Song of the Skylark

by Erica James

  Until yesterday Lizzie hadn’t appreciated things were so bad between Mum and Lorna; it just hadn’t occurred to her that Lorna would take umbrage to the extent she obviously had, or behave so pettily. The more Lizzie thought about it, and how upset Mum had been, the angrier she became. She was particularly annoyed because she had tried her best to protect her parents from the knowledge of what she’d been sacked for – they absolutely didn’t deserve to have that embarrassment thrust upon them.

  Putting her anger to good use, she channelled it to fuel her legs, and by the time she reached Woodside, her breath was ragged and she was hot and sweating. She looked in the mirror in the staff room where she slipped on her hideously pink tabard and saw that her face was near enough the same colour. It was not a good look. Not by a very long way.

  She was putting her things away in the locker she’d been allocated when the door of the staff room opened and a man peered in. He was dressed in faded jeans and a T-shirt with the collar of a shirt and tie printed on it; his thick, light brown hair was either naturally lightened by the sun or dyed a golden colour. He was, Lizzie realised, the first man she had seen at Woodside who was about the same age as she was. Seeing her, he hesitated in the doorway.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  There was an awkward moment when he didn’t say anything, he just stood there giving an impression of a man processing an unpleasant situation and working out the best way to deal with it. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said at last. ‘Can you?’

  ‘That rather depends on what it is you need help with,’ she said.

  ‘Who said I did?’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Need help.’

  Oh, so he was one of those clever types, was he, thought Lizzie, a show-off who liked to play games instead of answering a straight question with a straight answer? Well, he needn’t waste his ammunition on her! ‘You had that look about you,’ she said.

  He drew his brows together and scratched his unshaven chin. ‘Then I must do something about that, I can’t be going around with a face that makes out I’m helpless.’

  Skirting round him to get to the door, she said, ‘Perhaps you should, it might save you from any further offers of well-intentioned help.’ And before he could get the last word in, she pulled open the door and legged it fast.

  After two hours of serving cups of tea, and then getting out the board games in the main lounge while the care staff dealt with the inevitable toilet relay race for those who needed assistance, Lizzie was told by matron that Mrs Dallimore was asking for her.

  Uh-oh, she thought, what had she done wrong? Nothing, she told herself firmly as she went to find the old lady. Yesterday they’d parted company on perfectly good terms; in fact, Mrs Dallimore had said how much she’d enjoyed chatting with her. Maybe she wanted to chat some more about her life when she left America. Lizzie hoped so; she was intrigued to know more about the young woman Mrs Dallimore had once been, suspecting that she had probably been quite a character. Not unlike Grandma Wendy. Lizzie hadn’t really known her other three grandparents – they’d died when she and Luke had been young children – but Dad’s mother had been a larger-than-life character and fiercely independent right up until the day she died four years ago of a heart attack while on a coach tour travelling through Germany. Although Lizzie scarcely knew Mrs Dallimore, there were definitely moments when she was reminded of Grandma Wendy.

  She found the old lady on the terrace in the garden, her wheelchair positioned in the shade of a large parasol over a circular wooden table. There were two other ladies sitting at the table, both of whom were fast asleep and snoring gently. One of them must have just had her hair done by the visiting hairdresser, for she had a fluffy white hairdo that had something of the bichon frise about it.

  Seeing Lizzie, Mrs Dallimore lowered the book she was reading and, indicating her sleeping companions, put a finger to her lips. ‘I would welcome a change of scene,’ she whispered, and tapping the arm of the wheelchair, added, ‘Care to have another go at steering this confounded thing?’

  ‘Practice makes perfect,’ Lizzie whispered back with a smile. ‘Where do you fancy going?’

  Mrs Dallimore pointed across the lawn towards the rose-covered arbour where they had sat yesterday.

  Determined not to let her charge come to any harm, Lizzie steered the wheelchair across the lawn with concentrated care. Thanks to the hot, dry spell, the ground was hard and the grass short.

