The Second-last Woman in England (6 page)

Outside, the unseasonal September day was continuing to heat up, the air muggy so that Cecil’s shirt stuck unpleasantly to his back and his collar clung to his neck.

Harriet was outside already, winding down the windows of the Morris Oxford. The old car had been standing in direct sunlight all morning and inside she would now be as hot as the engine room of an 80-ton liner.

Cecil came down the steps with a cheery wave which Harriet chose to ignore.

‘Jolly hot in here, I expect,’ he observed, opening the car door and standing back to let a rush of hot air come out. He considered removing his blazer for the journey, but decided against it. They could always drive with the windows wound down.

The children appeared in the doorway and made their way down the front steps, Anne in a gaily coloured tartan pinafore, Julius rather surprisingly in a large knitted Fair Isle sweater. Behind them stood a tall and rather gaunt-looking girl, cheaply dressed, who watched their departure with a mixture of curiosity and something else that he couldn’t quite read. The new nanny, presumably. Cecil gave an encouraging smile which caused her to frown.

‘What ho, Pops,’ remarked Julius in that ultra-informal manner he had recently adopted, the sole purpose of which appeared to be to irritate.

‘Where on earth did you get that ghastly sweater, Julius? Please remove it and put on your blazer. You resemble some sort of grammar school jazz fan.’

‘Right-ho,’ said Julius, turning obligingly and going back into the house.

‘Do
I
resemble a grammar school jazz fan, too, Daddy?’ asked Anne very seriously as she paused beside the car to study her reflection in the car window.

‘Thankfully, no, you do not, Anne. You resemble a nice little girl who is about to go and lunch at her uncle and aunt’s. Now, hop to it, we are going to be rather late.’

The reason for the lateness was not mentioned but, as Anne climbed in to the back seat, yelping as her bare thighs touched the hot seat leather, he caught Harriet’s eye over the roof of the Oxford. She raised both eyebrows, a gesture that meant: I presume you intend to tell me what’s going on, and in the meantime is there anything I ought to be worried about?

He nodded briefly which meant: As head of the household I have the situation well in hand and there is nothing you need be concerned about.

Julius returned, having discarded the Fair Isle sweater and now sporting a navy blazer, and got wordlessly into the car.

Once they were all seated Cecil pressed the Oxford’s starter button. She was a 1930 Morris Oxford Saloon, practically vintage now, of course, but she started first time. He studied the view in the rear mirror, signalled his intention to pull out and moved out from the kerbside.

Harriet and the children sat motionless and silent, staring straight ahead.

Cecil settled back into his seat determined not to let the interview with the policemen spoil the drive. The roads were pocked and cratered still from the bombing, and the congestion nowadays was atrocious (every man and his dog appeared to have a motor car since the war had ended) yet it was a pleasant enough run to Mumford’s once past the Edgware Road.

‘Crater,’ remarked Harriet.

There was indeed a crater, stretching halfway across the road and so choked with rosebay willowherb one wondered if the road had simply been abandoned as a bad job. And in St John’s Wood too! Cecil negotiated the obstacle with some aplomb, followed, a little further on, by a second, and then an annoying new roundabout at the Finchley Road turn-off. He sailed through Swiss Cottage without further incident and before long they were approaching the outskirts of the Heath.

The Mumfords lived in All Saints Crescent, a tree-lined semicircular avenue on the south side of Hampstead Heath. Their house, a sprawling Victorian mansion, was designed for a nineteenth century family with an average of eight children plus sundry servants. Consequently Leo and Felicity rattled around in it like spectators at a Test match in winter.

The driveway already contained four cars including Leo’s silver 1950 Jaguar Roadster which was parked loudly and showily outside the house and had obviously been polished that morning. Cecil squeezed the Oxford in between a Vanguard and another, somewhat newer, Morris, crunching to a noisy stop on the gravel. The engine spluttered for a moment then fell satisfyingly silent. They had arrived.

‘We have arrived, safe and sound,’ Cecil announced, because this was expected. It was by way of being a family joke after so many years, and there was an unspoken rule that no one moved, no one opened the car door or gathered their belongings together until the ignition had been turned off and these immortal words spoken. It was the same with ‘Homeward bound!’ on the homeward journey.

Really, it was like any other day; a normal trip on a normal day.

