London House, page 21
Today he barely waved at me as Trent showed him straight into Father’s study.
The door was cracked, yet there was little I could hear, despite arranging the flowers on the hall table for a full fifteen minutes!
I did hear he has a leave coming up and has convinced a buddy to drop him into France. My heart started racing and I stepped forward. My move brought me into Father’s line of sight so I had to retreat and missed the next few sentences. Then I caught . . .
“Tell that to my daughter.” By his tone, Father was speaking of Caro. I remembered that tone well. It was full of the notes once reserved only for me. It was derisive, almost to the point of mocking.
In that moment and in that tone, I finally recognized what Caro has been telling me for years. That tone is uniquely hers now—I’m not the one causing quarrels, chaos, and “challenges” anymore. I’m not the one he is set against.
“The window is closing, sir. She must listen now.” The urgency in Randolph’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.
Something more was said before a booming laugh sent me to the other side of the hall table. I thought their discussion had ended and they were coming toward me. “You do that, son, and you may just have the moxie to win the day.”
Whatever Randolph said, my father liked a great deal. Father has to be in very good humor to pull out his “American slang,” as he calls it.
I shoved the last flower back into the vase as Randolph pulled the door fully open. “Eavesdropping, Moo?”
Silly as it is, that old nickname, now shortened from Margo Moo to simply Moo, still makes my heart flutter.
“Practicing reconnaissance.” I smiled. I heard the note of flirtation in my voice and ducked my head, hoping he hadn’t caught it and terrified he did. What a fool I am.
When I looked up, his face was mobile again, relaxed. Whatever had upset him, the conversation with Father cured it. As playful as ever, he pulled me into a hug. “Carry on, Moo. No going rogue and turning spy. We need you to keep us on the straight and narrow.” He kissed my forehead. “Drive safely.”
I can still smell him. He is the most wonderful mixture of peppermint and spice soap. His is sharper than the shaving soap Father uses. I can’t put my finger on what it is. I only know I will never forget it. I can’t . . . I still have a bowl of it from when Caro and I stole it from his bathroom during a long-ago visit. We were fourteen that summer. He was eighteen. I’d die if anyone ever found that little bowl now. Such a silly treasure I’ve made of it. Does my absurdity know no bounds?
“Drive?” I called after him. “How did you know I transferred to the motor pool?”
He turned and winked. “I keep my eye on you.”
I love that he does, Beatrice. He always has. I just wish he wouldn’t keep such a close eye on Caro.
I’ve tried to let this go. Goodness knows, it’s been six years . . . Six years? That’s a very long time. I hadn’t thought of that. Six years and they’ve gone no further. No engagement. No marriage. Could it be over?
Caro declared she’d marry him at eighteen. We’re almost twenty-two and she hasn’t come home for him and, as far as I know, he hasn’t asked her to. He hasn’t proposed. He visits her in Paris when there for work, but he would visit me if I lived abroad. Maybe—
“Randolph,” I called after him.
He heard the panic in my voice and was back to me in four quick strides. “What’s wrong?”
“I . . . I . . .” I had no idea what to say, what to ask. It was out of the question to simply ask, “Are you still in love with my sister?” So instead I settled for, “Please be careful out there.”
His eyes curl into half-moons when he smiles. It’s extraordinary. With a small genuine smile and a sigh that tipped toward a moan, he pulled me close again. He folded me completely within his arms, tucking me tight. “No worrying about me. If you do, I’ll have to start worrying about you worrying about me and—”
“Vicious cycle. Yes, I know.”
He kissed my forehead again and left. This time I watched him go, saying nothing more.
He’s twenty-six, Beatrice. It’s time for him to marry. Randolph is caring, relational, and he needs someone to love and someone to love him.
And yet . . . Perhaps it’s not that he doesn’t love Caro but that he fears marriage. Frederick is such a horrid matrimonial model. In fact, Adele has been awarded a decree nisi. It doesn’t mean they’ll finalize their divorce, but it probably means Frederick should stop his affair with Maribelle Cummings. My bet is he won’t—he’s just like their father. And yet Randolph did always worship that reprobate—both of them.
Or maybe it’s the war. How can one consider marriage in a world like this? We are in such an odd, terrifying place right now and I doubt life will ever return to the cadence we once knew—the safety and comfort I confess that I believed would last forever. And to make it worse, I feel as though we haven’t really begun this war at all . . .
I wish Caro were here. We talk about everything—everything except this. Maybe it’s time. Maybe she could help, understand, laugh me out of my fears, and banish these longings. If she does love Randolph, at least there could be clarity, and perhaps I could learn to let go.
I’m convinced that would be better than this—anything would be better than this.
26 May 1940
Dear Beatrice,
Mother asked one question at dinner last night. Only one. “Are we never to have peace in this house?”
Father glowered across the long table and held Caro in his sights. It was as if Mother and I vanished from the room. “Don’t worry, dear. Peace reigns after tomorrow, at least here at Parkley.”
Yes, Caro is home. Well, she was. She came to Parkley for two nights and stayed only one. Despite all the sentiment oozing from her last letter as she reached Hastings from France, she waited seven days to come here and has already returned to the London House this morning.
