‘Where are you off to, young lady?’ An old gentleman with grey hair squeaked his bicycle to a halt next to her and dismounted. ‘Can I be of any help?’
Jenny had intended to take the bus to Clapham South, but she allowed the prospect of pleasant company to sway her: ‘I’m going as far as the next tube stop. Yes, that would be very kind of you.’
The man hoisted the suitcase onto his crossbar and began pushing his bike along next to the pavement, the case wedged in place under his armpit.
‘Are you off to spend Christmas with your sweetheart?’
‘I don’t know’ – Jenny smiled at the man’s easy geniality – ‘I suppose I’ll see if he’s there when I arrive.’
‘I hope for his sake he makes it. This will be a Christmas we’ll need to remember for a long time.’
***
Jenny climbed the steps, emerged through the red brick maw of Hampstead station and stood blinking on the pavement. An otherworldliness hung in the ether that even a bombing war had failed to ruffle. The piles of sandbags either side of the entrance looked brand new, practically starched. The air, although tinged with the petrol fumes of revving cabbies, held no bitter undertones of burnt wood and brick dust. It was the first time in weeks she’d seen a street that nursed no broken windows.
‘Jenny!’
She turned at the boom of the familiar voice. ‘Hello, Daddy.’
Her father grabbed her suitcase and kissed her cheek in one swooping movement. ‘Come on, my love. I’m parked in the next road at a bus stop. Can’t afford to hang about.’
He bustled off the way he’d come and Jenny trotted after, a broad grin creasing her face. They dodged around the corner and he redoubled his speed at the sight of a double-decker bus crawling through the traffic towards them.
‘Quickly!’ He dropped the suitcase into the boot and they clambered into the car. ‘Now, come on old girl, don’t let me down.’
The car coughed into life at the first turn of the key and they pulled away, the driver’s cry of victory drowned out by the blaring horn of the bus looming behind them.
Jenny’s father glanced in the rearview mirror and tutted: ‘I don’t know, Jen. Why is everyone so impatient these days?’
‘It’s his job to be on time, Dad.’ She squeezed his hand where it rested on the gear stick.
‘Even so, young lady, there is such a thing as common courtesy.’
Jenny smiled again and gave up the argument. She relaxed into the seat and surrendered to the warm glow of coming home.
It was a short drive from the station along well-appointed streets to the Freeman home. The detached house stood behind a tall garden wall. In between the wall and the front porch there was space for a circular rockery around which the car crunched on deep shingle.
‘Welcome home, Jen,’ her father said and climbed out to retrieve the case.
Jenny clambered out and pushed her way through the front door. The rich scent of Christmas baking filled the hallway and she hurried through to the kitchen to find her mother testing a cake with a metal skewer, her eyes squinting at her creation from a visage reddened by the kitchen’s heat.
‘A couple more minutes, I think.’ She picked up the baking tin and approached the cooker: ‘Fruit cake. Your favourite.’ She slid the tin back into the oven and turned to regard her daughter. ‘Terrible job getting the cherries.’
‘Hello, Mother’ – Jenny crossed the room and melted into the woman’s embrace – ‘it’s good to be home.’
‘Sit down, my love.’ She took a speculative glance at her watch: ‘Too early I fear, it’ll have to be tea.’
Jenny heard the clump of her father climbing the stairs, taking her case to her old bedroom. The room they kept the way she’d left it, just in case. Glancing around the kitchen she was hard-pressed to spot anything that hadn’t been there forever. It could’ve been the night all those years ago when her mother sat her at this same kitchen table, filled the same dark brown teapot from the same whistling kettle and broke the news about Richard.
Her mother placed the tea tray on the table between them. ‘So,’ she said from beneath arched eyebrows, ‘any news?’
Jenny picked up the pot and poured. ‘None that I can tell you.’
The older woman glanced up sharply, gauging the humour behind the words: ‘So, you’re still single.’
‘I’m not ready to give up my job yet, Mummy. There’s too much important work to be done and I don’t want to be stuck in a kitchen while someone else does it.’
