A Countess Below Stairs

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ollie had heard. As though the words had been a physical blow, the colour drained from her face, she bent her bright head and the small hand which had been proudly holding up the flounces of her skirt dropped to her side. In shocked silence, Madame Duparc and the shopgirls stared at the woman who had done this deed.

Tom Byrne had checked his first steps towards his sister to control a rage so murderous that it terrified him. He wanted to shake Muriel till her teeth rattled, to press his fingers into her throat. Horrified to find these feelings in himself, he stood stock-still in the middle of the floor like a bewildered bull.

It was the Lady Lavinia, with her well-bred indifference, who saved the moment by suggesting an alteration to Muriel’s train and the fitting continued.

But when it was over and it came to carrying out the next part of the programme, Ollie quietly refused to co-operate. To the suggestion that she should now join the other bridesmaids for luncheon at the Ritz, the Honourable Olive gave a low-voiced but unalterable ‘No’. She wasn’t, she said, hungry and, clinging to Anna’s hand, she added that she thought she would like to go home.

‘I can’t take you home yet, love,’ said Tom desperately distressed - turning, with appeal in his nice brown eyes, to the Lady Lavinia Nettleford and Cynthia Smythe. Surely they would release him, let him attend to his sister? But in the eyes of Muriel’s adult bridesmaids there was only a desire, implacable as the urge of a wildebeest towards a water hole, for luncheon at the Ritz.

‘Well, really,’ said Muriel, ‘all that fuss just because I said—’

But even she did not repeat what she had said.

Anna now took charge. Her rage had been as instant and murderous as Tom’s, but it had been extinguished by an emotion even more intense: a deep pity for the man who had linked his life with a woman such as this. Now she rejected this too, bent only on helping Ollie.

‘Perhaps it would be nice if you came home with me and we made cinnamon toast and I showed you a little dog that has in his stomach the diamond that the Empress Elizabeth gave to Rastrelli and also a stuffed grandmother?’

Ollie, though she did not speak, indicated her approval by nodding into Anna’s skirts and Tom looked at her with gratitude.

But, in the event, they shared Lord Westerholme’s taxi. Arriving as planned to escort Muriel to lunch, Rupert was told that she preferred to stay behind and shop.

‘Oh?’

Muriel glanced up at him sharply. It had been her intention to punish her fiancé by depriving him of her company, for it seemed to her that in concealing Ollie’s handicap he had been deceitful and underhand. Now, too late, she saw her mistake. The flash of anger in Rupert’s eyes had only lasted a moment, but it had been unmistakable.

‘In that case I’ll get myself off to Aspell’s,’ he said, turning away. ‘I’ve got a taxi waiting. Does anyone want a lift?’

So it was arranged that Rupert would drop off Anna and Ollie, before proceeding to the queen’s jewellers to purchase Muriel’s bridal gift.

‘Who was that girl?’ asked the Lady Lavinia, looking after Anna as she led Ollie away. ‘The foreign one?’

Muriel shrugged. ‘Just one of the Mersham domestics. She seems to have forgotten her place and cadged a lift to town. A Russian refugee. Why do you ask?’

‘She reminds me of someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Actually, our new chauffeur. He’s a foreigner, too.’

And the Lady Lavinia sighed. For Sergei was rather more than a foreigner … To have the fur rug tucked round one’s knees by him, to have him hold open the car door and see him smile that devastating yet protective smile, to catch the warmth in those dark, long-lashed, gold-flecked eyes was to feel so cherished, so curiously excited, that it was best not to think of it. Not that she made an idiot of herself like her four sisters did, liking him to Rudolf Valentino, carrying on like kitchen maids. Sergei was, in fact, a great deal better-looking than Valentino - taller, stronger, in every way more manly -but that was neither here nor there. Whatever he had been in his native land, a chauffeur was a chauffeur. It was a good job she had given him the afternoon off. With Mama and the younger girls still in Northumberland, Hermione and Priscilla were quite capable of ordering him to take them on joyrides round the park.

But Tom Byrne was waiting — and with Cynthia docilely in attendance, Lavinia swept off to the powder room to prepare for the luncheon which she hoped would seal her fate.

