Sweet Sorrow (2 page)

Verity enjoyed referring to ‘my husband’. She had determined that as she had, against all her principles, got married, and to Lord Edward Corinth rather than to plain Mr Snooks, she might as well revel in her sin. She would not try to pretend that marriage was merely a slight error of judgement for which she could hardly be blamed. And here she was employing staff for the first time in her life. Edward had insisted on appointing a cook/housekeeper on the grounds that, as he put it, Verity was quite without any domestic skills – hurtful but undeniably true – and because she would be away for long stretches of time by nature of her work – she was a foreign correspondent for the
New Gazette
. Edward had accepted an ill-defined but interesting-sounding job at the Foreign Office, so he was likely to be at home more often than she and would need someone to run the house for him.

‘Do you mind that I can’t darn your socks, Edward?’ she had asked him, rather abashed.

‘Nor boil an egg or make a bed . . .’ He saw her face fall and stopped teasing. ‘Of course not! You know very well that such a woman would bore me rigid. That is why we will employ Mrs Brendel. And we have the added pleasure of knowing that we are helping someone less fortunate than ourselves. Oh dear, does that sound impossibly smug? But you know what I mean.’

Mrs Brendel was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany – a friend of their near neighbours, Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Leonard – a Jew himself – had been active in helping refugees find work and somewhere to live.

‘You can decorate the house how you like, V. The only thing I insist upon,’ Edward had continued, ‘is that you keep it clean and simple – no wallpaper. Wallpaper reminds me of dull London drawing-rooms and is totally inappropriate to a country vicarage.’

Verity, feeling almost dizzy with virtue – was she not behaving like the wives she had read about who treated their husband’s slightest whim as an order? – opened her mouth to ask Mrs Brendel what she was planning to give them for supper. She was arrested by a cry of ‘Cooee!’ from the French windows.

‘Verity, I hope you don’t mind me coming at you through the garden but I could hear you talking . . .’

She had very few female friends – she found most women irritating. They tended to disapprove of her wandering the world as a journalist, unmarried and unchaperoned. Now that she
was
married they would disapprove of her all the more. A wife’s place was in the home looking after the children and preparing supper for the man of the house when he returned from the City. She had no children, had no intention of having children and, under pressure, confessed to not liking children. As for waiting at home for Edward to return from town – she had never waited for anything, least of all Edward. At dinner parties, she objected to being sent out of the room with the women to discuss children and ‘the servant problem’ while the men sat over their port and cigars discussing money and politics. However, she had one woman friend to whom she was devoted – Charlotte, a novelist married to one of her oldest friends, the painter, Adrian Hassel. They lived in a cottage just across the field and it was they who had found Edward and Verity their house.

‘Of course not! Come in. It’s so hot that Mrs Brendel and I decided to open every window and air the house while we can. It’s wonderful to have escaped London. I really thought I should die, it was so oppressive.’

‘And how do you like it here?’

‘I adore it! I can’t tell you how grateful we are to you. I don’t think we would ever have found anywhere to live without your help. You know, I feel like a child playing with a doll’s house. I just can’t believe it’s all real.’

‘Well, I’m pleased, though somehow I can’t ever imagine you playing with dolls,’ Charlotte replied. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you settle in?’

‘No, thank you, Mrs Brendel is so efficient. The furniture we brought from Mersham arrived yesterday. It’s all a bit of a muddle now but I’m sure by the end of the week we’ll feel we have lived here for years.’

‘And last night . . .? You could have come and stayed with us.’

‘I know we could. You have been so kind but we decided we had to “take possession” so to speak. Now, are you coming to dinner tonight? I was just about to discuss what we might eat with Mrs Brendel.’ Verity looked doubtful for a moment. ‘We have got some food, I suppose, Mrs Brendel?’

Charlotte had to laugh at the hopeless way she looked about her as though expecting a leg of lamb, perfectly roasted, suddenly to appear in front of her.

‘Never mind that,’ Charlotte said. ‘You are invited to dinner tonight with the Woolves. They so much want to meet you. Do say you’ll come.’

‘Gosh, yes!’ Verity’s faced cleared and she smiled with relief. ‘We’d love that. Edward and I are already struggling to find things to talk about when we are by ourselves,’ she joked. ‘The Woolves . . .? You mean . . .?’

