Gone With the Windsors

Copyright

Fourth Estate

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Copyright © Laurie Graham 2005

Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover illustration © Rachel Ross

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Source ISBN: 9780007146765

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007369836

Version: 2017-03-30

10th March 1932, Sweet Air, Baltimore

Six months since Danforth Brumby surrendered to the first hint of kidney failure and left me a widow. It always was the risk in marrying an older man. Yesterday his headstone was raised, so now it’s time to look to the future. I still have my youth and my looks. Men are already flocking to my side and women are pursuing me as always for my advice and my vivacious presence at their dinner tables. Le tout Baltimore is impatient for my return to society, so tomorrow I shall drive into town, place my chinchilla in cold storage, and order a selection of spring outfits from Madame Lucille. A new chapter opens.

13th March 1932

A letter from sister Violet. Why not come to London, Maybell? she begs. It will lift you out of yourself. It’s impossible to remain sad for long in a house full of children.

Well, that is a matter of opinion.

Pips Waldo is here, she writes. You always liked Pips. And Judson Erlanger. Remember him? He’s married to one of the Chandos girls.

I’ll say I remember him! Judson Erlanger took me to the Princeton Ball.

It’s getting to be a real Little Baltimore over here, she concludes. And who knows, we may even find you another husband. Melhuish knows quite everyone.

I have already endured thirteen years of Violet’s condescension, brought on by her marriage to Donald Melhuish—Lord Melhuish as she reminds me with tedious regularity. The truth is, I could have snagged Melhuish for myself, had my tastes run to cold castles and men in skirts, but I allowed Violet to have him and I’ve said nothing since to disturb her smug satisfaction in her title and her connections and her lumpen Melhuish offspring. To some, it is given to tread the wilder track, to risk the ravine in order to conquer more majestic peaks, and I have always had a head for heights.

PS, she adds. You might think of spending some time with Doopie. She has missed you dreadfully.

So there we have it. Violet doesn’t want me in London for the zest I would undoubtedly bring to her life, nor does she particularly intend to find me a lord to marry. Tired of playing the angel of mercy, she hopes simply to saddle me with the retard.

What a trial Doopie has been to us all, a regrettable afterthought in a family already perfectly adorned by myself and Violet. If people must have children, two is certainly enough. But our misguided parents would have her, and they would allow her to arrive on my birthday, too.

“Maybell,” Father said, “you have the best birthday gift a girl could ask for.”

I had hoped for a new donkey cart, not an attention-seeking brat of a sister.

They named her Eveline and doted on every smile she smiled and every mew she mewed, but Sister Eveline didn’t impress me. Over and over, she’d allow a person to take away her pacifier, then look injured and start her sobbing. She never learned to say “No.” Then, after she caught inflammation of the brain, there could be no doubt about it. The child was a vegetable.

“Slow” was the word Mother used. “Slow, but special.”

The fact is, Eveline is stupid. Always was, always will be. I renamed her Stupid, but she’s so dumb she can’t even say it. “Doopie” is the best she has ever managed.

They tried her at Elementary School, but she was an embarrassment to us all, and it was soon decided that she would do just as well at home. She’s handy with a needle, I suppose. She can knit and crochet. And she’s quite the green-thumb, which used to endear her to Father.

“I had given up that Ficus for lost,” he’d say, “but Eveline has raised it from the dead.”

He claimed she knew every plant in the conservatory and talked to them like friends. Well, that says it all about Doopie’s powers of communication.

“Bayba,” she used to call me. And “Vite” was the best she ever managed for Violet.

“She does love you so,” Mother used to tell me. “Her eyes don’t leave you for an instant when you come into the room.”

There has never been any question of Doopie marrying, though I believe I am the only one who ever took the trouble to inform her of this. In 1914, when Violet was coming out, it was decided that because of the threat of war I had better come out, too. Just as well, because the Prussians quite ruined the 1915 season. Doopie helped with the trimming of our gowns.

“We’re invited to the Bachelor’s Club Cotillion,” I explained to her, “which is something that will never happen to you.”

