The Sky With Diamonds

by Malcolm Macdonald

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

It is the 1920s, an age of innovation and daring in transportation both on the road and in the air. At the forefront of motor-car development is Somerville's - to own a Somerville-bodied Rolls-royce is every man's dream. But when George Somerville has an accident that leaves him paralysed, the future of the firm looks uncertain. George has no sons old enough to manage the firm. He does, however, have a wife. Defying general skepticism and her own doubts, Julia gradually takes control, warding off takeover attempts with breathtaking skill and cunning. In Eliot Baring, an American employee and a brilliant airplane engineer, she sees a new future for Somerville's and, perhaps, for herself. Together they take Somerville's into the skies where competition is fierce and enemies common. But the skies darken as fascism spreads across Europe and Julia's conscience becomes ever more important in Somerville's future. Beset on all sides, deserted by her colleagues - and lovers - her future looks bleak until help comes from the most unexpected quarter.

Release date: October 10, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 624

Sample

SOMERVILLE-BODIED Rolls-Royce was to be seen waiting at the door of number 32 Connaught Square, every weekday morning, at precisely ten o’clock. It was waiting for Mrs Julia Somerville herself, of course. A quarter of an hour later, when she arrived at the offices of the SPRP, dear old Captain Harcourt would lift an eyebrow and say, “A new Rolls-Royce, I see!”

And she would glance casually over her shoulder and reply, “Oh, is it?”

There was never a smile, for that would have spoiled their little start-of-the-day pleasantry.

This unending supply of new Rolls-Royces owed itself to George Somerville’s proud boast that none of his firm’s coach-built motors ever left the works without undergoing the personal Somerville test. What that meant, in fact, was that Julia either drove the car or was driven in it for a day or two – after which time it would not dare develop another fault. This practice had begun in the early years of their marriage, back in 1912, when George had bought his first rolling chassis, a Silver Ghost, and built what the newspapers of the day had called “the world’s most luxurious motor phæton” for the Maharajah of Mysore. By chance Julia had noticed a slight mismatch in the West-of-England cloth upholstery, just as the vehicle was about to be shipped. George, in his gallant way, said his little girlie had saved the firm, and ever since then she had been Somerville’s final arbiter of quality. Even some of the armoured cars they had built during the Great War had been brought to Connaught Square for her scrutiny.

The workmen at Somerville’s did not think of her as “little girlie”; to them she was “the Boss.” George (“the Guv’nor”) had never told her that, and she was unlikely to hear it directly since she never visited the works – indeed, she was only vaguely aware of their direction. They were a few miles to the northwest of Connaught Square, somewhere beyond Paddington. Willesden? Kensal Green? Wormwood Scrubs? Somewhere like that – one of those fringes of London one need never visit in the ordinary way.

So every morning at ten, the latest Somerville awaited the Boss’s yea or nay. It might be anything from a sporty little open tourer to yet another “luxurious motor phæton”; to each she gave the same critical care. Julia enjoyed this mixture of routine and novelty – each day at ten, a little surprise. On the morning of this particular day the car was the regular Somerville body for the new Phantom chassis, but with the addition of half-silvered passenger windows; it had been ordered by a grand old lady of the theatre who nowadays preferred press photographers to take close-ups of their own flashbulbs rather than of her sadly ageing features.

On this morning, however, Julia’s routine was disrupted. She had put on her hat and gloves (which, even now, she could never do without hearing the voice of her old governess, Miss Creen: “Never put on your gloves, my dear, in sight of the servants!”) and was coming down to the hall when Mrs Crooke, the housekeeper, intercepted her.

Mrs Crooke waited until Julia reached the foot of the stair and then said, “The agency has sent a young woman for the place of nursery maid, madam. I wondered if you would care to see her for yourself this time?”

There was something a little odd in the request. The position was a minor one. Normally Miss Valentine, the governess, would see the girl. Still, after the dreadful things the last girl had done, perhaps it would be as well to vet this one herself? No, no, no. Miss Valentine would be mortally offended. Julia glanced at her watch and gave a tut of vexation.

She came to a decision. “I think Miss Valentine had better interview this … what’s her name?”

Mrs Crooke gave a tight little smile. “Miss Imogen Davis.” She watched closely for her mistress’s response.

