by Kate Morton
The waiter arrived at their table, sliding a steaming plate before each of them. ‘Mock fish scallops,’ he said grandly.
‘Mock fish scallops?’ Jimmy sputtered.
The waiter’s mouth twitched and his facade slipped a little. ‘Artichokes, I believe, sir,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Chef grows ’em on his allotment.’
Jimmy watched Dolly across the white tablecloth. This was not the way he’d planned it, to propose to her in an empty dive, after buying her crumbed artichoke and sour wine, and making her burn with anger. Silence set up camp between them and the ring box weighed heavily in Jimmy’s trouser pocket. He didn’t want to be arguing, he wanted to be sliding the ring onto her finger, not simply because it bound her to him—though of course he longed for that—but because it honoured something good and true. He poked at his food.
He couldn’t have messed it up more if he’d tried. Worse, there was nothing he could think of doing that would fix it. Dolly was angry because she knew he wasn’t telling her everything, but the woman, Vivien, had asked him not to repeat what she’d said. More than that, she’d pleaded with him, and there’d been something about the way she looked when she did so that made him close his mouth and nod. He dragged his artichoke through some miserable white sauce.
Maybe she hadn’t meant Dolly, though. Now there was a thought— they were friends. Dolly would probably laugh if he told her, and wave her hand and say that of course she already knew. Jimmy took a sip of wine, thinking it through, wondering what his father would have done in the same situation. He had a feeling his dad would’ve observed the promise to Vivien, but then again, look what happened to him—he’d lost the woman he loved. Jimmy wasn’t about to let the same thing happen to him.
‘Your friend,’ he said casually, as if there’d been no awkwardness between them, ‘Vivien—she saw one of my photo-graphs.’
Dolly’s attention came to rest on him but she said nothing.
Jimmy swallowed, shutting out all thought of his father, those talks he’d given Jimmy as he was growing up, about valour and respect. He had no choice tonight, he had to tell Dolly the truth and, really, what harm could possibly come? ‘It was of a little girl whose family was killed the other night in a raid over Cheapside way. It was sad, Doll, terribly sad, she was smiling, you see, and wearing—’ He stopped himself and waved his hand, he could tell by Dolly’s expression she was losing patience. ‘That’s not important—the thing is, your friend knew her. Vivien recognised her from the picture.’
‘How?’
It was the first word she’d spoken since their meals arrived, and although it wasn’t exactly unreserved forgiveness, Jimmy lightened. ‘She told me she has a friend, a doctor, who runs a small private hospital over in Fulham. He turned over part of it to care for war orphans and she helps him sometimes. That’s where she met Nella, the little girl in the photograph. She’d been taken there, you see, when no one else came forward to claim her.’
Dolly was watching him, waiting for him to continue, but there wasn’t anything more he could think to say.
‘That’s it?’ said Dolly. ‘You didn’t tell her anything about yourself?’ ‘Not even my name, there wasn’t time.’ In the distance, from somewhere in the dark cold London night there came a series of explosions. Jimmy wondered suddenly who was being hit, who was screaming right now with pain and grief and horror as their world came down around them.
‘And she didn’t say anything else?’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘Not about the hospital. I was about to ask her if I could go with her one day, take something for Nella—’
‘You didn’t though?’
‘I didn’t get a chance.’
‘And that’s the only reason you were being so evasive—because Vivien told you she helps her doctor friend in his hospital?’
He felt foolish in the face of Dolly’s incredulity. He smiled and shrank a bit and cursed himself for always taking things so seriously, for not realising that of course Vivien had been overstating things, and of course Dolly already knew—that he’d been agonising over nothing. He said, a bit limply, ‘She begged me not to tell anyone.’
‘Oh, Jimmy,’ Dolly said, laughing as she reached across the table to brush his arm gently. ‘Vivien didn’t mean me. She meant for you not to tell other people, of course—strangers.’
‘I know.’ Jimmy stilled her hand in his, felt her smooth fingers beneath his own. ‘It was stupid of me not to realise. I’m not myself tonight.’ He was aware suddenly that he was standing at the edge of something; that the rest of his life, their life together, began on the other side. ‘In fact,’ he said again, his voice cracking just a little, ‘there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, Doll.’
