Palace Circle Part 5

When Gwen came in, Delia said with a smile, "It's a little girl, Gwen. Ivor will be disappointed, but I don't care. I've never been so happy in my life. Never, never, never."

Gwen leaned over her, tenderly moving the shawl a little farther from the baby's face in order to see her better. "Oh," she breathed reverently, "she's absolutely perfect! What girl's name did you and Ivor decide upon?"

"We didn't decide." There was wry humor in Delia's voice. "He only ever made plans for a boy. However, I have picked a name. She is to be Petronella. Petronella Gwendolyn. I don't think Ivor will object."

"No, Delia. I don't think he will." Gwen was so overcome that the baby was to be named after her that tears misted her eyes. "And next time, when the baby is a boy, Ivor can choose. Oh, dear. I mustn't cry over her, must I? And you must need to sleep now, Delia. Shall I tell Jerome that it is far too soon for a visit and that he must come back in a few days?"

With great effort, Delia tore her attention away from her daughter's face. "No, Gwen. Jerome is leaving for France in two days. Please ask him to come in-though I think it best he does so after you have left. Two visitors at the same time would be too tiring for me."

It was a fib, but she didn't care. She didn't want Gwen with her when Jerome saw the baby for the first time.

Gwen kissed her on the cheek and left the room. Delia turned to the midwife and nurse. "You must both be famished. If you go downstairs with Ellie, cook will make you a light meal."

"Thank you, Lady Conisborough," they said, both more than ready to eat.

Seconds after they had left, Jerome entered, resplendent in his cavalry officer's uniform.

"It's a girl, Jerome," she said huskily as he crossed to the bed and looked down at the now-sleeping baby. "I'm going to call her Petronella and she's the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, Jerome. Truly."

He touched the baby's cheek very gently with the back of his finger. "She's going to have your coloring, Delia," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "There is red in her hair."

She smiled up at him. "Would you like to hold her?"

He nodded, tenderly taking the sleeping baby from her arms.

When Ellie returned to the room five minutes later he was still holding her-and doing so not only with great competence but with almost fatherly care.

FIVE.

On the day Jerome and his regiment left for France, not even holding Petronella eased Delia's disquiet. Unlike the vast majority of the population she hadn't been euphoric at the outbreak of war. Now, even those who had been were anxious as it became increasingly obvious that the war was going to be a long, drawn-out affair. For Delia it was much worse. With a husband a member of the Privy Council and with one friend married to the prime minister and another to the first lord of the admiralty, she knew too much of the worries felt at the very highest levels to be comforted by the remorselessly upbeat propaganda being pumped out by national newspapers.

"Please, G.o.d," she prayed throughout the day, "please G.o.d, don't let Jerome be killed. Don't let him be injured. Please, G.o.d. Please."

She was soon beset by another grim anxiety for there were rumors of German submarine activity in the Atlantic.

"They won't attack civilian s.h.i.+pping," Gwen's husband said confidently. "Such a thing is unthinkable, Delia. Ivor will be home safe and sound within the next couple of weeks."

Despite his certainty she continued to worry, her only distraction the gossip of her visitors.

"The Queen is visiting as many as four hospitals a day," Gwen said, busily knitting a khaki sock as she sat at Delia's bedside. "Seeing such suffering must be a terrible ordeal for her. I remember she was once so overcome when a footman cut his finger that she nearly fainted."

"The Prince of Wales has been gazetted to the Grenadier Guards," Clementine said when she visited, delving in her bag for the khaki s.h.i.+rt she was making. "He must look quite odd, for he's only five foot three and the guards are all six foot and over!"

They giggled, but when Delia had tried to imagine the golden-haired prince in a guards uniform, she failed completely.

Clara Digby visited and was appalled to find Delia out of bed and seated in a chair by the window. "Goodness gracious, when doctors decree that a new mother should remain in bed for ten days after giving birth, they mean ten days. And bed means bed, not a chair!"

"I've been in bed for five days, Clara, and I'm bored to tears. What is Cuthie's latest news from the palace? Is it true the King has ordered that no more wine is to be served at mealtimes?"

Clara seated herself and said, "Yes, he's decided that alcohol is not consistent with emergency measures. How deadly dull palace dinners are to be endured without the benefit of wine, I can't think. I don't envisage Ivor enjoying boiled water sweetened with sugar-which is, apparently, what was served yesterday evening-do you? And when do you expect him home?"

Without waiting for an answer, she eased off her pale kid gloves. "He must be exceedingly impatient to see his daughter-and not, I hope, too disappointed about her s.e.x. Cuthbert barely spoke to me for six months after Amelia was born."

She straightened the seam of her glove. "Has Sylvia been to visit? It will look very odd if she doesn't. I saw her at the Denbys' a week or so ago-your name was mentioned and the tips of her claws showed. Muriel Denby put her in her place- as, of course, did I. Why men never see that side of Sylvia is quite beyond me. Young Maurice Denby is quite besotted with her. He's Muriel's youngest and due to leave for France this week."

