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Lloyd knew he was right. "We'll have to take him with us."
Boy opened his eyes and said: "Williams."
"What is it, Boy?"
Boy seemed to grin. "You can marry the bitch now," he said.
Then he died.
viii
Daisy cried when she heard. Boy had been a rotter, and treated her badly, but she had loved him once, and he had taught her a lot about sex; she felt sad that he had been killed.
His brother, Andy, was now a viscount and heir to the earldom; Andy's wife, May, was a viscountess; and Daisy's name, according to the elaborate rules of the aristocracy, was the Dowager Viscountess Aberowen--until she married Lloyd, when she would be relieved to become plain Mrs. Williams.
However, that might be a long time coming, even now. Over the summer, hopes of a quick end to the war came to nothing. A plot by German army officers to kill Hitler on July 20 failed. The German army was in full retreat on the eastern front, and the Allies took Paris in August, but Hitler was determined to fight on to the terrible end. Daisy had no idea when she would see Lloyd, let alone marry him.
One Wednesday in September, when she went to spend the evening in Aldgate, she was greeted by a jubilant Eth Leckwith. "Great news!" Ethel said when Daisy walked into the kitchen. "Lloyd has been selected as prospective parliamentary candidate for Hoxton!"
Lloyd's sister, Millie, was there with her two children, Lennie and Pammie. "Isn't it wonderful?" she said. "He'll be prime minister, I bet."
"Yes," said Daisy, and she sat down heavily.
"Well, I can see you're not happy about that," said Ethel. "As my friend Mildred would say, it went down like a cup of cold sick. What's the matter?"
"It's just that having me as a wife isn't going to help him get elected." It was because she loved him so much that she felt so bad. How could she blight his prospects? But how could she give him up? When she thought like this her heart felt heavy and life seemed desolate.
"Because you're an heiress?" said Ethel.
"Not just that. Before Boy died he told me Lloyd would never get elected with an ex-Fascist as his wife." She looked at Ethel, who always told the truth, even when it hurt. "He was right, wasn't he?"
"Not entirely," Ethel said. She put the kettle on for tea, then sat opposite Daisy at the kitchen table. "I'm not going to say it doesn't matter. But I don't think you should despair."
You're just like me, Daisy thought. You say what you think. No wonder he loves me: I'm a younger version of his mother!
Millie said: "Love conquers all, doesn't it?" She noticed that four-year-old Lennie was hitting two-year-old Pammie with a wooden soldier. "Don't bash your sister!" she said. Turning back to Daisy, she went on: "And my brother loves you to bits. I don't think he's ever loved anyone else, to tell you the truth."
"I know," said Daisy. She wanted to cry. "But he's determined to change the world, and I can't bear the thought that I'm standing in his way."
Ethel took the crying two-year-old onto her knee, and the toddler calmed down immediately. "I'll tell you what to do," she said to Daisy. "Be prepared for questions, and expect hostility, but don't dodge the issue and don't hide your past."
"What should I say?"
"You might say you were fooled by Fascism, as millions of others were, but you drove an ambulance in the Blitz, and you hope you've paid your dues. Work out the exact words with Lloyd. Be confident, be your irresistibly charming self, and don't let it get you down."
"Will it work?"
Ethel hesitated. "I don't know," she said after a pause. "I really don't. But you have to try."
"It would be awful if he had to give up what he loves most for my sake. Something like that could destroy a marriage."
Daisy was half hoping Ethel would deny this, but she did not. "I don't know," she said again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1945 ( I )
Woody Dewar got used to the crutches quickly.
