Chapter 7: The Amazon

Gertie meets Johnnie’s older sister

The knock on Gertie’s bedroom door at the Dorset’s Kensington mansion was soft but Gertie heard it cut through her quiet reflection.

“Come!” she called out.

The door opened and one of Evie’s younger housemaids entered. “Sorry to disturb you, Miss Gertie, but Ma’am was asking whether you was ready to go yet or not?”

“Yes,” Gertie sighed as she rose from the dressing table, “please tell her that I will be down about a minute after you tell her.”

The girl flashed a quick smile, said “thank you”, turned and departed quickly and quietly, closing the door behind her.

Gertie picked up her shawl from the bed, wrapped it around her shoulders, picked up her purse that had lain handily next to it and took a final look around to ensure she hadn’t forgotten anything that she might need for what sounded like a rather tedious evening at The Royal Astronomical Society.

Gertie actually loved to look at stars, I mean, who didn’t? With the fogs and smogs in London pretty well obscurely the night sky for Londoners, Gertie had always been stunned by the sparkling skies almost anywhere else in the country. Not that she’d been many places, but the two years she spent in Devon as one of the London Evacuees in 1940 and ‘41 had shown her what people who lived in smokey cities were unaware of the beauty of the night sky.

But tonight’s event was apparently a lecture, probably some stuffy talk about the technical side of distant galaxies by some professor to the Fellows of the Society, it was bound to be in such detail that was way above her head. She accepted that she needed to be seen about Town and the Society that she was being trained to be comfortable with, but she knew absolutely nothing about stars other than they appear to twinkle and, unusually, as Evie was so professional, there was no earlier brief by Evie and detailed dossiers to go through of the people she was expecting that she was about to meet and converse with.

“I mean,” she said out loud to herself in frustration, “if these people are as much nobodies as me, why are we bothering to meet them at all?”

Resignedly, she left her bedroom and descended the grand staircase that graced Dorset House.

“Excellent,” Evie remarked as she saw Gertie coming down the stairs, “you look lovely, Gertie, I’m sure you’ll make a really good impression tonight.”

“You look lovely, too, Evie,” Gertie said, although she thought Evie always looked lovely whatever she wore. “And you look very dashing in your top hat and tails, I must say George,” she said to Lord Dorset, who smiled back at her from his towering height.

“Thank you, Gertie,” George bowed his head slightly, “but how I look don’t really matter this evening as this is all about you two lovely ladies and you both look absolute pictures, I’m sure the society pages in tomorrow’s Daily Mail and Express, maybe even the Daily Sketch, are going to be full of outstanding photographs in the morning.”

“The Press?” Gertie’s eyebrows lifted in surprise as she reached the foot of the stairs and the same housemaid she saw a minute or so earlier, helped her on with her coat, the other two were already coated and ready to go. “The Press’ll be there for this high-brow lecture on stars or planets or whatever?”

“Oh, yes, they will certainly be there,” Evie agreed with her husband, “and we want to get there early to take our seats up front, even though we have booked and preserved seats, we don’t want to have to fight our way through to get to them.”

“Are the seats that sought after? Just to hear about the planets and stars?” Gertie was surprised to hear that.

“Oh yes, indeed, Gertie. They don’t actually charge to attend these meetings at the RAS, even though we are not members, although Johnnie still is, actually. As a boy he had a small telescope in the summer house at the Manor and he did rather famously steer his tank squadron by the stars in an exercise involving tanks in the Egypt desert a couple of years ago that got him especially mentioned in The London Gazette.”

“Really? He never mentioned it.”

“My brother’s brim-full of personal modesty, Gertie, dear, maybe you could ask him about it.”

“I will.” Gertie replied.

When Bob, Evie’s driver, pulled up outside the very grand West Wing of Burlington House in Piccadilly, Gertie was mightily impressed with the building that appeared to be completely unscathed from the bombing of London which ended only three years earlier. Either that or the building had very quickly and quite expertly undergone repairs that were invisible to her quick glance which was all she could manage before being ushered inside...

Even in London, the capital city, the scars from four years of the constant German bombing were evident in almost every street. The mostly three storey building, with the central section having a fourth floor, appeared to be generally Palladian in style, putting its origins in the early eighteenth century, with some impressive colonnades in the front of the building, thought Gertie, she would have to look this building up in the public library later in the week and find out a little more about it. She made a mental note which she would have entered in one of her little notebooks when she had enough light to see, that she should research the venues that they were due to attend in the near future.

