CHAPTER 1

Be Ye Men of Valor

November 1930

A fug of tobacco smoke and damp clammy air hit her as she entered the café. Shehad come in from the rain and drops of water still trembled like delicate dew onthe fur coats of some of the women inside. A regiment of white-aproned waitersrushed around at tempo, serving the needs of the Münchner atleisure—coffee, cake and gossip.

He was at a table at the far end of the room, surrounded by the usual cohortsand toadies. There was a woman she had never seen before—a permed,platinum blonde with heavy makeup—an actress by the look of her. The blondlit a cigarette, making a phallic performance out of it. Everyone knew that hepreferred his women demure and whole-some, Bavarian preferably. All thosedirndls and knee-socks, God help us.

The table was laden. Bienenstich, Gugelhupf, Käsekuchen. He was eating aslice of Kirschtorte. He loved his cakes. No wonder he looked so pasty,she was surprised he wasn't diabetic. The softly repellent body (she imaginedpastry) beneath the clothes, never exposed for public view. Not a manly man. Hesmiled when he caught sight of her and half rose, saying, "Guten Tag,gnädiges Fräulein," indicating the chair next to him. The bootlicker who wascurrently occupying it jumped up and moved away.

"Unsere Englische Freundin," he said to the blonde, who blew cigarettesmoke out slowly and examined her without any interest before eventually saying,"Guten Tag." A Berliner.

She placed her handbag, heavy with its cargo, on the floor next to her chair andordered Schokolade. He insisted that she try the Pflaumen Streusel.

"Es regnet," she said by way of conversation. "It's raining."

"Yes, it's raining," he said with a heavy accent. He laughed, pleased at hisattempt. Everyone else at the table laughed as well. "Bravo," someonesaid. "Sehr gutes Englisch." He was in a good mood, tapping the back ofhis index finger against his lips with an amused smile as if he was listening toa tune in his head.

The Streusel was delicious.

"Entschuldigung," she murmured, reaching down into her bag and delvingfor a handkerchief. Lace corners, monogrammed with her initials, "UBT"—abirthday present from Pammy. She dabbed politely at the Streusel flakeson her lips and then bent down again to put the handkerchief back in her bag andretrieve the weighty object nesting there. Her father's old service revolverfrom the Great War, a Webley Mark V.

A move rehearsed a hundred times. One shot. Swiftness was all, yet there was amoment, a bubble suspended in time after she had drawn the gun and levelled itat his heart when everything seemed to stop.

"Führer," she said, breaking the spell. "Für Sie."

Around the table guns were jerked from holsters and pointed at her. One breath.One shot.

Ursula pulled the trigger.

Darkness fell.

Snow

11 February 1910

An icy rush of air, a freezing slipstream on the newly exposed skin. She is,with no warning, outside the inside and the familiar wet, tropical world hassuddenly evaporated. Exposed to the elements. A prawn peeled, a nut shelled.

No breath. All the world come down to this. One breath.

Little lungs, like dragonfly wings failing to inflate in the foreign atmosphere.No wind in the strangled pipe. The buzzing of a thousand bees in the tiny curledpearl of an ear.

Panic. The drowning girl, the falling bird.

"Dr. Fellowes should have been here," Sylvie moaned. "Why isn't he here yet?Where is he?" Big dewdrop pearls of sweat on her skin, a horse nearing the endof a hard race. The bedroom fire stoked like a ship's furnace. The thick brocadecurtains drawn tightly against the enemy, the night. The black bat.

"Yer man'll be stuck in the snow, I expect, ma'am. It's sure dreadful wild outthere. The road will be closed."

Sylvie and Bridget were alone in their ordeal. Alice, the parlor maid, wasvisiting her sick mother. And Hugh, of course, was chasing down Isobel, his wildgoose of a sister, à Paris. Sylvie had no wish to involve Mrs. Glover,snoring in her attic room like a truffling hog. Sylvie imagined she wouldconduct proceedings like a parade-ground sergeant-major. The baby was early.Sylvie was expecting it to be late like the others. The best-laid plans, and soon.

