A Season of Secrets (41 page)

As they approached Fifth Avenue’s intersection with 49th Street the traffic was so heavy the cab was reduced to a near-standstill. Curbing her frustration, Rozalind pondered on the best
locations for the shots she wanted to take. She knew from both Thea and Olivia that Fort Belvedere was where Edward was at his most relaxed. She also knew that at the Fort he would have his two
cairn terriers, Cora and Jaggs, with him.

Traffic had begun moving again, but Roz, whose thoughts had flicked to Edward’s father, was oblivious to it. King George was sixty-eight years old. It wasn’t a vast age, but his
health was poor and people in the know, such as her Uncle Gilbert, were convinced he was likely to die at any time. When he did, Edward would not only be King of the United Kingdom and Ireland and
of the British Dominions Beyond the Seas, but Emperor of India as well.

The burdens he carried now would be nothing compared to the burdens he would carry then, and she liked the idea of capturing Edward playing with his dogs at the Fort in the days just before his
life changed forever.

She grinned to herself, knowing it was highly unlikely King George was going to die just as doing so would add resonance to the photographs she hoped to take. As well as being imaginative,
though, she was also pragmatic, and one of her favourite mottos was her old Girl Scout motto: ‘Be Prepared’.

Rozalind liked to think she always was.

The cab drew up outside her apartment block and she paid off the driver, having made up her mind that when it came to photographing the Duke and Duchess of York and their children she would ask
to do so at Royal Lodge, their country retreat in Windsor Great Park.

With her decisions made, and determined that on her upcoming trip to England she would achieve the aim that had so long eluded her, she ran into the entrance hall and then, not wanting to spend
a second longer out of Max’s company than was absolutely necessary, didn’t wait for the lift, but ran with ease up the stairs to their second-floor apartment.

He was out on the balcony, sitting at a wrought-iron table drinking coffee and reading the
Chicago Tribune.
She dropped her Leica on the nearest available surface and ran across to him,
standing behind him and sliding her arms around his neck.

‘What’s the latest with Chicago’s new mayor?’ she asked, reading the headlines over his shoulder. ‘Is he still firing on all cylinders?’

‘Unfortunately.’ Ed Kelly, the new mayor, was a Democrat and Max wasn’t a fan. He put the newspaper down and covered her hand with his. ‘Have you noticed that ever since
Roosevelt replaced Hoover in the White House, Republicans have dropped out of sight – and even those who have been left behind seem to have changed political colour from red to
blue.’

Rozalind laughed, ‘But not you, sweetheart.’

‘No,’ he said with feeling. ‘Not me.’

Wishing she hadn’t brought up the subject of American politics, she withdrew her arms from around his neck and pulled up a chair at the other side of the small table on which, next to his
newspaper, a coffee pot stood.

Changing the subject to Germany, she said, ‘What fresh outrage is Hitler up to?’

His face hardened. ‘What fresh outrage isn’t he up to? The latest is official confirmation of the way he’s rounding up large numbers of Jews and sending them to makeshift
prisons. The
Chicago Tribune
quotes Germany’s outlawed Socialist Party as saying forty-five thousand prisoners are being held at scores of different locations.’

‘And is that information right?’ Rozalind put a hand against the coffee pot on the table to see if it was still hot.

‘Yes. It accords with the information we have on the Hill.’

‘On the Hill’ was the way he always referred to the Capitol Building in Washington. Quite what Max’s responsibilities were in Congress, over and above those of every
Congressman, she didn’t know, but whatever they were, she strongly suspected they were to do with foreign affairs – and with Germany in particular.

She rose to her feet. ‘The coffee is still hot. I’m just going to fetch a cup.’

Once in the kitchen, she stood for a moment, thinking. Whenever she crossed the Atlantic, Berlin was always her next stop after London. Thanks to Dieter, who had been posted back to Berlin more
than a year ago, her contacts there were as good as they had always been and she knew at first hand about the abuses of freedom that had been taking place since Germany had become a one-party
state.

Until now, though, the photographs she had taken from privileged viewpoints had been of Nazi parades, conventions and rallies, or occasions such as Hitler arriving at a meeting to explain why he
was taking no further part in the Geneva Disarmament Convention and was withdrawing from the League of Nations.

