The Second-last Woman in England (28 page)
‘The law reflects public opinion. The law is made
by
the people,’ she explained patiently.
Jean considered this. That the law could be a thing made by the people was a strange idea. A rich person’s idea.
‘Look here, Wallis. I’m not naïve enough to think all people’s opinions have changed overnight,’ said the young man, speaking for the first time, and he had a BBC voice, the same voice as Mr and Mrs Wallis.
‘The fact remains,’ the young man continued, ‘I shall no longer need to remain … incognito.’
‘You mean to announce your return in
The Times
, then?’ said Mr Wallis.
‘No, of course he doesn’t,’ said Mrs Wallis impatiently. ‘He simply means he no longer has to risk imprisonment. He can apply for this certificate of protection.’
A certificate of protection? Could an adulterer get such a thing?
‘Well, I am sorry, but I am unable to offer you any assistance,’ said Cecil with finality.
They had come to the cuckolded husband for help? Jean almost felt sorry for him.
‘You are perfectly able to assist, Cecil,’ retorted Mrs Wallis. ‘You are simply choosing not to.’
There was a silence. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly.
‘And what sort of firm do you think will want to take him on, eh?’ said Mr Wallis at last. ‘What kind of employer, when there are good men out there who have served their country?’
Inside the drawing room there was a thud as though something had fallen over, footsteps muffled by the thick carpet, the rasp of a match being struck.
‘I’m sorry, Freddie, but surely you must see how it is?’ he continued.
‘I see exactly how it is,’ replied the lover—Freddie—in a strange voice, almost bored. ‘Must have been tough for you during the war, old man, going off to the office each day while every other fellow was on foreign soil fighting for his damned life.’
‘That’s enough!’ replied Cecil sharply. ‘I refuse to discuss this further. You will kindly leave my house immediately.’
Jean moved through the open door of the breakfast room and closed it behind her just as the drawing room door opened. She stood perfectly still as angry footsteps passed her, then hurried down the stairs. A moment later other, lighter, footsteps followed.
‘
Freddie
! Freddie,
wait
!’ It was Mrs Wallis. ‘For God’s sake, don’t be such an idiot!’
‘I’m sorry, Harri,’ the young man replied from some way down the stairs. ‘I refuse to be insulted by—by
him
. This was a mistake—a stupid, blasted mistake. Lord knows how I let you talk me into it.’
‘Please,’ said Mrs Wallis, ‘just—just telephone me tomorrow when you are little calmer.’ Jean couldn’t hear the man’s reply, but a moment later she heard Mrs Wallis return to the drawing room.
Jean opened the breakfast room door and peered out. The coast was clear. She ventured out.
‘Well, are you satisfied?’ demanded Mrs Wallis indistinctly. She had closed the drawing room door after her this time. Jean found herself glued to the same spot on the carpet.
‘I
cannot
believe you put me in such a—a
compromising
position!’ said Mr Wallis.
‘You feel compromised, do you? This is Freddie’s life we are discussing, not some awkward social faux pas.’
‘For God’s sake, how can you be so damned naïve, Harriet? I know he’s your brother, but you can’t let that blind you to the facts.’
Her brother.
‘I understand the facts of this situation perfectly, Cecil. Do not patronise me.’
‘All I am saying, Harriet, is that public opinion has not changed. It was the same after the last war, no matter what you may think, no matter what law the government may have passed—and, for God’s sake, if it wasn’t Coronation year do you think there would ever have
been
an amnesty?’
The amnesty. The young man—Mrs Wallis’s brother—was a deserter. Jean stepped back from the room. She had no desire to hear any more.
‘It would be so easy for you to help him,’ said Mrs Wallis indistinctly. ‘All he needs is a job in some dull little insurance firm, some boring city bank. All he needs is a reference, a word from you. Is that so much to ask?’
There was a silence—thick and heavy. It was broken by a slow intake of breath.
‘What kind of a man
are
you?’
‘The kind of man who has standards, Harriet. Moral standards. And I will not compromise those standards. I simply
will not
.’
‘For God’s
sake
!’
The door opened and had Mrs Wallis turned right rather than gone down the stairs she would have seen the nanny disappearing into the breakfast room at some speed. In another moment the front door opened and closed with a slam.
Jean waited behind the door. Mrs Wallis’s brother was a deserter. Well, and so were hundreds, thousands of other men. Everyone knew someone whose son or friend or cousin had done a bunk. The streets round home were crawling with them: men who only emerged at night and who scuttled about with their collars turned up and one eye always behind them. But those men were just kids, boys from poor families, from the slums. Not Freddie. He was one of Them. You never heard of one of Them deserting.
But why should
he
get an amnesty? Did any of those dead young men get another chance? Did the families killed in the Blitz get a second go?
The drawing room door opened and Mr Wallis went into his study and closed the door behind him, and from the shadows Jean stood and watched.
And what had Mr Wallis done while other folk risked their lives? He had worked in an office. Sent others to their deaths and gone home for his tea.
A black cab drew up outside Cecil’s office just off Chancery Lane and Harriet paid the driver and got out, closing the door behind her and smoothing down her dress. It was a pleasant spring morning. One almost didn’t need a coat. A scattering of early blossoms was visible on the trees in the little park opposite. A young couple sat on the bench in the park laughing and tearing off pieces of bread and tossing them to the pigeons.
Harriet pulled out her cigarette case, took out a cigarette and lit it carefully.
