Page 44 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
What interested Basil most was that among the list of passengers, which included millionaires Nelson Rockefeller, M.
G. B. Whelpley and Winthrop W. Aldrich – along with top naval officers, generals, government officials, senators, bankers, industrialists and the bosses of three American airlines – he found the name of Lennox Manning, head of Manning’s Radios and former presidential adviser on broadcasting.
‘What’s up?’ said Bob Zennor, who had ambled up behind him eating a Bath bun and looked over to see what Basil was reading. ‘Oh, the “Millionaires’ Flight”. Are you writing it up?’
‘Dickins said just a par, but he hinted there might be an article on the Nazi government background and the propaganda value to the Fascists.’
‘Yes, he’s red hot on Fascists, is our Mr Dickins,’ Zennor said.
Basil tapped the sheet. ‘Interestingly, I know one of the millionaires.’
‘You know a millionaire?’ Zennor said, in mingled awe and doubt.
‘Well, not know him personally, but I’m distantly related to him.
Lennox Manning. He’s a sort of cousin of my father’s.
Dad’s talked about him, and how he lived at Morland Place during the war – that’s where Dad grew up.
I lived there too when I was a nipper. Don’t remember Lennox Manning – I was just a baby – but I’ve heard him talked about. ’
‘Morland Place? Where’s that? Is that where your people live?’
Basil grinned. ‘I don’t have “people”. There’s no money in my bit of the family, I promise you.
But it is quite a grand place. In Yorkshire.
My great-uncle owned it, and my grandmother lived there and sort of ran it for him, so my aunt and uncles all lived there too when they were kids.
’ He returned to the report, which contained a lot of effusive detail.
‘Do you think the old man will want the luncheon menu included? Swallow Nest Soup, whatever that is, cold Rhine salmon, tenderloin steak, Chateau Potatoes, beans à la Princesse, Carmen salad, and iced melon.’
‘Not unless you can prove that’s what Fascists eat when they grind the faces of the poor,’ said Zennor. He looked at the back of Basil’s head. ‘You seem a bit struck. You like airships? Particular interest of yours?’
Basil looked up. ‘My father worked on them, on the R100 and the R101. Mostly the 101.’
‘Oh!’ Zennor’s face creased in concern.
The R101 disaster had so shocked the nation that the airship-building programme had ended there and then, never to be revived.
His father had often said it was a pity, since airships were more practical for long distances and for heavy freight.
Basil knew, because he’d heard his father talking about it, that the Germans had experimented with using helium instead of hydrogen, because it was an inert gas and did not explode or burn.
But helium was also heavier than hydrogen and did not provide nearly as much lift.
The Germans must have decided they could not achieve sufficient payload with helium to make it commercially viable, because the Hindenburg , and her sister ship the Graf Zeppelin , were both hydrogen-filled.
‘Oh, Dad was all right. Actually, it’s a strange story.
He was meant to go on the flight, but he was up a ladder doing a last-minute adjustment before it took off, fell off the ladder and concussed himself.
So he was rushed to hospital, and was lying safely in a clean white bed when it came down in flames. ’
‘That was a piece of luck,’ Zennor said.
‘Yes,’ said Basil. ‘When I think about it, he’s had a lot of lucky escapes.’
Kit had always been more sympathetic towards Wally than Emma was, but it was Emma who agreed, in response to a frantic telephone call, to go down to Felixstowe for a few days, while Kit said he would rather be boiled in oil.
‘Look at the weather!’ he said, gesturing towards the window. ‘Have you ever been to Felixstowe?’
‘No – have you?’
‘I’ve been to Aldeburgh, so I know what that coast is like.
Bleak, bleak, bleak. The North Sea, darling!
Unless Goddard’s found a centrally heated palace formerly owned by a rich American, I know just what the house will be like.
Cold as a tomb, wind whistling in under the doors and round the window frames, fires that smoke, and damp sheets. No, you can’t ask it of me.’
‘I don’t ask it – Wally does.’
‘Well, someone has to stay at home with the girlies. If you’re really going, take your own bedding with you. And your furs.’
Emma agreed to go down for the weekend on Friday, the 16th of October.
Kit bought her a hot-water-bottle as a going-away present, and packed the car with ‘the essentials’ – champagne, smoked salmon and books: The ABC Murders , Jamaica Inn , Eyeless in Gaza , Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Ballet Shoes .
‘I’m only going for a weekend,’ Emma protested. ‘I’ll only need one book.’
He looked horrified. ‘But think how ghastly if you only took one and found you couldn’t get on with it! Wally won’t have any in the house, and as for a handy bookshop – you are going to the ends of the earth, my cherub!’
‘ Ballet Shoes is a children’s book,’ Emma said, turning it over.
‘Oh, but I adore children’s books,’ Kit said. ‘So restful. And ten times as much imagination as in adult books.’
Emma kissed him goodbye. ‘When all this is over, and we have our lives back—’
‘What makes you think it will ever be over? But if it is, what then?’
‘We talked about a third child.’
‘So we did.’ He kissed her a bonus time. ‘I may hold you to that.’
The house was pretty much as Kit had predicted, cramped and shabby.
The prospect was uninviting: the sea was grey, the sky was grey, and a bitter east wind lashed the waves against the shingle and the rain against the windows.
