Winter of the World (Century Trilogy 2)

6

1940 (I)

Aberowen had changed. There were cars, trucks and buses on the streets. When Lloyd had come here as a child in the 1920s to visit his grandparents, a parked car had been a rarity that would draw a crowd.

But the town was still dominated by the twin towers of the pithead, with their majestically revolving wheels. There was nothing else: no factories, no office blocks, no industry other than coal. Almost every man in town worked down the pit. There were a few dozen exceptions: some shopkeepers, numerous clergymen of all denominations, a town clerk, a doctor. Whenever the demand for coal slumped, as it had in the thirties, and men were laid off, there was nothing else for them to do. That was why the Labour Party’s most passionate demand was help for the unemployed, so that such men would never again suffer the agony and humiliation of being unable to feed their families.

Lieutenant Lloyd Williams arrived by train from Cardiff on a Sunday in April 1940. Carrying a small suitcase, he walked up the hill to Tŷ Gwyn. He had spent eight months training new recruits – the same work he had done in Spain – and coaching the Welsh Rifles boxing team, but the army had at last realized that he spoke fluent German, transferred him to intelligence duties, and sent him on a training course.

Training was all the army had done so far. No British forces had yet fought the enemy in an engagement of any significance. Germany and the USSR had overrun Poland and divided it between them, and the Allied guarantee of Polish independence had proved worthless.

British people called it the Phoney War, and they were impatient for the real thing. Lloyd had no sentimental illusions about warfare – he had heard the piteous voices of dying men begging for water on the battlefields of Spain – but even so he was eager to get started on the final showdown with Fascism.

The army was expecting to send more forces to France, assuming the Germans would invade. It had not happened, and they remained at the ready, but meanwhile, they did a lot of training.

Lloyd’s initiation into the mysteries of military intelligence was to take place in the stately home that had featured in his family’s destiny for so long. The wealthy and noble owners of many such palaces had loaned them to the armed forces, perhaps for fear that otherwise they might be confiscated permanently.

The army had certainly made Tŷ Gwyn look different. There were a dozen olive-drab vehicles parked on the lawn, and their tyres had chewed up the earl’s lush turf. The gracious entrance courtyard, with its curved granite steps, had become a supply dump, and giant cans of baked beans and cooking lard stood in teetering stacks where, formerly, bejewelled women and men in tailcoats had stepped out of their carriages. Lloyd grinned: he liked the levelling effect of war.

Lloyd entered the house. He was greeted by a podgy officer in a creased and stained uniform. ‘Here for the intelligence course, Lieutenant?’

‘Yes, sir. My name is Lloyd Williams.’

‘I’m Major Lowther.’

Lloyd had heard of him. He was the Marquis of Lowther, known to his pals as Lowthie.

Lloyd looked around. The paintings on the walls had been shrouded with huge dust sheets. The ornate carved marble fireplaces had been boxed in with rough planking, leaving only a small space for a grate. The dark old furniture that his mother sometimes mentioned fondly had all disappeared, to be replaced by steel desks and cheap chairs. ‘My goodness, the place looks different,’ he said.

Lowther smiled. ‘You’ve been here before. Do you know the family?’

‘I was up at Cambridge with Boy Fitzherbert. I met the Viscountess there, too, although they weren’t married then. But I suppose they’ve moved out for the duration.’

‘Not entirely. A few rooms have been reserved for their private use. But they don’t bother us at all. So you came here as a guest?’

‘Goodness, no, I don’t know them well. No, I was shown around the place as a boy, one day when the family weren’t in residence. My mother worked here at one time.’

‘Really? What, looking after the earl’s library, or something?’

‘No, as a housemaid.’ As soon as the words were out of Lloyd’s mouth he knew he had made a mistake.

Lowther’s face changed to an expression of distaste. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘How very interesting.’

Lloyd knew he had instantly been pigeonholed as a proletarian upstart. He would now be treated as a second-class citizen throughout his time here. He should have kept quiet about his mother’s past: he knew how snobbish the army was.

Lowthie said: ‘Show the lieutenant to his room, sergeant. Attic floor.’

Lloyd had been assigned a room in the old servants’ quarters. He did not really mind. It was good enough for my mother, he thought.

As they walked up the back stairs, the sergeant told Lloyd he had no obligations until dinner in the mess. Lloyd asked whether any of the Fitzherberts happened to be in residence right now, but the man did not know.

It took Lloyd two minutes to unpack. He combed his hair, put on a clean uniform shirt, and went to visit his grandparents.

The house in Wellington Row seemed smaller and more drab than ever, though it now had hot water in the scullery and a flushing toilet in the outhouse. The decor had not altered within Lloyd’s memory: same rag rug on the floor, same faded paisley curtains, same hard oak chairs in the single ground-floor room that served as living room and kitchen.

His grandparents had changed, though. Both were about seventy now, he guessed, and looking frail. Granda had pains in his legs, and had reluctantly retired from his job with the miners’ union. Grandmam had a weak heart: Dr Mortimer had told her to put her feet up for a quarter of an hour after meals.

They were pleased to see Lloyd in his uniform. ‘Lieutenant, is it?’ said Grandmam. A class warrior all her life, she nevertheless could not conceal her pride that her grandson was an officer.

News travelled fast in Aberowen, and the fact that Dai Union’s grandson was visiting probably went halfway round the town before Lloyd had finished his first cup of Grandmam’s strong tea. So he was not really surprised when Tommy Griffiths dropped in.

‘I expect my Lenny would be a lieutenant, like you, if he’d come back from Spain,’ Tommy said.

‘I should think so,’ Lloyd said. He had never met an officer who had been a coal miner in civilian life, but anything might happen once the war got going properly. ‘He was the best sergeant in Spain, I can tell you that.’

‘You two went through a lot together.’

‘We went through hell,’ Lloyd said. ‘And we lost. But the Fascists won’t win this time.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Tommy, and emptied his mug of tea.

Lloyd went with his grandparents to the evening service at the Bethesda Chapel. Religion was not a big part of his life, and he certainly did not go along with Granda’s dogmatism. The universe was mysterious, Lloyd thought, and people might as well admit it. But it pleased his grandparents that he sat with them in chapel.

The extempore prayers were eloquent, knitting biblical phrases seamlessly into colloquial language. The sermon was a bit tedious, but the singing thrilled Lloyd. Welsh chapelgoers automatically sang in four-part harmony, and when they were in the mood they could raise the roof.

As he joined in, Lloyd felt this was the beating heart of Britain, here in this whitewashed chapel. The people around him were poorly dressed and ill-educated, and they lived lives of unending hard work, the men winning the coal underground, the women raising the next generation of miners. But they had strong backs and sharp minds, and all on their own they had created a culture that made life worth living. They gained hope from nonconformist Christianity and left-wing politics, they found joy in rugby football and male voice choirs, and they were bonded together by generosity in good times and solidarity in bad. This was what he would be fighting for, these people, this town. And if he had to give his life for them, it would be well spent.

Granda gave the closing prayer, standing up with his eyes shut, leaning on a walking stick. ‘You see among us, O Lord, your young servant Lloyd Williams, sitting by here in his uniform. We ask you, in your wisdom and grace, to spare his life in the conflict to come. Please, Lord, send him back home to us safe and whole. If it be your will, O Lord.’

The congregation gave a heartfelt amen, and Lloyd wiped away a tear.

He walked the old folk home as the sun went down behind the mountain and an evening gloom settled on the rows of grey houses. He refused the offer of supper and hurried back to Tŷ Gwyn, arriving in time for dinner in the mess.

They had braised beef, boiled potatoes and cabbage. It was no better or worse than most army food, and Lloyd tucked in, aware that it had been paid for by people such as his grandparents who were having bread-and-dripping for their supper. There was a bottle of whisky on the table, and Lloyd took some to be convivial. He studied his fellow trainees and tried to remember their names.

On his way up to bed he passed through the Sculpture Room, now empty of art and furnished with a blackboard and twelve cheap desks. There he saw Major Lowther talking to a woman. At a second glance he saw that the woman was Daisy Fitzherbert.

He was so surprised that he stopped. Lowther looked around with an irritated expression. He saw Lloyd and reluctantly said: ‘Lady Aberowen, I believe you know Lieutenant Williams.’

If she denies it, Lloyd thought, I shall remind her of the time she kissed me, long and hard, on a Mayfair street in the dark.

‘How nice to see you again, Mr Williams,’ she said, and put out her hand to shake.

Her skin was warm and soft to his touch. His heart beat faster.

Lowther said: ‘Williams tells me his mother worked at this house as a maid.’

‘I know,’ Daisy said. ‘He told me that at the Trinity Ball. He was reproving me for being a snob. I’m sorry to say that he was quite right.’

‘You’re generous, Lady Aberowen,’ said Lloyd, feeling embarrassed. ‘I don’t know what business I had to say such a thing to you.’ She seemed less brittle than he remembered: perhaps she had matured.

Daisy said to Lowther: ‘Mr Williams’s mother is a Member of Parliament now, though.’

Lowther was taken aback.

Lloyd said to Daisy: ‘And how is your Jewish friend Eva? I know she married Jimmy Murray.’

‘They have two children now.’

‘Did she get her parents out of Germany?’

‘How kind of you to remember – but no, sadly, the Rothmanns can’t get exit visas.’

‘I’m so sorry. It must be hell for her.’

‘It is.’

Lowther was visibly impatient with this talk of housemaids and Jews. ‘To get back to what I was saying, Lady Aberowen . . .’

Lloyd said: ‘I’ll bid you goodnight.’ He left the room and ran upstairs.

As he got ready for bed he found himself singing the last hymn from the service:

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that rock I’m clinging

Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth

How can I keep from singing?

