12
‘You live in an amazing house,’ Beep Dewar said to Dave Williams.
Dave was thirteen years old; he had lived here as long as he could remember; and he had never really noticed the house. He looked up at the brick fa?ade of the garden front, with its regular rows of Georgian windows. ‘Amazing?’ he said.
‘It’s so old.’
‘It’s eighteenth-century, I think. So it’s only about two hundred years old.’
‘Only!’ She laughed. ‘In San Francisco, nothing is two hundred years old!’
The house was in Great Peter Street, London, a couple of minutes’ walk from Parliament. Most of the houses in the neighbourhood were eighteenth-century, and Dave knew vaguely that they had been built for Members of Parliament and peers who had to attend the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Dave’s father, Lloyd Williams, was an MP.
‘Do you smoke cigarettes?’ said Beep, taking out a packet.
‘Only when I get the chance.’
She gave him one and they both lit up.
Ursula Dewar, known as Beep, was also thirteen, but she seemed older than Dave. She wore nifty American clothes, tight sweaters and narrow jeans and boots. She claimed she could drive. She said British radio was square: only three stations, none playing rock and roll – and they went off the air at midnight! When she caught Dave staring at the small bumps her breasts made in the front of her black turtleneck, she was not even embarrassed; she just smiled. But she never quite gave him an opportunity to kiss her.
She would not be the first girl he had kissed. He would have liked to let her know that, just in case she thought he was inexperienced. She would be the third, counting Linda Robertson, whom he did count even though she had not actually kissed him back. The point was, he knew what to do.
But he had not managed it with Beep; not yet.
He had come close. He had discreetly put his arm around her shoulders in the back of his father’s Humber Hawk, but she had turned her face away and looked out at the lamplit streets. She did not giggle when tickled. They had jived to the Dansette record player in the bedroom of his fifteen-year-old sister, Evie; but Beep had declined to slow-dance when Dave put on Elvis singing ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’.
Still, he lived in hope. Sadly, this was not the moment, standing in the small garden on a winter afternoon, Beep hugging herself to keep warm, both of them stiffly dressed in their best clothes. They were off to a formal family occasion. But there would be a party later. Beep had a quarter-bottle of vodka in her handbag to spike the soft drinks they would be given while their parents hypocritically glugged whisky and gin. And then anything might happen. He stared at her pink lips closing around the filter tip of her Chesterfield, and imagined yearningly what it would be like.
His mother’s American accent called from the house: ‘Get in here, you kids – we’re leaving!’ They dropped their cigarettes into the flower bed and went inside.
The two families were assembling in the hall. Dave’s grandmother, Eth Leckwith, was to be ‘introduced’ to the House of Lords. This meant she would become a baroness, be addressed as Lady Leckwith, and sit as a Labour peer in the upper chamber of Parliament. Dave’s parents, Lloyd and Daisy, were waiting, with Evie, and a young family friend, Jasper Murray. The Dewars, wartime friends, were here too. Woody Dewar was a photographer on a one-year assignment in London, and had brought his wife, Bella, and their children, Cameron and Beep. All Americans seemed fascinated by the pantomime of British public life, so the Dewars were joining in the celebration. They formed a large group as they left the house and headed for Parliament Square.
Walking through the misty London streets, Beep transferred her attention from Dave to Jasper Murray. He was eighteen and a Viking, tall and broad with blond hair. He wore a heavy tweed jacket. Dave longed to be so grown-up and masculine, and to have Beep look up at him with that expression of admiration and desire.
Dave treated Jasper like an older brother, and asked his advice. He had confessed to Jasper that he adored Beep and could not figure out how to win her heart. ‘Keep trying,’ Jasper had said. ‘Sometimes sheer persistence works.’
Dave could hear their conversation. ‘So you’re Dave’s cousin?’ Beep said to Jasper as they crossed Parliament Square.
‘Not really,’ Jasper replied. ‘We’re no relation.’
‘So how come you live here rent-free and everything?’
‘My mother was at school with Dave’s mother in Buffalo. That’s where they met your father. Since then they’ve all been friends.’
There was more to it than that, Dave knew. Jasper’s mother, Eva, had been a refugee from Nazi Germany and Dave’s mother, Daisy, had taken her in, with characteristic generosity. But Jasper preferred to underplay the extent to which his family was indebted to the Williamses.
Beep said: ‘What are you studying?’
‘French and German. I’m at St Julian’s, which is one of the larger colleges of London University. But mostly I write for the student newspaper. I’m going to be a journalist.’
Dave was envious. He would never learn French or go to university. He was bottom of the class at everything. His father despaired.
Beep said to Jasper: ‘Where are your parents?’
‘Germany. They move around the world with the army. My father’s a colonel.’
‘A colonel!’ said Beep admiringly.
Dave’s sister, Evie, muttered in his ear: ‘Little tart, what does she think she’s doing? First she flutters her eyelashes at you, then she flirts with a man five years older!’
Dave made no comment. He knew that his sister had a massive crush on Jasper. He could have taunted her, but he refrained. He liked Evie and, besides, it was better to save up stuff like this and use it next time she was mean to him.
‘Don’t you have to be born an aristocrat?’ Beep was saying.