‘The time is running away from you, Jennifer. Good Lord, you’ll be twenty-nine next August. Don’t leave it too late, my darling. That would break my heart.’
Jenny reached across and squeezed her mother’s hand. ‘I’ll know the right man when he comes along, Mummy. After all, I can’t have your grandchildren with just anybody.’
The older woman smiled and stood up. ‘Come on. Bring your tea, let’s go and look at the Christmas tree.’
Monday, 23 December 1940
The two women strolled down Hampstead Grove on their way towards the press of shops and cafes clustered around the tube station. The sky formed a blue, cloudless dome over their heads and the tepid, yellowing sunshine cast ever-longer shadows as it descended to its early rest.
‘There have been a few bombs, of course,’ Mrs Freeman said. ‘But we stopped going to the shelter a long while ago. Out here we’re more likely to get run over in the blackout than killed in an explosion.’
‘The hit on Balham tube station was the closest thing to us.’
‘I heard. Nasty business.’
Jenny refrained from elaborating and simply grunted agreement.
‘It does rather prove,’ her mother continued, ‘that nowhere is truly safe.’
Hampstead Grove narrowed and the high walls on either side channelled the chill breeze. The downward slope hurried their feet along and Jenny felt a pang of anxiety, a stab of unbidden emotion: The road opened to a junction and they veered down towards Holly Hill. To their left, set back along a narrow alley, sat The Holly Tree public house. She hadn’t been there since her last visit with Richard and ghosts of that time flocked around the door. Jenny pulled her eyes away and let the jumble in her heart subside.
The slope steepened and within two hundred yards disgorged the pair onto the main street opposite the station.
‘Right, young lady’ – Mrs Freeman caught her arm – ‘let’s find you a Christmas present.’
***
Jenny’s mother busied herself at the table with wrapping paper and ribbons, while her father occupied his habitual perch at his desk with a fountain pen in his hand, writing a letter or crafting a diary entry. Jenny scanned the newspaper on her lap: Three consecutive raids on Liverpool had inspired some young hack to dub it the Christmas Blitz. Apart from this flash of diabolical creativity, the article was written in a stark, factual style. Three shelters had taken direct hits, killing nearly two hundred people.
Jenny gazed at the number, trying to penetrate its meaning. Fifty families or more?
She pushed the paper away and it slid to the floor. Her eyes rested on the glass ornaments dangling from the tree, sparkling against the odds in the dimly-lit room.
‘I had a chat with the postman, this morning.’ Mr Freeman’s head remained bowed over his papers as he spoke. ‘Apparently there’s some speculation about a truce over Christmas. A bit like 1914.’
Mrs Freeman finished wrapping a parcel and tucked it under the tree. ‘Perhaps Hitler will see the light and move for peace in the new year.’
Her husband stood and stretched. ‘It’s gone too far for that, my love. I don’t think 1941 can be a particularly happy new year for anyone.’
He opened a drawer in his desk and rummaged around. ‘Who’s for a game of cards?’
Chapter 17
Christmas Eve, 1940
It was approaching 9 o’clock in the morning when Bryan dropped Scott outside his house. Bryan waved to Lizzy wh
en she opened the door for her husband and smiled with genuine pleasure at the kiss she blew back. Grinding the Humber into gear, he pulled a laborious three-point turn in the narrow road and started back the way he had come, his exhaust swathing great coils of condensation into the crisp winter air.
He headed north up Peckham Hill. The grimy terraced houses resembled an old man’s dentures: some teeth missing, others broken. Along the pavements and on top of the rubble-heaps children played, wrapped in grubby overcoats and knitted balaclavas, each child a firecracker of barely-contained excitement ubiquitous amongst the innocent on this day of days.
Bryan steered west onto the Old Kent Road. Here shopkeepers and stallholders bustled about their business, eager to take a last few coins before their customers melted from the streets to shut themselves away in homes full of family. A pub stood with windows thrown open to clear the fug of the previous night and the landlord bent to sweeping his doorstep in readiness for a late afternoon rush of workmen bonding in seasonal camaraderie, and bosses treating the typing pool to a glass of sherry.
