Free The Bolter by Frances Osborne

Street empty and a perfect venue for an impromptu party.
    Euan set up the gramophone and the four of them “danced till 12:30 am.”
    The following day, Friday, was Euan’s last before going up to Cambridge, and one of Idina’s greatest girlfriends came to tea. Eva Belper was godmother to Idina’s elder son, David. She was just a few months older than Idina, and the two women had been “out” as debutantes at the same time. They were both from industrial dynasties (Eva’s family had discovered vast coalfields under their Glamorganshire estates) who had become Liberal politicians and then peers of the realm in the new industrial aristocracy. However, within a couple of months of Idina’s launch into Society, Eva had married. Her husband was Algernon Strutt, the eldest son of the second Lord Belper and another scion of aLiberal political dynasty that had risen from an industrial fortune. Shortly before the war Algernon’s father had died and Algernon had succeeded him as the third Lord Belper. Algernon and Eva’s marriage was not, however, running smoothly. The two of them were heading, slowly and steadily, toward divorce.
    Through all this Idina and Eva had remained close and, after Idina had wandered back upstairs, Eva stayed and “talked” to Euan “for half an hour.” That night Euan went out again with Avie, Barbie, and another man and ended up at Barbie’s house, where, with the slight thrill of being servant-free, “we made some supper & danced & played the gramophone.” The gramophone was Euan and Idina’s, which he had installed in Barbie’s home. “Stayed till nearly 2 am,” he wrote.
    Sometimes it is not what is recorded in a person’s diary that counts, but what is not. Idina’s operation was on 8 April, two days after Euan left for Cambridge. The operation went well and Euan scribbled at the end of the page in his diary: “Heard Dina alright after op.” But Idina did not make a rapid recovery. She remained bedridden and needing daily “treatment” by a physiotherapist called Mrs. Rigden to try to dislodge the infection from her lungs. And as she lay in that again near-empty cavern of Connaught Place, she slowly slipped out of her husband’s consciousness.
    Euan came back to London from Cambridge every weekend. On a Saturday night he had an early dinner in his college, Caius, and then caught the 9:10 p.m. train to Liverpool Street, arriving just after eleven-thirty The first Saturday, Avie met him at the station and whisked him straight to Barbie’s house, “where an informal party lasted till pretty late.” Euan eventually reached Connaught Place in the early hours, long after Idina had fallen asleep, and he crept into his dressing room to sleep. He then appeared in Idina’s room for breakfast the next morning, “at 8:45.” But she was still indisputably an invalid.
    After an hour Euan left. It was inconceivable that Idina might ask him to stay longer with her when he had so little time to enjoy himself. Stuck in bed, Idina was powerless to do anything but watch her husband dash out of the house to keep up with his new crowd of lively young girls.
    Euan went to visit a Cavalry colleague of his, Viscount Ednam, the eldest son of the Earl of Dudley, who had been invalided home and was coming out of hospital that morning. He and Avie drove around to Eric Ednam’s family’s town house to join the party to welcome him backand listen to his “thrilling account of the Brigade in recent fighting.” Eric had an audience of half a dozen: Euan; Avie; Barbie; Cimmie Curzon, the younger, beautiful sister of Irene, both celebrity debutantes and daughters of the former viceroy of India, Lord Curzon; and Eric’s sister, Morvyth Ward, who called herself Dickie. Dickie was a statuesque English beauty with well-defined features and a well-defined sense of have-a-go fun. That night Euan rounded up a couple of other officers on leave and took all the girls out to dinner at Claridge’s before