Winter of the World (49 page)

She studied herself in the narrow mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. She looked good.

She perched on the edge of the bed to put her stockings on, and Boy came in.

Daisy felt faint. If she had not been sitting she would have fallen down. She stared at him in disbelief.

‘Surprise!’ he said with jollity. ‘I came a day early.’

‘Yes,’ she said when at last she was able to speak. ‘Surprise.’

He bent down and kissed her. She had never much liked his tongue in her mouth, because he always tasted of booze and cigars. He did not mind her distaste – in fact, he seemed to enjoy
forcing the issue. But now, out of guilt, she tongued him back.

‘Gosh!’ he said when he ran out of breath. ‘You’re frisky.’

You have no idea, Daisy thought; at least, I hope you don’t.

‘The exercise was brought forward by a day,’ he explained. ‘No time to warn you.’

‘So you’re here for the night,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

And Lloyd was leaving in the morning.

‘You don’t seem very pleased,’ Boy said. He looked at her dress. ‘Did you have something else planned?’

‘Such as what?’ she said. She had to regain her composure. ‘A night out at the Two Crowns pub, perhaps?’ she asked sarcastically.

‘Speaking of that, let’s have a drink.’ He left the room in search of booze.

Daisy buried her face in her hands. How could this be? Her plan was ruined. She would have to find some way of alerting Lloyd. And she could not declare her love for him in a hurried whisper
with Boy around the corner.

She told herself that the whole scheme would simply be postponed. It was only for a few days: he was due back next Tuesday. The delay would be agonizing, but she would survive, and so would her
love. All the same, she almost cried with disappointment.

She finished putting on her stockings and shoes, then she went into the little sitting room.

Boy had found a bottle of Scotch and two glasses. She took some to be convivial. He said: ‘I see that girl is making a fish pie for supper. I’m starving. Is she a good
cook?’

‘Not really. Her food is edible, if you’re hungry.’

‘Oh, well, there’s always whisky,’ he said, and he poured himself another drink.

‘What have you been doing?’ She was desperate to get him to talk so that she would not have to. ‘Did you fly to Norway?’ The Germans were winning the first land battle of
the war there.

‘No, thank God. It’s a disaster. There’s a big debate in the House of Commons tonight.’ He began to talk about the mistakes the British and French commanders had
made.

When supper was ready, Boy went down to the cellar to get some wine. Daisy saw a chance to alert Lloyd. But where would he be? She looked at her wristwatch. It was half past seven. He would be
having dinner in the mess. She could not walk into that room and whisper in his ear as he sat at the table with his fellow officers: it would be as good as telling everyone they were lovers. Was
there some way she could get him out of there? She racked her brains, but before she could think of anything Boy returned, triumphantly carrying a bottle of 1921 Dom Pérignon. ‘The
first vintage they made,’ he said. ‘Historic.’

They sat at the table and ate Maisie’s fish pie. Daisy drank a glass of the champagne but she found it difficult to eat. She pushed her food around the plate in an attempt to look normal.
Boy had a second helping.

For dessert, Maisie served canned peaches with condensed milk. ‘War has been bad for British cuisine,’ Boy said.

‘Not that it was great before,’ Daisy commented, still working on seeming normal.

By now Lloyd must be in the Gardenia Suite. What would he do if she were unable to get a message to him? Would he remain there all night, waiting and hoping for her to arrive? Would he give up
at midnight and return to his own bed? Or would he come down here looking for her? That might be awkward.

Boy took out a large cigar and smoked it with satisfaction, occasionally dipping the unlit end into a glass of brandy. Daisy tried to think of an excuse to leave him and go upstairs, but nothing
came. What pretext could she possibly cite for visiting the trainees’ quarters at this time of night?

She still had done nothing when he put out his cigar and said: ‘Well, time for bed. Do you want to use the bathroom first?’

Not knowing what else to do, she got up and went into the bedroom. Slowly, she took off the clothes she had put on so carefully for Lloyd. She washed her face and put on her least alluring
nightdress. Then she got into bed.

