It was time to bury the hatchet, time to be friends again. Since finding Laura again, she had come to appreciate the importance of friendship, of not dwelling on the past. She had been living in the past too long. She smiled and accepted the invitation.
The bomb that fell on Beckbridge Hall was a nine-day wonder in the village. Everyone said they were thankful it had not landed in the village itself and the destruction of a wooden summer house was nothing, compared to houses and people’s lives. Of course, they felt sorry for Lady Helen losing her windows but no one had been hurt. Mr and Mrs Ward were so terrified they had gone to live with their daughter and refused to come back. ‘She’ll get a taste of work now,’ Ian Moreton told Joyce. ‘Never done a hand’s turn and now she’ll have to look after herself. I’m blowed if I know why she wants to rattle round in that great place all on her own. Time they pulled it down, instead of mending it. There’s others more needy who could do with a bit of building work done.’
Thanks to Donny’s timely warning, he had rushed up to the summer house and cleared up every vestige of evidence, so that when Constable Harris arrived to take charge of the black market goods, there was none to be seen. Ian had laughed himself into tears over that. But he quickly sobered when he counted up the amount of money he had tied up in the stuff and none of it usable, except the tins and booze he had hidden under a tarpaulin in the boathouse. He thought it expedient to remove those, but was left with the problem of getting rid of the useless stuff and finding a new hiding place for what was left because he dare not take it home. He had put everything in a sack, buried the rubbish on the common, and taken everything else to a disused shepherd’s hut on the far side of the common, helped by Donny. It was not as secure as the summer house, but it would have to do.
He’d offered the boy a tin of golden syrup for his pains, but that had been rejected. ‘Got no one to give it to now,’ he’d said. ‘I’d rather have half a crown.’ He’d had to pay the little bugger to keep his mouth shut and scared the daylights out of him to make sure he wasn’t tempted to blurt out the truth.
‘It’s going to be turned into a convalescent home,’ Joyce said, bringing him back to the subject of the Hall and its lonely occupant. ‘Lady Helen told Kathy.’ She didn’t, for a minute, think he’d given up his lucrative sideline, though where he hid the stuff and what he did with the money she had no idea; she certainly saw none of it. Kathy had told her about the stuff her ladyship found which had suddenly disappeared again, making Charlie Harris scratch his head. They both thought the twins might know but Kathy refused to badger them about it; they’d been very quiet since their mother died and she didn’t want them upset.
‘I thought they weren’t on speaking terms.’
‘They’re talking now. Funny how a bomb and a bit of danger make folks see things different.’
‘What was it all about anyway? Their fallin’ out, I mean.’
‘I dunno, do I?’
‘I reckon it was suff’n to do with men,’ a voice piped up from the chimney corner.
They both turned towards Joyce’s mother. Lily Wilson was sitting with her feet on the fender and her skirt pulled up above her knees to reveal voluminous pink bloomers.
‘What men?’
‘Oh, Richard and William and others I could name.’ She tapped the side of her nose.
‘What others?’ Ian asked.
‘Oh, those soldiers what went up to the Hall in the last war. Fine goings-on, there was.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘I worked up there, didn’ I? So did Valerie.’
‘She married one of them,’ he said. He’d always thought the wedding a rush job, held in a registry office and not the church, though not being married to Joyce at the time, he hadn’t been one of the guests. The newly-weds had left for Canada soon afterwards and they hadn’t seen them since, though Lily was always talking about going out there to visit them. Not that she ever would, considering she hadn’t got a penny-piece to her name except her pension.
‘Looks like ’istory is about to repeat itself,’ he said, suddenly aware of the opportunities for trade that recuperating wounded soldiers might present. He smiled a little to himself.
Chapter Six
LAURA HAD GIVEN up work and taken lodgings in Cambridge to be near her mother. Anne had wanted to postpone the operation until after the baby was born, but the surgeon had advised against delay. The operation, so Laura had been told by the surgeon who had performed it, had gone smoothly and he thought they had removed all the tumour, but it was difficult to be sure. Laura, because she was a nurse and having her there relieved the other staff, was allowed to spend hours at her bedside. She changed her dressing, helped her to eat and drink, and talked cheerfully the whole time.
