The Winding Road

Book 34: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1925. England is prosperous; the nation has put the war behind it, and hope is in the air. The Jazz Age is in full swing in New York, where Polly Morland is the most feted beauty of the day. But a proposal of marriage from the powerful, enigmatic Ren Alexander takes her by surprise. Her cousin Lennie, expanding his interests from radio to television and talkies, worries that no one knows much about Ren; but his attempts to find out more threaten disaster. In London, the General Strike gives the country another chance to show its stiff upper lip, as everyone turns to and helps out. Emma drives an ambulance again, while Molly runs a canteen, and each unexpectedly finds love, and a new career. But the whirligig is slowing, shadows are gathering over Europe, and the good times are almost over. Morland Place is threatened by the worst disaster of its history, and the Old World reaches out a hand to pluck Polly from the New. The Wall Street Crash brings the fabulous decade to a shattering close, and nothing will ever be quite the same again; but new shoots emerge from the ruins, hope is reborn, and the Morlands prove again that family is everything, and will endure.

Release date: November 3, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 640

Sample

January 1925

Was there anything nicer, Polly wondered, than to lie in your warm bed daydreaming while a bitter New York winter morning
faded from black to grey outside? She was thinking about the night before, when she had gone to the opening of the Palm Beach
Club, a glittering affair of top society people and celebrities, including two movie stars, a congressman and his wife. The
band had been good: the Washingtonians – borrowed from the Hollywood Club, which was closed for refurbishment – featuring
a ‘hot’ trumpeter, Bubber Miley, and an up-and-coming jazz pianist, Edward ‘Duke’ Ellington. There were crowds of onlookers
outside, and dozens of press photographers, and as she had walked from the kerb to the door, the flashes had gone off on all
sides to record the fact that Polly Morgan, of Maison Polly, New York’s newest, most exciting fashion house, was there.


There had been another photographer inside, and when she had shed her wrap she paused for him, turning to make sure he got
the best view of her gown. It was peacock blue and gold, gracefully draped and gathered at the hip, the skirt ending four
inches above the ankle to show off the peacock silk stockings and gold shoes. She had painted her eyes in Egyptian style,
and wore a close-fitting cap made of overlapping petals of gold foil. Being tall and svelte and beautiful, she was her own best advertisement, and made sure to be seen at every important social event wearing one of her own outfits.


It helped, of course, to enter on the arm of one of New York’s most recognisable men, Renfrew Hawthorne Alexander. He was
rich, possessed of business acumen that the wealthiest in New York admired – and it didn’t hurt, Polly thought, that he was
also very handsome. In his mid-thirties, a giant of a man but lithe as a panther, he was whispered, because of his vital dark
looks and thick black hair, to be part Apache Indian. A trace of Indian blood conferred a hint of raffishness, which could
spell social disaster, but the mamas didn’t mind because of his wealth, beautiful clothes and impeccable manners, while it
simply made their daughters squirm deliciously.


Polly had met him last fall at a party given by her friend Julie Gilbert Margesson, the mayonnaise heiress – there was a pot
of Gilbert’s ready-made in every kitchen and delicatessen. She had married Franklin D. Margesson, the beef baron, and was
an enthusiastic patron of the arts and a noted hostess. Polly had found Ren’s height and looks exciting and almost intimidating,
spurring her to be at her sparkling best, and he had plainly taken a shine to her and asked to see her again. They had been
photographed together at the opening of the Met season in September, and now, four months later, he had become one of her
regular escorts.


The social columns had wondered, in tones varying from the mildly interested to the downright bitchy, whether Ren Alexander
would fare any better with the aloof Miss Morland than her previous ‘romances’, such as Jay Van Plesset, Max Schneider and,
most recently, Chase Hazard. Chase was an outstandingly handsome young man and, as well as rejoicing in a splendid name, was
a Whitney cousin and very rich. He had been in love with the cool Miss Morland for months. The fact that these liaisons had
come to nothing added to her reputation as unattainable. She didn’t mind. It was good for business: women wanted to emulate her, have lots of suitors
and the confidence to turn them down.


