Illusions of Happiness (10 page)

Somewhat stunned by the cut and dried way he’d apparently had everything already planned, she could only nod, half expecting him to lean over and kiss her on the mouth, maybe a lingering one to which she would have to respond. Instead he’d sighed contentedly and sat back, still holding her hand and thus they travelled to the theatre where he’d been taking her, he carefully handing her down from the limousine and guiding her up the steps to the theatre as if she were made of delicate porcelain.

That was last night, Saturday. Now she sat in her room knowing that come Thursday she’d be vacating these awful premises forever. She hadn’t told Dolly, had no intention of telling her now, not after what she’d said. Nor had she told her she would be nineteen on Friday. James was giving her a birthday party next Saturday. It was to be at his home. And what a home!

Yesterday had been the first time she had ever seen it, practically surrounded by beautiful London parks, Hyde Park, Green Park, St James Park, every bit as fine as her old home in Oxfordshire, maybe even more so as he showed her around the many lower floor rooms, stopping short of showing her the upper rooms that were the bedrooms, to her relief.

When he’d brought her there after the theatre, on the way saying with a small smile, ‘I hope you don’t mind, my dear, I thought it would be far more suitable to have supper at home rather than a restaurant – after all it will be your home soon,’ there had come a sharp sense of alarm that he might be thinking to cement their engagement.

There had also come a surge of distaste at the thought of having his hands exploring her body, wondering what she had got herself into, agreeing to marry a man three times her age. She had prepared herself to tell him very gently that she wasn’t ready for that sort of thing before marriage, instantly recalling that she’d been ready enough with Freddy Dobson. But it had been different – he’d been young and she innocent. She was no longer an innocent, but refusing James might cause him to withdraw his proposal. Then where would she be? Without his money, his help, she’d never be able to trace her baby.

With that in mind she had steeled herself to endure his embraces but she need not have worried. He’d been a perfect gentleman the whole evening.

Waited upon by Merton his elderly butler and a rather plain-faced maid called Beattie, they’d sat at either end of a small, rectangular table, his cook Mrs Cole having supper already prepared almost as if he’d expected his proposal would be accepted. That too had raised the question of his proposal being anticipated, one she’d soon shrugged off as she put her mind to considering all the benefits this union could bring.

She’d intended to tell Dolly all about it. Now she was glad she hadn’t. Dolly, in her present jealous mood, would have shrugged, maybe said something nasty. It didn’t matter any more. She had a future now.

James had found her a nice little furnished two-roomed apartment not far from where he lived. ‘I shall be able to see you more often,’ he’d said cheerfully, but for her leaving this hole of a place felt far more important.

She could hardly wait for Thursday, to see the back of this place, and Dolly, and that common, rough-tongued landlady who was always yelling up the stairs to any tenant who had a caller. The next five days would seem endless. Of a sudden she felt desperately cooped up in this room, verging on claustrophobia. She needed to get out, find some fresh air even though the day was deeply overcast.

For much of May the weather had been wonderful but today hardly conducive to cheering her up after her encounter with Dolly. Little to cheer anyone up these days: the war expected to be over by last Christmas still dragging on, the fighting in France seeming to be going nowhere, the Huns now using a terrible weapon, gas. The outrage at the sinking of the Cunard liner
Lusitania
by torpedoes within sight of British shores with the loss of well over a thousand lives, not even military, but civilian men, women and children, had angry crowds descending on shops owned by Germans, people stoning their owners or covering them in paint, no matter that they’d been in this country half their lives. Madeleine had heard the ruckus only a few days ago, windows being broken in a nearby parade, shouts and screams, police called, trying to quell their fury. She had shut her window to keep out the sounds and prayed to soon leave this awful area.

Now her wish had been granted. By the end of the week she would be gazing around at a bright and beautiful little apartment. The thought of her coming marriage suddenly excited her as she snatched up her hat and coat and hurried down the stairs as quickly as her out of date hobble skirt allowed, knowing that soon all her clothes would be the latest of fashion.

