accommodating betting shop with generous credit that Mr. Schein had discovered tucked far down the maze of Eastbourne’s genteel side streets. Simon walked out of Schein’s with his newly razored cheeks and a shining pate, feeling quite converted to the idea of himself and Rachel spending a few days at the coast.
The holiday was such a success that on their return Rachel urged her neighbours to take a few days of sea air down on the south coast where you could get ice cream in a container that resembled a small vase and the added bonus of all the fish and chips you could eat just on the doorstep. There was no mention of the betting shop. Simon had kept that information to himself.
During their absence Sarah and Nat had been left alone for the first time in their marriage and she and Nat had fallen in love all over again. However, a tragedy had occurred next door at number 54 that had blighted those happy days. Mrs. Smith, the mother of ten, had recently discovered herself to be pregnant. One evening after their tea, Mr. Smith had taken two of the youngest children “out for some river air.” Neighbours had noticed how anxious he had been looking in recent days after the discovery that yet another mouth to feed was on the way. Times were already hard enough, with paid work still so scarce. Mr. Smith was at his wits’ end with worry. He must have concluded that the only solution to reducing the weekly food bill was by eliminating the need to fill hungry mouths. His actions had shocked the Oak Street neighbourhood.
According to a witness, the three members of the Smith family had been holding hands when they jumped from Blackfriars Bridge. In seeking to reassure Mrs. Smith the policemen said the little ones would probably have thought they were playing a game. They would have hit the water with such a smack, said the report in the Hackney Gazette, that death would have come very quickly. A black ribbon hung from the door knocker at number 54, indicating that visitors were not encouraged. Knots of shaken neighbours had stood outside talking in low voices about how anyone could reach such a level of despair as Mr. Smith must have done. The cloud of grief billowed out from behind their closed front door.
As Sarah told May this terrible story, her hand stroked her distended belly. What a lot of luck you need to be born into happiness, May thought. She wondered, not for the first time, whether she had already met someone who could sustain her as Nat did Sarah. She was still hesitant to confide to Sarah about what was happening between her and Julian and her persistent fear that his relationship with Lottie had been reignited in Berlin. So instead she talked about Florence. Sarah listened carefully as May described how much she had come to care for the child and how Florence had recently appeared so unsettled. The unusual belt Florence had reluctantly been wearing on the day she left for the beach gave the biggest clue to the nature of Florence’s strange mood.
“There was a mark on the belt that I discovered to be the symbol for Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirt party and I think her mother might be a Mosley follower,” May explained.
She was about to describe Mrs. Cage’s badly disguised excitement at the Blackshirt leader’s visit to Cuckmere but stopped herself. She was sworn to secrecy, of course, but she also knew that Sarah would have been horrified. The Greenfelds would not begin to understand the reason for Mosley’s visit to Cuckmere. Sir Philip would not have tolerated such a guest under his own roof were it not to discuss a matter of national importance: the king’s relationship with a married woman. May wondered what Sarah, a Jewish woman, would make of Mosley and felt dreadfully ashamed of the physical attraction she had felt for a man whose actions threatened the very London family with whom she spent her time. Racial and religious prejudice was not something of which May was ignorant. In Barbados, and outside their own plantation, there had been some notorious racists among the white community and the experience in Oxford’s town hall was still vivid in her mind. She remembered the angry wife of the Cowley motorcar worker, she remembered the noise of the clashing steel chairs and she remembered the blood that had oozed from the cuts