London - Edward Rutherfurd [580]
The answer for some, she knew, was to ignore the whole thing. For many of her friends, there had been a sense of adventure in the air. The war was over. Those who had survived were relieved to be alive; those, like her brother Frederick, who had been just too young to fight, were anxious to prove themselves by doing something daring. And parents, if they could, wanted to reassure themselves that the world was returning to something like normality. Helen had been a débutante. It was rather quaint really, but she understood that her mother’s sorrow about the death of Henry had made her determined to give her other children a good time if she could. She had wondered if her past as a militant might have put the other mothers against her, but it seemed all that was forgotten. Besides, handsome young Frederick Meredith was considered an asset at any party, especially with the shortage of men after the losses of the war. His little sister Helen therefore, as the saying was, “came out”.
What a time she had had! There had been the traditional balls of course, but the new generation of 1920s débutantes were less demure than their mothers had been. Young men were allowed to take liberties which would have been almost unthinkable before. Helen knew scarcely any girls who would go “all the way”, but that did not mean they wouldn’t go a very long way indeed. She was pretty – she had her father’s good looks, together with the bright blue eyes and golden hair of her Bull ancestors. She was vivacious and intelligent. By the end of her season she had received three offers of marriage, and two of them would have been very good matches indeed. The only trouble was that the young men didn’t interest her. “They’re insipid,” she complained.
“You could still do worse,” her mother had said weakly. “I just want you to be happy.”
“You chose an interesting man,” Helen had pointed out.
But where to find one? There had been the Frenchman. She had met him thanks to Frederick who had taken up flying. He had flown her across the Channel to an aerodrome in France, and it was there, one astonishing summer day, that she had met him. He had a plane. And a château. She had spent a wonderful summer. Then it had been over. There had been other interesting men, since then. “But the interesting men don’t seem to marry,” she had confessed to her mother sadly. What was she to do with her life?
“You’re still a flapper, Helen,” her brother Frederick would tease her affectionately. “Always looking for excitement.” A flapper – that was what they had called the bright young girls of the 1920s.
“Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded. “You obviously do.” Frederick, having gone into the army, looked every inch the dashing hussar, but she suspected that his occasional disappearance to Europe might have something to do with a more secret life. But it was not only a question of excitement: she wanted a cause to which she could devote herself.
The General Strike of 1926 had seemed to offer such a chance. “This is the revolution that those Bolsheviks have been waiting for,” Violet had announced. “We’ve got to beat them.” Helen did not know anyone who thought otherwise. How they had all worked during those heady days! She had acted as a conductor on a bus driven by a young man from Oxford she knew. They had operated the 137 route from Sloane Square to Crystal Palace. Other people ran the underground and the other public services. Thank God, she had reflected, that this was Britain, where people behaved decently. There had been little violence. The strike had been broken. And the whole country, unions and all, had drawn back from the awful communist threat.
After that, she seemed to drift. She had found a job as a secretary to a Member of Parliament. It was hard work, but she enjoyed it and felt she was doing something useful. When it came to the larger issues however, she experienced a growing sense of disappointment. There were great tasks to be accomplished. She was inspired by the aim of the League of Nations to rid the