Long Live the King (9 page)

Mr Baum got Rachel to open up the vaults, looked up Edwin Dilberne’s will and groaned. It was as he remembered. Not only was he, Eric Baum, the appointed executor – always a great deal of work for little return – but the deceased, in his Wishes, declared some two years ago, had made a rather extraordinary set of conditions. That he was to be buried in the graveyard at the church where he officiated, St Aidan’s, and on no account in the family vault, and that his earthly remains were not to be embalmed. The Wishes were on a separate piece of paper and Mr Baum was tempted to untie the red ribbon which bound the document, detach it and simply throw it into the coal fire which struggled in his grate. It would save everyone so much work. Such wishes were not legally binding. He had remonstrated with Edwin Hedleigh at the time, pointing out that if he was not to be embalmed it would necessitate a very speedy burial, which was not usual in Christian circles, unlike in his own religion, but had been told curtly, that was the point, so he had desisted.

Mr Baum had brought to Edwin’s attention that since he was bequeathing all his worldly goods to
The Protestant Review
, his family would be left unprovided for, unless Mrs Hedleigh had means of her own, in which case it would be advisable for him to have at least a copy of her will in his vaults. The Reverend Hedleigh had replied his wife would do as her husband instructed, and forward the will by post in due course. Mr Baum and Rachel witnessed the will, the meeting was abruptly brought to an end; and the Reverend Hedleigh had stalked out into the foggy afternoon, like some tall, stooping bird of ill omen. Mr Baum felt thankful he was not a Christian: there was a movement for reform within the Jewish faith, and that was causing some dissent and bitterness, but nothing like that which still existed between Catholic and Protestant. Not so long ago they had been burning each other to death.

‘Glad to see the back of that one,’ said Rachel. ‘Worse than the fog for standing between a girl and her breath. Is he really the Earl’s brother? How can that be? The Earl is so friendly and nice.’

Mr Baum searched further, to be certain, but could find no sign of a will from Mrs Baum, so he called the Bath and Wells Diocesan Office and asked young Mr Overhshaw if there was any likelihood of a will being found in the Rectory, and Mr Overshaw said not on your life, the place had been burning like the crackers, it was a miracle the Princess got out alive: the Lord above had leant down and saved his angel.

Mr Baum decided he would not tell his Lordship at once. He would not want the good cheer of the Sandringham Christmas disturbed by such grim news. It could wait until Boxing Day.

Adela Settles In

Mrs Kennion was a woman of swift decision. It was in her nature to take charge. She had run a home for unmarried mothers back in Adelaide and done it well, by doing, as she was fond of saying, ‘what she thought fit when she thought fit’. Within a couple of hours she had the girl homed in the servants’ quarters – safe and warm and the rest of the Palace full of Christmastide guests, bathed, fed (cold cuts, potatoes and salad, and a good quantity of semolina and strawberry jam, which the little orphan silently wolfed down), and prayed over – and the child was surely in need of prayer, having been roused from sleep, slung over the shoulder of a strange young man, carried through fire, left to shiver alone in the cold, seen the bodies of her parents carried from her blazing home, sketched in the extremity of her distress by the egregious Frank Overshaw, and now found herself cosy and secure in an unfamiliar bed. Henrietta did not wonder at the girl’s silence, and was merely glad that she could eat, and glad that she folded her hands decorously and automatically in prayer.

During the day the doctor was called and declared that the girl was healthy enough, but undernourished and in a state of shock. She roused herself sufficiently to say: ‘Please, I am not “the girl”. My name is Adela,’ before sinking back on her pillows, where she looked most beguiling, her hair washed and halo-like upon white linen, wavy, like a Botticelli angel.

Indeed, young Frank, who kept deserting his office duties through the morning to ‘just look in on her to see she’s all right’, kept murmuring, ‘Behold, the angel of the Lord Maitreya!’ Mrs Kennion, being herself rather irritable, having managed only a couple of hours’ sleep the night before, felt obliged to rebuke him, pointing out that while he was under her husband’s roof it would be only polite to keep his Theosophist convictions to himself. Though the Bishop was very much an ecumenical – one of the reasons he had had such a hard time with the Reverend Hedleigh, who was anything but – he would draw the line at the wishy-washy Eastern religions Frank semed to favour. The Theosophical Society, much in vogue at the moment, under the leadership of a Mrs Blavatsky, set out to understand the mysteries of the universe and the bonds between the human and the divine. It seemed to involve vegetarianism and rather a lot of chanting, and Mrs Kennion had no time for it. She had met Mrs Blavatsky and considered the woman a charlatan, with over-large eyes and frizzy hair.

