Abdication A Novel

Chapter TEN





One early spring evening, just as dusk was beginning to fall, an unfamiliar car came slowly down the Cuckmere drive and parked in front of the house. A tall figure in a dark suit emerged from the backseat, was greeted by Lady Joan, and marched into the stone hall as if he was leading a platoon of soldiers behind him.

May was on her way to the study to catch up on the large pile of correspondence. She had been so busy recently with the chauffeuring side of her work and was worrying about the backlog of papers that were piling up on her desk. She stood to one side as the visitor followed Lady Joan through the hall. May noticed his snappy black moustache and his neatly slicked-back hair, and then the man turned his head and looked directly at her. For a second his eyes connected so deeply with her own that she felt an intense physical jolt before he looked away and was hurried upstairs by Lady Joan. Sir Philip followed the pair climbing the stone stairs two at a time and closed the door behind him while May went into the study, disturbed by the unexpected encounter.

Back in January at May’s interview, Sir Philip had made clear that her job depended on keeping certain things to herself and not sharing confidences with the other staff, either in London or at Cuckmere. In theory, the rule applied to all Sir Philip’s employees, but May was aware of its flouting by the others on a daily basis. In the Cuckmere kitchen fierce differences of opinion were voiced about employers, weekend guests and other members of staff. “Pantry football” was how Lady Joan referred to the clatter of pans and raised voices that sometimes broke through the barrier of the baize door. It was clear that from the clandestine manner in which the dark-haired man had been brought into the house, Sir Philip and Lady Joan were going to some trouble to stop his presence being discussed downstairs.

A cold dinner for three had been left in the dining room, rendering redundant the need for any serving staff. The following morning May was standing in the hall, her hand absentmindedly stroking the glossy head of one of the golden Labradors when the door to the kitchen opened and Mrs. Cage emerged carrying a tray laid for breakfast with a tiny glass vase of miniature narcissi sitting on one corner of the white cloth. The housekeeper, dressed in her usual long black woollen costume, her hair tied back in her neat grey ponytail, was concentrating so hard on balancing the tray that she did not notice May watching her. The job of carrying breakfast upstairs to a guest was always reserved for one of the daily ladies and it was surprising to see Mrs. Cage taking on such a lowly duty. May might have thought no more of it if she had not looked at her watch half an hour later and realised she had forgotten to ask Mr. Hooch to fill the car with petrol in readiness for Sir Philip’s journey to London the next day. She nearly collided with Mrs. Cage who had just reached the bottom of the stairs and was breaking into a sort of run, a red flush filling her cheeks. But Mrs. Cage was in no mood to pause to chat and hurried out of sight through the door to the kitchen.

May went straight to the garage where she found Mr. Hooch smoking a Woodbine, an angry expression on his face.

“Don’t know what they’re doing inviting a man like that to this house,” he muttered when he saw May. “I know Sir Philip says Sir Oswald Mosley is helping him with important constitutional matters, but I don’t care if he’s come about the bleeding Saviour himself, pardon my directness.”

May had never seen Mr. Hooch either so animated or so agitated.

“Who is Sir Oswald Mosley?” May asked.

“Who is Oswald Mosley?” spluttered Mr. Hooch. “Oswald Mosley is the man in charge of the British fascists, that’s who. And a Jew-hater to boot. If we left things up to him, we’d have Hitler himself over here running the country. And then where would we be? If it wasn’t for Sir Philip and his reputation, I would have been tempted to put some of my supply of rat poison in the tank when his driver came to the pump for a fill-up. I mean, I ask you, what did we all go through for four and a half bloody years, if now we’re entertaining one of them to tea as if he were my aunt Molly.”

May did not press Mr. Hooch any further. She stopped herself from making any remarks about the dangerous attractiveness of the recent house guest. Nor did she say anything about the housekeeper’s furtive behaviour. She trusted Sir Philip implicitly and was sure he would not invite someone with those sorts of views into the house unless he had a good reason. But she was puzzled by Mrs. Cage. What could she have been doing upstairs for so long alone with the head of the British fascists? Much as she liked Mrs. Cage (who had never asked May to use her first name) at times she could not fathom her. May was trying to put her finger on this troubling feeling as she left Mr. Hooch and went to her room in Mrs. Cage’s house to pick up a sweater before resuming the afternoon’s work.

Just inside the small hallway, and almost hidden under the stairwell, was a small open door. May had never noticed it before and was about to look inside when Florence appeared, sliding down the banister, throwing her arms wide and shouting dramatically, “Save me, save me,” as she flung her arms round May’s neck.