----*

Ollie sat between Rupert and Anna in the taxi as it crawled down Piccadilly, festooned with bunting for the victory parade. She was still very white and quiet and Rupert, sensing her distress, was too wise to ask what had happened. Instead he watched as Anna, summoning up all her forces, turned to attack the little girl.

‘So. You wish to sit there like a small, wet blancmange because someone has said a word to you.’

‘It’s not a very nice word,’ said Ollie, in a thread of a voice.

‘Nice, nasty … It’s a word,’ said Anna shrugging. ‘It means someone who is lame. Well, you are lame. You are also pretty and good and have about one hundred and twenty people who love you very much and a hedgehog called Alexander. To be frightened by a word is an idiocy and you know this very well. In fact, I think I am a little bit ashamed of you.’

‘Are you?’ said Ollie. A trace of colour was returning to her cheeks.

‘Yes, I am. Of course, if you wish to be sad on purpose that is all right. We can all be sad. Lord Westerholme can be sad because under his shoulder is a piece of shrapnel and this gives him pain when he lifts his arm,’ said Anna, ignoring Rupert’s quick look of surprise. ‘And I could cry almost immediately because my father is dead and they have taken away all our houses—’

‘Did you have a lot of houses?’ asked Ollie, momentarily diverted.

Anna bit her lip and Rupert at his most silky, said, ‘In Russia all the housemaids have a lot of houses, Ollie.’

Not quite understanding, Ollie nevertheless responded to the feeling of warmth and affection which had grown up, almost tangibly, in the back of the taxi. And able, now, to put the dread question into words, she asked:

‘Will Muriel still want me to be a bridesmaid?’

Rupert, not knowing the reason for the question, answered it in a voice that she had never heard him use.

‘Ollie,’ said Lord Westerholme, taking both her hands in his, ‘if you are not a bridesmaid at my wedding then there will be no wedding, and that I swear!’

Ollie sighed and let her head fall back on to the seat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was silly.’

Anna nodded, conceding this. Then, allowing the tenderness to come back into her voice she said, ‘Do you know what is best of all? When one has been hurt or saddened, then suddenly to turn everything upside down and be very happy. So I think we should have an absolutely beautiful afternoon - an afternoon that you can lie in bed and remember for years and years.’

‘Can we do that?’ asked Ollie.

‘Most certainly,’ said Anna.

Anna was as good as her word. It was into an enchanted world that she now led Ollie Byrne.

Pinny, opening the door of her little mews house, did not need Anna’s hurried aside to see that the child had had a shock. To the information, tendered by Ollie, that she was not tired or hungry and almost never went to the lavatory. Pinny listened attentively and with respect. Half an hour later, Ollie, having drunk two glasses of milk and eaten a large helping of macaroni cheese, was lying on the sofa feeding the budgerigar the strips of cinnamon toast that were his passion.

But Pinny’s house was only the beginning. Anna had run upstairs to change into her only ‘good’ dress — a green velveteen which Kira had sent from Paris. The Countess Grazinsky gathered up shawls, leaking packets of tea and lorgnettes, and when Pinny was satisfied that the little girl was properly rested they set off for the Russian Club.

For the rest of her childhood, if anyone asked Ollie what she wanted to be when she grew up, she always replied: ‘A Russian.’ The dub was on the first floor of a large, dilapidated house behind Paddington Station, but the trains which shook its foundations every few minutes might have been travelling, not to Plymouth but to Minsk, not to Torquay but to Vladimir the Great, so exotic and foreign were its delights.

For there really was a stuffed grandmother. She lived - so everyone swore - in a most beautiful and gaily painted chest which stood under one window. The chest was heavily padlocked and covered with a crimson gypsy shawl and no one would have dreamt of putting down a tray of glasses or a plate on it without saying, ‘Sorry Baboushka’, or ‘Forgive me, Ancient One’. Nor was there anything sad about her, as Anna was quick to explain. For the old lady had belonged to the two pale young men, Boris and Andrey, who now owned the house the club was in and spent their time at a corner table playing Halma and planning to assassinate Lenin. Boris and Andrey had adored the old lady and when she died had, with the help of a famous Egyptologist, found this way of keeping her with them when they fled then-native land. Or so they said.