Cecil climbed out of the Oxford and smoothed down his trousers. As the rest of his family sorted themselves out he strode up to the front door and rapped on the giant brass knocker that was shaped, in somewhat vulgar fashion, like an elephant with a ring in its mouth. The boom of the knocker had hardly had time to resonate around the big old house when the door was flung open and Leo Mumford stood there brandishing a cocktail.

‘Cecil, old man! How the devil are you?’ he said by way of greeting.

‘Mumford. How are you?’ Cecil replied.

It was impossible to call him ‘Leo’ even though Mumford had been his brother-in-law for the best part of seven years. Today Mumford was in a crisp, white linen shirt. He and Cecil had the same shirt-maker and yet on Leo the self-same shirt—open at the neck, tucked into loose-fitting cream-coloured flannels—took on an entirely different air. It made Cecil think of that summer in St Tropez in ’38. An air of foreignness, then? But Mumford was as English as the Queen. He was more English than the Queen’s husband, at any rate. And besides, Mumford worked at the BBC.

‘Bit early for that, isn’t it?’ Cecil said, indicating the transparent liquid in Leo’s glass, an olive bobbing decadently on its surface.

‘A martini? Never too early for one of those, old man.’

Mumford, as usual, was trying just a little too hard but, when all was said and done, the fellow had married one’s little sister. Cecil softened a little.

‘Oh well, I expect you’re right,’ he agreed and, as he suspected Mumford intended to clap him on the shoulder, he side-stepped neatly.

‘Go on through, Ceece. The gang’s out in the back garden,’ said Leo, waving his martini in that general direction.

The gang! Did Mumford imagine himself on the film set of some American musical?

With a growing sense of foreboding, Cecil entered the hallway.

His brother-in-law’s house was painted egg-yolk yellow and was stuffed with moulded, bakelite and laminated furniture—ghastly receptacles that Mumford called ‘free-flow’ chairs and hideous coffee tables which swept upwards at either end like meringue desserts and a piece he claimed was a genuine Barbara Hepworth—furniture one never felt inclined to actually sit on and artwork one never wanted to look at.

The French doors at the rear of the house were open and Cecil could hear voices beyond—a man laughing, a woman making some arch reply and a peal of laughter from several others—and he felt a shudder of dismay. Surely this wasn’t going be one of those dreadful Continental affairs, everyone standing around in the garden juggling a plate and a fork in one hand and a glass in the other? Were they not going to sit down to lunch? What was it about a warm, sunny day that made otherwise rational people abandon a perfectly civilised lunch around a table in an elegant dining room just so they could stand about in the garden?

Beyond the French doors he could make out perhaps a dozen people in shirt sleeves and sleeveless summer dresses standing in a group on the lawn. The men all wore brightly coloured silk scarves tucked into their open-necked shirts like a badge that announced their BBC-ness. Everyone looked very young. Cecil paused a moment in the doorway.

‘Cecil.’

One member of the circle broke free and came over to him.

‘Felicity. How are you?’

Brother and sister greeted each other with a slight kiss on the cheek and a vague touch of hands then stepped apart.

Felicity looked unwell. The sunshine did not suit her. Her frame, always on the slim side, looked almost gaunt; her skin, always on the pale side, took on an unhealthy pallor in the sudden brightness of this September afternoon. And she had a knack for wearing something unflattering. Today it was a floral print frock with very short sleeves gathered at the shoulders and a hat of some undistinguished design in an unwise shade of mauve. One couldn’t quite put one’s finger on what exactly didn’t work—no doubt Harriet could, that was very much her line of country—one simply knew that in a fashion sense Felicity rarely pulled it off.

She smiled at him now a trifle wearily. ‘I’m quite well, thank you, Cecil. We’re having a fork lunch in the garden. I know you’ll hate it,’ she said simply and resignedly as though such trials must be borne quietly and with the minimum of fuss.

‘Ah well. Can’t be helped.’ No use denying his dislike of it. ‘Leo’s idea?’

‘Naturally … Harriet, my dear. How are you? Hello, Anne darling.’

When Felicity leant over to kiss her, Anne shied away in horror and ducked behind her mother. Clearly disconcerted, Felicity straightened up and smoothed down her skirt.

‘Is Anne perhaps a little overwrought?’

‘Oh, I dare say,’ said Harriet, to whom Anne’s behaviour had long ceased to be a subject for comment.

‘And Julius. My! How you’ve grown!’