“Unusual name,” Julia commented. “I have a cousin Imogen. Somewhere.”

Mrs Crooke nodded. “I seem to remember as much, madam. Quite unsuitable for a servant. I’ll suggest she chooses another. Jane or Kate or something more fitting.”

But Julia shook her head; then, smiling to soften what might otherwise seem a rebuke, she remarked, “I don’t think a mistress can give a girl a name any longer. Not these days.”

“More’s the pity.”

Julia eyed her shrewdly. “Why do you especially think I should see this one? Is it after what happened with the last?”

Mrs Crooke gave an awkward shrug. “There’s something about her … I don’t know. She’s not of the servant class. Yet she comes with the highest references. I just don’t know.”

Dear Mrs Crooke – the best housekeeper anyone could hope for, but such a snob! “I think Miss Valentine may conduct the interview,” she said. “And if she approves, well, I shall no doubt see Miss Imogen Davis in the usual way.”

Mrs Crooke gave a disappointed tilt of her head. “As you prefer, madam.”

Julia added, “Convey my wish for Miss Valentine to be utterly frank about … well, we all know what she is to be utterly frank about!”

Mrs Crooke’s ears flushed red as she agreed that indeed they did.

Moments later Julia had already dismissed the matter from her mind. Overnight rain lay in puddles on the two shallow front steps. Had they already been turned or would the undersides be good for another century of wear? She made a note to call in the stonemason.

Strong, the chauffeur, tucked away his chamois leather as soon as he heard the doorlatch; now he was holding open the car door for her.

“Good morning, Strong. What a blustery night.”

“It promises better today, madam.”

Strong was her weather expert. Before the war he had been Somerville’s chief upholsterer, but gas had half-ruined his lungs and he could not go back to air laden with leather dust and all the alcohols they used.

Today was a Tuesday so, without needing to be told, he drove her directly to the head office of the SPRP at the far end of Bayswater. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday she worked there until just before two, when she would return home for a light luncheon. Mondays and Fridays were usually her days for shopping, galleries, museums, and so on. The afternoons were for bridge, or being At Home, or going to matinées.

People said to her, “How you fit it all in I’ll never know!”

What they were talking about, of course, was not the busy social whirl but the SPRP itself – the Society for … well, before we name it, let us first see how it came about.

It was Julia’s own idea, prompted by something that happened toward the end of the war. From 1916 onward, Allbury, her family’s ancestral home in Hertfordshire, had been run as a convalescent home for soldiers. Julia, though her son Robert was then three, and baby Lydia only one, had gone down there every Friday to Monday to relieve the regular nurses. On one occasion, toward the end of the summer of 1918, she had taken a convalescent, a Gunner Ashbury, to his home in Dalston in the East End of London for the christening of the fourth and latest little Ashbury. Afterwards, over the teacups, there had been a heated discussion about the difficulties of feeding a growing family on a dwindling purse. At one point Theresa Ashbury had canvassed Julia’s opinion. Caught between husband and wife, she had given what seemed a diplomatic answer: The budget was certainly not lavish yet an adequate and wholesome diet should still be quite possible.

A disgruntled Theresa had muttered that it was all very well for some people to talk but she’d like to see them actually try it.

And Julia had astonished everyone, including herself, by saying, “Very well, and so I shall.”

So, a few months later, the war being then over, Julia had rented a house three doors down the terrace from the Ashburys and had fed them and herself every meal for two weeks – at a saving of several shillings. It had not been difficult. It was simply that no one had ever shown Theresa Ashbury such elementary tricks as managing a stockpot, using butcher’s bones and cheap end-of-the-day vegetables. If she wanted soup, she opened a tin.

It had astonished Julia, who, though brought up to expect the services of a cook, a housekeeper, and a dozen servants beside, had nonetheless been taught all those skills by her mother – on the grounds that, if you couldn’t do it properly yourself, the servants would walk circles around you. Whether that were true or no, her early training had come in useful at the time of Theresa’s challenge. The penny pinching produced those winning shillings.

