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She felt stabbed. "No!"
"It is the only way to save him. You must give him up. "
Maud opened her mouth to object again, but Otto was right, and she could not think of anything to say.
Otto leaned forward and spoke with pressing intensity. "Will you break with him?"
Tears ran down Maud's face. She knew what she had to do. She could not ruin Walter's life, even out of love. "Yes," she sobbed. Her dignity was gone, and she did not care; the pain was too much. "Yes, I will break with him. "
"Do you promise?"
"Yes, I promise. "
Otto stood up. "Thank you for your courtesy in listening to me. " He bowed. "I bid you good afternoon. " He went out.
Maud buried her face in her hands.
Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT - Mid-July 1914
There was a cheval glass in Ethel's new bedroom at Ty Gwyn. It was old, the woodwork cracked and the glass misted, but she could see herself full-length. She considered it a great luxury.
She looked at herself in her underwear. She seemed to have become more voluptuous since falling in love. She had put on a little weight around her waist and hips, and her breasts seemed fuller, perhaps because Fitz stroked and squeezed them so much. When she thought about him her nipples hurt.
Fitz had arrived that morning, with Princess Bea and Lady Maud, and had whispered that he would meet her in the Gardenia Suite after lunch. Ethel had put Maud in the Pink Room, making up an excuse about repairs to the floorboards in Maud's usual apartment.
Now Ethel had come to her room to wash and put on clean underwear. She loved preparing herself for him like this, anticipating how he would touch her body and kiss her mouth, hearing in advance the way he would groan with desire and pleasure, thinking of the smell of his skin and the voluptuous texture of his clothes.
She opened a drawer to take out fresh stockings, and her eye fell on a pile of clean strips of white cotton, the rags she used when menstruating. It occurred to her that she had not washed them since she had moved into this room. Suddenly there was a tiny seed of pure dread in her mind. She sat down heavily on the narrow bed. It was now the middle of July. Mrs. Jevons had left at the beginning of May. That was ten weeks ago. In that time Ethel should have used the rags not once but twice. "Oh, no," she said aloud. "Oh, please, no!"
She forced herself to think calmly and worked it out again. The king's visit had taken place in January. Ethel had been made housekeeper immediately afterward, but Mrs. Jevons had been too ill to move then. Fitz had gone to Russia in February, and had come back in March, which was when they had first made love properly. In April Mrs. Jevons had rallied, and Fitz's man of business, Albert Solman, had come down from London to explain her pension to her. She had left at the beginning of May, and that was when Ethel had moved into this room and put that frightening little pile of white cotton strips into the drawer. It was ten weeks ago. Ethel could not make the arithmetic come out any differently.
How many times had they met in the Gardenia Suite? At least eight. Each time, Fitz withdrew before the end, but sometimes he left it a bit late, and she felt the first of his spasms while he was still inside her. She had been deliriously happy to be with him that way, and in her ecstasy she had closed her eyes to the risk. Now she had been caught.
"Oh, God forgive me," she said aloud.
Her friend Dilys Pugh had fallen for a baby. Dilys was the same age as Ethel. She had been working as a housemaid for Perceval Jones's wife and walking out with Johnny Bevan. Ethel recalled how Dilys's breasts had got larger around the time she realized that you could, in fact, get pregnant from doing it standing up. They were married now.
What was going to happen to Ethel? She could not marry the father of her child. Apart from anything else, he was already married.
It was time to go and meet him. There would be no rolling on the bed today. They would have to talk about the future. She put on her housekeeper's black silk dress.
What would he say? He had no children: would he be pleased, or horrified? Would he cherish his love child, or be embarrassed by it? Would he love Ethel more for conceiving, or would he hate her?
She left her attic room and went along the narrow corridor and down the back stairs to the west wing. The familiar wallpaper with its pattern of gardenias quickened her desire, in the same way that the sight of her knickers aroused Fitz.
He was already there, standing by the window, looking over the sunlit garden, smoking a cigar; and when she saw him she was struck again by how beautiful he was. She threw her arms around his neck. His brown tweed suit was soft to the touch because, she had discovered, it was made of cashmere. "Oh, Teddy, my lovely, I'm so happy to see you," she said. She liked being the only person who called him Teddy.
"And I to see you," he said, but he did not immediately stroke her breasts.
She kissed his ear. "I got something to say to you," she said solemnly.
"And I have something to tell you! May I go first?"
She was about to say no, but he detached himself from her embrace and took a step back, and suddenly her heart filled with foreboding. "What?" she said. "What is it?"
"Bea is expecting a baby. " He drew on his cigar and blew out smoke like a sigh.