It was difficult because she was getting very near her time and she worried about what would happen if Anne took a turn for the worse while she was in labour and hors de combat herself. Her mother muttered a lot about Tom and Helen. Laura couldn’t understand why both names should be uttered almost in the same breath, but she clearly had something on her mind. ‘Mum, it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is, it isn’t important. You must get better.’ The thought of losing her mother was almost too much to bear and she railed against the injustice of it. Mum had never done a bad deed in all her life. She had gone without herself to give Laura everything she needed – school uniforms, books, tennis rackets, dancing lessons – and she had done it cheerfully, without a word of complaint. She went to church regularly, helped to clean it and arrange the flowers, and whenever a neighbour needed a helping hand she had been there to offer it. She had been one of the first to join the WVS when it was formed. The prospect of going back to Axholme Avenue without her was terrifying.
Today, for the first time, Anne seemed a little better. At least, she was fully conscious and smiling. ‘Still here?’ she murmured.
‘Where else would I be?’
‘How are you?’
‘As big as a London bus, but how do you feel?’
‘Drowsy. Has Helen been in?’
‘Not today. She was here two days ago. Her house has been bombed, she told me. Funny, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be going there for you to convalesce and she’s lost her windows. She told me it was a stray bomber who had lost his way and decided to jettison his cargo.’
‘Oh dear. Was there much damage?’
‘No, only windows and a few tiles. The bomb landed in the grounds.’
‘Did she say anything about us going?’
‘Yes. She said the repairs are being done. She got the builders to come quickly because she told them the place was going to become a hospital for wounded servicemen. I hadn’t realised she’d gone ahead with that plan.’
‘Why not? No doubt the house would be requisitioned if she didn’t do something.’
‘Does that mean we’re committed?’
‘Don’t you want to go?’
‘I don’t know. We don’t know her very well do we?’
‘I know her very well indeed. I hoped you’d like her.’
‘I do. She’s a nice person. Better than the Rawtons by a long chalk.’ She had written to Bob’s parents, feeling they had a right to know that they would shortly become grandparents. She had done it more for her baby’s sake than her own, but the only reply she had had was a typed one from Sir Edward’s secretary telling her they did not wish to communicate with her and if she persisted in harassing them, they would take legal action. They probably thought she was after money.
‘Of course she is. And, Laura, I’m not going to be much help to you with the baby, am I? It is for the best.’
‘I suppose so. Let’s get you well first.’
‘When is she coming again?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘I want to talk to her. It’s important.’
Laura sighed. ‘All right, I’ll telephone her, but you’ve got to rest now. All this talking has worn you out.’
&n
bsp; Laura made sure she was comfortable and left her to trudge through heavy snow to her digs in Tennis Court Road, chosen because it was near the hospital. Her mother’s lack of progress worried her, as did her obsession with Lady Barstairs. Laura had never heard of the woman until a few weeks ago and yet she and Mum were supposed to be close friends. What was even more puzzling was the fact that they were a million miles apart in every way. Her ladyship had obviously been brought up in the lap of luxury while her mother was living in an orphanage and enduring the privations of life as a skivvy, which was no more than slavery. She had only recently been told about that. Mum had never talked much about her early life, but on this occasion she had wanted to chat, and Laura had listened to tales of the orphanage, where there was nothing you could call your own, and the cruelty of Mrs Colkirk. No wonder Mum hated the so-called upper classes. So why this dependence on Lady Barstairs? Was there something else her mother wasn’t telling her? There must be because she had also suddenly produced an insurance policy she said she had been paying a few coppers into for years. Her mother was not a liar, so she must accept it as true, but it must have been done very secretively. Perhaps she had taken it out in order to have something to leave in her will, but if that was so Laura was glad she had decided to use it for the operation.