She just smiled. How much of what one says penetrates her brain one never can tell, but she always seems contented enough. The only question was what would become of her. Father seemed to think that two sisters and a Trust Fund answered the case, but I was never consulted. And when Danforth Brumby asked for my hand, nobody asked him if he’d mind having a half-wit in the attic someday.

Violet thought she’d made her escape, I guess, settling overseas. I suppose she thought an idiot couldn’t be sent on a sea voyage. But when the time came, after Father passed over and Mother had to be placed in the care of a full-time nurse, it so happened that Brumby and I were much burdened with the renovations at Sweet Air. It would have been most unsuitable for Doopie to move in with us. She might have bumped into a marble pillar awaiting installation and brought it tumbling on top of her, or wandered into the path of some falling beam. It was safer by far to send her to Violet. We provided her with a chaperone, and they traveled first class, and everything has worked out for the best. From their army of peasant retainers, Violet and Melhuish have been able to furnish her with the simple companionship she requires and then, with the arrival of the babies, she has gained a nursery full of playmates.

So, I will not fall for Violet’s sly attempt at luring me to England. I see her little game. She hopes to catch me while I’m weakened by grief, and change the arrangements for Doopie. Well, they seem perfectly satisfactory to me. I shall stay where I am and reign over Baltimore.

20th March 1932

Stepsons are sent to try us. The earth has barely settled on his father’s grave, and Junior is demanding to know my plans for Sweet Air. Do I expect to stay on, alone in such a large and isolated house? And if I were to think of selling, he knows his father would have wanted the place kept in the family. Junior has never liked me. He’s never forgiven me for replacing his sainted mother and making Danforth smile again. He obviously hopes to spook me out of the place and then pick it up at a knockdown price. He’ll probably come around tapping on windows and making hooty owl noises. Well, he’ll find Maybell Brumby is made of sterner stuff than that.

24th March 1932

Randolph Putnam pressed me to join him for luncheon today, but I declined. I find him too eager, and anyway I’d already agreed to take tea with Nora Sedley Cordle. One social obligation a day is enough for anyone, especially where Nora is involved. She sat behind her Reed and Barton teapot, pretending friendship, but I read her like a book. She’s hoping I’ll give up Sweet Air, too. I always was a challenge to her social ambitions and now I suppose she’s hoping I’ll get me to a nunnery. Well, one thing I can tell her. She may be a Daughter of the American Revolution, but she had better learn to leave the ruffled neckline to those of us who can carry it off.

1st April 1932

The telephone keeps ringing and no one speaks. Today a package arrived, The World’s Most Chilling Ghost Stories. Junior must take me for a fool.

3rd April 1932

Not sleeping well. I’ve instructed Missie not to answer the telephone after ten p.m.

7th April 1932

Randolph Putnam crossed the street to tell me how strained I look and recommend I take myself off to Palm Beach for a while. And leave Nora Sedley Cordle to consolidate the gains she made while I was in mourning? I think not!

10th April 1932

A quantity of horse manure was deposited on the front steps during the night. Missie says she was wakened by the sound of unearthly laughter and didn’t close her eyes again till morning. Much theatrical yawning when she brought in my breakfast tray. Just what one needs at a time like this: the help falling asleep on their feet.

12th April 1932

Another letter from Violet. The most extraordinary thing, she wrote. You’ll never guess who has appeared on the scene. She then digresses, recounting in unnecessary detail various antics of the brood. Ulick won a trophy for shooting. Flora wet her drawers at Lady Londonderry’s. Rory fell off his new pony and knocked out two teeth. On and on it went without at all getting to the point. Violet’s meanderings are so fatiguing. I had to turn two pages before I learned who it was who had so extraordinarily appeared on the scene. Minnehaha, no less. Wally Warfield! Well!

I ran into Pips Waldo, she writes, who told me all she knew. Apparently, she’s married to someone who was in the Guards but is now in business. They have a little place somewhere north of Marble Arch, and from what Pips has heard, she’s quite on the make.

I can imagine. Her mother didn’t have a dime, but Wally never allowed that to hold her back. She had sharp elbows and a calculating mind, and she didn’t miss a trick. Great fun though. School was much more interesting once Wally was around.