"Oh, ma'am," Bridget cried suddenly, "she's all blue, so she is."

"A girl?"

"The cord's wrapped around her neck. Oh, Mary, Mother of God. She's beenstrangled, the poor wee thing."

"Not breathing? Let me see her. We must do something. What can we do?"

"Oh, Mrs. Todd, ma'am, she's gone. Dead before she had a chance to live. I'mawful, awful sorry. She'll be a little cherub in heaven now, for sure. Oh, Iwish Mr. Todd was here. I'm awful sorry. Shall I wake Mrs. Glover?"

The little heart. A helpless little heart beating wildly. Stopped suddenly likea bird dropped from the sky. A single shot.

Darkness fell.

Snow

11 February 1910

"For God's sake, girl, stop running around like a headless chicken and fetchsome hot water and towels. Do you know nothing? Were you raised in a field?"

"Sorry, sir." Bridget dipped an apologetic curtsy as if Dr. Fellowes were minorroyalty.

"A girl, Dr. Fellowes? May I see her?"

"Yes, Mrs. Todd, a bonny, bouncing baby girl." Sylvie thought Dr. Fellowes mightbe over-egging the pudding with his alliteration. He was not one for bonhomie atthe best of times. The health of his patients, particularly their exits andentrances, seemed designed to annoy him.

"She would have died from the cord around her neck. I arrived at Fox Corner inthe nick of time. Literally." Dr. Fellowes held up his surgical scissors forSylvie's admiration. They were small and neat and their sharp points curvedupwards at the end. "Snip, snip," he said. Sylvie made a mental note, a small,vague one, given her exhaustion and the circumstances of it, to buy just such apair of scissors, in case of similar emergency. (Unlikely, it was true.) Or aknife, a good sharp knife to be carried on one's person at all times, like therobber-girl in The Snow Queen.

"You were lucky I got here in time," Dr. Fellowes said. "Before the snow closedthe roads. I called for Mrs. Haddock, the midwife, but I believe she is stucksomewhere outside Chalfont St. Peter."

"Mrs. Haddock?" Sylvie said and frowned. Bridget laughed out loud andthen quickly mumbled, "Sorry, sorry, sir." Sylvie supposed that she and Bridgetwere both on the edge of hysteria. Hardly surprising.

"Bog Irish," Dr. Fellowes muttered.

"Bridget's only a scullery maid, a child herself. I am very grateful to her. Itall happened so quickly." Sylvie thought how much she wanted to be alone, howshe was never alone. "You must stay until morning, I suppose, doctor," she saidreluctantly.

"Well, yes, I suppose I must," Dr. Fellowes said, equally reluctantly.

Sylvie sighed and suggested that he help himself to a glass of brandy in thekitchen. And perhaps some ham and pickles. "Bridget will see to you." She wantedrid of him. He had delivered all three (three!) of her children and she did notlike him one bit. Only a husband should see what he saw. Pawing and poking withhis instruments in her most delicate and secretive places. (But would she ratherhave a midwife called Mrs. Haddock deliver her child?) Doctors for women shouldall be women themselves. Little chance of that.

Dr. Fellowes lingered, humming and hawing, overseeing the washing and wrappingof the new arrival by a hot-faced Bridget. Bridget was the eldest of seven soshe knew how to swaddle an infant. She was fourteen years old, ten years youngerthan Sylvie. When Sylvie was fourteen she was still in short skirts, in lovewith her pony, Tiffin. Had no idea where babies came from, even on her weddingnight she remained baffled. Her mother, Lottie, had hinted but had fallen shy ofanatomical exactitude. Conjugal relations between man and wife seemed,mysteriously, to involve larks soaring at daybreak. Lottie was a reserved woman.Some might have said narcoleptic. Her husband, Sylvie's father, LlewellynBeresford, was a famous society artist but not at all Bohemian. No nudity orlouche behavior in his household. He had painted Queen Alexandra, when she wasstill a princess. Said she was very pleasant.

