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Chapter Four
Leo Dreams of England
New York, 1912
At the New York hospital where they took him to repair the leg shattered in his fall from the Titanic, Leo had ample time to reflect on the events that had brought him so far from friends and family. His memories of his family were so vivid that the scenes moved into his consciousness like a stage play. In his mind's eye he visualized the day of Bleriot's flight from France, across the English Channel and onto their garden wall in the house in Beckenham...the day the fat hit the fire.
He remembered coming home from university for a fortnight whilst they renovated the engineering wing and the students' rooms of the ancient stone buildings. Installed in the library of his parent's house, he began to work on his massive assignment on the properties of steel.
His sisters' voices kept intruding from the small adjacent sitting room, where the two girls took their tea. Sybil was reading aloud from a book by "The Duchess" as she often did when she and April were abandoned at teatime.
He recalled rising to close the door and catching a glimpse of April about to pop a tiny cucumber sandwich into her mouth in a way Mummy would never approve.
"This whole conversation between the heroine and her cousin is nonsensical," she told Sybil.
Intending to stop only a moment, Leo got caught up in the scene. Sybil read so well, with such expression, that her sisters often said she should try the stage.
" 'Marry him? Why did I marry him?" she asked with a laugh. 'That's just it. You see...the fact is... I don't know myself.' " Sybil glanced at April over the top of the book.
"They both know quite well that she married him because the real fate worse than death in those days was spinsterhood," said April.
"Quite. Still is."
He had forgotten how frivolous his sisters were, their minds constantly on the steeplechase of marriage. One couldn't blame them. Girls who failed to catch a husband were doomed to a life of humiliation.
"Mummy herself is the best example of it. Whatever would have become of her if Aunt Bea had not died in childbirth, freeing Father?"
"It is obvious that if Aunt Bea had lived, Mummy would still be pottering about as a glorified nanny to Aunt Bea's offspring. Egg and Chloe were just tiny babies then." Sybil took a sip of her tea. "What else? She couldn't do anything but needlework and she was always plain." Sybil picked up A Modern Circe and prepared to read on.
April put up her finger. "Stop a moment and have a fruit tart —or would you prefer lemon cake? Cook has outdone herself."
"Cook expected we should all be here; instead Fawn slipped out to her friend's house bearing scones, arriving just at their tea time."
"And Father dragged Mummy off to meet Monsieur Bleriot, although she'd much rather have gone on one of her interminable errands of charity."
"You must admit, April, that Mummy's terribly kind," said Sybil.
"Oh, wonderfully, quite the most selfless person I know. But not too brilliant," said April, stuffing a piece of lemon cake into her mouth.
"Really, April, your manners."
April ignored her. "But then, who could look brilliant compared to Father and Egg?"
"Certainly not Leo."
"He's such a darling. I much prefer him to Egg."
"That's because he's our real brother. But he is a darling," said Sybil.
"He's ever so much more practical than Egg," April maneuvered a tart onto a hand-painted china plate. "And so amusing."
"I often feel put in the shade, don't you?" Sybil settled the book on her lap.
"Of course, they treat us like lovelorn geese."
"Being women."
"Exactly. Men think we're only good for babies." April sighed.
"Did you read The Odd Women ?"
"Don't you remember? I read the entire book under the covers, hiding it from Nanny. She thought it shocking because it advocated women working —even running for Parliament." April paused to sip her tea.
"Anyway, in The Odd Women , Dr. Madden died and left six daughters to be married off, with only eight hundred pounds patrimony among them." She reached for a bit of tatting she had laid aside and began to work absently on it.
Sybil nodded. "I remember. They had to "sponge on more or less well-to-do families in the lower middle class —people of no inherited refinement —people, as they put it, 'consumed with a disease of vulgar pretentiousness, inflated with the miasma of democracy.' It was dreadful."
"Fawn says all that is changing."
"Our sister is very advanced, enamoured of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury crowd."
"How amusing. Fawn thinks of herself an intellectual. She is incredibly dense, actually."
Sybil picked up The Duchess' latest novel and resumed reading:
My uncle, when he died left me without a sou. John Dundas was twenty years older than I, and hardly my beau-ideal, but he adored me, so I gave in to circumstances and married him."
Sybil put the book down. "No wonder marriage is such a crashing bore."