Delia let Clara rattle on, wondering, as she always did, just how much of a true friend Clara was. Clementine and Margot sensitively never brought Sylvia's name into the conversation. She was curious just how Sylvia had shown her claws, but she had far too much pride to ask. And Clara's remark about Ivor's reaction to a girl only increased her anxiety as to how deep his disappointment would be.

When he had received the cable informing him of the birth, his answering cable had simply read: RELIEVED ALL IS WELL STOP HOME SOON STOP IVOR.

The wording hadn't filled her with optimism.

An hour after Clara had left her, another cable arrived:

AM SAILING TODAY ON THE CARONIA STOP IVOR.

When he arrived five days later she was in the frost-covered walled rear garden, cutting long sprays of yellow-berried pyracantha to fill the Chinese vases in the hall.

It was a footman who hurried out to her with the news. "His lords.h.i.+p has arrived, my lady. And he's gone straight to the nursery."

Thrusting the pyracantha into his arms she ran to the house, yanking off her coat as she did so.

"His lords.h.i.+p is in the-" Bellingham began helpfully as she raced past him.

"I know, Bellingham! I know!" Tossing her tam-o'-shanter at him, she hurtled up the stairs.

Bellingham, by now well accustomed to his mistress's easygoing familiarity, gravely carried the tam-o'-shanter toward the cloakroom.

With a fast-beating heart Delia hurried along the corridor toward the nursery. "Please don't be too disappointed, Ivor," she whispered to herself. "Please think Petronella beautiful. Please. Please."

She opened the nursery door.

Still wearing his traveling clothes he was standing by the crib, looking down into it with a bemused expression on his face.

She stood very still. "Do you like her?" she said, unable to voice the words drumming in her brain: Are you going to be too disappointed to love her?

"Like her?" He turned toward her and to her vast relief he was smiling. "Of course I like her, Delia. She's beautiful."

All her tension and fear ebbed away. Everything was going to be all right.

She crossed the room and stood beside him, taking hold of his hand and squeezing it to express her grat.i.tude.

"Why Petronella?" he asked. "I've never heard of it before. Is it a Chandler family name?"

"No. It's a Roman family name. And I chose it just because so few people will have heard it and because I like it." She remembered how important having a son was to him and realized how magnificently he was overcoming his disappointment. "We can change it if you want to, Ivor. I don't mind."

"I don't want to change it. It suits her. Who does she look like, do you think? I don't see the faintest resemblance to myself in her-and I don't think she looks much like you, either, except for her dark-red hair."

"Imagining that babies look like family members is usually wishful thinking. Petronella just looks like herself-and I'm glad. Think how awful it would be if she had your big feet or my father's nose!"

He chuckled and she said, "Would you like to hold her?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't think I should when she's sleeping. It would only disturb her. And I have to go straight on to Downing Street. Lloyd George is waiting for my report on my meetings with the American bankers."

Lloyd George, the chancellor of the exchequer, was not a man known for patience and she didn't try to dissuade Ivor. Instead, linking her arm in his, she said as they left the room, "Where will we be spending Christmas, Ivor? Here, or at s.h.i.+bden?"

"It's tradition for Christmas to be spent at s.h.i.+bden, you know." He saw the expression on her face and added, "Is there a problem with that?"

"Only that Norfolk is bitterly cold at Christmas and as Petronella will still be only a few weeks old I think it would be better if she wasn't taken to s.h.i.+bden until the spring."

They had reached the head of the stairs and he came to a halt, looking puzzled. "But that isn't a difficulty, Delia. She'll remain here in the care of her nurse and nurserymaids."

"And I will be over a hundred miles away. I'm sorry, Ivor, but not being with her at Christmas would make me very unhappy. I should like to stay here."

He hesitated and she knew he was thinking how odd it would look not spending Christmas at s.h.i.+bden when the royal family would be spending Christmas at nearby Sandringham.

"If that is what you want," he said at last, a little reluctantly.

"Yes, it is. Thank you, Ivor."

With her arm still linked in his she walked downstairs with him, feeling more optimistic about her marriage than she had since its first few headily careless days, her mind racing with ideas for making Petronella's first Christmas the most splendid Christmas the Cadogan Square house had ever known.

In the New Year, with a very satisfying nursery routine established under a new nurse-who wasn't at all disconcerted when Delia treated her as if she were a member of the family-Delia began socializing and riding again.

Every morning at eleven o'clock she trotted into Rotten Row, riding sidesaddle on Juno, the thoroughbred Ivor had bought for her shortly after their marriage. Compared to riding in Norfolk, it was sedate-and certainly nothing like the gallops she had enjoyed in Virginia.

Occasionally Sylvia would also be in the Row, her satin-black hair worn in a bun that showed off the lovely long line of her neck. Her hat was always tilted at a provocative angle, the veil pressing against her face, her elegant riding habit fitting so perfectly Delia wondered if she was wearing anything beneath it.

They would incline their heads to each other and nothing more. When there was no one nearby to observe, they never bothered pretending they were friends.

In February, Lord and Lady Denby's only son was killed in his first twenty-four hours of action.