He continued west, through Elephant and Castle and on to Lambeth. Here the people moved along the streets with a certainty of purpose and a sense of belonging. It was Christmas and they were home; nothing could hurt them today.
Bryan slowed as he jostled with double-decker buses to cross Westminster Bridge. Parliament brooded behind its ramparts of bagged sand, and terse-featured guards, with their rifles slung, regarded last-minute shoppers with a tinge of envy.
Hard right onto the Embankment and the traffic loosened. Ahead, above the docks, a miasma of soot stained the horizon, rising from burnt-out timber yards that had smouldered for weeks. On the river, an RAF launch plied its way seaward, curving gracefully between the tugs labouring their loads in the opposite direction.
Striking north now, through Holborn, Russell Square and Bloomsbury. More women on the pavements here, some with packages, some arm in arm, all better dressed.
Through Camden to Belsize Park and a sudden flood of memories that had lain in wait for his return. Pubs he knew, shops he had frequented, the side road to St Christopher’s, his old school. And finally, Hampstead.
Bryan hauled a left turn onto Church Row and there, towards the end of the road, stood the church of St John. The building sat squat amongst the elegant Georgian terraces, like a gothic power station supplanted from the age of steam. Its bleak brick tower supported a diminutive verdigris spire, a small afterthought to soften the gruff industrial façade with a hint of righteousness. Here, with all its oppressive inertia, stood his father’s palace of dogma.
‘God help me,’ Bryan breathed.
He crawled the Humber along the road next to the wrought iron railings that stood in the shadow of the church walls. Stones, marking the graves of long-dead gentlemen traders and their families, slid by, inexorable. Directly behind the church stood a substantial house with a columned porch, thickly painted in years of white gloss. Bryan parked on the road outside.
It took only a few moments before a curtain moved to one side and his mother’s face appeared at the window. Her querulous expression melted into wide-eyed surprise as Bryan climbed out of the car and pulled his kitbag off the back seat.
Bryan walked up the porch steps and the door opened before he reached it.
‘Shhh…’ His mother held a finger to her lips. ‘Your father is working on his sermon for midnight mass. Mustn’t be disturbed.’
‘Hello, Mother.’ Bryan bent and brushed a kiss onto the woman’s cheek. ‘Happy Christmas.’
‘Shhh. Come through.’
Bryan set his bag down under the hat rack in the tiled hallway and followed his mother past his father’s closed study and into the kitchen. She ushered him in and gently shut the door.
‘Well, here’s a surprise. Let me look at you.’ A smile brightened her worn features. ‘How long do we have you?’
‘I’ll be leaving on Boxing Day.’
She filled a kettle and set out three cups and saucers. ‘I expect the turkey is big enough.’ She broke off her tea-making and turned to regard him, her smile broadening as her surprise at his arrival dissipated. ‘How are you, Bryan?’
‘Never mind me, what about you? Still walking on eggshells around the old man, I see. Haven’t you put in sufficient time to earn some privileges?’
‘Now, now, don’t be disrespectful. It’s for better or worse, you know that. He has a calling to answer, and he puts his heart into it.’
Mrs Hale placed the tea cups on the table and arranged some oatmeal biscuits on a plate, overlapping them neatly into a circle. The kettle’s hiss changed to a warble which escalated to a full-throated screech. She turned off the gas and filled the teapot.
‘He’ll be through in a moment,’ she said, under her breath, inclining a nod to the kitchen door.
Bryan turned as the door opened. Reverend Hale stepped into the room and hesitated. He regarded Bryan with the air of an engineer evaluating an unexpected fault.
‘Tea,’ Mrs Hale announced, ‘and look; Bryan’s visiting us for Christmas.’
The tall man’s neck swivelled against his dog collar from Bryan to his wife and back again. His features relaxed, as if a conundrum had been satisfactorily explained and he stepped forward with his hand outstretched. ‘Good morning, Son.’
Bryan stood and received the handshake. ‘Hello, Father.’
They all sat, and the tea was poured and sipped in silence. The Reverend picked up a biscuit and nibbled its edge.
‘How is the sermon coming along?’ Bryan asked.
