Palace Circle Part 7

Very slowly, Delia let out her breath. At the window, muslin curtains fluttered gently in the May breeze.

For four years she had lived in the hope of Ivor returning the love she felt for him. It was a hope often dashed, but it had never died. Only days ago, when he suggested that they spend time together at s.h.i.+bden, she had felt certain that her long battle was almost won.

Now, with terrible finality, she knew she had lost. He loved her, but not enough. With Ivor, Sylvia came first, and, even pregnant, Delia came a very poor second.

But she didn't come second with everyone.

She didn't come second with Jerome.

She heard Sylvia's door open and then close. Ivor's footsteps strode down the corridor toward her, but she no longer cared about him or their marriage.

She was thinking of the letter she would write when she was next alone. The letter she would send to France. The letter she knew Jerome had given up all hope of ever receiving.

SIX.

At Christmas Delia gave birth to a second daughter after a prolonged and difficult labor. This time she had no name waiting. This time, like Ivor, whose disappointment was profound, she hadn't even entertained the thought that the baby might be a girl.

"We could name her after your mother," she said hesitantly, so weak from the birth she didn't truly care what name the baby was given.

A shutter came down over Ivor's austerely handsome face at the mention of his long-dead parents.

"No," he said shortly. "I think not." He paused and then said, "What about naming her after her mother?"

"Bedelia? I don't think so. I found the name hard enough to live with until I insisted it was shortened to Delia, and two Delias would be highly confusing."

"You truly don't have any preferences?"

She shook her head, her mane of hair glowing like fire against the ivory-silk pillows.

"Then we'll call her Davina May. Davina as a mark of respect to David Lloyd George-who is certain to replace Herbert as prime minister within the year-and May after Queen Mary, who was christened May and is still known as May by everyone on intimate terms with her."

Delia closed her eyes. To name their daughter after a bullish, fiery-tempered Welshman was ridiculous, yet the name was both pretty and unusual and she liked the way Delia and Davina rolled off the tongue so easily when spoken together.

Eight weeks later, just as she was finally regaining her strength, news came that Jerome had been badly injured. He wrote to her from a field hospital.

I still have all my limbs, which I hope is as much of a relief to you as it is to me. Word is I'm to be transferred to a hospital in Blighty where, with luck, I'll recover fast enough to be back at the front for the final push.

"He's mad," she said, when she next had lunch with Mar-got. "How can he say with luck he'll be back at the front? And how can there be talk of a final push when things are at such a stalemate? Month after month men are ga.s.sed, mined, and mutilated with no appreciable ground taken. Things are just as bad as they were this time last year."

Margot, her face white and strained, remained silent. Afterward, when they parted, Delia regretted saying things which, though true, could have been taken as criticism of the prime minister's handling of the war.

A month later and Jerome was in a military hospital in Suss.e.x. Wearing a sea-green bolero, a matching ankle-length skirt, and a stiff white s.h.i.+rtwaist, Delia took a train and taxi to see him. Though she'd had two children, rigorous corseting ensured she still had an elegant hourgla.s.s figure, and the admiring looks she received from men in uniform-and every fit man of military age was in uniform-were considerable.

It wasn't merely her deeply waving fox-red hair-topped by a saucy straw boater-that attracted attention, or the fact she was taller than most Englishwomen. It was her breezy American manner, her disarming self-confidence, and her unpretentiousness that set her apart.

When she walked into the hospital ward all eyes turned toward her.

"Whom are you visiting?" the ward sister asked, swiftly coming to greet her.

"Captain Bazeljette."

"Ah." The sister called a nurse away from settling an amputee more comfortably. "Nurse-please escort Mrs. Bazeljette to Captain Bazeljette's bedside."

Delia cleared her throat. "Lady Bazeljette is unable to visit on this occasion. I am Viscountess Conisborough-a close family friend."

Though the ward sister's eyebrows rose only the merest millimeter Delia knew that the loving greeting she had intended was out of the question.

As the nurse led her down the long ward full of injured officers she was sickeningly aware that very few of them would ever walk again without the aid of crutches or an artificial limb. With rising panic she wondered whether Jerome had lied in his letter to her. Perhaps he had not told her the extent of his injury. Perhaps he, too, had been maimed.

As the nurse came to a halt Delia steeled herself for the worst. She mustn't let horror show on her face in case he registered it as repugnance. She must be brave, as he had been for so long.

