The Bannister Girls

by Jean Saunders

  ‘Don’t ever cut your beautiful hair again, Angel. This is how it was on that first night, and I had never seen anything so lovely. My lovely, golden girl –’

  She buried her face in his shoulder, because her love for him was almost too unbearable to contain. She wished that she could hold every moment, and capture it in a container, so that the light of love would never be dimmed. She brushed the thought away fearfully as a portent of disaster, and tonight was not a night for such thoughts.

  ‘Come to bed with me, my love,’ Jacques whispered against her cheek.

  She felt his fingers on the buttons of her blouse, and stood mutely, allowing him the lingering pleasure of seeing her revealed to him, bit by bit. Blouse, skirt, shift, all cascaded to the floor, to stay where they fell until he scooped her up in his arms and lay her between the sheets to await him. He turned the gaslight down low, so that only a flickering rosy glow lit the room, intimate and warm, and Angel watched as her husband and lover discarded his own clothes and slid into bed beside her.

  They had been together so few times that each time was like the first time, the best time. His hands caressed her like a blind man learning his way around a beloved piece of porcelain by sensitive and delicate touch. Her own fingers sought and found every responsive part of his body, and she thrilled anew that a touch or a kiss from her lips could bring this powerful man to high passion in moments.

  ‘I can’t wait another second to make you mine, chérie,’ she heard his throaty voice against her flesh as he kissed her breasts.

  ‘I was always yours, Jacques,’ she whispered, the charged emotion in the room too deep to spoil with any but the softest words. ‘It’s what I was always intended to be, from that first day, when your hand touched mine in a London taxi –’

  ‘And now you’re my wife. My own adored wife, and neither war nor continents will keep us apart –’

  As if to underline his words, she felt the beloved weight of his body cover hers, poised for a moment on the brink of a union so sweet that she was dazzled with the magic of it. And then she opened up to receive him, and he soared inside her, a flame lighting her life, completing the perfect being.

  Angel lay awake long into the night, not wanting to sleep and lose the wonder of such closeness. Jacques’ lovemaking had been ardent and inexhaustible, and at times, both of them felt the pleasures of love almost too emotional to bear.

  He was sleeping now, and in the faint glow of moonlight from the curtained window, she could see the strong Gallic profile, relaxed in sleep, more dear to her than she had ever dreamed another human being could be. These three days were an oasis in time, and she wanted to savour every second.

  She moved her lips against his cheek, tasting the salt of his skin, and felt him stir slightly in sleep and hold her more tightly. She was safe and warm and loved, and there was nothing in the world that anyone could ever want that was more important than that.

  The idyll was over, and they sat on a crowded country bus that would take them to the nearest railway station. Angel would take the train from there to report to her new duties in Essex. There was a sudden unbearable constraint between them. So much to be said, so much left unsaid. Fears that were best left unvoiced, words of love that had no place here among the countrywomen and noisy children who glanced briefly at the handsome airman and the beautiful girl by his side and then ignored them.

  They held hands tightly, and with every mile, Angel felt as though she and Jacques were already slipping apart. Actual distance didn’t matter. It was the inexorable knowledge that she was on her way to one duty, while he would soon be going back on another. And now that the fascination of her own flight was receding in her memory a little, she was beset with worry for the dangers of his chosen life.

  ‘We’re here, chérie,’ Jacques said quietly, and she felt her heart jolt. So soon, so soon…

  The railway station was crowded, and as the train came lurching along the line like a giant caterpillar spitting sparks and cinders in its wake, she felt her eyes sting. She must be brave, she thought desperately. She mustn’t break now, when Jacques needed her to be strong.

  The train surged to a halt, and smoke and steam enveloped them, and it hardly mattered that tears smarted in her eyes, for no one noticed in the general flurry of greetings and farewells. They clung desperately, and then she broke away, for to drag out the parting only increased its intensity a hundredfold.

  She found a seat between several servicemen, and watched Jacques through the grimy window. A whistle blew. Doors slammed. She saw him run alongside the carriage window for a last glimpse of her, until the crowds frustrated him, and he was lost in the midst of them.

  Angel sat back, closing her eyes, and trying not to let the tears force their way through, incongruously imagining her mother’s voice at that moment. ‘A young lady never betrays her feelings in public…’

  ‘Cheer up, ducks,’ she heard a voice say. ‘It’ll be all over soon, so they say.’

  She smiled wanly at the Cockney soldier smiling cheekily at her. Needing desperately to believe him, because it was the only thing she could do. It was what they all did, constantly. Gave each other false hope that the war would all be over soon…

  Chapter 27

  Angel discovered that the convalescent home was a fairly cheery place. The men wore blue uniforms, signifying that they had been honourably wounded, and although some remained in the depths of misery about their lot, most of them showed remarkable resilience to whatever injuries they had suffered.

  Some were horrific, of course. The amputees were the ones that Angel found most heartbreaking; the empty sleeves, the ending of a body at the hips; the frustration of men with no fingers wanting to do the simplest, basic things for themselves with human dignity, and having to rely on young nurses to do these for them.