On a whim she turned in the direction of the nearby post office. There she bought herself some notepaper and envelopes and a couple of penny stamps. Armed with these she turned back to where she lived, almost at a run, all thought of enjoying some fresh air swept from her mind.

Seated at her table she began to write the letter, having to resort to pencil, all she had to hand, ink and a pen a luxury she’d so far had no need to afford until now. But suddenly this letter was important and pencil would have to do. Maybe the letter was somewhat premature yet she wrote as if there was no time at all to spare, her usually cultured, careful handwriting becoming a scrawl in her haste, hardly allowing herself time to think lest an attack of misgiving made her change her mind.

In the over-furnished drawing room that still reflected the old Edwardian days of over a dozen years ago, Aldous Wyndham had left the cheap-looking envelope to the very last in his usual pile of morning post. Most probably from someone begging monetary help of some sort, of which he received quite a few, being a man of some standing on a board of directors of a well known, well sought after Buckinghamshire grammar school.

Sighing at the likelihood of declining whatever the sender was begging from him, he slit open the envelope to scan the single sheet of thin notepaper prior to screwing it into a ball and throwing it into the wicker waste paper basket at his feet. But the moment he began to read, he froze.

Leaping to his feet, almost knocking over the waste paper basket, he hurried to the door, tore it open to bellow at the girl who was dusting the hall stand just a few feet away, ‘Where is my wife?’

The maid started as if struck, collecting herself to mumble, ‘I don’t know, sir,’ her head respectfully lowered.

‘Then find her,’ he commanded, at which the girl scuttled off, duster still in hand.

He was seated at his bureau when Dorothy finally came in, a little diffidently. Their maid had appeared harassed, leaving her to feel something must be terribly amiss, something she must have done was probably annoying him.

‘Where were you?’ he demanded, glancing up at her. The tone of his question made her catch her lower lip between her teeth.

‘I was in the kitchen with Mrs Plumley, planning today’s menu,’ she offered. ‘What was it you wanted, dear?’

‘Look at this!’ He held out the sheet of notepaper to her, his face now turned away from her, compelling her to come forward to receive it.

‘Read it!’ he snapped.

Quickly she began to read but only got as far as the first sentence. ‘It’s from Madeleine,’ she gasped.

‘I do not recognize the name,’ he growled, still with his gaze on the surface of his bureau. ‘Just read what it says . . . to yourself,’ he added as she started to read aloud.

As bidden she took in the words in silence, reading quickly and as briefly as she could. Finally she looked up. He was staring out of the window from where he sat. ‘It says she is getting married in August. She has asked us to be present.’

‘Never!’ he exploded, leaping up to go over to the window to gaze out.

‘She asks if you would give her away,’ Dorothy ventured timidly.

‘I cannot give away what I do not have,’ he returned, his back still to her.

‘But she is our daughter, dear. We ought at least . . .’

Swinging round so viciously that he caused her to jump, he blared, ‘Enough! We have no daughter, Dorothy! The author of this letter is nothing to do with us. You would be well advised to remember that fact.’

It sounded as though he were addressing his board of governors. His tone seemed to stab into her heart like a knife wound, so harsh did it sound and quite suddenly his anger made her feel bolder than she could ever remember.

‘You may not like it, Aldous,’ she heard herself say, ‘but she is still my daughter. I bore her, fed her at my breast, tended her and cared for her. She is . . .’

‘Enough!’ he thundered, moments later drawing an impatient breath as she began to weep. ‘I am not prepared to countenance her nor be present at the wedding of someone I do not know, whoever the man is. Nor will you, Dorothy. I am disappointed in you. I did expect you to be in total agreement, which is why I called you in here. But it seems your answer to everything is to dissolve into tears so there is no point saying any more. As to this letter I shall not even respond to it. And neither will you. Now you may go back to whatever you and Mrs Plumley were doing.’

With that he returned to his writing desk and sat down, continuing to ignore her presence until slowly she turned and went from the room.