  Looking back from the arbour they had a view of the entire garden and the house, along with the red-brick modern extension that was considered an eyesore by both staff and residents alike. It housed the medical wing of the care home from which, according to Mum, the residents liked to keep a healthy distance for fear of never leaving in an upright state. The original house had been built of honey-coloured stone, but the walls were now so thickly draped in ivy they were all but hidden. There was another extension to the building, a large Victorian-style conservatory known as The Orangery and it was a much more attractive addition. Residents who were gardening enthusiasts were encouraged to potter in there and tend to the plants.

  ‘Tell me some more about yourself,’ Mrs Dallimore said, indicating the chair next to her. ‘And don’t worry about thinking you’re neglecting the other residents, I cleared it with matron. Her precise words were, “Mrs Dallimore, if it keeps the rest of the residents safe, you have my blessing to keep Lizzie with you as long as you can.”’

  Lizzie was about to remonstrate that she was being unfairly cast in the role of Dr Shipman when she saw the ghost of a smile quivering at the corners of the woman’s pale lips. ‘Mrs Dallimore,’ she said, ‘I’m beginning to think you’re not half as nice as I thought you were.’

  ‘Then you were labouring under a gross misapprehension,’ the woman replied with a laugh. ‘Come on, amuse me, tell me something wildly interesting about yourself.’

  ‘I wish I could, but really I just don’t—’

  Mrs Dallimore tutted. ‘If you dare to say you haven’t done one single interesting thing in your life I shall be very cross with you, not to say deeply disappointed.’

  ‘But it’s true.’

  ‘I refuse to believe that. For instance, you mentioned yesterday that it was a long story why you were sacked from your last job. What happened there?’

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘You so don’t want to know.’

  ‘What an absurd thing to say! Why else would I have brought it up if I didn’t want to know?’

  ‘It was a figure of speech.’

  Mrs Dallimore tutted again. ‘More like a figure of prevarication.’

  ‘Do you ever take no for an answer?’

  ‘Do you?’

  It was Lizzie’s turn to laugh. ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘And yet you expect me to. I can’t abide double standards. Is it because I’m so ancient you have me written off as some old dear who doesn’t have a clue about the world you inhabit?’

  Lizzie didn’t want to be unkind, but really there wasn’t a hope in hell of this woman having the slightest inkling of what went on at Starlight Radio. For that matter, Lizzie was beginning to feel she no longer had an inkling of that world. She hadn’t been living back at home for that long, but already her London life, even Curt, now that she hadn’t heard from him while he was on holiday, was dissolving into a hazy memory. In the blink of an eye it was as if she’d become institutionalised, with the village of Great Magnus, Keeper’s Nook and Woodside becoming the sole focus of her life. All that had gone before seemed to be a faraway landscape seen through the wrong end of a telescope.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Mrs Dallimore said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Was that because you were trying to find a tactful way to agree with me without hurting my feelings?’

  ‘If you knew me better you’d know tact isn’t exactly my strong suit.’<
br />
  ‘A lack of tact is the prerogative of the young – the acquiring and employment of it comes later in life, and then there comes a point when one realises there simply isn’t time to beat about the bush.’

  Thinking there was something Oscar Wilde-ish about the remark, Lizzie listened to a pigeon cooing and a woodpecker drilling in the woods. Aware of the silence around her she began to feel uncomfortable; she wasn’t used to long silences. She was used to noise, lots of noise. The constant energising buzz of people talking, of traffic roaring by, of people always in a hurry, jostling and barging, voices raised. With a pang she thought of London and how much she missed it. Which, of course, led her to think of Curt. Oh Curt, she thought miserably, I miss you so much. The wait to hear from him was unbearable. She’d never known a misery like it.