She came to Oldfields in 1911 and only because an uncle was paying for her. One didn’t expect a new girl to start throwing her weight around, especially a girl who was a charity case, but on her first day she warned everyone that although her given name was Bessie Wallis, she only answered to Wallis or Wally. I could see her point. Bessie’s more a name for a cow or a mammy.

But more often than not, we called her Minnehaha, because of her cheekbones and the way she braided her hair, and she quite liked it. She reckoned she was descended from Pocahontas, but then so do a lot of people. Pips Waldo and Mary Kirk and I were her main friends. Lucie Mallett was a hanger-on, but she never invited Wally to her home, because Mrs. Mallett knew all the dirt about Wally’s mother taking in boarders and wearing lip rouge, and the Malletts had very closed minds. But we Pattersons were raised differently.

‘Let me not judge my brother,’ Father always said.

Anyway, it was Lucie Mallett’s loss. Wally and I used to have such fun. Inventing pains so we could stay in and read fashion tips instead of playing basketball. Drinking ginger ale and eating butter cookies after lights out. I was always sorry we drifted out of touch. So, now she’s in London. Perhaps I’ll reconsider. It would be nice to see Pips. It might be interesting to pick up the threads with Judson Erlanger. And with Wally around livening things up, I think I could even endure a few weeks of dull old Violet.

15th April 1932

Dead crows nailed to the gate posts this morning and yesterday. I leave for England next week. And if Randolph Putnam is so anxious to be of service to me, he can arrange for the locks to be changed. I don’t want to come back and find Junior has taken possession of Sweet Air.

11th May 1932, Carlton Gardens, London

A whole month since I found the energy for my diary. Can there be anything more prostrating than travel. And my recovery is being made a thousand times harder by the chaos in Violet’s establishment. She and Melhuish had been in the country, so, when I arrived, the house in Carlton Gardens wasn’t properly aired and my bed was distinctly damp. I threatened to move to Claridge’s. Violet eventually asked a rebellious-looking domestic if she might find the time to fill a rubber bottle with hot water and rub it between my sheets, and seemed to think that addressed the problem. Said rubber bottle was finally delivered, with heavy sighs, an hour after I had fallen exhausted into my bed. If this house is anything to go by, England is on the very edge of revolution.

The good news is that the location seems to be the very best. Melhuish is handy for his clubs and the House of Lords, Buckingham Palace is practically in our backyard, so very convenient for Violet, who is thick as thieves with Their Majesties, and the shops of Bond Street are no great distance away. If I can only get my rooms heated, I think I’ll be suited.

Violet has grown stouter and probably hasn’t had her hair attended to since the day she left Baltimore. She clips it up, and she’s no sooner clipped it than it escapes. Melhuish’s hair, on the other hand, is now in the final stages of retreat. One thing I will say for Danforth Brumby, he kept a fine head of hair till the very last.

Of the children I have so far met only Flora. She is eight years old and has occasional lessons from a spinster who comes to the house whenever she can be spared by her sick relations. Otherwise the child seems to tag along with whatever Doopie is doing, which cannot be very much. They take each other for walks in St. James’s Park and make tiny coverlets for a dolls’ house. My arrival caused great excitement, and the child immediately showed signs of wishing to attach herself to me, so today I was forced to establish some rules. She is not to visit my room. She is not to lurk in doorways spying on me. She is not to play her drum within a country mile of me. One must start as one intends to go on.

As for Doopie, she never seems to age. She stared and stared at my face, then smiled and said, “Ids Bayba!” but I’m not convinced anything really registered with her. Violet credits her with understanding, but a person may smile in an aimless way without at all understanding whether there’s anything to smile about. Nora Sedley Cordle springs to mind.

I haven’t yet sighted the two boys. They are normally kept at a school called Pilgrims but are being allowed out tomorrow night for something called an exeat. Not on my account, I hope.

A sweet note of welcome waiting for me from Pips Waldo, now Crosbie. She and her husband, Freddie, are in Halkin Street, just off Belgrave Square. We lunch on Monday.