The chimney was rebuilt, the tiles were replaced and the windows re-glazed. There had been some compensation from the war damage people, but it hadn’t covered the special bricks to match the existing ones, nor all the windows, and Helen had paid the extra in order to have the house ready for Anne and Laura. She had made enquiries about making it into a convalescent home and discovered the Air Ministry were looking for beds for airmen who had been shot down and needed long-term treatment for burns. They were doing wonderful things with a procedure called plastic surgery, where they took skin from other parts of the men’s bodies and grafted them onto their burnt faces and hands. It meant a series of operations and the patients had to have somewhere to recover from one before they went on to the next. Beckbridge Hall, being in a relatively safe area of the country, would be ideal, they told her. She had told them Laura had some experience nursing burns cases and she would talk to her about it, but not now. Better to concentrate on Anne, who wanted to see her.
‘She’s bothered about something,’ Laura had said the day before when she rang just after the telephone had been reconnected. ‘Would you come?’
And so here she was, once more sitting in a train, taking her from Attlesham to Cambridge and wondering what the future had in store. Judging by Laura’s matter-of-fact tone, Anne had not yet told her the truth, but did the summons mean that she intended to? Did she want Helen to witness it? Suddenly she was not sure that she wanted it told. It would cause untold heartache to everyone concerned.
Laura met her as she entered the ward. The baby she carried was only three weeks from being born and it made her walk awkwardly. She looked drawn, older than her years, and her eyes were dull. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘She keeps falling in and out of consciousness and I don’t know if she will know you are here.’
She led the way back to the curtained-off area at the far end of the ward and allowed Helen to precede her to the side of the bed. Anne, always small, looked like a doll: a white-faced, pink-eyed doll. Her hands were above the covers and every now and again they twitched as if to grab something unseen. Helen sat in the chair by the bed. ‘Anne,’ she murmured.
The grey-haired head thrashed from side to side. ‘Tom, Laura, I’m sorry…’ It was a mumble, hardly coherent.
‘I don’t know what she has to be sorry for,’ Laura whispered. ‘But it’s evidently worrying her.’
‘Helen, forgive me.’ That was clearer, as if she knew Helen was there.
‘What’s to forgive?’ Laura asked.
Helen didn’t answer but leant forward and took one of Anne’s hands. ‘I’m here, Anne, and it doesn’t matter any more. It’s over and done with. Please don’t agitate yourself.’
Anne opened her eyes suddenly. ‘Helen, you came.’
‘Of course I came.’
‘Where’s Laura?’
‘I’m here, Mum.’
‘Go and fetch us a cup of tea, love, I want to have a private word with Helen.’ It was said quite clearly.
Laura was about to protest, but Helen’s little nod sent her off in search of tea.
‘Has she gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t told her, Helen. I couldn’t.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to. It won’t change anything and it will make her very unhappy.’
‘I’ve written her a letter to read after…after, you know…’ She paused. ‘Cowardly of me, I know, but I couldn’t bear to see her face when I told her. Will you give it to her?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps I won’t. We’ll see.’
‘It’s in my locker.’
Helen opened the locker and found an envelope with Laura’s name on it. ‘This?’
‘Yes. I wrote it when I knew I might not survive the op…’
Helen put it in her handbag. ‘But you have survived and now you must concentrate on getting better. The house is all ready for you.’
‘Good.’ She knew she was not going to Beckbridge, was not even going back to Burnt Oak; she wasn’t going anywhere except in a wooden box. She suspected Helen knew it too. ‘Look after her, won’t you? She won’t find it easy.’
‘Of course.’
‘She’s yours now.’ She looked past Helen to where Laura approached with a tray of tea things. But suddenly she was too tired to drink, too tired to do anything. She smiled and allowed her eyelids to close.
‘Mum?’ Laura dumped the tray down and ran round to the other side of the bed, where she dropped to her knees and took her mother’s other hand.
Anne’s eyelids flickered open. ‘It’s your birthday tomorrow, love.’
Laura smiled. ‘So it is. I’d forgotten.’
‘I hadn’t. How could I? There’s a little present for you in my locker.’
‘Oh, Mum. The only present I want is for you to get better.’
‘I am going to be better quite soon.’ She smiled again and lifted both her hands, one clasping Helen’s and one clasping Laura’s, and joined them together. ‘Be good to each other…’
‘Oh, Mum.’ Laura swallowed hard, trying not to break down.