Ren Alexander was older than the others, which Polly liked. He was sophisticated, at ease with the world, and handled things,
like helping her with her coat, securing taxis, paying waiters and tipping doormen, expertly and without fuss. He was never
at a loss for conversation and, best of all, he never tried to make love to her. She was tired of red-faced, tongue-tied moon-calves
who became tiresomely spoony, or stammered that she was the most b-beautiful g-girl they had ever met and wanted to take her
home to meet their mothers. Ren looked at her sometimes with a glow in his green-gold eyes that told her he admired her, but
that was all. Polly enjoyed being admired, but she wanted no romance.


At the Palm Beach opening, she, Ren Alexander and the Margessons had shared a table with the Roderick Towers – he was a stockbroker and son of a diplomat, and she had been Flora Whitney, daughter of the racehorse breeder Harry Payne Whitney. Ren was a business adviser to both Tower and
Harry Whitney, and Polly suspected she had him to thank that Flora had recently come to her for a gown. It had given her a
foothold on a whole new stratum of New York society. The Whitneys were unimaginably rich: Harry had inherited something like
fifty million dollars, and then had married a Vanderbilt heiress with a score of millions of her own. They moved in a small
circle of the super-rich, who were as far above the merely wealthy as the wealthy were above the ordinary citizen. To gain
them as customers would be the most fabulous good fortune.


So it was important for her business that Polly was seen at the opening with these people, but otherwise she had found much
of the evening dull. Flora Tower had been moody and withdrawn, Julie unusually preoccupied, and the three men had talked politics. There were times when she had looked across at other tables, where the Bright Young People were chatting
about bands, movies, fashions and gossip, and wished herself over there. That had been her set until Ren had entered her life
– still was, when she was not with him.


She had never cared about politics at home in England, and the American sort was a mystery. She could barely yet tell the
Democrats from the Republicans, and the word ‘caucus’ always put her in mind of Alice in Wonderland. But politics was Ren’s greatest passion, besides business and finance. He had many acquaintances in the political world,
and was not unknown at the White House, through his business connections with Herbert C. Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce
(and wryly dubbed Under-secretary of Everything Else because of his wide influence). When Polly did not see Ren for a few
days, she could be fairly sure he was in Washington, talking to important people. It added to his glamour.


The election of Calvin Coolidge over John W. Davis in November 1924 had been a matter of supreme indifference to her, but
she gathered that people did not know quite what to make of the new President, which inclined her towards him: she liked enigmas.
He was cool, withdrawn and aloof, as people said she was; so she would say, if anyone asked, that she liked him. Having an
opinion on the subject went down well with Ren, so she tried to cultivate a few more. But it was hard to concentrate when
the swing music called to her so strongly.


She loved to dance for the same reason that she loved hunting at home – because for a time she could be taken over by sheer
physical sensation and cease to think about anything. Ren was a good dancer, and he didn’t talk much while they danced, for
which she was grateful. It was another of the things she liked about him. She was obliged out of politeness to dance with
the other men at the table, and they talked, dragging her from her mindless ecstasy to answer them. Rod Tower danced well, but she didn’t like him much: he smelt
strongly of drink and held her too close. Frank Margesson was a nice man, but dull, and no dancer.


At midnight Rod Tower was for going on somewhere, but no-one else was keen and the party broke up. Ren had seen her home in
a taxi through the brilliant, frozen canyons of Manhattan. He had parted with her at the street door of the hotel with his
usual proper handshake – except that this time he did not release her hand at once.


‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Your presence made the evening perfect.’ He stood for a moment, looking at her intently, still holding
her hand. Then he bowed over it and kissed it. ‘May I call you later?’


‘Of course,’ Polly said, managing to sound cool and unmoved though inwardly she was flustered. He had never kissed her hand
before, and she was suddenly and intensely aware of his powerful body and coiled strength so close to her. What if he were
to sweep her off her feet – literally? He was big and strong enough to pick her up and make nothing of it, and she would not
have been able to stop him. For a split second she had seen herself pinioned helpless in his arms as he kissed her passionately,
and something inside her had clenched and shuddered in anticipation.


The next instant he had released her hand and stepped back, and she turned away and walked in, past the porter holding the
door for her, feeling faintly ashamed of herself.


