ix
"You look wonderful," Eva Rothmann said to Daisy Peshkov. "If I was a boy I'd fall in love with you in a minute."
Daisy smiled. Eva was already a little bit in love with her. And Daisy did look wonderful, in an ice-blue silk organdy ball gown that deepened the blue of her eyes. The skirt of the dress had a frilled hem that was ankle length in front but rose playfully to midcalf behind, giving a tantalizing glimpse of Daisy's legs in sheer stockings.
She wore a sapphire necklace of her mother's. "Your father bought me that, back in the days when he was still occasionally nice to me," Olga said. "But hurry up, Daisy, you're making us all late."
Olga was wearing matronly navy blue, and Eva was in red, which suited her dark coloring.
Daisy walked down the stairs on a cloud of happiness.
They stepped out of the house. Henry, the gardener, doubling as chauffeur tonight, opened the doors of the shiny old black Stutz.
This was Daisy's big night. Tonight Charlie Farquharson would formally propose to her. He would offer her a diamond ring that was a family heirloom--she had seen and approved it, and it had been altered to fit her. She would accept his proposal, and then they would announce their engagement to everyone at the ball.
She got into the car feeling like Cinderella.
Only Eva had expressed doubts. "I thought you'd go for someone who was more of a match for you," she had said.
"You mean a man who won't let me boss him around," Daisy had replied.
"No, but someone more like you, good-looking and charming and sexy."
This was unusually sharp for Eva: it implied that Charlie was homely and charmless and unglamorous. Daisy had been taken aback, and did not know how to reply.
Her mother had saved her. Olga had said: "I married a man who was good-looking and charming and sexy, and he made me utterly miserable."
Eva had said no more.
As the car approached the Yacht Club, Daisy vowed to restrain herself. She must not show how triumphant she felt. She must act as if there was nothing unexpected about her mother being asked to join the Buffalo Ladies' Society. As she showed the other girls her enormous diamond, she would be so gracious as to declare that she did not deserve someone as wonderful as Charlie.
She had plans to make him even more wonderful. As soon as the honeymoon was over she and Charlie would start building their stable of racehorses. In five years they would be entering the most prestigious races around the world: Saratoga Springs, Longchamps, Royal Ascot.
Summer was turning to fall, and it was dusk when the car drew up at the pier. "I'm afraid we may be very late tonight, Henry," Daisy said gaily.
"Quite all right, Miss Daisy," he replied. He adored her. "You have a wonderful time, now."
At the door, Daisy noticed Victor Dixon following them in. Feeling well disposed toward everyone, she said: "So, Victor, your sister met the king of England. Congratulations!"
"Mm, yes," he said, looking embarrassed.
They entered the club. The first person they saw was Ursula Dewar, who had agreed to accept Olga into her snobby club. Daisy smiled warmly at her and said: "Good evening, Mrs. Dewar."
Ursula seemed distracted. "Excuse me just a moment," she said, and moved away across the lobby. She thought herself a queen, Daisy reflected, but did that mean she had no need of good manners? One day Daisy would rule over Buffalo society, but she would be unfailingly gracious to all, she vowed.
The three women went into the ladies' room, where they checked their appearance in the mirrors, in case anything had gone wrong in the twenty minutes since they left home. Dot Renshaw came in, looked at them, and went out again. "Stupid girl," Daisy said.
But her mother looked worried. "What's happening?" she said. "We've been here five minutes, and already three people have snubbed us!"
"Jealousy," Daisy said. "Dot would like to marry Charlie herself."
Olga said: "At this point Dot Renshaw would like to marry more or less anybody, I guess."
"Come on, let's enjoy ourselves," said Daisy, and she led the way out.
As she entered the ballroom, Woody Dewar greeted her. "At last, a gentleman!" Daisy said.
In a lowered voice he said: "I just want to say that I think it's wrong of people to blame you for anything your father might have done."
"Especially when they all bought their booze from him!" she replied.
Then she saw her future mother-in-law, in a ruched pink gown that did nothing for her angular figure. Nora Farquharson was not ecstatic about her son's choice of bride, but she had accepted Daisy and had been charming to Olga when they had exchanged visits. "Mrs. Farquharson!" Daisy said. "What a lovely dress!"