Releasing herself from the embrace, Florence slammed the open cupboard door shut with one hand while grabbing May’s with the other.

“Shall we go down to the lake?” she asked, pulling May towards the front door.

“I wish I could, Florence, but I must get back to work,” she said.

Neither of them mentioned the cupboard.


The following Saturday afternoon May was alone in the study at Cuckmere catching up on the filing. She had no time to answer a knock on the door before Mr. Julian came straight in. He appeared unusually nervous, clearing his throat, as he came straight over to her desk. He was standing so close to May that she could smell the smoke from a recently extinguished cigarette clinging to his blue suit jacket.

With her Anglepoise lamp tilted to shine directly onto her papers, she looked up, seeing bright spots dancing in front of her, the light momentarily dazzling her. Mr. Julian had a favour to ask. He began with a confession: he had not yet learned to drive although he had promised himself that after his final exams he would take lessons.

“The thing is, you see, I want to travel around a few of the towns up in the north of the country. I keep reading about these places where so many people are out of work, especially in the mining areas, and I want to see those towns for myself, stop where I want to, look about a bit, not be dependent on taxis or train times, you know?”

May moved the lamp to one side.

Mr. Julian continued. “Quite a few of my friends at Oxford have already been up there to take a look. Not Rupert’s crowd, obviously, but some of the others in my politics year. What I am trying to say is that I am beginning to feel like such a hypocrite. I mean, I keep talking about how awful it must be up there but actually I don’t really know what I am talking about.” The favour was turning into a ramble. “It might sound odd but I am frightened that when I leave Oxford this term, my time won’t be mine anymore. I can see just as many obligations as opportunities, exciting but limiting. Maybe Philip, if he did not need you one day …?”

Mr. Julian paused.

May said nothing. He was leaning on his right hand on the desk. His second and third fingers were stained slightly yellow by tobacco. May stared at them.

“The thing is, perhaps I could see if Charlotte could come too? You could both chaperone me if …” he trailed off.

“Shall I see if Sir Philip can spare me during the Easter recess, Mr. Julian?’ May interrupted.

“Oh would you? Would you really?” he replied, pulling a packet of Woodbines out of his pocket and spilling the contents on the floor. “Oh and please don’t use the ‘Mr.’ bit. I’m Julian. Just Julian.”

Without waiting to hear her answer he bent down, gathered up the cigarettes, stuffed them in his pocket and walked out of the room. May could just hear his tuneless humming as he reached the garden door at the end of the corridor.

Hard as she tried, May found herself incapable of returning to work after her spontaneous suggestion to Julian. What had she been thinking of? Her concentration was all over the place. The beautiful spring weather shone through the window and, getting up from her desk, she went to find Florence. They had taken to spending time together whenever May was not working and Florence was home from school. On the first of these expeditions May had agreed to be introduced to the legendary Mrs. Jenkins, despite Mrs. Cage’s warning about the unpredictability of such a meeting. Florence had dragged a reluctant May through the post office door and up to the counter.

“This is my friend May. Don’t you think she’s beautiful, Mrs. Jenkins? My mother says all the men are cracky about her.”

“And I am not surprised to hear it,” Mrs. Jenkins replied, a severe but harmless-looking middle-aged woman, her hair caught back in a net. She was giving May a thorough once-over from her position behind the counter.

“She’s gorgeous, Florence darling. Mind you, she’s as dark as a cup of over-stewed tea. And that awful chopped-off hairstyle. She isn’t one of those frightful lesbians is she?”

A gleaming bicycle had appeared on Florence’s tenth birthday, a present from Lady Joan, accompanied by a very serviceable secondhand version for May. After twenty minutes of wobbles with May running behind, her hand on the seat to steady the machine, and Florence’s occasional violent kick of frustration at the spinning spokes as the machine fell to the ground beneath her, Florence had found her natural balance. As May left the study to go and find Florence, the sun falling in pools on the stone floor of the great hall, she knew that if there had ever been a day for bicycling this was the one.