Now, in the morning, the image of that moment last night came to her again, and it was disturbing. He was disturbing. His big, dark, slightly farouche maleness was almost frightening, but in a strangely delicious way. She forced
her mind away from the dangerous Mr Alexander and thought instead of what she had to do at work that morning.


Her cousin Lennie had helped her set up the business and his grandmother Ruth had put up most of the money, a vote of confidence in her that she appreciated. Maison Polly was on 34th, just off Fifth Avenue, and in a little more than
a year it had carved out a place for itself in the intensely competitive fashion world. It was tremendously hard work, and
she was proud of what she had achieved. Little Polly Morland of Morland Place, who had been nothing but her father’s daughter,
had taken New York by the scruff of the neck and made it notice her. That was a matter for pride.


She had only to look around her to see the results: her apartment in the Delft was in one of the best parts of the fashionable
Upper West Side. Her bedroom was a bower of peach, cream and café-au-lait, silk curtains over voile at the windows, close-fitted cream carpet on the floor, dainty mock-nineteenth-century-French furniture
with gilded legs, mirror glass everywhere. She thought of the bedroom she had left behind in Morland Place: heavy, dark and
oak-panelled, full of dull objects and ugly furniture that had been in the family for centuries; nothing new, nothing chosen
by her or for her. And no central heating! In winter there had been ice on the inside of the windows until a housemaid came creeping up mouselike to light the fire.


She had come a long way; and most of the time she was too busy to be lonely, or to regret what she had left behind.

The door opened, and her maid, Plummer, came in. ‘Your tray, madam.’

Polly sat up, and Plummer placed it across her knees. Tea and toast – Plummer thought it very refined that she took tea rather
than coffee. She went to draw the curtains. ‘Very sharp out,’ she advised. ‘Shall I put out the smoke-blue tweed?’ Polly nodded,
inspecting the jam dish. Imported cherry jam – she had had great difficulty in weaning Plummer off dull grape jelly.


‘And Mr Manning is in the parlour with the newspapers, madam,’ Plummer went on. ‘He said he could wait half an hour if you
wanted to take your bath.’


‘Oh, no, he can come in,’ Polly said. ‘Just hand me that bed-jacket.’ It was quilted peach satin trimmed with marabou and,
with its high neck and long sleeves, ought to cover her enough to satisfy even old sobersides Lennie. ‘Have you given him
coffee?’


‘I was just about to, madam.’

‘Bring it to him here.’

Cousin Lennie was a cousin at some removes, but she had known him for so many years – he had first come to stay at Morland
Place when she was only fourteen – that she looked on him as a brother.


He, however, did not wish to see Polly as a sister but as something much dearer, which made being received in her bedroom
not entirely comfortable for him. He came in hesitantly and, for a moment, avoided looking at her directly as she sat up in
bed.


‘I could have waited,’ he said.

‘I’m perfectly decent,’ she said, with a shade of impatience. ‘I thought you’d have been gone by now. Weren’t you leaving
first thing this morning?’


Lennie took a chair from beside the window and brought it closer. He was tall, and handsome in an unemphatic way – in fact,
what you noticed most about his face was its niceness rather than good looks. He had also proved an adroit businessman. He had built up a radio business just at the time radio
was becoming popular, so that now he had shops all over New York and up and down the east coast, and was in the process of
building a factory in New Jersey to replace the muddle of workshops from which he had started. Nice, ordinary, kind Lennie
was on his way to becoming very rich.


‘That was the plan,’ he said, sitting down, ‘but something came up last night at the factory, and as I was the only one who
could sort it out, I was there all night.’


She eyed him over her teacup. ‘You look very good for someone who hasn’t been to bed.’

‘Oh, I went home and bathed and changed, but I’d missed my train. I’ll have to go tomorrow instead.’


Polly was impressed by the equanimity with which he was taking it. Crossing America, rather than travelling up and down the
coast, was a big undertaking. It took four days and three nights, and involved a Pullman train, the Century, to Chicago, a
bus or taxi from one Chicago station to the other, and then the Chief to the west coast. In summer it was too hot, in winter
it was too cold, and it was rarely safe to open the windows. It was a crowded, reasonably uncomfortable five days lost from
your life, and the only good thing to say about it was that it was better than doing the same journey by covered wagon.