  And still the silence went on, punctuated by the woodpecker. She pictured the bird hell-bent on drilling its way through a large, unyielding tree. She glanced at Mrs Dallimore, wondering if she had fallen asleep. She hadn’t; she was staring intently into the distance, into the leafy shade of the trees, as if she were looking for something. Or someone. Lizzie hoped she wasn’t about to suggest they went for a meander into the woods; it would be hard going with a wheelchair.

  ‘Would you tell me what happened to you when you left America and came to England all those years ago?’ she asked, hoping the request would distract the woman, just in case she did have a bee in her silvery bonnet and wanted to go on a woodland walkabout.

  Getting no response to her question, Lizzie was about to repeat it when the old lady turned to look at her with her pale, watery blue eyes. ‘Do you really want to know, or are you just humouring me?’

  ‘I’m not humouring you,’ Lizzie replied adamantly, realising how awful it must be to think that you weren’t being taken seriously, that everything said to you was banal and insincere, no more than a feeble attempt to make conversation for the sake of it. ‘I really would like to know what happened to you when you arrived in this country,’ she added. ‘But, please, only tell me if you’d like to.’

  The old lady stared sceptically at her as though still unsure that Lizzie’s interest was genuine. ‘I wouldn’t want to bore you,’ she said.

  There was something so sadly stoic and dignified in her expression that, without thinking, Lizzie put a hand on the old lady’s thin arm. ‘Please, Mrs Dallimore,’ she said, ‘if what you told me yesterday is anything to go by, you could never bore me. And after matron said you had asked for me this afternoon, I was hoping you’d tell me some more about your life.’

  A slow and tentative smile spread over Mrs Dallimore’s face. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’

  ‘I am. Really I am.’

  ‘In that case, I shall start at the beginning, when I stepped on board the Belle Etoile.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, what a ship it was! I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.’

  Chapter Twelve

  12th April 1939, SS Belle Etoile

  WESTERN UNION

  TELEGRAM

  MISS CLARISSA ALLERTON, SS BELLE ETOILE, PIER 88 NYK.

  BEST WISHES FOR A PLEASANT JOURNEY.

  YOUR GRANDMOTHER.

  The Belle Etoile was considered by many to be one of the most spectacular ocean liners ever built, and from the moment Clarissa set eyes upon it she could well believe the claim.

  The chaperone arranged by her grandmother saw things quite differently, and had declared the French-owned ship to be far too big and the interior design with its Art Deco style so modern and lavish as to be utterly vulgar. ‘But then what could you expect from the French?’ Marjorie Boyd-Lambert opined in a voice that, to Clarissa’s ears, had the power to carry from one end of the vessel to the other, all 1,020 feet of her. She would, she further maintained, preferred to have travelled with the Holland America line, or Cunard. ‘One always knows where one is with Cunard White Star,’ she informed Clarissa, who knew where she would like the tiresome woman to be, and that was left standing on the pier. To put it bluntly, Majorie Boyd-Lambert was a pretentious snob who was determined not to enjoy herself, or allow anyone else to have any fun.

  Little wonder her husband had not stayed for a drawn-out farewell. Instead, due to ‘an important meeting with a client’, he had deposited his wife and Clarissa at the pier, having found them a porter, and then hastened away to his office. Clarissa privately suspected he couldn’t wait to be rid of his wife and was already relishing her two-month absence.

  As for Clarissa’s grandmother, warned by her friend, Marjorie – ‘Ethel, the crowds are simply ghastly!’ – she had cited a dread of crowds and the risk of the palpitations consequently induced and had flatly refused to make the journey from Boston to Manhattan to see Clarissa off.

  Marjorie’s foghorn voice was coming through the wall that divided their first-class cabins as she instructed the immaculately dressed garçon de cabine where to put the flowers her husband had bestowed upon her, as well as telling him how to unpack her clothes. Travelling with five trunks in all, four of which had been stored elsewhere, she had piously pointed out that she was an extremely light traveller and would require only the one trunk while crossing the Atlantic. In contrast, it had taken the steward assigned to assist Clarissa a mere few minutes to unpack her things and without any instruction. There were no flowers for her, but there was a telegram from her grandmother wishing her well for the voyage.