The fields around Cuckmere Park were bisected at many points by the meanders of a small river that led out to the open sea at Cuckmere Haven. One morning May and Florence had biked up onto the small rise above the house to see the winding river from above, finding themselves eyeball-to-eyeball with the thrice life-size figure of a white horse sketched into the chalky hillside. Florence’s new proficiency on wheels had coincided with the transformation of the rolling fields into a giant nursery. On this sunny spring day May and Florence went up onto the Downs to see the new lambs, the wool of their lithe week-old bodies like peaks of whipped egg white. Their drowsy mothers with their grey matted coats, the colour of the chalky flints that dotted the landscape around them, chewed rhythmically as beside them their lambs leapt into the air on all four legs. Florence imitated the young animals, jumping up and down on the spot like an escaped spring from a mattress. Sometimes they would tire of bouncing off the earthy mole-made hillocks and come to nuzzle at the ever ready source of milk, their catkin tails waggling as they drank. Occasionally they would lie down on the warm earth, exhausted by their own energy, kneeling first, before tucking their forelegs neatly beneath their chests. The new mothers would stand shielding the whip of the wind from the young bodies, and every so often would gently touch their mouths to their offspring in a grassy kiss. On the periphery of the fields, at the foot of the newly green hedgerows lurked a kindergarten of young rabbits. Sentimentality was rationed and discouraged up here as May and Florence both knew that these young innocents would eventually end up in the large copper cooking pots of the Cuckmere kitchen. But May found a beauty and a peace in this place that excelled even the memories of the sandy, wave-lapped expanses on which she had walked as a child.


A few days later May was once again working in the study. She had changed her mind entirely about agreeing to drive Julian up north. Even though she had originally gone along with his proposal, she now felt the idea to have been quite mad, partly because of the alarming prospect of spending time alone with someone so clever and so, well, so different. She had a further reservation. She belonged to a different class of society and her experience of life in England had already taught her that different classes, like different nationalities, did not mix. If she was to keep her job, she should also know her place.

May pulled the typewriter nearer. There was an urgent letter to Sir Oswald Mosley to complete, suggesting a second overnight visit. The trust between May and her boss grew daily and confidential papers passed through her typewriter often without explanation.

“I was happy to discover during our enjoyable conversation recently here at Cuckmere that political differences can be laid aside most willingly when matters affecting the constitutional roots of our nation are concerned,” Sir Philip had dictated.

Next there was a pressing call to be made to the editor of The Daily Telegraph, offering him a choice of dates to discuss what Sir Philip referred to as “the American problem.” May lifted the unwieldy mouthpiece, and was about to ask the exchange operator to put her through when the instrument rang.

“Is that May?” a familiar voice asked. “Oh, May. It is you. Can I come down and see you? Straight away? I have been given leave for the afternoon.”

Her brother Sam spoke with practical urgency. A mist of unreality descended as May was about to ask him why he wanted to come and yet realised she did not want to know. Not yet.

“I will take the train from Portsmouth and be with you in two hours.” And then, just before she replaced the earpiece back on its cradle, she heard his half whisper, “I love you.”

May sat at her small desk in the corner of Sir Philip’s study uncertain what to do next. She examined her hands. As usual, her fingers were covered in the inky film that rubbed off from the carbon paper. She had to use a scrubbing brush to get them properly clean. Today the sight of the smudgy ink stains did not trouble her. They felt like part of a normal working day. But still she sat, unable to get on with her work. The telephone call to the editor and the letter to Mosley would have to wait. The pile of correspondence that she had been about to reply to on Sir Philip’s behalf was in front of her, skewered through the middle on the dangerous-looking letter spike on the desk. The letters were a humdrum collection, typical of the Cuckmere post during the Easter parliamentary recess: early requests to attend two summer fetes in nearby villages, the weekly cigar bill. But there were also two envelopes marked “Strictly Private,” which she should put on Sir Philip’s desk but she could not bring herself to move.

At least two weeks had elapsed since May had received the letter from her mother in which she expressed her contentment at the news that May and Sam had both settled into their new life.

“I have always felt sure that Nat would look after you with the loving care that my sister would have given you both,” Edith had written, sounding reassured about the welfare of her children.

May began thinking about the last time she had looked closely at her mother’s face. She had been surprised to see a network of tiny lines running around her mouth and chin, which, when Edith concentrated or smiled, puckered into a crisscross pattern like a honeycomb. How could May not have noticed that her mother was growing older? Another existence away on the day of her departure from Barbados, as the Caribbean sun shone down on the Bridgetown quayside, May and her mother had tried to ignore the distant shouts.

“Anyone sailing better hurry now.”

But Sam had come dashing and panting over the gangplank and onto the jetty beside them.

