‘Good Lord. Come and see.’ Buzz’s voice was amused. ‘I’ll bet the local constabulary doesn’t know about this!’
Allie joined him at the conservatory door. As he had opened it, a wave of warm, moist air had escaped into the cold room, misting the mirror that hung on the wall. A tiny paraffin heater burned in the middle of the tiled floor, the plants – that Allie had expected to see dead, or dying, of cold and neglect – were as green, glossy and healthy as they had ever been. She looked at the little heater. ‘That isn’t allowed, surely?’
‘You can bet your boots it isn’t. But who’s arguing? What a smashing little spot. Looks as if our fairy godmother got here before us.’
‘It must be Browning, bless his heart. How strange to see it looking so normal – the only part of the house that hasn’t changed a bit…’ Her voice faded. Buzz had gently shut the door behind them and was standing watching her, his face for once serious. The warm and verdant smell of the conservatory engulfed them. As he stepped to her she stiffened for a moment, pulling away from him.
‘Allie? What is it?’
‘Nothing.’ But as she lifted her face to his kiss she saw again those other lovers, felt again the physical shock experienced by that other achingly, stubbornly young Allie as she had watched. But also felt something else, something so surprising that it took a moment for her to identify it as the first, faint stirrings of an astonishing sympathy. The Allie who stood here now was herself in love. Could anything – anyone – have prevented her from falling in love with Buzz?
She doubted it. Was there anything she would not do for him? She knew there was not. But Buzz was not someone else’s husband. Someone else’s father. The old antagonistic hurt rose freshly, burning like acid through the softer fabric of a faint, newborn understanding. Destroying it. With a physical effort she shut out the thoughts. Shut out the memories.
Buzz kissed her, long and slowly, held her to him, rocking her gently, like a child, her head on his shoulder. Faintly, through the cold air, the sound of the church clock striking the half hour came to their ears. Allie closed her eyes.
‘I’m glad I’ve seen you here.’ His voice was soft, muffled in her thick hair. ‘You belong. It’s a lovely old house. A real home. I think you must have been very happy here.’
She opened her eyes. The vibrations of the chimes still hung in the air. ‘Yes. I was.’ And once again a treacherous stirring of loving nostalgia smoothed the raw edges of her hurt. There had been other things than that awful night, than the miseries of misunderstanding in the intervening years. She had always known it, had never been able to face the knowledge. Even now she fought it. She had not been wrong. She knew she had not been wrong. They – they – had been wrong. And yet – suddenly, her clearest memory was of her father’s face as she had seen it last, on her weekend leave – tired, older, and with always that awful depth of sadness in his eyes when he looked at her.
She turned from Buzz to the window, stood looking through the live, patterned lacing of leaves into the garden. He came to her, and she leaned back against him, her head tipped to his shoulder – and again came that razor-sharp stab of recollection. In just that way, Celia had leaned to Robert Jordan, her face streaked with tears. Curiously, it was the first time she had remembered those tears.
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Buzz said into the curve of her neck. ‘Tell you something.’
‘Mm?’
‘Well – ask you something. If you say yes, then I’ll tell you something.’
His unaccustomed awkwardness surprised her. She turned in his arms to look at him. There was a look of boyish uncertainty about him that made her want to hug him, hard. ‘What is it?’
‘Do you think — that is — any chance that you could get a few days off after Christmas? Some time in January, say?’
‘I’m not sure. I might be able to. My last real leave was a good few months ago. Depends on how busy we might be, I suppose. Why?’
‘I’ve got some leave owing. Haven’t been bothering to take it. But – well – I thought – wondered – there’s somewhere I’d like you to see. Someone I’d like you to meet. If you’d like to, that is. I thought it might be fun – just the two of us…’ He hesitated, misinterpreting her silence. ‘I’m sorry, perhaps it wasn’t such a bright idea. I just thought—’
‘Buzz, I’d love to. Love to.’
His arms tightened around her. ‘Really?’
‘Really. Where are we going?’
‘Northamptonshire. Do you know it?’
She shook her head, her eyes on his animated face.
