The Magic Hour Read online

  Gerald had to feel pleased with himself. He was tall and handsome, and he was marrying Ariel, who was not only beautiful, but so fascinating that he couldn’t wait for the whole wedding fandango to be over, and for them to be alone.

  ‘I’m afraid that was really rather a quiet do for a stag night, Edward,’ he went on. ‘But you know how it is, I did promise Ariel that I would not fetch up on my wedding day as so many bridegrooms do, hung, drawn and quartered from the night before, as it were.’

  Edward nodded, checking his immaculate appearance yet again in the mirror. He really did not mind not having a hangover, and they had enjoyed a jolly good dinner at the Savoy with some fine wines, which now seemed just the job.

  Edward and Gerald had been through school together, done National Service with the same regiment, and were now well set up as stockbrokers in the City having fun with their relatives’ not inconsiderable fortunes. Not content with that, both young men had become engaged at the same time – although Gerald did have to go through the small matter of getting un-engaged to Laura before becoming engaged to Ariel. That had been a bit of a messy business, until you met Ariel, and then you understood, because Ariel was an absolute cracker. Not Edward’s sort, actually, because he himself could never even begin to manage such a spirited girl as Ariel. Too much to handle for a simple chap like himself. You needed to have a real way with women, such as Gerald undoubtedly had, to have the slightest chance with someone like Ariel.

  ‘Come on, time to face the firing squad.’

  Gerald turned reluctantly from his satisfyingly handsome image and smiled at his old friend.

  ‘I think I can hear the wedding bells of St Mary’s, Eddie, calling me to my beauteous bride.’

  Edward stepped back from the bridegroom, admiring his appearance. Gerald really did look every inch the eager groom.

  ‘Time for the off, Gerald, time for the off. You know weddings always remind me of my confirmation, all that preparation and then everything seems to tear past one.’

  The two young men made a handsome sight, and of course they knew it, as they made their way down the steep London staircase of the tall Knightsbridge house. It was as they were passing the first-floor drawing-room door that Gerald paused on the stairs, and reversed back up the last two he had just taken, while glancing at his wristwatch.

  ‘I say, let’s have a glass of champagne for the road, Eddie, shall we? Just the one. After all, you deserve it, and I’m damned sure I need it. Besides, we can drink to the old days, to the days of our youth, which are about to end. What do you say?’

  Edward glanced at his watch. It was true, they were early, and St Mary’s was only a step after all, only a step or two away.

  ‘These are the only drinks I really enjoy, do you know that, dear boy?’ Gerald mused as he lifted a champagne glass to his lips. ‘Drinks with one’s best friends, they’re the best.’ He opened a silver box and offered Edward a cigarette.

  There was a short silence as both men drank and smoked in appreciative silence, a silence finally and annoyingly broken by the sound of the front-door bell.

  ‘What the hell is that? You don’t think Ariel’s backed out on me, do you?’ Gerald lifted one eyebrow at Edward. ‘See who it is, dear boy, can’t speak to the grocer or whoever, really I can’t, spoils the moment.’

  Edward leaned over the side of the banisters, halfway down the stairs, and peered at the top of the glass door.

  ‘Looks like someone in uniform,’ he called back to Gerald. ‘I don’t like it at all. Don’t like people in uniform, not unless it’s someone from one’s own regiment,’ he joked.

  ‘If it’s the police tell them they can’t arrest me until after my honeymoon,’ Gerald replied.

  ‘No, it’s not the police, I think it’s a boy with a telegram,’ Edward shouted up to his old friend as he took the small envelope from the nattily dressed boy and opened the front door.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  The boy saluted smartly and jumping on his bike he bicycled off, disdaining the use of his saddle, his bottom staying high above it, the sunshine glancing off the metal of his handlebars.

  Edward glanced at the addressee on the envelope.

  ‘Captain Gerald Hardwick. It’s obviously a congratters telegram for you, old thing.’

  He smiled and handed it over to Gerald to open, picking up his drink and happily finishing it off, as Gerald stubbed out his cigarette and picking up a paper knife from the table slit open the envelope.