‘Leonard and Virginia – round here, they are always called the Woolves. It’s affectionate, you understand.’

Verity turned to the housekeeper who was standing patiently waiting for instructions. ‘It seems we’ll not be dining at home, Mrs Brendel. I hope you haven’t bought anything that won’t keep?’

‘No, mam. There’s a shoulder of mutton but it will keep in the larder until tomorrow, even in this heat.’

‘Oh, you’ve been into Lewes . . .?’ Verity sounded surprised.

‘No, mam. The butcher calls every Tuesday and Friday, the fish on Wednesday and the baker’s boy calls daily except Sundays.’

‘Goodness! Well then, there’s nothing for me to worry about, is there?’

When Mrs Brendel had departed, Charlotte giggled. ‘I’ll have some difficulty thinking of you as “mam”, Verity.’

‘She wanted to call me “my lady”,’ Verity responded defensively. ‘I told her I couldn’t live up to that so we compromised on mam or madam. Do you think it too absurd?’

‘No! We’ll soon get used to the new Verity – with a big house and servants and a title . . .’

‘Now you’re teasing me again. Why does everyone think it so funny? I can’t get Edward to take me seriously and now you. You’ve got to give me support or else I’ll run away.’

‘Nonsense!’ Charlotte said firmly. ‘Don’t be such a ninny. Where is Edward, anyway?’

‘He’s walking Basil.’ Basil was Verity’s curly-coated retriever. ‘They’ve gone up on the downs. Stay and have some tea. I expect they’ll be back in a few minutes.’

‘Haven’t got time. I have a book to finish. My publisher says that, if the war comes, no one will want to buy books – at least not ones like mine.’

‘About family squabbles . . .? Oh, I don’t agree. I think people will always want to read novels about normal life to remind them what they are fighting for and as an escape from the horrible present.’

Charlotte looked rather hurt. ‘I don’t think it’s fair to say my books are about family squabbles. I try to write about more important things.’

Verity did not hear her friend’s protest and continued her lecture. ‘During the last war, soldiers read in the trenches. In Spain, books and cigarettes were used as currency. Don’t forget that even in the most beastly wars, most of the time people sit around waiting for things to happen. War is a combination of boredom, fear and exhaustion.’

‘What about courage?’ Charlotte asked, still rather put out. ‘People are brave in war, aren’t they?’

‘Some people are brave but most just endure,’ Verity replied soberly.

‘Well, I’ve still got to finish the damn thing – the book, I mean. I’ll see you at Monk’s House around eight. Don’t dress up – it’ll just be us and maybe Byron Gates, the poet. Do you know him?’

‘I think I met him once, very briefly.’

‘Well, anyway, Adrian will probably insist on wearing his smoking jacket with paint on it and Leonard wears a moth-eaten corduroy thing.’ She looked at a pile of black cloth on the floor. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s for the blackout. Colonel Heron dropped in and reminded us that, when war is declared, we’ll have to keep any lights from showing. He took one look at our curtains and said they were much too thin. Next week he’s expecting to receive a new batch of gas masks to distribute. It’s so awful. One can’t think of war when it’s like this – the sun shining and the birds twittering and all that.’

‘You don’t fool me, Verity. You are longing for it – the excitement . . .’

‘No, Charlotte, you are quite wrong. I saw enough of it in Spain to know that war destroys everything it touches. I hate it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Charlotte said, realizing that she had upset her friend. ‘I shouldn’t have joked about it. You’re right of course. The truth is we’re all terrified of what’s to come but we have to put on a brave face.’

Virginia and Leonard had bought Monk’s House in the summer of 1919 for seven hundred pounds. It was a modest brick and flint two-storey building – little more than a cottage – weather-boarded on the street side. As she and Edward strolled the short distance from the Old Vicarage, Verity wondered if their hosts would resent them buying a much grander house than theirs.

They were let in by Leonard himself, although Verity caught sight of a maid bobbing around behind him. He was a gaunt, monkey-faced man with sharp intelligent eyes and a thin mouth, but his smile was attractive and she knew immediately that she liked him without his having said more than a word of welcome. He ushered them into a low-ceilinged, oak-beamed drawing-room apologizing for Sally, his cocker spaniel, who jumped up at them. Virginia rose to greet them and, holding out her hand to Verity, said how very much she had been looking forward to meeting her.