"Captain Bazeljette, you have a visitor," the nurse said sunnily, her manner completely different from that of the ward sister. "And can I ask you not to stay any longer than half an hour, Lady Conisborough? Wounded men tire easily."

With a flick of her starched skirt she was gone. With relief that made her weak at the knees, Delia saw that though Jerome's left arm, shoulder, and leg were heavily bandaged, none of the bandaging ended in a stump.

"G.o.d, but you're a wonderful sight," he said as she sat down as close to the bed as she could get.

Speech was beyond her so she took hold of his hand and pressed it against her cheek.

His hair, far longer than army regulations allowed, tumbled low over his brow and curled tightly at the nape of his neck. A livid wound knifed down through his left eyebrow.

He read her thoughts and said gently, "It could have been worse, Delia. I could have lost an eye. Of all the men in this ward I'm probably the one least grievously injured."

"I know," she said unsteadily. "And I'm grateful. But such luck can't last, Jerome. You've been at the front for almost eighteen months. The next time you could be ... could be ..." She couldn't finish the sentence and instead said thickly, "I want you to apply for a staff posting. You have influential friends." Her voice was urgent and pleading. "It could easily be managed. And it isn't as if you haven't done your bit. You've been mentioned in dispatches for exceptional bravery. As a staff officer you could ..."

"... Remain well behind lines and never be able to live with myself?" His voice was still gentle, but mulishly firm. "No, Delia. It isn't an option." He squeezed her hand. "Tell me about the new baby. Ivor didn't seriously name her after Lloyd George, did he?"

Still distraught at the prospect of his returning to the front she managed only a glimmer of a smile. "Yes, he did. Despite being so different in character, he and Lloyd George have become very close, though not so close that he has asked him to be her G.o.dfather. That position is reserved for you-and we're goin' to delay the christening until you can attend."

"Thank you." He paused and then said in a different tone of voice, "And Petra, Delia? How is Petra?"

Her smile deepened. "Very sa.s.sy. She's walkin' and talkin' and is full of mischief. I wish you could see her, Jerome. I wish I'd been able to bring her with me, but babies ain't allowed."

In spite of the pain he was in, an answering smile split his swarthy face. "And is her hair still red?"

"Yes, but not t.i.tian, like mine. It's more a russet. And though her eyes are green, they're a hazel, not emerald. I've brought a photograph."

There was a locker by his bed and she propped the photograph against a jug of water, wondering if he would keep it there-and if he did, how he would explain it to Sylvia.

As if reading her thoughts and with his eyes on the photograph, he said, "I haven't seen Sylvia yet. She's in Scotland with the Girlingtons. Jack's been, though. My father brought him down."

He dragged his eyes away from the photograph. "He wasn't at all fazed by the bandages-not when I told him I still had an arm and a leg beneath them-and he was very admiring of the wound through my eyebrow. He said it made me look like a pirate."

Laughter fizzed in her throat. "It does. Not an evil Captain Hook. A handsome swashbuckling pirate."

"Your sort of a pirate?" An amber flame burned deep in his eyes.

"Oh, yes," she whispered. "Very much so, Jerome." And, uncaring of who might be watching, she leaned forward and kissed him long and tenderly on the mouth.

Three months later he was back in France. A month after that the Somme campaign opened. It was the biggest British army ever sent into battle and the country held its breath. Delia received regular postcards from Jerome, but the censor saw to it that they told her nothing except that, at the time of writing, he was alive. And the battle that had been meant to be so decisive simply went on and on and on, for month after month, in a seemingly endless series of partial actions. The casualty lists were catastrophic.

In September, as a second big push on the Somme began, Margot's stepson Raymond was killed leading his men.

Margot's grief was deep. "What a waste, what a waste," was all she could say, ashen-faced, when Delia went to 10 Downing Street to pay her condolences. "Raymond should have had a staff job where he could use his brains, but no one of any sensitivity will take a staff job anymore-it arouses both jealousy and the suspicion of cowardice. There's another kind of cowardice, too, Delia."

She clenched her hands. "Too many of Henry's friends are no longer loyal to him. Not Winston. Not George. Not Ivor. All the three of them ever do is praise Lloyd George-and that's tantamount to pus.h.i.+ng Henry out of office. The consequence is that I'm losing all my friends. I had a dreadful altercation with Clemmie-she, of course, can only see things from Winston's point of view. I do hope the same kind of thing isn't going to happen with you, Delia."