Nora Farquharson turned her back and walked away.
Eva gasped.
A feeling of horror came over Daisy. She turned back to Woody. "This isn't about bootlegging, is it?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"You must ask Charlie. Here he comes."
Charlie was perspiring, though it was not warm. "What's going on?" Daisy asked him. "Everyone's giving me the cold shoulder!"
He was terribly nervous. "People are so angry at your family," he said.
"What for?" she cried.
Several people nearby heard her raised voice and looked around. She did not care.
Charlie said: "Your father ruined Dave Rouzrokh."
"Are you talking about that incident in the Ritz-Carlton? What has that got to do with me?"
"Everyone likes Dave, even though he's Persian or something. And they don't believe he would rape anybody."
"I never said he did!"
"I know," Charlie said. He was clearly in agony.
People were frankly staring, now: Victor Dixon, Dot Renshaw, Chuck Dewar.
Daisy said to Charlie: "But I'm going to be blamed. Is that so?"
"Your father did a terrible thing."
Daisy was cold with fear. Surely she could not lose her triumph at the last minute? "Charlie," she said. "What are you telling me? Talk straight, for the love of God."
Eva put her arm around Daisy's waist in a gesture of support.
Charlie replied: "Mother says it's unforgivable."
"What does that mean, unforgivable?"
He stared miserably at her. He could not bring himself to speak.
But there was no need. She knew what he was going to say. "It's over, isn't it?" she said. "You're jilting me."
He nodded.
Olga said: "Daisy, we must leave." She was in tears.
Daisy looked around. She tilted her chin as she stared them all down: Dot Renshaw looking maliciously pleased, Victor Dixon admiring, Chuck Dewar with his mouth open in adolescent shock, and his brother, Woody, looking sympathetic.
"To hell with you all," Daisy said loudly. "I'm going to London to dance with the king!"
CHAPTER THREE
1936
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in May 1936, and Lloyd Williams was at the end of his second year at Cambridge, when Fascism reared its vile head among the white stone cloisters of the ancient university.
Lloyd was at Emmanuel College--known as "Emma"--doing modern languages. He was studying French and German, but he preferred German. As he immersed himself in the glories of German culture, reading Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and Thomas Mann, he looked up occasionally from his desk in the quiet library to watch with sadness as today's Germany descended into barbarism.
Then the local branch of the British Union of Fascists announced that their leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, would address a meeting in Cambridge. The news took Lloyd back to Berlin three years earlier. He saw again the Brownshirt thugs wrecking Maud von Ulrich's magazine office; heard again the grating sound of Hitler's hate-filled voice as he stood in the parliament and poured scorn on democracy; shuddered anew at the memory of the dogs' bloody muzzles savaging Jorg with a bucket over his head.
Now Lloyd stood on the platform at Cambridge railway station, waiting to meet his mo
ther off the train from London. With him was Ruby Carter, a fellow activist in the local Labour Party. She had helped him organize today's meeting on the subject of "the Truth about Fascism." Lloyd's mother, Eth Leckwith, was to speak. Her book about Germany had been a big success, she had stood for Parliament again in the 1935 election, and she was once again the member for Aldgate.
Lloyd was tense about the meeting. Mosley's new political party had gained many thousands of members, due in part to the enthusiastic support of the Daily Mail, which had run the infamous headline HURRAH FOR THE BLACKSHIRTS! Mosley was a charismatic speaker, and would undoubtedly recruit new members today. It was vital that there should be a bright beacon of reason to contrast with his seductive lies.
However, Ruby was chatty. She was complaining about the social life of Cambridge. "I'm so bored with local boys," she said. "All they want to do is go to a pub and get drunk."
Lloyd was surprised. He had imagined that Ruby had a well-developed social life. She wore inexpensive clothes that were always a bit tight, showing off her plump curves. Most men would find her attractive, he thought. "What do you like to do?" he asked. "Apart from organize Labour Party meetings."
"I love dancing."
"You can't be short of partners. There are twelve men for every woman at the university."
"No offense intended, but most of the university men are pansies."
