Bleeding Heart Square

The woman’s stupidity makes you scream. But you put your hands over your mouth so no one but you will hear.

Monday, 3 March 1930

If all goes well, Joseph says there’s no reason why we shouldn’t move within a few weeks. He has sent off for some seed catalogues. He is planning to set up a market garden. Spring in the country! I can hardly believe it. And Jacko will love it too. I saw him today on our way to Mr Shires’ office. I’m sure Mr Howlett is a kind man and looks after him very well but I can’t help feeling that there was a very sad look in Jacko’s eyes when I left him.

Mr Shires is the lawyer, and his office is in Rosington Place, almost opposite the chapel which will always be so very special to us. He seems a very pleasant man, rather plump and shy. Joseph tells me he is very good at his job and not expensive.

We transacted a great deal of business in about half an hour. It’s such a relief to have Joseph looking after my interests. He and Mr Shires went through my papers and explained which shares I needed to sell and which to keep. I seem to have been poorly advised before — some of the shares are losing value, and the best thing to do is sell them while we can. I was a little worried, I must admit — I thought that if I sell some of my shares I shall have less income to live on. But Joseph pointed out I should have his income too, and anyway everything is much cheaper in the country. Between us we shall live very comfortably even before the market garden begins making a profit.

Mr Shires had also prepared a letter for me to send to Mr Orburn, withdrawing my legal business from him and asking him to send my file to Mr Shires. I felt a little unhappy about this but Joseph said it was purely a matter of professional etiquette, and Mr Orburn would not be offended. In any case he and his father have earned a handsome amount from us over the years.

Joseph and I had a long chat about how we should purchase the farm. The problem is that, even though it will be my farm (or rather ours), if we put it legally in my name then everyone will know that Joseph and I are not yet married — in the eyes of the law, that is. Joseph said there would be all sorts of difficulties if I call myself Mrs Serridge in a legal document before I am entitled to do so. (He squeezed my hands and said that as far as he was concerned the time couldn’t come too soon.) So I suggested that the best thing might be to put the farm in his name at least for the moment. The dear man objected, saying that it might not be fair to me, but in the end I managed to persuade him. That way our little deception need never come to light.

Afterwards we had lunch with Joseph’s friend, Captain Ingleby-Lewis, who seems rather fond of his wine. Nevertheless anyone with half an eye can see that he’s a gentleman. The Captain told me confidentially that all the fellows in his Regiment thought very highly of Major Serridge. He said that he (Joseph) is the salt of the earth. He didn’t need to tell me!

Five minutes after persuading her to buy the farm, he’s got her selling her shares to pay for it, cutting herself off from the one person she can trust and practically begging him to put the farm in his name.

The cufflink lingered like a bad smell in Lydia Langstone’s mind. It was there when she went to bed on Saturday evening, and it was still there when she woke up on Sunday morning. It was part of the reason she decided to go to Frogmore Place.

Not to move back in, not to return to the life she had left behind less than a fortnight earlier. One couldn’t go backwards, she was beginning to learn, however much one thought one could. Life was like a motor car with only forward gears, rushing faster and faster into the future.

This would be a flying visit. She had not realized how cold a place like Bleeding Heart Square could be. She needed more clothes, and much warmer ones. She had also remembered the pearl necklace, once her grandmother’s and now hers. It was kept in the safe behind the boring painting of a horse that hung above the fireplace in Marcus’s study. There was a sporting chance that Marcus had forgotten to take it to the bank. It was insured for over a thousand pounds. She had already been obliged to pay a second call on Mr Goldman in Hatton Garden in order to dispose of a gold charm bracelet.

As for the cufflink, she knew that probably hundreds of men were wearing identical BUF cufflinks in London alone. Nor was there reason to believe that the attack on Rory Wentwood on Friday night had anything to do with herself. But the fact remained that Marcus had recently joined the British Union of Fascists, and he was the sort of man who takes a childish pleasure in proclaiming his membership of masculine associations; his wardrobe was full of striped ties, coded sartorial statements to those in the know.

He was jealous by nature too, and capable of violence. Lydia thought this wasn’t because he loved her but simply because he disliked it when anyone tried to take his possessions away — again like a child, this time with his toys. During their engagement, at a hunt ball at a neighbour’s house, a drunken subaltern had manoeuvred her into the morning room and tried to kiss her. Marcus, almost equally drunk, had followed them in, given the silly boy a bloody nose and thrown him out of the house, much to the delight of the servants.

It was a long step between a drunken fight at a hunt ball in Gloucestershire and what had happened on Friday in Bleeding Heart Square. But it was at least possible that Marcus or somebody watching on his behalf had seen her with Mr Wentwood and drawn quite the wrong conclusions. Marcus was good at getting things wrong. And if he had had something to do with the attack, she might be able to find a hint of it at the house, perhaps a letter from one of his like-minded friends or even an orphaned cufflink. If nothing else, looking for a clue and failing to find it was better than doing nothing but wonder and worry.

Sunday morning was the best time to visit Frogmore Place. The house was shut up, Marcus had told her, and he was living at his club. The servants would have gone back to Longhope; the Langstones did not maintain two separate staffs. There was a caretaker, Mrs Eggling, but she was religious, and on Sunday went to church twice a day, morning and evening.

Lydia was still, in theory at least, the mistress of 9 Frog-more Place, and she still had her latchkey in her handbag. She was perfectly entitled to march up the steps to the front door, let herself in and take away any or all of her own possessions and also those in her charge for those hypothetical future generations of little Langstones. She would be within her rights if she commandeered the services of Mrs Eggling to help her. But she didn’t want to advertise her presence, partly because of wanting to snoop among Marcus’s possessions but more because she had broken with that part of her life. If she had to revisit her past, she preferred there to be no witnesses, no accusing glances, no one to ask questions, no one to try to persuade her to stay, and above all no danger of bumping into Marcus.

A bus took her as far as Marble Arch. She walked the rest of the way. Marcus’s car was not in Frogmore Place or in the mews at the back. At the house the blinds were drawn over the windows. She ran up the steps to the front door, inserted her key and let herself into the hall.

Inside, the air was cold and slightly damp. The grandfather clock still ticked and a collection of cards lay on the salver on the pier table at the foot of the stairs. Next to the salver was the crystal vase, lacking its usual flowers but still with an inch of brown water in the bottom. Mrs Eggling was growing slack.

All the doors were closed. The inner doors to the principal rooms were locked when the house was unoccupied. She walked slowly up the hall to the cupboard under the stairs. Inside, concealed in a recess, was a row of hooks holding the spare keys. Lydia took the one for her own bedroom and climbed the stairs through the silent house. It was only after she had passed the first-floor landing that she remembered the pearls. She would need the study key for that. No matter — she would fetch the clothes first.

She unlocked her bedroom door and let herself into the familiar space beyond. The blind was down and the curtains were half drawn. The dressing table had been cleared of its usual litter of silver-backed brushes, mirrors and little pots. Why had she once needed so many expensive objects to make herself presentable to the world? No one had yet put dustsheets over the furniture. Perhaps Marcus thought that covering the furniture would lend an unwanted impression of permanence to his wife’s departure. One had to think of the servants, Marcus was always saying, which made life so complicated. One had to think about what they would think and what they might say to other servants.

Lydia did not remove her hat and gloves. She lifted the empty suitcase onto the bed and opened it. From the