Most other grand ladies of Bayswater, even if they had dared take up such a challenge, would have left it at that and dined out for weeks on their victory. Most other women in Dalston would have shrugged their shoulders, repeated that it was all very well for some … and reached for another tin of soup the moment Lady Bountiful had gone. But, just as Julia was not like most other women in Bayswater, so Theresa was not like most other women in Dalston. Over the two weeks of that challenge they were in each other’s company a great deal of the time, and Julia was the first to admit that she had learned much more from Theresa than she had taught in return.

Between them they decided that if working people were ever to rise above their poverty, it could not be by higher wages alone. If the men brought home more money, much of the increase would be squandered – not wilfully but through simple ignorance of good housekeeping and domestic economy. In the last days of the challenge, when it was plain that Julia had “won,” and neither of them cared a button for victory or defeat, Theresa had one final fling at an excuse. “It was easier for you,” she said, “not having a load of screaming kids clinging round your skirts all the time.”

The comment amused Julia. Many times during the days of the challenge she had envied Theresa and the other mothers their close and almost permanent relations with their children. Over the years since then she often thought of her own two – Robert, now away at school, independent already, and Lydia, still snug in the nursery and schoolroom. They wanted for nothing, yet both had given their love and their best childhood years to paid strangers. Still – that was the way of her world. Nothing could be done about it.

Such, at least, were the acceptable thoughts and recollections associated with those weeks in Dalston; but there was a deeper layer, dark and frightening … memories from which her mind would still recoil in a kind of terror.

Early on in the challenge, around the third or fourth day, the novelty of her situation had suddenly evaporated. The thought then gripped her: What if this were all real? In comfortable Bayswater, married to George with his thriving business, living in her big town house, cushioned by servants, it was impossible to imagine herself reduced to such poverty. But there in Dalston, lost in those acres of grimy brick, walking those mean streets where desperation seemed to hang on the very air, the impossible began to assume a nightmarish reality.

Money, a comfortable obsession until then, became a jealous god, demanding all her time, consuming every stray hint of pleasure. She went to sleep gnawing at it and awoke devoured by it.

And then, while the terror was still formless within her (because not capable of reasonable formulation), Theresa voiced the thought that gave it shape: “It’s when you can’t think beyond tonight’s supper, innit? That’s when you’re trapped. Every day it’s like a new prison cell where the window’s too high. You can’t see out, so you can’t plan no escape. But having a few extra coins to rattle, so’s you don’t have to think only about supper and that, well, it’s like standing on a chair so’s you can look out the window, innit. Know what I mean? I wish I could talk like you, only there must be a word for it.”

And it suddenly dawned on Julia that there was, indeed, a word for it – this ability – no, this freedom – to look beyond one’s immediate despair. And that word, much to her surprise, was “responsibility.” The way out of her own astonishing terror was a path that led, almost in one bound, to the founding of the SPRP.

“Responsibility” was such a comforting word. She had been raised on reassuring sermons about the irresponsibility of the working classes, as if they had made a deliberate moral choice to behave like that and therefore had only themselves to blame for their wretchedness.

“They will have these large families …”

“The amount they spend on weddings and funerals! They cast themselves upon the Jews for life.”

“And the drink and the gambling! Just go down any back street. No, no, my dear – their poverty is quite voluntary, I assure you.”

Julia had absorbed such opinions almost from the day she could talk. But the two weeks of the “Ashbury Challenge” had changed her perceptions for ever.

After that she had become quite a regular visitor at the Ashburys, witnessing their rise in the world as some token of personal deliverance. She watched Theresa learning to look out of her prison window and felt the vision as her own. With the extra money came the move to “a better street.” It was, in fact, only around the corner but the streets of working-class Dalston were graded to a sixpence. The Gunner, as everyone called him, took a vegetable allotment beside the railway line, which he cultivated each evening, thus staying out of the pubs. Soon there was a further weekly sixpence to spare, and so the family made yet another move, this time to a house with a parlour and a piano.

“Pray, do enter, Fairy Godmother!” Theresa had said with shy daring as she let Julia into this latest household.

But it suddenly struck Julia that the words could not have been further from the truth. No magician had waved a magic wand over the Ashburys. No pumpkins had been turned into coaches. What they had done thousands of others might also do, if not millions. Already, indeed, one or two of Theresa’s neighbours had taken pattern from her and were on the same highway. That was another thing about Theresa: She was a born teacher.

