Chapter 23 A Cuckoo in the Nest #2
“To shield me from prosecution, you mean. That’s one thing. But I don’t see how you could legalize my marriage, if concrete evidence emerged that invalidated it. And therefore jeopardized my pension, my house. Speaking purely hypothetically, of course.”
“Of course. And I can assure you, Mrs. Wilson, far deeper wrinkles have been smoothed in the cause of a greater good.”
Well, reflected Honor, he would say that, wouldn’t he. Though she supposed it was the sort of arrangement one could get in writing, under lawyerly advisement. Not that she was actually considering it, mind you. It hadn’t come to that. Not yet.
She placed a hand on his arm. “Now, I haven’t seen anything nicer than that little green vase, I don’t think. Have the Metropolitan Police got an account here?”
For the rest of the day, George kept wondering, Who am I?
She even considered asking Venetia. When George was born, Venetia was fourteen, so she’d have known about a cuckoo in the nest. Yet supposing it wasn’t the Mountford-Owens who’d always lied to her?
Supposing Honor was lying now, for heaven knew what reason?
She certainly had form, if Comyns was to be believed.
And what had Mina said? “The lies that woman has told…”
George imagined the impatient disdain on Venetia’s face, were she to relate the pickle she was in.
And where would she even begin? The silly cow’s really lost her mind this time, her sister would think.
Succumbing to crackpot delusions. It was an anxiety of hers, being written off as mad.
She remembered a cousin, Lettice, who went slightly cracked after having her fifth baby.
She was found roaming the carpet and fabrics department of Marshall & Snelgrove, wearing nothing but her dressing gown.
In the middle of January, too. Apparently it was a nice dressing gown, pale-yellow brocaded satin with soutache embroidery, the sort of thing that could almost pass for evening wear.
Nonetheless, Lettice was carted off to a loony bin in Shropshire and given weekly electroshock treatment until she seemed herself again. Except she never quite did.
George would have to talk to her putative mother, then.
When she rang her, Lady Susan sounded surprised but not displeased. “There’s nothing wrong, is there, darling? Or it is good news?”
“No news,” said George, “either good or bad. I just need to talk to you about something. Daddy won’t be there, will he?”
“Oh no,” her mother said offhandedly. “Your father is in Ireland. Something to do with horses. You know me, I don’t ask questions.”
On the train to Winchester the following afternoon, George mentally rehearsed ways of broaching the subject. There was definitely no need to bring up the police business. Yet she could hardly claim to have pulled from thin air the notion that she was some sort of foundling.
It was even more difficult than she had imagined.
Mother and daughter walked around the garden and looked at the roses.
They drank two cups of tea and smoked several cigarettes.
Still she couldn’t find the right words.
Susan was midway through an impenetrable anecdote involving a dismissed churchwarden, corruption in the May queen election, and a visiting troupe of Italian rope dancers when George could contain herself no longer.
“Mummy, are you actually my mother?”
Susan didn’t look appalled, or shocked—merely uncomprehending. “I’m sorry, darling?”
“It’s just that…” George picked up the heavy onyx cigarette lighter and started playing with its chrome mechanism.
“It’s difficult to explain. But I learned recently that I’ve got a brother and a sister other than Arabella and Venetia.
And there’s such an age gap between me and them—I thought perhaps I had different parents.
I don’t want to cause a flap, or upset anyone.
But I’d dearly like to know the facts of the matter. ”
Susan removed the lighter from her daughter’s hands and set it back down on the coffee table. On the sofa next to her was Sheba, a fifteen-year-old golden retriever, whose neck she slowly stroked. Sheba rested her head in Susan’s lap and blinked at George accusingly.
“Look, Georgie,” began Susan, “I was going to tell you eventually. It just never seemed to matter particularly. It’s a common enough thing in families, after all. But you’re right, you may as well know, Charles isn’t your real father.”
Oh, thought George. Oh. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
Susan twisted one of her rings around her middle finger, centering the sapphires. “You remember my friend Sir Alec St. John Gardner?”
With difficulty George summoned the image of a ruddy man with large teeth and hawkish brows.
“You mean to say…” She must have looked squeamish, because Susan shook her head and smiled.
“He was terribly handsome as a young man. I wouldn’t expect you to see that, not now.
But age comes to us all. Who’d believe I was once considered a beauty? ”
But the ghost of that beauty remained, thought George, despite the wrinkles and ravages. And Susan still made the effort, still reddened her lips and wore pearls in her ears, tucked a pale silk scarf into the neck of her cardigan.
“He knows about you,” Susan went on. “There wasn’t much room for doubt. Charles and I… Well, I’m sure Alec will be delighted if you acknowledge him. Not publicly, of course. But he’s always said you’re a smashing girl, a chip off the old block. You ought to write to him. Tell him I said to.”
“Wait—so does Daddy know, too?”
“Naturally. Why do you think he dislikes you, darling?”
“My personality?”
They both laughed. “Well that, too,” said Susan.
“No, he was irritated at my carelessness. He didn’t mind who I had affairs with.
But he didn’t want to bring up another man’s child.
He found it unseemly or humiliating or something.
Infuriating man. It wasn’t my fault. I was forty-five when I realized I was having you.
I assumed it was my change of life. The penny only dropped when you started kicking.
Charles said I was so ancient you’d be a defective.
He said he’d put you in an institution. But you were a lovely little baby.
Much nicer than Arabella or Venetia. Wailing red-faced wretches.
I couldn’t wait to hand them over to Nanny.
Perhaps you took after Alec. You didn’t cry or fuss, just gazed at everything with those huge gas-blue eyes.
I really don’t know what I’m doing here, you seemed to be thinking, this simply isn’t what I signed up for, but I suppose I’ll give things a fair shot. ”
She looked at her daughter intently. It was almost, thought George, as though she was seeing her for the first time since she was a baby. “You were at school with Daphne Gardner, do you remember? And you came out together.”
“Gosh, good old Daffy, yes. I’ve not seen her in ages. She was a scream. She winked at the king, you know, when we were presented. She said he winked back, but no one else saw it. She was probably pulling my leg.”
“She married an Eyetie, didn’t she?”
“That’s right. Count Alfonso of Caserta. Actually a rather dear little man.”
“Ah yes. I suppose the title makes a difference.” Susan sighed.
“You must have met all the Gardner children at one time or another. I always feared you’d take up with one of the boys—though I don’t believe the youngest are Alec’s.
” She smiled. “I can’t tell you how glad I am this is all out in the open! ”
Whereas I’m more confused than ever, thought George. “Did Alec… does Alec have other offspring out of wedlock, do you know? Perhaps with a woman of not quite the same class?”
“Knowing him,” said Susan with a wryly raised eyebrow, “I wouldn’t rule it out.”