The Mayfair Bookshop, page 3
She pulled out Highland Fling, one she and her mother had read together half a dozen times.
She cracked open the familiar volume, reading the first few lines of Albert’s rather humorous journey of self-discovery.
“I see you’ve got a Mitford novel,” Oliver said, approaching.
Lucy stared down at the canvas cover, threadbare in the corners, the pages yellowed. “She’s one of my favorites.”
“Were you aware that the owner of Heywood Hill is Ms. Mitford’s nephew?”
Lucy nodded. “I love the family tie.”
“Agree. The Duke of Devonshire is a bibliophile to be sure, whose father was married to Nancy’s sister Deborah.”
“But they weren’t the original owners, right?”
Oliver shook his head. “No, but the late duke and duchess had a great fondness for it. In the early nineties they endeavored to become part of its legacy. The original store was actually down the street at number seventeen. They moved a few years after opening.”
Lucy stared at the Mitford display again, her eyes this time alighting on a black-and-white picture of two young women outside of the shop. Was it too much to hope that the girl beside Nancy was Iris? “Who’s that with Nancy?”
“Anne Hill, the wife of Heywood. Nancy helped Anne during the war, when Heywood was shipped overseas. A lot of literary greats have filled the shop.”
Lucy’s skin prickled. To be sitting in the very place that a famous writer might have plotted out their books, or discussed a particular scene, was exhilarating.
“If you’re interested in Nancy and her family, perhaps I could arrange for you to visit Chatsworth House and have a look at more books and letters?”
Lucy flashed Oliver a grateful smile. This was too good to be true; the answers to the questions she and her mother had pondered for years might be within reach. “I’d love that.”
“Of course, it will have to be when the house is open to the public. We wouldn’t want to disturb them.”
“That would be amazing. And not just because of the Mitford connection. What bibliophile wouldn’t want to see one of the grandest personal libraries in the world?”
“I’ll make the arrangements.” Oliver walked away, leaving Lucy in a state of shock.
Day one on the job in London, and she felt incredibly productive. If only her mother were still alive to help her uncover the truth of Nancy’s past, her mysterious friend and the letters.
Later that night, curled up in a chair with a glass of wine, she untied the twine that wrapped around Nancy’s letters. Rather than have to decide which one to open, she simply picked the one on top, smoothing her thumb over the scrawl on the front of the envelope addressed to acclaimed author Evelyn Waugh.
Chapter Three
Nancy Mitford
August 1933
Darling Evelyn,
Do you recall this past May, when Hitler’s followers hurled thousands of books into bonfires while giving the Nazi salute? Burning ideas that were deemed “un-German.” Such great authors and brilliant minds as Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, H. G. Wells, Jack London.
London’s book White Fang was the only novel my father claims to have ever read, having loved it so much he never need read another again—absurd, no? I can’t decide if I believe him, but I honestly can’t recall having ever seen him pick up a book to read.
Burning books with ideas that don’t align with the Nazi regime is only the beginning of a dangerous censorship, don’t you agree?
For that matter, burning any book for any reason. Well, unless it’s one of mine. I’m fairly certain there are a number of people who want to toss my prose upon the flames.
Speaking of books, I am dying for a new bookshop. If only I had the money to set one up. I’d be an amazing bookseller.
Love from,
Nancy
DIANA STUDIED ME WITH her sapphire eyes over the gold rim of her yellow-primrose-painted teacup. Our sister Unity perched across from me on the slope-backed settee beside Diana.
We sat in the drawing room of the tiny cottage on Eaton Square she’d recently let—the Eatonry, we’d named it. The walls were painted a soft butter yellow, and the furniture was equally muted and elegant, with pops of color on the fringed pillows, and flowers that adorned the mahogany side tables.
Diana, beautiful and cigarette thin, had seemingly lost her mind at some point in the last year. She’d left her handsome, rich husband and taken up as a lover of Oswald Mosley—the leader of the British Union of Fascists. Why Diana had left the privileged life of being married to Bryan to become a mistress who waited for her Fascist paramour to sneak over boggled the mind.
