‘Iris,’ Charles said, ‘was a splendid woman. She was completely and utterly thorough. Even her death was typical. She didn’t like things left undone. But she would never have understood a marriage like yours, Nicole. It would have done no good to see her. Remember that.’
She spent one night in the shuttered and sandbagged basement of Elgin Square, while the bombers came once more. It was the first time she had heard high-explosives close at hand. The sound terrified and shook her, but the real amazement was the calmness of the people. Several shared the basement with them. Charles had brought them himself from the East End, friends formed during the time he had worked with a shelter there. Adams, as air-raid warden, was in charge of them. During a lull in the bombing he went out to tour the square, mostly watching for signs of incendiaries. ‘Adams,’ Charles said, ‘is terribly upset about Iris. He was devoted to her, you know. Yes, I know ‒ he looks like a wooden-faced old snob, but he respected her highly after all these years of serving her. He feels partly responsible for her death. You see, she was a sort of honorary warden ‒ she had so much else to do that she didn’t have much time to get to their training sessions. Adams let her get out of his sight that night, he says. She should never have gone back into the building. And yet if she hadn’t gone the first time, the mother and the child were too paralysed with fright to move … So she saved two lives, and was on her way back to save another. Adams mourns for her, genuinely … He’s sixty-eight, you know. Sometimes I look around and I almost think it’s the old ones who are keeping this country going … the old and the very young. They’re kids up there in those planes.’
‘And how old are you, Uncle Charles? Adams isn’t the only one who grieves …’
‘Me? I’m just an old fool.’ In the semi-darkness of the basement his hand sought hers. ‘Try to stay safe, will you, Nicole? It would be hard on me to lose you.’
She had a lift in Charles’s official car the next morning but only to the point where it did not deviate from its usual route. ‘I couldn’t look Aunt Margaret in the eye if I used a drop more petrol than was strictly necessary.’
Charing Cross was sandbagged and dusty from bomb damage, but functioning. Nicole changed trains three times in the journey down to Fenton Field, which had once been so easy and swift.
She found Wilks alone in the kitchen when she got back to the house. How much he and Adams fitted the pattern ‒ an unquestioning devotion to a family and a way of life which both were determined, in their own fashion, to see survive. ‘I’ve been reading about your aunt, Lady Gowing, Mrs Fenton. A very gallant lady.’
She sat while he made a cup of tea for her. He was as troubled as Margaret was by the tense thinness of this woman who seemed to have aged before his eyes. ‘Dr Fenton telephoned,’ he said.
Nicole sat upright, her fatigue vanished. ‘He telephoned! Is there something wrong? Is he all right?’
Wilks was worried that so much of this young woman’s being, her vital strength, was bound up in this one man. ‘He didn’t speak himself, Mrs Fenton. He’d read about Lady Gowing. But a secretary, or a nurse, or someone was trying to reach you. I expect he couldn’t spare the time to come to the phone unless you were available. The bombing all along the Thames has been pretty bad, you know. He said he’d telephone again ‒ tonight.’
Nicole drank her tea slowly. It was very strong, and sweet. The sort of tea they had handed out in the basement the night before, hoping that the warmth and sweetness would help fend off the shock of the earth rumbling around them. It was very different from the China tea Wilks had brought out to the lawn in the thin fine china on the fine summer days of a world that seemed for ever gone. She roused herself out of her own thoughts, the thoughts of Lloyd, the greedy, selfish thought that tonight he would telephone her.
‘Richard,’ she said. ‘Is there any new word on Richard?’
Wilks sipped his own tea, and then went on with his task of stirring egg powder. It always amazed Nicole that they sent so many fresh eggs from the farm, and got back egg powder in return. ‘Master Richard is improving. He’s very strong. All the Fentons have good constitutions …’ Nicole looked away from the silent tears that streamed down the old man’s cheeks. It was his private grief, and he would live with it. She rinsed her cup at the sink, and went upstairs to change into her pants and sweater. It was almost milking time.