There appeared to be a large throng of photographers milling about in front of the building and they all turned as one and focussed their attention on the newcomers.

Bob held the door open for her to on the pavement side of the car and Gertie got out very carefully to ensure she made no mistake of her modesty in doing so, while the flashes and cracks of the photographers’ flash bulb cameras was more than a little daunting for someone unused to such attention. She did smile at herself as she edged her way out of the motor car and rose up onto her stylish heels, remembering all those lessons Evie made her practice on all the different types of motor cars that Lord Dorset kept in his garage, and she was forced to try on everything from day dresses and skirts and slacks through to full on and potentially embarrassingly revealing evening gowns. She was grateful for the shawl, wrapped around her shoulders against the chill evening air, which meant she only had to concentrate on the legs and not the top part of her lovely figure-hugging silk evening dress.

It was shots of Gertie’s particularly relaxed and quite beautiful smile that made it to the society pages as the primary headline photograph the next morning. Evie couldn’t contain her excitement when she eventually saw it. But that was going to be tomorrow.

George meanwhile helped Evie out of the motor car on the roadside and, although dozens of photographs were taken of her and her husband, only a couple of small ones survived the various. newspaper sub-editors’ late night scissors.

Lord Dorset urged the unescorted Gertie to walk ahead of him and Evie, so the young girl received most of the photographers’ remaining attention as they walked the short steps towards the entrance.

Inside the foyer, they were welcomed by one of the Society’s Fellows, where Gertie was introduced by Evie, Lady Dorset, as “my dearest friend, Gertrude Thornton, who is staying with us in town for the early part of the season”. From there they were directed to the room where the lecture was to be heard.

There were several men milling around the head of the room, surrounding a tall and very striking woman of around 30 years of age, Gertie guessed.

The woman was so striking for several reasons: one, she was tall, very tall, equally as tall as most of the men in her group and certainly taller than about a half of them. Naturally she was slim, with long elegant legs and arms. Two, her clothes were striking, a suit jacket and straight skirt in a light mauve colour and cut just a daring one inch at most below the knee.

Gertie grinned at the thought of trying to get out of a motor car and retaining her modesty in THAT dress!

Thirdly, the woman’s hair was as striking as the colour of her dress, a fiery red, like burnished copper, which hung in thick, bouncing waves around her shoulders. Fourthly, as the woman turned to see the newcomers walking towards the front seats, she noticed them for the first time and smiled at them in obvious pleasurable recognition. Gertie thought that she must be the most beautiful woman that she had ever seen. She could have been a fashion model, an icon of the silver screen, or even an Amazon warrior lifted sans-armour from the well-thumbed pages of the Greek Myths.

“Who’s that woman?” Gertie asked Evie with a hissed whisper.

“Which woman would that be, Gertie dear?” replied Evie, a little louder than Gertie wanted to hear.

Gertie turned to see Evie and George both smiling broadly at her.

She immediately realised she had been set up in some way, that this woman was the person she was here to meet, the lecture or talk or whatever it was, was merely a smokescreen to get her here to be introduced to her. Who she was exactly probably wasn’t relevant, she was clearly an important personality who Gertie was required to impress, and this time it was to be on the fly with none of the usual efficient briefing that Evie ensured she had down pat before the meeting.

‘Was this a test?’ Gertie wondered to herself. ‘Throwing me into the deep end to see how I cope with the unexpected?’ Gertie wasn’t sure about her own ability to appear to be someone must more sophisticated and knowledgeable about everyday life in high society.

By the time Gertie faced forward again, the gorgeous woman was almost upon them.

“Evie, Georgie, I didn’t know you were coming to my little talk here tonight,” the woman said as she passed Gertie and embraced first Evie and then Lord Dorset. Only then did she turn back to include Gertie in her target sights.

“You, then, must be the Gertie I have heard everything about but not yet been introduced to,” she smiled with what looked to Gertie like the perfect teeth of a goddess, and she grasped Gertie’s shoulders and pulled the stunned girl into an enthusiastic squeeze which took her breath away.

“Gertie,” Evie said to the pair, “please allow me to introduce you to Lady Mildred Winter, my older sister. She’s here to give a talk about her upcoming expedition, aren’t you, Milde, dear?”