(ii)

Three days later Daisy was finishing writing to her half-brother, Greg. When war broke out he had sent her a sweetly anxious letter, and since then they had corresponded every month or so. He had told her about seeing his old flame, Jacky Jakes, on E street in Washington, and asked Daisy what would make a girl run away like that? Daisy had no idea. She said so, and wished him luck, then signed off.

She looked at the clock. It was an hour before the trainees’ dinner time, so lessons had ended and she had a good chance of catching Lloyd in his room.

She went up to the old servants’ quarters on the attic floor. The young officers were sitting or lying on their beds, reading or writing. She found Lloyd in a narrow room with an old cheval-glass, sitting by the window, studying an illustrated book. She said: ‘Reading something interesting?’

He sprang to his feet. ‘Hello, this is a surprise.’

He was blushing. He probably still had a crush on her. It had been very cruel of her to kiss him, when she had no intention of letting the relationship go any further. But that was four years ago, and they had both been kids. He should have gotten over it by now.

She looked at the book in his hands. It was in German, and had colour pictures of badges.

‘We have to know German insignia,’ he explained. ‘A lot of military intelligence comes from interrogation of prisoners of war immediately after their capture. Some won’t talk, of course; so the interrogator needs to be able to tell, just by looking at the prisoner’s uniform, what his rank is, what army corps he belongs to, whether he is from infantry, cavalry, artillery, or a specialist unit such as veterinarian, and so on.’

‘That’s what you’re learning here?’ she said sceptically. ‘The meanings of German badges?’

He laughed. ‘It’s one of the things we’re learning. One I can tell you about without giving away military secrets.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Why are you here in Wales? I’m surprised you’re not doing something for the war effort.’

‘There you go again,’ she said. ‘Moral reproof. Did someone tell you this was a way to charm women?’

‘Pardon me,’ he said stiffly. ‘I didn’t mean to rebuke you.’

‘Anyway, there is no war effort. Barrage balloons float in the air as a hazard to German planes that never come.’

‘At least you’d have a social life in London.’

‘Do you know that used to be the most important thing in the world, and now it’s not?’ she said. ‘I must be getting old.’

There was another reason she had left London, but she was not going to tell him.

‘I imagined you in a nurse’s uniform,’ he said.

‘Not likely. I hate sick people. But before you give me another of those disapproving frowns, take a look at this.’ She handed him the framed photograph she was carrying.

He studied it, frowning. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘I was looking through a box of old pictures in the basement junk room.’

It was a group photo taken on the east lawn of Tŷ Gwyn on a summer morning. In the centre was the young Earl Fitzherbert, with a big white dog at his feet. The girl next to him was probably his sister, Maud, whom Daisy had never met. Lined up on either side of them were forty or fifty men and women in a variety of servants’ uniforms.

‘Look at the date,’ she said.

‘Nineteen-twelve,’ Lloyd read aloud.

She watched him, studying his reactions to the photo he was holding. ‘Is your mother in it?’

‘Goodness! She might be.’ Lloyd looked closer. ‘I believe she is,’ he said after a minute.

‘Show me.’

Lloyd pointed. ‘I think that’s her.’

Daisy saw a slim, pretty girl of about nineteen, with curly black hair under a maid’s white cap, and a smile that had more than a hint of mischief in it. ‘Why, she’s enchanting!’ she said.

‘She was then, anyway,’ Lloyd said. ‘Nowadays people are more likely to call her formidable.’

‘Have you ever met Lady Maud? Do you think that’s her next to Fitz?’

‘I suppose I’ve known her all my life, off and on. She and my mother were suffragettes together. I haven’t seen her since I left Berlin in 1933, but this is definitely her in the picture.’

‘She’s not so pretty.’

‘Perhaps, but she’s very poised, and wonderfully well dressed.’

‘Anyway, I thought you might like to have the picture.’

‘To keep?’

‘Of course. No one else wants it – that’s why it was in a box in the basement.’

‘Thank you!’

‘You’re welcome.’ Daisy went to the door. ‘Go back to your studies.’

Going down the back stairs she hoped she had not flirted. She probably should not have gone to see him at all. She had succumbed to a generous impulse. Heaven forbid that he should misinterpret it.

She felt a sharp pain in her tummy, and stopped on the half-landing. She had had a slight backache all day – which she attributed to the cheap mattress she was sleeping on – but this was different. She thought back over what she had eaten today, but could not identify anything that might have made her ill: no undercooked chicken, no unripe fruit. She had not eaten oysters – no such luck! The pain went as quickly as it had come and she told herself to forget about it.

She returned to her quarters in the basement. She was living in what had been the housekeeper’s flat: a tiny bedroom, a sitting room, a small kitchen and an adequate bathroom with a tub. An old footman called Morrison was acting as caretaker to the house, and a young woman from Aberowen was her maid. The girl was called Little Maisie Owen, although she was quite big. ‘My mother’s Maisie too, so I’ve always been Little Maisie, even though I’m taller than her now,’ she had explained.

The phone rang as Daisy entered. She picked it up and heard her husband’s voice. ‘How are you?’ he said.

‘I’m fine. What time will you be here?’ He had flown to RAF St Athan, a large air base outside Cardiff, on some mission, and he had promised to visit her and spend the night.

‘I’m not going to make it, I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, how disappointing!’

‘There’s a ceremonial dinner at the base that I’m required to attend.’

He did not sound particularly dispirited that he would not see her, and she felt spurned. ‘How nice for you,’ she said.

‘It will be boring, but I can’t get out of it.’

‘Not half as boring as living here on my own.’

‘It must be dull. But you’re better off there, in your condition.’

Thousands of people had left London after war was declared, but most of them had drifted back when the expected bombing raids and gas attacks did not materialize. However, Bea and May and even Eva were agreed that Daisy’s pregnancy meant she should live at Tŷ Gwyn. Many women gave birth safely every day in London, Daisy had pointed out; but of course the heir to the earldom was different.

In truth, she did not mind as much as she had expected. Perhaps pregnancy had made her uncharacteristically passive. But there was a half-hearted quality about London social life since the declaration of war, as if people felt they did not have the right to enjoy themselves. They were like vicars in a pub, knowing it was supposed to be fun but unable to enter into the spirit.

‘I wish I had my motorcycle here, though,’ she said. ‘Then at least I could explore Wales.’ Petrol was rationed, but not severely.

‘Really, Daisy!’ he said censoriously. ‘You can’t ride a motorcycle – the doctor absolutely forbade it.’

‘Anyway, I’ve discovered literature,’ she said. ‘The library here is wonderful. A few rare and valuable editions have been packed away, but nearly all the books are still on the shelves. I’m getting the education I worked so hard to avoid at school.’

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Well, curl up with a good murder mystery and enjoy your evening.’

‘I had a slight tummy pain earlier.’

‘Probably indigestion.’

‘I expect you’re right.’

‘Give my regards to that slob Lowthie.’

‘Don’t drink too much port at your dinner.’

Just as Daisy hung up she got the tummy cramp again. This time it lasted longer. Maisie came in, saw her face, and said: ‘Are you all right, my lady?’

‘Just a twinge.’

‘I have came to ask if you are ready for your supper.’

‘I don’t feel hungry. I think I’ll skip supper tonight.’

‘I done you a lovely cottage pie,’ Maisie said reproachfully.

‘Cover it and put it in the larder. I’ll eat it tomorrow.’

‘Shall I make you a nice cup of tea?’

Just to get rid of her Daisy said: ‘Yes, please.’ Even after four years she had not grown to like strong British tea with milk and sugar in it.

The pain went away, and she sat down and opened The Mill on the Floss. She forced herself to drink Maisie’s tea and felt a little better. When she had finished the drink, and Maisie had washed the cup and saucer, she sent Maisie home. The girl had to walk a mile in the dark, but she carried a flashlight, and said she did not mind.

An hour later the pain returned, and this time it did not go away. Daisy went to the toilet, vaguely hoping to relieve pressure in her abdomen. She was surprised and worried to see spots of dark-red blood in her underwear.

She put on clean panties and, seriously worried now, she went to the phone. She got the number of RAF St Athan and called the base. ‘I need to speak to Flight Lieutenant the Viscount Aberowen,’ she said.

‘We can’t connect personal calls to officers,’ said a pedantic Welshman.

‘This is an emergency. I must speak to my husband.’

‘There are no phones in the rooms, this isn’t the Dorchester Hotel.’ Perhaps it was her imagination, but he sounded quite pleased that he could not help her.

‘My husband will be at the ceremonial banquet. Please send an orderly to bring him to the phone.’

‘I haven’t got any orderlies, and anyway there’s no banquet.’

‘No banquet?’ Daisy was momentarily at a loss.

‘Just the usual dinner in the mess,’ the operator said. ‘And that was finished an hour ago.’

Daisy slammed the phone down. No banquet? Boy had distinctly said he had to attend a ceremonial dinner at the base. He must have lied. She wanted to cry. He had chosen not to see her, preferring to go drinking with his comrades, or perhaps to visit some woman. The reason did not matter. Daisy was not his priority.

She took a deep breath. She needed help. She did not know the phone number of the Aberowen doctor, if there was one. What was she to do?

Last time Boy had left he had said: ‘You’ll have a hundred or more army officers to look after you if necessary.’ But she could not tell the Marquis of Lowther that she was bleeding from her vagina.

The pain was getting worse, and she could feel something warm and sticky between her legs. She went to the bathroom again and washed herself. There were clots in the blood, she saw. She did not have any sanitary towels – pregnant women did not need them, she had thought. She cut a length off a hand towel and stuffed it in her panties.

Then she thought of Lloyd Williams.

He was kind. He had been brought up by a strong-minded feminist woman. He adored Daisy. He would help her.

She went up to the hall. Where was he? The trainees would have finished their dinner by now. He might be upstairs. Her stomach hurt so much that she did not think she could make it all the way to the attic.

