He puffed up his own role in the office, and was incensed as he saw her hide a smile. She never had much time for him, he raged, forgetting that she had been instrumental in persuading Skye and Nick to let him take this job and move in with the Kingsleys in the first place.
Such things could always be conveniently forgotten as far as Olly was concerned. In journalist jargon, he considered it sorting out the wheat from the chaff.
One day, he told himself furiously when she had gone… one day they’ll take me seriously. And soon.
* * *
At least the evacuees were settling in after the first hiccups, thought Celia, as she drove back to New World. The drive was slow due to the restrictions of the hooded car headlights everyone was now forced to adopt, even though she knew the road so well.
But she also knew the cliff edge was perilously near to the road in places, and she had no wish to go plunging over the side to the rocks below. Her great-uncle Walter had deliberately walked straight into the sea from somewhere along this stretch of coastline, breaking his mother’s heart, and she had no wish to do the same.
In any case, it would be very bad form to have to have two funerals in such a short space of time, she told herself with mock cynicism.
Her thoughts reverted to the evacuees. Though Mary’s sobbing bouts at home continued, the other three hadn’t found school too much of a problem. Tommy had come home with a bloodied nose on numerous occasions, but had triumphantly proclaimed that they should see the other twerps.
Admittedly, a couple of irate mothers had telephoned Skye from time to time to complain about her charges. But apart from that, the children had dutifully written their laborious letters home – and sometimes the parents had written back. And all was well, Celia thought with supreme optimism.
She discovered the irony of that thought as soon as she arrived home. The sound of shouting came from the drawing room, and she was immediately enveloped in the smell of cheap scent as she went into the room. It was just as if a younger version of Fanny Rosenbloom had been reincarnated and appeared in their midst, as brash and blowsy as ever.
The only difference was that Mary Lunn, sobbing louder than ever, was clinging desperately to the woman’s skirts.
Skye turned to her daughter with relief.
‘Honey, this is Tommy and Mary’s mother—’
‘Pleased, I’m sure,’ the woman said, without bothering to turn around. ‘So let’s stop beating about the bush, missis. I’ve come for me kids and I ain’t going back wivout ’em.’
Celia intervened with a gasp as she realised what this was all about. ‘You can’t do that. They’re really settling down here, and Tommy’s enjoying his new school.’
Mrs Lunn looked at her through heavily made-up eyes. She was a tart, Celia thought brutally.
‘He ain’t enjoying nuthing. The kids want to come home where they belong and I should never have sent ’em away. My gentleman and me can give ’em a good home now, and no do-gooders are stopping us, see?’
‘Your gentleman? You do mean their father, I presume?’
‘That ain’t your concern. He’ll be back in a minute and if you’re thinking of getting the rozzers on to us, we’ll say you was taking our kids against our will, see?’
‘Somebody’s obviously schooled you well in what to say,’ Skye said, wishing desperately that Nick was here. Why was he always involved with other folks’ affairs whenever she needed him? she thought furiously.
‘We don’t need no schooling. We just need the kids back.’
‘Why do you need them just now, Mrs Lunn?’ Celia asked, knowing that letters from their mother had been sparse indeed. The woman flushed under the heavy make-up.
‘We gets a new flat if we’ve got the kids wiv us.’
‘That’s the most terrible and selfish reason I’ve heard for taking the children away from here where they’re safe,’ Skye snapped. ‘Don’t you know the danger you’ll be putting them in if they go back to London? It’s a terrible time.’
‘They’re my kids and I’ll say where they live,’ she shouted. ‘You’ve missed me, ain’t you, duckie?’
Mary snivelled that she had, and the next minute Tommy appeared from the nursery with their paper parcels of clothes. The other two children trailed behind him. Butch, never too bright, was uncertain of what was going on, and Daphne was clearly in admiring awe of the flashy Mrs Lunn.
‘We’re going home,’ Tommy announced to Celia. ‘Me Ma needs us and so does Uncle Bert.’
‘Yes, well never mind all that,’ his mother said hastily. ‘Have you got all Mary’s things as well?’
But it was becoming clearer by the minute now why she wanted these children home. ‘Uncle Bert’ was obviously on the look-out for an easy place to lay his head, and if they presented a united family, the flat would be theirs.
‘You can’t do this,’ Skye said.
‘I’m doing it,’ the woman said rudely, and at the toot of a motor horn, she bundled the children out of the house towards the waiting car where a large man in an astrakhan coat pushed them into the back seat and slammed the door shut.
It happened so quickly that the others were left reeling.
‘I didn’t even get the chance to give Mary a hug or to say goodbye,’ Skye said, her throat closing up.
‘She ’ad to go wiv her Ma, though, didn’t she?’ Daphne said sensibly. ‘You only borrowed ’er, Mrs Pen.’
Skye felt choked at the child’s artless words. Oh yes, they were all on loan, all these children the country folk brought into their homes, and whose allegiance to them clearly meant nothing compared to what they felt for their parents.
That was absolutely right too, but she couldn’t help feeling bad about not putting up more of a fight to keep the Lunn children here. She had wanted to care for them and keep them safe, and she had failed abysmally.
