“No, out here. I want you out here, in the open air.” A little way along the verandah was a day bed, set for the sun; he half-carried her to it, dragged the cover from it.
The air was cold on her warm skin. Naked, she lay beneath him, taken beyond thought, beyond memory, by his gentle lovemaking. And later she lay with his sleeping body a dead weight upon her, refusing to close her own eyes. These moments must not be wasted in sleep. Time, she knew, could be the greatest traitor of all.
* * *
Their few precious days sped by, as she had known that they would, lost in the sunshine and the sand, in the wild headlands and glittering sea. They read Byron on the beach, declaimed him on the windy cliffs, whispered behind closed shutters in the loving nights. Against her own convictions she grew young again in his company, and he, it seemed, changed as she watched him.
On their last morning, he stood at the door of the kitchen tall and tanned, love in his eyes, unshadowed, his diffidence and uncertainty finally gone.
She lifted the basket from the table, looked around for one last time and could not speak.
* * *
“Looks like another push,” Christopher said when they arrived back at Calais, almost inevitably it seemed to that apparently confused activity that they had both come to know well. For the sake of propriety he was leaving her to catch a train for the last stage of the journey while he returned the car to its owner.
She caught his hands. “Christopher, promise me you’ll be careful—” She bit her lip, shaking her head ruefully. “Damn. I always swore I’d never do that to a man.”
He took her by the shoulders. “Be careful yourself. You’ll never know how much you mean to me. You are sanity in a lunatic world.”
“Some might put it the other way round,” she said, smartly, her eyes too bright for laughter.
They came together for a moment in the noise and confusion, the trains packed with uniformed men. “Stations are my least favourite places,” she said, breaking away. “Please go. You don’t have to wait. I have Lord Byron for company.”
In her hand she held the small leather book. He wrapped it, and her hands, in his own, lifted them to his lips. “Remember this: You are more than life to me. You are my whole strength. We’ll be together one day, I promise you, no matter what. No one will stop us.”
On the railway line that ran past the other side of the platform a long, clanking line of trucks was rolling slowly by, the great, ugly snouts of mounted guns pointed skywards, waiting.
“Take care,” she whispered.
“I will.” He kissed her, quickly and lightly, and then he was gone.
Three days later the ambulance that Nancy Benton was driving along the desolate track that had once been the Menin Road suffered a direct hit from a high explosive shell.
Nancy was lucky. She died at once.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The autumn and winter of 1917 were the grimmest of the war, both for those at home and for those in the trenches. During September there were raids on London on six out of eight consecutive nights, bringing human casualties and destruction of property, fraying further nerves already at breaking point. The psychological effect of the raids was inestimable: the life of the capital was seriously disrupted, the temper of its population was short-fused, people were angry and frightened. Any shop or business whose unfortunate owner bore a name even slightly Teutonic was in real danger of being stoned or even burned. And an additional strain was, as Adam had predicted, that, as the convoys continued to be attacked or diverted, food failed to get through to the capital. With the railways of the south already clogged with war materials, food shipments piled up in the west, and Londoners muttered while they queued. They cared less that in unpredictable Russia centuries of repressive Czarist rule had come to an end, or that the French Army had come perilously close to open revolt than that the price of butter continued to rise and that after a long wait all they could get was half a loaf.
A few days before Christmas Molly came home to The Larches to be told that a visitor was waiting in the parlour.
“Christopher! How nice to see you!” Molly’s voice was genuinely warm.
Christopher, with some difficulty, lowered himself into the offered chair.
The fire had been lit and glowed rosily, tamped down with dust to make the fuel last longer. In the corner of the room a small, decorated Christmas tree shone in the light. Carefully, Christopher propped his walking stick against the chair. His right leg stuck stiffly out in front of him. He was in civilian clothes.
“You were wounded,” Molly said, gently.
“At Passchendaele.” He smiled a little, deprecatingly. “A ‘Blighty’ one. Next best thing to a home posting, so they say.” The lightness of his tone was painful. “Mrs Benton—”
“Molly.”
He smiled. “Molly, yes. I came to offer my condolences—” He struggled for a moment over the name, “—Nancy told me about Jack. And then – to have lost her, too—” His voice trembled very slightly. “I wanted to come, just to tell you—” he spread helpless hands, “—these things are impossible to say. I’m sorry. Totally inadequate words.”
“But welcome,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”
Christopher’s eyes had strayed to a new photograph upon the table at his elbow. The tall, young uniformed figure smiled jauntily. “Your son?” Christopher asked in surprise.
“Yes. He joined the army some months ago. He’s being sent to France. Next week.”
He said nothing.
“I just won’t think about it,” she said, honestly, and for a moment the strain behind the calm exterior was plain to be seen. Then she stood up briskly. “I’m glad you came. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve something for you.” She walked to the sideboard, opened a drawer and came back carrying a small book. “Sarah gave this to me, as a keepsake for Nancy. But – somehow I feel that you should have it. It has your name in it.”
His hand shook as he took it, his fingers closing around familiar, warm leather. He bowed his head. “Are you sure?” he asked, after a moment.
“Of course. It is yours, isn’t it?”