‘Good. Then I can show it to you. A bit of it, anyway. Now, come on, show me the rest of the house. I want to see every nook and cranny. I want to know what it was like to be you, here, a long time ago. I already know what you were like.’
‘Oh? What was I like?’
He contemplated her, smiling. ‘A very serious little girl, all arms and legs and big blue eyes. You didn’t say much, and you spent a lot of time hiding from people.’
She looked at him startled. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I’m not silly.’ He held out his hand and she took it. He pulled her towards the door. ‘Show me the house.’
She hung back, laughing. ‘Hold on a minute. You said you were going to tell me something. Ask me something, you said, and then tell me something.’
He put an arm about her shoulders, guided her back into the cold drawing room. ‘Ah, but I didn’t say when, did I? Northamptonshire, as I remember it, is a jolly good place for telling people things…’
They explored the rest of the empty house, came back into the warm conservatory to eat the sandwiches they had brought with them and to share a thermos of hot tea. Then they went out into the back garden, wandered past the soldierly ranks of winter cabbage and onions that were strewn, Allie noticed, with a weird fertilizer of shrapnel. There must an anti-aircraft battery somewhere near. In the orchard, the river-mist wreathed ghost-ribbons through the spreading bare branches of the trees. They stood by the muddy, swirling water and listened to the unmistakable sound, high and distant, of enemy bombers heading for London, heard too the heavy guns start up from the direction of the city. A little sobered, hand in hand, they walked back to the house. It was now almost full dark. With the flashlight Allie checked the doors and windows, pulled the front door firmly closed behind her and trudged down the wet drive to where Buzz awaited her. As she shut the rusted gates, she looked back at the dark mass of the house. A real home, Buzz had said. Yes, it had been that. And, please God, would be again.
With one last, long, thoughtful look, she turned to Buzz and the wretched Norton.
* * *
Libby Maybury, ensconced behind an enormous, steaming tea urn under the eagle eye of her mother, at first did not recognize the young man in army uniform who stood, smiling, waiting for her to remember him. The smooth fair hair was shorter, the moustache a little more military.
‘Peter! Good heavens, how marvellous! Where did you spring from?’ Her voice faltered as her eyes took in the slightly lopsided stance, the stick with which Peter Wickham propped himself up. She recovered, smiled brilliantly. ‘How lovely to see you! It must be – what? – two years?’
‘Something like that.’ The pleasant, quiet voice was the same. ‘How are you?’
Libby spread her small, well-manicured hands. ‘As you see. Suffering like everyone else. My clothes are wearing out. I haven’t had a decent hairdo – or a decent night’s sleep, for that matter – for months, and—’ Suddenly the superficial brightness faded under his quiet smile. ‘Hark at me. I don’t change, do I? I never could stop talking and say something straight.’ She extended her hand across the littered, tea-stained table. ‘It really is marvellous to see a face from the old days. You don’t know how marvellous.’
The bustling station hall was full of men and women in uniform. An engine shrieked, the sound echoing through the twisted girders that perilously supported a roof h
alf-burned away in a recent raid. A guard blew his whistle and the great locomotive began to move, belching and coughing steam, roaring its eagerness to be off, the long line of packed carriages jolting and clanking behind it. Libby put her hands over her ears and grimaced. Peter, smiling, stood back to make way for a young sailor, kitbag high on his shoulder, his hat, with its dark ribbon showing only the letters HMS at a jaunty angle on his mop of hair.
‘Cuppa tea, miss, please. An’ a kiss fer luck, if there’s one goin?’
‘Don’t be cheeky, sailor. I might be tempted to put a little extra something in your tea.’
The lad grinned acknowledgement, took his mug. A train was pulling into a platform with short, sharp chuffs that turned into a long, relieved sigh as it came to rest against the buffers. The carriage doors banged open like a volley of pistol shots and the platform became a swirling river of uniforms, kitbags, luggage.
‘Batten down the hatches, here come the next lot.’ Libby beckoned to Peter, shouted over the noise. ‘I’m off in about twenty minutes. Can you wait?’
