The Summer Before the War (25 page)

“The boy is very kind, but as Miss Nash will agree, my wife, Amberleigh, is the real writer in the family. Old Tillingham would tell you that I am a charming fellow and a complete hack. It's one of Tillingham's great qualities that he tells all his friends they are hacks and yet he manages to keep them.”

“He doesn't tell me I'm a hack,” said Daniel. “He is being very strict but encouraging.”

“Beauty is his weakness, which is perhaps why he is also kind to my wife,” said Frith. “But his literary nature will savage you in the end.”

“Will you join us for the festivities this evening, Mrs. Frith?” asked Eleanor. “We have plenty of room at our table.”

“I think we are promised elsewhere,” said Amberleigh, a shade too quickly. “We are to meet Miss Finch, the photographer, and Miss Buttles.” She turned away as if to scan the field for her friends, and her hat, held as a shade against the sun, obscured her face.

“The more the merrier,” said Eleanor. “I wonder if Miss Finch might be persuaded to take our photograph.”

“My wife and I live largely in seclusion,” said Frith, dropping his voice to add, “We do not look for social invitations given the business about my divorce.”

“It has been suggested that I confine myself to a more secluded life because of my German husband, but I think we have to resist such nonsense, don't you?” asked Eleanor, a note of ringing determination in her voice. “Besides,” she added, “it's a picnic and we are dining with everyone from farmers to Gypsies. There can be no drawing room ceremony here.”

“You must join us, old man,” said Daniel. “You and Amberleigh will completely enliven the proceedings.” Frith looked to his wife, who lowered her hat and gave the briefest nod of her head.

“If you please, Baroness, we will be happy to accept your kind invitation,” said Frith.

“Good, we will be a thoroughly bohemian party,” she replied, with an air of satisfaction. “And do call me Eleanor. We needn't stand on ceremony.”

Agatha Kent had promised herself that on this particular evening she would keep her opinions to herself. It was important to Colonel Wheaton and Lady Emily that they appear entirely nonchalant about entertaining an earl, and they were consequently wound as tightly as Swiss clocks and would have held their chins at an uncomfortably raised angle even if they had not been both attired in collars of the highest and stiffest appearance. Lady Emily's high-collared dress of thick black lace was decorated with a simple diamond pin. It was the size of a quail egg but did not sparkle, which indicated that it was the best kind of discreet old family jewel. Colonel Wheaton appeared in the dress uniform of his previous service, to which he had added a small armband with the insignia of his new Sussex Reserves. It appeared tight, but, thought Agatha, Colonel Wheaton would have been just as fidgety in a dressing gown given the importance of the occasion.

Lord North, who seemed to hold several military commissions as well as Ministry portfolios, strolled into the sitting room in a short dinner jacket and soft shoes. His wife wore plain black silk and a string of pearls long enough to wrap her throat several times. They were shorter than Agatha had expected and both built square across the shoulders. They might have been a pair of school inspectors or a brewer and his wife as they marched across the carpet to shake hands.

“On the road, you see,” said Lord North, by way of apology as to his dress. “Just the necessities and not a box more, I say.”

“We try to avoid any affair too formal while we are inspecting,” said his wife. “In case it sends the wrong message to the people working so hard to prepare the country.”

“I quite agree with you,” said Lady Emily, and Agatha could see her mentally whisking away the menu cards and getting rid of the smoked oyster course and perhaps the second pudding. “We shall be quite informal tonight. Just a small party. May I introduce Mr. Kent from the Foreign Office and his wife?”

She might have pulled off this sudden change in tone, for Agatha and John had both dressed with the proper sense of deference, John in a black tailcoat and Agatha suitably demure in her dark blue, but just then the butler announced the Mayor and his wife, and any sense of nonchalance was destroyed by their magnificence.

The Mayor's fur-trimmed scarlet robes and chain of office were a resplendent backdrop for Mrs. Fothergill's dress of gold thread with an overlay of transparent silk crepe de chine. Diamonds sparkled at her throat, waist, and wrists, while a tall hair ornament of peacock and burnt ostrich feathers threatened to dust the chandelier as she traversed the room.