Dolly had been smiling distractedly as Jimmy stroked her hand. A doctor friend, a male friend—Kitty had been right, Vivien had a lover, and suddenly everything made sense. The secrecy, Vivien’s frequent absences from the WVS canteen, the distant expression on her face as she sat in the window at number 25 Campden Grove, dreaming. She said, ‘I wonder how they met,’ just as Jimmy was saying, ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, Doll.’
It was the second time that night they’d spoken at once, and Dolly laughed. ‘We have to stop doing that,’ she said. She felt unexpectedly lucent and giggly, as if she could laugh all night. Perhaps it was the wine. She’d had more to drink than she realised. Then again, the relief at knowing Jimmy hadn’t revealed himself made her feel rather euphoric. ‘I was just saying—’
‘No,’ he reached to press a fingertip to her lips. ‘Let me finish, Doll.
I have to finish.’
His expression took her by surprise, it was one she didn’t see often, determined, almost urgent, and although she was desperate to know more about Vivien and her doctor friend, Dolly closed her mouth.
Jimmy let his hand slip sideways to caress her cheek. ‘Doro-thy Smitham,’ he said, and something inside her caught at the way he said her name. She melted. ‘I fell in love with you the first time I saw you. Do you remember, that cafe in Coventry?’
‘You were carrying a bag of flour.’
He laughed. ‘A true hero. That’s me.’
She smiled and pushed her empty plate aside. She lit a cigarette. It was cold, she realised, the radiator had stopped ticking. ‘Well, it was a very big bag.’
‘I’ve told you before there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.’
She nodded. He had, of course, many times. It was sweet, and she didn’t want to interrupt him when he was saying it again, but Dolly didn’t know how much longer she could keep her questions and thoughts about Vivien from bubbling to the surface.
‘I meant it, Doll. I’d do anything you asked.’
‘Do you think you could get the waiter to check the heating?’
‘I’m serious.’
‘So am I, it’s freezing in here all of a sudden.’ She wrapped her arms across her middle. ‘Can you feel it?’ Jimmy didn’t answer, he was too busy digging in his trouser pocket for some-thing. Dolly glimpsed their waiter and tried to get his attention. He appeared to see her, but then turned and headed back to-wards the kitchen. She noticed then that the other couple had gone and they were the only ones left in the restaurant. ‘I think we should leave,’ she said to Jimmy. ‘It’s late.’
‘Just a minute.’
‘But it’s cold.’
‘Forget the cold.’
‘But Jimmy—’
‘I’m trying to ask you to marry me, Doll.’ He’d surprised him-self, she could tell by his face, and he laughed. ‘I’m making a bit of a mess of it, apparently—I’ve never done it before. I don’t intend to do it again.’
He eased out of his seat and went to kneel before her, taking a deep breath. ‘Dorothy Smitham,’ he said, ‘will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
Dolly waited to understand, for him to break character and laugh. She knew he was joking; he was the one who’d insisted back at Bournem
outh that they wait until he’d saved enough money; any minute now he’d laugh and ask her if she’d like to order some dessert. But he didn’t. He stayed where he was, staring up at her. ‘Jimmy?’ she said. ‘You’ll get chilblains down there. Hop up, quickly.’
He didn’t. Without looking away, he raised his left hand and revealed a ring between his fingertips. It was a band of yellow gold with a small stone in a claw setting—old enough not to be new, too modern to be a real antique. He’d brought a prop, she realised, blinking at it with surprise. He really was doing a splendid job playing his part; she had to admire him; she wished she could say the same for herself, only he’d caught her off guard. Dolly wasn’t used to Jimmy initiating games of pretend—that was her job; she wasn’t sure she liked it. ‘Let me wash my hair and think about it,’ she quipped.
