Dickie and Edwina

Dickie and Edwina are husband and wife whose relationship is revealed less through courtship than through the obligations, arguments, and losses that shape their shared family life. Edwina takes on the work of being a stepmother to Lucas, but privately feels no blood tie or natural closeness to him; after Charlie’s death, Dickie becomes a witness to the grief and blame surrounding the family, and his death leaves a final, formal point of contact between them.

Marriage and the Blended Household

For many years Edwina performs the duties expected of a stepmother to Lucas: she remembers his birthday, wraps his Christmas presents, makes him breakfast, and washes his clothes. The care is real as labor, but she experiences it as acting a part, and sees Lucas as Barbara’s son rather than her own. She and Lucas tolerate one another, and Edwina’s private hostility is severe: she imagines that, if a boat capsized, he would be the last person she saved. This strained bond forms part of the marriage’s domestic landscape, even as the available glimpses do not describe how Dickie and Edwina first came together or what their private life as a couple was like.

Edwina’s attempts to make Lucas welcome are visible in the room she prepares for him. After learning that he was fascinated by the Apollo space mission, she painted a mural for him and marked the door with a hand-painted tile bearing his name. Dickie had suggested that Lucas might want to return, even if only for a night, and Edwina could not bring herself to refuse. She was relieved, however, when Lucas returned to Britain and stayed with Barbara instead. The room preserves the effort Edwina made for her husband’s son alongside the distance she never overcame.

Domestic Labor and Disagreement

Alicia’s work is part of the household Edwina and Dickie share. Alicia first came to the house as a part-time cleaner and, from the twins’ infancy onward, cared for them daily; when they no longer needed a nanny, she stayed to do the ironing and cleaning. She also did most of the cooking and laundry. Dickie, by contrast, wanted his work shirts sent out for professional laundering. When Edwina told Alicia, Alicia responded angrily, banging pans while Edwina retreated to her studio. The episode shows a domestic arrangement in which Edwina communicated Dickie’s preference, while Alicia bore much of the housework and its frustrations.

The clearest recorded clash between the couple concerns Dickie’s language about Alicia. At a Saturday lunch in the basement, with Alicia’s fish pie on the table, Dickie remarked that Lucas had not been in such close contact with a Black person before. Edwina was furious and rebuked him for using a racialized term for Alicia, insisting that he change with the times. She regarded Dickie as stuck in the 1950s, and blamed the conventions of Wyebourne College for leaving him and Lucas with little experience of Black people outside royal pupils or staff doing cleaning work. Her response makes the marriage a site of disagreement over race and respect, not simply a partnership organized around domestic routine.

Grief and Continuing Responsibility

After Charlie’s death in Thailand, Edwina carried his ashes home on the plane, holding the urn as if it were a small child. Dickie later told Lucas that Edwina blamed Rowena, believing that Rowena should have recognized how vulnerable her brother was and stayed with him. He reported that Edwina had said she might as well have killed Charlie herself, and admitted that the upheaval was almost too much for him to bear. In this account Dickie is both close enough to describe Edwina’s grief and burdened by the blame circulating within the family.

Lucas later understood that his father’s visits had dwindled because Edwina needed him in London. This detail suggests that, despite their strained family circumstances and the reduced visits, Dickie remained involved in Edwina’s life. When Dickie died, Edwina was the one who informed Lucas, leaving a long message that specified the time and date of the death and of the burial. Her message is practical and exact; it becomes the final occasion on which she contacts her stepson about his father.

Funeral and Estrangement

The funeral is the last time Lucas sees Edwina, and they do not speak. He stays with Barbara, while Edwina is with Alicia, and the opposing groups remain on different sides of the church. Their silence gives the family’s divisions a physical arrangement: husband and wife are joined in the funeral’s purpose, but the people around them keep apart. Barbara criticizes Edwina for not wearing a hat, while Alicia’s large, brightly patterned turban draws Barbara’s hostile attention. The scene places Edwina among those who supported her and Lucas among those who remained aligned with Barbara.

Dickie’s death closes the relationship without a recorded reconciliation between Edwina and Lucas. The surviving details instead show the marriage through its consequences: Edwina’s sustained, sometimes reluctant performance of family duty; her arguments with Dickie over Alicia; and the shared grief that Dickie reports but cannot resolve. Their final connection to Lucas is carried by Edwina’s message about the death and by the divided funeral, where presence replaces conversation.