Perhaps he was in the library. The trainees used the room for quiet study. She went in. A sergeant was poring over an atlas. ‘Would you be very kind,’ she said to him, ‘and find Lieutenant Lloyd Williams for me?’

‘Of course, my lady,’ said the man, closing the book. ‘What’s the message?’

‘Ask him if he would come down to the basement for a moment.’

‘Are you all right, ma’am? You look a bit pale.’

‘I’ll be fine. Just fetch Williams as quickly as you can.’

‘Right away.’

Daisy returned to her rooms. The effort of seeming normal had exhausted her, and she lay on the bed. Before long she felt the blood soaking through her dress, but she hurt too much to care. She looked at her watch. Why had Lloyd not come? Perhaps the sergeant could not find him. It was such a big house. Perhaps she would just die here.

There was a tap at the door, and then to her immense relief she heard his voice. ‘It’s Lloyd Williams.’

‘Come in,’ she called. He was going to see her in a dreadful state. Perhaps it would put him off her for good.

She heard him enter the next room. ‘It took me a while to find your quarters,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Through here.’

He stepped into the bedroom. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘What on earth has happened?’

‘Get help,’ she said. ‘Is there a doctor in this town?’

‘Of course. Dr Mortimer. He’s been here for centuries. But there may not be time. Let me . . .’ He hesitated. ‘You may be haemorrhaging, but I can’t tell unless I look.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Go ahead.’ She was almost too scared to be embarrassed.

She felt him raise the skirt of her dress. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘Poor you.’ Then he ripped her underpants. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Is there some water . . . ?’

‘Bathroom,’ she said, pointing.

He stepped into the bathroom and ran a tap. A moment later she felt a warm, damp cloth being used to clean her.

Then he said: ‘It’s just a trickle. I’ve seen men bleed to death, and you’re not in that danger.’ She opened her eyes to see him pulling her skirt back down. ‘Where’s the phone?’ he said.

‘Sitting room.’

She heard him say: ‘Put me through to Dr Mortimer, quick as you can.’ There was a pause. ‘This is Lloyd Williams. I’m at Tŷ Gwyn. May I speak to the doctor? Oh, hello, Mrs Mortimer, when do you expect him back? . . . It’s a woman with abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding . . . Yes, I do realize most women suffer that every month, but this is clearly abnormal . . . she’s twenty-three . . . yes, married . . . no children . . . I’ll ask.’ He raised his voice. ‘Could you be pregnant?’

‘Yes,’ Daisy replied. ‘Three months.’

He repeated her answer, then there was a long silence. Eventually he hung up the phone and returned to her.

He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘The doctor will come as soon as he can, but he’s operating on a miner crushed by a runaway dram. However, his wife is quite sure that you’ve suffered a miscarriage.’ He took her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Daisy.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. The pain seemed less, but she felt terribly sad. The heir to the earldom was no more. Boy would be so upset.

Lloyd said: ‘Mrs Mortimer says it’s quite common, and most women suffer one or two miscarriages between pregnancies. There’s no danger, provided the bleeding isn’t copious.’

‘What if it gets worse?’

‘Then I must drive you to Merthyr Hospital. But going ten miles in an army lorry would be quite bad for you, so it’s to be avoided unless your life is in danger.’

She was not frightened any more. ‘I’m so glad you were here.’

‘May I make a suggestion?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you think you can walk a few steps?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Let me run you a bath. If you can manage it, you’ll feel so much better when you’re clean.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then perhaps you can improvise a bandage of some kind.’

‘Yes.’

He returned to the bathroom, and she heard water running. She sat upright. She felt dizzy, and rested for a minute, then her head cleared. She swung her feet to the floor. She was sitting in congealing blood, and felt disgusted with herself.

The taps were turned off. He came back in and took her arm. ‘If you feel faint, just tell me,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you fall.’ He was surprisingly strong, and half carried her as he walked her into the bathroom. At some point her ripped underwear fell to the floor. She stood beside the bath and let him undo the buttons at the back of her dress. ‘Can you manage the rest?’ he said.

She nodded, and he went out.

Leaning on the linen basket, she took off her clothes slowly, leaving them on the floor in a bloodstained heap. Gingerly, she got into the bath. The water was just hot enough. The pain eased as she lay back and relaxed. She felt overwhelmed with gratitude to Lloyd. He was so kind that it made her want to cry.

After a few minutes, the door opened a crack and his hand appeared holding some clothes. ‘A nightdress, and so on,’ he said. He placed them on top of the linen basket and closed the door.

When the water began to cool she stood up. She felt dizzy again, but only for a moment. She dried herself with a towel then put on the nightdress and underwear he had brought. She placed a hand towel inside her panties to soak up the blood that continued to seep.

When she returned to the bedroom, her bed was made up with clean sheets and blankets. She climbed in and sat upright, pulling the covers up to her neck.

He came in from the sitting room. ‘You must be feeling better,’ he said. ‘You look embarrassed.’

‘Embarrassed isn’t the word,’ she said. ‘Mortified, perhaps, though even that seems understated.’ The truth was not so simple. She winced when she thought of how he had seen her – but, on the other hand, he had not seemed disgusted.

He went into the bathroom and picked up her discarded clothes. Apparently he was not squeamish about menstrual blood.

She said: ‘Where have you put the sheets?’

‘I found a big sink in the flower room. I left them to soak in cold water. I’ll do the same with your clothes, shall I?’

She nodded.

He disappeared again. Where had he learned to be so competent and self-sufficient? In the Spanish Civil War, she supposed.

She heard him moving around the kitchen. He reappeared with two cups of tea. ‘You probably hate this stuff, but it will make you feel better.’ She took the tea. He showed her two white pills in the palm of his hand. ‘Aspirin? May ease the stomach cramps a bit.’

She took them and swallowed them with hot tea. He had always struck her as being mature beyond his years. She remembered how confidently he had gone off to find the drunken Boy at the Gaiety Theatre. ‘You’ve always been like this,’ she said. ‘A real grown-up, when the rest of us were just pretending.’

She finished the tea and felt sleepy. He took the cups away. ‘I may just close my eyes for a moment,’ she said. ‘Will you stay here, if I go to sleep?’

‘I’ll stay as long as you like,’ he said. Then he said something else, but his voice seemed to fade away, and she slept.

(iii)

After that Lloyd began to spend his evenings in the little housekeeper’s flat.

He looked forward to it all day.

He would go downstairs a few minutes after eight, when dinner in the mess was over and Daisy’s maid had left for the night. They would sit opposite one another in the two old armchairs. Lloyd would bring a book to study – there was always ‘homework’, with tests in the morning – and Daisy would read a novel; but mostly they talked. They related what had happened during the day, discussed whatever they were reading, and told each other the story of their lives.

He recounted his experiences at the Battle of Cable Street. ‘Standing there in a peaceful crowd, we were charged by mounted policemen screaming about dirty Jews,’ he told her. ‘They beat us with their truncheons and pushed us through the plate-glass windows.’

She had been quarantined with the Fascists in Tower Gardens, and had seen none of the fighting. ‘That wasn’t the way it was reported,’ she said. She had believed the newspapers that said it had been a street riot organized by hooligans.

Lloyd was not surprised. ‘My mother watched the newsreel at the Aldgate Essoldo a week later,’ he recalled. ‘That plummy-voiced commentator said: “From impartial observers the police received nothing but praise.” Mam said the entire audience burst out laughing.’

Daisy was shocked by his scepticism about the news. He told her that most British papers had suppressed stories of atrocities by Franco’s army in Spain, and exaggerated any report of bad behaviour by government forces. She admitted she had swallowed Earl Fitzherbert’s view that the rebels were high-minded Christians liberating Spain from the threat of Communism. She knew nothing of mass executions, rape and looting by Franco’s men.

It seemed never to have occurred to her that newspapers owned by capitalists might play down news that reflected badly on the Conservative government, the military or businessmen, and would seize upon any incident of bad behaviour by trade unionists or left-wing parties.

Lloyd and Daisy talked about the war. There was action at last. British and French troops had landed in Norway, and were contending for control with the Germans who had done the same. The newspapers could not quite conceal the fact that it was going badly for the Allies.

Her attitude to him had changed. She no longer flirted. She was always pleased to see him, and complained if he was late arriving in the evening, and she teased him sometimes; but she was never coquettish. She told him how disappointed everyone was about the baby she had lost: Boy, Fitz, Bea, her mother in Buffalo, even her father, Lev. She could not shake the irrational feeling that she had done something shameful, and she asked if he thought that was foolish. He did not. Nothing she did was foolish to him.

Their conversation was personal but they kept their distance from one another physically. He would not exploit the extraordinary intimacy of the night she miscarried. Of course, the scene would live in his heart for ever. Wiping the blood from her thighs and her belly had not been sexy – not in the least – but it had been unbearably tender. However, it had been a medical emergency, and it did not give him permission to take liberties later. He was so afraid of giving the wrong impression about this that he was careful never to touch her.

At ten o’clock she would make them cocoa, which he loved and she said she liked, though he wondered if she was just being nice. Then he would say goodnight and go upstairs to his attic bedroom.

They were like old friends. It was not what he wanted, but she was a married woman, and this was the best he was going to get.

He tended to forget Daisy’s status. He was startled, one evening, when she announced that she was going to pay a visit to the earl’s retired butler, Peel, who was living in a cottage just outside the grounds. ‘He’s eighty!’ she told Lloyd. ‘I’m sure Fitz has forgotten all about him. I should check on him.’

Lloyd raised his eyebrows in surprise, and she added: ‘I need to make sure he’s all right. It’s my duty as a member of the Fitzherbert clan. Taking care of your old retainers is an obligation of wealthy families – didn’t you know that?’

‘It had slipped my mind.’

‘Will you come with me?’

‘Of course.’