Above the Baboushka there hung an icon of St Cunouphrius, the saint who grew a beard to cover his nakedness and whose stick-like arms and little, white legs were all that protruded, wistfully, from behind the curlicues of coal-black hair. Beside him, there was another picture showing forty martyred bishops busily freezing to death in their shifts on an ice floe, and beneath them was a small shrine containing a crimson icon lamp, a bunch of withered marigolds, a lump of bread and a packet of Cerebos salt. There was an enormous, stuttering, smouldering samovar of fluted brass…

And there was Pupsik himself, the mythical dachshund, his sagging extremeties hanging exhaustedly over the edges of a low footstool which had become a kind of altar. Pupsik, to whom his owner the Baroness de Wodzka had fed, in a moment of panic on the Finnish border, the Rastrelli diamond embedded in a chunk of liver sausage. A priceless diamond, the baroness’ only remaining jewel which somehow, mysteriously, the ancient, wheezing animal had managed to retain in some diverticular abnormality along the clogged and malodorous drainpipe of its body … Every day during the six months of his quarantine, the baroness had rung the kennels, terrifying the kennel-maids with her imperious, ‘Veil? ‘ass ‘e voided?’

But Pupsik, though functioning normally in other respects, had not voided the jewel.

Bets had been laid, horrendous physiological disputes had split the club - but Pupsik, returning from quarantine to find himself famous and feted, continued to deprive the baroness of the jewel which would have reunited her with her children in America, secured her a livelihood, a home.

Anna’s entry, with her mother, her governess and Ollie, was the signal for an explosion of hugs, kisses and endearments. The Princess Chirkovsky, Sergei’s mother, enveloped her in an enormous motheaten chinchilla stole; a grey-bearded poet who had been writing verses to her since she was six years old rushed forward with his latest ode. Colonel Terek, who had parked his taxi in the mews, went for more vodka…

For a few moments, Anna gave herself up to the joy of being welcomed. Then she held up her hand and, switching to English, said: ‘I have brought you a very special friend of mine, Miss Olive Byrne. She has been a little bit sad and I have told her that here it is possible to be instantly and completely happy. Was I correct?’

And the party began.

An hour later, Ollie had reached unimaginable heights of glory. Her health had been drunk and the glasses thrown away so that no lesser toast could ever be drunk than the one dedicated to her. Gentlemen behaved in this way in the presence of beautiful women, Anna explained, and she must accustom herself to it. Now she was not only sitting on the stuffed grandmother, but holding in her arms the greater part of the dachshund, Pupsik, bestowed on her by the Baroness de Wodzka herself. On either side of her, as unobtrusively watchful as the Praetorian guard, stood Pinny and Sergei’s erstwhile governess, Miss King. Boris and An-drey, the pale young counter-revolutionaries, were playing the balalaika; Princess Chirkovsky, waving her arms, was expounding to Anna’s mother her latest, absolutely sure-fire method of retrieving the family fortunes: the setting up of a piroshki stall on Paddington Station.

As for Anna, she was everywhere - dancing with a huge blond Cossack, flirting with the eighty-year-old admiral who had lost an eye in the Tsushima Straits, picking up her mother’s shawls - but always returning to Ollie to give the little girl a hug, a smile.

‘Everyone wants to be with Anna, don’t they?’ she said to Pinny, to whom she could have said nothing that would endear her more.

But suddenly something happened. Anna had stopped dancing and was standing stock-still in the centre of the room, her face turned to the door. The colour drained from her cheeks; her clasped hands flew to her mouth…

Then everyone saw what Anna had seen; a tall, tanned, staggeringly handsome man in a dove grey uniform with a high collar, standing in the doorway. The next second, pandemonium broke loose. The Princess Chirkovsky rose, let out a scream and rushed forward, overturning her glass of tea. Miss King, the Countess Grazinsky and a crowd of others followed. Pupsik woke, barked, and slithered out of Ollie’s arms on to the floor.

Only Anna stood still in the centre of the room hugging her joy.