"Perhaps, but the choice seems to be rich and bored, or poor and miserable."
"I don't know. We Phillips girls appear in a different position —well off, and two brothers to bring in prospective suitors."
"Would you be interested in any of those twits Egg drags in?" April asked.
"I must admit intellectuals do bore me. But Leo knows battalions of attractive men."
"Charming scoundrels," said April.
"Like Leo." Sybil agreed. "They'll outgrow it. I expect Leo will be a great success in life."
"Probably end up in trade, the way he's headed."
"That would sink us. As it is we are just on the edges of polite society, with one foot in, so to say." Sybil snapped the book shut placing it on the small table next to her chair.
"The slightest vulgarity could finish us all off. Leo is terribly ambitious."
"True, he is possessed of a passionate determination to succeed," Sybil said.
"Mummy says that under his affable exterior, he has a will of iron."
Sybil nodded. "There is something dreadfully vulgar about such ambition. Luckily he doesn't go about society boasting of it."
"The women are frightfully keen on Leo," April said. "You know how women feel about success: they go for it."
"We of the younger generation, yes. But the vulgar instincts of the climber are an anathema to..."
April broke in, "As it is, some older people question Father's position, whether he is truly a professional man, despite his learned books."
"His editorials on political reform and his books are acceptable; it's that advertising firm he's got involved with," Sybil explained.
"I expect that's where the money is. He can't make much with the rest."
"By the way, April, engineers aren't tradesmen. Leo is reading metallurgy at Glasgow."
"I know, but have you caught any of those rows between Leo and Egg. Leo's all for trade, he plans to..."
The door burst open and Fawn flung herself wildly through it, her coat flying, an agonized expression on her arrogant face. She stood in the middle of the parlor examining it as if she had not had tea there almost every day for sixteen years. Sybil and April sat transfixed.
She burst into tears —Fawn, who never, ever, wept. "I can't bear it," she sobbed.
"Here, have a cup of tea and a fruit tart," said April, who, like her mother, thought food the answer to every problem.
Fawn waved it away. She burst into a renewed frenzy of sobbing which lasted five minutes by the antique grandfather's clock, the only piece of furniture Father brought with him when he married Aunt Bea years ago and moved into Beckenham House.
The two sisters listened to the clock ticking away. Suddenly it chimed, a clamorous, urgent chime.
Fawn pulled herself together. Very deliberately she opened her purse and drew out a long slim cylinder. As her sisters watched she removed a square gold packet and began tapping it on the edge of the table. A cigarette slid out. She inserted it carefully into the cigarette holder. Her slender fingers caressed the sleek holder as she edged it between her full, pouty, red lips.
Sybil and April stared. They had never before seen a woman smoke, much less their seventeen-year-old sister. They watched her take out a tiny box of matches and hold the flame to the dangling cigarette. To their surprise she inhaled deeply with no apparent difficulty.
Puffs of smoke drifted over toward the two girls. Sybil dispersed the gray vapor with her book.
Standing quietly in the library door, Leo observed Sybil becoming cross. Fawn, the youngest of his sisters had been a trial to her family since the day she was born. Obstinate, unruly, spoiled, she had caused Mummy no end of grief and had driven off countless Nannies. Father had long ago given up attempting to deal with her. His contribution was the best girl's finishing school he could find.
When Fawn finally spoke, it was in a plummy public school accent, a wonderful imitation of her classmates who came from some of the best families of London. "And how, pray tell, have Mr. and Mrs. Adam Phillips managed to get round the Deceased Wife's Sister Law?
"You can't be serious," said April.
"Deadly serious."
"When was that law passed? asked Sybil, her forehead wrinkled.
"Obviously between the time Aunt Bea died and the time Mother and Father might have got round to marrying."
"No!" cried April.
Fawn's face once more assumed a supercilious cast and her voice the mushy tones of the very posh. "As a matter of fact, one hears constantly the rumor that the Phillips never did bother to marry."
"They wouldn't dare say such things of us."
"There's worse," said Fawn. "One of the boys horned in , sotto voce , "yet produced four lovely bastards."
"How cruel," said April "And they are not counting Egg and Chloe."
Fawn flashed her sister a disdainful look. "Aunt Bea and Papa were properly married, so their children can't be called bastards."