The next day was a Sunday, and they went in the morning, when Lloyd had no lectures. They were both shocked by the state of the little house. The paint was flaking, the wallpaper was peeling, and the curtains were grey with coal dust. The only decoration was a row of photographs cut from magazines and tacked to the wall: the King and Queen, Fitz and Bea, and other assorted members of the nobility. The place had not been properly cleaned for years, and there was a smell of urine and ash and decay. But Lloyd guessed it was not unusual for an old man on a small pension.

Peel had white eyebrows. He looked at Lloyd and said: ‘Good morning, my lord – I thought you were dead!’

Lloyd smiled. ‘I’m just a visitor.’

‘Are you, sir? My poor brain is scrambled eggs. The old earl died, what, thirty-five or forty years ago? Well, then, who are you, young sir?’

‘I’m Lloyd Williams. You knew my mother, Ethel, years ago.’

‘You’re Eth’s boy? Well, in that case, of course . . .’

Daisy said: ‘In that case, what, Mr Peel?’

‘Oh, nothing. My brain’s scrambled eggs!’

They asked him if he needed anything, and he insisted he had everything a man could want. ‘I don’t eat much, and I rarely drink beer. I’ve got enough money to buy pipe tobacco, and the newspaper. Will Hitler invade us, do you think, young Lloyd? I hope I don’t live to see that.’

Daisy cleaned up his kitchen a bit, though housekeeping was not her forte. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said to Lloyd in a low voice. ‘Living here, like this, he says he’s got everything – he thinks he’s lucky!’

‘Many men his age are worse off,’ Lloyd said.

They talked to Peel for an hour. Before they left, he thought of something he did want. He looked at the row of pictures on the wall. ‘At the funeral of the old earl, there was a photograph took,’ he said. ‘I was a mere footman, then, not the butler. We all lined up alongside the hearse. There was a big old camera with a black cloth over it, not like the little modern ones. That was in 1906.’

‘I bet I know where that photograph is,’ said Daisy. ‘We’ll go and look.’

They returned to the big house and went down to the basement. The junk room, next to the wine cellar, was quite large. It was full of boxes and chests and useless ornaments: a ship in a bottle, a model of Tŷ Gwyn made of matchsticks, a miniature chest of drawers, a sword in an ornate scabbard.

They began to sort through old photographs and paintings. The dust made Daisy sneeze, but she insisted on continuing.

They found the photograph Peel wanted. In the box with it was an even older photo of the previous earl. Lloyd stared at it in some astonishment. The sepia picture was five inches high and three inches wide, and showed a young man in the uniform of a Victorian army officer.

He looked exactly like Lloyd.

‘Look at this,’ he said, handing the photo to Daisy.

‘It could be you, if you had side-whiskers,’ she said.

‘Perhaps the old earl had a romance with one of my ancestors,’ Lloyd said flippantly. ‘If she was a married woman, she might have passed off the earl’s child as her husband’s. I wouldn’t be very pleased, I can tell you, to learn that I was illegitimately descended from the aristocracy – a red-hot socialist like me!’

Daisy said: ‘Lloyd, how stupid are you?’

He could not tell whether she was serious. Besides, she had a smear of dust on her nose that looked so sweet that he longed to kiss it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve made a fool of myself more than once, but—’

‘Listen to me. Your mother was a maid in this house. Suddenly in 1914 she went to London and married a man called Teddy whom no one knows anything about except that his surname was Williams, the same as hers, so she did not have to change her name. The mysterious Mr Williams died before anyone met him and his life insurance bought her the house she still lives in.’

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘Then, after Mr Williams died, she gave birth to a son who happens to look remarkably like the late Earl Fitzherbert.’

He began to get a glimmer of what she might be saying. ‘Go on.’

‘Has it never occurred to you that there might be a completely different explanation for this whole story?’

‘Not until now . . .’

‘What does an aristocratic family do when one of their daughters gets pregnant? It happens all the time, you know.’

‘I suppose it does, but I don’t know how they handle it. You never hear about it.’

‘Exactly. The girl disappears for a few months – to Scotland, or Brittany, or Geneva – with her maid. When the two of them reappear, the maid has a little baby which, she says, she gave birth to during the holiday. The family treat her surprisingly kindly, even though she has admitted fornication, and send her to live a safe distance away, with a small pension.’

It seemed like a fairy story, nothing to do with real life; but all the same Lloyd was intrigued and troubled. ‘And you think I was the baby in some such pretence?’

‘I think Lady Maud Fitzherbert had a love affair with a gardener, or a coal miner, or perhaps a charming rogue in London; and she got pregnant. She went away somewhere to give birth in secret. Your mother agreed to pretend the baby was hers, and in exchange she was given a house.’

Lloyd was struck by a corroborating thought. ‘She’s always been evasive whenever I’ve asked about my real father.’ That now seemed suspicious.

‘There you are! There never was a Teddy Williams. To maintain her respectability, your mother said she was a widow. She called her fictional late husband Williams to avoid the problem of changing her name.’

Lloyd shook his head in disbelief. ‘It seems too fantastic.’

‘She and Maud continued friends, and Maud helped raise you. In 1933 your mother took you to Berlin because your real mother wanted to see you again.’

Lloyd felt as if he were either dreaming or just waking up. ‘You think I’m Maud’s child?’ he said incredulously.

Daisy tapped the frame of the picture she was still holding. ‘And you look just like your grandfather!’

Lloyd was bewildered. It could not be true – yet it made sense. ‘I’m used to Bernie not being my real father,’ he said. ‘Is Ethel not my real mother?’

Daisy must have seen a look of helplessness on his face, for she leaned forward and touched him – something she did not generally do – and said: ‘I’m sorry, have I been brutal? I just want you to see what’s in front of your eyes. If Peel suspects the truth, don’t you think others may too? It’s the kind of news you want to hear from someone who . . . from a friend.’

A gong sounded distantly. Lloyd said mechanically: ‘I’d better go to the mess for lunch.’ He took the photograph out of its frame and slipped it into a pocket of his uniform jacket.

‘You’re upset,’ Daisy said anxiously.

‘No, no. Just . . . astonished.’

‘Men always deny that they’re upset. Please come and see me later.’

‘All right.’

‘Don’t go to bed without talking to me again.’

‘I won’t.’

He left the junk room and made his way upstairs to the grand dining room, now the mess. He ate his canned beef mince automatically, his mind in turmoil. He took no part in the discussion at table about the battle raging in Norway.

‘Having a daydream, Williams?’ said Major Lowther.

‘Sorry, sir,’ Lloyd said mechanically. He improvised an excuse. ‘I was trying to remember which was the higher German rank, Generalleutnant or Generalmajor.’

Lowther said: ‘Generalleutnant is higher.’ Then he added quietly: ‘Just don’t forget the difference between meine Frau and deine Frau.’

Lloyd felt himself blush. So his friendship with Daisy was not as discreet as he had imagined. It had even come to Lowther’s notice. He felt indignant: he and Daisy had done nothing improper. Yet he did not protest. He felt guilty, even though he was not. He could not put his hand on his heart and swear that his intentions were pure. He knew what Granda would say: ‘Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ That was the no-bullshit teaching of Jesus and there was a lot of truth in it.

Thinking of his grandparents led him to wonder if they knew about his real parents. Being in doubt about his real father and mother gave him a lost feeling, like a dream about falling from a height. If he had been told lies about that, he might have been misled about anything.

He decided he would question Granda and Grandmam. He could do it today, as it was Sunday. As soon as he could decently excuse himself from the mess, he walked downhill to Wellington Row.

It occurred to him that if he asked them outright whether he was Maud’s son they might simply deny everything point-blank. Perhaps a more gradual approach would be more likely to elicit information.

He found them sitting in their kitchen. To them Sunday was the Lord’s Day, devoted to religion, and they would not read newspapers or listen to the radio. But they were pleased to see him, and Grandmam made tea, as always.

Lloyd began: ‘I wish I knew more about my real father. Mam says that Teddy Williams was in the Welsh Rifles, did you know that?’

Grandmam said: ‘Oh, why do you want to go digging up the past? Bernie’s your father.’

Lloyd did not contradict her. ‘Bernie Leckwith has been everything a father should be to me.’

Granda nodded. ‘A Jew, but a good man, there’s no doubt.’ He imagined he was being magnanimously tolerant.

Lloyd let it pass. ‘All the same, I’m curious. Did you meet Teddy Williams?’

Granda looked angry. ‘No,’ he said. ‘And it was a sorrow to us.’

Grandmam said: ‘He came to Tŷ Gwyn as a valet to a guest. We never knew your mother was sweet on him till she went to London to marry him.’

‘Why didn’t you go to the wedding?’

They were both silent. Then Granda said: ‘Tell him the truth, Cara. No good ever comes of lies.’

‘Your mother yielded to temptation,’ Grandmam said. ‘After the valet left Tŷ Gwyn, she found she was with child.’ Lloyd had suspected that, and thought it might account for her evasiveness. ‘Your Granda was very angry,’ Grandmam added.

‘Too angry,’ Granda said. ‘I forgot that Jesus said: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Her sin was lust, but mine was pride.’ Lloyd was astonished to see tears in his grandfather’s pale-blue eyes. ‘God forgave her, but I didn’t, not for a long time. By then my son-in-law was dead, killed in France.’

Lloyd was more bewildered than before. Here was another detailed story, somewhat different from what he had been told by his mother and completely different from Daisy’s theory. Was Granda weeping for a son-in-law who had never existed?

He persisted. ‘And the family of Teddy Williams? Mam said he came from Swansea. He probably had parents, brothers and sisters . . .’

Grandmam said: ‘Your mother never talked about his family. I think she was ashamed. Whatever the reason, she didn’t want to know them. And it wasn’t our place to go against her in that.’

‘But I might have two more grandparents in Swansea. And uncles and aunts and cousins I’ve never met.’

‘Aye,’ said Granda. ‘But we don’t know.’

‘My mother knows, though.’