There was a big difference between photographs like those appearing in British and American newspapers, and photographs of prison camps where people were being imprisoned for crimes as trivial
as reading a banned book, writing anti-Nazi graffiti or simply being a Jew, a homosexual, a prostitute, a Jehovah’s Witness or a gypsy.

Once those kinds of damaging photographs began appearing, her unique contacts with the Nazi hierarchy would be over and she would be lucky even to be allowed back in the country.

She walked out onto the balcony, reflecting that it was a difficulty almost as great as that of maintaining a good relationship with Dieter – without which she would be just another
freelance news photographer without special access to anything.

‘He just doesn’t see what horrors Hitler is plunging Germany into,’ she said to Max, pouring coffee and not bothering to preface what she’d said with the name of the
person she was talking about. Like an old married couple, the two of them picked up on each other’s half-begun or half-finished sentences instantly.

He pulled her down onto his knee. ‘He will – eventually.’ He slid a hand up her leg until he reached the smooth, firm flesh above her stocking top. Pleasurably he let it linger
there, saying, ‘At the moment all Dieter sees is the way Hitler has brought unemployment under control and suppressed the communists.’

‘And as he and Olivia are happy to see the communists being suppressed, Thea is no longer on speaking terms with either of them. She and Olivia have always had frequent spats, but this is
the first time they’ve ever not been on speaking terms with each other.’

‘I think,’ he said, his voice thickening as his hand moved a fraction higher, ‘that it’s time we stopped talking about Germany and went indoors for a little
while.’

Her eyes darkened with heat. ‘I think so, too. In fact, I rather think the bedroom for preference.’

‘My thoughts entirely.’

She slid from his knee and, as he rose to his feet, the telephone in the living room rang.

The only people who had the apartment’s phone number, other than themselves, were Rob Dawkins, Max’s chief of staff, and Doris Tyndall, his personal secretary – and neither Rob
nor Doris ever used it except in matters of emergency.

With his mood instantly altered, Max strode towards the phone.

‘Yes?’ he said peremptorily as, certain their already too-short time together was about to be cut even shorter, Rozalind sat on the arm of a sofa and waited. ‘Yes,’ he
said again, his jaw tightening. ‘I understand. Thank you, Doris.’

One look at his face as he hung up and Roz knew without being told that their precious time together was at an end.

‘I’ll pack your bag,’ she said, knowing there was going to be no languorous goodbye lovemaking, only a fierce hug and a hurried passionate kiss.

The packing of what was only a weekend bag took no more than three minutes. She did it while he rapidly changed out of his casual clothes and into Congressman mode: a dark suit, white shirt,
subdued tie and well-polished black leather shoes. He held her against him tight and hard, kissing her as if he was doing so for the last time ever and then, ten minutes after he had answered the
telephone, he was striding away in the direction of the lift and all she had left of him was a lingering tang of lemon cologne and the feel of his hands on her body and the taste of his mouth on
her lips.

She walked slowly back out onto the balcony, picked up the newspapers and took them into the kitchen ready to be dropped into the rubbish bin. Then she went back outside to clear the coffee pot
and coffee cups away.

She was just wondering whether to take a shower before heading off to her apartment on the Upper East Side when the doorbell rang.

The sound knocked the breath from her body. No one, not even Rob Dawkins and Doris Tyndall, had the address of the apartment, and nothing was ever delivered to them there. Max wouldn’t
have left without his key, so it couldn’t be him coming back after having forgotten something. Yet if it wasn’t Max, who could it be?

The bell rang again.

Aware there was only one way of finding out, she moved quickly across to the door.

When she opened it, the world seemed to rock on its axis and, even as Rozalind struggled with her disbelief, she knew the world – her world – was never going to be the same
again.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Duveen,’ Max’s wife said. ‘I’d like a few words. May I come in?’

Speechlessly Rozalind opened the door wider.