"Where did all this take place? In the drawing room? How rude." Sybil poured herself a cup of tepid Earl Grey.
April wolfed down the rest of the cucumber sandwiches.
"No, in the card room," Fawn replied. "Ever since an article appeared in the Times advocating the repeal of the Deceased Wife's Sister Law , everyone must have been gossiping about us behind our backs."
"What did you respond?"
"I stood up, faced all of them, and said: 'To all the gossip I hear, I'll give no faith', to quote Lady Huxley, whose good breeding always told."
"Well done!" When Leo's deep voice resonated from the library they all looked startled. How long had their brother been standing in the doorway? The question was written on their faces. Leo was uncommonly tall and well built with the enormous shoulders and chest of an oarsman, topped by a majestic head. This magnificent head and the mane of golden-brown hair that crowned it accounted for his nickname, Leo.
April jumped up and ran to Leo. "I don't understand," she cried.
"Mama and Papa are not married. That's the long and short of it," said Fawn.
"It's not true, is it, Leo?"
"Unfortunately, it is." Leo stroked April's long brown hair.
"How do you know?" asked Sybil, her prominent cheekbones fiery red.
"Father told me long, long ago, in the days when we two used to have our early morning chats in the back garden —before Egg came back from Cambridge and started spraying the flowers with streams of political invective."
"But —"April began.
"Once upon a time they could have married, but now it's too late, the law forbids it." Leo explained.
"We are ruined," said Fawn, nose wrinkled like a snarling Rottweiler.
"Ruined," agreed Sybil. "You know how people are —straight-laced as a dress maker's dummy. Respectability is all." She'd twisted her table napkin into a pink string.
Leo laughed. "The higher up you go on the social scale, the less true that is. Aristocrats are not respectable at all. We shall just have to travel in higher circles."
"That's easy for men to say, but what about us girls. If this is true our marriage prospects have diminished fearfully," Sybil said.
Fawn straightened her back. "I shall go to London and join Bloomsbury."
April wailed. "I shall probably be a spinster like the Odd Women."
"Don't be silly. Not with your looks. None of you girls have to worry. Between your beauty and your dowry you should soon be swimming in suitors."
"We shall not be received in society. You'll see, Leo. We are not men. We can't afford to be thought wicked."
Leo snorted. "In some sets girls pride themselves on being fast. They address men by their Christian names and talk about Bertie's mistresses, and even smoke."
Sybil was inconsolable.
Chloe arrived back from her art class and joined the discussion. Leo went and sat beside her on the divan to explain their agitation. He observed, not for the first time, that Chloe was one of those perfectly at ease, natural rarities with an innate aversion to snobbery, yet so well bred that even those at the very top admired her.
Her mother, Beatrice, had been the beautiful Haig sister, always surrounded by admirers even after her marriage to Papa. Chloe took after her mother in the matter of beauty and her father in the matter of brains. Leo had often thought that his own sisters, though beauties, resembled their mother, Emmaline, the gears of their minds stripped at birth.
On hearing the problem Chloe looked disbelieving. "It's hard to view Aunt Emmaline as a fallen woman. Speaking of prim and proper..."
"It's the Scot in her," said Leo. "I actually don't think people who know her will be able to swallow the idea that she's a fallen woman."
"Nobody in Paris gives a fig what the bourgeoisie think," said Chloe. "When I'm older I plan to escape to Paris and become a painter."
"Unfortunately London is not Paris," said Sybil.
Leo looked at Chloe fondly. His sisters often chided him with loving his half-sister more than his own flesh and blood. Although Leo and Egbert were like two snarling dogs trying to pee on the same tree, Leo obviously felt quite differently about his half-sister. With his own sisters, he camouflaged his disdain for their frivolity with compassion.
Leo held up his arms to halt the chatter. "I think we have to stop and consider how to protect Mummy," he said. "Since respectability is all-important to her."
They were deep in deliberation of this problem when unexpectedly Father and Egg arrived on the scene together. They explained that they were late because Father had dropped Mother off at the seamstress on his way home, then stopped to pick up Egg at the Darwin Club, where they celebrated the arrival of Bleriot by breaking out a case of Krug Champagne.
The footman gathered up the tea things and replaced them with whisky and canapés. After Leo explained the situation the men all helped themselves to a stiff drink.