2
She waited up. About two o’clock the call came, and she snatched the receiver. The voices of several operators came between. At last she heard Lloyd’s voice. ‘Nicky? ‒ are you all right? You’ve been up to London to the funeral? I’m sorry I couldn’t get there. No time off duty. But of all people your aunt would have understood that. Is Charles all right?’
She hesitated. ‘He seems all right. It’s all such confusion there … Lloyd, you’ve heard about Rick?’
‘Yes. Rotten luck. When this lets up a bit I’ll get over to see him ‒ professionally. I’ve talked to his doctor. Nicky … don’t let the family hope too much. The sight of one eye is gone completely. There’s only a small chance of saving the other … Does the family know that?’
‘I … I don’t know they know that much. Everyone keeps hoping.’
‘Then perhaps you’d better say nothing. Time enough to get used to the idea when they must. Time enough …’
‘Lloyd … Lloyd …’ What had she been going to say? There were no words.
‘Yes, my love. I know. It’s rough all round. And guess who I’ve had as my particular patient these last five days? No, don’t guess. I didn’t mean that. I’ve got young David Ashleigh ‒’
‘David ‒!’
‘Yes, the young golden eagle of the skies himself. Famous air ace. The word hasn’t been released to the Press yet.’
‘What word? What happened to him?’
‘Nicky, he’s been incredibly lucky. He got a bullet through the cheekbone which went on up to lodge in the skull. By whatever reflexes the gods gave him, he managed to get himself out of the craft and pull the rip-cord in time. He was unconscious when they found him. I imagine he must have passed out while he was still coming down, and was lucky someone didn’t shoot at him. However, he’s here, and he’s all right.’
‘All right ‒ what does that mean?’
‘He’s all right. He’s alive. I’ve managed to extract the bullet from his skull, and so far as we can tell, the brain isn’t damaged. It was five days ago, Nicky. I didn’t want to tell you until I was fairly sure he was going to make it. Not just make it as a vegetable, but as a person. He’s showing responses, and good reflexes. His eyes react to light ‒ he hears sounds. The rest of his body is almost undamaged, considering that he came down in a parachute unconscious. A broken ankle, two broken ribs. Nothing, really.’
‘But you said a bullet went through his cheek …’
‘Well, that’s something different. If I manage to get through my part of the job and keep him and his brain alive, then the plastic surgeons are going to have to take over. That side of his face was shattered. They’ll put it together, one way or the other, but they’ll have to rebuild it. They’ll have to find small pieces of bones from other places in his body. The cheekbones are gone …’
‘Gone …’ she echoed the word dully. The beautiful, blond David was destroyed, the young man of poetic beauty.
‘Nicky … after I’d done my piece, taking the bullet from the skull, I watched the plastic guy get to work. God, I nearly wept, and surgeons aren’t sentimental. They had to do an initial repair job, just so the dressings could be put on him. But if only we’d had Carl Zimmerman. Hell, I’ve seen him handle a dozen far worse things brought in off street accidents … The way he can pick out the splintered bones, and start to reconstruct the face even from the beginning. Young David won’t be beautiful ever again, but he would have looked a damn sight nicer if Carl had had him.’
‘And where is Carl? Why couldn’t you have …?’
‘Carl, love, by chance of the winds of fortun
e, is now in an internment camp on the Isle of Man. I guess he got so preoccupied with his job that he forgot to do anything about becoming a British subject. He was still a German when war broke out. So he’s in a camp on the Isle of Man. And people like young David Ashleigh have to do without him.’
‘God ‒ it isn’t true!’
‘True enough. Carl’s fault ‒ and our fault for letting him have the wrong nationality at the wrong time. Now if this invasion succeeds, he’ll have the right nationality but the wrong religion. I wish I could think Carl is religious …’
‘Lloyd, we’re wasting time. David’s all right. Carl will survive. Rick lives. Charles will manage. How are you! How am I? Have we forgotten?’