And so, in the summer of 1919, six eventful years ago, the SPRP, the Society for the Promotion of Responsible Parenthood, had been born. Julia was its creator, fund raiser, and administrator; Theresa its adjutant. She no longer lived in Dalston but in the warden’s apartments of the rather grandly titled “City College,” which was actually housed in the former Frog Lane Brewery, overlooking the City Road Basin of the Regent’s Canal in Islington. There the society ran weekend “starter” courses for housewives from all over the East End.

Theresa had developed a shrewd instinct for sorting out their likely successes from their near-certain failures. Women in the first category were followed up and the more promising among them were selected for longer, five-day courses at the society’s “Country College” – a former makings at Ware, associated with the old brewery. The town of Ware is only a few miles from Allbury, which explains how Julia came to hear of the company’s difficulties before most other people and was thus able to snap up both premises for a fraction of their price in an unforced sale.

Whenever people asked Julia, “How d’you manage to fit it all in?” she thought at once of Theresa, of whom the question could truly be asked. The woman seemed absolutely tireless. She not only ran the courses at the City College, she also trudged the streets to recruit the “students” and to follow up the hopefuls. And on at least one day each week she travelled down to Ware to guide the work of the Country College, too.

“It’s easy,” she would say. “As long as you keep raising the money, Mrs Somerville, I can cheerfully spend it.” And then she’d give a roguish smile. “That was never my difficulty – spending the old spondulicks.”

They were a perfectly matched pair. Julia’s talent, as she had quickly discovered, lay in the business of organization, in raising and managing money. Theresa, on the other hand, could manage people, could teach, and, above all, knew how to ration the hours of the day so that everybody, from the least promising student to her own youngest child, got their fair share of her time. Indeed, so small was the overlap between their two spheres that a daily chat on the phone and a brief meeting once a month was all the consultation they needed. Whenever Julia’s work took her inside other charities and she saw the time that was wasted in committees and in the supervision of routine tasks that needed none – then she knew how she managed to “fit it all in.”

The SPRP’s “head office” (as it was called in anticipation of the branch offices that would one day open in other cities up and down the country) was in a private house in Pembridge Square. When Strong drew up before it on this particular day there was nothing out of the ordinary. She handed him her usual list of minor defects – a “blip” in the french polish, which she had ringed with a yellow wax pencil; an unidentified squeak, probably beyond the hearing of most men, in the rear offside coachwork; and some uneven stitching in the driver’s seat, which Strong himself had pointed out to her; then she left him to return the car to the works. He would bring it back at two, and she would then search for more blemishes … and so on until she could find none.

Dear old Captain Harcourt opened the door for her and said, “A new Rolls-Royce, I see.”

She glanced casually over her shoulder and replied, “Oh, is it?”

And then they went to her office, where they ran through a list of fund-raising events that were to take place within the next few weeks. Julia was no public speaker. In fact, as she often said, she was rotten at doing any of the things that either raised the society’s money or spent it. Her one great talent lay in organizing those geniuses who could do either or both.

After that they went through the ledgers. Then Julia telephoned Warne & Co., the society’s stockbrokers, and discussed their investments, a conversation that almost always ended with her complaint that charities had to keep their funds in such safe investments, especially when equities were roaring away so famously.

Then Mrs Lacy, her secretary, brought her a cup of rosehip tea and a marie biscuit and they talked about Tallulah Bankhead in Noël Coward’s “Fallen Angels” and agreed that the critics who had called it “vulgar, obscene, degenerate …” should visit the City College and have their eyes opened.

Then Julia dictated thank-you letters to donors, large and small. This was so routine she could not prevent her mind from wandering. What would it be like to be a great West End actress? Parties and night clubs and early-morning drives out into the country, where astonished yokels would fall off their bicycles at the sight of your fancy dress … would it be as wonderful as everybody imagined? Funny to think that those sorts of carryings-on were … well, carrying on not half a mile away from Connaught Square. All you needed to do was walk across the open space by Marble Arch and there it was, Mayfair, all around you. Yet in the almost-fourteen years she had lived there she had not once made that journey.

One day she would, of course – just as one day she would see the Pyramids and visit America and fly and learn to play the piano really properly and go walking in the Lake District … But just lately it had begun to dawn on her (or at least to hover at the outer rim of her consciousness) that some of these dreams would never come true.

