Here, one could finally stare openly, and recognize, in a thousand different faces, something of the fine human thread which made up the ever-changing national character.

Knots of tourists clogged the central wooden staircase as Cate made her way up. She paused, feeling suddenly tired and strangely light-headed. Too little sleep and not enough food. The rarity of an English heatwave, and the nation’s stubborn refusal to invest in any air conditioning, had kept her awake. Also she’d had doubts about burning the letter. Perhaps she should’ve read it. After all, what did she have here, in London? Round and round her thoughts ran, little knives stabbing at her confidence.

As she reached the top of the landing, she sat down on a bench. If only she could stop thinking; simply switch her head off. After a while, one of the security guards came over, a spotty young man in a uniform.