While England Sleeps Read Free

fact I’d spent most of my afternoons smoking cigarettes in cafés and most of my evenings smoking cigarettes in a leather-curtained bar. There were beers, there were boys. Mostly there were cigarettes.
    Then Mother died, and I had to come home. I didn’t have the money to get back to Germany after that, and Aunt Constance—having concluded, apparently, that Germany was not good for me—elected not to give me any more. I had nowhere to go, so I lingered in Richmond, parentless, sorting through the detritus of Mother’s and Father’s lives, while my siblings bickered and poor old Nanny, who had been dragged back from Eastbourne to take care of us all again, tried to keep the peace. Finally I could bear it no more; I accepted a long-standing invitation from Rupert Halliwell, a Cambridge chum who was rich and had recently acquired grandiose digs in Cadogan Square.
    Rupert and I had not known each other well at Cambridge: still, something in his passion for antique crystal had spoken to something in my passion for Digby Grafton, who rowed. Rupert was a short, plump, pale fellow, rather resembling one of those blancmanges or mousses Aunt Constance always referred to as a “shape.” He had fat wrists, fussy tastes, doleful eyes.
    I arrived at four on a Wednesday. A cowering little maid led me into the drawing room, where soon enough Rupert joined me, looking droopy and sad as ever in his smoking jacket. “Awfully kind of you to put me up, Rupert,” I said to him as we shook hands. “Oh, nonsense,” he replied dismissively. “The pleasure is mine entirely. In any case, it sounds as if you were roasting alive in that household.”
    “It is good to be out of there.”
    We sat down to tea, which the maid brought in along with a set of lovely blue-and-gold enamel cups—“Eighteenth century,” Rupert informed me. “They belonged to Queen Beatrix and are the only set of their kind still in existence.” Next I complimented him on the sofa. “Yes, it is lovely, isn’t it? But it’s covered in a very rare type of Indian handwoven silk that, if it’s ever stained, is impossible to clean.” “Oh, really,” I said, endeavoring to hold my cup at a distance. Then he showed me his collection of antique crystal vases. “Three are chipped,” he pointed out, “the result of clumsiness on the part of domestic servants.” No wonder the poor maid’s hands shook as she picked up the tea tray!
    We finished off our tea and Rupert showed me up to my room. “I think you’ll find you have everything you need,” he said.
    “Yes,” I said, “I’m sure I will.”
    I started to unpack, but instead of leaving he sat down on the edge of the bed. Needless to say I felt rather self-conscious, his sad eyes fastened on me as I put away my clothes.
    “How’s your mother?” I asked him.
    “The same. Pain is her companion, her daily tormentor. She can hardly get out of bed now, but I visit every day, which is a great pleasure for her. Really, she’s too good for the earth.”
    In fact the woman was a beast, and not nearly as sick as she pretended. When she bought Rupert the house in Cadogan Square I had hoped it might mean a final severing of the umbilical cord. Instead he simply replicated her fondness for objects that were both impossibly delicate and irreplaceable. (Why is it that the rich, who have been spared material worry, feel obligated to create, all around themselves, the potential for disaster?) Rupert was, at twenty, a decidedly unformed young creature who had chosen to emulate the habits of the extremely aged. And yet somehow they didn’t quite stick to him; you couldn’t help wondering how long the “stage” would last.
    I finished unpacking and was eager to write in my journal, so I told Rupert I wanted to have a nap before dinner. Regretfully he stood. “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do for you?” he asked, his eyes wide and wet as ever. “No, I’m fine, really,” I said. “All right,” he