‘I suppose she does.’

‘I’ll ask her, then,’ said Lloyd.

(iv)

Daisy was in love.

She knew, now, that she had never loved anyone before Lloyd. She had never truly loved Boy, though she had been excited by him. As for poor Charlie Farquharson, she had been at most fond of him. She had believed that love was something she could bestow upon whomever she liked, and that her main responsibility was to choose cleverly. Now she knew that was all wrong. Cleverness had nothing to do with it, and she had no choice. Love was an earthquake.

Life was empty but for the two hours she spent with Lloyd each evening. The rest of the day was anticipation; the night was recollection.

Lloyd was the pillow she put her cheek on. He was the towel with which she patted her breasts when she got out of the bathtub. He was the knuckle she put into her mouth and sucked thoughtfully.

How could she have ignored him for four years? The love of her life had appeared before her at the Trinity Ball, and she had noticed only that he appeared to be wearing someone else’s dress clothes! Why had she not taken him in her arms and kissed him and insisted they get married immediately?

He had known all along, she surmised. He must have fallen in love with her from the start. He had begged her to throw Boy over. ‘Give him up,’ he had said the night they went to the Gaiety music hall. ‘Be my girlfriend instead.’ And she had laughed at him. But he had seen the truth to which she had been blind.

However, some intuition deep within her had told her to kiss him, there on the Mayfair pavement in the darkness between two street lights. At the time she had regarded it as a self-indulgent whim; but, in fact, it was the smartest thing she had ever done, for it had probably sealed his devotion.

Now, at Tŷ Gwyn, she refused to think about what would happen next. She was living from day to day, walking on air, smiling at nothing. She got an anxious letter from her mother in Buffalo, worrying about her health and her state of mind after the miscarriage, and she sent back a reassuring reply. Olga included titbits of news: Dave Rouzrokh had died in Palm Beach; Muffie Dixon had married Philip Renshaw; Senator Dewar’s wife, Rosa, had written a bestseller called Behind the Scenes at the White House, with photographs by Woody. A month ago this would have made her homesick; now she was just mildly interested.

She felt sad only when she thought of the baby she had lost. The pain had gone immediately, and the bleeding had stopped after a week, but the loss grieved her. She no longer cried about it, but occasionally she found herself staring into empty space, thinking about whether it would have been a girl or a boy, and what it would have looked like; and then realized with a shock that she had not moved for an hour.

Spring had come, and she walked on the windy mountainside, in waterproof boots and a raincoat. Sometimes, when she was sure there was no one to hear but the sheep, she shouted at the top of her voice: ‘I love him!’

She worried about his reaction to her questions about his parentage. Perhaps she had done wrong to raise the issue: it had only made him unhappy. Yet her excuse had been valid: sooner or later the truth would probably come out, and it was better to hear such things from someone who loved you. His pained bafflement touched her heart, and made her love him even more.

Then he told her he had arranged leave. He was going to a south coast resort called Bournemouth for the Labour Party’s annual conference on the second weekend in May, which was a British holiday called Whitsun.

His mother would also be at Bournemouth, he said, so he would have a chance to question her about his parentage; and Daisy thought he looked eager and afraid at the same time.

Lowther would certainly have refused to let him go, but Lloyd had spoken to Colonel Ellis-Jones back in March, when he had been assigned to this course, and the colonel either liked Lloyd or sympathized with the party, or both, and gave him permission which Lowther could not countermand. Of course, if the Germans invaded France, then nobody would be able to take leave.

Daisy was strangely frightened by the prospect of Lloyd’s leaving Aberowen without knowing that she loved him. She was not sure why, but she had to tell him before he went.

Lloyd was to leave on Wednesday and return six days later. By coincidence, Boy had announced he would come to visit, arriving on Wednesday evening. Daisy was glad, for reasons she could not quite figure out, that the two men would not be there at the same time.

She decided to make her confession to Lloyd on Tuesday, the day before he left. She had no idea what she was going to say to her husband a day later.

Imagining the conversation she would have with Lloyd, she realized that he would surely kiss her, and when they kissed they would be overwhelmed by their feelings, and they would make love. And then they would lie all night in each other’s arms.

At this point in her thinking, the need for discretion intruded into her daydream. Lloyd must not be seen emerging from her quarters in the morning, for both their sakes. Lowthie already had his suspicions: she could tell by his attitude towards her, which was both disapproving and roguish, almost as if he felt that he rather than Lloyd should be the one she should fall for.

How much better it would be if she and Lloyd could meet somewhere else for their fateful conversation. She thought of the unused bedrooms in the west wing, and she felt breathless. He could leave at dawn, and if anyone saw him they would not know he had been with her. She could emerge later, fully dressed, and pretend to be looking for some lost piece of family property, a painting perhaps. In fact, she thought, elaborating on the lie she would tell if necessary, she could take some object from the junk room and place it in the bedroom in advance, ready to be used as concrete evidence of her story.

At nine o’clock on Tuesday, when the students were all in classes, she walked along the upper floor, carrying a set of perfume vials with tarnished silver tops and a matching hand mirror. She felt guilty already. The carpet had been taken up, and her footsteps rang loud on the floorboards, as if announcing the approach of a scarlet woman. Fortunately, there was no one in the bedrooms.

She went to the Gardenia Suite, which she vaguely thought was being used for storage of bed linen. There was no one in the corridor as she stepped inside. She closed the door quickly behind her. She was panting. I haven’t done anything yet, she told herself.

She had remembered aright: all around the room, piled up against the gardenia-printed wallpaper, were neat stacks of sheets and blankets and pillows, wrapped in covers of coarse cotton and tied with string like large parcels.

The room smelled musty, and she opened a window. The original furniture was still here: a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a writing table, and a kidney-shaped dressing table with three mirrors. She put the perfume vials on the dressing table, then she made the bed up with some of the stored linen. The sheets were cold to her touch.

Now I’ve done something, she thought. I’ve made a bed for my lover and me.

She looked at the white pillows and the pink blankets with their satin edging, and she saw herself and Lloyd, locked in a clinging embrace, kissing with mad desperation. The thought aroused her so much that she felt faint.

She heard footsteps outside, ringing on the floorboards as hers had. Who could that be? Morrison, perhaps, the old footman, on his way to look at a leaking gutter or a cracked windowpane. She waited, heart pounding with guilt, as the footsteps came nearer then receded.

The scare calmed her excitement and cooled the heat she felt inside. She took one last look around the scene and left.

There was no one in the corridor.

She walked along, her shoes heralding her progress; but she looked perfectly innocent now, she told herself. She could go anywhere she wanted; she had more right to be here than anyone else; she was at home; her husband was heir to the whole place.

The husband she was carefully planning to betray.

She knew she should be paralysed by guilt, but in fact she was eager to do it, consumed by longing.

Next she had to brief Lloyd. He had come to her apartment last night, as usual; but she could not have made this assignation with him then, for he would have expected her to explain herself and then, she knew, she would have told him everything and taken him to her bed and ruined the whole plan. So she had to speak to him briefly today.

She did not normally see him in the daytime, unless she ran into him by accident, in the hall or library. How could she make sure of meeting him? She went up the back stairs to the attic floor. The trainees were not in their rooms, but at any moment one of them might appear, returning to his room for something he had forgotten. So she had to be quick.

She went into Lloyd’s room. It smelled of him. She could not say exactly what the fragrance was. She did not see a bottle of cologne in the room, but there was a jar of some kind of hair lotion beside his razor. She opened it and sniffed: yes, that was it, citrus and spice. Was he vain, she asked herself? Perhaps a little bit. He usually looked well dressed, even in his uniform.

She would leave him a note. On top of the dresser was a pad of cheap writing paper. She opened it and tore out a sheet. She looked around for something to write with. He had a black fountain pen with his name engraved on the barrel, she knew, but he would have that with him, for writing notes in class. She found a pencil in the top drawer.

What could she write? She had to be careful in case someone else should read the note. In the end she just wrote: ‘Library’. She left the pad open on the dresser where he could hardly fail to see it. Then she left.

No one saw her.

He would probably come to his room at some point, she speculated, perhaps to fill his pen with ink from the bottle on the dresser. Then he would see the note and come to her.

She went to the library to wait.

The morning was long. She was reading Victorian authors – they seemed to understand how she felt right now – but today Mrs Gaskell could not hold her attention, and she spent most of the time looking out of the window. It was May, and normally there would have been a brilliant display of spring flowers in the grounds of Tŷ Gwyn, but most of the gardeners had joined the armed forces, and the rest were growing vegetables, not flowers.

Several trainees came into the library just before eleven, and settled down in the green leather chairs with their notebooks, but Lloyd was not among them.

The last lecture of the morning ended at half past twelve, she knew. At that point the men got up and left the library, but Lloyd did not appear.

Surely he would go to his room now, she thought, just to put down his books and wash his hands in the nearby bathroom.

The minutes passed, and the gong sounded for lunch.

Then he came in, and her heart leaped.

He looked worried. ‘I just saw your note,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

His first concern was for her. A problem of hers was not a nuisance to him, but an opportunity to help her, and he would seize it eagerly. No man had cared for her this way, not even her father.

‘Everything is all right,’ she said. ‘Do you know what a gardenia looks like?’ She had rehearsed this speech all morning.

‘I suppose so. A bit like a rose. Why?’

‘In the west wing there’s an apartment called the Gardenia Suite. It has a white gardenia painted on the door, and it’s full of stored linen. Do you think you could find it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Meet me there tonight, instead of coming to the flat. Usual time.’

He stared at her, trying to figure out what was going on. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘But why?’

‘I want to tell you something.’

‘How exciting,’ he said, but he looked puzzled.

She could guess what was going through his mind. He was electrified by the thought that she might intend a romantic assignation, and at the same time he was telling himself that was a hopeless dream.

‘Go to lunch,’ she said.

