Ben left the Three Bells, thinking about Dr. Rosenberg. As he had said, he didn’t look Jewish, with his blond hair and light greenish eyes. Ben toyed with the idea that he could have been a plant, sent over to become embedded in the community. Dr. Sinclair was a soft-hearted man, lonely, easily taken in. Perhaps the parachutist had expected to find sanctuary at the doctor’s house.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Farleigh again
The next morning there was great excitement in several households with the arrival of the morning post. Lady Esme looked up in surprise, waving a sheet of paper at the other occupants of the breakfast table. “Well, isn’t that nice?” she said. “We’re invited to a dinner party at the Prescotts to celebrate Jeremy’s safe return home.”
“Just you and Pah or all of us?” Dido asked.
“It says you and your family,” Lady Esme said. “Not Phoebe, of course. She’s too young for dinner parties.”
“What?” Phoebe looked up from her porridge. “That’s not fair. I’m never included in anything.”
“You are not an adult, Phoebe. You haven’t come out,” Lady Esme said.
“Neither has Dido. Neither has anybody these days,” Phoebe said.
“Don’t remind me!” Dido said angrily. “If you’re talking about not fair, then my missing a season is the unfairest of all. No balls. No parties. Nothing. I’ll never meet a man and I’ll die an old spinster.”
“I don’t know how they can get their hands on enough food to hold a dinner party when we are eating sawdust sausages and shepherd’s pie that is ninety-percent potato.” Lord Westerham interrupted this tirade. “But then that blighter Prescott always does seem to get his hands on things other people can’t. He drives that Rolls of his around as if there wasn’t petrol rationing.”
“He’s on important committees, dear,” Lady Esme said. “Obviously, he has to go up to London.”
“What’s wrong with a train, like for the rest of us?” Lord Westerham snapped. “I am most careful about the amount of petrol I use.”
“I don’t believe you’ve taken out the motorcar once since the chauffeur was called up,” Lady Esme said. “But then you’ve always been a hopeless driver.”
“I resent that,” Lord Westerham retorted. “I’m sure I could be a splendid driver if I put my mind to it. But there’s always been a chauffeur, so there didn’t seem much point. Besides, we are supposed to set a good example by not using any unnecessary petrol. And since I’m apparently no use to anybody in the war effort, apart from leading the local home guard, I have no justification to use petrol.”
“If you’d teach me to drive, then I could chauffeur us around,” Dido said. “Will you, Pah?”
“You? Drive us around? Even without the petrol coupons, the answer to that would be no, no, a thousand times no. You’d be more danger to the British populace than the Germans. You’d kill us all.”
“I wouldn’t,” Dido said, her cheeks now bright pink. “I bet I’d be a marvellous driver. Lots of girls from good families are driving ambulances and lorries these days. Doing their bit for the war effort, unlike me, stuck here, bored to tears.”
“Anyway, Roddy, you’ll have to get the motorcar out to drive us to the Prescotts,” Lady Esme said. “We can hardly arrive on bicycles.”
“I don’t know if I want to go,” Lord Westerham said. “There’s something about that blighter Prescott. I don’t trust him. He’s not one of us.”
“How can you say that, Pah?” Pamma had sat quietly until now, finishing up a slice of toast and marmalade.
“Because he’s not. Oh, he might have a fine house and all the airs and graces these days, but he grew up distinctly middle class.”
“Well, he’s one of us now,” Pamma said. “He has a title, just like you.”
“You either inherit a title or you buy it,” Lord Westerham said dryly. “In his case, the latter. And I query how he made all that money, too. There is something too smooth about the blighter.”
“You’re just jealous, Pah,” Dido said with a little grin. “So will you teach me to drive? I could drive us over to the Prescotts tomorrow. I can hardly hit anyone going down our driveway, can I?”
“Absolutely bloody well not,” Lord Westerham stormed.
“Then what can I do?”
“Stay at home and help your mother until you’re old enough, that’s what you can do. Knit socks and helmets for soldiers.”
“Knit things? You’re joking. If I were a son and I was eighteen, I bet you’d be proud if I joined up.”
A spasm of pain crossed his face. “But you’re not, are you? I just have girls, and it’s my job to protect them.”
“If you’re not careful, I’ll run off and marry a gypsy, and then you’ll be sorry.” Dido stood up, dropped her napkin, and flounced out of the room.
“I’ll look forward to buying clothes pegs from you,” Lord Westerham called after her, chuckling.
Lady Esme looked at her husband. “You’ll have to let go of her sometime, Roddy. I understand how she feels. She can’t sit home doing nothing when everyone else is helping with the war effort.”
“When she’s twenty-one she can do as she bloody well pleases,” he said. “Until then, she’s under my care, and I do what I think is best for her. You know what she’s like, Esme. If we let her go off to London, she’ll be back with an illegitimate baby in ten minutes.”
“Really, Roddy. Sometimes you go too far.” Lady Esme turned pink. “I must make sure we all have something decent to wear to the Prescotts. I haven’t had my good frocks out for ages, and Lady Prescott is always so chic.” She looked across at Pamela, who had now risen from the table. “Did you bring an evening dress with you, darling?”
“I left most of my things here,” she said. “Not much chance to wear evening dresses when I’m on night shift.”
“Then pass the news on to Livvy, will you. I’m sure she’ll want to come.”
As Pamela left the room, she heard her father say, “I’ve been thinking this over, Esme, and the more I think of it, the less I want to go. Prescott will be effusive and magnanimous and handing out his single malt Scotch and getting my goat.”
“But we have to go,” Lady Esme lowered her voice. “For your daughter’s sake.”
Pamela paused in the passage outside the dining room.
“Daughter? Which daughter?”
“Pamma, of course. It’s to celebrate Jeremy’s safe return. Jeremy and Pamela, you know?”
“No, I didn’t know. Has he asked for her hand or something?”
“No, but I’m sure he will when the time is right.”
Pamma waited no longer but went on up the stairs. Her face was flushed at what she had just heard. Everyone else assumed she’d marry Jeremy, except Jeremy himself, it seemed. And now another nagging doubt had crept into her mind. Her sister Dido. She had apparently been visiting Jeremy, and then last night . . .
Dido was waiting at the top of the stairs. “Are you sure I can’t come and live with you, Pamma? I’ll go mad if I stay here much longer. They must be able to find me a job where you work. I’d take anything at this stage, even boring old filing.”
“Dido, you can’t go against Pah’s wishes. You know that. Besides, I share a room with another girl in an absolutely awful boardinghouse, and we’re as far out of London as we are here. Stuck in the middle of the countryside with nothing going on. You’d be just as bored as you are here.”
“But you must be working with men.”
“That’s true. Although I wouldn’t call most of them exciting, either. They’re too old or they’re gangly boys with pimples. Nothing exciting, I assure you.” She turned to her sister. “I know. Why don’t you ask Pah to see if the colonel of the West Kents could use you for office duties? That would be a start and get you some experience.”