Boy was moderately drunk when he climbed in beside her, but he still wanted sex. The thought appalled her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Dr Mortimer said no marital relations
for three months.’ This was not true. Mortimer had said it would be all right when the bleeding stopped. She felt horribly dishonest. She had been planning to do it with Lloyd tonight.

‘What?’ Boy said indignantly. ‘Why?’

Improvising, she said: ‘If we do it too soon, it might affect my chances of getting pregnant again, apparently.’

That convinced him. He was desperate for an heir. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, and turned away.

In a minute he was asleep.

Daisy lay awake, her mind buzzing. Could she slip away now? She would have to get dressed – she certainly could not walk around the house in her nightdress. Boy slept heavily, but often
woke to go to the bathroom. What if he did that while she was gone, and saw her return with her clothes on? What story could she tell that had a chance of being believed? Everyone knew there was
only one reason why a woman went creeping around a country house at night.

Lloyd would have to suffer. And she suffered with him, thinking of him alone and disappointed in that musty room. Would he lie down in his uniform and fall asleep? He would be cold, unless he
pulled a blanket around him. Would he assume some emergency, or just think she had carelessly stood him up? Perhaps he would feel let down, and be angry with her.

Tears rolled down her face. Boy was snoring, so he would never know.

She dozed off in the small hours, and dreamed she was catching a train, but silly things kept happening to delay her: the taxi took her to the wrong place, she had to walk unexpectedly far with
her suitcase, she could not find her ticket, and when she reached the platform she found waiting for her an old-fashioned stage coach that would take days to get to London.

When she woke from the dream, Boy was in the bathroom, shaving.

She lost heart. She got up and dressed. Maisie prepared breakfast, and Boy had eggs and bacon and buttered toast. By the time they had finished it was nine o’clock. Lloyd had said he was
leaving at nine. He might be in the hall now, with his suitcase in his hand.

Boy got up from the table and went into the bathroom, taking the newspaper with him. Daisy knew his morning habits: he would be there five or ten minutes. Suddenly her apathy left her. She went
out of the flat and ran up the stairs to the hall.

Lloyd was not there. He must already have left. Her heart sank.

But he would be walking to the railway station: only the wealthy and infirm took taxis to go a mile. Perhaps she could catch him up. She went out through the front door.

She saw him four hundred yards down the drive, walking smartly, carrying his case, and her heart leaped. Throwing caution to the wind, she ran after him.

A light army pickup truck of the kind they called a Tilly was bowling down the drive ahead of her. To her dismay it slowed alongside Lloyd. ‘No!’ Daisy said, but Lloyd was too far
away to hear her.

He threw his suitcase into the back and jumped into the cab beside the driver.

She kept running, but it was hopeless. The little truck pulled away and picked up speed.

Daisy stopped. She stood and watched as the Tilly passed through the gates of T
ŷ
Gwyn and disappeared from view. She tried not to cry.

After a moment she turned around and went back inside the house.

(v)

On the way to Bournemouth Lloyd spent a night in London; and that evening, Wednesday 8 May, he was in the visitors’ gallery of the House of Commons, watching the
debate that would decide the fate of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

It was like being in the gods at the theatre: the seats were cramped and hard, and you looked vertiginously down on the drama unfolding below. The gallery was full tonight. Lloyd and his
stepfather, Bernie, had got tickets only with difficulty, through the influence of his mother, Ethel, who was now sitting with his Uncle Billy among the Labour MPs down in the packed chamber.

Lloyd had had no chance yet to ask about his real father and mother: everyone was too preoccupied with the political crisis. Both Lloyd and Bernie wanted Chamberlain to resign. The appeaser of
Fascism had little credibility as a war leader, and the debacle in Norway only underlined that.

The debate had begun the night before. Chamberlain had been furiously attacked, not just by Labour MPs but by his own side, Ethel had reported. The Conservative Leo Amery had quoted Cromwell at
him: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!’ It was a cruel speech to come from a colleague,
and it was made more wounding by the chorus of ‘Hear, hear!’ that arose from both sides of the chamber.

