Winter of the World (Century Trilogy 2)

Ethel made a scornful noise.

Lloyd held up a hand. ‘That would explain two things,’ he said. ‘One, the unlikely friendship between you and Lady Maud.’ He reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Two, this picture of me in side-whiskers.’ He showed them the photograph.

Ethel stared at the picture without speaking.

Lloyd said: ‘It could be me, couldn’t it?’

Billy said testily: ‘Yes, Lloyd, it could. But obviously it’s not, so stop mucking about and tell us who it is.’

‘It’s Earl Fitzherbert’s father. Now you stop mucking about, Uncle Billy, and you, Mam. Am I Maud’s son?’

Ethel said: ‘The friendship between me and Maud was a political alliance, foremost. It was broken off when we disagreed about strategy for suffragettes, then resumed later. I like her a lot, and she gave me important chances in life, but there is no secret bond. She doesn’t know who your father is.’

‘All right, Mam,’ said Lloyd. ‘I could believe that. But this photo . . .’

‘The explanation of that resemblance . . .’ She choked up.

Lloyd was not going to let her escape. ‘Come on,’ he said remorselessly. ‘Tell me the truth.’

Billy intervened again. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, boyo,’ he said.

‘Am I? Well, then, set me straight, why don’t you?’

‘It’s not for me to do that.’

That was as good as an admission. ‘So you were lying before.’

Bernie looked gobsmacked. He said to Billy: ‘Are you saying the Teddy Williams story isn’t true?’ Clearly he had believed it all these years, just as Lloyd had.

Billy did not reply.

They all looked at Ethel.

‘Oh, bugger it,’ she said. ‘My father would say: “Be sure your sins will find you out.” Well, you’ve asked for the truth, so you shall have it, though you won’t like it.’

‘Try me,’ Lloyd said recklessly.

‘You’re not Maud’s child,’ she said. ‘You’re Fitz’s.’

(vii)

Next day, Friday 10 May, Germany invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Lloyd heard the news on the radio as he sat down to breakfast with his parents and Uncle Billy in the boarding house. He was not surprised: everyone in the army had believed the invasion was imminent.

He was much more stunned by the revelations of the previous evening. Last night he had lain awake for hours, angry that he had been misled so long, dismayed that he was the son of a right-wing aristocratic appeaser who was also, weirdly, the father-in-law of the enchanting Daisy.

‘How could you fall for him?’ he had said to his mother in the pub.

Her reply had been sharp. ‘Don’t be a hypocrite. You used to be crazy about your rich American girl, and she was so right-wing she married a Fascist.’

Lloyd had wanted to argue that that was different, but quickly realized it was the same. Whatever his relationship with Daisy now, there was no doubt that he had once felt in love with her. Love was not logical. If he could succumb to an irrational passion, so could his mother; indeed, they had been the same age, twenty-one, when it had happened.

He had said she should have told him the truth from the start, but she had an argument for that, too. ‘How would you have reacted, as a little boy, if I had told you that you were the son of a rich man, an earl? How long would it have been before you boasted to the other boys at school? Think how they would have mocked your childish fantasy. Think how they would have hated you for being superior to them.’

‘But later . . .’

‘I don’t know,’ she had said wearily. ‘There never seemed to be a good time.’

Bernie had at first gone white with shock, but soon recovered and became his usual phlegmatic self. He said he understood why Ethel had not told him the truth. ‘A secret shared is a secret no more.’

Lloyd wondered about his mother’s relationship with the earl now. ‘I suppose you must see him all the time, in Westminster.’

‘Just occasionally. Peers have a separate section of the Palace, with their own restaurants and bars, and when we see them it’s usually by arrangement.’

That night Lloyd was too shocked and bewildered to know how he felt. His father was Fitz – the aristocrat, the Tory, the father of Boy, the father-in-law of Daisy. Should he be sad about it, angry, suicidal? The revelation was so devastating that he felt numbed. It was like an injury so grave that at first there was no pain.

The morning news gave him something else to think about.