He hesitated.

She said: ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

‘I can’t wait,’ he said, and went out.

She returned to her flat. Maisie, who was not much of a cook, had made her a sandwich with two slabs of bread and a slice of canned ham. Daisy’s stomach was full of butterflies: she could not have eaten if it had been peach ice cream.

She lay down to rest. Her thoughts about the night to come were so explicit she felt embarrassed. She had learned a lot about sex from Boy, who clearly had much experience with other women, and she knew a great deal about what men liked. She wanted to do everything with Lloyd, to kiss every part of his body, to do what Boy called soixante-neuf, to swallow his semen. The thoughts were so arousing that it took all her willpower to resist the temptation to pleasure herself.

She had a cup of coffee at five, then washed her hair and took a long bath, shaving her underarms and trimming her pubic hair, which grew too abundantly. She dried herself and rubbed in a light body lotion all over. She perfumed herself and began to get dressed.

She put on new underwear. She tried on all her dresses. She liked the look of one with fine blue-and-white stripes, but all down the front it had little buttons that would take forever to undo, and she knew she would want to undress quickly. I’m thinking like a whore, she realized, and she did not know whether to be amused or ashamed. In the end, she decided on a simple peppermint-green cashmere knee-length that showed off her shapely legs.

She studied herself in the narrow mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. She looked good.

She perched on the edge of the bed to put her stockings on, and Boy came in.

Daisy felt faint. If she had not been sitting she would have fallen down. She stared at him in disbelief.

‘Surprise!’ he said with jollity. ‘I came a day early.’

‘Yes,’ she said when at last she was able to speak. ‘Surprise.’

He bent down and kissed her. She had never much liked his tongue in her mouth, because he always tasted of booze and cigars. He did not mind her distaste – in fact, he seemed to enjoy forcing the issue. But now, out of guilt, she tongued him back.

‘Gosh!’ he said when he ran out of breath. ‘You’re frisky.’

You have no idea, Daisy thought; at least, I hope you don’t.

‘The exercise was brought forward by a day,’ he explained. ‘No time to warn you.’

‘So you’re here for the night,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

And Lloyd was leaving in the morning.

‘You don’t seem very pleased,’ Boy said. He looked at her dress. ‘Did you have something else planned?’

‘Such as what?’ she said. She had to regain her composure. ‘A night out at the Two Crowns pub, perhaps?’ she asked sarcastically.

‘Speaking of that, let’s have a drink.’ He left the room in search of booze.

Daisy buried her face in her hands. How could this be? Her plan was ruined. She would have to find some way of alerting Lloyd. And she could not declare her love for him in a hurried whisper with Boy around the corner.

She told herself that the whole scheme would simply be postponed. It was only for a few days: he was due back next Tuesday. The delay would be agonizing, but she would survive, and so would her love. All the same, she almost cried with disappointment.

She finished putting on her stockings and shoes, then she went into the little sitting room.

Boy had found a bottle of Scotch and two glasses. She took some to be convivial. He said: ‘I see that girl is making a fish pie for supper. I’m starving. Is she a good cook?’

‘Not really. Her food is edible, if you’re hungry.’

‘Oh, well, there’s always whisky,’ he said, and he poured himself another drink.

‘What have you been doing?’ She was desperate to get him to talk so that she would not have to. ‘Did you fly to Norway?’ The Germans were winning the first land battle of the war there.

‘No, thank God. It’s a disaster. There’s a big debate in the House of Commons tonight.’ He began to talk about the mistakes the British and French commanders had made.

When supper was ready, Boy went down to the cellar to get some wine. Daisy saw a chance to alert Lloyd. But where would he be? She looked at her wristwatch. It was half past seven. He would be having dinner in the mess. She could not walk into that room and whisper in his ear as he sat at the table with his fellow officers: it would be as good as telling everyone they were lovers. Was there some way she could get him out of there? She racked her brains, but before she could think of anything Boy returned, triumphantly carrying a bottle of 1921 Dom Pérignon. ‘The first vintage they made,’ he said. ‘Historic.’

They sat at the table and ate Maisie’s fish pie. Daisy drank a glass of the champagne but she found it difficult to eat. She pushed her food around the plate in an attempt to look normal. Boy had a second helping.

For dessert, Maisie served canned peaches with condensed milk. ‘War has been bad for British cuisine,’ Boy said.

‘Not that it was great before,’ Daisy commented, still working on seeming normal.

By now Lloyd must be in the Gardenia Suite. What would he do if she were unable to get a message to him? Would he remain there all night, waiting and hoping for her to arrive? Would he give up at midnight and return to his own bed? Or would he come down here looking for her? That might be awkward.

Boy took out a large cigar and smoked it with satisfaction, occasionally dipping the unlit end into a glass of brandy. Daisy tried to think of an excuse to leave him and go upstairs, but nothing came. What pretext could she possibly cite for visiting the trainees’ quarters at this time of night?

She still had done nothing when he put out his cigar and said: ‘Well, time for bed. Do you want to use the bathroom first?’

Not knowing what else to do, she got up and went into the bedroom. Slowly, she took off the clothes she had put on so carefully for Lloyd. She washed her face and put on her least alluring nightdress. Then she got into bed.

Boy was moderately drunk when he climbed in beside her, but he still wanted sex. The thought appalled her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Dr Mortimer said no marital relations for three months.’ This was not true. Mortimer had said it would be all right when the bleeding stopped. She felt horribly dishonest. She had been planning to do it with Lloyd tonight.

‘What?’ Boy said indignantly. ‘Why?’

Improvising, she said: ‘If we do it too soon, it might affect my chances of getting pregnant again, apparently.’

That convinced him. He was desperate for an heir. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, and turned away.

In a minute he was asleep.

Daisy lay awake, her mind buzzing. Could she slip away now? She would have to get dressed – she certainly could not walk around the house in her nightdress. Boy slept heavily, but often woke to go to the bathroom. What if he did that while she was gone, and saw her return with her clothes on? What story could she tell that had a chance of being believed? Everyone knew there was only one reason why a woman went creeping around a country house at night.

Lloyd would have to suffer. And she suffered with him, thinking of him alone and disappointed in that musty room. Would he lie down in his uniform and fall asleep? He would be cold, unless he pulled a blanket around him. Would he assume some emergency, or just think she had carelessly stood him up? Perhaps he would feel let down, and be angry with her.

Tears rolled down her face. Boy was snoring, so he would never know.

She dozed off in the small hours, and dreamed she was catching a train, but silly things kept happening to delay her: the taxi took her to the wrong place, she had to walk unexpectedly far with her suitcase, she could not find her ticket, and when she reached the platform she found waiting for her an old-fashioned stage coach that would take days to get to London.

When she woke from the dream, Boy was in the bathroom, shaving.

She lost heart. She got up and dressed. Maisie prepared breakfast, and Boy had eggs and bacon and buttered toast. By the time they had finished it was nine o’clock. Lloyd had said he was leaving at nine. He might be in the hall now, with his suitcase in his hand.

Boy got up from the table and went into the bathroom, taking the newspaper with him. Daisy knew his morning habits: he would be there five or ten minutes. Suddenly her apathy left her. She went out of the flat and ran up the stairs to the hall.

Lloyd was not there. He must already have left. Her heart sank.

But he would be walking to the railway station: only the wealthy and infirm took taxis to go a mile. Perhaps she could catch him up. She went out through the front door.

She saw him four hundred yards down the drive, walking smartly, carrying his case, and her heart leaped. Throwing caution to the wind, she ran after him.

A light army pickup truck of the kind they called a Tilly was bowling down the drive ahead of her. To her dismay it slowed alongside Lloyd. ‘No!’ Daisy said, but Lloyd was too far away to hear her.

He threw his suitcase into the back and jumped into the cab beside the driver.

She kept running, but it was hopeless. The little truck pulled away and picked up speed.

Daisy stopped. She stood and watched as the Tilly passed through the gates of Tŷ Gwyn and disappeared from view. She tried not to cry.

After a moment she turned around and went back inside the house.

(v)

On the way to Bournemouth Lloyd spent a night in London; and that evening, Wednesday 8 May, he was in the visitors’ gallery of the House of Commons, watching the debate that would decide the fate of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

It was like being in the gods at the theatre: the seats were cramped and hard, and you looked vertiginously down on the drama unfolding below. The gallery was full tonight. Lloyd and his stepfather, Bernie, had got tickets only with difficulty, through the influence of his mother, Ethel, who was now sitting with his Uncle Billy among the Labour MPs down in the packed chamber.

Lloyd had had no chance yet to ask about his real father and mother: everyone was too preoccupied with the political crisis. Both Lloyd and Bernie wanted Chamberlain to resign. The appeaser of Fascism had little credibility as a war leader, and the debacle in Norway only underlined that.

The debate had begun the night before. Chamberlain had been furiously attacked, not just by Labour MPs but by his own side, Ethel had reported. The Conservative Leo Amery had quoted Cromwell at him: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!’ It was a cruel speech to come from a colleague, and it was made more wounding by the chorus of ‘Hear, hear!’ that arose from both sides of the chamber.

Lloyd’s mother and the other female MPs had got together in their own room in the palace of Westminster and agreed to force a vote. The men could not stop them and so joined them instead. When this was announced on Wednesday, the debate was transformed into a ballot on Chamberlain. The Prime Minister accepted the challenge, and – in what Lloyd felt was a sign of weakness – appealed to his friends to stand by him.

The attacks continued tonight. Lloyd relished them. He hated Chamberlain for his policy on Spain. For two years, from 1937 to 1939, Chamberlain had continued to enforce ‘non-intervention’ by Britain and France, while Germany and Italy poured arms and men into the rebel army, and American ultra-conservatives sold oil and trucks to Franco. If any one British politician bore guilt for the mass murders now being carried out by Franco, it was Neville Chamberlain.