  She was not involved in these things now. Her role was to drive ambulances to and from the channel ports to deliver the wounded to the home, and take back those fit enough to resume military life. She sometimes wondered if any of them knew what real life was any more. The old world they had known four years ago seemed part of a distant age. Yet people still went to dances, visited the picture shows, made love…

  Jacques wrote to her as often as he could. She lived for his letters, for each one meant that he was still safe, still alive, still coming back to her. She wrote to him frequently, wanting him to breathe her essence through the words she wrote.

  He sent her sketches of beautiful things, butterflies and flowers and the calm wash of the ocean on sunlit days, and she treasured them in a scrapbook, and told herself it was something to show their children. She thought of it as a little omen, knowing she had something to keep for them, and their shadowy future images didn’t seem so impossible.

  She had telephoned her family to let them know she was now in England, and was warmed by their ecstatic reaction. Even Clemence seemed quite choked to hear her daughter’s voice, and to know that she wasn’t far away in France.

  ‘We had such a terribly anxious time in the spring, Angel,’ Clemence said on the telephone in her quick, efficient well-bred tones. ‘Everyone thought the Germans were going to win, and some people made tentative arrangements to flee to Canada. I don’t think any of them actually went in the end –’

  ‘How is everyone, Mummy?’ Angel cut across the beginnings of pomposity, more interested in her own family than strangers at the moment. She was surrounded by strangers, and felt a great need to hear about those dear to her.

  ‘Louise is well, and the baby is apparently thriving. We haven’t seen him yet, since Dougal doesn’t want them to travel until the war is over.’ If Clemence was the snorting kind, she would have snorted then. ‘I know he’s thinking of his family, but it seems rather odd to be so pedantic when half the country seems to be travelling back and forth to France the entire time!’

  ‘Dougal saw enough of the war, Mummy. He’s thinking of Louise’s safety,’ Angel defended her. ‘And what of Daddy
? It seems so long since I’ve seen any of you!’

  ‘Your father’s well,’ Clemence said. ‘Business still keeps him away for much of the time.’ She resisted adding that relations between them were probably better because of the little time they spent together. It was something one didn’t discuss with one’s children.

  ‘And Ellen?’

  Angel sensed that her mother paused.

  ‘I’m not sure what to say about Ellen. She’s mellowed a little in past months, and she seems to enjoy this appalling farming life. She’s as forthright as ever in her views, but somewhat secretive in many ways.’

  ‘Does she see anything of Peter Chard?’ Angel said the words casually, dying to know.

  ‘She never tells me, though she can hardly avoid him in a place this size. Anyway, my dear, I shall have to cut this conversation short. My ladies are coming this afternoon, and we’re still knitting furiously. Oh – and how is Jacques?’

  It was an afterthought, and Angel answered evenly.

  ‘He was well the last time I saw him, thank-you. We came to England together in his airplane, as a matter of fact –’

  ‘What? Angel, how could you be so reckless! Didn’t you think of the danger –?’

  All she could think of was the soaring blue of the sky, the feeling of oneness with God and nature and Jacques, the empathy with Jacques’ passionate love of flying…

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ she said edgily. ‘Mother, I’ll let you go. I know you have a million important things to do. Give my love to everyone. ‘Bye.’

  She put the instrument down, suddenly stifled by her mother’s indignant voice. Clemence still saw her girls dressed in juvenile frilly frocks attending garden parties with their parents in the eternal round of London’s social life. To Clemence, the girls had never grown up, nor ever would, despite Louise being widowed, remarrying and having a baby; Ellen involved in a near-disastrous love affair; Angel going through a war and growing up in the process, and finding love…

  She felt a brief pity for Clemence, knitting diligently, offering dignified succour to victims on the railway station, and yet still somehow remaining virtually untouched by war. Almost everyone would emerge at the end of it, marked in some way. Clemence would merely resume the old life as if four years of war had been merely a hiccough in her ordered routine.

  Angel caught her thoughts up short. She was thinking as though the war was nearly over, but everyone was talking of it that way now. She had gone through an anxious time at the end of May when the Germans attacked the French lines on the Marne. The long-range guns were firing shells into Paris, and Angel was desperate with worry for Jacques.

  There was no news from him for several weeks until at last she heard that he was well. At the same time, the military news improved, with the Americans taking a key role in halting the German advance, the British counter-attacking alongside them. The Allies had a triumphant victory, and everyone at home breathed more easily again.

  The weeks passed quickly by. June merged into July and August … another summer came and went, while it seemed as if the whole of Britain held its breath for the end of all hostilities. It was a tormented and tantalising time, when muddled reports promised that the end was near, then another battle would flare up, and hopes would be dashed. Still the wounded came home, were patched up and sent back to fight again.

  And still Angel Bannister de Ville drove her ambulance between the ports and the convalescent home, until she could have driven the routes blindfold, and felt that she never wanted to hear the whine of an engine again, nor to feel her eyes so tired and strained from lack of sleep that she could have crawled into the nearest ditch and remained there until the Armistice.

  Newspapers reported every new development of the war with screaming headlines, implying that victory was just around the corner, and that each new day brought peace a little nearer. The waiting was almost unbearable, the rumours becoming wilder and more unreliable.