Mildred Winter, also eldest sister of Johnnie Winter, released Gertie from her embrace and, with her hands still on both Gertie’s shoulders, examined her closely, while replying to Evie out of the side of her mouth, “My talk includes my next two expeditions, dear Evie, and a challenge to the star-gazing boffins present to create for me a modern method of steering by stars day and night while I circumnavigate the world singlehanded by sail.”

Despite the shock revelation, Gertie stood firm, squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin in defiance and spoke as soon as the woman paused and Gertie regained the initiative. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Mildred. I wish I could say that your brother and sister have told me everything about you, but I regret to say, I know hardly anything about you at all, so, that being the case, I would be delighted to listen to your talk this evening and perhaps we can get to know each other at a time most convenient to you, hopefully before your next enthralling adventure?”

Lady Mildred roared with laughter and put her arms around Gertie again and almost squeezed the life out of her once again in an even warmer embrace.

“You’ll do!” she cried when she released Gertie, “My, you’re pretty too, and I do admire your spunk. You’re an absolute darling. No wonder my brother’s pretty damn potty about you, my dear. Yes, we must get to know each other, we are virtually sisters and one can never have too many sisters, especially when one of them goes around with a poker stuffed up her arse.” She turned to Evie, “Is she free on Wednesday for lunch, dear heart?”

“Yes, she is, sweet sister,” Evie smiled in return, “she has a hair appointment at four, though, so please don’t get her too drunk.”

“Tsk tsk, sister of mine, she’s still underage to drink, isn’t she?”

“She is, but I thought I’d remind you, in case you brought any of your wild friends with you.”

“No wild friends Evie, just Gertie and I, a light lunch with tea, with maybe some cake after, we’ll even forgo the Sherry trifle, just to allay all your baseless fears, dear heart.”

“Thank you, Milde dear, I will sleep more easily through my afternoon nap on Wednesday.”

Lady Mildred turned back to Gertie, “Looks like you’re free to lunch with me, do you want to have lunch with me, at the Dorchester, I think?”

“I would love to have lunch with you, Lady Mildred and become better acquainted.”

“Oh, just Mildred, darling. Please note that my friends never call me Mil or Milly, those are diminutives for Muriel and I hate that, besides, my Mother is the Milly of the family. Please call me Mildred, or Milde, especially as you are family, and I’m sure that as sisters we will get on like a house on fire.”

“Then Milde it is, my sister to come, I will look forward to making our better acquaintance and I shall sit up with interest throughout your talk tonight.”

“You are sweet, Gertie, after all there’s nothing so disconcerting, I was once told by a learnéd professor at Cambridge, than someone snoring through a lecture. Fortunately, I can only take his word for it.”

“Of that, Milde,” Gertie laughed, “I have no doubt.”

Lady Mildred squeezed her shoulders once more before she released her, and turned to Evie, “I love her already.”

“I know,” Evie replied with a smile, “we all do.”

“She’s actually going to attempt to be the first climber to conquer Mount Everest?” Gertie asked Evie again in disbelief in the motor car going home on the short journey towards the Dorsets’ house in Kensington.

“Yes, she’s been obsessed with mountaineering since about 1930, when she was in her late teens and did a climbing course in France. She’s climbed mountains in Wales, Scotland, the Alps many times, of course, as well as in the US and the Andes, where we have family who took her under their wing, especially as they are as wild as she is.” Evie replied.

“So she took part in the last expedition to Mount Everest in 1938 but they had to abandoned it through sickness?”

“Yes, she’s already maintained that in most of the attempts which have been the most promising of success, they’ve used oxygen, which is what she is forcefully advocating now for the next expedition. She’s been flying planes for at least the last twenty years and knows that if you fly as high as these 8000-metre high mountains you need oxygen to breathe even simply sitting down to fly the plane, so it makes absolute sense to breathe oxygen when you are physically climbing to where the air is too thin to breath and the very effort of climbing takes you to the edge of your endurance. You can die up there without even realising it.”

“And they failed in 1938 because of the lack of oxygen?”

“Yes, Gertie, the organisers of that particular attempt mistakenly thought that an experienced climber in the peak of fitness should reach the summit under his own steam, but they gave up through exhaustion and sickness over 2000 feet short of their target.”

“So, Mount Everest has never been climbed and your sister Mildred wants to not only be the first woman to climb the highest mountain in the world but be the first human to do it?”