He smiled, nodded, toasted her with his mug of tea and limped to a nearby wooden seat onto which, very slowly and with painful care, he lowered himself, his damaged left leg sticking straight out in front of him. Libby remembered Ashdown, a tennis court, shouts, and laughter, Allie’s voice: ‘Oh, Peter, honestly, you’ll have to move faster than that!’
‘Two teas and some biscuits, please, miss. One with, one without…’
Half an hour later they were walking through the wrecked streets, Libby sauntering, slowing her footsteps to Peter’s awkward, swinging gait. She pulled off her headscarf, shook her hair free. She was wearing trousers and a man’s heavy jumper that Peter recognized as Edward’s, her only real concession to femininity the small, wedge-heeled shoes that picked their careful way through brickdust and rubble. Yet despite the masculine attire and the faint, dark rings beneath her eyes, she was still utterly lovely.
Not far from them, women queued patiently for water at an emergency standpipe. Every road had its raw and ragged gap, almost every house showed some sign of damage – broken windows, shattered roofs, some of which were spread with tarpaulins in an attempt to keep out the worst of the December weather.
‘They’ve caught it badly round here ever since the start of the Blitz.’ Libby skirted a bomb crater. ‘It’s the station, you see.’
‘Couldn’t the people be evacuated?’
‘Most of them have been. They came back.’ Libby shrugged. ‘You can’t blame them, I suppose. All they have is here – possessions, home, family, friends.’
‘Do you work at the station every day?’
She laughed. ‘Good Lord, no. Only when I can’t get out of it,’ she said with disarming frankness. ‘My mother – you remember my mother…’ Her tone was dry.
He nodded, smiling.
‘…has a wonderful way with her when it comes to bulldozing people into doing things they thought they wouldn’t be seen dead doing. Must be awfully good for the war effort, my mother.’
He glanced down at her. The times made it difficult to enquire after old friends. One never knew what one might hear. ‘Edward?’ he asked, gently.
‘Abroad. Malaya, I believe. His family have connections out there, as you know. I don’t know quite what he’s doing – but he knows about rubber, and the rubber supply is essential, so…’ She paused, added on a strange little half-breath, ‘I just wish it weren’t so damned far away.’
They walked in silence for a while, picked their way around a roped-off street where hung a carelessly strung, lopsided notice: KEEP OUT. UXB.
‘And – Allie?’ His voice was still perfectly even, but it took him just a fraction of a second too long to get the name out. ‘She’s in the WAAFs still?’
‘Yes. Down at Hawkinge.’ Libby flicked him a sympathetic glance. ‘You haven’t seen her?’
‘No.’ The monosyllable gently but firmly closed the subject. He stopped for a moment, leaning on his stick. His face was suddenly pale and lines of strain showed themselves around his eyes. ‘Sorry. Have to rest up for a sec.’
‘Of course.’
‘Caught it in Belgium,’ he said, ‘in the retreat. Machine-gun. They’re still trying to patch it together but…’ He shrugged, smiled wryly, and left it at that. ‘In between hospital trips, I’m at the War Office, so at least I can try to convince myself I’m still doing something halfway useful.’
‘Do you have to get straight back there this afternoon?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m off till tonight.’
‘Can you make it to Rampton Court? We could have a drink – a chat – oh, please do.’ She took his free hand, held it in both of hers. ‘The world’s full of strangers, isn’t it?’ she said in an odd little voice. ‘I didn’t know, until I saw you standing there, how much I missed my old friends.’
In the flat, which was bright with pre-war Christmas decorations, he lowered himself with an undisguised sigh of relief into an armchair, propping his stick by his side.
Libby pulled off her jumper, tossed it onto a chair, straightened the collar of her blouse, ran her fingers through her hair, tidying it. ‘Drink?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact – if you wouldn’t mind? – I’d really love a cup of tea. If you’ve got tea, that is?’
‘Good Lord,’ Libby threw back her head and laughed. ‘Tea? Well, yes, it happens you’re in luck. I managed to get hold of a quarter yesterday. Is that what you’d like? Really?’
‘Please.’
