minute, then her head cleared. She swung her feet to the floor. She was sitting in congealing blood, and felt disgusted with herself.
The taps were turned off. He came back in and took her arm. ‘If you feel faint, just tell me,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you fall.’ He was surprisingly strong, and half carried her as he walked her into the bathroom. At some point her ripped underwear fell to the floor. She stood beside the bath and let him undo the buttons at the back of her dress. ‘Can you manage the rest?’ he said.
She nodded, and he went out.
Leaning on the linen basket, she took off her clothes slowly, leaving them on the floor in a bloodstained heap. Gingerly, she got into the bath. The water was just hot enough. The pain eased as she lay back and relaxed. She felt overwhelmed with gratitude to Lloyd. He was so kind that it made her want to cry.
After a few minutes, the door opened a crack and his hand appeared holding some clothes. ‘A nightdress, and so on,’ he said. He placed them on top of the linen basket and closed the door.
When the water began to cool she stood up. She felt dizzy again, but only for a moment. She dried herself with a towel then put on the nightdress and underwear he had brought. She placed a hand towel inside her panties to soak up the blood that continued to seep.
When she returned to the bedroom, her bed was made up with clean sheets and blankets. She climbed in and sat upright, pulling the covers up to her neck.
He came in from the sitting room. ‘You must be feeling better,’ he said. ‘You look embarrassed.’
‘Embarrassed isn’t the word,’ she said. ‘Mortified, perhaps, though even that seems understated.’ The truth was not so simple. She winced when she thought of how he had seen her – but, on the other hand, he had not seemed disgusted.
He went into the bathroom and picked up her discarded clothes. Apparently he was not squeamish about menstrual blood.
She said: ‘Where have you put the sheets?’
‘I found a big sink in the flower room. I left them to soak in cold water. I’ll do the same with your clothes, shall I?’
She nodded.
He disappeared again. Where had he learned to be so competent and self-sufficient? In the Spanish Civil War, she supposed.
She heard him moving around the kitchen. He reappeared with two cups of tea. ‘You probably hate this stuff, but it will make you feel better.’ She took the tea. He showed her two white pills in the palm of his hand. ‘Aspirin? May ease the stomach cramps a bit.’
She took them and swallowed them with hot tea. He had always struck her as being mature beyond his years. She remembered how confidently he had gone off to find the drunken Boy at the Gaiety Theatre. ‘You’ve always been like this,’ she said. ‘A real grown-up, when the rest of us were just pretending.’
She finished the tea and felt sleepy. He took the cups away. ‘I may just close my eyes for a moment,’ she said. ‘Will you stay here, if I go to sleep?’
‘I’ll stay as long as you like,’ he said. Then he said something else, but his voice seemed to fade away, and she slept.
After that Lloyd began to spend his evenings in the little housekeeper’s flat.
He looked forward to it all day.
He would go downstairs a few minutes after eight, when dinner in the mess was over and Daisy’s maid had left for the night. They would sit opposite one another in the two old armchairs. Lloyd would bring a book to study – there was always ‘homework’, with tests in the morning – and Daisy would read a novel; but mostly they talked. They related what had happened during the day, discussed whatever they were reading, and told each other the story of their lives.
He recounted his experiences at the Battle of Cable Street. ‘Standing there in a peaceful crowd, we were charged by mounted policemen screaming about dirty Jews,’ he told her. ‘They beat us with their truncheons and pushed us through the plate-glass windows.’
She had been quarantined with the Fascists in Tower Gardens, and had seen none of the fighting. ‘That wasn’t the way it was reported,’ she said. She had believed the newspapers that said it had been a street riot organized by hooligans.
Lloyd was not surprised. ‘My mother watched the newsreel at the Aldgate Essoldo a week later,’ he recalled. ‘That plummy-voiced commentator said: “From impartial observers the police received nothing but praise.” Mam said the entire audience burst out laughing.’
Daisy was shocked by his scepticism about the news. He told her that most British papers had suppressed stories of atrocities by Franco’s army in Spain, and exaggerated any report of bad behaviour by government forces. She admitted she had swallowed Earl Fitzherbert’s view that the rebels were high-minded Christians liberating Spain from the threat of Communism. She knew nothing of mass executions, rape and looting by Franco’s men.
It seemed never to have occurred to her that newspapers owned by capitalists might play down news that reflected badly on the Conservative government, the military or businessmen, and would seize upon any incident of bad behaviour by trade unionists or left-wing parties.
Lloyd and Daisy talked about the war. There was action at last. British and French troops had landed in Norway, and were contending for control with the Germans who had done the same. The newspapers could not quite conceal the fact that it was going badly for the Allies.
Her attitude to him had changed. She no longer flirted. She was always pleased to see him, and complained if