Plummer came in with his coffee; when she had gone again, he went on, ‘Wouldn’t it be grand if one could fly? I wonder no-one’s
thought of starting up an airship service. It would have to go a long way round to avoid the mountains, but with comfortable
accommodation on board that wouldn’t matter.’


‘All the way to California?’ Polly said, spreading cherry jam thickly on a slice of toast. She offered him the slice, and
he took it absently, so she spread herself another. ‘What exactly are you going there for, anyway?’


‘To see if conditions are right to start a string of stores along the west coast, the way I have over this side. A lot of
rich people live in Los Angeles.’


‘Beverly Hills?’ she said. ‘That’s where all the cinema stars live, isn’t it?’

‘So they say. Think what a good advertisement it would be if one of my radiograms was photographed at Pickfair.’

‘I’ve read Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford give fabulous dinners,’ Polly said. ‘Everyone important goes, not just film
actors – though they say Charlie Chaplin lives right next door. Do you think you’ll get invited?’


‘I will be one day, when everyone who is anyone has a Manning’s radio. The west coast is ripe for picking: radios, radiograms – and for those beach parties, I’m designing a new
portable gramophone.’ He smiled. ‘I thought Pola Negri might like one in lizardskin, with her initials picked out in diamonds,
so she can dance on the sand for Rudolph Valentino.’


‘Oh, you have it all worked out!’ Polly laughed. ‘Hollywood will eat you up. You’ll have your head turned by some sultry star
and never come back to us.’


‘I’ll always come back,’ he said seriously.

She turned her eyes away. She didn’t want him to think she was encouraging him.

He saw this with resignation. He knew she was nursing a broken heart – some man she had loved who had been killed during the
war – but he was willing to wait, his whole life if need be. She had said she could never love anyone else – well, neither
could he. ‘You won’t get yourself into any trouble while I’m away, will you?’ he said lightly.


She looked at him again, and decided he was joking. ‘No, what trouble could I get into?’ she said.

‘I’m afraid last night’s triumph might have turned your head.’

‘After last night’s triumph, as you call it, all the new orders will keep me too busy for mischief.’

‘Then I’m surprised you’re idling in bed, and not in your office already.’

‘I shall get up as soon as you’ve gone. But I’m glad you called in.’

‘I couldn’t go without saying goodbye. And to tell you you looked extremely beautiful last night in your Egyptian costume.’

‘How do you know?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘I’ve seen the papers,’ he said. ‘A very nice photo of you in the lobby.’ He looked at her humorously. ‘Why? Did you think
I was hanging around outside the Palm Beach to catch a glimpse of you, like some poor hopeless swain?’


She had the grace to blush. ‘The headdress wasn’t actually Egyptian, but nobody noticed. I copied it from a Phrygian cap in
the museum. It was too hot for dancing in, really,’ she admitted.


‘It looked good, though. No sign of the Tut-Ankh-Amun craze fading?’

‘It had better not, before my spring collection, or I’ll be ruined.’

He looked down at the half-eaten toast in his hand to avoid her eyes as he said diffidently, ‘You and Alexander looked handsome
side by side in the paper. He’s a striking fellow.’


‘I suppose so,’ she said cautiously.

‘Rich, too. I wonder how come he’s not married by now.’

‘Perhaps he prefers being single,’ Polly said. ‘Some people do, you know.’

She didn’t say, ‘Like me, for instance,’ but he heard the thought anyway. He looked up, and smiled, lighting his face in a
way that made him seem very attractive. Polly felt kind towards him, and sorry. She knew why he was still single, and it made her sad.


‘Well, I’d better get going,’ he said. ‘Much as I’d like to sit and chat with you all day …’

She saw him staring absently at his piece of toast and said, ‘Give that to me. You don’t want to get jam on your suit.’

‘Jam,’ he said. ‘How English. One day, I must introduce you to the delights of peanut butter and jelly.’

‘Sounds revolting,’ she said cheerfully.

‘You mustn’t belittle the very heart of American cuisine.’

He borrowed her napkin to wipe his fingers, and stooped to kiss her cheek. ‘Be good,’ he said. And then he was gone.