Then Sergei saw her and parted the people that were between them and she was in his arms. They had shared a childhood and a country. They had not seen each other for three years and, for two of them, Anna had believed him lost. Now, even their excited ebullient compatriots were silent, awed by the measure of their joy.

‘Annushka! Milenkaya…dorogaya. . .‘He put up a finger, brushed away her tears. ‘Is it you … is it really you?’

Anna could not speak. She just stood looking up at him, letting the tears run down her face, while Sergei pulled her close to hug her, then away so that he could see her and closer once again.

But even in this moment of homecoming and happiness, Anna did not long forget the little girl whose wound she had set herself to heal, and presently she dried her eyes and led her cousin over to where Ollie sat.

‘Sergei,’ she said, ‘I want you to meet a very special friend of mine. Miss Olive Byrne.’

Sergei, from his great height, looked down on Ollie. He clicked his heels and bowed. Then he reached for OHie’s hand, turned it over and kissed the palm.

‘Enchante, mademoiselle,’ he said gravely. ‘Permit me to say that all my life I have wanted to meet a girl with hair the colour of a sunset over the steppes.’

Ollie tilted her head at him. Sergei’s gold-flecked eyes were warm and tender, the smile that lit his lean, tanned face and showed his dazzling teeth was unforced, caressing and perfectly sincere.

She stared down at her kissed palm and up again. And unhesitatingly, uncomplainingly, joined the long, long line of women that were in love with Anna’s Cousin Sergei.

----*

While Ollie was being feted at the Russian Club, Rupert was being led into an upstairs room at Aspell’s, the discreet and world-famous jeweller in Bond Street. Mr Aspell had intended to deal with a client such as Lord Westerholme himself, but Rupert was early; Mr Aspell was still at lunch and it was to old Mr Stewart, whose dry and scholarly exterior hid a deep and romantic passion for rare stones and their history, that Rupert explained his errand.

‘Sapphires … Ah, yes.’ The dry fingertips met, the gold pince-nez fixed themselves on the good-looking young nobleman. ‘What kind of sapphires had you in mind, my lord?’

Rupert smiled. ‘I’m afraid I thought sapphires were just sapphires.’

‘Oh, dear me, no! No, no, not at all.’ Mr Stewart, shaking his bald head, looked quite upset. ‘There are sapphires so dark as to seem almost black in certain lights. Siamese sapphires are like that. So much so that they have been used as mourning jewels during certain periods of history. Then again the Australian stones are almost turquoise with a light, translucent quality that is very characteristic. They’re not quite so valuable, but very pleasing. Whereas certain star sapphires are quite grey intone …’

‘I see. Well then I’m afraid the limitation may be one of price. I’m not very well off.’

Mr Stewart nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, quite. Well, this is an exceptional time to pick up a bargain. We are getting some quite outstanding pieces at a very reasonable price from the Russian emigres. For example, we would be in a position to offer you the Galychev necklace of one hundred and seven cabochon sapphires, each stone weighing not less than thirty carats. Or we are acting as agents for Madame Bogdanin - she is selling off a chain of Burmese stones with an exceptionally fine gold-beaded mounting by Faberge. No one, in my view, can set jewels like the Russians.’ He sighed. ‘Of course, if I could have offered you the Grazinsky sapphires…’

Rupert leaned forward, wondering why his heart had begun to race. ‘The Grazinsky sapphires?’ he prompted. Mr Stewart nodded. ‘I have never seen such sapphires. Never. It was as if God had at that moment invented the colour blue and wanted it preserved for ever in those stones. It was almost a religious experience to look at them.’

He glanced up, suddenly anxious, for he was aware that of late he had begun to reminisce and ramble in a way that betrayed his age. But the earl’s silence was one of total attention.

‘All the Grazinsky jewels were like that. Beyond price, beyond belief… There was a triple row of pearls with which I suppose one could now purchase Blenheim Palace. I’ve never seen such pearls anywhere. Even in Russia they were a legend and what country understands pearls like the Russians do? Every nursemaid pushing a perambulator has a kokoshnik studded with them. But these… They had the Potempkin pendant, too, and of course the emeralds. They were one of the great showpieces of the world, the Grazinsky emeralds.’

