The Countess was annoyed. Only that morning she had suffered humiliation at the hands of a shop assistant in Harrods, and anger still raged through her. ‘And please take that towel off your head and have the goodness to look at me when I’m speaking to you!’
‘Sorry.’ Lucinda Bainbridge ran her fingers through her half-dry hair. ‘I was listening, truly I was, and I’m sorry you feel foolish.’
‘Don’t be pert. Just give me one good reason why you and Charles cannot be married at once.’
‘Well, I – I’d like to wait a little while, I suppose.’
‘I see. And had you forgotten you will be twenty in November? Has it ever occurred to you that I was wedded and bedded and well pregnant by the time I was your age? Most of the girls who came out with you are married, so why must you be different?’
‘Perhaps because I’ve always thought it might be nice to have a honeymoon in Venice.’
‘Well, you can’t. No one can go to Venice – or anywhere else, for that matter – until this dreary war is over, so please stop prevaricating.’
‘Yes, Mama.’ Once more Lucinda took refuge beneath the towel and began to rub furiously. Mama was on her pet hobbyhorse again and it was too foolish, really it was, to have a hurried wedding in London, where she hardly knew a soul, when it could all be so lovely at Lady Mead. When the government let them live there again, of course.
‘I mean, Charles won’t always be at the War Office. They could post him to a regiment and send him abroad just like that!’ Elegantly, dramatically, the Countess snapped her fingers. ‘And where would you be if he got killed? You should get married now and get that baby started. That’s all I ask, Lucinda. At least try to see my point of view.’
‘I do. Oh, I do.’ Lucinda accepted her mother’s need for a Bainbridge heir and she understood her feelings of guilt, too, even though no one ever blamed her for the accident. But there had been no more children, and now Cousin Charlie would inherit. But please, Mama, Lucinda pleaded silently, don’t treat me like a complete idiot. I realized a long time ago why you were so set on Charlie and me marrying, and I’m very fond of him, and I’d like to go on living at Lady Mead for the rest of my life. But let me do it in my own time, and don’t make me feel like a brood mare.
‘I mean, don’t you think I’ve got worries enough, Lucinda, what with this terrible war and the bombing? And if those Germans ever get here, we’ll lose everything. They don’t like the aristocracy.’
‘I rather think that’s the Communists.’
‘And what about all the shortages? It’s enough to turn one grey.’
Only that morning she had stood, she, Kitty Bainbridge, had actually stood in a queue for nail polish, and when it came to her turn there was no more left. ‘I’m sorry, modom, don’t blame me for the shortages. There is a war on, you know,’ the common little bitch had said with relish. And soon there would be a shortage of clothing and wouldn’t those shop girls have a field day, then!
‘Worries enough, I said. And when did you last see Charles? You spend too much time with those wounded soldiers.’
‘Airmen, Mama.’
‘You’re running after them morning, noon and night. I suppose you’ll be off with them to the theatre again, when you ought to be with Charles.’
‘Charlie’s fire watching tonight, and I saw him a couple of days ago.’
Two days ago, in this very room, Mama. Charlie got annoyed with me because I wouldn’t let him. Called me frigid and said all the other chaps’ girls were willing enough, and would it matter all that much if he put a bun in the oven for me? So I let him, Mama, right there on the sofa, and it wasn’t a bit nice, and in the end Charlie went off in a huff …
‘A couple of days ago? And what did he say? That boy will go off with someone else, mark my words.’
‘No he won’t. We’ll be married, I promise we will.’
And she hoped she would feel better about getting the baby everyone seemed to want so much. She wanted it too, and maybe when she and Charlie were married and in bed and they’d had a few drinks and she was wearing a black nightie, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
‘Married! I wish I could be sure of that.’ Lady Kitty looked obliquely at her daughter. Lucinda was tall and beautiful, and most times obedient and biddable. It was a pity she was an only child; the fault of the riding accident, of course. Secretly, she had been grateful to the farmer who had strung barbed wire across that particular gate.
Kitty Bainbridge had not enjoyed her pregnancy, though she accepted that her family record had been taken into account when Donnington proposed. The Cravens were a prolific lot, wretchedly poor but very fertile. There had been eight of them, four girls and four boys, and only ten years between first and last. So Kitty Craven had been welcomed to Lady Mead, and the Dowager died happy in the knowledge that her daughter-in-law of six months was five months pregnant.
But the getting of that child was not the pleasurable romp she had been led to believe, and her pregnancy was a sick one. As for Lucinda’s birth – she still shuddered just to think of it, and she had prayed that the next one would produce the son she so desperately needed to enable her to call a halt to the whole disagreeable business. But fate intervened and the young Countess of Donnington was thrown from her horse and, badly cut and bruised, lay concussed for two days and nights.
Poor Kitty, everyone said, when she did not conceive again; thank goodness there’s a lesser Bainbridge to carry on the line.
Thank goodness indeed, poor Kitty agreed, and from then on Lady Lucinda, smiling in her pram, and her three-year-old cousin Charles, featured hugely in her future plans. And when they married, thought the Countess happily, the Bainbridge comforts would still be hers to manipulate, provided the Earl popped off first and, as he was fifteen years older, it was almost certain that he would.
‘Well,’ said the Countess, ‘are you to be out on the town again with your wounded soldiers?’
‘Well, they do rather want to take in a show, but we’ll have to see what’s open. Don’t worry, though. If there’s another raid and it gets bad, we’ll go to the nearest tube station. It’s safe enough down there.’
Kitty Bainbridge closed her eyes and shuddered. She had had enough of the blackout and the bombing and the shortages, and if she let herself think too much about the invasion she would become quite ill. It was all too much, waiting for that upstart Hitler to make up his mind; to envisage the Germans strutting down the Mall as they’d strutted down the Champs Élysées. And all because of Poland!
‘Oh, and could I please have the hot-water ration today, Mama? You did have it yesterday and Thursday too, and I must have a bath.’
‘Then you’ll have to take it standing up in cook’s enamel bowl.’ If they’d had a cook! If the wretched woman hadn’t taken herself off to war work in a factory canteen for three times the money, or so she had said. ‘They hit the mains last night with a land mine. No electricity for two days, the gas turned off too, and now no water. It’s beyond belief, it really is. I wonder sometimes what the world is coming to.’
Our world, Mama, Lucinda brooded. Yours and mine. It’s changing, but you won’t accept it. There are no servants now, no seasons in London or Monte, and our lovely, stubborn, precious little island might be invaded any day. France has gone, and Belgium and Holland, and the German army is only a few miles away across the Channel. I know why you are so jumpy, Mama, but you mustn’t think you are the only one who is being put out. This is everybody’s war; we are all suffering and we are all afraid …
‘Look, don’t get upset. It doesn’t matter about the bath.’ It was selfish even to think of one when the fire service