Her younger sister, Dolly, would be the one to ask about high life in the West End. Wild little Dolly. It had always been her ambition to become a great West End actress – no, not always, but ever since the war. Perhaps that dream would never come true, either. Julia felt a familiar wave of sadness pass through her. She ought to try with Dolly, one more time.

They were an awful family for letting things slide. Since their parents had died, the pull of their diverse ambitions had carried them apart. No one meant it to happen; but they’d done little to stop it, either. Except with Dolly. She really had tried with Dolly.

Agnes was another matter. There she was, out in Kenya, reduced to a dutiful letter at Christmas and dutiful notes on birthdays. Still, when she was so far away, what else could one do?

And then there was Max. What could one say about Max? Prickly, lovable, incompetent … mad? Anyone would imagine that, what with all her trips to Ware, she’d often pop over to see her only surviving brother; but the truth was she couldn’t bear to see the old place running itself down under his “care.” He’d have made a wonderful landowner, Max – two hundred years ago.

No, since their parents had died they had all rather gone their separate ways. One really ought to Do Something about it. She gave an involuntary sigh.

“Is anything the matter, Mrs Somerville?” Mrs Lacy’s face was filled with concern.

“Not in the least. My mind was wandering, I’m afraid. How many are left?”

“Three.”

While she dictated the final letters Julia confined her musings safely to “Passion Island,” which lay concealed in its brown paper wrappers in her handbag, awaiting her next private moment – for Julia could never quite own up to her addiction to romantic novels.

Would beautiful, spoiled, coquettish Joan Allison, already the cause of two suicides, go to San Francisco to stay with the Vandeerings, “one of the oldest and richest families in America,” and there get the comeuppance she so richly deserved? Julia smiled to herself; of course she would. She’d fall hopelessly in love with the handsome young heartthrob who (quite unwittingly) would torment her, just as she had (not quite so unwittingly) tormented poor … whatsizname, the debonair society portrait painter who had then killed himself.

The telephone rang – the direct line into her office. Even as she leaned forward to lift the earpiece from its cradle, Julia had a premonition that something dreadful was about to happen.

STRONG WAS BACK even before Mrs Lacy rescued the earpiece from Julia’s nerveless hand. “Whatever is the matter, Mrs Somerville?” she asked.

“I have to go home.” The voice did not sound remotely like her own. “Something has happened to Mr Somerville.”

No doubt Mrs Lacy made some reply but the words did not register. Nor – for the first time in her life – did Julia notice what sort of car Strong had brought for her. It was a model she had never seen before; that was all she noticed about it. But hadn’t he been going to bring back the Phantom … lord, what did it matter now!

He opened the rear door for her.

“No, no,” she told him. “I’ll sit beside you. I want you to tell me what has happened. I’m afraid I didn’t take in much of what Mr Opie was saying.”

“I didn’t see it myself, madam,” he said as soon as they set off. “But I was there before the doctor moved him …”

“Yes, I had a word with the doctor, too. They both said he’s unconscious. Tell me – they weren’t just being … he’s not dead, is he?”

The world seemed unreal. She had passed these houses every day for years, practically. Why were they so unfamiliar?

“You may set your mind at rest on that, madam. The Guv’nor was breathing regular and he had a good colour and all. It didn’t look that bad a wound to me, not on the surface. I expect you’ll find it’s just concussion.”

“I’m sorry – go on. You were telling me what happened.”

“It seems he was hit by a falling chain. There was an overhead pulley-block, see? And the side plate must have worked loose so the chain sort of jumped off of the drive wheel.”

She closed her eyes and gripped the edges of her seat. The description was too graphic; she could hear the rattle of the chain as it fell … smell the oil …

“I wouldn’t say as it fell from all that high, neither,” Strong added. “Twelve foot, maybe. I’ve seen men hit harder by worse – and off down the pub for a pint next day.”

She reached across and gave his arm a grateful squeeze, but did not risk speaking. Judging by Dr Jordan’s tone of voice, even down the phone, it was nothing so simple as that.

“You never asked what car this is,” Strong prompted, determined to be jovial.

She let him talk. A human voice reading telephone numbers would be better than the silent screams that filled her mind.