‘No, love, nothing is forgotten. No second is not relived. And we’ve held the telephone line for too long. Everything’s OK. I don’t know how long it’ll be OK for any of us. But Fenton Field still exists, and so does England. While that holds, I’ll say it’s a bargain. Good night, my darling love, good night.’
‘Good night …’ There was no more to be had from him. He had violated all the codes to speak to her of the things they both held most in their hearts. Even his last words had been strangely free, uninhibited, for Lloyd. The mood of the hour held him, the fatigue, the urge to fight, the will to win, as it did every other person she had encountered in these past weeks.
‘Good night, my love,’ she echoed softly into the empty buzz of the dial tone.
3
The anti-aircraft batteries over Dover and Folkestone had been very active. The cloud was only scattered and light, and the big wings of the German bombers showed plainly. They had swung a little north in their passage over the coast to try to avoid the worst of the flak; the plan was then to head north-west when the Thames was sighted, to follow it, and deliver the nightly load of bombs on London. Most of the squadron followed the plan, but one of the pilots, watching his instruments nervously, saw that the flak which had shaken the craft so badly ten minutes ago had caused a leak in the fuel line. One of his port engines spluttered and died, the propeller fanned uselessly. He had to fight the rudder with his whole strength to hold the aircraft steady against the dead useless weight of the engine. Finally he signalled his squadron leader that he must break formation; he had enough fuel, he thought, to make it back to the airfield near Wissant, on the French coast. It was not his squadron’s airfield, but it was the nearest. So, with the Thames glinting greyly on his starboard, he made a slow bank to head back towards the coast. He asked the navigator for his position, and the position of secondary targets. The light of the flak was all about them; behind them now lay the glow of London’s dockland fires. The navigator made a hurried fix on their position; he also was nervous about the fuel steadily leaking away, the chance that a fighter would come up from under them, that bullets screaming through the fabric of the plane would set the leaking tank ablaze. There were a thousand things to worry about, and the few miles that separated them from the safety of Wissant seemed incredibly too far. On the intercom he gave the position to the bombardier. He had hoped for the Fighter Command base at Biggin Hill, but it was already behind him. They could try for the bases of Canterbury or Hawkinge, but the flak of Dover and Folkestone lay directly beyond that. So they dropped their bombs in haste, not really knowing where they were. With the load of the bombs gone, the whole crew could feel the speed of the aircraft pick up, its controls become more responsive. The bomber survived the intensified flak of the coast, and landed safely at Wissant. Even their aerial photographs did not tell them that two bombs had fallen on a hospital near Maidstone.
4
The break that Margaret had dreaded and feared in Nicole did not come when the telegram with the news of Lloyd’s death reached Fenton Field. It did not come as the arrangements for Charles to make formal identification at Maidstone were made, nor did she weep when the coffin came finally to the village church of Stokeley. She went through the service stony-faced; she had shown no interest whatever in choosing the hymns for the service, she had refused to see the vicar for more than a few minutes, had left it to Margaret to give the background and details of Lloyd’s life of which he would speak during that service. It seemed a matter of indifference to her that the vicar should speak of the sacrifice of a man drawn into a war which was not his own country’s. Margaret doubted if Nicole ever heard the vicar’s words when he ended, ‘One might say that Lloyd Fenton gave more than any of us here, even those of our young men who have already given their lives. He did it unasked, unbidden. He did it for England, this, his second home, with a pureness of love that knew not the boundary of country or birth. England claimed him. England must acknowledge her debt.’
Charles and Andrew led Nicole towards the grave, where Lloyd was to be buried among these cousins of his, these English Fentons. Only for a moment did she seem to hesitate, to pause for a second as they moved along the wet grass. It was as if she was about to refuse these final terrible moments. She looked for a moment into Charles’s face, and shook her head. But still she didn’t speak. Then, visibly straightening her body, so that she seemed taller than she was, she went on to the open grave. Margaret noticed that she never looked once at the coffin, nor did her lips move at all with the words of the service. She was staring at the old beeches planted against the churchyard wall. They had a touch of gold in them, as they had had on the day she had been married here six years ago. There were too many such burials in those grim days to allow for the practised protocol of a military funeral. There was no sounding of the Last Post, mercifully no ceremonial folding of the flag. The only thing Nicole had insisted on was that Lloyd’s coffin should bear the American Stars and Stripes. ‘Old Glory’ she had called it. It was Charles who had received back the flag.