‘You sound as though you have seen them yourself?’ said Rupert.

The old man nodded. ‘Yes, I went out to Russia … oh, twelve years ago it would be now. The autumn of 1908.1 was collecting material for a monograph on eighteenth century court jewellery. The period of the Empress Elizabeth.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘It’s my speciality. It may seem dry to you, but I assure you—’

‘No, no, not at all,’ said Rupert. ‘I’m extremely interested. Did you actually meet the Grazinskys?’

‘I didn’t just meet them, I stayed with them. They invited me for as long as I wished. People tell me,’ said Mr Stewart, removing his spectacles and polishing them, ‘that Russia was corrupt, that the revolution was necessary - and I have no doubt that they are correct. But all I can say is that never in my life have I experienced such hospitality … such democracy as I experienced in that house. But I must say their attitude to their jewels amazed me.’

‘In what way?’

‘It’s not easy to put it into words. To a certain extent, all Russians are like that. They treat their jewels -not carelessly, exactly - on the contrary, they glory in them. After all they’re halfway to the Orient. But it’s almost as if they thought of them as… family friends or household pets. For example the Grazinskys didn’t keep anything in the bank - it was all just lying about the house. Once -1 really couldn’t believe my eyes -1 was invited into one of the upstairs salons and found the baby lying on a bearskin rug - and playing with the Crown of Kazan!’

He looked up to gauge the effect of this on his client.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to enlighten me,’ said Rupert. ‘I’m very ignorant about jewellery. What is the Crown of Kazan?’

‘You may well ask, my lord. It’s a fifteenth century piece; it ought to be in a museum, let alone a bank. Enamelled, gold-studded with uncut rubies and diamonds … The countess used to wear it to costume balls - and there was the little boy dribbling on it! His sister had given it to him because it was so pretty, she said, and would help him to cut beautiful teeth.’

Rupert waited, willing him to go on. ‘She sounds a very enterprising child,’ he said.

‘Oh, she was, she was,’ the old man continued. ‘A most unusual child. Not pretty exactly but … it was difficult to leave a room that she was in. Her parents thought the world of her, of course. I remember her mother going out to a charity gala one evening. She was wearing the diamond tiara that Alexander the Second bought for the Princess Dolgoruky - and a necklace of sunflower seedsl Anna had made it for her, so she wore it to the tsar’s box at the Maryinsky!’ He paused, shaking his bald head. ‘I’ve often wondered what happened to them. There were rumours that they’d lost everything -robbed by their old wet nurse, I’ve heard. She was an incredible woman - used to wear the finger of some Georgian saint round her neck; nasty looking thing. Her people came from a cave village near the Turkish border; there must have been dreadful poverty there. I suppose the temptation was just too much for her.’

‘None of the Grazinsky jewels have reached the European market, then?’ asked Rupert.

‘None, my lord, you can be sure of that.’

‘And if they did?’

‘If they did, I fancy you could buy an English county with what they’d fetch. And now to business. In my view you’d do best to consider the Bogdanian parure. The stones are a little pale, perhaps, but magnificently cut and the price is not at all unreasonable. If you would care to come with me to the strongroom …’

----*

Muriel had stayed behind at Fortman’s. As an engaged woman within four weeks of marriage, she considered it perfectly seemly to dispense with a chaperone and the thought of making good the deficiencies of her trousseau without the clucking of Mrs Finch-Heron was most agreeable.

Even Fortman’s, however, was not immune to change. Walking into what had once been ‘lingerie’, Muriel found that the great store had embarked on a new venture: a pet department. An area had been separated off with a trellis and where once there had been calming displays of crepe de Chine cami-knickers and neglige’s of guipure lace, there was now a circle of cages with silver bars. Inside, there tumbled litters of soft puppies, clusters of kittens, a bush baby with stricken eyes. Ther were fish tanks with darting, thumb-sized fish; crocodile-skin dog leads hung from a rack, woven poodle baskets lined with velvet were stacked on the floor…

Muriel frowned. Fortman’s was her favourite store and the intrusion of livestock into what had once been a sanctuary of bust bodices and suspender belts displeased her.