“This is W.O.’s new Bentley. The Big Six. Well, she’s six-and-a-half, really. Remember? They was testing the Four in France and they met the new Royce and had a race on the spot? And that was when W.O. decided to go for the Big Six.” There was a pause before he added, “Beautiful, beautiful. Royce’ll have to put their skates on now and all.”

He was still praising the car as they pulled into Connaught Square. When he held open the door for her he said, “The Guv’nor’s going to be all right, madam. I felt it the moment I saw him.”

Too filled with dread to speak, she smiled her gratitude and turned toward her front door. Even at this extremity she could not forget that she was in public. She mounted the two steps calmly and did not fish for the keys until she arrived. Indoors she would be in public, too. The servants would be looking at her, seeking their cue. Later they would say, “Mrs Somerville was magnificent!” – meaning that she showed not a trace of emotion. No matter that inside herself she was on the verge of hysteria, that she wanted to rend her clothes, tear out her hair, fall to her knees and beg God not to do this to her …

Instead, she drew a deep breath and, preparing to be magnificent, lifted the key to the lock.

But someone must have been looking out for her arrival; the door opened before her hand was halfway there. “Oh, madam, what a terrible thing!” Mrs Crooke declared, watching her mistress keenly.

“Is Dr Jordan with him?”

“He’s using the telephone. He wants to call in Sir John Woolaway.”

“Of course. Anybody. The best …” She was already halfway up the stairs. But Mrs Crooke called after her, “They’re in the morning room, madam.”

It was such a shock to see George lying on the carpet – on his side, as if he were only pretending to sleep. He was still in his works overalls. She stood by the doorway and stared at him, then at Dr Jordan, who put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Best place.” Then, quickly returning to the instrument, “Yes! I’m holding on here.” Again the hand over the mouthpiece. “Sir John Woolaway.”

“So I gather.” She spoke at last. “What does he say?”

“No. They’re still trying to find him. He is there. We know that much.”

She knelt beside George.

“Please don’t touch him,” the doctor asked with respectful urgency.

Her hands hung limp at her sides. Now she was close to her husband she could see what damage the chain had done. There was dried blood on the back of his head and the bruising on his neck looked deep and angry. But his breathing was regular. She risked touching his hand; the skin was cold.

Sir John had obviously been located. As soon as he heard the circumstances of the accident and learned of George’s condition, he promised he’d come without delay, and he’d send an ambulance, too.

“Your husband will go directly into University College Hospital,” Jordan told her as he replaced the phone. He spoke as if that already made the outlook twice as hopeful. “Sir John is the best man in the world at this kind of thing, you know.”

But his smile faded when Julia asked, “What exactly is ‘this kind of thing’?”

“Well, we mustn’t go jumping to conclusions,” he said vaguely.

“I must go to my daughter,” she told him. “I hope she hasn’t seen …” she inclined her head toward George.

“No.”

“Good. I’ll post a maid at the door, just in case. And then I’ll pack a bag. I’ll stay at UCH with him.”

“Oh but look …” he began, and then thought better of it.

Young Lydia was terrified. Yet, even at the tender age of ten, she had already absorbed that impulse of her class toward reserve and coolness. She ran to her mother, threw her pale little arms around her, hugged her tight – and uttered not a word.

Miss Valentine gestured toward the door and raised her eyebrows. Julia nodded. The woman tiptoed away.

A maid, a stranger, dropped a curtsy and prepared to follow the governess out, also in silence.

Julia detained her briefly, saying, “You are Miss … I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten.”

“Davis, madam. The new nursery …”

“Yes, of course. Imogen Davis. Of course. Well, Miss Davis, please go and stand outside the morning room door.” Her eyes gestured down at Lydia, still clinging silently, eyes tight shut.

The maid, whose eyebrows had lifted a sardonic half-inch at being called Miss Davis, gave a nod and a wan little smile that was almost conspiratorial. It was not quite a servant’s gesture, though the difference was subtle. Yet, watching her go, Julia, in whom it was quite instinctive to judge new servants, even in such awful circumstances as these, took an instant liking to her. Somehow she radiated confidence and reliability.

The minute they were alone, en famille, the rules changed. Lydia broke down and howled. Julia half-joined in, racking her body with almost silent sobs until, after a minute or so, she caught the distant