  ‘I hate this tradition that’s growing up of sending one rude messages on one’s wedding day,’ he confessed. ‘And then all that reading them out at receptions …’

  ‘It does seem a ghastly waste of time, time better spent in swigging the in-laws’ champagne, I would have thought,’ Edward agreed.

  He looked over to Gerald who was frowning.

  ‘Anything the matter, Gerry?’

  Gerald held up a hand.

  ‘Got to read this again.’

  ‘Some people’s jokes one just doesn’t get first time, does one?’

  ‘No, this is not a joke, Edward. At least if it is, which it can’t be, it’s a pretty poor one.’

  ‘Well, go on, try it out on me, I might get it, you never know.’

  Gerald shook his head, speechless, and sat down suddenly on the velvet-covered chair behind him.

  ‘It’s Laura.’

  ‘A telegram from Laura? I say, that’s pretty decent of her – considering.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not from Laura, it’s about Laura.’

  Edward suddenly noticed that Gerald was a great deal paler, and he was yet again reaching into the pocket of his waistcoat and taking out his slim silver cigarette case, from which he proceeded delicately to extract one of his special mix of Fox’s cigarettes and slowly light one with a shaking hand.

  ‘It’s from her brother, from Jamie Millington. It seems Laura died in childbirth – this morning.’

  ‘I say, a bit much telling you now – doesn’t he know you’re getting hitched today?’

  Gerald stared from the telegram to Edward’s appalled face and then down at the telegram again.

  ‘Yes, I think he does, Edward. I think he must know that all too well.’

  A Question of Birth

  Her Uncle Staunton and his wife having gone to live in the South of France to escape the English weather, and Laura having only one brother, there were very few of the Millington family at poor Laura’s funeral, something that Betty Stamford, Laura’s mother-in-law of only ten months, realised at once.

  She also realised that it was not a particularly Christian thing to do – to note who was who at such a time, and how many had bothered to attend her daughter-in-law’s funeral, but it was all too human. Very well, the poor dead girl’s father and mother had both been killed during the last war, and her brother had a family of his own, but nevertheless she had thought that they might make a better show of it. It was as if they were ashamed of her. As if, having attended Laura’s wedding and duly noting the family into which she had married, gracious, it had to be faced – it was as if the Millingtons had determined not to have any more contact with the Stamfords.

  ‘It’s not as if we’re not somebody, it’s not as if the Stamfords haven’t some standing in the county,’ she insisted to her grieving son, as she prepared to hand out plates of sandwiches at the funeral tea.

  ‘Her brother is here, Mother, representing the family, we can’t expect more. It’s not as if Laura’s brother hasn’t come—’

  ‘On his own, please note.’

  ‘Well, at least he’s here.’

  Betty sat back down on the large, faded satin-upholstered chair and crammed a curling sandwich into her mouth. She had not known her daughter-in-law very long, but it had been long enough to realise that, try as she might to disguise the fact, Laura despised her.

  ‘John, your brother-in-law is calling you over.’

  John looked over to where a tall, fair-haired man
was standing by the old carved chimneypiece.

  ‘I think this would be a good time to discuss family business, don’t you? Shall we adjourn to the library?’

  John Stamford nodded, but only because he did not like to admit that he did not actually own a library, the fact being that if the Stamfords came across someone in the house reading, they would come to the swift conclusion that they must be feeling unwell, for surely there could be no other possible explanation for someone picking up a book?

  However, John did have a dining room, and it did have shelves and a collection of bound volumes to which he carefully added every year. In this way he was able to imagine his formal dining room might be counted as a library.

  Jamie Millington looked round the room into which he had been led, and wondered at its oak furniture, its ladderback chairs and three-leaf oval table, so different from his own old mahogany furniture, just as the people in the paintings on the walls were so different. Jamie Millington’s family portraits showed gentlemen in lace cravats and much gold on their uniforms or jackets; the Stamford family portraits showed men and women in black clothes, the women’s sole adornment being a cameo brooch, the men’s a watch chain. The hands of the Stamford family bore no signet rings, and there were no large houses with flights of steps in the background. Nevertheless their expressions, low key in keeping with their Low Church beliefs, were those of people of substance.