Outside the door she stood sniffing back the tears. Finally she slowly straightened her back and lifted her chin, whispered softly, almost defiantly: ‘But she is still my daughter.’

She began to make her way back along the hall, not to the kitchen but to the stairs leading up to her little parlour on the second floor where she would write her own letters to people she knew, one letter which at this moment she needed very much to write.

After only three months of preparation, neither she nor James hardly needing to lift a finger towards the day, his having arranged it all to be done for them, she had still felt that she was living in a dream world, that nothing was real. From that very evening when James had proposed to her, such as it was, and she had accepted, again such as it was, everything had felt as if it wasn’t happening, the world itself seeming to have receded, as if she were floating through it.

The war too, even now, seemed to pass her by. And yet it held enough stark reality to make her feel otherwise – daily the newspaper headlines, the sight of maimed and blinded men on the streets, Lord knows how many thousands more languishing in hospitals all over the realm, the sight of drawn blinds in almost every other street – to make it all real, so horribly real.

Sometimes she thought of Hamilton Bramwell. She rather felt he still survived, conducting operations from some safe distance, a command post well removed from the front, maybe still safely entrenched in some HQ in England. Other times her thoughts wandered to Freddy Dobson, a common soldier no doubt fighting in the trenches. That was if he was still alive or had he been killed, shot in what they called No Man’s Land or blown to pieces in some trench? If so had he been found or did he lay buried, unknown? Had he married his fiancée never uttering a word about his casual affair and a silly young girl he’d left pregnant with his baby? Did he and his wife have a child of their own, a child borne in wedlock? Another thought, if he’d been killed, his wife would now be a widow. Or maybe he’d been sent home maimed for life or blinded by chlorine gas, which the papers had reported to be like a sickly, greenish-yellow fog that drifted across open ground towards the still mainly unprotected Allied troops. Freddy’s wife would be left to nurse him for the rest of their lives, that once handsome and vigorous young man who had turned her heart, stricken and scarred forever.

Part of Madeleine’s reaction to that speculation was that such an end was exactly what he deserved, moments later to feel chastened and full of remorse at such a wicked thought. But it was no concern of hers any more. She had a new life now and it was wonderful. Whatever had befallen Freddy Dobson was way in the past.

Amazing how quickly summer had flown. Only two weeks to her wedding. Not that there’d been much for her to do, James having taken charge of almost everything.

It was to be a quiet affair, with few guests invited. ‘Far better that way don’t you think, my dear?’ he’d said, and as she nodded, glad enough for it to be so, continued, ‘Not as though I were marrying for the first time and I assumed you wouldn’t care for anything ostentatious in light of the present situation between yourself and your family.’

Even though it had been said kindly with smiles intended to comfort, his words had bitten deep. But she knew what he meant. There’d been no reply from her parents to his invitation, not even to decline, making her half wish he hadn’t included them at all.

There had been one reply; from her mother’s sister Maud whom she hadn’t seen in years but had hoped might accept but even that had been to decline with the excuse that a recent bout of ill health would prevent her attending. Whether true or not, Madeleine rather suspected she’d more than likely been influenced by her father.

No one on her side would be there so in a way it did come as a relief that it would be a simple wedding. Most were these days; hasty marriages, little to celebrate, young men dragged off to fight almost immediately upon being conscripted; the food shortage dictating meagre wedding breakfasts coupled with a natural reluctance to indulge in anything too showy while perhaps in almost every street more than one woman was grieving the loss of a husband to an enemy bullet or shell. So it was only right that her wedding should be a quiet one.

No bridal gown for her. She’d be wearing a simple, two-piece tailor-made tweed costume with a white blouse of hand-embroidered voile, together costing all of six pounds eighteen shillings and sixpence, expensive but which he’d insisted paying for, together with a lovely double row of pearls. All she’d taken with her on leaving home for that place for unmarried mothers had been just a couple of pieces of jewellery, left to forever regret the other fine pieces left behind. Now there was no longer need to fret. James was here now. Provided she wasn’t greedy he’d buy whatever jewellery took her fancy.