Mrs Kennion dispatched Frank to find out what he could from the solicitor, and he came back with the news that the girl was not only a niece of Lord Dilberne the politician, but a princess to boot. Mrs Kennion cut her nephew off before he could rave further about the wondrous girl – she had never known him in love before: apart from the Theosophy, which presumably he would grow out of in time, he had seeemed perfectly sensible – and hurried off to tell her husband the news.

Bishop Kennion was an impressive, handsome man of fifty-five with the serious face of a senior cleric, quick in thought and slow of speech, and well regarded by his peers. At the moment, since it was the Christmas season, he was extremely busy. He was followed wherever he went by a flock of black-garbed lesser clerics and secretaries in need of instruction. The last thing he wanted was an unclaimed orphan girl on his hands.

The Bishop felt overworked as it was. The thousand-candle services – and extra services meant extra sermons – the Magnificat to be sung at Evensong every day, and today an O Antiphon, always tricky, and the Director of Music complaining that the choirboys were hoarse from too many carol concerts – not to mention the new Archdeacon enraged because his vestments were rose not purple. It was almost too much. This Christmas demands for the services of the exorcist had increased threefold. Why? The Bishop thought it was more to do with the general upset of the population, a real distress of the mind as the concentration camp scandal in South Africa broke, than Satan and his minions tripping hither and thither, but perhaps these things were indeed linked? And now the tragedy of the St Aidan’s fire and this pale little waif of an orphan snatched, probably quite illegally, by his wife. The Bishop prayed for forgiveness for his first reaction to the news that Edwin Hedleigh had passed away. It was of relief. The flow of troublesome letters from St Aidan’s would stop. It might not even be necessary to rebuild the church. Congregations there had fallen off sharply lately and not even a pleasanter parson was likely to restore them. Once a congregation decamped to the Methodists it was likely to stay there.

‘The Earl of Dilberne’s niece!’ exclaimed the Bishop. ‘Hedleigh is – was, God rest his poor tormented soul – Robert Dilberne’s brother? And you have kidnapped her?’

‘I have kidnapped no one,’ said his wife. ‘I found one of your young parishioners in trouble and distress and offered her succour.’

‘There are temporal powers as well as spiritual ones, Henrietta,’ said the Bishop, ‘and it is my job to reconcile the two. I admire your impulse to virtue while doubting the wisdom of your judgement. You are too impetuous, my dear. Better have left her for the authorities to deal with: she would be safely in the bosom of her family by now. Christmas is a time for rejoicing, not weeping and wailing.’

‘I suppose you think Hedleigh should have timed his death better; waited until, say, Easter Friday.’ She should not have said it: he did not smile but looked vaguely pained, which he was good at.

Henrietta wanted to get on. Lady parishioners were to turn up for one of her charity dos – morning tea with scones – at eleven. They would expect strawberry jam but Jenny could lay hands only on apricot and waited for instruction. But the Bishop hated her to ‘run about’.
More haste, less speed,
was his favourite saying. So she waited with seeming patience until he had finished on the subject of the Earl of Dilberne.

‘As it happens, I know Dilberne rather well. I sit across from him in the House of Lords. He’s a High-Church Tory, voted against me on the Charles Gore issue. Come to think of it, the man’s near as dammit a Papist. I am sorry if I express myself too forcibly but the Romans have shown themselves more recalcitrant even than the Methodists when it comes to reinforcing unity and collegiality throughout the community of Christ. Dilberne’s son and heir, I seem to remember, has married into the Roman Church, daughter of a pork baron from Chicago. There was talk of it in the House. It was felt he was letting the side down. I daresay that was what drove Edwin Hedlegh mad: something certainly did. I have no great symathy with the Catholics: but Hedleigh loathed them. His letters to me on this and allied matters take up three box files. Will you see to it and have them burned, Henrietta?’

‘Of course, my dear,’ she said. ‘One’s children may outlive the grave: one’s opinions seldom do. They take up too much space.’

He did not seem to hear her; but then he seldom did.