By March, the death toll of officers in the Grenadiers and the Scots-two guards regiments packed with Ivor's friends or the sons of his friends-was so high Delia was terrified for Jerome's safety. But in his letters he repeatedly told her not to worry.

As cavalry we don't suffer in the same way that the poor sods living twenty-four hours a day in the trenches do- and I have the comfort of your Fortnum & Mason's food parcels. I made myself very popular with my fellow officers by sharing out the pate and caviar.

In April, when he came home on leave, his description of life at the front was very different.

"It can't be expressed in a letter," he said, his hand holding hers so tightly she thought he was going to break it. "It's indescribable. Filth. Thigh-deep mud. The dead unburied. The injured lying with them for hours, sometimes days, before they can be carried to a field hospital. Constant cold. Constant pandemonium. And a feeling of near uselessness."

His voice was bitter, his olive-skinned face pale with fatigue.

"Uselessness? But why? I don't understand."

"Cavalry might have been the army's ace in previous wars, Delia, but they weren't on the scale of this one. How can cavalry successfully charge against machine guns and barbed wire and six-foot-deep trenches? More and more valiant horses are dying horrific deaths. In a charge near Ypres we lost one hundred and forty-four horses out of one hundred and fifty-and the number of men lost is almost beyond human calculation."

She blanched.

"In the short time I have before going back to such a h.e.l.l, I want to enjoy myself-and not talk about the war." He gave a lopsided smile. "How's Petra? As we didn't have the chance to celebrate her birth with champagne at the time, let's toast her now."

Delia forced herself into a cheerful mood; a mood of loving gaiety that would enable him to forget, for a little time at least, the horrors waiting for him when his leave was over.

"Petra?" With superhuman effort she banished the images he had conjured up, knowing that the minute he had gone they would resurface in endless nightmares. "No one calls her Petra," she said, managing to giggle. "Not even Ellie."

"Well, no one will keep calling her Petronella when she's older. It's too much of a mouthful. And better Petra than Nellie!"

This time her laughter was unforced. "Just for you, Jerome- and because I would take a gun to anyone who called my lovely daughter Nellie, Petra it is." She hugged him tightly, saying, "G.o.d, but I've missed you, Jerome. I've missed you more than words can tell."

The days after Jerome's return to the front were spent in an agony of anxiety. The newspapers were full of accounts of the British spring offensive at Ypres and she knew that Jerome was in the thick of it. If Sylvia was similarly concerned she showed no sign. "There's no need to worry about Jerome," Delia overheard her saying at a house party at the Wharf, the Asquiths' country home on the upper reaches of the Thames. "He always falls on his feet."

At the beginning of May she discovered that she was pregnant again.

"Which is about the only good news I've had for many months," Ivor said. "And, once again, I'm going to be in America for part of your pregnancy, though this time in the early part."

"America? But why?"

"I'm going with a begging bowl," he said grimly. "We need American financing in order to keep armament production at its present level. I don't work only for the King nowadays, Delia. I work for the government."

She tilted her head a little to one side, her eyes reflective. "If the Atlantic is safe enough for you to cross, then it's surely safe enough for me. Petra is six months old and my parents still haven't seen her. We could sail together to New York and then you could go to Was.h.i.+ngton or wherever it is you have to go, and I could go down to Virginia. We could meet up again in New York for the trip home."

"No," he said, not even hesitating. "I'm not going to allow you to take even the slightest risk. When the war is over, then we'll go to Virginia, Delia. And not before."

His voice was implacable. Disappointment flooded her, but she knew better than to lose her dignity in an argument she couldn't win.

A week later she lost all desire to cross the Atlantic with her precious daughter.

"There's just been a wireless announcement that a German submarine has sunk the Lusitania, my lady!" Ellie said, coming into Delia's bedroom with her breakfast tray. "It was on its way from New York to Liverpool carrying hundreds of civilian pa.s.sengers. Mr. Bellingham says it's the worst outrage he's ever heard of. His lords.h.i.+p left the house in a great hurry. He'll be going to Downing Street, I expect."

Four hours later he returned home, his handsome features so grim they looked as if they had been carved in stone. "Cu-nard is talking in the region of over a thousand drowned." He poured a large whiskey and added the merest squirt of soda to it. "There'll be no more pa.s.senger sailings. The American financing will have to be carried out by telegraph."

He drained his gla.s.s and then said unsteadily, "The Lusitania was the sister s.h.i.+p of the Mauretania, Delia. What kind of world is it when a liner carrying American pa.s.sengers, who are neutral and not at war, can be blown out of the sea as mercilessly as if she were an enemy wars.h.i.+p?" He covered his eyes with his hand. "It's something I would never have believed."

Two weeks later, despite it being the beginning of the London season, they went to s.h.i.+bden, taking Petra and her nurse with them. Juno, and his groom, Charlie, followed. The horse, accustomed to traveling in a horse box, was no trouble. According to the nurse, who was traveling with Petra and a nurserymaid in a separate car, Petra was.

"She's cried on and off the entire journey, my lady," the nurse said as Delia lifted Petra from her arms the instant they had all stepped from the cars in front of s.h.i.+bden's porticoed entrance. "I think maybe she's beginning to teethe."