She still had done nothing when he put out his cigar and said: ‘Well, time for bed. Do you want to use the bathroom first?’
Not knowing what else to do, she got up and went into the bedroom. Slowly, she took off the clothes she had put on so carefully for Lloyd. She washed her face and put on her least alluring nightdress. Then she got into bed.
Boy was moderately drunk when he climbed in beside her, but he still wanted sex. The thought appalled her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Dr Mortimer said no marital relations for three months.’ This was not true. Mortimer had said it would be all right when the bleeding stopped. She felt horribly dishonest. She had been planning to do it with Lloyd tonight.
‘What?’ Boy said indignantly. ‘Why?’
Improvising, she said: ‘If we do it too soon, it might affect my chances of getting pregnant again, apparently.’
That convinced him. He was desperate for an heir. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, and turned away.
In a minute he was asleep.
Daisy lay awake, her mind buzzing. Could she slip away now? She would have to get dressed – she certainly could not walk around the house in her nightdress. Boy slept heavily, but often woke to go to the bathroom. What if he did that while she was gone, and saw her return with her clothes on? What story could she tell that had a chance of being believed? Everyone knew there was only one reason why a woman went creeping around a country house at night.
Lloyd would have to suffer. And she suffered with him, thinking of him alone and disappointed in that musty room. Would he lie down in his uniform and fall asleep? He would be cold, unless he pulled a blanket around him. Would he assume some emergency, or just think she had carelessly stood him up? Perhaps he would feel let down, and be angry with her.
Tears rolled down her face. Boy was snoring, so he would never know.
She dozed off in the small hours, and dreamed she was catching a train, but silly things kept happening to delay her: the taxi took her to the wrong place, she had to walk unexpectedly far with her suitcase, she could not find her ticket, and when she reached the platform she found waiting for her an old- fashioned stage coach that would take days to get to London.
When she woke from the dream, Boy was in the bathroom, shaving.
She lost heart. She got up and dressed. Maisie prepared breakfast, and Boy had eggs and bacon and buttered toast. By the time they had finished it was nine o’clock. Lloyd had said he was leaving at nine. He might be in the hall now, with his suitcase in his hand.
Boy got up from the table and went into the bathroom, taking the newspaper with him. Daisy knew his morning habits: he would be there five or ten minutes. Suddenly her apathy left her. She went out of the flat and ran up the stairs to the hall.
Lloyd was not there. He must already have left. Her heart sank.
But he would be walking to the railway station: only the wealthy and infirm took taxis to go a mile. Perhaps she could catch him up. She went out through the front door.
She saw him four hundred yards down the drive, walking smartly, carrying his case, and her heart leaped. Throwing caution to the wind, she ran after him.
A light army pickup truck of the kind they called a Tilly was bowling down the drive ahead of her. To her dismay it slowed alongside Lloyd. ‘No!’ Daisy said, but Lloyd was too far away to hear her.
He threw his suitcase into the back and jumped into the cab beside the driver.
She kept running, but it was hopeless. The little truck pulled away and picked up speed.
Daisy stopped. She stood and watched as the Tilly passed through the gates of Ty Gwyn and disappeared from view. She tried not to cry.
After a moment she turned around and went back inside the house.
On the way to Bournemouth Lloyd spent a night in London; and that evening, Wednesday 8 May, he was in the visitors’ gallery of the House of Commons, watching the debate that would decide the fate of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.
It was like being in the gods at the theatre: the seats were cramped and hard, and you looked vertiginously down on the drama unfolding below. The gallery was full tonight. Lloyd and his stepfather, Bernie, had got tickets only with difficulty, through the influence of his mother, Ethel, who was now sitting with his Uncle Billy among the Labour MPs down in the packed chamber.
Lloyd had had no chance yet to ask about his real father and mother: everyone was too preoccupied with the political crisis. Both Lloyd and Bernie wanted Chamberlain to resign. The appeaser of Fascism had little credibility as a war leader, and the debacle in Norway only underlined that.
The debate had begun the night before. Chamberlain had been furiously attacked, not just by Labour MPs but by his own side, Ethel had reported. The Conservative Leo Amery had quoted Cromwell at him: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!’ It was a cruel speech to come from a colleague, and it was made more wounding by the chorus of ‘Hear, hear!’ that arose from both sides of the chamber.
Lloyd’s mother and the other female MPs had got together in their own room in the palace of Westminster and agreed to force a vote. The men could not stop them and so joined them instead. When this was announced on Wednesday, the debate was transformed into a ballot on Chamberlain. The Prime Minister accepted the challenge, and – in what Lloyd felt was a sign of weakness – appealed to his friends to stand by him.
The attacks continued tonight. Lloyd relished them. He hated Chamberlain for his policy on Spain. For two years, from 1937 to 1939, Chamberlain had continued to enforce