Knowing such an event was likely, Delia murmured something placating and left heavyhearted, sensing that their friends.h.i.+p would end the day Lloyd George stepped into H.H.'s shoes.

The announcement that he was to do so came the first week in December. "Thank G.o.d," Ivor said with relief. "The war will take a new direction. Even the King-never the most optimistic of men-believes it could well be over by the spring."

It wasn't.

When Jerome came home on leave in March, he said, grimfaced, "Unless America enters the war, the fighting is going to go on until there isn't a man left standing."

He was a major now and looked a decade older than when, three years ago, he had enlisted so exuberantly. His dark hair was flecked with gray and the lines running from nose to mouth looked as if they had been carved in stone. His weariness was palpable.

"Heaven only knows what's happening on the eastern front," he said bitterly to Ivor when he dined with him at the Denbys'. "But the western front is a stalemate of cataclysmic proportions. An entire generation is being wiped out. It's kill or be killed. G.o.d knows how I'm still alive."

On the sixth of April, the day after his leave ended, America declared war. A month later Delia received a euphoric letter from her cousin Bella. It was addressed "Darling Viscountess," because Bella loved to use Delia's t.i.tle-however inappropriately-at every opportunity.

Isn't it wonderful that our American boys can now share in all the glory and the gallantry? Cousin Beau enlisted immediately and I can't tell you how handsome he looks in uniform. He's such a daredevil I just know he'll win all kinds of honors. He's as eager to go into battle as a child itching to go to a party, but we don't rightly know when American troops will be leaving for Flanders. Is Flanders in France or Belgium? One thing is certain: once Beau arrives there the men will have to look to their laurels where their girls are concerned.

Delia laid the letter down, sick at heart at Bella's foolish naivete. More than half a million men had died on the Somme alone-and that was just the published figures. She thought of the amputees she had seen. Men in their early twenties, and even younger, who would never walk again. Men who, unable to work, would be reduced to selling matches. And to Bella the war was one of battlefields set neatly outside towns where, the fighting for the day over, gallant soldiers returned as if from the office to flirt with pretty mademoiselles.

"Don't be too hard on her," Ivor said when she voiced her despair that Bella wasn't better informed. "Three years ago that was how nearly everyone thought. All that matters is for American troops.h.i.+ps to reach France without being blown out of the water by German submarines."

At the end of June the American troops reached France, but as the weeks pa.s.sed, Delia could see no dramatic changes. If anything, things grew worse. The Germans began making zeppelin raids over London, involving civilians in a way no one had ever thought possible. One bomb fell on a school, killing a roomful of children. Another crashed into a railway station, hitting a crowded train.

Postcards from Jerome, written in pencil and with nearly every sentence blocked out by the censor, still arrived with thankful regularity. Though he had fought tooth and nail against accepting a staff job, a staff job behind lines was where he had now been a.s.signed and Delia thanked G.o.d for it every night.

"Has Jerome said what he intends doing once the war is over?" Ivor asked on one of the rare evenings when they were dining together. "The world won't be the same place and knowing Jerome he'll adapt quickly."

"He's going to enter politics. He's already spoken to Lloyd George, who has promised to put him up as the Liberal candidate for some promising const.i.tuency."

Ivor wasn't as surprised as Delia expected. "It's something he should have done ten years ago," he said. "He's got the right manner. I suspect people will vote for him in droves."

If he lives, Delia thought fiercely but she did not put the thought into words. There was always the chance Jerome would figure out a way to return to the front.

In October, on Petra's third birthday, Delia held a party at Cadogan Square. Jack, who was now nine and at a preparatory school in Suss.e.x, was home for half term and arrived when the party was in full swing and a conjuror was performing.

"Ooh, Jack, Jack!" Petra squealed, hurling herself toward him and fastening hands gooey with icing around his legs. "Come and see the man taking rabbits-live real rabbits-out of his hat. Can I have one of the rabbits to keep, Mama? Jack is going to stay, isn't he? You are going to stay, aren't you?" And letting go of his legs to grab his hands, she dragged him across the floor where a dozen children were laughing and cheering as the magician drew a live dove from his hat.

Davina, twenty-two months old, was standing as near as she could get, not clapping and cheering noisily like the other children, but simply staring at the dove in round-eyed, gray-eyed wonder.