She was about to turn away when she saw, standing by a sanded aviary full of brightly coloured parrots, a man whose back seemed familiar. Tall, broad-shouldered, with springing, straw-coloured hair…

She approached.

‘Dr Lightbody?’

Ronald Lightbody turned.

‘Miss Hardwicke!’ His pale eyes gleamed - and indeed Muriel, in peach satin, flushed from the heat of the store, was a sight to make any eugenecist rejoice. ‘I had supposed you to be down in the country, preparing for your wedding.’

Muriel smiled with unaccustomed warmth. ‘I am, really. I just came up for the day to try on my wedding dress.’ She looked at him enquiringly. ‘You are not considering purchasing a parrot?’

‘Not a parrot, no.’ And, following his gaze, Muriel saw that what the doctor had been rapturously contemplating was not a parrot but a bird, pinioned and heavily chained to an iron bar - a fierce and yellow-eyed predator with a death-dealing beak.

‘It’s a golden eagle,’ explained the doctor, and realized suddenly that he could confide in this beautiful woman as he could never confide in his wife. There is a Persian who lectures on the need for inner harmony. He has the hall on Thursdays and Saturdays and he always comes on to the platform with a falcon perched on his shoulder. The effect,’ said the doctor bitterly, ‘is considerable’.

‘I see. So you thought an eagle…?’

‘Not for my own sake,’ said Dr Lightbody. ‘Ostentation is anathema to me as you know. But for the sake of the Cause…

As he had expected, Muriel understood. Side by side, Master and Disciple stood and gazed at the eagle and each saw the same vision - the doctor striding onto the stage with the King of Birds sitting lightly on his shoulder. It was a fine vision. To Muriel’s practical mind, however, certain considerations presented themselves. Delicately, she voiced them.

‘Yes,’ he said, sighing. ‘You’re right, of course. And Doreen is so uncooperative.’

‘How is your wife?’

‘Don’t ask, Miss Hardwicke. She seems to be incapable of making any effort at all. Some mornings she simply doesn’t get out of bed. It is wrong to complain, I know, but sometimes I feel so terribly alone.’

Muriel was deeply moved. She knew of the vision which had sustained the doctor ever since he had realized that his name was no coincidence - that in his body there really was a light, a shining image of perfection which could save the world. And to help him, to succour him, he had only a low-born slut.

She laid a plump, kid-gloved hand on his arm. ‘Dr Lightbody, I’m just going up to the restaurant for luncheon. I have an account here. If you would care to join me …? I am unchaperoned,’ she dropped her eyes demurely, ‘but with you I know I will be perfectly safe. And to tell you the truth, I too have troubles.’

Dr Lightbody’s eyes lit up. A free lunch! With a last regretful look at the eagle, he gave his arm to Muriel.

They ascended in the lift ancTsettled themselves in the restaurant which abounded in nodding, feathered toques and swelling, net-encrusted bosoms. A pianist played soft ragtime; daylight had been excluded by silken drapes and replaced by pink-shaded lamps. It was an atmosphere for intimacy and confidences.

‘And how do you find your future home, Miss Hardwicke?’ enquired the doctor when they had ordered.

Muriel took a sip of Vichy water and dabbed at her mouth. ‘It’s very beautiful. Quite, quite lovely. Only I had expected - perhaps it was foolish of me - far higher standards … a much greater formality and propriety. Perhaps it was unreasonable of me?’

‘No! No! How could it be unreasonable to want the highest and the best? In what way does Mersham fall short?’

Muriel sprinkled salt over her haddock mousse. ‘It is not easy to be specific, but both morally and hygienically there is… a kind of laxness which I had not expected.’ .Dr Lightbody leaned forward. The discussion of hygienic and moral laxness with a beautiful woman in a softly shaded restaurant was exactly to his taste.

‘Can you give me examples?’

‘Well, take the servant problem. A house, after all, is judged by its staff. And at Mersham there is a most appalling and totally senile old woman who has been given a cottage in the stable block, not two hundred yards from the house. She throws things, Dr Lightbody! And my fiancé seems to find this perfectly natural. Indeed, he seems to enjoy it.’