Lloyd’s mother and the other female MPs had got together in their own room in the palace of Westminster and agreed to force a vote. The men could not stop them and so joined them instead.
When this was announced on Wednesday, the debate was transformed into a ballot on Chamberlain. The Prime Minister accepted the challenge, and – in what Lloyd felt was a sign of weakness
– appealed to his friends to stand by him.

The attacks continued tonight. Lloyd relished them. He hated Chamberlain for his policy on Spain. For two years, from 1937 to 1939, Chamberlain had continued to enforce
‘non-intervention’ by Britain and France, while Germany and Italy poured arms and men into the rebel army, and American ultra-conservatives sold oil and trucks to Franco. If any one
British politician bore guilt for the mass murders now being carried out by Franco, it was Neville Chamberlain.

‘And yet,’ said Bernie to Lloyd during a lull, ‘Chamberlain isn’t really to blame for the fiasco in Norway. Winston Churchill is First Lord of the Admiralty, and your
mother says he was the one who pushed for this invasion. After all Chamberlain has done – Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia – it will be ironic if he falls from power because of something
that isn’t really his fault.’

‘Everything is ultimately the Prime Minister’s fault,’ said Lloyd. ‘That’s what it means to be the leader.’

Bernie smiled wryly, and Lloyd knew he was thinking that young people saw everything too simply; but, to his credit, Bernie did not say it.

It was a noisy debate, but the House went quiet when the former Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, stood up. Lloyd had been named after him. Seventy-seven years old now, a white-haired elder
statesman, he spoke with the authority of the man who had won the Great War.

He was merciless. ‘It is not a question of who are the Prime Minister’s friends,’ he said, stating the obvious with withering sarcasm. ‘It is a far bigger
issue.’

Once again, Lloyd was heartened to see that the chorus of approval came from the Conservative side as well as the opposition.

‘He has appealed for sacrifices,’ Lloyd George said, his nasal North Wales accent seeming to sharpen the edge of his contempt. ‘There is nothing which can contribute more to
victory, in this war, than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.’

The opposition shouted their approval, and Lloyd could see his mother cheering.

Churchill closed the debate. As a speaker he was the equal of Lloyd George, and Lloyd feared that his oratory might rescue Chamberlain. But the House was against him, interrupting and jeering,
sometimes so loudly that he could not be heard over the clamour.

He sat down at 11 p.m. and the vote was taken.

The voting system was cumbersome. Instead of raising their hands, or ticking slips of paper, MPs had to leave the chamber and be counted as they walked through one of two lobbies, for Ayes or
Noes. The process took fifteen or twenty minutes. It could have been devised only by men who did not have enough to do, Ethel said. She felt sure it would be modernized soon.

Lloyd waited on tenterhooks. The fall of Chamberlain would give him profound satisfaction, but it was by no means certain.

To distract himself he thought about Daisy, always a pleasant occupation. How strange his last twenty-four hours at T
ŷ
Gwyn had been: first the one-word note ‘Library’; then the
rushed conversation, with her tantalizing summons to the Gardenia Suite; then a whole night of waiting, cold and bored and bewildered, for a woman who did not show up. He had stayed there until six
o’clock in the morning, miserable but unwilling to give up hope until the moment when he was obliged to wash and shave and change his clothes and pack his suitcase for the trip.

Clearly something had gone wrong, or she had changed her mind; but what had she intended in the first place? She had said she wanted to tell him something. Had she planned to say something
earth-shaking, to merit all that drama? Or something so trivial that she had forgotten all about it and the rendezvous? He would have to wait until next Tuesday to ask her.

He had not told his family that Daisy had been at T
ŷ
Gwyn. That would have required him to explain to them what his relationship with Daisy was now, and he could not do that, for he did not
really understand it himself. Was he in love with a married woman? He did not know. How did she feel about him? He did not know. Most likely, he thought, Daisy and he were two good friends who had
missed their chance at love. And somehow he did not want to admit that to anyone, for it seemed unbearably final.

He said to Bernie: ‘Who will take over, if Chamberlain goes?’

‘The betting is on Halifax.’ Lord Halifax was currently the Foreign Secretary.