Watching her, Delia's heart contracted with love. Where Petra was exuberantly outgoing, demanding constant attention and entertainment, Davina was quite happy with her own company as long as she had bricks or a tiny toy figure to play with. Delia bit her lip, wondering what a third child would have been like-a third child that, after Davina's difficult birth, she'd given up hope of conceiving.

Her obstetrician had told Ivor that it was unlikely she would conceive again and that, if she did, her life would be at risk. Delia feared it would mean the end of her marriage.

It hadn't.

"Divorce is simply not socially acceptable," Ivor said, when she had voiced concern. "Not for a man in my position. Two daughters are simply what I'm going to have to settle for."

He hadn't troubled to disguise his bitter disappointment and she hadn't troubled to hide her vast relief. If he had wanted a divorce, it would have made it impossible for her to spend time with Jerome. It was only because she was safely married, and because her husband was viewed as Jerome's close friend, that regular contact with Jerome aroused no gossip.

As the conjuror began pulling colored-silk handkerchiefs from the back of Jack's jacket, Delia tried to think of life without Jerome. She couldn't. He had become her best friend and now that her inability to give Ivor a son had made her husband even more distant, Jerome had become the central person in her life.

A sudden uproar interrupted her thoughts. The conjuror had just drawn a live mouse from Jack's pocket. Nannies screamed and scattered, toddlers shrieked.

Aware that it was time she intervened, Delia walked swiftly across the floor, deciding that the instant the party was over she would telephone Fortnum & Mason's and order another food parcel for Jerome-one including his favorite Fuller's walnut cake.

Christmas was spent at s.h.i.+bden, and over the holidays King George and Queen Mary paid one of their very rare social visits. It was a disruption Delia could well have done without, entailing, as it did, a menu submitted for approval in advance-ensuring that cook had hysterics-and a swarm of police outside the house. The Queen unbent enough to ask after Delia's charity work and the King discussed the difficulty of America's loan restrictions.

"The money can only be spent to pay for supplies bought in the United States." His Majesty was so anxious that he forgot he was discussing a political subject in front of his wife and his hostess. "We don't exact similar conditions on loans that we make to our allies. Difficult though such trips now are, I fear you are going to have to cross the Atlantic again, Conisborough. The U.S. secretary of the treasury needs to understand just how critical our financial situation is. He must be told-and in no uncertain terms-that we need a more flexible arrangement."

Later, when their royal visitors had driven back to Sandringham, Delia knocked on the connecting door to Ivor's bedroom.

"Will you really have to risk crossing the Atlantic again?" she asked.

Though he had dispensed with his evening jacket he was otherwise fully dressed and she was suddenly very conscious of being clad only in her nightdress and peignoir.

"Perhaps. It will be up to Balfour."

Arthur Balfour was the British secretary of foreign affairs.

"The difficulty is," he said, talking frankly to her as he always did where his work was concerned, "America now has its own vast war needs and as a consequence, the supply of credit to Britain could well begin to dry up."

"But not when we're allies! Surely now that we're allies we will receive increased lines of credit?"

"Maybe." He shot her his familiar down-slanting smile. "Perhaps it's you, not me, Balfour should be sending to America. The secretary of the treasury's name is Mr. McAdoo."

It had been a long time since, in Ivor's company, she had giggled, but she giggled now. "It sounds like something out of a comic-strip cartoon."

His smile deepened.

Sensing his new affection and what it portended she decided she couldn't bear to have her emotions thrown into turmoil again. She said swiftly, "I'm sure if you go to America your trip will be successful. Good night, Ivor." And before he could try and detain her she walked back into her own bedroom, closing the connecting door.

All through the cold months of the spring the fighting continued. On the eastern front, the Russian armies had been defeated. On the western front the French troops were so diminished they could no longer be relied upon for any operation that involved a major attack and the U.S. troops were still not being deployed. In March, when the Germans opened a ma.s.sive offensive, King George was so fearful of a German victory that he rushed to France to bolster the flagging morale of the British armies.

Jerome's staff job hadn't prevented him from being injured again, though this time he was not evacuated to a military hospital in England. Instead, he spent several weeks recuperating near Boulogne and then, in June, suffering a permanent limp, he was back in the thick of it.

So as not to think, Delia kept herself so busy with charity work that she was in danger of collapsing from exhaustion. It was better, however, than reading the casualty lists in The Times or hearing that a soldier who had just been killed was the last surviving brother of three.