‘We’ll have to inform the billeting officer about what’s happened, Mom,’ she heard Celia’s crisp voice. ‘I’ll telephone her now, and we can let the school know in the morning.’
Skye looked at her vacantly. Her daughter was the practical one, the strong one, while she was beginning to feel as if she was falling apart, the way she had felt when she lost her baby. And there were still these other two to care for… As if to echo her thoughts, she felt the unlikely touch of Butch Butcher’s hand clumsily squeezing her arm, his voice rough with embarrassment.
‘You’ve still got us, missis, and I ain’t going nowhere.’
Skye gave him a watery smile, hoping the kindly meant remark wasn’t a prophetic one. Hoping that at the end of this dreadful war, Butch Butcher would have a home and family to go back to…
She shook off the surreal feeling as Daphne tossed her head and resumed her usual toughness.
‘They was cissies, anyway, and that stupid Mary was always stinkin’ the place out wiv ’er widdle. We’re better off wivout ’em if you ask me,’ she declared.
‘And there speaks the voice of experience,’ Celia murmured, praying that her mother would see the funny side of it and not get too depressed at what she obviously saw as her own failure.
Celia knew very well that she was still grieving over her own miscarriage, no matter how she tried to hide it. It was one of the reasons Celia herself was still reluctant to think of enlisting, although she would dearly love to do so.
But if the London families wanted to withdraw their children from their country hosts, there was nothing to stop them, and everyone knew it. It was one of the things the billeting officers had impressed on the temporary foster homes before they took the children in.
And the worst thing any of them could do was to get too fond of the children.
Well, she would definitely never get too fond of Daphne, Celia thought now, seeing the way the little madam was noisily declaring now that she had never liked Tommy, anyway, and that Mary was a widdlin’ weed.
Butch had turned out to be a gentle giant and not a thug, but what surprised Celia most o
f all was why her mother tolerated Daphne so patiently. She obviously saw something in her that Celia didn’t. She gave up analysing and went to report the departure of the Lunn children to the billeting officer.
‘Do we want to take in any more?’ she asked Skye, careful to hold her hand over the mouthpiece at the officer’s request.
Skye shook her head. ‘Not yet. We’ll see how things go, honey,’ she said quickly.
She wasn’t being cowardly, Skye told herself, but she just couldn’t bear to have children coming and going and tearing her heart apart every time they did so. She knew she had babied Mary too much, and she dreaded what kind of life the child was going to have with that spiv of a ‘gentleman friend’ of her mother’s.
No, Skye thought determinedly, if they had to open up their home to anyone in the future, it wouldn’t be to any more evacuees – and she wasn’t sure she could do what Betsy was proposing to do, either. She couldn’t think any farther ahead than that for the moment.
* * *
One Sunday morning a few weeks later Lily and David Kingsley turned up at the house, and sent their boys out to play in the garden with the willing Butch and the reluctant Daphne.
‘This is a surprise,’ Nick said with a smile, ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’
‘What is it?’ Skye said, always more perceptive than he was when something was wrong.
Dear heaven, don’t let anything be wrong with Lily, she thought, seeing her pallor. Lily had always been her strength when she needed it, but she looked positively ill as she put her hand on David’s arm as if to caution him.
‘Skye darling, we’ve got something to tell you, and I promise you we knew nothing of it ourselves until we found the letter this morning. There’s one for you too, and we’ve brought it straight away. Don’t be too hard on him.’
Skye took the envelope mechanically, but she hardly needed to open it to know what it was going to say, or who it was from. Olly’s large, scrawly handwriting was all over the envelope, addressing them as if he wrote to strangers.
‘What’s going on?’ Nick said sharply.
‘Can’t you guess? He’s enlisted,’ Skye said, choked, scanning the words that jazzed in front of her at speed.
‘He can’t enlist!’ Nick exploded. ‘He’s too young.’
David spoke harshly. ‘They’re all doing it, Nick, and the hell of it is they’re getting away with it. I grant you some of them are brought back with their tails between their legs, but Olly’s too canny for that. The army needs keen young men like him, and from the size of him and his self-assurance, nobody would guess he’s not yet seventeen.’
‘And who gave him such self-assurance?’ Nick said, rounding on him. ‘I always knew it was a mistake to let him work in your bloody office and to live with you. His place was here where he belongs—’
‘Nick, please,’ Skye said, appalled at this outburst. ‘None of this is David’s fault.’
‘It’s all right, Skye, I don’t blame Nick,’ David said soothingly. ‘It’s the boy’s own doing, and it’s happened now.’
‘Well, I’ll see to it that it bloody un-happens,’ Nick shouted. ‘And please don’t patronise me, Kingsley. You can always soft-soap my wife, but it won’t work with me.’
‘Nick,’ Skye said warningly.
With his paying clients, he was always the cool-headed lawyer, but once he lost his temper he never did things by halves. And she couldn’t bear it if he became vicious and made some sarcastic remark about always having known that David was in love with Skye. Not in front of Lily…
It was Lily who spoke calmly then, unwittingly diffusing the situation by her logical thinking.