Of course there was no central heating. The coal-and-wood fires only made small arcs of warmth, leaving everywhere else clammily cold.
Another couple, George and Kitty Hunter, were also staying, and Emma thought Wally could have managed without her and spared her the discomfort, but she seemed almost feverishly pleased to see her.
‘I don’t believe Goddard could have seen this house before he rented it!
’ she said. ‘And I daren’t go out, even for a walk.
The detective says the place is crawling with American press, and if they spotted me they’d follow me back here.
Then they’d be jamming their cameras against the windows and we’d have to have the curtains shut all day. ’
They played cards all evening, with rugs over their knees.
Wally seemed to have lost more weight, and even with a rug and the seat closest to the fire, she was shivering.
Emma took pity and offered her hot-water-bottle, and with that filled and on her lap under the rug, Wally relaxed a little.
But she didn’t give it back when it was time for bed, and it took Emma a long time to get to sleep.
She woke early and, longing for a cup of tea, got up and dressed and went downstairs.
There was no-one about, and she was waiting for the kettle to boil when the King arrived.
The detective at the door let him in, and he stood in the dingy hallway, staring about as if he wondered that such places could exist. Or perhaps he was only astonished to find himself in one.
Then he saw Emma, and gave her a beaming smile. ‘Is she up? I want to surprise her,’ were his first words.
‘No-one’s up but me.’
‘I drove through the dark so as to get here early,’ he said, seeming terribly pleased with himself. ‘I want to be the one to take her tray up. Won’t she be surprised when she sees me? I wonder what she’ll say.’ He rubbed his dry hands together, and laughed in childlike delight.
But he was no child. ‘Sir,’ Emma said, ‘you really shouldn’t be here. You and Wally aren’t supposed to meet until the divorce is over.’
‘Oh, don’t fuss,’ he said gaily. ‘No-one will know. And, anyway, what could be more natural than for a friend to visit another friend and give them support when they’re going through a difficult time? That’s all I am, Emma, a concerned friend.’
‘But you know that’s not the way it will appear,’ Emma urged. ‘It could jeopardise the divorce if you were known to have visited.’
His smile went, and the deep frown etched itself between his brows.
He hated to be argued with. ‘I’m surprised at you,’ he said.
‘I know the papers say foul things about our relationship, but I thought you knew better.’ Emma didn’t answer, and his face cleared again.
‘All this has been very hard for her, and I look to her friends – I look to you – to keep her spirits up. Anything she wants, she must have – you will see to it? And I’ve brought her a little present. What do you think?’
He took a jeweller’s box from his pocket, and opened it for her to see. It was a ruby bracelet. ‘It’s lovely,’ Emma said.
He beamed. ‘You think she’ll like it? I’ve had something engraved on the clasp. Look. It says, “Hold Tight.” Because we’re on the last lap now. She only has to keep up her courage, hold fast a little longer, and everything will be all right.’
His eyes were moist as he gazed into the middle distance, evidently viewing a golden future when he and Wally would be together as man and wife, King and Queen, soul-mates never to be parted for a single minute of any day, ever again.
She would have felt pity for him, had the prospect not made her feel a bit sick.
He stayed the night, and since some other American friends drove down on the Sunday for the day, the atmosphere was more cheerful.
The King seemed in high good humour, and Wally relaxed a little.
He mixed the pre-luncheon cocktails, and she went into the kitchen to explain to the bewildered locals who had been hired to cook and clean how to prepare cutlets her special way.
The telephone rang after luncheon. It was Alec Hardinge, the King’s private secretary, calling to ask Wally – much against his will – if she knew where the King was.
The Prime Minister had telephoned Sandringham, where he had believed the King was hosting a shooting party, to arrange an urgent meeting.
Sandringham had told him the King had already left for the Fort.
Baldwin had rung the Fort, but they’d said they didn’t have him.
Then he rang Hardinge personally, and Hardinge had had to admit he didn’t know where the King was.
It made him look a fool. Once he learned the King was there, with his mistress, his voice became very tight-lipped, according to Wally.
When the call was over, the King said that Hardinge had suggested he come straight back. The Prime Minister’s business was very urgent: he ought to be granted an audience that same day.
‘I know what he wants to say to me, and I don’t want to hear it,’ the King said. ‘Especially not today. It’s Sunday – the day of rest. I’m not at anyone’s beck and call. Not Hardinge’s and not Baldwin’s.’
Wally’s hands clenched at her side in anxiety. ‘Oh, please, sir, please don’t antagonise Baldwin. Things are difficult enough. And please don’t risk them knowing you’re here.’
‘I thought you were pleased to see me,’ he said.
‘Of course I am, but I haven’t suffered two weeks in this hellish place just to have my divorce thrown out of court.’
‘You fret too much, darling,’ the King said, beaming, taking hold of her arm and stroking her hand.
The ruby bracelet glinted in the dull light.
‘Everything’s going to be all right. I’m not worried, so you shouldn’t be – isn’t that right, Emma?
’ Luckily, he didn’t expect a reply from her.
‘I’ll go back later today. Can’t set off until after dark, anyway, in case I’m seen.
Baldwin can wait. Kings don’t jump to attention for prime ministers. It’s the other way round.’