Nicole ignored, or did not see, the hands outstretched to her in sympathy as she left the churchyard. She had refused the car which would have taken her back to Fenton Field. She walked the mile there flanked by Charles and Andrew, and turned only vacantly when someone came from one of the cottages along the way to murmur words of condolence.
Margaret grew even more fearful when, as soon as they were back at Fenton Field, Nicole had gone to her room and had changed back into the filthy corduroy pants. The weather was warm, so she wore an old, washed-out shirt which had belonged to Lloyd. People had gathered with the Fentons ‒ distant cousins, close friends, all people who had known Lloyd during the times he had stayed at Fenton Field. They were in the drawing-room, which Wilks had insisted on putting back into use. The fire was burning brightly; tea and whisky were circulating.
When Margaret went to try to intercept Nicole she met with a blank stare. ‘Don’t you know it’s milking time?’
5
Margaret sat at the cluttered desk in the sitting-room, ostensibly busy with the weekly task of juggling with the ration books. And yet in the past ten minutes she had thought nothing about rations, or meal-planning. She was tired. She didn’t sleep very well these nights; she told herself that the sounds of the planes overhead would disturb anyone, but it was not really the planes any longer that troubled her. It was only a year since the war had begun, but already it had made terrible inroads on her family. She thought of Richard, lying still in the hospital in Hastings. She had visited him again, and been dismayed to find that he barely wanted to talk to her. The truth about his own situation was coming to him swiftly. His hatred of it was evident. He made short, sharp answers to her questions and seemed indifferent when she said she must go. Richard had seemed already to have closed into his own darkness. And Allan … Joan was allowed to write one letter a month to the prison camp in Germany, to send an occasional package. He was well, he said; his leg wound was healing. There had been parts of his letters which the censors had struck out. And Ross. Since Dunkirk he had been recommended for an MC; he refused to talk about what action the recommendation had cited. There was a hardness now in Ross which somewhat frightened Margaret; the eager boy had gone for ever. She was not even sure s
he liked the hard-eyed, thin man who had replaced him. He had his own impatience, and an anger that came to the surface too often. His last leave had been an uncomfortable time. ‘We were sold out,’ he said. ‘Here we are, with Hitler about to invade, and we’ve hardly got a tank in the whole country. Everything left behind there in France. We’ve been sold out by a bunch of foolish old men who refused to see what was coming …’ The bitterness seemed to embrace them, his parents, because they were the generation who had refused to act. He was enthusiastic about the new job which had been given to Gavin. Gavin had been sent to a research establishment somewhere in Wales which was so top secret that Judy did not even have its exact address. All communication between them was sent through a Whitehall address. ‘Damn good,’ Ross had said. ‘I hope he’s making something to blow them all to hell over there. At least they’re not letting a brain like his go and rust itself on writing some stupid training manual ‒ which would be typical of the mess they’ve made of everything. When this war’s over, the real heroes won’t be the guys with the medals, but the ones who made the better gun. If we hadn’t got radar, this island would be finished now … but I don’t recall them handing out any medals to the men who came up with radar.’
He had come back for Lloyd’s funeral. ‘Bloody waste of a good life,’ was his bitter comment. ‘What fool put a man with a speciality like that in a front-line hospital. These old men just don’t know how to use their resources.’ Margaret had been thankful when he left.
So her family was shattered and shaken, the whole structure thrown out of balance. She strove desperately to keep this centre here steady and peaceful, but the stresses and the pulls against it were proving too much, even for her strength, and the belief, never before challenged, that they would survive as a family. But at the moment her worst and most immediate worry focused on Nicole. Nicole was on her mind in every waking moment since the news had come ‒ Nicole, who as yet, had not begun to accept it.
The Lynmara Legacy Page 41