She had a long-standing appointment for luncheon with Lennie’s Granny Ruth. With her late start she would have been glad to cancel, but one didn’t ‘chuck’ a grand Southern lady like her, so she took herself along at the due time to Brevoort’s
Hotel. Granny Ruth was devoted to the Café there, saying it was the only place in New York where you could get real French
food. Since she had never been out of America, Polly wondered how she knew; but it was not a thing to say to her, unless you
wanted to feel the sharp side of her tongue.


Ruth had virtually brought Lennie up, after his mother died when he was a baby. She lived with him and Lennie’s father, Patrick,
an architect, in a big old-fashioned apartment off Sixth. Lennie said there was plenty of room for all of them, and until
he was married there was no point in his having a separate establishment. Polly had been around them all long enough now to
know the real reason: Ruth would have been heartbroken if he went. She would never have shown it, though: she was seventy-nine
and had lived through the Civil War in the South and the even more terrible Reconstruction after it. Grit and pride were bone-deep
in her. A lady doesn’t complain, she had been told every day as a rebellious child; and in old age such rules now sustained
her. She never complained – and her back never touched the chair she sat in.


She was glad to see Polly, and rose to greet her with a kiss as if she had never known what stiffness was.

‘I brought you this,’ Polly said. ‘I got an extra pot when I ordered it.’

Ruth took the little pot and looked at the label. ‘Confiture de Cerises,’ she read. She had a hint of Southern to her accent even yet, and the French sounded pleasant in her soft, slow voice. ‘How
nice. Thank you, honey. You know how I like Cont’nental jelly. Sit down, dear, and tell me what you’ve been doing. How was
the opening last night? Was your costume a success?’


Polly told her everything – Ruth liked details. ‘There was a very good photograph of the gown in the paper this morning, and I think there’ll be more in the Sundays,’ she concluded.


‘Lennie saw it this morning,’ Ruth said. ‘He said you and Alexander make a handsome couple.’

‘We’re not a couple,’ Polly said, sensing disapproval.

‘Are you not?’ Ruth gave her a penetrating look. ‘You seem to be spending an awful lot of time with him lately.’


‘He’s just one of my escorts,’ Polly said, trying to sound indifferent; but his big, male image was in her mind again, making
her self-conscious.


Ruth noticed the blush. ‘How much do you know about him?’ she demanded.

‘Hardly anything, but what does it matter? I enjoy his company, and he’s a good dancer,’ Polly said. ‘What more do I need
to know?’


‘Nothing, dear, not a thing, as long as you don’t mean to marry him.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Polly said, annoyed and trying not to show it.

Ruth tapped her hand. ‘Hoity-toity. I’m allowed to ask you tricksy questions. What’s the good of being old as Methuselah if
you can’t be cussed and annoy people? Now Ren Alexander’s mighty rich, that I do know, and he’s good-looking, if you like that sort of thing. Better than that washed-out Hazard boy who’s been making a fool
of himself over you this half-year, anyway. But he has no family that I’ve heard of, and he seems to have come from nowhere.
And I never can make out what is his line of business.’


Polly didn’t really know either. ‘The business of making money, I guess.’

‘Is he a stockbroker?’ Ruth suggested.

‘I don’t think so. I know what one of those is. I think he just invests money and makes a profit and invests the profit in something else.’


‘A speculator,’ Ruth said, with a hint of disdain.

‘Maybe. But some very rich people seek his advice, so he must know what he’s doing.’


‘Hmph,’ said Ruth, unconvinced. She liked there to be something tangible behind money. It should come from building railroads
or ranching cattle or digging up diamonds. ‘Be that as it may, a man with no family’s not to be trusted. Money comes easy
and goes easy when it’s not family money, and doesn’t have its feet under some good, solid table. So if he makes you an offer,
you mind and take advice before you give him an answer.’


‘There won’t be an offer,’ Polly said, ‘because he isn’t sweet on me. And if there was, I wouldn’t accept it. I never intend to marry.’


Ruth eyed her sternly. ‘Don’t you know what makes God laugh? It’s girls saying, “I never intend to marry”! Someone will come
for you one day, and pick you right off the tree like a ripe big peach. Just ’cause some fellow you fancied got killed in
the war don’t mean you can waste yourself away.’


‘I don’t know what you—’ Polly began, and bit her lip, disconcerted that Ruth knew so much.