  Seizing the opportunity to explore the vast ship while her chaperone was otherwise occupied – the poor steward was being told to make dining-table and deckchair reservations – Clarissa slipped quietly away. She didn’t want to wave goodbye to America in the company of Marjorie Boyd-Lambert, she wanted to savour the moment alone and without her thoughts continuously interrupted by the ghastly woman’s incessant babble on the horrors of travelling abroad. If she hated leaving America so much, why was she making this trip?

  But solitude appeared to be nigh on impossible to find. The ship was chaotically full of people buzzing around, many of them visitors who were allowed on board to see families and friends off. Through open cabin doors Clarissa caught noisy snatches of bon voyage parties in progress, with canapés and glasses of champagne consumed amidst laughter and gaiety. It all looked so much fun, but brought home to her that there was no one to throw a party for her. Fun, she reflected, would be in very short supply throughout the crossing unless she could escape the clutches of her chaperone.

  For now, though, she had escaped, and losing herself in the ebullient throng of passengers and visitors she took pleasure in the knowledge that, for Marjorie to find her, it would take all the skill of locating a very fine needle in a very large haystack.

  After she’d wandered aimlessly, taking in the dazzling splendour of her surroundings – vulgar be damned! – she decided to go up to the sun deck. Many others had had the same idea, but eventually she found a small space against the rail. She was staring down at the packed pier and the Manhattan skyline in the afternoon sunshine, when the order was given for all visitors to disembark. A murmur of eager anticipation ran through those gathered around her – at last, they would soon be on their way! It was impossible not to succumb to a rush of exhilaration, and Clarissa happily gave in to the thrill of not knowing what awaited her in England. Another girl her age, and in her shoes, might have been fearful, but the way she saw it, she was sailing to freedom. No more would she be answerable to Grandma Ethel – or anyone else for that matter.

  Her first priority, once she had made it to London, was to make arrangements to travel to Suffolk. She knew that her grandparents were still alive, but she had no idea if they had read the letter she’d sent, or if they would agree to meet her. She was determined, however, to do everything she could to see where her mother had spent her childhood. Nothing would stop her from trying; it was what her mother had wanted, her last wish for Clarissa.

  A sudden shove from behind jammed Cla
rissa painfully against the rail. She turned to see who or what was the cause, at the same time clasping her handbag tightly to her – amongst many of Marjorie’s warnings had been to be on her guard against pickpockets, who gained access to the ships for the sole purpose of stealing from the wealthy, unwary passengers. ‘It’s easy pickings for them, like shooting fish in a barrel,’ Marjorie had said.

  Looking back at Clarissa, or rather looking haughtily down his long straight nose at her, was a tall man in a cream sweater and grey flannel trousers. The expression of disdain on his arrogant face, particularly in his unnaturally green eyes, implied that it was she who was in the wrong and therefore she should be the one to apologise. She stared back at him defiantly before turning away. She knew his type; she had met many of them at Hyannis Port during the summers – the self-important born into families of great wealth and taught from an early age to have a colossal sense of entitlement. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him walk on by. She was disappointed he hadn’t said anything; she would have enjoyed putting him in his place and telling him what a rude man he was.

  A loud blast from the ship’s whistle made her jump and once more visitors were urged, with greater insistence, to disembark.

  Thirty minutes later the whistle was blown again, and with tugboats nudging at the bows, Clarissa felt the first thrill of the great ship beginning to slide away from the pier. All around her passengers leaning against the rails began waving goodbye to loved ones, and although she had no one to wave to, she felt compelled to raise her hand and join in. Fixing her gaze on an unknown couple – the man was waving his hat in the air, the woman a handkerchief – she unexpectedly found herself pulling off her own hat and waving it with all her might.