“So delighted to be invited, dear Emily,” said Bettina, kissing Emily Wheaton on the cheek with her plumes bobbing like swords. “Agatha, how nice you look. So appropriate.” As she kissed Agatha, she whispered, “Where is the Earl? Are they making a formal entrance?”

“Lord North, Lady North—may I introduce to you our Mayor, Mr. Frederick Fothergill, and his dear wife,” said Colonel Wheaton. “You had most particularly requested to meet our local officials, and here he is.”

“Good, we've got the Ministry, the army, and the local view, so now maybe we can have a frank talk about the need for urgency and the Hun practically at our door,” said Lord North.

“Now do let us have dinner before you start stealing the cruet to make maps of sea defenses,” said his wife. “You will get indigestion again if you start lecturing while you eat.”

“Small price to pay. Must keep moving,” he said, turning to Lady Emily. “How many more stand between us and the dinner table, dear lady, only it doesn't do to tax the eager stomach with waiting.”

“Just Mr. Tillingham and the Professor,” said Lady Emily. “Here they come.”

“Tillingham? Tillingham?” asked Lord North. “I know that name…”

“He's that writer chap, American. He agitates for the Belgian refugees,” said his wife, sotto voce. “Wrote that piece in
The Times
that gave you hiccups.”

“Writers,” he said, loudly. “Always writing instead of doing. And then they have the most extraordinary opinions.”

“A man of action is always to be preferred,” said Mr. Tillingham. “Of course all such heroes require a scribe to record their great deeds, and I am your humble servant, Lord North.”

If he was offended by the comment, he did not show it, and his response seemed to soften the Earl, who shook his hand quite vigorously and said, “I think we met you at the Duchess's fundraising dinner in Belgrave Square?”

“Horrible crush, but some of the best minds in the country sat around the port that night,” said Tillingham. “I believe you were the heart of that discussion, Lord North?”

“And Mr. Tillingham comes with his own darling refugee,” interrupted Bettina. “The Professor is quite a marvelous addition to the cultural life of our town, and we are all perfectly fond of him.” She took the Professor's hand in both of hers and thrust it towards Lord North.

“How d'you do?” said Lord North. He shook the Professor's hand and raised his voice. “Do you speak English?”

“I am delighted to meet you and your lovely wife,” said the Professor.
“Enchanté, madame.”
He kissed Lady North's hand.

“Only it's difficult to get any organization going when these chaps insist on speaking some other language,” said Lord North. “Hard enough running a war in English.”

“How ever did we defeat the Boers?” said Agatha. The words escaped before she could think, and she tried hard to look serene and hoped John would not step on her foot.

“How indeed, Mrs. Kent, you are quite right to ask,” said Lord North. “If you ask me, we could have been in Mafeking six months earlier if we hadn't had to translate all the signposts and work with different railway gauges.”

“Our refugees are so simple and so contented when they can have a good dinner and a pipe,” interrupted Bettina. Agatha bit her tongue not to bring up the departure of Bettina's own refugees, the accountant and his wife, who had removed themselves to a hotel in Bexhill after just a week of her overbearing hospitality. “They are taking to knitting as if they were simple English peasants,” Bettina added.

Agatha felt her mouth begin to twitch, and she lowered her eyes in an attempt to hide her amusement.

“Mrs. Fothergill has such an admirable grasp of the essential nature of our refugee guests,” said John, lofting his brows in an expression of utmost innocence. “If you had to sum them up for Lord North, in a word or two, Mrs. Fothergill?” He let the question trail off as Bettina blushed for pleasure.

“Why, I would call them simple, Mr. Kent,” she answered, and Agatha was forced to press her gloved hand to her lips and pretend to cough.

“I am sure the lady does not mean to call us simpletons?” said the Professor.

“Of course not, Professor,” said Bettina, her feathers quivering. “I only meant—” She broke off in confusion as to what she might say next.

“Well, I hope the desire for a simple life around one's own hearth, with a good dinner and a good wife, might just as easily describe us English,” said Colonel Wheaton.

“And I can only hope we would be half as grateful were we driven from our land,” said Agatha.

