Alice begged to be allowed to go home early but they refused: ‘You need the week here,’ the ward sister said, ‘to rest and get your strength back. I know you’ve got a very easy baby, but when you’re home as well as looking after him, you’ll have to do the laundry – and there’ll be an awful lot – clean the house and look after your husband. They don’t like playing second fiddle to their babies, you know, whatever they may say. Also getting home unsettles baby, he’ll be difficult for a few days which will make things harder for you.’
But if Kit felt unsettled, he kept it to himself; he appeared to like his nursery, and the mobile strung across his cot entertained him mightily. He continued to sleep a great deal. Alice put him out in the garden in his pram whenever she could, under the apple tree, where he seemed to take equal pleasure watching the leaves move about in the sunlight; it was a beautiful spring, and almost every day he lay there all morning sleeping or gazing contentedly round him. He smiled for the first time when Alice lifted him out of his pram for his two p.m. feed. ‘I know it’s half an hour early,’ she said to him, ‘but if you don’t tell anyone, I won’t. Then we can get to the park early, sit by the pond.’
And his answer, as he gazed up at her, was some wobbly working of his face as he struggled to get it under control, a little awkward at first, but then settling into the undoubted wonder of his first smile. Alice was so excited, she wanted to ring Tom and tell him. Since she was not allowed to ring him in the office, she rang his mother instead.
‘I do hope we haven’t made a terrible mistake,’ said Jillie, looking anxiously at her husband to be. ‘Or rather,’ she added, ‘that I haven’t made one.’
‘My darling girl, why ever should you think that?’ said Ned. A student of body language would have noticed a slight but distinct change in his.
‘Ned! Don’t be silly!’ Jillie threw down her pen. They were making one of the countless lists that litter every path to every wedding service and celebration.
Geraldine Curtis had set the number of people invited. ‘Perfectly straightforward,’ she said. ‘Fifty for Ned, fifty for you, Jillie, fifty for our friends, fifty for Persephone and James’s. Strictly speaking the marquee only holds one hundred and fifty, but please God the sun will shine, and people can spill out into the garden.’
‘I mean, it’s perfectly obvious,’ Jillie said now, glaring at Ned. ‘It’s Ascot week. I just hadn’t realised.’
‘Realised what?’ said Ned patiently.
‘Oh, Ned, don’t be stupid. Lots of people will be going, it’s Ladies’ Day. Why didn’t any of you think of it?’
‘It was arranged rather a long time ago,’ said Ned. ‘We checked our own diaries, family birthdays, all that stuff.’
‘None of those things can possibly compare with Ladies’ Day at Ascot. We’ll just have to change the date.’
‘Jillie,’ said her mother rather firmly, ‘we have very few friends who go to Royal Ascot. Now if it was a first night at the Old Vic or Stratford, or even Covent Garden, it might be more serious, but I did check all those.’
‘Well,’ said Jillie irritably, ‘I’m simply not convinced.’
‘I think perhaps I should be going,’ said Ned. ‘I’ve done my list. If you think we should change the date, then let’s discuss it at another time.’
‘Of course we can’t change the date now,’ said Jillie. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’
If only, Ned thought, as he pulled the MG out of the drive, if only his worries were just guest lists and dates. He went home and played Scott Joplin ‘Rags’ for almost an hour, to try and calm down.
Jillie spent quite a lot of time during this period with Persephone, who she increasingly liked. She was such fun, enjoyed everything, and was full of admiration for Jillie’s future career. She also didn’t seem to have the blind devotion to her son so many women did. She clearly adored him, but she was very aware of his faults, and laughed about them with Jillie – his obsessive tidiness for one. ‘It’s the navy training.’
‘Well, I’m rather obsessively untidy, so goodness knows what will happen,’ said Jillie, laughing.
Persephone asked her if they had found a house yet; Jillie sighed and said they hadn’t. ‘We’ll just have to slum it in Ned’s cottage in Chelsea, but it really is tiny. I’d have settled for half a dozen of the houses we’ve seen, but not one was right for Ned. I don’t know quite why.’
Persephone thought she knew but was unable to say so. The wedding was fantasy, which Ned had always been good at, while a house, making a home, was real life, and he simply could not confront it.
Diana and Johnathan had reached an uneasy truce while they tried to decide precisely what to do. Hostilities had reached crisis point; each feeling the other had committed the ultimate in cruelty. Johnathan with his accusation of Diana having an abortion, Diana with her wilful departure for Paris in January.
Long term they didn’t know what to do. Divorce would affect Jamie’s life horribly, and Johnathan had no real grounds. Diana did, that of mental cruelty, but it would be extremely hard to prove and the case would be sordid. And so they went along, polite in company and with Jamie, silent when not; sleeping in separate rooms, eating when possible at different times – waiting for some helpful nudge from fate to show them the way.
Chapter 31
1952
‘Oh, Tom, not this weekend.’
‘Yes, Alice, this weekend. It’s essential.’
‘Well, why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘I didn’t know before.’ Tom had been asked to present the prizes at Acton grammar school on Saturday evening. ‘Some bigwig from Oxford was coming but he’s pulled out at the last minute, and they’ve asked me to do it instead. Of course I must go, and of course you must be there with me. It’s a marvellous opportunity to be seen and the local press will be there. We won’t be late, so you can leave Kit with your mother.’
‘She might be busy – you can’t just assume she’ll come up here.’
‘She’s never busy,’ said Tom. ‘Anyway, what’s so special about this weekend?’
‘Jillie’s having all her bridesmaids to supper on Saturday. It’s only a week till the wedding.’
‘Golly,’ said Tom, ‘good thing it’s not this weekend. We’d have to miss it.’
Alice would have liked to think he was joking; but she knew he wasn’t.
‘Ludo, I need to see you. Can you have dinner tonight?’ His voice sounded shaky even to himself.
‘Not tonight, old boy, sorry. Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow’s fine. Thanks, Ludo. Look, do you mind if we eat here? I’ve made a steak-and-kidney pie by way of a diversion. Is that all right?’
‘Of course. Do I take it you have something rather personal to discuss? Got plenty of whisky, have you?’
‘Plenty,’ said Ned. ‘Although not nearly as much as I did a week ago, I’m afraid.’
‘Sounds bad.’