The eighty labour exchanges he was to remember because in the week before their marriage Peggy, glancing idly through the paper, noticed the announcement of their opening and remarked: 'Oh, dear, Daddy won't be at all pleased; he says they're sure to be clearing-houses for agitators and Bolsheviks,' which for some reason stuck in his mind; "By the light of the silvery moon", like the election, impressed itself on his memory by sheer repetition. And the elm tree he remembered because, after three weeks determined avoidance of the place where they had buried Curry, he strolled over one afternoon to see that nothing had been disturbed, and only with difficulty recognised the untidy, muddied spot among the brambles with the newly-fallen elm across it.
They sailed from London on February 5 on their honeymoon cruise of the Caribbean, which was provisionally booked to last six weeks, at £4 a day for their de luxe stateroom on the port side, and in the event took three months. They extended it, by transferring to another ship, because neither of them had been so happy in their lives before, and Mr Franklin reflected that they were indeed fools who supposed that bliss could not be bought for hard cash, at least on a temporary basis. They cruised through the Antilles in a rapturous haze, intoxicated by blue water, golden sand, magnificent scenery, and each other's company; they rode on bamboo rafts down jungle rivers, shopped in colourful waterfront bazaars, drank strange sweet liqueurs in mountain distilleries, listened to amazing native bands playing throbbing and vaguely sinister music at midnight barbecues on tropical beaches, jaunted in open carriages on misty hill trails, danced after dinner in hotels from Port-au-Prince to Nassau, and made love ecstatically each evening on the mosquito-netted double bed beneath their stateroom window, open to the purple sky with its twinkling stars. Peggy got sunburned at Kingston, and Mr Franklin caught a peculiarly unpleasant stomach germ in Antigua, but these were small things in their West Indian idyll. And finally, on a pleasant May evening, they disembarked at Southampton to see a sad-faced urchin selling papers beside a blackbordered news bill, and Mr Franklin bought a newspaper with a cold feeling of disbelief, and read that portly old Mr Lancaster, who had offered him a glass of wine by the roadside and complained petulantly when he overbid, had died - the paper said it was sudden, but it seemed that many people, including the King himself, had expected it.
Mr Franklin found himself strangely affected by the news. Peggy's immediate reaction was to catch his arm and gasp: 'Oh, poor old thing! And I said such beastly things about him that evening, over that awful dinner! Oh, I'm sorry!' It was a fairly typical response among the British on that day; Mr Franklin noticed an elderly woman in tears, being patted on the shoulder by an old man while she exclaimed: 'Oh, dear! Oh, dear old Dad!' He did not feel regret so much for the man, whom he had liked well enough in their brief acquaintance, while being under no illusions about his faults, as for the passing of an institution; in his few months in Britain Mr Franklin had sensed an underlying confidence that while `dear old Dad' was there, all would be well. Mr Franklin had been close enough to guess that the royal influence on affairs was slight, and yet, so long as he had lived, with his reassuring, portly presence, his easy, human manners, and his aura of knowing, rather raffish shrewdness, Edward had been a symbol for his people; a wayward but steady, dissolute but decent old codger in the eyes of the populace, a royal John Bull with just a touch of that rascality so essential for popularity in a ruler of the island race. And now it had gone, and an age with it, and Mr Franklin shivered even in the warmth of the May evening.
They caught an evening train to London, and it was midnight when their taxi drew up outside the new house in Wilton Crescent. The lamps were twinkling on the pavements, with moths fluttering round the mantles, there were lights in the ground-floor windows, and Samson was throwing open the front door and sending down the footman to collect the luggage. One or two passers-by turned idly to look at the new arrivals, a policeman on the corner glanced incuriously in their direction. Mr Franklin handed Peggy from the taxi as Samson descended briskly to pay the driver, and to murmur `Welcome home, madam; welcome home sir.' For a moment they stood in the summer dark; Mr Franklin could see through the front door the row of figures waiting in the hall - trust Samson to see that the whole new staff was on hand for the homecoming of the master and mistress - the starched aprons and caps, the curious faces looking out, the sombre warmth of the panelled hall in the glare of the electric light.
He glanced at Peggy and took her arm. She was smiling in delighted anticipation, and looking beautiful in her fur boa and broad-brimmed hat.
`Glad to be home, Mrs Franklin? I'd carry you over the threshold, but I doubt if Samson would approve.'
`Glad to be home, darling,' said Mrs Franklin, and they went up the steps to the house with Samson stepping sedately in their wake. As they passed through the door, and the waiting maids smiled and bobbed at them, Mr Franklin had an odd memory of resting his head on his valise that first night in the empty hall of the manor; that night he had gone to sleep in Castle Lancing; tonight he would fall asleep in London Town.
15
During the year 1910 Mr and Mrs Mark Franklin lived in Wilton Crescent, except for occasional visits to Castle Lancing, Oxton Hall, and a shooting box in Scotland. They were well received in polite society, were photographed for the illustrated papers (Mrs Franklin's striking beauty being especially noted at the famous `Black Ascot meeting of that year), and were minor favourites with the fashionable columnists, who described them respectively as 'distinguished-looking' and `lovely'.