“The English spirit will not stand to be driven out of its land,” said Mr. Tillingham, in the rapturous way he spoke when trying on a phrase for possible posterity. “But will surely stand to its defenses to the last man and boy.”

“First we need the defenses to which we can stand,” said Lord North. “So far I've seen more Boy Scouts on patrol than soldiers, and we are weeks behind in gathering sandbags and building defensive positions.”

“As the Rye Voluntary Aid Detachment President, I can assure you my ladies are quite ready to be called into action,” said Bettina. “We are ready to serve at a moment's notice.”

“I'm happy to hear it,” said Lady North, looking with some skepticism at Bettina's attire.

“Maggots, lice, suppurating sores,” said her husband with relish. “It's going to be bloody work and quite a shock for your average volunteer bandage roller.”

Bettina gave a muffled groan and turned her head aside.

“We are to be a convalescent hospital,” said Lady Emily faintly. She sat down rather abruptly on a chaise longue. “We plan to make our own beef tea and to offer plenty of board games in the conservatory.”

“I'm sure Lord North merely seeks to brace us up with his bluntness,” said John. “But we should be careful not to indulge in any scaremongering.”

“Scaremongering?” said Lord North. “You Whitehall chaps can peddle your propaganda of Berlin by Christmas, but I'm planning to fight back a full invasion, the Hun pillaging up the London Road, bayoneting our children and violating our women.” He banged his fist on a small table, and Bettina Fothergill gave out a slight shriek.

“I feel quite faint at the thought,” she said. “What must you feel, dear Lady Emily, to have your own daughter married to one of…one of them?” There was an uncomfortable stiffening of faces around the room, and Agatha saw Emily Wheaton press her lips together until they were bloodless.

“It's the damned Prussians,” said Colonel Wheaton. “My daughter's husband is from Saxony, landowning aristocracy going back to the Crusades. Not the same thing at all.”

“We mean no disrespect to the poor young man,” said the Mayor. “My wife has only been most concerned for you and for your daughter, Lady Emily.”

“My daughter is happily hopping with Mrs. Kent's nephews and a whole group of young people,” said Lady Wheaton, her voice icy. “I believe your son has also gone with them, Lord North?” she added.

“Yes, he was happy to be spared another official dinner party,” he replied.

“The last day of the hops is always quite the festival,” said Agatha, trying not to sigh. “Country dancing, games, performances, dinner by the river—they will be having such fun.”

“A large festival is it?” said Lord North.

“Impossibly so,” said Bettina. “All kinds of rough types allowed. I never attend.”

“The farm in question is leased from us, and my son and daughter always give their patronage to the farmer on the last day of hopping,” said Lady Wheaton. “We regard it as a duty to participate, and I hope my children are not afraid to offer thanks to those below them.”

“What better representation of the nation for which we fight than town and country, rich and poor, young and old, coming together in the timeless gathering in of the crops of the field?” said Lord North. “I believe Lady North and I would like to take a look at these festivities.”

“Are you sure?” said Colonel Wheaton. “Our Lady Mayoress is correct that it can become quite colorful and raucous.”

“What is this ‘raucous'?” said the Professor. “My child has been at this entertainment,
n'est-ce pas?
”

“Oh, it's just country dancing and local entertainment,” said Agatha.

“All perfectly proper,” said Colonel Wheaton. “Only I wasn't sure our lovely wives would care to sit on a plank over two barrels just to watch a lot of people gallop about the grass.”

“Quite pastoral,” added Mr. Tillingham. “Though as with all good pastorals, one delights in spotting the storm on the horizon and the wolf hidden in the thicket.”

“There are wolves?” asked the Professor.

“Figure of speech, dear sir,” said Mr. Tillingham. “Some years they have quite a good Gypsy band. I took a young Italian artist once and he was quite struck.”

“Well, I would love to go,” said Lady North, folding her fan with finality. “To serve the people we must go to the people.”

“Perhaps the poor hop pickers should to be left in peace to enjoy their holiday,” said Agatha. “They have worked very hard, and they may not feel able to celebrate as freely with such eminent visitors.”