Winter of the World (Century Trilogy 2)

rush outside and punch heads.

After a minute the audience quietened somewhat. They returned their attention to Ethel, though still fidgeting and looking back over their shoulders. Ruby muttered: ‘We’re like a pack of rabbits, shaking in our burrow while the fox barks outside.’ Her tone was contemptuous, and Lloyd felt she was right.

But his mother’s forecast proved true, and no more stones were thrown. The chanting receded.

‘Why do the Fascists want violence?’ Ethel asked rhetorically. ‘Those out there in Hills Road might be mere hooligans, but someone is directing them, and their tactics have a purpose. When there is fighting in the streets, they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are needed to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include banning democratic political parties such as Labour, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial – people such as us, peaceful men and women whose only crime is to disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, unlikely, something that could never happen? Well, they used exactly those tactics in Germany – and it worked.’

She went on to talk about how Fascism should be opposed: in discussion groups, at meetings such as this one, by writing letters to the newspapers, by using every opportunity to alert others to the danger. But even Ethel had trouble making this sound courageous and decisive.

Lloyd was cut to the quick by Ruby’s talk of rabbits. He felt like a coward. He was so frustrated that he could hardly sit still.

Slowly the atmosphere in the hall returned to normal. Lloyd turned to Ruby. ‘The rabbits are safe, anyhow,’ he said.

‘For now,’ she said. ‘But the fox will be back.’

(ii)

‘If you like a boy, you can let him kiss you on the mouth,’ said Lindy Westhampton, sitting on the lawn in the sunshine.

‘And if you really like him, he can feel your breasts,’ said her twin sister, Lizzie.

‘But nothing below the waist.’

‘Not until you’re engaged.’

Daisy was intrigued. She had expected English girls to be inhibited, but she had been wrong. The Westhampton twins were sex mad.

Daisy was thrilled to be a guest at Chimbleigh, the country house of Sir Bartholomew ‘Bing’ Westhampton. It made her feel that she had been accepted into English society. But she still had not met the King.

She recalled her humiliation at the Buffalo Yacht Club with a sense of shame that was still like a burn on her skin, continuing to give her agonizing pain long after the flame had gone away. But whenever she felt that pain she thought about how she was going to dance with the King, and she imagined them all – Dot Renshaw, Nora Farquharson, Ursula Dewar – poring over her picture in the Buffalo Sentinel, reading every word of the report, envying her, and wishing that they could honestly say they had always been her friends.

Things had been difficult at first. Daisy had arrived three months ago with her mother and her friend Eva. Her father had given them a handful of introductions to people who turned out not to be the creme de la creme of London’s social scene. Daisy had begun to regret her overconfident exit from the Yacht Club Ball: what if it all came to nothing?

But Daisy was determined and resourceful, and she needed no more than a foot in the door. Even at entertainments that were more or less public, such as horse races and operas, she met high-ranking people. She flirted with the men, and she piqued the curiosity of the matrons by letting them know she was rich and single. Many aristocratic English families had been ruined by the Depression, and an American heiress would have been welcome even if she were not pretty and charming. They liked her accent, they tolerated her holding her fork in her right hand, and they were amused that she could drive a car – in England men did the driving. Many English girls could ride a horse as well as Daisy, but few looked so pertly assured in the saddle. Some older women still viewed Daisy with suspicion, but she would win them around eventually, she felt sure.

Bing Westhampton had been easy to flirt with. An elfin man with a winning smile, he had an eye for a pretty girl; and Daisy knew instinctively that more than his eye would be involved if he got the chance of a twilight fumble in the garden. Clearly his daughters took after him.

The Westhamptons’ house party was one of several in Cambridgeshire held to coincide with May Week. The guests included Earl Fitzherbert, known as Fitz, and his wife, Bea. She was Countess Fitzherbert, of course, but she preferred her Russian title of Princess. Their elder son, Boy, was at Trinity College.

Princess Bea was one of the social matriarchs who were doubtful about Daisy. Without actually telling a lie, Daisy had let people assume that her father was a Russian nobleman who had lost everything in the revolution, rather than a factory worker who had fled to America one step ahead of the police. But Bea was not taken in. ‘I can’t recall a family called Peshkov in St Petersburg or Moscow,’ she had said, hardly pretending to be puzzled; and Daisy had forced herself to smile as if it was of no consequence what the princess could remember.

There were three girls the same age as Daisy and Eva: the Westhampton twins plus May Murray, the daughter of a general. The balls went on all night, so everyone slept until midday, but the afternoons were dull. The five girls lazed in the garden or strolled in the woods. Now, sitting up in her hammock, Daisy said: ‘What can you do after you’re engaged?’

Lindy said: ‘You can rub his thing.’

‘Until it squirts,’ said her sister.

May Murray, who was not as daring as the twins, said: ‘Oh, disgusting!’

That only encouraged the twins. ‘Or you can suck it,’ said Lindy. ‘They like that best of all.’