His own hair had fallen across one eye and he tossed his head to shift it. There was no hint of a smile on his face as he stared at her for a moment, as if he were collecting his thoughts, as he sighed. ‘I’m asking you to marry me, Doll,’ he said, and something in the honest woody quality of his voice, the complete absence of subterfuge and doublemeaning, made Dolly feel the first inkling of suspicion that he might in fact be in earnest.
She thought he was joking. Jimmy almost laughed when he realised that. He didn’t, though; he swiped his hair out of his eyes and thought about the way she’d taken him upstairs the other night, the way she’d looked at him as her red dress dropped to the ground, as she lifted her chin and met his gaze, and he’d felt young and strong and so very glad to be alive right then, right there, with her. He thought about the way he’d sat up afterwards, unable to sleep for the blessed knowledge that a girl like her could possibly be in love with him, the way he’d known as he watched her dream that he would love her all his life and hers, until they were old together, sitting on comfortable armchairs in their farmhouse, their children all grown up and flown away, taking it in turns to make each other cups of tea.
He wanted to tell it all to her, to remind her, to make her see the picture as clearly as he did, but Jimmy knew that Dolly was different, that she liked surprises and didn’t need to see the ending when they were still right at the start. Instead, when all his thoughts had been gathered like leaves, he exhaled slowly and said as plainly as he could, ‘I’m asking you to marry me, Doll. I’m still not a rich man, but I love you, and I don’t want to waste another day without you.’ And then he watched as her face changed, and he saw in the corners of her mouth and the minute shift of her brows that finally she understood.
As Jimmy waited, Dolly sighed, long and slowly. She reached for her hat, frowning a little as she turned it round and round by the brim. She’d always favoured the dramatic pause, so he wasn’t really worried as he followed the perfect line of her profile, just as he had on that hill by the sea; as she said, ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ in a voice not quite her own; as she turned to him and he saw a fresh tear sliding down her cheek: ‘what a thing to ask; what a damnable thing to ask me right now.’
Before Jimmy could ask her what she meant, she hurried past him, bumping her hip against another table in her hurry to get away, disappearing into the cold and the dark of wartime London without so much as hinting at a backwards glance. It was only after minutes had passed and she still hadn’t returned that Jimmy finally understood what had happened. And he saw himself suddenly, as if from above, as if the subject of his very own photograph, a man who’d somehow lost everything, kneeling alone on the dirty floor of a dingy restaurant that had become very cold.
Fifteen
Suffolk, 2011
LAUREL DID WONDER afterwards how it was possible she’d come this far without thinking to Google her mother’s name. Then again, nothing she knew about Dorothy Nicolson led her to suspect for a second that she might have an online presence.
She didn’t wait to get home to Greenacres. She sat in the parked car outside the hospital, took out her phone and typed ‘Dorothy Smitham’ into the search window. She went too quickly, of course, spelled it incorrectly and had to do it all over again. She steeled herself against whatever the results might show, and then pressed the search button. There were 127 hits. Laurel exhaled. A genealogy site in America, a Thelma Dorothy Smitham looking for friends on Facebook, a white pages listing in Australia, and then, halfway down the page, an entry on the BBC People’s War archive, subtitled ‘A London telephonist remembers World War Two’. Laurel’s finger was shaking as she selected that option.
The page contained the wartime remembrances of a woman called Katherine Frances Barker who’d worked as a telephonist for the War Office in Westminster during the Blitz. It had been submitted, said the note at the top, by Susanna Barker on be-half of her mother. There was a photograph at the top of a spritely old woman, posing somewhat coquettishly against a raspberry velour sofa with crocheted headrests. The annotation read:
Katherine ‘Kitty’ Barker relaxing at home. When WW2 broke out, Kitty moved to London, where she worked as a telephonist for the duration. Kitty would have liked to join the WRNS but communications was considered an essential service and she wasn’t able to leave.