They stayed like that a long time, one on each side of the bed, hands joined, while the fluttering breath rose and fell gently until it became almost imperceptible. There was a last huge sigh and Anne’s heart stopped. It was a moment or so before her watchers realised that she hadn’t taken another breath; that she never would.
Helen withdrew her hand carefully and sat white-faced and silent, while Laura flung herself forward and wept on her mother’s breast.
A nurse glided silently to the bedside, felt for Anne’s pulse and quietly withdrew. Helen waited, wondering what she could do, knowing there was nothing she could do to mitigate the loss of a beloved mother. And she was glad that Anne had not told Laura the truth.
Laura went back to Axholme Avenue. There was, she had told Helen, things she must do. She had to arrange the funeral; Mum would want to be buried with Dad and there were friends and neighbours to invite, people who had known Anne ever since they moved to Burnt Oak, her friends at the church and in the WVS, Aunt Maisie, whom she had not seen in years. Apart from her father’s sister and her children, she didn’t have a relative in the world. Mum had known that and so she had looked up an old friend, an old friend who seemed ready and willing to do what she could to help. She ought to be grateful. She was grateful, but it didn’t stop her wondering why.
‘Let me help you,’ Lady Helen had said. ‘You shouldn’t be doing all that in your condition.’
‘No, thank you all the same. This is something I must do myself. I’m perfectly well and the baby is not due for another three weeks.’ She gulped, determined to be practical, but the thought
that Mum would never see her grandchild, never watch its first steps, hear its first words, watch it grow, had her in floods of tears again. And when, gently coaxed by Helen, she opened her birthday present, she was reduced to incoherence. It was a silver christening cup, which was really a present for her baby, but her mother could not have chosen anything better. ‘Oh, Mum, what will I do without you?’ she said at last, and Helen found herself turning away to hide her own tears. It was a question she longed to answer, but couldn’t.
‘You will come to the funeral?’ Laura asked her when she had recovered her composure.
‘Of course. You’ll come to Beckbridge afterwards?’
‘Thank you, but I’ll have to sort Mum’s things out and clear the house, and it doesn’t seem right to do that before the funeral. I’ll come when it’s done.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes, I promised Mum I would.’
The funeral was over, Helen had come and gone by train and Laura, dry-eyed and weary, with her unborn child growing heavier and heavier, was trying to go through her mother’s things without bursting into tears, and wondering about the future. She hated the idea of giving up her home but the alternative was to shut the house up and leave everything inside to the mercy of the German bombers and the looters, who were everywhere. In any case, paying rent for an unoccupied house was a luxury she could not afford. Lady Barstairs had told her to send the furniture to Beckbridge Hall, that she had acres of room and it would be nice for her to have some of it around her. She was a very understanding person and Laura was grateful, but she could not get over her wariness. It was not distrust exactly, but a feeling that there was something she did not know, something she ought to know.
Perhaps the answer was in that little case her mother had carted everywhere with her, even to the hospital. Until now she had been reluctant to open it because it felt like prying, but it had to be done. She sat down at the kitchen table and opened it with a key she had found in her mother’s handbag. It contained, as she expected, her personal treasures: her marriage certificate, her own and Laura’s birth certificate: Laura Anne Drummond, born March the fifth, 1918, father Thomas Drummond, soldier; mother, Anne Drummond, née Smith. Her mother’s birth certificate was a revelation. ‘Father unknown,’ it said. Poor Mum, no wonder she had flown off the handle when she was told her unmarried daughter was pregnant. There was a well-thumbed letter from her mother to her father and his reply, written somewhere in France, which showed how much she had been welcomed and had her in tears again. There were also snapshots taken with her father’s box camera; mostly by her mother of her and her dad, but there were proper photographs of her receiving her school certificate from the headmistress of her grammar school and of the ceremony on the day she qualified as a nurse. And there was one of Lady Barstairs. She was wearing a shapeless dress with a lace collar and cuffs and a cloche hat. Behind her was a small building that looked a bit like a cricket pavilion. She turned it over. Written on the back was: Lady Helen Barstairs, Beckbridge Hall, 1921. It confirmed her mother’s statement that she had known Lady Barstairs a long time and only now did Laura admit that she had not believed it.
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