It’s for the best. Last night, after thanking Father for working with Ambassador Campbell for her passage out of France, she launched into Schiap’s politics, the horrors facing Jews in France, and the “Imperial bubble” she feels has skewed our perspective here in England.
She brought “spit and fire,” as Creighton says, to the table and basically called everyone in England a coward.
Father turned beet red and ordered her out of the dining room—this was after Mother’s question.
“The dining room?” Caro shouted back. “I’ll leave the house.”
And she did. She’s not so independent as to have gone far or to have gotten a flat with friends. She simply returned to the London House—perhaps because Mother asked her to. I suspect Mother feels she will be safer there with its large reinforced basement than in a flat with friends, running the streets for a bomb shelter at night. Caro agreed quickly, seeing either the ease and comfort or the prudence of Mother’s request.
Father is tired of Caro’s “insolent rebellion,” but it isn’t that. She is wired for action. I can see it in her walk and wonder how everyone else has missed it. Her little bouncy step of old is long, firm, and directed now. She sees a way the world should work and is ready to make it so. She reminds me of that Archimedes quote, “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” I suspect she spouts these ideas, not even believing most of them, in an effort to get Father’s attention and, perhaps, to find her way home. She’s looking for that lever and a place to stand, and he’s not making it easy.
“I’m sorry I have to go.” She hugged me tight this morning as we waited for the train.
“As am I.” I drove her alone to the station. I didn’t want Creighton or anyone else to take her—I wanted it to be the two of us. I wanted—I don’t know what I wanted, Beatrice. I think I wanted to test my strength. Test if, alone, I could look at her and not scream and cry. If alone, I could love her again as part of my own soul. If alone, I could reach out and help her.
Her latest letter arrived a few days ago—and I have cried every day since. Betsy thought I was getting ill. Only Caro’s visit got me up and out—I couldn’t let her see me down. I couldn’t let her sense my pain. And I was so afraid she’d bring it up and want to relive it all, as she said in her letter, that I avoided being alone with her. But when she didn’t pursue me or say a word, it was almost more painful.
How can she be so cavalier? How can she not blush constantly, recalling all she shared with him in Hastings? All she shared with me in that letter? She never should have written such things. That night changed my whole world—and I was not the one making love to Randolph.
She called this afternoon, after reaching the London House, and asked me to join her.
“We don’t need to be apart. Come stay with me here. It’ll be just like you wanted when we were kids.”
“I can’t. I have work.”
“Margo,” Caro groaned. She heard it—my voice is flat and dead now. “Don’t let them bury you up there. Don’t let them make you afraid to live. Mother does that. She’s the worst hypochondriac there is.”
I wanted to scream. Not only does she have no clue how I feel, but she thinks me a coward? A sycophant to my parents’ every whim? I’m not sure my position can get more humiliating, Beatrice.
“It’s not that.” I tried to lift my voice and muster some dignity, but it came out sharp rather than confident—and nowhere close to kind. “Don’t you think I have responsibilities? There’s good and important work here, Caro.”
“I wasn’t saying that. I’m sorry . . . I just miss you.”
We hung up soon after and I’ve felt sick all night. I keep snapping at people and I feel pulled apart. There are spaces within me, one near my heart and a couple openings around my lungs, that feel endlessly black and empty. I can’t breathe. I can’t relax. I hate feeling this way. I hate hurting her, and all I want to do is hurt her.
But as much as I yell and scream and dream of scratching her eyes out, part of me remembers she is innocent. Caro doesn’t know—and would never suspect. We made a pact to never lie, never divide, and she never broke it. All those years ago, when I was so mad she left . . . That wasn’t her fault either. I see that now. I was sick, and nothing, not even my twin, was coming between me and health. Mother and Father made it clear then and they’ve made it clear every day since. In many ways, Caro is right. I am trapped by their fear. Trapped by my own as well.
How did we get here? How did I diminish so completely? I barely recognize myself some days.
Worse yet . . . Does she get Randolph because my parents claimed me? I was once bold. I was once what he could have loved.
I should have told her. Right then, that summer we were sixteen and she came back and she glowed and it was all new—so new it could have ended. I could have spoken and she would have taken my side. She would have conceded and her weeks with Randolph would have been a summer crush that cooled with fall.
But I said nothing. I said nothing because she’d surpassed me in the short span of a summer. He had held her hand and spoken things I’d only dreamed of. He had never looked at me with anything close to what she described.
What would I have said anyway? That I had loved him since I was ten? That he was mine, like in a game of tag? It would have sounded ridiculous. It would have been ridiculous. But not one ounce of feeling has changed in twelve years.
That’s a lie. Everything has changed. I love him more now than ever.
She can never know.
Even you and I, dear Beatrice, will never speak of this again.
22 November 1940
Dear Beatrice,
She didn’t come home for our birthday. Twenty-two years old. For the first time in years, we are in the same country. We could have been together, but we weren’t. We weren’t because she didn’t come home. She didn’t ask me to come to her, and on the day, she didn’t bother to telephone at all.