‘And yet,’ said Bernie to Lloyd during a lull, ‘Chamberlain isn’t really to blame for the fiasco in Norway. Winston Churchill is First Lord of the Admiralty, and your mother says he was the one who pushed for this invasion. After all Chamberlain has done – Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia – it will be ironic if he falls from power because of something that isn’t really his fault.’

‘Everything is ultimately the Prime Minister’s fault,’ said Lloyd. ‘That’s what it means to be the leader.’

Bernie smiled wryly, and Lloyd knew he was thinking that young people saw everything too simply; but, to his credit, Bernie did not say it.

It was a noisy debate, but the House went quiet when the former Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, stood up. Lloyd had been named after him. Seventy-seven years old now, a white-haired elder statesman, he spoke with the authority of the man who had won the Great War.

He was merciless. ‘It is not a question of who are the Prime Minister’s friends,’ he said, stating the obvious with withering sarcasm. ‘It is a far bigger issue.’

Once again, Lloyd was heartened to see that the chorus of approval came from the Conservative side as well as the opposition.

‘He has appealed for sacrifices,’ Lloyd George said, his nasal North Wales accent seeming to sharpen the edge of his contempt. ‘There is nothing which can contribute more to victory, in this war, than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.’

The opposition shouted their approval, and Lloyd could see his mother cheering.

Churchill closed the debate. As a speaker he was the equal of Lloyd George, and Lloyd feared that his oratory might rescue Chamberlain. But the House was against him, interrupting and jeering, sometimes so loudly that he could not be heard over the clamour.

He sat down at 11 p.m. and the vote was taken.

The voting system was cumbersome. Instead of raising their hands, or ticking slips of paper, MPs had to leave the chamber and be counted as they walked through one of two lobbies, for Ayes or Noes. The process took fifteen or twenty minutes. It could have been devised only by men who did not have enough to do, Ethel said. She felt sure it would be modernized soon.

Lloyd waited on tenterhooks. The fall of Chamberlain would give him profound satisfaction, but it was by no means certain.

To distract himself he thought about Daisy, always a pleasant occupation. How strange his last twenty-four hours at Tŷ Gwyn had been: first the one-word note ‘Library’; then the rushed conversation, with her tantalizing summons to the Gardenia Suite; then a whole night of waiting, cold and bored and bewildered, for a woman who did not show up. He had stayed there until six o’clock in the morning, miserable but unwilling to give up hope until the moment when he was obliged to wash and shave and change his clothes and pack his suitcase for the trip.

Clearly something had gone wrong, or she had changed her mind; but what had she intended in the first place? She had said she wanted to tell him something. Had she planned to say something earth-shaking, to merit all that drama? Or something so trivial that she had forgotten all about it and the rendezvous? He would have to wait until next Tuesday to ask her.

He had not told his family that Daisy had been at Tŷ Gwyn. That would have required him to explain to them what his relationship with Daisy was now, and he could not do that, for he did not really understand it himself. Was he in love with a married woman? He did not know. How did she feel about him? He did not know. Most likely, he thought, Daisy and he were two good friends who had missed their chance at love. And somehow he did not want to admit that to anyone, for it seemed unbearably final.

He said to Bernie: ‘Who will take over, if Chamberlain goes?’

‘The betting is on Halifax.’ Lord Halifax was currently the Foreign Secretary.

‘No!’ said Lloyd indignantly. ‘We can’t have an earl for Prime Minister at a time like this. Anyway, he’s an appeaser, just as bad as Chamberlain!’

‘I agree,’ said Bernie. ‘But who else is there?’

‘What about Churchill?’

‘You know what Stanley Baldwin said about Churchill?’ Baldwin, a Conservative, had been Prime Minister before Chamberlain. ‘When Winston was born, lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle with gifts – imagination, eloquence, industry, ability – and then came a fairy who said: ‘No person has a right to so many gifts,’ picked him up, and gave him such a shake and a twist that he was denied judgement and wisdom.’

Lloyd smiled. ‘Very witty, but is it true?’

‘There’s something in it. In the last war he was responsible for the Dardanelles campaign, which was a terrible defeat for us. Now he’s pushed us into the Norwegian adventure, another failure. He’s a fine orator, but the evidence suggests he has a tendency to wishful thinking.’

Lloyd said: ‘He was right about the need to rearm in the thirties – when everyone else was against it, including the Labour Party.’

‘Churchill will be calling for rearmament in Paradise, when the lion lies down with the lamb.’

‘I think we need someone with an aggressive streak. We want a prime minister who will bark, not whimper.’

‘Well, you may get your wish. The tellers are coming back.’

The votes were announced. The Ayes had 280, the Noes 200. Chamberlain had won. There was uproar in the chamber. The Prime Minister’s supporters cheered, but others yelled at him to resign.

Lloyd was bitterly disappointed. ‘How can they want to keep him, after all that?’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ said Bernie as the Prime Minister left and the noise subsided. Bernie was making calculations with a pencil in the margin of the Evening News. ‘The government usually has a majority of about two hundred and forty. That’s dropped to eighty.’ He scribbled numbers, adding and subtracting. ‘Taking a rough guess at the number of MPs absent, I reckon about forty of the government’s supporters voted against Chamberlain, and another sixty abstained. That’s a terrible blow to a prime minister – a hundred of his colleagues don’t have confidence in him.’

‘But is it enough to force him to resign?’ Lloyd said impatiently.

Bernie spread his arms in a gesture of surrender. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

(vi)

Next day Lloyd, Ethel, Bernie and Billy went to Bournemouth by train.

The carriage was full of delegates from all over Britain. They all spent the entire journey discussing last night’s debate and the future of the Prime Minister, in accents ranging from the harsh chop of Glasgow to the swerve and swoop of Cockney. Once again Lloyd had no chance to raise with his mother the subject that was haunting him.

Like most delegates, they could not afford the swanky hotels on the clifftops, so they stayed in a boarding house on the outskirts. That evening the four of them went to a pub and sat in a quiet corner, and Lloyd saw his chance.

Bernie bought a round of drinks. Ethel wondered aloud what was happening to her friend Maud in Berlin: she no longer got news, for the war had ended the postal service between Germany and Britain.

Lloyd sipped his pint of beer then said firmly: ‘I’d like to know more about my real father.’

Ethel said sharply: ‘Bernie is your father.’

Evasion again! Lloyd suppressed the anger that immediately rose in him. ‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ he said. ‘And I don’t need to tell Bernie that I love him like a father, because he already knows.’

Bernie patted him on the shoulder, an awkward but genuine gesture of affection.

Lloyd made his voice insistent. ‘But I’m curious about Teddy Williams.’

Billy said: ‘We need to talk about the future, not the past – we’re at war.’

‘Exactly,’ said Lloyd. ‘So I want answers to my questions now. I’m not willing to wait, because I will be going into battle soon, and I don’t want to die in ignorance.’ He did not see how they could deny that argument.

Ethel said: ‘You know all there is to know,’ but she was not meeting his eye.

‘No, I don’t,’ he said, forcing himself to be patient. ‘Where are my other grandparents? Do I have uncles and aunts and cousins?’

‘Teddy Williams was an orphan,’ Ethel said.

‘Raised in what orphanage?’

She said irritably: ‘Why are you so stubborn?’

Lloyd allowed his voice to rise in reciprocal annoyance. ‘Because I’m like you!’

Bernie could not repress a grin. ‘That’s true, anyway.’

Lloyd was not amused. ‘What orphanage?’

‘He might have told me, but I don’t remember. In Cardiff, I think.’

Billy intervened. ‘You’re touching a sore place, now, Lloyd, boy. Drink your beer and drop the subject.’

Lloyd said angrily: ‘I’ve got a bloody sore place, too, Uncle Billy, thank you very much, and I’m fed up with lies.’

‘Now, now,’ said Bernie. ‘Let’s not have talk of lies.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad, but it’s got to be said.’ Lloyd held up a hand to stave off interruption. ‘Last time I asked, Mam told me Teddy Williams’s family came from Swansea but they moved around a lot because of his father’s job. Now she says he was raised in an orphanage in Cardiff. One of those stories is a lie – if not both.’

At last Ethel looked him in the eye. ‘Me and Bernie fed you and clothed you and sent you to school and university,’ she said indignantly. ‘You’ve got nothing to complain about.’

‘And I’ll always be grateful to you, and I’ll always love you,’ Lloyd said.

Billy said: ‘Why have this come up now, anyhow?’

‘Because of something somebody said to me in Aberowen.’

His mother did not respond, but there was a flash of fear in her eyes. Someone in Wales knows the truth, Lloyd thought.

He went on relentlessly: ‘I was told that perhaps Maud Fitzherbert fell pregnant in 1914, and her baby was passed off as yours, for which you were rewarded with the house in Nutley Street.’

Ethel made a scornful noise.

Lloyd held up a hand. ‘That would explain two things,’ he said. ‘One, the unlikely friendship between you and Lady Maud.’ He reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Two, this picture of me in side-whiskers.’ He showed them the photograph.

Ethel stared at the picture without speaking.

Lloyd said: ‘It could be me, couldn’t it?’

Billy said testily: ‘Yes, Lloyd, it could. But obviously it’s not, so stop mucking about and tell us who it is.’

‘It’s Earl Fitzherbert’s father. Now you stop mucking about, Uncle Billy, and you, Mam. Am I Maud’s son?’

Ethel said: ‘The friendship between me and Maud was a political alliance, foremost. It was broken off when we disagreed about strategy for suffragettes, then resumed later. I like her a lot, and she gave me important chances in life, but there is no secret bond. She doesn’t know who your father is.’

‘All right, Mam,’ said Lloyd. ‘I could believe that. But this photo . . .’

‘The explanation of that resemblance . . .’ She choked up.

Lloyd was not going to let her escape. ‘Come on,’ he said remorselessly. ‘Tell me the truth.’

