Page 57 of A Family Affair
On hearing this Chuck twisted the biscuit wrapping to seal the pack and, after placing them on the nest of tables, turned his body so he was looking directly at her.
It was as he waited that Clarissa realised something. A fact that had never occurred to her before then. That she had never told another living person her story. Only the portrait of Eleonora knew Clarissa’s truth, and it was about time someone else listened. And if she was going to tell anyone, it had to be in her own words, and to Chuck.
CHAPTER43
Chamberlain Manor, Cheshire. 1941
Acloud hung over Chamberlain Manor for months after the news that dear Eleonora was missing in France. Mother took to her bed and whenever she did venture downstairs, she insisted on being left alone to whatever thoughts made her cry so much.
I never gave up hope though, and it became an obsession, watching for the postie and checking the mail as soon as I took it from his hands. Spring and summer dragged, and in the July we had a visit from Uncle Oscar, my father’s younger brother.
He resided in London, and he too worked at the War Office so I prayed that he would bring news of Eleonora. I didn’t much care for Oscar. He had a handlebar moustache and greased back hair and piggy eyes that fixed you with a stare if you dared speak before being spoken to. He had no time for children, or, it seemed, women, and often spoke in a dismissive tone to my mother.
I think Mother tolerated Oscar to keep the peace. That was her way. Especially because the merest thing, like a grubby thumbprint on the silver teapot, would send her into a tizzy. Mother was fragile and had lived a sheltered and charmed life, in fact, I remember once I was sick in bed and I said the light hurt my eyes and asked her if she’d close the curtains and you know what she did? She rang the bell and got the maid to do it! I don’t think she’d ever opened or drawn the curtains in her life. Imagine that.
Mother knew her place in life, and she also knew her place in her marriage. That’s just how it was. She was above menial tasks but below the male members of our family and as I grew older, I saw it more and more.
Take Uncle Oscar for instance. Mother couldn’t abide him, yet because he was her brother-in-law she was expected to tolerate him just like she did her boorish husband, my chauvinistic father.
I knew Oscar treated all our staff – especially the maids – appallingly, tweaking bottoms and being incapable of keeping his slimy hands to himself. I heard that via Old Cookie when I crept into the larder to steal some biscuits. I was such a little sneak but needs must, and how else would I have known what was going on in my own home?
Oscar was a gambler and a drunk, too. And I later learned he’d played fast and loose with the family finances and sailed close to the wind with his investments and the wives of his friends. No wonder his wife preferred to leave him to his own devices and live a quiet life in Berkshire while he did what he did in his Chelsea townhouse.
His visit during that summer of 1941 sticks in my mind for three reasons. One, was because there’d been a lot of whispering in Father’s study and Mother had taken umbrage about him tipping up out of the blue, and refused to dine in Oscar’s presence. The atmosphere was dreadful, and for once I was happy to be sent to my room.
Then, there was a bit of a to-do when Oscar was found passed out in the rose garden one morning by the gardener. Mother and I were taking breakfast alone, a rare treat for me and I suspected she wanted some female company.
When my uncle was discovered, Kingsley called for assistance and as usual I was ushered upstairs out of the way. Peeved, I cleverly escaped Miss Cleves by saying I needed the lavatory, and watched from the landing. It was the most entertaining thing that had happened for a while, seeing Oscar ferried to the front door in a wheelbarrow, clinging to a whisky bottle, shoeless, flies undone and bedraggled. Mother was mortified.
The third thing happened the day after Oscar went back to London and the house breathed again. I was summoned to Father’s study where my pinched-faced Mother awaited. While she remained silent and obedient, I was told that Uncle Oscar had secured me a place at a very fine boarding school in Sussex. According to his contacts at the War Office, it wasn’t safe living so near to Manchester and the threat of more raids.
I wasalmostten years old. I spent most of my time being sent to my room or being told that ‘I wouldn’t understand’ by everyone from Mother to Cookie. And Miss Cleves was permanently exasperated by my constant questions about everything under the sun. But evensilly old meknew that living in the middle of the Cheshire countryside meant I wasn’t in any danger and suspected they simply wanted me out of the way.
I suppose I was my own worst enemy and being inquisitive resulted in being shuffled off to school where I remained until the end of the war and beyond. I only came home for holidays and truthfully, as hard as boarding was at the beginning, I began to miss my parents less and less. The only person I did miss was Eleonora.
Her memorial service was held in 1946 and attended by my parents, myself, Uncle Oscar, and the staff, officiated over by the vicar. They erected a stone plinth and on it, was a gold plaque inscribed with the words –in loving memory of Eleonora Agatha Louisa Chamberlain. Lost but not forgotten.
That was it. My father didn’t even say a few words. I remember being incensed by the meagre ceremony and inscription and seethed about it all day. It was as though they were paying lip service, the prayers, the gathering, a glass of sherry in the dining room then chop-chop, back to work. It was all a sham.
I’d learned by then that no good would ever come of approaching my parents with regards to Eleonora, so I kept my counsel and went back to school. I actually preferred it there with my friends, amongst women and away from obnoxious male family members and my fey, weeping wreck of a mother.
The effects of the war years rumbled on for a while. We were still hungry and missing those lost overseas, but slowly we got on with it and settled back into our everyday lives.
For my eighteenth birthday my parents bought me a beautiful thoroughbred. Apart from Eleonora walking through the door, it was the best present I could have received. Spirit became my soulmate. I spent every hour I could with him because he filled a huge void in my life.
Like my very special friend, Amelia, from school did. Amelia went home to India after the war and even though we corresponded for many years, I never saw her dear face again. And of course there was always the hole left by Eleonora. As for my parents, I don’t think I missed something I never really had.
Spirit made up for all of that.
I won’t bore you with the tedium of being a female member of the upper classes, only to say that, according to Mother, my main purpose in life was to find myself a husband. I had other ideas.
I secretly had ambitions to start a stud farm at Chamberlain, borne from my love of Spirit and the desire to have a purpose in life. Not to be a good wife and a baby making machine. I wanted more. Which was why I’d bravely mooted the idea with my father who promised to mull things over while I was on holiday in Switzerland.
Much to my annoyance Mother accompanied me to Verbier as my chaperone, like we were characters in a gothic novel. While I took to the slopes in order to escape, she entertained herself on the social circuit, one eye on the quest for a suitable spouse.
It finally happened on the green run. That’s where, quite by accident and with a resounding wallop, I ran into the love of my life. Marquess Ursula Bonham-Jones, wife of Cyril, the Rt Honourable member of Parliament for Hampstead.
Once we were over the shock of the collision and had checked for broken bones, we made our way down the slope and headed straight to the lounge-bar. From the word go, there was something so magical and alive about Ursula. I’d never met anyone like her in my life. She made my heart and my world glow with just the sound of her laugh. The way she looked at me with glistening grey eyes. And when she ran elegant fingers through her ice-blonde hair I could only think thoughts that made me blush, all over, in every part of my body.