“It was. I gave it to her.” He lifted the cover. CHRISTOPHER EDMONTON. 1912. His own writing, faded and smudged. Then beneath it, strong and clear, NANCY BENTON. JUNE 1917. SOFT EYES LOOKED LOVE TO EYES WHICH SPAKE AGAIN – he stared at the blurring words. “And all went merry as a marriage bell,” he said, softly. “Do you know the quotation?”
“I looked it up. It’s ‘Childe Harold’, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “‘But hark! – that heavy sound breaks in once more/ As if the clouds its echoes would repeat/ And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!/ Arm! Arm! it is – it is – the cannon’s opening roar!’”
“Please keep the book,” she said, into the quiet, “I think she would have wanted you to have it. And I have – other things.”
“Thank you.” Very carefully he tucked the book into his pocket, then with the help of his stick he began to struggle to his feet.
“Oh, please—” Molly stepped forward to assist him, but was waved away. “Won’t you stay for a drink?”
He smiled pleasantly, his eyes distant. “I won’t, if you don’t mind. It takes me an age to get anywhere with this, and with transport the way it is—” They stood awkwardly, looking at one another. “—I won’t impose on you. I hope you haven’t minded my coming? I simply felt that I had to convey my sympathy. And my thanks. I think that in the past you have been a good friend to me. And now,” he touched his pocket, “thank you especially for this. It is far more than I could have hoped for. I had nothing to remember her by. I thought I needed nothing. Now I know that not to be so.”
Molly put an impulsive hand on his arm. “If you want her remembered, truly remembered, by people other than us, you could give me – or rather Nancy – something in exchange.”
“Oh? Why certainly – i
f I can—?”
“I’m setting up a fund. In Nancy’s name. A memorial to her. A fund for the education of bright, working class girls. Fee paying scholarships to schools and colleges – perhaps, who knows, if I can get enough support – even to universities. But it’s difficult, as you can probably guess. This kind of thing at the moment is bound to come a long way behind the Red Cross, the refugees – oh, the million and one worthy calls on people’s charitable pockets. But I’m determined to do it anyway.”
“It’s a wonderful idea. A perfect memorial to Nancy.”
“That’s what I thought. But if it’s going to get off the ground—”
“How much do you need?” he asked, simply.
“I’m starting it with a thousand pounds. May I count on you for—?”
“The same,” he said.
“Oh, but that’s too much.” She was quite genuinely taken aback.
“A thousand,” he said, firmly. “And money as well-used as any I have ever spent. I’ll approach my mother, too. I’m certain she’ll help. She was very fond of Nancy.”
After he had taken his leave the girls found their mother staring pensively into the fire. “He was a lot better looking than I remembered him,” said Meg.
“You think anyone who’s male and over twenty good-looking,” retorted her sister, with unaccustomed asperity. “I thought he looked terribly sad. Sort of battered.”
“You make him sound like an old tin mug.”
Their voices washed over Molly unheard. She was remembering the time, in another life, when a gangling youth had walked into the chaos of moving-in day at The Larches; trying – and failing – to discover any resemblance at all between that remembered, sensitively youthful face and the hardened, damaged face of the young man who had just left.
* * *
A couple of days after Christmas – a Christmas spent very quietly with the twins, Sarah, and Annie and little Tom, and inevitably haunted by absent faces – Molly and Adam dined in his apartment. Adam, as always, had contrived gracefully to rise above such things as shortages and rationing and provide something approximating a pre-war meal.
“You’re impossible,” Molly said, regarding her inch-thick steak. “Poor Effie’s ‘doin’ somethin’ with mince’. I feel as if I ought to put this in a bag and take it home.”
Adam, smiling, opened the wine. Outside the window a London pea-souper wreathed ghostly fingers in the darkness; the best defence of all for the city against the Gothas and the Giants. There had been no raids since Christmas Eve.
Molly picked up her wine glass and looked through it at the flickering candlelight. It glowed like rubies.
Adam leaned across the table. “You’re looking particularly beautiful tonight.”
She lifted cool eyes. “And you’re looking particularly pleased with yourself.”
He laughed. “It’s the temporary security afforded by the fog. And it might have something to do with the company I’m keeping.” He half-bowed across the table.
“I see.” Very composedly, Molly sipped her wine. ‘It wouldn’t, of course, have anything to do with the fact that you’re bribing and corrupting half the city of Liverpool to ensure our cargoes’ precedence over everyone else’s?”
The silence was telling.
“I’ve known for a week,” she continued pleasantly. “You really should be more careful what you say in front of William Baxter. He works for me, Adam. Not for you. You’ve got the poor man quite worried with your – unorthodox methods of business.”
Adam laid down his knife and fork, laced long fingers together and regarded her gravely over them. In the fog-bound silence of the room the flames crackled in the hearth. “Are you going to read me the Riot Act?”
She shook her head, and saw the gleam of surprise in his eyes. She had thought about this long and hard. “No. The shipments are getting through, and that means that people are getting badly needed supplies that they otherwise might not. If anything needs to take precedence – by whatever method – it’s our foodstuffs. If I insist that you stop—” she paused “—oiling hinges, then someone else will start, and London might find itself with a fine supply of cotton reels or flannelette nightdresses.”