She had found Freddie a position. It hadn’t been easy. Three weeks of masterfully arranged dinner parties with some of the dullest men in England and their dreadfully dreary wives, of opportune conversations during intervals at the theatre, of sitting through the most ghastly charity lunches and writing fat cheques for everyone’s pet charity from Yugoslavian orphans to elderly pit ponies. And the phone calls! There had been too many to count. But it had finally paid off. She had, to put it somewhat vulgarly, ‘hit the jackpot’.
Now all she needed was to find a way to convince Cecil that he should help.
In the three weeks since Freddie had come to the house and left in such a fury she had seen him only once and that an unsatisfactory meeting at a café in Baker Street. Freddie had been sullen, taciturn. Angry at her, it seemed, for the world’s condemnation, for Cecil’s belligerence, for her own belief in him. He had been restless, had talked of leaving, of returning to Canada. It was certainly what Cecil wanted. But why must they all do what Cecil wanted? It was Freddie’s life, after all. She had come away angry herself, at Cecil, at the world, at Freddie.
But last night, and from an unlikely source, something had come up. They had dined at White Gables, the Richmond home of Nobby Caruthers. Nobby and Cecil were both VPS Old Boys, though Nobby was some years Cecil’s senior. Now for the most part retired, Caruthers sat on the board of Home Counties Equity and Insurance in the City. The dinner—an annual affair made up of retired bankers and stockbrokers and their wives—was, generally speaking, as dull as ditchwater, but with the men finishing their port and cigars in the other room, Harriet had found herself seated next to Trixie Caruthers, Nobby’s wife.
‘My brother, Freddie, has recently returned from overseas,’ she had remarked. ‘He was in Canada, you know? Did rather well. But now he’s returned and is looking for a suitable position. His area is finance. Accounting, administration—well, one is never entirely clear about these things, but it’s all money, isn’t it?’
It had been a desperate gambit, not to mention an appalling lie to her host, who would surely see right through it. What kind of person, after all, returned from overseas having done ‘rather well’ and yet had no position to go to?
Yet Trixie had responded with a smile and a pat of her hand. ‘My dear, I’m sure if your brother is as good as you say he is, Nobby would be delighted to help him out. Why don’t I ask him if he is agreeable to a meeting?’
And there it was. So very simple in the end. Trixie had been true to her word, had telephoned that morning to report that Nobby was more than happy to meet Harriet’s brother and that the brother in question should telephone Nobby’s office to arrange a meeting. Harriet had telephoned Freddie at once.
‘Caruthers?’ Freddie had said suspiciously down the telephone. ‘There was a Caruthers made a big splash in New York before the war. That him?’
‘I think so. He’s semi-retired now, but he still holds a fair bit of influence. Well, the way Cecil and all the others kow-tow to him one would think he was the chairman of the Bank of England.’
‘And you went to him cap in hand, did you, begging for a job for the wayward younger brother?’
‘For God’s sake, it wasn’t like that, Freddie. Trixie, his wife, mentioned Caruthers had just given a job to Phyllis Bing’s ghastly eldest boy and how he was always scratching around trying to find good men. It just seemed the perfect opportunity. And once you’re in, in a place like that, well, that’s it. You’re set for life. No one gives a damn where you were before.’
‘You mean no one gives a damn what I did in the war? It’s the first thing they look at—a chap’s blasted war record. It’s no good, Harri. People like that—places like that—simply can’t see beyond it.’
‘Cecil and Caruthers were at the same school. A word from Cecil, a character reference, call it whatever you like—and you’re in.’
There had been a silence.
‘You can’t seriously believe Cecil would give it?’
‘He’ll have to.’
On the corner of Chancery Lane Harriet drew heavily on her cigarette, thinking hard.
She hadn’t rung to let Cecil know she was coming.
But no matter. She cast the cigarette into the gutter and walked up to the front entrance of Empire and Colonial’s head office.
The building was a large, modern tower block, all glass and concrete. Utterly bleak, of course. Cecil’s old office in Moorgate had been a marvellous old place, originally a Masonic hall, all coats of arms and gargoyles and intricate little cornices. Over two hundred years old. But an incendiary in the building next door in early ’41 had rendered it unsafe and the place had been abandoned. Empire and Colonial had operated out of temporary offices near Liverpool Street for some years, finally moving into these new premises off Chancery Lane in late ’49. Functional, that was about the only word one could use to describe this building. It was as though the war had made everyone too wary of wasting time and money putting up something rather grand or beautiful that a rocket could destroy in a matter of seconds.
She went briskly up the front steps and pushed her way through the ghastly revolving doorway. (Really! Such doors appeared to have been designed purely to repel visitors. And Lord knew, Empire and Colonial could ill afford to repel anyone.)
‘May I help you, madam?’ said the receptionist, a pert young girl in a steel grey blouse and horn-rimmed glasses. Her manner was slightly confronting, slightly hostile, utterly efficient. Harriet took an immediate dislike to her.
‘Yes, you may.’ She paused to put a cigarette in her mouth. ‘Do you have a light?’
The receptionist raised one eyebrow a fraction of an inch then reached beneath her desk. She pulled out a lighter and silently lit Harriet’s cigarette.
‘Good. Thank you. Now, I should like to see Mr Cecil Wallis, please.’
‘Certainly.’ The girl was at once all smiling efficiency. ‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No.’
The smiling efficiency disappeared, replaced by cool impenetrability. ‘Then I shall need to consult with Miss James, Mr Wallis’s secretary,’ she said, as though she had little expectation of such a course of action actually achieving anything.
‘You do that,’ Harriet blew a stream of smoke from her nostrils upwards into the atrium.
The receptionist picked up the receiver of her telephone with some importance. ‘And what name shall I give?’
‘Your own, I would imagine. Then you may inform Miss James that Mrs Cecil Wallis is here.’
The receptionist reddened and asked no further questions.