In that year which had seen the funeral of King Edward, there also died Florence Nightingale, Tolstoy, and Mary Baker Eddy. Season tickets were issued for the first time on the railways, Stravinsky produced The Firebird, Jack Johnson knocked out James J. Jeffries, and the powers of the House of Lords were reduced.
In 1911 King George V was crowned during one of the most brilliant summers in living memory, Amundsen reached the South Pole, suffragettes (including Lady Helen Cessford) continued to smash windows and set fire to pillar-boxes, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, Italy went to war with Turkey, the literary world enthused over the poetry of a stripling named Rupert Brooke, Society laughed politely at the cruel wit of "The Chronicles of Clovis", and the commonalty enjoyed "Sanders of the River". A gallant old gentleman saved a young woman from drowning and died himself as a result, and the country sang one of his best-loved songs, "He is an Englishman" in his memory; it was not inappropriate that as Gilbert died the feet of the younger generation were beginning to stir to the work of another great songwriter, and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" was heard in the land. The last great sunset of the Indian Empire began with the Delhi Durbar, the Kaiser promised that the German Navy would secure for the Fatherland `a place in the sun', and at the Palace Theatre Pavlova's partner dropped her, she struck him, the curtain was lowered, and a cinema film was shown instead. Mr and Mrs Franklin continued to live in Wilton Crescent.
In 1912 the United States Marines landed in Cuba, there were strikes and riots in the London docks, the suffragettes succeeded in breaking a window at Number 1 o Downing Street, Mr Lansbury protested about the forcible feeding of those who had been arrested and lost his seat in a -by-election, the Titanic went down in the Atlantic and both Oxford and Cambridge boats sank in the Boat Race on the Thames, "Alexander's Ragtime Band" was joined in the public repertoire by "Oh, You Beautiful Doll", "When Irish Eyes are Smiling", and a swinging little song which a few years later was to become the anthem of a generation -"Tipperary" After several centuries of living by their wits, British members of Parliament realised that they had the power and lack of shame to vote themselves salaries, and did so, £400 a year, no less, cinema audiences were entranced by Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Good Queen Bess, Germany had over 4 million men under arms, and Britain fewer than a million, Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the U.S., and war broke out among certain obscure countries in the Balkans. Mr and Mrs Franklin continued to live in Wilton Crescent.
&n
bsp; In 1913 the suffragette campaign mounted, with bombs, arson, mass demonstrations, and the death of a woman who threw herself in front of the King's horse during the Derby; either despite or because of these things Mrs Pankhurst was sentenced for a bomb plot and the House of Commons threw out the women's franchise bill. The warring Balkan countries signed a peace treaty in May and began a second war in June, the Commons passed the Irish Home Rule bill, England beat Australia at cricket, and Mr and Mrs Franklin remained in residence at Wilton Crescent.
Part Two
16
It was as he was reaching for the marmalade that Mr Franklin realised what a creature of habit he had become. It stood where the maid had placed it, precisely six inches beyond his coffee cup and to the right of the toast rack, as it had stood for the past four years; Peggy never used it, having her own small pot of honey on the other side of the table, and Mr Franklin could have reached out, without taking his eyes from the morning paper, in the absolute certainty that the marmalade would be there. In fact, he was doing just that when the automatic nature of his action struck him, and he murmured aloud: 'Phineas Fogg has nothing on me. One of these days they'll put strawberry jam there, and I'll think the sky has fallen in.'
Peggy, deep in the illustrated magazines, said vaguely, `What?' and Mr Franklin sighed and spooned marmalade on to his plate.
`I was just remarking,' he said, `that according to the paper his holiness the Pope doesn't care much for the tango. It says here that he prefers the furlana, a local Italian dance which he used to watch when he was a boy.'
'Mm-m,' said Peggy, frowning as she leafed over the pages, and then softly exclaiming 'Ah!' and sitting back to stare at the page. Mr Franklin knew exactly what she was looking at, and studied her surreptitiously past the edge of his paper. It was a little less than a week since they had been for the first time in their lives to Buckingham Palace, to attend the opening Court of the year, at which young ladies, most of them single but one or two married, were presented formally to their majesties. Peggy had never been a debutante, and at twenty-three was rather past the usual age, but the circumstances had been exceptional. Two years earlier the leader of the Conservative Party, Mr Balfour, had been succeeded by the Scots-Canadian Bonar Law, with whom Sir Charles Clayton was closely acquainted, both politically and socially; Miss Bonar Law had been one of the debutantes due for presentation, and Mr Franklin did not doubt that Peggy's inclusion had been arranged through the influence of the new Tory leader. So they had driven out on a wet Friday evening, Peggy immaculate in white silk and diamonds, and betraying not a sign of nervousness; she had made her curtsey, and in so doing had made the final formal passage into polite society, and what was almost equally important, had been photographed by respectful attendant cameramen.