‘What do you think you can do about it, Nick? He says in the letter he’s going to enlist, but he doesn’t say where. I doubt that he’ll have done it locally. In any case, people would know his family connections here.’
Nick’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re quite right. He’ll have gone elsewhere. Plymouth or Southampton or Bristol, maybe. I’ll make some telephone calls tomorrow. He chose the right day to leave the letters, didn’t he, knowing we’d be unlikely to get after him on a Sunday?’ he added bitterly.
‘He’s a clever lad, your Olly,’ Lily said.
‘Too clever and too proud to want to be hauled back here like a criminal or a naughty child,’ his mother said slowly.
Nick turned on her. ‘So what’s your bright suggestion? Leave him to get on with it, knowing he’s breaking the law? That’s a fine way for a lawyer’s son to behave, isn’t it?’
‘But he’s not your son, is he?’ Skye heard herself say.
She clapped her hands to her mouth as she saw Nick’s stricken face and heard Lily’s gasp. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, honey! I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.’
‘Was there any other way? We all know I’m not the boy’s natural father but I seem to remember I adopted all three of your children after we were married, and I think I’ve always done the right thing by them,’ he said, stiff with anger.
‘Of course you have,’ Skye almost wailed, wondering how this conversation had descended so rapidly into hurtful accusation and pain. And it wasn’t helping things at all. It wasn’t bringing Olly back. A small chill like a premonition fluttered over her heart then, and she willed it away.
She put her hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Darling, please listen a minute. I think we have to let the army deal with it. They must have ways of checking up on these young men who think soldiering is all fun and games. I’m sure he’ll be found out and sent back home without us humiliating him.’ She swallowed, imagining Olly’s wounded pride. ‘If we do that, he’ll never forgive us and we’ll have lost him for ever.’
She wasn’t at all sure it was the right way, or if they too were breaking the law in not informing the authorities. Nick should know about such things… but this was a military matter and had no bearing on the domestic cases a country lawyer undertook in his everyday life.
She had to accept that her own instinctive need to hold the family around her like a kind of security blanket was of far less importance than the troubles in a changing world. The country needed their young men and women more than mere mothers did. All the government posters and propaganda told them as much, so it had to be true…
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t let it rest without making some enquiries,’ Nick said firmly. ‘He’s still a child and we’re responsible for him, Skye. If you can’t see that then we’re obviously on different sides.’
In the brittle atmosphere that was quickly developing, the Kingsleys called their sons and wisely took their leave, sensing the erupting situation between the two.
* * *
Celia arrived home from an exhilarating walk along the sands to find her parents practically screaming at one another.
Discovering the reason for it filled her with anger and guilt, knowing how impatient she had been with her brother. But common sense told her she couldn’t have pushed him into this. The idea for enlisting must have been simmering inside him for some time.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ she asked flatly.
‘Find him and bring him home,’ Nick retorted at once.
‘Nick, we can’t,’ Skye repeated.
‘Would you rather see him killed? War isn’t a game, however much these gun-happy children think it is.’
The words seemed to hang in the air between them all. Whatever else Olly was, he was still a child – her child. Skye was wretched, torn between the wish for her son to find his own feet and not be overshadowed by his successful stepfather, and her natural desire to keep him safe.
‘Mom’s right,’ she heard Celia say scratchily. ‘You can’t humiliate him by bringing him back. The authorities will surely check all his personal details, and if they don’t, then you should take it as a sign and let him go.’
‘And there speaks our so-called modern miss, apparently still ready to trust in signs and omens,’ Nick said coldly. ‘I still intend telephoning
the three army recruiting offices I suspect he may have contacted. It’s my duty as a lawyer and father,’ he added, without the slightest hesitation.
Skye knew then how much she had wounded him by her earlier remark, when in fact he had been all that a good father could be to her children.
‘And if he hasn’t reported to one of them you’ll leave it alone?’ Celia persisted.
She hardly knew why she was doing so, except that she felt bound to support Olly in this, having frequently been beastly to him in the past. And secretly envying him so much for his daring.
‘For the time being,’ was all Nick would say.
* * *
But his telephone calls produced nothing at all. Eventually he even called his one-time business partner, now the owner of an antique shop in Bristol, in case Oliver should have found his way there as a kind of temporary refuge.
‘Nick, by all that’s holy,’ he heard his ex-partner’s wife say delightedly. ‘It’s so long since we’ve heard from you, we thought you must have died or something!’
‘Thankfully no. But it’s good to hear you’re still bright and cheerful, Queenie. Is William available?’
‘I’ll call him. He’ll be tickled pink to hear from you.’
Even over the telephone line, Nick could hear her high heels clicking away, and her shrill voice calling for her husband. And then William was on the line, as hearty as ever, but instantly attentive when he heard why Nick was calling.
‘I haven’t seen him, Nick, but if he comes here I’ll be sure to let you know.’
‘Don’t warn him, though. He won’t think kindly of us if he thinks we’re about to haul him back, but I’m afraid the boy’s as wild and passionate as the rest of his clan.’
‘I thought that was what attracted you to them – or one of them, anyway,’ William said, and then his voice sobered. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll be discreet if he does turn up here.’
A Brighter Tomorrow Page 5