  But at last there was great rejoicing, when on August 8th fresh news from France became known. In dense fog, the German front lines were pushed back relentlessly. Even though they still fought fiercely, they were unable to resist the combined tank assaults of Canadian, Australian and British troops, brought together in a massive show of strength.

  ‘We’re almost there!’ Sir Frederick Bannister said jubilantly, scanning the latest newspaper headlines in the small Yorkshire cottage. Harriet looked at him fondly.

  ‘You’d like to have taken part in this war, wouldn’t you, Freddie?’

  He grinned sheepishly. ‘Is it so obvious?’

  ‘’Tis to me! Why else would you get so uppity when things have gone wrong? You’d like to have been in France with the young ’uns beating hell out of the Jerries!’

  Fred laughed out loud, giving her a squeeze, and revelling in the fact that there was more flesh on her bones than in months past. She fitted more comfortably against him now, in the old sweet way that was familiar and loving.

  ‘It’s no comfort to know that you’re too old to go to war, sweetheart. I could hold a rifle with the best of ’em, and stick a bayonet where it hurt most –’

  ‘And probably die of a heart attack in the process,’ Harriet said with dry Yorkshire perception. ‘You do your bit for the war effort, Freddie, providing cloth for uniforms and blankets, and don’t ever think otherwise.’

  He wasn’t a particularly religious man, though there had been times when he’d prayed to God for Harriet’s recovery, and God had answered his prayers. There were other times when he remembered fragments of old scriptures, and twisted them to suit his mood. This was one of them, for his Harriet truly restored his soul, he thought irreverently…

  The battle begun on August 8th raged on. Newspaper reports played down the enormous waves of casualties produced, and concentrated instead on the furious efforts of the Allied forces to break down the famed Hindenburg line, the hugely successful German fortification. Tremendous battles were fought along its length, until in early September it was at last pierced and the defences broken. Surely now at last, victory was imminent…

  Celebrations were begun far too early in some towns and villages. Without waiting for official confirmation as to whether the war was over or not, people celebrated in their own way, with small parties and mutual congratulations on the ending of four years of hardship and anxiety. They waited impatiently for the final declaration of peace to be signed, and for their men and women to come home. Some wept silently for those who would never return. And still the final news didn’t come…

  Ellen Bannister was as anxious as anyone for the war to end. She was still undecided what to do with her life once it was all over. But of one thing she was certain. She had to get back to London. She adored the country with a fervour that constantly surprised her, but it would be impossible for her to remain in Somerset, knowing that she loved Peter Chard.

  If things had been different, she would have stayed so willingly, so gladly … but as it was, it was far better to cut her losses with the entire country scene, and get back to the bright lights again. Perhaps join the campaigning work for the Women’s Movement once more, which was sure to resume activities again soon. It was a thought that would once have inspired her, but which, guiltily, she now found depressingly hollow.

  But once she was back in smoky old London, Ellen thought desperately, everything would fall into place again, and she could forget this madness of ever thinking Peter Chard could love her too … Wasn’t it some clever theorist who said there was never one so dogmatic in resolution than the one most opposed to it in the first place?

  Which was merely a pedantic way of saying that to a woman who had never expected to fall in love, the reality was even more all-consuming than she could have imagined in her wildest dreams. And to find that love unreturned, the most devastating blow to her self-esteem…

  At the end of September, while the weather was still mild and balmy, there was to be a village street party that was being or
ganised partly by her mother, the vicar, and the other village bigwigs. It was to be a cautious celebration in honour of certain victory, and a way of raising funds for the comforts still needed by bereaved families and wounded heroes about to return.

  In Ellen’s opinion, it was taking things far too much for granted, but the village was swept along on a wave of having something to do that was cheerful and positive, and bunting was hung from shop doorways, Union flags fluttered from every window, and one might think that peace had already come to one sleepy little Somerset village…

  And naturally Peter was there on the day, dressed in his Sunday corduroys and polished boots, and the Land Army girls had put aside their businesslike uniforms, and dressed in bright summer frocks. After the drabness and itchy wool of the dark green clothes, Ellen felt strangely light and feminine in soft yellow muslin.

  There was a surprising amount of country fare on long trestle tables, and an even greater quantity of scrumpy cider and home-made wines. If the occasion didn’t make everyone slightly tipsy, then the alcohol consumed certainly did.

  Music was played on an old squeeze-box, and there was lusty singing of patriotic songs. Far down the length of the tables, Ellen saw Peter watching her in a way that made her heart thump. He began moving towards her, and it was as though she watched him in slow motion.

  It was as if he would never reach her, as if they were both caught up in one of those awful dreams, where the person one wants the most is forever out of reach … she had felt like that before, only this time, Peter did reach her side, and she felt the grasp of his hand on hers. His voice was slightly aggressive, but when he spoke, she found herself obeying.

  ‘I have to talk to you, but not here. Let’s go somewhere private.’

  She could smell the sweet fragrant scrumpy on his breath but it didn’t offend her. If anything, it stirred her blood into a kind of pulsing excitement. Peter pulled her along with him through the winding streets until they reached the edge of the village and the ancient church.