“We really must get on board,” he said, looking pleadingly at May. He was wearing the uniform of the cargo ship’s management, even though the Thomas sugar consignment formed only a small percentage of the total number of crates packed into the vessel. Business was tough and the plantation managers had taken to sharing cargo ships between them.

It was time to leave. May’s hands were enclosed within those of her mother.

“All I want is for you to know true, enveloping happiness,” she said.

Edith’s tears were on the brink of falling. Her huge grey eyes had a recently washed but not quite dried haze about them, suggesting the weeping she might have done recently and alone.

“Stay safe,” her mother whispered, pressing a tiny black velvet pouch into May’s hand. “Whenever I think of you wearing this, I will know that you are thinking of me. Stay safe, my darling girl. And look after Sam. You and Sam are more precious to me than anything.”

In the study the Anglepoise lamp flickered for a moment before returning to its full strength. May stroked the silver flowers of her forget-me-not bracelet. She willed Sam to arrive. Twice she thought the moment had come. Girlish shrieks could be heard a long time before Bettina actually burst into the study. She was, she said, “looking over tout la terre for her father. May told her he had bicycled over to Beddingham to see his friend Eric Ravilious. The artist had wanted to show Sir Philip his designs for souvenir mugs, commissioned for next year’s coronation.

Bettina left May alone. No wonder her voice drove Julian mad. He was always confiding things to May that they both knew he shouldn’t. The second time the door opened it was Mrs. Cage. Without actually entering the room, Mrs. Cage peered round from the cover of the door and wanted to know if there was anything she could fetch May. The unusual gentleness of her tone increased May’s sense of apprehension. Did Mrs. Cage know something? Had she spoken first to Sam on the kitchen telephone extension?

When Sam eventually walked into Sir Philip’s study, still wearing his naval volunteer’s uniform with its smart white collar, May momentarily forgot her anxiety. He came straight behind the desk and held his sister close. She was the first to speak. Somehow she already knew what he had come about, even before he produced the telegram from his pocket.

“It’s Mamma,” she said. He did not contradict her.

No one disturbed the brother and sister as they spent the afternoon alone together, trying to make sense of their tragedy. The telegram gave only the very basic details.



Regret to inform Sam and May Thomas. Edith Thomas drowned 21 March 1936, while swimming off Bathsheba Beach, Barbados, West Indies. R.I.P. Duncan Thomas



Over and over it all again and again they went, as if by imagining the exact circumstances and the exact manner and cause of their mother’s death the fact of it would seem real. May and Sam both knew the seductive beauty of Bathsheba Beach. It had been part of the landscape of their lives. They knew the easy temptation of racing out towards the water along its sandy expanse, always deserted (and for good reason). At one end of the beach there was a dramatic rock formation, a huge stone mass, the under-part whittled away by the remorseless pounding of the sea to form a sharply defined jaw. May and Sam had often risked leaving their towels on the rock just where the scrubby trees petered out, before running towards the spray that was thrown up high into the air when the colossal waves hit the shore. But the rule had always been never to go into the water itself. The riptides were deceptively powerful, carrying with them an undertow that was notoriously difficult to battle against. Years ago the locals had put up a huge red and white painted notice to warn strangers. But the sign had become part of the landscape of the beach and the urgency of the message had faded along with the paint of the letters. No one really noticed it anymore. In the absence of a witness, or any explanation from their father, they could only conclude that Edith Thomas must have been swept away in the strong current on the east coast of the island. Could their mother, who knew the power of those unpredictable waters so well, really have been so careless? Perhaps they would never know.

The talk turned briefly towards their father. What must he be feeling? His telegram, except for the one word of “regret,” had revealed nothing of his own state of mind. Would he now wish both children to return to the plantation? They would have to wait for a letter from him if they were to know more. For once May was relieved that there was no telephone at the plantation. The prohibitive expense of the installation had meant that urgent messages had instead been delivered on horseback or by May herself in the car.

Both of Edith’s children had their reasons for wanting to stay in England, but neither was quite prepared to share them with the other. Sam’s motives were more transparent. He was relishing a career in the navy that was already on the ascendant. In February, the government had approved a report calling for the expansion of the navy and Sam, until then a mere volunteer, had impressed the “high-ups” enough to have been selected as a permanent employee of the fleet. He was damned if he was going to be sent back to the confines of the sugary fields of Barbados.