There were a lot of homosexual men in Cambridge University, Lloyd knew, but it startled him to hear her mention the subject. Ruby was famously blunt, but this was shocking even from her. He had no idea how to respond, so he said nothing.
Ruby said: "You're not one of them, are you?"
"No! Don't be ridiculous."
"No need to be insulted. You're handsome enough for a pansy, except for that squashed nose."
He laughed. "That's what they call a backhanded compliment."
"You are, though. You look like Douglas Fairbanks Junior."
"Well, thanks, but I'm not a pansy."
"Have you got a girlfriend?"
This was becoming embarrassing. "No, not at the moment." He made a show of checking his watch and looking for the train.
"Why not?"
"I just haven't met Miss Right."
"Oh, thank you very much, I'm sure."
He looked at her. She was only half joking. He felt mortified that she had taken his remark personally. "I didn't mean . . ."
"Yes, you did. But never mind. Here's the train."
The locomotive drew into the station and came to a halt in a cloud of steam. The doors opened and passengers stepped out onto the platform: students in tweed jackets, famers' wives going shopping, workingmen in flat caps. Lloyd scanned the crowd for his mother. "She'll be in a third-class carriage," he said. "Matter of principle."
Ruby said: "Would you come to my twenty-first-birthday party?"
"Of course."
"My friend's got a little flat in Market Street, and a deaf landlady."
Lloyd was not comfortable about this invitation, and hesitated over his reply; then his mother appeared, as pretty as a songbird in a red summer coat and a jaunty little hat. She hugged and kissed him. "You look very well, my lovely," she said. "But I must buy you a new suit for next term."
"This one is fine, Mam." He had a scholarship that paid his university fees and basic living expenses, but it did not run to suits. When he started at Cambridge his mother had dipped into her savings and bought him a tweed suit for daytime and an evening suit for formal dinners. He had worn the tweed every day for two years, and it showed. He was particular about his appearance, and made sure he always had a clean white shirt, a perfectly knotted tie, and a folded white handkerchief in his breast pocket: there had to be a dandy somewhere in his ancestry. The suit was carefully pressed, but it was beginning to look shabby, and in truth he longed for a new one, but he did not want his mother to spend her savings.
"We'll see," she said. She turned to Ruby, smiled warmly, and held out her hand. "I'm Eth Leckwith," she said with the easy grace of a visiting duchess.
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Ruby Carter."
"Are you a student, too, Ruby?"
"No, I'm a maid at Chimbleigh, a big country house." Ruby looked a bit ashamed as she made this confession. "It's five miles out of town, but I can usually borrow a bike."
"Fancy that!" said Ethel. "When I was your age, I was a maid at a country house in Wales."
Ruby was amazed. "You, a housemaid? And now you're a member of Parliament!"
"That's what democracy means."
Lloyd said: "Ruby and I organized today's meeting together."
His mother said: "And how is it going?"
"Sold out. In fact we had to move to a bigger hall."
"I told you it would work."
The meeting was Ethel's idea. Ruby Carter and many others in the Labour Party had wanted to mount a protest demonstration, marching through the town. Lloyd had agreed at first. "Fascism must be publicly opposed at every opportunity," he had said.
Ethel had counseled otherwise. "If we march and shout slogans we look just like them," she had said. "Show that we're different. Hold a quiet, intelligent meeting to discuss the reality of Fascism." Lloyd had been dubious. "I'll come and speak, if you like," she had said.
Lloyd had put that to the Cambridge party. There had been a lively discussion, with Ruby leading the opposition to Ethel's plan, but in the end the prospect of having an M.P. and famous feminist to speak had clinched it.
Lloyd was still not sure it had been the right decision. He recalled Maud von Ulrich in Berlin saying: "We must not meet violence with violence." That had been the policy of the German Social Democratic Party. For the von Ulrich family, and for Germany, the policy had been a catastrophe.
They walked out through the yellow-brick Romanesque arches of the station and hurried along leafy Station Road, a street of smug middle-class houses made of the same yellow brick. Ethel put her arm through Lloyd's. "How's my little undergraduate, then?" she said.