I’d never understand why Diana disrupted her whole family instead of having a quiet affaire d’amore behind her husband’s back like any other respectable lady in society.
To help Diana stave off a modicum of social gossip, and keep myself from living at Swinbrook—or Swinebrook as I liked to call it—I’d rented a room from her. There was an air of nostalgia about us being under the same roof. Though I suppose we’d never been complete bosom buddies in our lives. As Mitford sisters go, we would fiercely protect one another from outside sources of pain, but behind the safety of our walls, we might be the one employing a well-placed smack.
From somewhere within the dwelling came the screech of two little boys, and the muffled call of their nanny.
“We’re going to Germany. Should you like to join us?” Diana asked.
“We?” I raised a brow and poured milk into my tea.
“Bobo and I,” she said referring to Unity’s nickname.
“Oh, the kindness of you.” I took a dainty sip and put on a good shop front.
Unity was lucky to be here with us at all. Muv forbade Jessica and Deborah from visiting this vulgar house of iniquity—or at least that was how our mother viewed Diana’s new residence, sans husband, but frequented by a paramour. Funny enough, our sister Pamela, clever hen, moved to a cottage in Biddesden, where she managed Diana’s ex-husband’s farm.
I think Muv would have forbidden everyone from visiting Diana if she could, considering her beautiful daughter was the center of the scandal of 1932. Salacious affairs and divorce would do that to a gal. C’est la vie. She was in love.
Being the elder, wiser sister, I warned Diana that her social standing would be nil if she went on about getting in wrong with the world, but that I would always be on her side. As would anyone who cared about her. Muv would come around, along with the rest of society.
“Oh, come now, Naunce.” Diana’s lip curled sweetly. “I know you prefer travel to boring, old, dirty London.”
Unity bit into a blueberry scone and then chimed in, “We’re leaving in a few weeks. I’m going to meet Adolf Hitler.”
I tried not to show my horror at such a statement. The man was a monster, yet posters of Hitler lined Unity’s walls, whereas normal girls her age might have gummed up fashion prints or at the very least a profile of a picture star like Laurence Olivier or Cary Grant. The idea of Hitler being her crush was absolutely batty. How exactly did she plan to see her desire come to fruition?
I opened my mouth to ask Unity what she was thinking, but Diana cut in.
“One could be so lucky,” Diana quipped. “We’re merely going for distraction.”
Lucky? The madness . . . Poor Diana. Mosley didn’t seem bent on monogamy and had gone off to Paris with his other mistress. A distraction was most definitely what she needed.
Diana tapped her teacup with a perfectly manicured nail, hesitating in something she wanted to say.
“What is it, Honks?” I asked Diana, referring to her childhood nickname.
“I received an invitation from Putzi Hanfstaengl, who happened to be at a party I attended, and also happens to be Chancellor Hitler’s foreign secretary. He says we should come and see for ourselves the truth of which is mangled in our British papers.”
“Indeed, it can’t be as bad as all that.” Unity gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes.
I tried to keep the horror from my face. I shook my head, having unquestionably no interest in joining my sisters on this particular tour. For it wasn’t going to be exploring Neuschwanstein Castle or to stun our parents by a trip to Sylt beach, where sunbathers and sea swimmers did so in the nude.
I loved my sisters with every breath, to the deep marrow of my bones. However, I also knew Diana was willing to risk everything for Mosley, and her new lover was part of something dark and sinister.
His views on the world, on humanity, aligned with a Germany that seemed from the outset horrifyingly wrong. If Diana could prove to me that this visit would show otherwise, I’d be happiest to hear it. But I didn’t doubt for a minute she would make this trip, not for the distraction against her lover’s infidelity, but because she hoped to strengthen her ties with Germany as some sort of gift to him.
I sipped my tea, wishing I could add something a little stronger as I pondered my sisters’ choices.