14th May 1932

Besieged. The house is filled with boys wearing hobnailed boots. They were brought down to the drawing room to meet me last evening. All Violet’s children have Melhuish’s carroty hair and freckled skin. Ulick is tall, I’d say, for twelve; Rory is like a skinned rabbit. According to Violet, he suffers from night terrors. According to one of the housemaids, who offers unsought opinions on everything while dust gathers in drifts inches deep, he sees “imaginings.” Well, all children are prone to imaginings, and the less intelligence they have the more susceptible they are. I remember I used only to have to snake my arm out of bed and set a rocking chair in unexplained motion for Violet to start howling, followed rapidly by Doopie.

Anyway, both boys shook me nicely by the hand and Ulick asked me how many acres I have at Sweet Air. Rory was gazing at me with his mouth open, Ulick nudged him in the ribs, and when he still stood catching flies, Ulick said, “And how was the crossing? Agreeable, I hope.”

Rory said, “You beast! I was going to ask that. You know I was. Now what shall I ask?” Quite droll.

But they’ve all been tramping overhead since the crack of nine and now, just as I thought I’d found peace in the morning room, Violet has appeared with her book of lists, and the child Flora has bounded in, draped in a tartan traveling rug. She says they’re playing Highland Clearances and she is It.

This evening, Violet and Melhuish are dining with the Bertie Yorks. He’s a brother of the Prince of Wales. Violet said, “I’ll have cook prepare you a tray. I hope you understand. It’s not the kind of dinner where one can arrive with an extra.”

Extra indeed! As if I’ve come to London to beg dinners from junior Royalties! I shall go to a movie theater with a box of candy.

15th May 1932

The boys Ulick and Rory were driven back to their school after luncheon, Rory sobbing pitifully when the moment came to leave, begging to be allowed to have lessons at home like Flora. Ulick was in a fury with him. He kept saying, “Stop it at once. Melhuishes don’t blub.”

Violet busied herself in the library with committee papers while he was being bundled into the car. She says he always cries, but once he’s back with his friends he soon cheers up. She said, “He’ll toughen up. And someday he’ll thank us for it. Imagine if a boy went into Officer Training still soft from home life.”

16th May 1932

Lunch with Pips Crosbie. She now has a red tint and bangs and looks adorably modern. She goes to Monsieur Jules in Bruton Street and is going to introduce me. Her husband, whom she can’t wait for me to meet, is in Parliament, a kind of congressman, I gather, but not in the same House as Melhuish. Freddie Crosbie had to get elected to his seat, whereas Melhuish has one simply because he’s Lord Melhuish. It has been warmed by Melhuish b-t-ms through the centuries.

Pips and Freddie seem to see quite a bit of Judson Erlanger.

She said, “As I recall, you had quite a pash for him.”

Pips is misremembering. Judson was the one who pursued me.

Another name from the past. Ida Coote is in town, living some kind of artistic life in a rooming house full of White Russians. Extraordinary. I hadn’t realized Russians came in any other color.

I don’t believe I’ve seen Ida since Gunpowder River Summer Camp. It must be twenty years. She was another unusual girl. I can’t wait.

Wally is now married to someone called Simpson, and I have her address from Pips. George Street. All I’ve been able to discover is that it’s in some kind of backwater north of Marble Arch and absolutely nobody lives there. Poor Wally.

Pips says they’ve seen each other in passing at several receptions, but so far they haven’t managed to get together for lunch. I sense Pips dragging her heels. She said, “I don’t know. Maybe the years have improved her, but didn’t you always find her rather mouthy?”

Actually, I liked that in her. I had the face and the figure, but Wally had the patter. We’d take a slow walk down to the Chesapeake tea rooms on a Sunday and collect ourselves quite an escort of good-looking Navy boys, in from Annapolis for the afternoon. We made a good team. Perhaps we will again. Me, Wally, Pips, Ida. At this rate, we belles of Baltimore will be taking over London.

Violet says Ida’s address is in West Kensington, which hardly counts as London. Also that she’d hesitate to classify Wally Warfield as a belle.

Tomorrow to Swan & Edgar for woolen camisoles.