The article itself was rather long and Laurel skimmed it, waiting for her mother’s name to jump out from the text. A few paragraphs down she found it:
I had grown up in the Midlands and had no family in London, but during the war there were services set up to find accommodation for war workers. I was fortunate compared to some, being sent to board in the home of a rather grand woman. The house was at number 7 Campden Grove, Kensington, and although you might not think so, my time spent there during the war was very happy. There were three other office girls staying, too, and a couple of Lady Gwendolyn Cal- dicott’s staff members who had remained when war broke out, a cook and a girl called Dorothy Smitham who was a companion of sorts to the mistress of the house. We became friendly, Dorothy and I, but lost touch when I married my husband, Tom, in 1941. Friendships were forged very quickly during the war—I suppose that should come as no surprise—and I have often wondered what became of my friends from that time. I hope they survived.
Laurel was buzzing. It was incredible, the effect of seeing her mother’s name, her name from before, in print. Especially in a document like this one, recounting the very time and place that Laurel was curious about.
She read the paragraph again and her excitement didn’t wane. Dorothy Smitham had been real. She’d worked for a woman named Lady Gwendolyn Caldicott and lived at number 7 Campden Grove (the same street as Vivien and Henry Jenkins, Laurel noted with a thrill) and she’d had a friend called Kitty. Laurel searched the date of the entry’s submission, 25 October 2008—a friend, who was quite possibly still alive and willing to talk to Laurel. Each discovery was another shining star in the great black sky, forming the picture that would lead Laurel home.
Susanna Barker invited Laurel to call for tea that afternoon. Finding her had proved so simple that Laurel, who’d never believed in an easy ride, had felt a surge of constitutional suspicion. She’d done no more than punch the names Katherine Barker and Susanna Barker into the Numberway online directory page, and then set about dialling each of the resulting numbers. She struck pay dirt on the third. ‘Mother plays golf on Thursdays and talks to students at the local grammar on Fridays,’ Susanna said. ‘There’s a space in her diary today at four, though?’ Laurel had taken the slot gladly, and was now following Susanna’s careful directions along a meandering lane through drenched green fields on the outskirts of Cam-bridge.
A plump jolly sort of woman with a fuzz of coppery rain-frizzed hair was waiting for her by the front gate. She was wearing a cheery sun-yellow cardigan over a brown dress, and clutching an umbrella with both hands in an attitude of polite anxiety. Sometimes, thought the actress inside Laurel (‘ears, eyes and heart, all at once’), you could tell everything there was to know about a person by a single gesture. The woman with the umbrella was nervous, dependable and grateful.
‘Why, hello there,’
she trilled as Laurel crossed the street to-wards her. Her smile exposed a magnificent amount of glossy gum. ‘I’m Susanna Barker and it’s just such an enormous pleasure to meet you.’
‘Laurel. Laurel Nicolson.’
‘But of course I know who you are! Come in, come in, please. Terrible weather, isn’t it? Mother says it’s because I killed a spider inside. Silly me, I ought to know better by now. It always brings the rain, though, doesn’t it?’
Kitty Barker was bright as a button and sharp as a pirate’s sword. ‘Dolly Smitham’s daughter,’ she said, bringing her tiny fist down on the table with a thump. ‘What a bloody marvellous surprise.’ When Laurel attempted to introduce herself and ex-plain how she’d found Kitty’s name on the Internet, the frail hand waved impatiently and its mistress barked; ‘Yes, yes, my daughter told me already—you said so on the phone.’
Laurel, who’d been accused of brusqueness more than once herself, decided to find the woman’s efficiency refreshing—for now. Presumably at the age of ninety-two, one neither minced a word nor wasted a moment. She smiled and said, ‘Mrs Barker, my mother never spoke much about the war when I was growing up—I gather she wanted to put it all behind her—but she’s unwell now and it’s become important to me to know everything I can about her past. I thought perhaps you might tell me a bit about wartime London, in particular about my mother’s life back then.’
Kitty Barker was only too happy to comply. That is, she leapt with alacrity to fulfill the first part of Laurel’s request, launching a lecture on Blitz-time London while her daughter brought the tea and scones.
Laurel paid full attention for a time, but her concentration began to waver when it became clear that Dorothy Smitham was only going to be a bit player in this story. She studied the war-time memorabilia on the sitting-room wall, posters entreating people not to take the squander bug with them when they went shopping, rather to remember their vegetables.