Unity had always followed at Diana’s heels, lapping up the crumbs she dropped as if they were gold nuggets from the mining camp Farve once owned in Canada. Now in this instance, the tables had turned with Diana suddenly following in Unity’s fanatical footsteps. Unity’s extremism regarding the British Union of Fascists, and her latest craze about Hitler, appeared to be hitting new excesses, and appealing to Diana for some reason.
So often in our family I felt like the odd woman out. A voice of reason? I’m not so certain, but at the least, a varying voice on absolutes.
My gaze skimmed the pamphlet on the table with the announcement of the annual rally in Nuremberg, Germany, where Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party had seized power, banning all other political parties and destroying democracy in the country. With the Nazis having ultimate rule, Hitler wanted to speak to his people about their victory. A rally my sisters planned to attend.
“Why not go somewhere far more interesting, like Inverness?” I suggested. “We can see if all the hubbub about the Loch Ness monster sighting a few months ago has merit. Maybe convince Nina to have a house party. Muv and Farve can watch your sons. Perhaps teach them the ways of the child hunt.”
I laughed softly, remembering Farve’s favorite game of sending us out into the Cotswold landscape and how he’d come after us on horseback, hounds baying at discovering our scent. An elaborate, and rather eccentric, game of hide-and-seek.
Diana had lost interest in being a socialite the moment she’d left her husband, and Unity had always been a bit shy around our friends, and they a little unnerved by her considering her penchant for keeping rats as pets. And so I wasn’t at all surprised when they shook their heads.
Diana settled her teacup on the tiny matching primrose dish. “We’re headed to Bavaria. Munich first and then Nuremberg. The arrangements have been made, but as I said, there is room for one more should you change your mind.”
“While the invitation holds some fascination for me, I’m afraid I must decline.” I smiled sweetly and picked at a blueberry on my scone, the fruit ready to burst from the womb of baked flour.
“Oh, Lady.” Unity gave a slight scowl. “What better have you to do?”
The question stung, but I brushed it off, never showing a sign of weakness, especially with my sisters. “Well, silly, I have a wedding to plan. Some of us have to set our expectations on reality rather than fantasy.” It was a low blow, a dig at Unity’s imagined meeting with Hitler, of finding her own Fascist lover.
“Is it truly going to happen, do admit?” Unity countered, a brow raised in challenge. “Already your arrangements have shifted from October to November.”
I waved away her comment with a flit of my hand. “Why rush perfection?” In truth, I was rapidly approaching thirty years of age, and whispers of spinsterhood grew to near-shout levels. The worst of them came this year when Muv and Farve suggested I return to Swinebrook and settle into country life as if I’d already dried up. “I’ll be a Mrs. before the year is out. Besides, another book idea has very recently come to me.” In the last few minutes, in fact.
“Oh, do tell. You know how much I enjoyed reading Christmas Pudding aloud to Kit.” Diana had been kind enough to share the book widely with her friends, and her lover, Oswald—Kit.
My second book, Christmas Pudding, had done only slightly better than Highland Fling. Though neither were the huge successes I’d hoped for, they both brought with them a minor bump in societal status, along with a few ego-stroking reviews.
Today, a new idea began to stir. A satirical tale I thought my sisters might find flattering, as an opus to their recent conversions to Fascism—which I abhorred. What was sisterly love if we couldn’t poke fun? Was that a bridge I was willing to cross?
“You shall have to wait like the rest of the world, for I’m far too busy writing for The Lady and Vogue, and the wedding, of course.”
“Lady is a tease.” Diana flashed a mocking smile. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find us.”
Indeed, I did—at the closest Fascist rally.
“I do adore you,” I said. “And thank you ever so much for thinking of me, darling. I hope the both of you have a most marvelous time.”
The small drawing room grew quiet, but only for a second before Unity filled the silence with the discussion of a new hairstyle she wanted that would give her the look of a crown of curls, and how she’d acquired a number of black shirts to wear to rallies. Oswald’s band of Blackshirts certainly were a bundle of rods, and not in the way they believed.