‘Very well, thank you.’
‘It must be a difficult one to pitch, this year. What with London being crucified by air raids practically every night?’
The older man hesitated under his son’s provocation for a moment, then decided to turn the other cheek; ‘We can always rally to the flag of faith when all around seems lost to chaos.’
Bryan nodded sagely: ‘A very fine concept for a sermon writer sitting in a vicarage drawing room. But how might it play to the bombed-out families of Coventry, or Liverpool, or the East End? Those people only believe in Hitler and the devils that work for him. I expect they’d like to know why God allows him such free rein.’
Mrs Hale cleared her throat: ‘I need to make up a bed.’
The Reverend watched her go and took another bite of his biscuit. The kitchen door clicked closed and he leaned towards Bryan, his expression locked into its habitually beneficent altruism despite his underlying rankle.
‘God has allowed this war to happen in order to spur us on towards a solution; some way to bring about everlasting peace, to prevent such things from ever happening again.’
‘Father’ – Bryan looked the older man in the eye – ‘outside our aerodrome there’s an iron age hillfort. It was built for the same reason that takes me into the sky in a heavily armed aircraft searching for people to kill; self-defense. How can war be stopped when there’s always someone ready to steal everything you’ve got?’
The Reverend leaned back in his chair and drained his tea. ‘I thank God for your deliverance from the danger.’
‘I assure you that’s purely a matter of luck.’
‘Well’ – Bryan’s father hauled his tall frame upright – ‘I must go and finish my sermon.’
Bryan swivelled on his shiny wooden chair to watch his father walk towards the door.
‘I suppose you know the Nazis believe God is on their side?’
***
The bar at The Flask public house embraced a throng of sweating customers, mostly married couples, intent on squeezing out whatever merriment might be available for the coins they possessed, while the log fire roared out its broiling heat to further ruddy their faces. Occasional hoots and cackles of laughter split the air as the crowd jostled under a turgid layer of tobacco smoke wallowing against the ceiling like an inverted moorland fog.
Bryan’s dinner sat like a lump of chalk in his stomach. It had been
eaten in silence, not because anyone held a grudge, but because that’s the way it always was. He vaguely regretted goading his father, if only because his mother was likely to suffer the consequences of the resultant brooding. The man gave no credence to Bryan’s opinions on anything, especially religion, so the sparring was ultimately a pointless sport. Perhaps his attendance at the church would oil the choppy waters.
Bryan wore his crumpled civilian suit and he’d long since pulled his tie loose. But even that, and the six pints of ale he’d swilled, failed to liberate him from his bleak mood.
‘Cheer up, mate’ – a man nudged him in the ribs with a bony elbow – ‘it might never happen.’
Bryan shuffled sideways to let the man through to the bar.
‘I’m almost certain it will,’ he muttered to himself.
The large clock on the wall, a trophy from a French railway station, struck ten. The crowd whittled away, women calling farewells and Christmas wishes to neighbours across the room. Within twenty minutes Bryan was left with barely a dozen drinking companions, mostly hard-bitten older men whose eyes reflected their losses from a previous war.
Too bloated to drink any more ale, Bryan ordered a large port and brandy, partly to salve his indigestion, but mostly to dull the impending ordeal of his father’s midnight mass. The deep, blood tingling warmth of the ruby-red liquid loosened the knots in his stomach and blunted the edge of his senses.
Draining the glass, he wriggled into his overcoat, waved his goodnight to the barman and pushed through the blackout curtains to the chill winter night and the short walk to St John’s Church.
***
Bryan trudged up the path between the gravestones and through the church doors. A verger smiled in greeting and held the blackout drapes to one side. Bryan nodded his thanks and stepped through.
Sconces thronged with candles danced and flickered their light around the vast cream-white interior. The painted columns, marching in pairs down the body of the church, supported sweeping arches and balconies, both rimed with plaster decorations clothed in gold leaf that glinted in resonance with the guttering flames below. A thousand times he’d been inside this building, almost every time against his will or better judgement, yet in spite of himself, it never failed to move him with its simple, clean beauty.
The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set Page 46