Sam had never discussed with May or his mother the other reason he was enjoying his new life in England. It had to do with Duncan. There was something about his father that made him recoil. On countless occasions Sam had caught him staring at May in a way that unsettled him. And then there was the time when he had burst into his parents’ bedroom to see Duncan’s hand raised over his mother’s head, only for him to lower it as soon as Sam appeared. Although there were four members of the Thomas family Sam always felt there were only three. For some reason Duncan seemed like an outsider. He did not even look like Sam, who had inherited Edith’s blond hair. More curiously, May with her olive skin, did not look like either of their parents but her temperament confirmed conclusively enough for Sam that she was related by blood to himself and their mother. Nothing of Duncan’s abrasive nature was ever evident in his sister.

May knew she would never return to Barbados. The presence there of her father had been one deterrent. Now the absence left by her mother’s death and the opportunities offered by her new life in England gave her two more. As well as the deep affection she felt for her cousins and the endless challenges and excitements of her job, there was her growing interest in one particular individual who occupied her thoughts more every day.

Eventually Sam said he wanted to walk to the river that May had told him about so often. The prospect of being by water always calmed him, and he set off, oblivious to the irony that it was water which had taken his mother from him so recently. Exhausted by trying to restrain her tears May went to lie down on her bed in Mrs. Cage’s house, where she stroked each of the little forget-me-nots in turn as they hung on the sliver chain round her wrist. At last she allowed herself to weep wildly and loudly and without control, before burying her face in the paisley quilt, soaking the edges of the silky material. Picking up her diary she pressed the blue cloth covers against her face, and knowing how her mother had held the small lined book in her own hands, she willed her mother’s touch to be somehow preserved within the binding.

The storm of crying was over with the suddenness with which it had begun, and May became still, the blue book still held to her cheek. New images began to jostle for space in her thoughts and the previously sharply focused picture of her mother became suddenly elusive as memories of her father returned with a rush. Hard as she tried to will Edith to fill her thoughts, the cold touch of Duncan’s ever-damp hands continued to fill her mind. She remembered how he would interrupt conversations when she was alone with her mother. He had been jealous, she now realised.

“What’s going on here?” he would ask angrily, a pool of sweat gathering across the top of his forehead, from which two tributaries would run down onto his nose. His long tongue would flick out through the gap in his teeth and catch the drip, his lips glistening with the moisture. “Got all the time in the world to waste, have we? All right for some.” His ill-matched front teeth enhanced the muffling of his words.

“Secrets.” May now said the word aloud, slowly. The sound, with its snakelike consonant at beginning and end, contributed a sinister meaning to the word. Her life was littered with secrets, but the story-time nip had been the first.

Opening the blue book she turned to the pages at the back and for the hundredth time, she tried to cheer herself up by reading through a list of notes she was making for herself headed “Qualities Necessary for True Love.”



Must not rule out short sight, snorers or strange tastes in food.

Cherish and be cherished.

Listen as well as hear.



These initial points had been inspired by her mother, of course, but May decided that now was the time for some of her own additions. First, there were to be no secrets between her and the man she chose to marry. And secondly, she would have to find him infinitely desirable. The concept made her feel nauseous. One man’s body had evoked feelings of revulsion for so long. How could the hairiness of a male body, and the sensation of her skin crawling and pricking as if infected by some termite as he stroked her, ever be a source of pleasure? How could she trust her own nakedness in the hands of someone so much bigger than herself? How could she be sure she would not be hurt? Her curiosity about Julian and her fascination with the beauty of his mouth was invariably eclipsed by the nightmares of those “little nip” moments in her childhood bedroom.

Suddenly she remembered Sam and, standing up, she brushed her hair and washed her smudged face, before going over to the house. Sam was sitting in the hallway pretending to read a newspaper, waiting for her, trying to smile a lopsided smile. She drove him to the station and clung to him on the platform before promising they would be together on Oak Street soon.

Florence was sitting in front of an empty bowl at the kitchen table when May returned, holding a spoon with the remains of Cooky’s sponge-cake mixture smeared around her lips. Both plaits were in their familiar state of disarray, the coppery strands of hair escaping as ever from their loosened ribbons. Florence put her arms around May’s waist and then stood on her chair so she was on the same level as May. As Florence kissed her quickly on the lips, May could taste the uncooked sponge mixture on her own mouth. The sudden, intimate, reassuring contact made her feel she could not bear to be alone any longer, so instead of returning to her room she went upstairs to see if Sir Philip had arrived home. She had made a decision about something that had been troubling her for a week. She wanted to ask Sir Philip if she might have permission to drive Julian up north.