Diana smiled, nodding, happy to have someone else as consumed with the changing tide.
“Black does bring out the blue of your eyes,” Diana said smoothly to Unity.
“I much prefer you in a dull beige,” I teased, to which I received two identical tight smiles. “Or perhaps white, or rose. Black is so . . . harsh, do admit.”
Unity’s chin notched up. “I like black best.”
“I look good in anything.” Diana’s voice was cool, but the hint of a smile gave way to the humor of it, and I laughed.
“Of course, you are wondair,” I said in the exaggerated accent I’d used when we were girls and I played a doctor preparing to operate.
A laugh elicited from both before Unity ruined the conversation with another round of ovations about Hitler. I pretended to listen while composing a list of books I should like to read, and then pondering just how Oswald had wooed my sister into scandal. What young woman in her early twenties left her wealthy husband, a stable marriage, with two young children in tow, to become the mistress of a notoriously controversial, older politician?
There was something in the way the Poor Old Leader, as we sarcastically called him, wooed Diana. Was it that he supported women’s rights, evidenced by the number of suffragettes who’d joined his movement? Or maybe because he positioned himself as the only one who could save Britain from economic ruin. There was some hint of Hitler in him too, believing in a purer race and British superiority. I found all of it repulsive. And he wasn’t even good-looking.
I’d attended one of the meetings at Diana’s hopeful insistence, a clear intent to gain support from her older sister. While Oswald was a great orator, the men he surrounded himself with were bullies, railing on anyone who coughed or sneezed to keep quiet.
“In other news,” I said, taking the August second issue of Tatler from beneath my seat. “Do you recognize this Hon on the cover?”
Diana and Unity both squealed, ogling the portrait of me taken in the perfect light by Madame Yevonde. I wore a wide-brimmed white hat with a dark blue bow to match my blue-and-white-checked frock with double-layered capelet sleeves sewn by our longtime family seamstress and maid.
“A beautiful portrait of you.”
“The hat is divine.” Unity examined the hat closely. “I should like to borrow it.”
Diana took the newspaper and read the caption. “‘The Honorable Nancy Mitford is not only charming to look at but also extremely intelligent and an entertaining conversationalist.’”
“As we all know.” I cocked my shoulder coyly. And yet, surprisingly, I felt oddly at a loss for more words.
A cold wash of apprehension had stilled my tongue. For while I headed for inevitable marital bliss, my sisters were diving headlong into dangerous obsession.
December 4, 1933
Hamish,
I’ve decided to forgive you for breaking my heart. I am going to marry Peter and we are exceedingly happy. The moment I say, “I do,” I will forget all of the wrongs I suffered at your callousness
“I am a happy bride.” I whispered the words to myself, in the looking glass in the dressing room of St. John’s Smith Square church.
My face appeared pale against the backdrop of my dark curls. I pinched my cheeks to bring in color, the rouge standing out even more starkly as put on rather than the natural happy glow of someone about to wed for love.
My groom would be at the altar, elegantly dressed in a black tailcoat with a white gardenia pinned to his lapel, waiting for me to appear in the white chiffon gown with narrow frills and a veil of lace and gardenias.
A crowd packed into the church like smoked oysters in a can, ready to watch me glide down the aisle, a happy bride eager for her perfect future.
For wasn’t that what every bride was on their wedding day?
Unhappiness before marriage meant that when the proverbial vows were exchanged a sudden blessing of joy would radiate from within, like the sun beaming down after a lifetime of cold rain.
My groom was that beam of light at the end of a nearly thirty-year period of darkness. Soon I would have my bliss, at least I hoped.
The low rumble of voices mingled with the organ music coming from the other side of the door. To stay and remain in despair, or open the door to a whole new world of uncertainty? Diana had not seemed miserable in her marriage, only dispassionate. Was love a disillusionment?