They sat as winter shadows gathered around them, sipping from fine, bone-china cups of eggshell colour and fragility. Libby caught Peter’s quizzical glance. ‘Aunt Maude’s wedding present. Supposed to be an heirloom. But needs must and all that. I broke the last of the everyday china last week and there’s absolutely nothing in the shops. I refuse – absolutely refuse – to drink my tea out of that awful white stuff an inch thick and with no handles. You have to draw the line somewhere. So out came Aunt Maude’s Spode. I keep meaning to poke around a couple of second-hand shops – they might have something, I suppose.’
The tea was steaming and strong, the silence companionable. After a while, they talked, desultorily, about old times and old friends, about normality – trips to the seaside, tea on the lawn. About another life. At last Peter glanced at his watch. Darkness was closing in. He stirred, reached for his stick. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better—’
Libby cut his words short. She was slumped in an armchair, her head resting on her hand. The lights were not yet switched on, and as the fire was screened, the curtains had not yet been drawn. Her fair hair was a smudge in the faint light. ‘They’ll be here in a minute, I suppose, our little kraut chums. Damn them.’ Her voice was suddenly bleakly bitter.
Peter struggled to his feet. She stood up, reached and brushed a speck of dust from his uniform jacket. ‘I’ve always been afraid of the dark, you know that? Always. As a child I was terrified. Stupid, isn’t it? Even now I’m – marginally – more afraid of the dark out there than I am of the bombs, of being alone, of what’s happening to Edward, of the damned mice in the damned shelter—’ She broke off with a nervous catch of her breath that was not quite laughter. ‘I hate it. Hate it all. I hate the shortages, and the blackout, and the fear, and the Woolton pie. Oh, I know – no one in their right mind would admit to enjoying it – but sometimes I wonder. Have you heard them singing in the shelters night after night? Seen the queues for the clubs and dance halls?’ She took a long breath and ruffled her hair with her hand. ‘Christ, hark at me. If the others heard me, they’d think I’d taken leave of my senses. I’m the worst of the lot. I never stop. I can’t stop. I can’t bear to be alone. Because I’m so – wretchedly – terribly – afraid. Of the present. Of the future. Of the whole bloody awful mess. Why am I such a coward? Does everyone feel the same?’ She was speaking rapidly, the words running into each other, her breath shallow and sharp in her throat.
Peter reached a
friendly arm. She leaned tiredly against him, her head bowed. He could feel her tears. As he held her, awkwardly unbalanced, searching for words, he felt a wave of pity for this small, bright, fragile creature. ‘Of course it isn’t just you. We all feel the same to a greater or lesser extent. You just mustn’t give in to it. Look on the bright side.’ The words sounded, even in his own ears, empty of meaning. ‘Sooner or later it will all be over, and Edward will come back, and everything will be the same as it was before.’
In her own unthinking misery, she did not sense the flinch of pain that crossed his face as he spoke the last words, nor feel the instinctive movement of his shattered leg. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.
The first distant siren sounded, a wailing banshee that immediately awoke echoes from all over the city.
‘Damn and blast that thing!’ Libby drew away from him, sniffing, and dashed an embarrassed hand across her face. ‘Sorry about that.’
He smiled in the darkness. ‘What are friends for? But, truly, I have to go now…’
‘Of course.’ She was bright again, brittle as glass. ‘And I have people coming. But you will come again, won’t you? I do promise faithfully not to weep all over you again.’
He kissed her cheek gently. ‘Weep all you like. As I said – what are friends for?’
Chapter Sixteen
The Christmas dance for the men and women of the RAF station at Hawkinge was held in the restaurant of a big department store in Folkestone on two consecutive evenings, it being felt unwise to offer the target of the massed personnel of the station to the possibility of enemy action in one go. Disappointingly, Buzz Webster could make neither evening, so Allie – determined not to miss the fun altogether – went with Sue and a couple of other girls.
Despite the obviously adverse circumstances, nothing could suppress the Christmas spirit. Hired buses carried them the short distance to shell-battered Folkestone. The station band gave festive and enthusiastic rendering of spot-waltzes, ladies’ excuse-mes and the inevitable Paul Jones. Allie danced every dance, drank a little more than was now her custom, and was standing fanning herself vigorously with her cardboard ticket during the brief interval, looking for Sue, when an airman she knew by sight tapped her on the shoulder.
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