He smiled at the word little. He was four inches taller than she, and muscular because of his training with the university boxing team: he could have picked her up with one hand. She was bursting with pride, he knew. Few things in life had pleased her as much as his coming to this place. That was probably why she wanted to buy him suits.
"I love it here, you know that," he said. "I'll love it more when it's full of working-class boys."
"And girls," Ruby put in.
They turned into Hills Road, the main thoroughfare leading to the town center. Since the coming of the railway, the town had expanded south toward the station, and churches had been built along Hills Road to serve the new suburb. Their destination was a Baptist chapel whose left-wing pastor had agreed to loan it free of charge.
"I made a bargain with the Fascists," Lloyd said. "I said we'd refrain from marching if they would promise to do the same."
"I'm surprised they agreed," said Ethel. "Fascists love marching."
"They were reluctant. But I told the university authorities and the police what I was proposing, and the Fascists pretty much had to go along with it."
"That was clever."
"But, Mam, guess who is their local leader? Viscount Aberowen, otherwise known as Boy Fitzherbert, the son of your former employer Earl Fitzherbert!" Boy was twenty-one, the same age as Lloyd. He was at Trinity, the aristocratic college.
"What? My God!"
She seemed more shaken than he had expected, and he glanced at her. She had gone pale. "Are you shocked?"
"Yes!" She seemed to recover her composure. "His father is a junior minister in the Foreign Office." The government was a Conservative-dominated coalition. "Fitz must be embarrassed."
"Most Conservatives are soft on Fascism, I imagine. They see little wrong with killing Communists and persecuting Jews."
"Some of them, perhaps, but you exaggerate." She gave Lloyd a sideways look. "So you went to see Boy?"
"Yes." Lloyd thou
ght this seemed to have special significance for Ethel, but he could not imagine why. "I thought him perfectly frightful. In his room at Trinity he had a whole case of Scotch--twelve bottles!"
"You met him once before--do you remember?"
"No, when was that?"
"You were nine years old. I took you to the Palace of Westminster, shortly after I was elected. We met Fitz and Boy on the stairs."
Lloyd did vaguely remember. Then as now, the incident seemed to be mysteriously important to his mother. "That was him? How funny."
Ruby put in: "I know him. He's a pig. He paws maids."
Lloyd was shocked, but his mother seemed unsurprised. "Very unpleasant, but it happens all the time." Her grim acceptance made it more horrifying to him.
They reached the chapel and went in through the back door. There, in a kind of vestry, was Robert von Ulrich, looking startlingly British in a bold green-and-brown check suit and a striped tie. He stood up and Ethel hugged him. In faultless English Robert said: "My dear Ethel, what a perfectly charming hat."
Lloyd introduced his mother to the local Labour Party women who were preparing urns of tea and plates of biscuits to be served after the meeting. Having heard Ethel complain, many times, that people who organized political events seemed to think an M.P. never needed to go to the toilet, he said: "Ruby, before we start, would you show my mother where the ladies' facilities are?" The two women went off.
Lloyd sat down next to Robert and said conversationally: "How's business?"
Robert was now the proprietor of a restaurant much favored by the homosexuals about whom Ruby had been complaining. Somehow he had known that Cambridge in the 1930s was congenial to such men, just as Berlin had been in the 1920s. His new place had the same name as the old, Bistro Robert. "Business is good," he answered. A shadow crossed his face, a brief but intense look of real fear. "This time, I hope I can keep what I've built up."
"We're doing our best to fight off the Fascists, and meetings such as this are the way to do it," Lloyd said. "Your talk will be a big help--it will open people's eyes." Robert was going to speak about his personal experience of life under Fascism. "A lot of them say it couldn't happen here, but they're wrong."
Robert nodded in grim agreement. "Fascism is a lie, but an alluring one."
Lloyd's visit to Berlin three years ago was vivid in his mind. "I often wonder what happened to the old Bistro Robert," he said.
"I had a letter from a friend," Robert said in a voice full of sadness. "None of the old crowd go there anymore. The Macke brothers auctioned off the wine cellar. Now the clientele is mostly middle-ranking cops and bureaucrats." He looked even more pained as he added: "They no longer use tablecloths." He changed the subject abruptly. "Do you want to go to the Trinity Ball?"