‘I’m afraid it’s inevitable, Aunt Felicity,’ said Julius, thrusting his hands into his pockets in his man-of-the-world stance. ‘At our age one never stays the same height.’

‘It’s really not our fault,’ explained Anne, wiping a smear of scarlet lipstick from her cheek then studying her reddened fingertips thoughtfully.

Felicity laughed, her head back, her mouth slightly open, her lips remaining in a perfectly straight line and Anne and Julius observed her with polite interest. Cecil smiled. It really was a pity she and Mumford had no children of their own, Felicity was good with the youngsters. Most women were, of course, but Felicity had that something extra—an ability to get down to their level; yes, that was it in a nutshell.

And it no doubt explained the extraordinary success of the hippo.

‘Would you like to help yourselves to lemonade, children?’ she said. ‘There’s a lovely lot of strawberry ice-cream for afters, too,’ she added and Anne and Julius smiled obligingly. They wandered off in the direction indicated by Felicity, where a long trestle table was set up, covered with a white cloth and a mountain of perfectly good food that was about to be spoiled by wasps and flies and falling leaves and pollen and, oh yes, if they were really lucky, a summer shower.

Julius was humming to himself. It was a familiar tune though for a moment Cecil couldn’t quite place it.

‘And you, Cecil? What would you like to drink? Leo will try to force a martini on you.’

It was the hippo song, of course, that Julius was humming.
Hip,
hip, hip hooray! It’s hip hip hippo day!
Or something like that. And there was a second line too though Cecil couldn’t quite remember the words. Daft, really, but the children appeared to like it. He glanced at Felicity as she poured him a drink but she appeared not to have heard Julius’s rendition of her theme song. Not Felicity’s theme song really, the
Hippo and Friends
theme song.

‘Bit early for martinis, isn’t it?’ he repeated, for something to say.

Hippo and Friends
was a popular children’s television program broadcast by the BBC at five o’clock on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Felicity was the presenter. It was a ludicrous sort of profession really, but there you were—not everyone could be, nor wished to be, a doctor or a policeman or to work in a law firm or a shipping firm. No doubt the war was largely to blame—Felicity had been in the ATS manning a battery in Victoria during much of it and, by all accounts, had acquitted herself awfully well. He had expected that once the war was over she would marry and have a family—most of those young girls did, eventually. Instead she had landed a job in radio—the announcer between programs. She had that sort of voice—more BBC than the BBC itself. And that was where she had met Leo. Now of course there was Television, which was purely for entertainment, and most people didn’t even own, nor wished to own, a set, and yet here she was presenting a program about a hippo. And his friends.

Hip, hip, hip hooray
. Damn catchy tune, though.

Harriet stepped into the garden and came over already carrying a martini. She moved gracefully in white shoes with a wicked stiletto heel that spiked the lawn as effectively as a golf tee would on the centre court at Wimbledon. But as the lawn was already pocked it was reasonable to assume every other lady had on similar shoes—except Felicity—and that Leo wasn’t overly concerned. Or hadn’t properly thought through his plan, which was more likely.

Harriet shot Cecil a glance (oh Lord, the Rocastle thing!) and for a moment it appeared certain she was going to come over to demand an explanation. He prepared to produce his nothing-to-worry-about smile. But she veered off at the last moment and he saw with surprise that Simon was here.

Relieved, he took a sip of lemonade. ‘Certainly wasn’t expecting to see Simon here,’ he remarked to Felicity, who had remained standing beside him and looked in no hurry to return to her guests.

‘Oh yes. He and Leo have become quite chummy,’ she replied and it was hard to tell if she approved of this chumminess or not. ‘The BBC is doing a program about Spitfires.’

‘Good God, not another one? Haven’t we heard enough about the war? Surely there can’t be any more stories left to tell?’

‘Apparently there are. At any rate, Leo has lined Simon up to be technical advisor.’

‘Well,’ was all Cecil could think of to say. What he wanted to say was, why in God’s name would Simon Paget wish to get himself caught up in some ghastly Television program? Did Harriet know about this? Quite probably she did. She did have an unnerving habit of dropping some revelation into the conversation and then making one feel foolish for not having known it oneself:
Oh yes I’ve known that
for simply ages—did you really not know?
It was unsettling. And Paget was Harriet’s brother, after all. Yet Cecil had an idea she didn’t know. He had another idea that she wouldn’t actually care one way or the other.