He regarded her with absolute and undisguised admiration. “How very practical of you.”
“But—” she said.
“Ah.”
“But I’m not happy about the excess profits were making. You’ve made a lot of things of me in the past, Adam, but I’m damned if even you are going to turn me into a war profiteer.”
“That’s an emotional phrase.”
“I’ll say it is.”
For a long moment he did not speak. Then he said, “It’s too much to expect, of course, that you haven’t already decided what you think should be done about it?”
This was her moment: she had planned it for a week. She leaned forward, her small face intent. “It’s really very simple. Marvellously so. I want us to donate the excess profits to Nancy’s funds. Oh, Adam, don’t you see – it’s the perfect thing to spend the money on—”
He remained silent and unsmiling. Her heart sank. She had lost. If she could not persuade him, she knew there was no way to force him.
“By Christ,” he said at last, quietly. “I must be going soft in the head. All right. It’s a deal. But only what you can prove to me are excess profits, mind. I’m not finishing up in the poorhouse for you or for anyone else.”
Molly laughed wryly. Beneath her triumph, a thought lay, still and heavy, like a stone in a bright pool of water. A few years ago Molly O’Dowd would not have come to such an arrangement. She would have been storming into the street looking for a policeman. Ends and means. Where would it stop?
Adam did not notice her odd change of mood. He stood up and came to her, offering his hand. She came to him and he kissed her, his mouth hard, familiar, infinitely exciting. “You’ll make an honest man of me yet, Molly,” he said into her hair.
And, even if she had seen it, she might have misinterpreted the thoughtful gleam in his eyes.
* * *
At the beginning of March 1918 Danny came home on leave. Molly was never more pleased to see anyone in her life, nor more astonished to see so great a change in such a short while, for the boy who had left came home a man.
“Why, Danny-oh,” Meg crowed, swinging on her brother’s hands, “how handsome you look! I swear I could fall for you myself!”
“You must have grown an inch,” Molly said.
“Two,” he grinned. “Hello, Kit.”
Kitty clung to him in silence.
“If you’d let a fellow breathe for a minute,” he said, “then he might be able to lay his hands on a couple of things that you ladies might like.” Even his voice was different, Molly noticed; the words were clipped and clear, the sloppiness of enunciation that she had used to scold about completely gone.
In the parlour he dug into his kitbag. “Here, pussy cat,” he said, tossing a small packet to Meghan.
“Oh, Danny, what is it?”
“Open it and see.”
He stood watching, a smile on his face as his sister’s eager fingers shredded the paper. The last traces of awkward adolescence had left him. He was as tall as Jack had been, but was built, like Harry, his true father, spare and graceful. The burnished red-brown hair, even shorn as it had been by an army barber, curled crisply away from a face that Molly saw with some misgiving would undoubtedly charm most women into ignoring the flaws that were inherent in it – a certain hard selfishness about the mouth, a jauntiness that promised arrogance in the tilt of the well-shaped head. He stood easily, his eyes on Meghan, a look of such confident expectation on his face that Molly, too, turned her face to her daughter.
“Danny! Oh, Danny, how marvellous! How on earth did you—?” Meghan’s face was brilliant. “Look, oh look what I’ve got!” She held up a slender, glittering chain of gold from which depended a perfect golden rose whose heart was set with a single stone that winked
fire as it swung from her fingers.
Molly looked sharply at her son. With the air of a magician he produced another little package, the twin of the one he had given Meghan. “Here, Kit. This is for you.”
With trembling fingers Kitty carefully opened her gift, smoothing the pretty paper into a neat square before she opened the tiny box. “Oh, Danny, it’s lovely!” She too had a golden chain, from which hung a tiny locket edged with glowing stones, blood-red, which turned it, as she held it up, into a heart of fire. “But Danny,” she said, aghast, “it must have cost pounds! And then, abashed, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” She stopped, blushing as red as the rubies in her locket.
“And now—” this time Danny’s hand went to his pocket, “—for what our gallant allies across the water might call the pièce de résistance—” He pulled from his pocket a small twist of rustling tissue paper. “For you,” he said to Molly.
The ring glittered on the palm of her hand like a capricious moonbeam trapped in metal and stone.
“Does it fit?” His young voice was anxious.
She slipped it on her finger. “Perfectly. What a lovely thing. Thank you.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “Have you given up eating or something?” she asked, smiling.
Very faintly he flushed. “Of course not. What do you mean?”
“Well, you didn’t get these at a sixpenny stall in Petticoat Lane, did you?” She tried to hide the tiny, gnawing doubts behind the lightness of the words.
Danny was digging once more in the bag. “I’m not Tommy Atkins in the trenches, you know Mum. Oh, no. I soon realized that wasn’t for Danny Benton. I’m in the Officer’s Mess at an HQ just outside Calais. Safe as houses.” He grinned disarmingly. “No one’s fired a shot at me in anger yet. And with a bit of luck no one ever will. It’s a cushy billet, with the chance to make a few bob on the side.”
Molly Page 57