  ‘I don’t really have a library, just a few books, which Mother likes to read. I am hoping to buy more books, in time, but things have been rather tight the last few years, what with having to buy new machinery for the farm.’

  Jamie did not really know what to say in answer to this assertion, since he came from a background where people did not actually talk about money, or possessions, perhaps to make up for the fact that they seldom thought about anything else at all.

  ‘The thing is, John,’ Jamie began, determined to come straight to the point, ‘Laura’s child, yours and Laura’s child, the baby. Might be better if it was brought up at Knighton Hall with us. With two girls and two boys in the nursery already, as Tasha says, a third girl won’t make much difference. And Tasha’s awfully good at coping with children, as you know. As the baby’s uncle, I’m sure it would be a good thing for her to be brought up with brothers and sisters, rather than here, motherless, alone with you.’

  Even before he finished speaking Jamie knew that his was a lost cause, and he sighed inwardly, already hearing his wife’s indignant tones when he returned home, hearing her questioning him, over and over again.

  ‘But didn’t you explain? Didn’t you explain that the poor little girl is as much a Millington as she is a Stamford, and just because her surname is Stamford doesn’t make her wholly so? People like the Stamfords, they don’t read books, they don’t go to art exhibitions, they don’t even go to the theatre. I mean they just don’t! What will happen to the poor little girl? She will grow up ignorant of the fine things of life, ignorant of everything that makes life worth living. She will not be a Millington.’

  Jamie could hear himself replying.

  ‘I know, darling, I know, but nothing to be done. She has a father. John Stamford is her father. I am only her uncle, there is truly nothing that I can do.’

  Now, as he stared into John Stamford’s face, whose lower lip seemed to be sticking out ever more stubbornly, the look in his eyes reminded his brother-in-law of a farm animal refusing to budge from the middle of the road. Again Tasha’s voice came into his head. ‘You have to face it, Jamie, your niece will become a tousle-headed farmer’s brat, not a young lady, if you leave her with the Stamfords.’ Jamie knew it to be true, but much as his heart reached out to the poor little motherless girl in the crib upstairs, much as he knew that if she was in any way like his dead sister, he also knew, as sure as eggs were eggs, that it would probably prove to be easier to move a mountain than Laura’s poor little offspring. Of course Tasha was right about the Stamfords, for decent though they might be, and probably were, they were so utterly different to the Millingtons, it was almost ludicrous. Chalk and cheese would have more in common than the Millingtons and the Stamfords.

  For perhaps the thousandth time Jamie wondered what had come over his sister to marry such a man as poor John Stamford. His sister Laura had been a will o’ the wisp, a beautiful butterfly with gossamer wings, a piece of fine porcelain, sunlight on water. Her husband was pottery, heather on hills, rain clouds over mountains. They were about as suited as organza and tweed.

  ‘They are not a couple, they don’t look like a couple,’ Tasha kept whispering insistently all through the wedding. ‘No one can say that they do.’

  And that was not all that Tasha kept insisting. Her newest assertion was that poor Laura had probably died owing to her mother-in-law insisting the local midwife attend her daughter-in-law, rather than send her to a proper gynaecologist; obviously not appreciating that Laura was a thoroughbred, not a cob, and simply not up to giving birth in a field or a stable, or – in poor Laura’s case – in the upstairs bedroom of a farmhouse.

  ‘Thank you very much for the offer, but I don’t think that I would like to hand over the baby. She is after all a Stamford, and besides, Mother would not like it.’

  Jamie sighed inwardly, and outwardly, and then walked out of the dining room, knowing it was useless to argue, or even to try to persuade a man such as John Stamford from any course other than the one upon which he was intent.

  As Jamie’s wise old batman used to say about so much: ‘You might as well spit in the wind, sir, as to try to change that matter. Now I come to think of it, sir, spitting in the wind might be of more use.’