Even with bombs raining down upon London each night, I would have gone to her. If asked. And I telephoned the London House fourteen times.
Yet despite her cold silence and indifference, she asks me for a favor now. Eight days late, she finally telephoned tonight, but rather than open with an apology, she opened with a demand.
“I just talked to George and he’s furious, Margo. He came by the London House when I was sick. I didn’t know. I had told him I was coming home for our birthday, but then he spoke to you and learned I wasn’t at Parkley, and now . . . he thinks I lied. Will you talk to him?”
“You did lie.”
“I meant to come home, then I got sick. It was an accident, a misunderstanding, not a lie. He says after he talked to you, he came to the house and banged on the door.”
“I telephoned you as well. Fourteen times, Caro. You didn’t hear anything?”
“There’s a war going on, Margo.” She huffed. “Besides, the telephone at the house has been out for almost two weeks. I’m telephoning you from work. Talk to him, please. Do this for me. It’s important. He’ll listen to you. He’ll believe you.” She paused, yet I refused to acquiesce. “He wants to marry me, Margo.”
My heart bounced up, then dropped straight through me. I glanced to the carpet fully expecting to see it splatted there. “What did you say?” I breathlessly asked her to repeat her statement, certain I couldn’t have heard it right. But she misunderstood and continued on—sure I had.
“I didn’t say anything, because he didn’t ask. He said he had wanted to marry me, but now he’s not sure . . . I thought we were getting through all that . . . You have to talk to him, Margo. He’s not listening to me. He doesn’t trust easily, but he trusts you. He always has.”
That dagger struck deep.
“Trust . . . I can’t lie for you.”
“Margo,” she barked. “I won’t take that from you. Either you will help me or you won’t, but you know I love him and I would never cheat on him.”
That brought me up short, Beatrice. She said she would never cheat on him, not that she didn’t lie to him—or to me. I’ve noticed Caro has become careful with language that way.
That said, I know she wouldn’t cheat. We are cut from the same cloth. We are loyal. Why she lied, I have no idea, and such a silly lie. Because she does love Randolph. I see it every time she mentions his name. She glows. It’s so cliché to say that, but clichés are born from truths.
“I love you, Moo, and I’m sorry. There’s a lot I can’t tell you, or him,” she whispered over the line. I closed my eyes. As soon as Randolph had started calling me that, she joined in. Always with affection.
It never fails to wound.
“I love you too.” I pushed out the words.
“You’ll talk to him?”
“If I see him, yes.”
“Thank you. I must go now. It’s almost curfew and I need to race home.” She hung up.
I’m afraid for her. Something isn’t right. She never planned to come home. If she had, she would have telephoned me in advance to talk of plans and treats. She didn’t.
And I don’t believe she was sick.
She lied. But why?
Twenty-Eight
I laid down the book and backtracked over lost time. Margaret had written nothing in her diary between the May of Caro’s return in 1940 and the following November, six full months of lost time and two months after Caro joined the ISRB.
For a split second it surprised me. Margo had started her diaries in 1928 barely writing anything and always apologizing to her fictional “Beatrice” for her failure. But by 1940 she had hit her stride and recorded much of the world around her on a regular basis. What had happened?
I cast back to Caro’s May letter, and to George.
Margaret answered my question—sometimes writing helps one heal, and other times it opens the wound. I suspected that she hurt so much after Caro’s May letter and subsequent visit she couldn’t bring herself to commit anything to paper.
That meant anything important from the summer of ’40 and Caro’s initial months at the ISRB came directly from her. If crumbs were to be found, it was because she had purposely dropped each and every one . . .
London House
30 July 1940
Dear Margo,
London is too hot, too hard, and beyond quiet. All I want to do is cry. I want to hang my head in shame and cry. That’s not doing my bit, I’m fully aware, but . . . I didn’t realize how weak I truly am. I was so full of fire when I landed in Hastings. All that’s gone now.
And I’ve been a fool. All those platitudes—“Fashion is politics.” Bollocks!
I claimed it had meaning, substance, and power. I drank it in, believed it, even as rations were cut and Jews I knew and loved fled. I still believed I was doing the right thing and taking a stand. With silk and buttons? Buttons fashioned like birds, bugs, swimmers, butterflies, and zodiac signs? What the hell was I thinking?
I’m in a typing pool now. I can’t tell you where, and I may be transferring soon. At least I want to. There’s a new group forming that could use me—and maybe my fashion acumen. I’m kidding. No one has a use for that these days.
You should be proud to be in the ATS, by the way. I was recording the minutes in a meeting today—don’t worry, it wasn’t classified—and they talked about how brave the ATS women were. Did you know some of them—some of you—were the last to leave Dunkirk? ATS women worked the beaches with the troops, bombs and bullets cutting through them. I got a ride west, caught a train and safe passage home—all secured by Ambassador Campbell weeks earlier.
That’s why I feel like a coward, Margo. Everything I hear makes me realize how privileged I am and how little I saw. My version of reality was not reality. It was nowhere close to reality—and probably still isn’t.