‘I read your reports from Spain and I was about to ask you to write a book for us when I was beaten to it by Gollancz.’

The Woolves had started a small publishing firm called the Hogarth Press and Verity was flattered that she had even been considered as a possible author.

‘It was so kind of you to have sent me books when I was ill, Mrs Woolf,’ she replied. ‘Although, I have to confess, I would always rather be “doing” than reading. Still, being laid up for so long, I was able to do something about my education – or lack of it.’

Verity found it almost impossible to take her eyes off Virginia. She thought she had never seen such a remarkable face, full of pain, lovely and remote. She became aware that she was being introduced to a handsome man in his early forties whose face she recognized.

‘Miss Browne – sorry, I mean Lady Edward – you won’t remember but we met at the BBC two years ago – Byron Gates. You were being interviewed about the war in Spain.’

‘Of course I remember. I didn’t know you lived near here until Charlotte – Mrs Hassel – mentioned it this afternoon.’

‘We’re just across the road from the pub – Ivy Cottage. Mrs Woolf was kind enough to find somewhere for me, my wife and daughters to take refuge. You must have come to the same decision, to leave London to the mercy of the Luftwaffe.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Verity said, frowning. She did not like to be accused of running away. ‘My husband and I need a home – we never had one in London – but we shall both be away a lot.’

‘You are still hoping to be “in the thick of it”?’ Byron inquired a little patronizingly. ‘I thought you had been ill.’

‘I had a very light case of TB but am fully recovered. Your wife . . . she’s not here?’ Verity said to change the subject.

‘No, Mary’s in Hollywood making one of those pictures where they take our history and turn it into Technicolor tosh. Nelson and Lady Hamilton, Queen Bess and the Earl of Essex – you know the sort of thing.’

‘I saw
Fire over England
. Is that the kind of picture you mean? I rather enjoyed it.’

‘Yes, but it was tosh, wasn’t it?’

‘It wasn’t realistic but it carried one along. And your daughters . . .?’

‘Ada and Jean, my stepdaughter – they’re at home with a sitter-in Virginia found me. I really don’t know what I would do without her.’ Again there was that patronizing tone of voice with the implication that the distinguished novelist had nothing better to do than sort out his domestic affairs.

‘You mustn’t mind Byron,’ Virginia said, smiling indulgently. ‘He’s an intellectual and despises we “toilers-in-the-field”. You know, he not only sets the crossword in
The Listener
, which I find impenetrable, but he actually completes the monthly Greek or Latin puzzle.’

Byron smiled smugly.

At dinner, Virginia served a brown vegetable soup from a huge tureen, decorated she said by her friend, the artist, Duncan Grant. She was silent but watchful as she drank her soup – sizing up the new arrivals, or so Verity presumed. There was nothing luxurious about Monk’s House. The dining-room was small, the table narrow and unprepossessing, but the chairs, designed and decorated by Virginia’s sister, Vanessa, were comfortable. Verity found that she was trying hard to impress Virginia. She told herself not to be so silly. She must be herself – take it or leave it.

Leonard and Edward seemed to be getting on well. Byron, rather rudely, Verity thought, broke in on their conversation to ask Edward whether it was true he was a private detective. ‘I ask because, as you may know, I write detective stories and it would be useful to study a real amateur detective at work.’

Edward, attempting to hide his irritation, admitted that he had been involved in one or two murder investigations but absolutely denied being a private detective. ‘My wife is much more astute than I am about discovering “who did it”,’ he joked. ‘I have quite determined never to investigate another crime.’

‘And if there’s a war . . .?’ Byron inquired. ‘Will there still be anything for you to detect?’

‘There can be no doubt about it,’ Edward replied sombrely, ignoring Byron’s attempt to needle him, ‘war is coming. It’s only a question of when. As for murder, I should have thought that, by definition, there will be many thousands of murders but, as I said, I won’t be investigating them.’

Verity was looking at Virginia when Edward said that war was inevitable and saw her rather sallow face go very pale and wished he would change the subject. Virginia must have seen that she had been observed and seemed called upon to explain her feelings.