“After I got out of the Army, Angela and I were finally allowed to get married. I basically became her father’s errand boy, but at least I learnt to speak Italian. Once Angela found out she was pregnant, we thought it best to move to England so the baby would be a British citizen. Italy was and is in terrible shape. Everyone in town had relatives in America sending them food parcels, including Angela and me. When the time came to leave, we practically floated out of the village with all her relatives crying.”
James stood up, put on his coat, and pointed to the envelope. “You know that’s only a fraction of what my parents have stored away in an upstairs room. I know Dad worked on it during his convalescence, and Mom cataloged everything during the war when she wasn’t at the hospital. It probably helped to take her mind off the war, especially since my brother was in Burma fighting Japs.”
“And you were in Italy fighting Germans,” I quickly added.
“Yeah, but I always thought I was better off than Mike, working on planes in hot, humid, bug-infested Burma. Not only did he have to worry about the Japs, he also had to keep an eye on the locals, who preferred their Jap invaders to us. So much for making the world British.” Then he smiled and said, “And Italian girls are much prettier.”
Before I let him go, I wanted to ask him one question. “Is your Aunt Margie still living, the one who helped with some of the family research?”
A complete change of expression came over James’s face.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. I had said the wrong thing.
“No, no. It’s all right. Aunt Margie. My God, I haven’t thought about her in years.” He looked down and made a circular pattern on the carpet with his foot before saying, “She was married to my Uncle Reed. They had a cabin in Scotland west of Perth.” After a long pause, James said, “I’ve got to go.”
While buttoning his overcoat, he said, “My parents are very fond of you, and I think before all is said and done, you’ll know more about my family than I do.”
Shortly after my evening with James Crowell, I stopped by the bookstall near my office building to pick up a newspaper, as I did every day before going to work. On the front page of The Times in big black letters was the headline that Lord Fitzwilliam and his companion, Lady Hartington, nee Kathleen Kennedy, had been killed in an airplane crash in France. The couple had been fodder for the tabloids for months, and now they were both dead.
I remembered Jack and Beth talking about Kathleen Kennedy’s mother objecting to her marriage to the Duke of Devonshire because he was a Protestant. She must have been horrified when she learned that her daughter had taken up with another titled Protestant who wasn’t yet divorced. Now, none of that mattered.
Chapter 19
Rob and I tried to spend as much time together as possible, but occasionally we had to go our separate ways. I had been invited to a bridal shower for Pamela, who was shortly to be not only a bride but a mother. Troy seemed to be a very nice man, but like so many servicemen who had been “demobbed” out of the service, he could not find a job, and now there was a baby on the way.
After returning home from the shower, I heard Rob’s unmistakable Western drawl coming from the kitchen. Poking my head around the corner, I saw Rob and Mr. Dawkins sitting at the kitchen table drinking beer. Mr. Dawkins was a World War I veteran, whose hearing had been badly damaged in the war, which was why Rob was shouting. When Mr. Dawkins saw me, he jumped up, patted Rob on the back, and left.
“I didn’t mean to chase him,” I said after my landlord went upstairs.
“He’s embarrassed about his hearing loss. Everything has to be shouted. But Mrs. Dawkins and the boys have gone out to the movies, so I told him there was no one to hear the shouting except me. He was telling me about a village near Rouen in France he came to enjoy for a lot of reasons. He was quick to add he was not married at the time, and Mrs. Dawkins had never heard that particular story.”
“Do you have a story like that?” I asked in a teasing way.
“Yep,” he said as he pulled me tight against him. “I met this hussy when I was living in London after the war.”
I pushed him away and slid into Mr. Dawkins’s vacant chair. “Then you had better go look her up.”
Jumping up, Rob took me by the hand and led me to the sitting room. Because Rob had worked his way into my landlady’s good graces, we were allowed to use the room to go over all the papers Beth had sent to me.
“While you were out, I went to the library. Everyone who is anyone in Britain is listed in a book called Who’s Who, which includes a short biography listing their titles, honors, and accomplishments. Everyone who was ever knighted or elevated to the peerage is in this book, including Will Lacey, who was knighted by George IV. He also served as a Justice of the Peace, which Mrs. Tobin, the librarian, told me was common practice because he was the Lord of the Manor.
“Will’s son, Christopher, was also knighted because he was one of the founders of the Derwent Valley Manufacturing Corporation. Mrs. Tobin said that if you could point to one place in England where the factory system was born, ‘for good or ill,’ it was in the textile mills in the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire. Chris was a Member of Parliament for a decade from a ‘safe’ seat under the control of the Duke of Devonshire, and he supported Lord Ashley’s 1840 Coal Mines Act, banning women and children from working underground.
“Andrew Lacey, Beth’s grandfather, was honored for doing a lot of civic-type things in Stepton, like building a hospital, but the big news there was Andrew was made a baronet. It’s a hereditary title between a baron and a knight, but baronets do not have a seat in the House of Lords.”
“Which means Beth’s father was also a baronet,” I said.
“Yes, which made Beth’s parents Sir Edward and Lady Lacey. And this is really interesting. Both were honored by George V in 1933 for their work on the War Graves Commission and the creation of the Thiepval War Memorial in Picardy, which is in northern France. There are 72,000 names listed on the Memorial of men who have no known graves. This is just for those killed at the Battle of the Somme, and in addition to honoring his work on the Memorial, Edward Lacey served on the Board of Directors of Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh.”
I about jumped out of my chair. “Jack said that Craiglockhart was where Reed went when he was sent home from France, and James told me Reed and his Aunt Margie lived in Scotland after they got married.”
“I think Reed was one of those shell-shocked soldiers, and they put him in that hospital. That’s why no one talks about him.”
“No, that can’t be it,” I said. “I mean he was at the hospital. We know that. But Reed had to be well enough to get married.”
Rob just shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, I asked the librarian if there was any information on shell-shocked vets, and she said there was a government report commissioned after the war on who served and who didn’t serve, and if not, why not.”
“Catchy title.”
Rob smiled before continuing. “When war was declared, tens of thousands of volunteers showed up, but when the Army gave them their physicals, they found out that many of them, especially those from the cities, were physically unfit because of tuberculosis, chronic skin diseases, malnutrition, etc. This was an ongoing problem. In the last two years, the Army had a difficult time filling its ranks, even with conscription. So if you were a healthy young man, well-nourished because you were rich, and not totally crazy, you almost certainly would have been drafted.