Perfectly composed, Myrtle Bradley walked past her. She was a tall woman, verging on plumpness. The plumpness didn’t matter, though, for she was supremely elegant. Her beige
mid-calf-length suit was worn with a fox-fur flung carelessly over one shoulder. There were pearls at her throat. Her fair hair was streaked with silver and was worn in a chignon beneath a
coffee-coloured pillbox hat decorated with a wisp of net veiling.

Elegance personified, she seated herself on the sofa, took a cigarette-case and lighter from her clutch-bag and said without preamble, ‘You and I have to talk.’

Rozalind struggled to gather her wits, and her composure.

‘Before we do,’ she said tartly, ‘I’d like to know how you got hold of this address, because no one has it. Absolutely no one.’

There was a suffocating tightness in her throat. Myrtle at a distance, unintroduced and never spoken to, was one thing. Myrtle, cool and insultingly composed and seated opposite her in the
apartment that was her own and Max’s sacred space, was quite another.

‘I’ve always had it. Max gave it to me the day he signed the lease.’

The floor tilted beneath Rozalind’s feet. The room swam.

‘Sit down,’ Myrtle said with almost disinterested practicality. ‘We can’t talk about serious matters if you’re going to behave like an old-fashioned Victorian
maiden in need of smelling salts. Would you like a brandy?’

She made a movement as if about to rise to her feet and get her some.

Indignation cleared Rozalind’s head in a flash. ‘I don’t need a brandy, and if I did I’d get one for myself!’

Myrtle pursed her lips. ‘I accept that my coming here this afternoon has been a surprise to you, Miss Duveen, but there’s no need for rudeness.’

Her effrontery and self-possession were on such a scale that although Rozalind didn’t want to sit down – didn’t want to do anything to indicate the two of them were settling in
for a cosy chat – she had no choice. Not to sit down would be to risk her legs giving way.

She sat down on the stiffest-backed chair the room possessed, hoping it would somehow give her an advantage.

Myrtle adjusted her fur.

‘Before you think my finding you here alone was a coincidence, Doris’s telephone call was prompted by me: which may indicate to you, Miss Duveen, just how serious my meeting with you
is.’

Rozalind felt sick with giddiness. First had come the utter shock of finding herself face-to-face with Myrtle. Then had come the devastating revelation that Myrtle knew the address of the
Greenwich Village apartment – and that she knew it because Max had told her. Now Myrtle had come to a matter that was obviously of great importance to her – which could only mean
she’d become afraid Max wanted a divorce.

She said dismissively, ‘There’s no need for anxiety, Mrs Bradley. Max has no intention of divorcing you, and I have no intention of asking him to divorce you.’

Myrtle arched a finely plucked eyebrow. ‘I’m well aware Max has no intention of divorcing me, so whether you would or wouldn’t like it if he did so is immaterial to me, Miss
Duveen. What I have come about is something completely different.’

Until now, happily certain that it was her own relationship with Max that mattered to him, and not his relationship with Myrtle, Rozalind had scarcely given a thought to his wife. She was doing
so now, though, because Myrtle was giving her no option not to. After all, Myrtle
should
have been concerned that Max might one day ask for a divorce. Her complacency as to the stability of
her marriage wasn’t just infuriating. It was insulting.

Tight-lipped, Roz waited to hear what the different matter was.

Myrtle lit a cigarette and said starkly, ‘Max has been asked to run for office.’

Rozalind stared at her, understanding now why Myrtle was so confident that Max wouldn’t ask for a divorce. No divorced man could ever hope to run for the highest elective office in the
land.

She said slowly, wanting to be sure she hadn’t misheard, ‘Max has been asked to be a nominee in the primaries?’

Myrtle nodded. ‘And he would stand a good chance of winning.’ She paused, and added with steel in her voice, ‘He would stand a good chance of winning all the way.’

Rozalind thought of Max as a presidential candidate. Of course he would stand a good chance of winning all the way.

‘The difficulty, Miss Duveen, is that the nomination process will entail rigorous scrutiny into his private life – and at the moment his private life won’t stand up to such
scrutiny. You can imagine Max’s dilemma. Does he end his affair with you and seize the chance he is being given to embark on a four-year battle for the White House? Or does he continue with
your affair and never know whether he could, or could not, have won for his party the greatest position any American can hold?’