Abdication A Novel - By Juliet Nicolson Page 0,120
she had obviously drunk a good deal of champagne and did not bother to disguise the truth of her relationship with Julian’s erstwhile university roommate. “Off to find the backseat of a Rolls-Royce, I expect,” she added, with unmistakable bitterness. Julian did not answer her. Coatless, he dashed out into the street, banging the front door hard behind him before the surprised butler could reach it. An hour later, after he had signed up at the Holborn headquarters to become a card-carrying member of the Labour Party, he made his way back down Piccadilly feeling disturbed. Skirting the back wall of the gardens of Buckingham Palace, he headed for Victoria railway station. Barely pausing to think what he was doing, he bought a ticket to Polegate and an hour later walked through the gates of Cuckmere Park just as the light was fading. Mr. Hooch was putting the Talbot away in the garage and waved in greeting.
“Good afternoon, sir. Nice to see you. Come to pay a surprise visit to her ladyship, have you, sir?”
The Cuckmere kitchen staff’s united approval of Mr. Julian had not abated both for his loyalty to Lady Joan and for his still unspoken but obvious attachment to young May.
“Yes, that’s right, Hooch. I came to find a bit of peace and sanity if you really want to know!” Julian told him, suddenly overcome by a need to tell the truth to the older man. “Is anyone about?” Julian asked.
Mr. Hooch was not innocent of what lay behind the question. “Sir Philip has gone to his study and I am just this moment back from collecting Miss May from the station. You must have walked along the back lane or we would have passed you on the road. You’ll find her in the kitchen, I expect. I’ll tell Sir Philip you are here.”
The kitchen door was empty but Julian knew where May lived. He found Mrs. Cage’s front door unlocked. May was crouching in the hallway beside a cupboard sniffing a paintbrush. She started when she saw Julian.
“You! Sorry! You gave me such a shock! A lovely shock, though,” she whispered. And laying the brush on top of the paint pot, she closed the cupboard and put her finger up to touch his lips.
“Can we go inside the cupboard?” he whispered back, grinning at her with a mixture of delight and puzzlement and catching her finger and kissing it. “And you can tell me why you are suddenly so interested in paint.”
“Oak Street, you silly,” she said quietly.
“Oh yes, of course,” he replied. May had not been the only one to see the letters on the Greenfelds’ door in Bethnal Green on the evening of Joshua’s birth. Both Nat and Simon had been safely upstairs with the new baby when May had beckoned to Julian to join her outside and with the help of a wet cloth and some turpentine the two of them had managed to remove the evidence before any of the inhabitants at number 52 had seen it.
Without another word, May motioned Julian to follow her up to her room, taking his hand as they climbed the stairs. A small and silent figure was lying facedown on May’s bed. Florence was shaking all over, rigid to May’s gentle touch. On the floor beside her was a small picture frame. May picked it up. Together she and Julian looked at the full-length photograph. A young unsmiling man of about twenty years old, Julian’s age, looked back at them. His hair was greased and smoothed away from his face. Julian recognised the uniform at once. The knee-length socks, lederhosen and beige-brown shirt with epaulettes identified him at once as a member of the Hitler Youth.
“Florence. Speak to me,” May said as she sat down on the bed beside the child. Her red-gold plaits hung down the back of her checked shirt. But as May tried to turn her over, Florence stood up without looking at her and ran from the room. Julian and May looked at one another. Julian came over to the other side of the bed. Putting both arms round May’s waist he kissed her so hard that she had to lean right into him to still her sudden dizziness.
“That felt like a good-bye rather than a hallo kiss,” she said eventually. “It felt like a final and never-to-be forgotten kiss. Will you do it again? Just so I can be certain it isn’t the last one?”