‘Even in the oldest families there has to be a first one,’ Jasper said. ‘But nowadays we have Life Peers, who don’t pass the title to their heirs. Mrs Leckwith will be a Life Peer.’
‘Will we have to curtsey to her?’
Jasper laughed. ‘No, idiot.’
‘Will the Queen be there for the ceremony?’
‘No.’
‘How disappointing!’
Evie whispered: ‘Stupid bitch.’
They went into the Palace of Westminster by the Lords’ Entrance. They were greeted by a man in court dress, including knee breeches and silk stockings. Dave heard his grandmother say in her lilting Welsh accent: ‘Obsolete uniforms are a sure sign of an institution in need of reform.’
Dave and Evie had been coming to the Parliament building all their lives, but it was a new experience for the Dewars, and they marvelled. Beep forgot to be charmingly dizzy and said: ‘Every surface is decorated! Floor tiles, patterned carpets, wallpaper, wood panelling, stained glass, and carved stone!’
Jasper looked at her with more interest. ‘It’s typical Victorian Gothic.’
‘Oh, really?’
Dave was beginning to get irritated with the way Jasper was impressing Beep.
The party split, most of them following an usher up several flights to a gallery overlooking the debating chamber. Ethel’s friends were already there. Beep sat next to Jasper, but Dave managed to sit on the other side of her, and Evie slid in beside him. Dave had often visited the House of Commons, at the other end of the same palace, but this was more ornate, and had red leather benches instead of green.
After a long wait there was a stir of activity below and his grandmother came in, walking in line with four other people, all dressed in funny hats and extremely silly robes with fur trimmings. Beep said: ‘This is amazing!’ but Dave and Evie giggled.
The procession stopped in front of a throne, and Grandmam knelt down, not without difficulty – she was sixty-eight. There was a lot of passing round of scrolls that had to be read aloud. Dave’s mother, Daisy, was explaining the ceremony in a low voice to Beep’s parents, tall Woody and plump Bella, but Dave tuned her out. It was all bollocks really.
After a while Ethel and two of her escorts went and sat on one of the benches. Then followed the funniest part of all.
They sat down, then immediately stood up again. They took off their hats and bowed. They sat down and put their hats back on again. Then they went through the whole thing again, looking for all the world like three marionettes on strings: stand up, hats off, bow, sit down, hats on. By this time Dave and Evie were helpless with suppressed laughter. Then they did it a third time. Dave heard his sister splutter: ‘Stop, please stop!’ which made him giggle even more. Daisy directed a stern blue-eyed glare at them, but she was too full of fun herself not to see the funny side, and in the end she grinned too.
At last it was over and Ethel left the chamber. Her family and friends stood up. Dave’s mother led them through a maze of corridors and staircases to a basement room for the party. Dave checked that his guitar was safe in a corner. He and Evie were going to perform, though she was the star: he was merely her accompanist.
Within a few minutes there were about a hundred people in the room.
Evie buttonholed Jasper and started asking him about the student newspaper. The subject was close to his heart, and he answered with enthusiasm, but Dave was sure Evie was on to a loser. Jasper was a boy who knew how to look after his own interests. Right now he had luxurious lodgings, rent-free, a short bus ride from his college. He was not likely to destabilize that comfortable situation by beginning a romance with the daughter of the house, in Dave’s cynical opinion.
However, Evie took Jasper’s attention away from Beep, leaving the field clear for Dave. He got her a ginger beer and asked her what she thought of the ceremony. Surreptitiously, she poured vodka into their soft drinks. A minute later everyone applauded as Ethel came in, dressed now in normal clothes, a red dress and matching coat with a small hat perched on her silver curls. Beep whispered: ‘She must have been drop-dead gorgeous, once upon a time.’
Dave found it creepy to think about his grandmother as an attractive woman.
Ethel began to speak. ‘It’s such a pleasure to share this occasion with all of you,’ she said. ‘I’m only sorry my beloved Bernie didn’t live to see this day. He was the wisest man I ever knew.’
Granddad Bernie had died a year ago.
‘It is strange to be addressed as “My lady”, especially for a lifelong socialist,’ she went on, and everyone laughed. ‘Bernie would ask me whether I had beaten my enemies or just joined them. So let me assure you that I have joined the peerage in order to abolish it.’
They applauded.
‘Seriously, comrades, I gave up being the Member of Parliament for Aldgate because I felt it was time to let someone younger take over, but I haven’t retired. There is too much injustice in our society, too much bad housing and poverty, too much hunger in the world – and I may have only twenty or thirty campaigning years left!’
That got another laugh.
‘I’ve been advised that here in the House of Lords it’s wise to take up one issue and make it your own, and I’ve decided what my issue will be.’
They went quiet. People were always keen to know what Eth Leckwith would do next.
‘Last week my dear old friend Robert von Ulrich died. He fought in the First World War, got in trouble with the Nazis in the thirties, and ended up running the best restaurant in Cambridge. Once, when I was a young seamstress working in a sweatshop in the East End, he bought me a new dress and took me to dinner at the Ritz. And . . .’ she lifted her chin defiantly – ‘and he was a homosexual.’