‘Really?’ Tremulous hope quivered in Alice’s voice. ‘You don’t have to … I don’t want you to get into trouble…’
‘I’m not going to get into trouble, because no one’s going to know except us two.’ Polly went to the door, turning round to look back at Alice. ‘And just between you and me, it won’t be the first time I’ve risked my job to help your mama out.’ There was something sad in her smile. ‘Now, you wait here while I get that paper.’
2
The Game Begins
Alice knew that it would be a long time before a reply came to her letter. In her head she tried to keep track of the letter’s progress, from the village post office to the sorting office in Salisbury and then to a Royal Mail Steamer at Southampton, but there her experience reached its limit. As her letter made its journey across the fathomless miles of ocean, the closeness she’d felt to Mama as she’d written it receded again.
A heaviness lay over the days, caused in part by the death of the old king at the end of January. Blackwood felt a long way away from London, but the news made everyone sombre and the world seemed altered in some significant way: less safe, in the careless hands of the dandy prince. If death could claim the King himself surely it could come for anyone, at any time?
The bitter cold continued, but still it didn’t snow. The ground over which Alice trailed after Miss Lovelock each afternoon was frozen to flinty hardness, the grass brittle with frost. The hours between dawn and dusk were short and the sun barely managed to raise itself above the bare, black branches of the trees around the lake before the shadows on the nursery walls stretched and it slid downwards again, along with Alice’s spirits. The days themselves might be short, but the empty hours dragged like weeks. Instead of her homesickness easing, it settled more solidly inside her, as if her heart was gradually freezing like the lake’s murky waters.
But writing the letter had helped. There was the anticipation of a reply and, more importantly, the secret knowledge that she could write again which gave some small purpose to her days. She made it her business to look out for things to tell Mama; small details from her walks with Miss Lovelock, like the heron that they sometimes saw in the reeds by the lake, or the perfect pink sunset that, for a little while, had turned the hard, white world into a sugared confection of Turkish delight. Even the ordeal of Sunday lunch with The Grands (as Mama called them, though never to their faces) was made more bearable by knowing she could share it with Mama. She told her about the time Grandfather had caught her looking at one of the huge portraits on the dining room walls, and asked her if she recognized the young woman in the white dress. Alice had stared up at the painted peaches-and-cream complexion and piled-up, pale gold hair and felt her own face growing crimson with embarrassment as no answer presented itself. Grandmama’s voice had been icy as she’d informed Alice that the girl in the painting was she, in the year of her Coming Out.
Did Grandmama really look like that, she wrote to Mama that night, before she was cross all the time?
In fact, Mama’s reply came sooner than Alice had really dared hope. It wasn’t quite two weeks after Polly had posted the letter, when Alice imagined it might still be making its epic journey, that Polly came into the day nursery with Alice’s lunch tray and an air of suppressed excitement.
With a rustle of paper she slipped the letter out of her pocket and set it down on the table. There was only one word on the envelope, in Mama’s familiar handwriting and trademark turquoise ink. Alice. She and Polly had agreed it was safer if Mama wrote to Polly, enclosing a letter for Alice, in case Grandmama decided to check her letters too.
‘Well, aren’t you going to open it? It feels lovely and thick.’
Alice’s fingers itched to tear the letter open and let Mama’s jewelled words come spilling out, but instead she picked up her fork. After waiting all this time she wanted to savour the anticipation a bit longer.
‘I am, but later. After lunch.’
The oxtail and stewed prunes were rather less worth savouring than the anticipation, but she made herself eat slowly, sipping at her glass of water. When she had finished she stacked her plates onto the tray and took the letter to the window seat, settling an old, flattened needlepoint cushion with a pair of Noah’s elephants on it behind her back and half-drawing the curtain to cloak herself in privacy.
Finally, carefully, she slid her finger beneath the flap of the envelope.
S.S. Eastern Star
The Suez Canal
28th January 1936
Darling, darling Alice,
I got your letter just now, and I didn’t want to waste a moment before replying. It is the middle of the afternoon and fiercely hot, and we have just left Port Said where your letter was waiting for us. Papa has been terribly kind and said that he will try to get this letter sent back to England by airmail, which is as quick as the blink of an eye. Isn’t that smart?
Sweetheart, I am so desperately sorry that you are feeling sad and lonely. I know how confusing all this must seem to you, and how sudden. Papa tries to shield us from all his business concerns but this trouble at the mine is something that he can’t sort out from London and it will help tremendously to have a wife there to do the kind of social smoothing over that wives do, when the men have finished squabbling over their sheets of figures and legal small print. I would have simply adored to bring you with us, my darling – oh, the heaven of having your wonderful company – but it would have been extremely selfish. The heat is draining (hard for you to imagine, I know; how well I remember that Blackwood feels like the coldest corner of Christendom in the winter) and, once we arrive in Burma the mine business is sure to take up every waking hour, which means you would have to be left alone anyway, and without darling Polly to look after you. There’s no one in whose care I would rather leave you, sweetheart. Polly has kept many of my secrets over the years – I trust her with my life, and yours too, which is infinitely more precious. I know you will be safe with her, but I do so hope that we can sort things out quickly here and come home soon. Oh darling, I hope that with all my heart.
But for the moment we must both try to be brave and cheerful, because if we feel brave and cheerful the time will go much more quickly than if we are gloomy and despondent. So, I shall tell you about where I am sitting right now, because that will make me pay proper attention to how beautiful it all is rather than dwelling on how far away from you. I am on the little private deck of our cabin, sitting in the shade of a green and white striped awning and our dear steward Ahmed has just brought me some peppermint tea in a silver teapot, served in the daintiest little pink glass etched with gold. It’s wonderful to be sailing again. In the harbour at Port Said the air was sweltering but out at sea the breeze is quite delicious. It carries the scent of spices out from the shore, which is just a dark blue line between the lighter blues of sea and sky. I swear I haven’t seen a single cloud since we left Marseilles, though that was where we heard of the dear old King’s death, so the blue skies felt all wrong. (Poor Grandmama – she danced with him in her youth, when he was the Duke of York and she a dazzling debutante. I expect she will be very saddened by the news.)
Papa managed to get us a rather lovely suite, which was jolly clever of him when the passage was booked at such short notice. My room is small, but very comfortable and modern, with lovely walnut panelling and the most sumptuous carpet and gold satin bedcover. There’s a dear little lamp above the bed for reading, though for two entire days I could barely open my eyes or lift my head from the pillow because of the dreaded seasickness. I’m much better now. Papa, being so much more used to sailing than I am, has been perfectly well. His cabin is on the other side of our little sitting room, and is decorated all in green. (I’m glad I didn’t have that one. I felt quite green enough.) The ship is terribly plush; there’s a swimming pool and a gymnasium I believe (though I have no intention of seeking it out myself!) and a library – so you see, my darling, I have no excuse to be bored and gloomy.