It seemed to Leo that Egg was neither surprised nor sorry. He wondered if his half-brother was the source of the rumours regarding the Phillips' menage. Egbert and Chloe's position, as the progeny of a legitimate marriage, was secure from the taint.
Egg had always resented the unseemly haste with which his mother was supplanted in his father's affections. Egg had been particularly incensed at Leo's appearance exactly nine months after his mother's funeral. If someone had inquired about how the Phillips had managed to get round the law, Egg might well have vented the truth.
Adam's first reaction, like Leo's own, was to protect Emmaline. Usually remote, father was nevertheless instinctively kind. They all decided not to say anything about the situation to their mother until they had more time to debate the best course of action.
At dusk Emmaline arrived on foot. Tiny, with a brown squirrel-like face and wispy graying hair, she moved like a cricket, in erratic leaps, but managed to cover amazing distances in her walks, ten miles or more each day.
In contrast to Leo, both his parents were noticeably short. His father with his long torso might have been the same stature as Leo, except for his stubby legs. Uncle Louis had been caught in jest once or twice calling his brother "Toulouse," an appellation Emmaline discouraged straightway. Bad enough to be named for a debauched French aristocrat, but unthinkable to be called after a crippled impressionist painter.
"Hello, darlings," Emmaline said. "Sorry I'm late. I'll get cook moving on a light supper."
She rushed off to the scullery, to the vast relief of the others. Luckily their mother could be fairly obtuse on occasion, a trait that would make their efforts to protect her less onerous.
The meal, eaten mostly in silence, consisted of mutton, bubble and squeak, bread pudding, fruit, and cheese. During the cheese course Father and Egg got into a discussion about the doubling of the London population in the last forty years. Leo poured the wine and dreamed of tomorrow.
"All the country people streaming into the cities," Father said.
"Once respectable districts degenerating into slums," said Egg. "The government has got to do something about it. In London people are living six to a room."
"The best solution would be to open businesses and provide them a living," said Leo.
Father and Egg ignored Leo and began discussing the People's Budget.
Fawn pulled back her chair and slipped out. "I take it the ladies are excused," said Emmaline and followed, leaving the men to their wine and politics.
Emmaline caught up with Fawn in the hall. "Fawn, what's this I hear about your smoking cigarettes?"
Fawn gnashed her teeth. "Those bloody tittletattles," she muttered under her breath, a remark her mother missed, being slightly hard of hearing.
"I don't want to hear of your ever again smoking in this house."
Fawn nodded sulkily.
"It's wicked. Worse than wicked, 'tis vulgar."
After supper when their father retired to his study, Leo and Egg sauntered off to the library. Egg, who was up to his frizzy scalp in reform legislation, had bought a set of used law books. He flicked through them, searching for the law forbidding marriage to the deceased wife's sister.
Leo dropped into a leather chair and poured himself a glass of port. His eyes ran along the shelves of his father's library, with volumes of the world's famous philosophers, made more valuable by Adam's scribbled reactions in the margins. Great piles of The Rationalist sat on the floor under the window.
"Here it is," cried Egg at last. Struggling to handle the huge volume, he read aloud from a tome bound in red.
DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER'S MARRIAGE ACT, 1907. "By this enactment (7 Edw.VII.c.47) it has been provided that marriage heretofore or hereafter contracted between a man and his deceased wife's sister...shall be deemed to have been or shall be void or voidable, as a civil contract by reason only of such affinity ..."
"1907, the law was enacted in 1907, two years ago," said Leo."I was born in 1888."
"So what?" Egg snapped.
"Father and mother could just as well have married in 1887, the year after your mother died."
Egg scowled, his scrawny body bent over the law books. "The marriage act is totally irrelevant to Aunt Emmaline and Father's situation. Father no doubt sought a nursemaid for his two children. I don't suppose he was enamored of your mother...or terribly eager to marry her."
Leo turned on him. "Mother, on the other hand, owned the house and most of the money. If she married, control of it could have fallen into Pater's hands, so she didn't press the issue."
"In spite of her well-advertised propriety." Egg slammed shut the tome.
Leo gritted his teeth. "Heretofore or hereafter contracted —that's the relevant part."
"Looks like nothing can be done about it." Egg sounded almost exultant.
Leo slumped back into the leather wing chair and stared straight ahead. There must be some way out , he thought.
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