What she was looking at now was the result, in the society magazines, and it obviously pleased her. Not that an outsider would have guessed it; she looked almost bored as she studied the pages, and the tiny deprecating twist at the corner of the perfectly-shaped mouth was in evidence; it usually was nowadays, and Mr Franklin wondered if its presence had anything to do with his own feelings as he watched her. Four years ago the sight of her across the table, the angelic face with its superb complexion, framed by the high lace collar of her deshabille and the artful carelessness of her piled auburn hair, would have produced a reaction in him; it might have resulted in his sitting gazing at her in quiet wonder and deep content, or in his quickly locking the morning-room door and sweeping her up suddenly towards the couch - either way, it would have been different from the interest he was taking in her now, which was decidedly more clinical, and he wondered for the hundredth time if the change in him stemmed from the change in her, or vice versa, and how much that tiny curl of the lip was a symptom or a cause of that change. Certainly the Peggy of four years ago would not have studied her picture so coolly; she would have exclaimed: 'Mark! Darling! It's in!' and flown round the table with the magazine, to throw her arms round his neck and laugh over his shoulder as he admired it. Now, after studying the page for a minute, she pushed the magazine aside without even drawing his attention to it, remarking only in passing: 'I can't think what possessed Mavis Littleton to wear that awful antique shawl; it made her look like a grandmother,' and turned to her correspondence.
In fact, Mr Franklin, first down to breakfast, had already seen the picture, and had shaken his head over it in silent admiration. Peggy had never looked so composedly stunning. And, to be fair, four years ago he would have gone straight upstairs again to show her the magazine at once; two years ago he would have drawn attention to it, with a kiss and congratulations, when she came down; now, he wasn't sure why, he left it for her to find. Of course, in some ways it was natural enough; honeymoons didn't last forever, and the enthusiasms of their first year had gradually ebbed away; at the same time, after the passing of that first heady rapture, somehow life had not settled into the placid, loving amiability he had expected - well, he had not known quite what to expect, but he had certainly not foreseen that four years of marriage would expose such marked differences in taste, in temperament, in purpose, and in outlook between them, and it was only when he looked the differences in the face, and studied them, that he realised their cause.
At first he had put it down to his own background, his strangeness in a strange land. But it had not been that; he had merged into England as easily as the young British immigrants he had known had merged into the United States - he thought of Cassidy's family, still talking with the thick accent of their native Lancashire, yet as American as the Americans of the frontier, and knew that he had adapted to England in precisely the same way. It had been a homecoming; any disenchantments he might feel were not so much those of the stranger, as of the travelled native. Even in small things he had acclimatised; he still occasionally said 'Every time!' and `gotten' and 'guess', but he was used to being taken for an Englishman by strangers, and these were the superficial things. Deep down, he was easy here; the drifting imperceptibly away from Peggy had been nothing to do with upbringing or background or culture.
Had there been a change in Peggy, then? After all, when they had met and married, she had been only nineteen, hardly more than a schoolgirl, and she had grown quickly into a leading society beauty, the wife of a wealthy man, sought after and admired - it would have been no wonder if she had become completely spoiled. But she had not; the level-headedness which had balanced the girlish impulses was still there, there was none of the wilfulness or pettishness which disfigured the behaviour of so many of her friends. No, the change in Peggy had been nothing more than the early maturing of a lovely, spirited girl into an even lovelier, spirited woman; the fault did not lie there.
It was, as he eventually concluded, the simple fact that he was almost sixteen years older than Peggy, entering middle age while she was still a young woman. He had pondered on the age difference, without too much disquiet, before they were married; any doubts he had had then dwelt on a vague thought, quite consciously sexual, that he would be an old man when she was still in her ardent prime, but he had dismissed it as being too far ahead to worry about. Now it was the least of his anxieties - paradoxically enough, it was when they made love that the disparity of years was most easily forgotten; Mr Franklin at forty was a healthy and vigorous animal who occasionally surprised himself, and it was in bed that he and Peggy came closest to recapturing that early, careless happiness. It was in the ordinary, everyday pursuit of life that they parted company, amiably enough, but inevitably and, he sometimes felt, irrevocably.
At first it had gone well enough. She was, he realised, a socialite; she loved to entertain and be entertained, to attend parties, to dance, to go on trips, to pay calls, to make the day a constant round of driving into Town, visiting shops and hairdressers, lunching with friends, hurrying to some afternoon function, giving or receiving tea, dressing for dinner, dining out or going to the theatre, dancing until after midnight - and being out next morning, fresh as a daisy,
for the same activities all over again, apparently without cessation. To which he could have no reasonable objection, although he sometimes reflected wryly on her pre-marital remark that she was not one of the bright young things, really, and was looking forward to a fairly settled married life. Possibly she had believed it then; more probably their definitions were just different. For there was no doubt, he soon discovered, that they simply lived at a different pace; Peggy was in a higher gear than he was, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.