he hungered to see her soft body spread-eagled for him on the bedsheets, white on white, and her fair hair spilling over the pillow. He repressed the vision. “If you know your duty, please do it. Next time I come into your room I shall expect to be welcomed like the loving husband that I am.”
“Yes, Fitz.”
He left. He was glad he had put his foot down, but he also felt an uneasy sense that he had done something wrong. It was ridiculous: he had pointed out to Bea the error of her ways, and she had accepted his reproof. That was how things ought to be between man and wife. But he could not feel as satisfied as he should.
He pushed Bea out of his mind when he met up with Maud and Aunt Herm in the hall. He put on his uniform cap and glanced in the mirror, then quickly looked away. He tried these days not to think much about his appearance. The bullet had damaged the muscles on the left side of his face, and his eyelid had a permanent droop. It was a minor disfigurement, but his vanity would never recover. He told himself to be grateful that his eyesight was unaffected.
The blue Cadillac was still in France, but he had managed to get hold of another. His chauffeur knew the way: he had obviously driven Maud to the East End before. Half an hour later they pulled up outside the Calvary Gospel Hall, a mean little chapel with a tin roof. It might have been transplanted from Aberowen. Fitz wondered if the pastor was Welsh.
The tea party was already under way and the place was packed with young women and their children. It smelled worse than a barracks, and Fitz had to resist the temptation to hold a handkerchief over his nose.
Maud and Herm went to work immediately, Maud seeing women one by one in the back office and Herm marshaling them. Fitz limped from one table to the next, asking the women where their husbands were serving and what their experiences had been, while their children rolled on the floor. Young women often became giggly and tongue-tied when Fitz spoke to them, but this group was not so easily flustered. They asked him what regiment he served in and how he had got his wounds.
It was not until he was halfway round the room that he saw Ethel.
He had noticed that there were two offices at the back of the hall, one Maud’s, and he had vaguely wondered who was in the second. He happened to look up when the door opened and Ethel stepped out.
He had not seen her for two years, but she had not changed much. Her dark curls bounced as she walked, and her smile was a sunbeam. Her dress was drab and worn, like the clothes of all the women except Maud and Herm, but she had the same trim figure, and he could not help thinking about the petite body he had known so well. Without even looking at him she cast her spell. It was as if no time had passed since they had rolled around, giggling and kissing, on the bed in the Gardenia Suite.
She spoke to the only other man in the room, a stooped figure in a dark gray lounge suit of some heavy cloth, sitting at a table making notes in a ledger. He wore thick glasses, but even so Fitz could see the adoration in the man’s eyes when he looked up at Ethel. She spoke to him with easy amiability, and Fitz wondered if they were married.
Ethel turned around and caught Fitz’s eye. Her eyebrows went up and her mouth made an O of surprise. She took a step back, as if nervous, and bumped into a chair. The woman sitting in the chair looked up with an expression of irritation. Ethel mouthed: “Sorry!” without looking at her.
Fitz rose from his seat, not an easy matter with his busted leg, all the time gazing steadily at Ethel. She dithered visibly, not sure whether to approach him or flee to the safety of her office. He said: “Hello, Ethel.” His words did not carry across the noisy room, but she could probably see his lips move and guess what he said.
She made a decision and walked toward him.
“Good afternoon, Lord Fitzherbert,” she said, and her lilting Welsh accent made the routine phrase sound like a melody. She held out her hand and they shook. Her skin was rough.
He followed her in reverting to formality. “How are you, Mrs. Williams?”
She pulled up a chair and sat down. As he lowered himself into his seat he realized she had deftly put them on a footing of equality without intimacy.
“I seen you at the service in the Aberowen Reck,” she said. “I was very sorry-” Her voice caught in her throat. She looked down and started again. “I was very sorry to see you wounded. I hope you’re getting better.”
“Slowly.” He could tell that her concern was genuine. She did not hate him, it seemed, despite everything that had happened. His heart was touched.
“How did you get your injuries?”
He had told the story so often that it bored him. “It was the first day of the Somme. I hardly saw any fighting. We went over the top, got past our own barbed wire, and started across no-man’s-land, and the next thing I remember is being carried on a stretcher, and hurting like hell.”
“My brother saw you fall.”
Fitz remembered the insubordinate Corporal William Williams. “Did he? What happened to him?”
“His section captured a German trench, then had to abandon it when they ran out of ammunition.”
Fitz had missed all the debriefing, being in hospital. “Did he get a medal?”
“No. The colonel told him he should have defended his position to the death. Billy said: ‘What, like you did?’ and he was put on a charge.”
Fitz was not surprised. Williams was trouble. “So what are you doing here?”
“I work with your sister.”
“She didn’t tell me.”
Ethel gave him a level look. “She wouldn’t think you’d be interested in news of your former servants.”
It was a jibe, but he ignored it. “What do you do?”
“I’m managing editor of The Soldier’s Wife. I arrange printing and distribution, and edit the letters page. And I take care of the money.”
He was impressed. It was a big step up from housekeeper. But she had always been an extraordinarily capable organizer. “My money, I suppose?”
“I don’t think so. Maud is careful. She knows you don’t mind paying for tea and cake, and doctoring for soldiers’ children, but she wouldn’t use your money for antiwar propaganda.”
He kept the conversation going just for the pleasure of watching her face as she talked. “Is that what is in the newspaper?” he asked. “Antiwar propaganda?”
“We discuss publicly what you speak of only in secret: the possibility of peace.”
She was right. Fitz knew that senior politicians in both major parties had been talking about peace, and it angered him. But he did not want to have a row with Ethel. “Your hero, Lloyd George, is in favor of fighting harder.”
“Will he become prime minister, do you think?”
“The king doesn’t want him. But he may be the only candidate who can unite Parliament.”
“I fear he may prolong the war.”
Maud came out of her office. The tea party was breaking up, the women clearing up the cups and saucers and marshaling their children. Fitz marveled to see Aunt Herm carrying a stack of dirty plates. How the war had changed people!
He looked again at Ethel. She was still the most attractive woman he had ever met. He yielded to an impulse. Speaking in a lowered voice he said: “Will you meet me tomorrow?”
She looked shocked. “What for?” she said quietly.
“Yes or no?”
“Where?”
“Victoria Station. One o’clock. At the entrance to platform three.”
Before she could reply the man in thick glasses came over, and Ethel introduced him. “Earl Fitzherbert, may I present Mr. Bernie Leckwith, chairman of the Aldgate branch of the Independent Labour Party.”
Fitz shook hands. Leckwith was in his twenties. Fitz guessed that poor eyesight had kept him out of the armed forces.
“I’m sorry to see you wounded, Lord Fitzherbert,” Leckwith said in a cockney accent.
“I was one of thousands, and lucky to be alive.”
“With hindsight, is there anything we could have done differently at the Somme, that would have greatly altered the outcome?”
Fitz thought for a moment. It was a damned good question.