Billy intervened again. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, boyo,’ he said.

‘Am I? Well, then, set me straight, why don’t you?’

‘It’s not for me to do that.’

That was as good as an admission. ‘So you were lying before.’

Bernie looked gobsmacked. He said to Billy: ‘Are you saying the Teddy Williams story isn’t true?’ Clearly he had believed it all these years, just as Lloyd had.

Billy did not reply.

They all looked at Ethel.

‘Oh, bugger it,’ she said. ‘My father would say: “Be sure your sins will find you out.” Well, you’ve asked for the truth, so you shall have it, though you won’t like it.’

‘Try me,’ Lloyd said recklessly.

‘You’re not Maud’s child,’ she said. ‘You’re Fitz’s.’

(vii)

Next day, Friday 10 May, Germany invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Lloyd heard the news on the radio as he sat down to breakfast with his parents and Uncle Billy in the boarding house. He was not surprised: everyone in the army had believed the invasion was imminent.

He was much more stunned by the revelations of the previous evening. Last night he had lain awake for hours, angry that he had been misled so long, dismayed that he was the son of a right-wing aristocratic appeaser who was also, weirdly, the father-in-law of the enchanting Daisy.

‘How could you fall for him?’ he had said to his mother in the pub.

Her reply had been sharp. ‘Don’t be a hypocrite. You used to be crazy about your rich American girl, and she was so right-wing she married a Fascist.’

Lloyd had wanted to argue that that was different, but quickly realized it was the same. Whatever his relationship with Daisy now, there was no doubt that he had once felt in love with her. Love was not logical. If he could succumb to an irrational passion, so could his mother; indeed, they had been the same age, twenty-one, when it had happened.

He had said she should have told him the truth from the start, but she had an argument for that, too. ‘How would you have reacted, as a little boy, if I had told you that you were the son of a rich man, an earl? How long would it have been before you boasted to the other boys at school? Think how they would have mocked your childish fantasy. Think how they would have hated you for being superior to them.’

‘But later . . .’

‘I don’t know,’ she had said wearily. ‘There never seemed to be a good time.’

Bernie had at first gone white with shock, but soon recovered and became his usual phlegmatic self. He said he understood why Ethel had not told him the truth. ‘A secret shared is a secret no more.’

Lloyd wondered about his mother’s relationship with the earl now. ‘I suppose you must see him all the time, in Westminster.’

‘Just occasionally. Peers have a separate section of the Palace, with their own restaurants and bars, and when we see them it’s usually by arrangement.’

That night Lloyd was too shocked and bewildered to know how he felt. His father was Fitz – the aristocrat, the Tory, the father of Boy, the father-in-law of Daisy. Should he be sad about it, angry, suicidal? The revelation was so devastating that he felt numbed. It was like an injury so grave that at first there was no pain.

The morning news gave him something else to think about.

In the early hours the German army had made a lightning westward strike. Although it was anticipated, Lloyd knew that the best efforts of Allied intelligence had been unable to discover the date in advance, and the armies of those small states had been taken by surprise. Nevertheless, they were fighting back bravely.

‘That’s probably true,’ said Uncle Billy, ‘but the BBC would say it anyway.’

Prime Minister Chamberlain had called a Cabinet meeting that was going on at that very moment. However, the French army, reinforced by ten British divisions already in France, had long ago agreed a plan for dealing with such an invasion, and that plan had automatically gone into operation. Allied troops had crossed the French border into Holland and Belgium from the west and were rushing to meet the Germans.

With the momentous news heavy on their hearts, the Williams family caught the bus into the town centre and made their way to Bournemouth Pavilion, where the party conference was being held.

There they heard the news from Westminster. Chamberlain was clinging to power. Billy learned that the Prime Minister had asked Labour Party leader Clement Attlee to become a Cabinet Minister, making the government a coalition of the three main parties.

All three of them were aghast at this prospect. Chamberlain the appeaser would remain Prime Minister, and the Labour Party would be obliged to support him in a coalition government. It did not bear thinking about.

‘What did Attlee say?’ asked Lloyd.

‘That he would have to consult his National Executive Committee,’ Billy replied.

‘That’s us.’ Both Lloyd and Billy were members of the committee, which had a meeting scheduled for four o’clock that afternoon.

‘Right,’ said Ethel. ‘Let’s start canvassing, and find out how much support Chamberlain’s plan might have on our executive.’

‘None, I should think,’ said Lloyd.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ said his mother. ‘There will be some who want to keep Churchill out at any price.’

Lloyd spent the next few hours in constant political activity, talking to members of the committee and their friends and assistants, in cafés and bars in the pavilion and along the seafront. He ate no lunch, but drank so much tea that he felt he might have floated.

He was disappointed to find that not everyone shared his view of Chamberlain and Churchill. There were a few pacifists left over from the last war, who wanted peace at any price, and approved of Chamberlain’s appeasement. On the other side, Welsh MPs still thought of Churchill as the Home Secretary who sent the troops in to break a strike in Tonypandy. That had been thirty years ago, but Lloyd was learning that memories could be long in politics.

At half past three Lloyd and Billy walked along the seafront in a fresh breeze and entered the Highcliff Hotel, where the meeting was to be held. They thought that a majority of the committee were against accepting Chamberlain’s offer, but they could not be completely sure, and Lloyd was still worried about the result.

They went into the room and sat at the long table with the other committee members. Promptly at four the party leader came in.

Clem Attlee was a slim, quiet, unassuming man, neatly dressed, with a bald head and a moustache. He looked like a solicitor – which his father was – and people tended to underestimate him. In his dry, unemotional way he summarized, for the committee, the events of the last twenty-four hours, including Chamberlain’s offer of a coalition with Labour.

Then he said: ‘I have two questions to ask you. The first is: Would you serve in a coalition government with Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister?’

There was a resounding ‘No!’ from the people around the table, more vehement than Lloyd had expected. He was thrilled. Chamberlain, friend of the Fascists, the betrayer of Spain, was finished. There was some justice in the world.

Lloyd also noted how subtly the unassertive Attlee had controlled the meeting. He had not opened the subject for general discussion. His question had not been: What shall we do? He had not given people the chance to express uncertainty or dither. In his understated way he had put them all up against the wall and made them choose. And Lloyd felt sure the answer he got was the one he had wanted.

Attlee said: ‘Then the second question is: Would you serve in a coalition under a different prime minister?’

The answer was not so vocal, but it was Yes. As Lloyd looked around the table it was clear to him that almost everyone was in favour. If there were any against, they did not bother to ask for a vote.

‘In that case,’ said Attlee, ‘I shall tell Chamberlain that our party will serve in a coalition but only if he resigns and a new prime minister is appointed.’

There was a murmur of agreement around the table.

Lloyd noted how cleverly Attlee had avoided asking who they thought the new prime minister should be.

Attlee said: ‘I shall now go and telephone Number Ten Downing Street.’

He left the room.

(viii)

That evening Winston Churchill was summoned to Buckingham Palace, in accordance with tradition, and the King asked him to become Prime Minister.

Lloyd had high hopes of Churchill, even if the man was a Conservative. Over the weekend Churchill made his dispositions. He formed a five-man War Cabinet including Clem Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, respectively leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party. Union leader Ernie Bevin became Minister of Labour. Clearly, Lloyd thought, Churchill intended to have a genuine cross-party government.

Lloyd packed his case ready to catch the train back to Aberowen. Once there, he expected to be quickly redeployed, probably to France. But he only needed an hour or two. He was desperate to learn the explanation of Daisy’s behaviour last Tuesday. Knowing he was going to see her soon increased his impatience to understand.

Meanwhile, the German army rolled across Holland and Belgium, overcoming spirited opposition with a speed that shocked Lloyd. On Sunday evening Billy spoke on the phone to a contact in the War Office, and afterwards he and Lloyd borrowed an old school atlas from the boarding-house proprietress and studied the map of north-west Europe.

Billy’s forefinger drew an east–west line from Dusseldorf through Brussels to Lille. ‘The Germans are thrusting at the softest part of the French defences, the northern section of the border with Belgium.’ His finger moved down the page. ‘Southern Belgium is bordered by the Ardennes Forest, a huge strip of hilly, wooded terrain virtually impassable to modern motorized armies. So my friend in the War Office says.’ His finger moved on. ‘Yet farther south, the French–German border is defended by a series of heavy fortifications called the Maginot Line, stretching all the way to Switzerland.’ His finger returned up the page. ‘But there are no fortifications between Belgium and northern France.’

Lloyd was puzzled. ‘Did no one think of this until now?’

‘Of course we did. And we have a strategy to deal with it.’ Billy lowered his voice. ‘Called Plan D. It can’t be a secret any more, since we’re already implementing it. The best part of the French army, plus all of the British Expeditionary Force already over there, are pouring across the border into Belgium. They will form a solid line of defence at the Dyle River. That will stop the German advance.’

Lloyd was not much reassured. ‘So we’re committing half our forces to Plan D?’

‘We need to make sure it works.’

‘It better.’

They were interrupted by the proprietress, who brought Lloyd a telegram.

It had to be from the army. He had given Colonel Ellis-Jones this address before going on leave. He was surprised he had not heard sooner. He ripped open the envelope. The cable said:

DO NOT RETURN ABEROWEN STOP REPORT SOUTHAMPTON DOCKS IMMEDIATELY STOP A BIENTOT SIGNED ELLISJONES

He was not going back to Tŷ Gwyn. Southampton was one of Britain’s largest ports, a common embarkation point for the Continent, and it was located just a few miles along the coast from Bournemouth, an hour perhaps by train or bus.

Lloyd would not be seeing Daisy tomorrow, he realized with an ache in his heart. Perhaps he might never learn what she had wanted to tell him.

Colonel Ellis-Jones’s à bientôt confirmed the obvious inference.

Lloyd was going to France.