Ruth’s scolding tone softened. ‘I know, honey, I know. I loved my husband Pick so much it hurt, and when he got killed at
Manassas I thought I’d die. But people like you and me don’t die. God has better things for us to do.’ Her scowl reappeared.
‘Just don’t you go marrying any old person because you think your heart’s in the ice-box. It’ll thaw one day, and when it
does, you don’t want to be stuck married to someone you don’t give a rap about.’


‘I don’t need to marry anyone,’ Polly said, annoyed again. Why did everyone feel they could tell her what to do? Lennie did it all the time – and Cousin
Ashley, who had charge of her money, and his wife Lizzie, who seemed to feel she ought to be a mother to Polly. I’m twenty-five years old, almost, she thought. When do I get to say what I do?

‘Need and want are different things. Besides, a woman’s not complete without a man, any more’n the other way round.’ Ruth saw the line of stubbornness appear between Polly’s brows.
‘You can make mule faces at me all you want,’ she said, ‘but someone’s got to look out for you. You think you’re up to snuff, but you’re still wet behind the ears, ’specially when it comes to
men. It’s a dam’ disgrace that your father lets you live in an apartment all on your own.’


‘The Morgan twins did,’ Polly said, her frown disappearing now they were on a familiar circuit. ‘They had a town house on
Fifth together and they were only sixteen.’


‘And look how that turned out,’ Ruth said with triumph. ‘Both married at seventeen to shocking unsuitable men – Thelma to that Converse divorcé,
and that won’t last, and Mercedes, or Gloria as she calls herself now—’


‘You can’t say she didn’t marry well,’ Polly interrupted.

‘If you think money is the only thing that matters. Reggie Vanderbilt’s more than twice her age, and—’ She remembered too
late the reason Polly had made her home in New York and refused to go home: that her father had remarried, a woman thirty
years his junior. She changed tack quickly: ‘And that’s enough of talking about other people’s business. I wonder how far
Lennie’s got. What do you think of his plan to open up on the west coast?’


Polly gladly accepted the new topic, and the conversation continued on more comfortable lines.

The winter day had ended by the time she left the office, stepping out into the bustle of Fifth Avenue, dark and brilliant,
full of streetlamps and headlamps, lit shop windows, slow-moving traffic and brisk pedestrians heading for the bus stops and
subway stations. It had turned even colder, biting at her nose and ears, so cold it even hurt her eyeballs. Paper-sellers
had the evening editions out, their breath smoking up on the frozen air as they shouted the headlines; street vendors were bobbing about beside their little carts, blowing on their fingers, and there was a smell of pretzels and
hot nuts on the air. Polly felt a sense of exhilaration. Manhattan lay before her, promising her that, whatever she chose
to do, she would have an exciting evening. The sense of freedom the place gave her filled her with energy. The possibilities
seemed endless to a bright, healthy young woman with money of her own.


She took a cab home. Plummer was waiting for her. ‘Some flowers arrived for you, madam,’ she said, her voice more impressed
than such a normal event warranted.


They’d be from Lennie, Polly thought – it was like him to send her flowers because he was going to be out of town for a while.
Or possibly Chase, still pursuing the impossible.


When she saw them, she saw why Plummer was impressed. January was a difficult month for flowers, with nothing but rather strained-looking
hothouse blooms. But when Polly drew apart the waxed paper, she saw white roses – a dozen of them – and from the scent that
arose she knew they had been grown outside. Definitely not Chase. But where would Lennie get real roses in January?


‘They must have cost the earth,’ she murmured. And white roses, so unusual, where a lesser man would have sent yellow (safe) or pink (sentimental). What a foolish gesture! She was
touched and just a little exasperated, for she had made her feelings known to him so often. She took up the card that lay
on top.


Nothing less than white roses would do for the most beautiful woman in New York. In admiration, R.H. Alexander.

Polly felt her cheeks warm at the words. She looked up and saw from Plummer’s expression that she had read the card before Polly came in. It was annoying, but there was nothing one could do. Any servant would do the same – the difference
was that an English servant would have been better at concealing it. ‘Put them in water, will you?’ she said shortly.


She had hardly got to her room when the house telephone rang, and a moment later Plummer appeared, tau