‘Dilberne’s on the up and up politically. He’s one of the Marlborough set – shoots, hunts and fornicates – but Balfour seems to quite like him. I think they even play golf together. Mind you, Dilberne can be charm itself. A born diplomat. I sometimes have a perfectly amiable drink with him in the Commons Bar. Lemonade for me, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Henrietta. ‘Shoots, hunts and fornicates. I wonder if he is a proper guardian for little Adela?’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said the Bishop. ‘Of course he is. Fellow’s an Earl. Just get the poor child out of the house and let me get on with the diocesan Christmas in peace. I am really very busy.’

‘Frank says she may be a princess through the mother’s line,’ said Henrietta. ‘A rather obscure foreign line, but she may inherit.’

‘Indeed,’ said Bishop Kennion, as if it were a matter of no interest. Then he said, ‘Where have you put her?’

‘There was a nice dry room in the servants’ quarters,’ said Mrs Kennion. ‘We’re so very crowded at the moment. Colleagues want to stay on after the candlelight services.’

‘Find her one of the moat rooms, my dear,’ said the Bishop. ‘She’ll have to eat with us, I suppose. But there’ll be no Your Grace-ing or anything like that. She is to be plain Miss Hedleigh. You must not be so impressed by titles. I hope the girl is decorative?’

‘Frank certainly thinks so,’ said Mrs Kennion. ‘But I really must be getting on.’

‘Always so busy,’ lamented her husband. ‘Some urgent matter to do with jam, perhaps?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ said Henrietta.

‘Just one thing, before you dash off. It seems the Coronation is to be at the end of June, a double ceremony with both the King and his consort crowned. I will be much involved; the tradition is that the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Durham too, support a female monarch throughout the ceremony, though whether this applies to Alexandra will have to be approved by the Court of Claims. Their records go back a thousand years at least: if only they didn’t life would be much simpler. Perhaps you will be in touch with the Liturgical Committee about the detail of the habit, if you’re not too taken up with your new charge? I imagine it will be full episcopal regalia. The Church can hardly appear with less splendour than the State. Also be in touch with Ede and Ravenscroft; tell them I will need a new coronation cope; the one used by Henry Law for Victoria was positively humble, to all accounts, threadbare even sixty years ago. Sunbursts of gold thread for such a rare and glorious day in the nation’s history would be appropriate, so they need to discuss this with me without delay. Gold embroidery on silver brocade takes time.’

‘I will find time to see to it, my dear,’ said Henrietta. ‘You will look very grand and handsome indeed in sunbursts.’ He was a fine figure of a man, she thought, even without his robes. Tall, lean, and nobly featured. She was proud of him. Other prelates easily turned to fat and looked more like Friar Tuck than ascetic grandees.

‘Victoria’s coronation was a series of mishaps,’ he went on. ‘My predecessor turned over two pages at once and told the poor little Queen – she was only eighteen, you know – that the ceremony was at an end and she had to be fetched back from the Abbey door. She was mortified, they say. Things can go so badly wrong if proper attention to detail is overlooked. I can rely on you to see to it, my dear.’

‘At once,’ said his wife.

Mrs Kennion visited Frank in his office and put these matters into what she saw as his capable hands. If he were more preoccupied with his work, he would be less preoccupied with Adela, and she had no time to act as a chaperone. Jenny the housekeeper had found an untapped source of strawberry jam and by the time the lady parishioners arrived for their morning tea and scones all was prepared and ready.

Adela in the Moat Room

Adela contemplated her future with a mixture of hope and despair. She was a murderess; that was for sure. She had killed her own father and mother if not by intent, then by the sin of omission, almost as bad as any sin of commission. She should have pulled her father’s sleeve and pointed out the dangers of the cigar ash, but she had not. His was not the kind of sleeve you easily pulled.

Her last view of her parents was as two black ragged shapes tangled together like dried-up grasshoppers on a single stretcher. Someone had said they had died from smoke inhalation but it looked to Adela more as if a fiery blast had leapt out from hell, blackening and shrivelling, to punish and devour them for some nameless sin. How she wished someone would name it within her hearing. She hoped the undertakers had managed to prise the bodies apart for the burial. She did not think her parents would want to share a single coffin, any more than they had shared a bed in life. It must be wonderful to share a bed. You would never be cold; there would always be someone to talk to. She did not want to think about these things at all, and tried not to. Better remember the song Ivy sung while she worked – she found herself humming it from time to time. It comforted her.