  Betty Stamford watched Jamie Millington leaving the funeral tea, and she too sighed inwardly, and outwardly, but with relief. She knew what his brother-in-law taking her John into the dining room must be about. Luckily she had warned John that this might be on the cards, that the Millingtons might come after the baby now that Laura, the silly girl, had gone and died.

  ‘Say as little as possible. Don’t refer to the birth, don’t say a word.’

  ‘I can’t say nothing, Mother, either I say something or I don’t say anything at all.’

  Betty stared at her son for a second. She could never quite make up her mind as to whether John was stupid or just down to earth.

  ‘In that case, don’t say anything at all, John. Not that you’re not capable, my love, because of course you are, but the Millingtons are the Millingtons, and they’re bound to want to take the child over, and when all is said and done it is your child, John, and you can’t allow that. Above all, don’t say anything about the birth, do you hear? We don’t want the Millingtons getting wind of what happened. Above all, we don’t want that, John.’

  John had nodded in his slow way, so broken over the events of the previous week that he found it difficult to concentrate on anything other than his sorrow.

  ‘Such a pity the baby’s a girl, she’s going to be no use on the farm, a girl, is she?’ Janet Priddy murmured to another of the mourners.

  ‘No matter, John’ll marry again soon enough. He’ll have to, to get sons for the farm, it’s his duty.’

  The two women nodded wisely. They were both farmers’ wives, they knew their reputations in the neighbourhood were unimpeachable: they’d done their duty, they’d had sons.

  ‘I hear she had some sort of paroxysm, apparently.’

  ‘Oh no, I heard she was haemorrhaging, my dear, and nothing to be done.’

  ‘No, but apparently she passed away with the shock of the birth, at least that was what I heard; but whether that’s true, I don’t know.’

  They both nodded, together, feeling that curious satifaction that plain women often feel when a much prettier one dies young, as if some sort of opposition had been removed from their neighbourhood.

  ‘By the way what is she to be called, the poor baby? What is she to be called?’

  ‘Alexandra, apparently.’

  ‘She’ll alw
ays be known as Alex, of course, which is really a boy’s name, I always think. Such a waste of time, these long names. Why not call her something sensible, like Jane or Elizabeth?’

  ‘Apparently the mother wanted her called after her grandmother, John told Betty.’

  ‘She would. She would want a stuck-up sort of name like Alexandra. Talk about Miss Nose in the Air! Tuppence to talk to Laura Stamford it was, and now, doubtless, her daughter’s going to turn out the same.’

  The infant daughter of the late Laura Anne Stamford (née Millington) and Mr John Stamford was christened at St Luke’s Church, Witchampton. Mr G. Priddy and Mr W. Stanley stood as godparents.

  The christening tea was if anything quieter than the funeral tea, and once again Jamie Millington attended, still without his family, and yet again inadvertently caused ruffled feelings with Betty Stamford.

  ‘Us Stamfords are just not good enough for the Millingtons, we really are not, just not good enough,’ Betty murmured. ‘I’m surprised even that James Millington has come, that even the uncle’s turned up. I was that surprised to see him at the church, really I was.’

  Janet Priddy nodded absently at Betty while all the time staring from under her new hat at what she always called the ‘goings on’. She could readily appreciate what Betty Stamford was saying. Just watching Jamie Millington standing over by the fireplace, as he had at the funeral six months before, just watching him lolling there with his cup of tea and his scone, it was for all the world as if he owned the place, as if he owned the farm, as if the Stamfords were his tenants.

  ‘The trouble with the Millingtons is they’re not just stuck up,’ she said, picking up what she knew to be her friend Betty’s thoughts, ‘they’re jumped up. The way they go on you would honestly think they were the De Vere de Veres, which they definitely are not.

  ‘No, but they think they are, so when all is said and done, they might as well be,’ Janet reasoned, and several of the women standing around, ostensibly admiring the baby in her crib, nodded sagely at this, knowing it to be only too true.