They lived in a good house in Mayfair, while Tiffin was stabled in a mews nearHyde Park. In darker moments, Sylvie was wont to cheer herself up by imaginingthat she was back there in the sunny past, sitting neatly in her side-saddle onTiffin's broad little back, trotting along Rotten Row on a clean spring morning,the blossom bright on the trees.

"How about some hot tea and a nice bit of buttered toast, Mrs. Todd?" Bridgetsaid.

"That would be lovely, Bridget."

The baby, bandaged like a Pharaonic mummy, was finally passed to Sylvie. Softly,she stroked the peachy cheek and said, "Hello, little one," and Dr. Fellowesturned away so as not to be a witness to such syrupy demonstrations ofaffection. He would have all children brought up in a new Sparta if it were upto him.

"Well perhaps a little cold collation wouldn't go amiss," he said. "Is there, bychance, any of Mrs. Glover's excellent piccalilli?"

Four Seasons Fill the Measure of the Year

11 February 1910

Sylvie was woken by a dazzling sliver of sunlight piercing the curtains like ashining silver sword. She lay languidly in lace and cashmere as Mrs. Glover cameinto the room, proudly bearing a huge breakfast tray. Only an occasion of someimportance seemed capable of drawing Mrs. Glover this far out of her lair. Asingle, half-frozen snowdrop drooped in the bud vase on the tray. "Oh, asnowdrop!" Sylvie said. "The first flower to raise its poor head above theground. How brave it is!"

Mrs. Glover, who did not believe that flowers were capable of courage, or indeedany other character trait, laudable or otherwise, was a widow who had only beenwith them at Fox Corner a few weeks. Before her advent there had been a womancalled Mary who slouched a great deal and burned the roasts. Mrs. Glover tended,if anything, to undercook food. In the prosperous household of Sylvie'schildhood, Cook was called "Cook" but Mrs. Glover preferred "Mrs. Glover." Itmade her irreplaceable. Sylvie still stubbornly thought of her as Cook.

"Thank you, Cook." Mrs. Glover blinked slowly like a lizard. "Mrs. Glover,"Sylvie corrected herself.

Mrs. Glover set the tray down on the bed and opened the curtains. The light wasextraordinary, the black bat vanquished.

"So bright," Sylvie said, shielding her eyes.

"So much snow," Mrs. Glover said, shaking her head in what could have beenwonder or aversion. It was not always easy to tell with Mrs. Glover.

"Where is Dr. Fellowes?" Sylvie asked.

"There was an emergency. A farmer trampled by a bull."

"How dreadful."

"Some men came from the village and tried to dig his automobile out but in theend my George came and gave him a ride."

"Ah," Sylvie said, as if suddenly understanding something that had puzzled her.

"And they call it horsepower," Mrs. Glover snorted, bull-like herself. "That'swhat comes of relying on new-fangled machines."

"Mm," Sylvie said, reluctant to argue with such strongly held views. She wassurprised that Dr. Fellowes had left without examining either herself or thebaby.

"He looked in on you. You were asleep," Mrs. Glover said. Sylvie sometimeswondered if Mrs. Glover was a mind-reader. A perfectly horrible thought.

"He ate his breakfast first," Mrs. Glover said, displaying both approval anddisapproval in the same breath. "The man has an appetite, that's for sure."

"I could eat a horse," Sylvie laughed. She couldn't, of course. Tiffin poppedbriefly into her mind. She picked up the silver cutlery, heavy like weapons,ready to tackle Mrs. Glover's devilled kidneys. "Lovely," she said (were they?)but Mrs. Glover was already busy inspecting the baby in the cradle. ("Plump as asuckling pig.") Sylvie idly wondered if Mrs. Haddock was still stuck somewhereoutside Chalfont St. Peter.

"I hear the baby nearly died," Mrs. Glover said.