Dr Lightbody made noises of sympathy.

‘I can give you so many examples… I’ve discovered that they knowingly employ a mental defective in the kitchen; the girl can’t even speak, I understand. And even in the family itself…’ She flushed. ‘Rupert’s old uncle … I have seen it with my own eyes. He actually … handles the maids!’

Hungry for details, Dr Lightbody laid down his fork but Muriel was off on another track. ‘I could give you a hundred instances … Rupert has this great dog who is allowed everywhere, even into the bedrooms’. She shuddered. ‘And even socially … They entertain Israelites of a kind that would not have been permitted over my father’s doorsteps.’ She lifted her blue eyes to his face. ‘You see why I am distressed?’

Dr Lightbody reached across to take her hand, thought better of it and took, instead, the Sauce Tartare.

‘Indeed I do.’

But he saw, in fact, a great deal more. Ever since Miss Hardwicke had invited him down for the wedding, the conviction had been growing in him that this was his chance. To found an institute in one of England’s most famous houses, to spread the doctrine of the new eugenics free from the endless financial anxieties that had hitherto pursued him - here, clearly lay his destiny. He had seen pictures of Mersham - the library, for example, would make a perfect lecture theatre.

That was if Miss Hardwicke really had, as she seemed to, the upper hand…

‘Don’t you see, my dear young lady,’ he said now, ‘you have a task. A mission. You have been singled out!’

‘Yes, I know. And of course I shall act. After the wedding I mean to—’

‘After the wedding?’ said the doctor. ‘My dear, I beg of you, don’t wait, don’t procrastinate! Remember you are acting in the best interests of these unfortunate people. Take the lady with senile dementia. There is a paper by Schuster and Filemann which shows conclusively that the old are better off with others like themselves, protected from stresses and strains which they can no longer endure.’

Muriel nodded. ‘It is certainly what one always feels when confronted with such people,’ she said, remembering the broken flowerpot, the appendix in its glass.

‘And the defective kitchen girl… What if she should get herself into trouble, as girls of that kind are so apt to do? Another deformed human being brought into the world. Would you ever forgive yourself?’

‘No, indeed. You are right; you are perfectly right. You have helped me so much.’ She smiled up at him and this time the doctor did permit himself a quick squeeze of the soft, plump hand.

‘It is hard, I know,’ he said. ‘AH reformers must endure opposition and calumny. I myself …’ He sighed.

‘I know, I know … You must forgive me,’ said Muriel. ‘I’m afraid I’m not quite myself this morning. You see there is this little girl who is to be a bridesmaid …’

She launched into a description of the morning’s events.

Dr Lightbody was shocked. ‘You have been abominably treated. You mean you had no idea that the child was so severely handicapped?’

‘None at all. Rupert just kept saying how pretty she was, how sweet.’

The doctor’s blond eyebrows met together in a frown. ‘To have a conspiracy of silence on such a topic is gross dishonesty indeed. Still, if as you say, your nance is so fond of the child, tact and diplomacy will be needed. Let me see …’

Two hours later, the doctor let himself into his flat. He was in the best of spirits. Though he regretted the eagle. Miss Hardwicke had been right. Dagos and foreigners could risk an accident, but not he. And Miss Hardwicke had extended her invitation not only to the wedding but to the houseparty for the ball which preceded it. If only Doreen wasn’t so unpresentable. He supposed he’d have to take her along, but the embarrassment would be almost unendurable.

‘Doreen?’ he called now.

There was no answer. Instead, his landlady came puffing upstairs, her fat, powdered face full of self-importance.

‘She ‘ain’t ‘ere. They bin and took her away in an ambulance.’

‘An ambulance!’

‘Aye. She bin coughin’ somethink ‘orrible - well, you know how poorly she was. But she would go out and go and get you a pork chop for your tea and in the butcher she ‘ad this turn. Blood comin’ out of her mouth an’ all. So they sent for an ambulance and they took her away. In the Samaritan she is, on Edgeware Road.’

Dr Lightbody stared at her. He caught himself wondering what had happened to the chop.

‘How terrible!’ he said. ‘How absolutely terrible!’