"Well ..." Sylvie said. Such a fine line between living and dying. Her ownfather, the society portraitist, slipped on an Isfahan rug on a first-floorlanding after some fine cognac one evening. The next morning he was discovereddead at the foot of the stairs. No one had heard him fall or cry out. He hadjust begun a portrait of the Earl of Balfour. Never finished. Obviously.

Afterward it turned out that he had been more profligate with his money thanmother and daughter realized. A secret gambler, markers all over town. He hadmade no provision at all for unexpected death and soon there were creditorscrawling over the nice house in Mayfair. A house of cards as it turned out.Tiffin had to go. Broke Sylvie's heart, the grief greater than any she felt forher father.

"I thought his only vice was women," her mother said, roosting temporarily on apacking case as if modeling for a pietà.

They sank into genteel and well-mannered poverty. Sylvie's mother grew pale anduninteresting, larks soared no more for her as she faded, consumed byconsumption. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie was rescued from becoming an artist'smodel by a man she met at the post-office counter. Hugh. A rising star in theprosperous world of banking. The epitome of bourgeois respectability. What morecould a beautiful but penniless girl hope for?

Lottie died with less fuss than was expected and Hugh and Sylvie married quietlyon Sylvie's eighteenth birthday. ("There," Hugh said, "now you will never forgetthe anniversary of our marriage.") They spent their honeymoon in France, adelightful quinzaine in Deauville before settling in semi-rural blissnear Beaconsfield in a house that was vaguely Lutyens in style. It hadeverything one could ask for—a large kitchen, a drawing room with Frenchwindows on to the lawn, a pretty morning room and several bedrooms waiting to befilled with children. There was even a little room at the back of the house forHugh to use as a study. "Ah, my growlery," he laughed.

It was surrounded at a discreet distance by similar houses. There was a meadowand a copse and a bluebell wood beyond with a stream running through it. Thetrain station, no more than a halt, would allow Hugh to be at his banker's deskin less than an hour.

"Sleepy hollow," Hugh laughed as he gallantly carried Sylvie across thethreshold. It was a relatively modest dwelling (nothing like Mayfair) butnonetheless a little beyond their means, a fiscal recklessness that surprisedthem both.

"We should give the house a name," Hugh said. "The Laurels, the Pines, theElms."

"But we have none of those in the garden," Sylvie pointed out. They werestanding at the French windows of the newly purchased house, looking at a swatheof overgrown lawn. "We must get a gardener," Hugh said. The house itself wasechoingly empty. They had not yet begun to fill it with the Voysey rugs andMorris fabrics and all the other aesthetic comforts of a twentieth-centuryhouse. Sylvie would have quite happily lived in Liberty's rather than the as-yet-to-be-named marital home.

"Greenacres, Fairview, Sunnymead?" Hugh offered, putting his arm around hisbride.

"No."

The previous owner of their unnamed house had sold up and gone to live in Italy."Imagine," Sylvie said dreamily. She had been to Italy when she was younger, agrand tour with her father while her mother went to Eastbourne for her lungs.

"Full of Italians," Hugh said dismissively.

"Quite. That's rather the attraction," Sylvie said, unwinding herself from hisarm.

"The Gables, the Homestead?"

"Do stop," Sylvie said.

A fox appeared out of the shrubbery and crossed the lawn. "Oh, look," Sylviesaid. "How tame it seems, it must have grown used to the house beingunoccupied."

"Let's hope the local hunt isn't following on its heels," Hugh said. "It's ascrawny beast."

"It's a vixen. She's a nursing mother, you can see her teats."

Hugh blinked at such blunt terminology falling from the lips of his recentlyvirginal bride. (One presumed. One hoped.)

"Look," Sylvie whispered. Two small cubs sprang out onto the grass and tumbledover each other in play. "Oh, they're such handsome little creatures!"

"Some might say vermin."

"Perhaps they see us as verminous," Sylvie said. "FoxCorner—that's what we should call the house. No one else has a house withthat name and shouldn't that be the point?"