He handed her a small revolver.
‘Hide this in your gas mask case.’
‘And the target?’ Poppy wondered, although in her heart she felt she already knew even before he spoke.
‘No one, we hope, as yet. Just a precaution, but in the event, of course, if you were in a bad situation, you might feel it better to turn it on yourself.’
He stood up. They looked at each other for a moment. Outside Poppy heard the crumping, muffled thud of a bomb falling, followed by the thunder of collapsing masonry. Neither of them said a word. Finally Jack Ward picked up an old brown trilby and set it carefully on his head at a rakish angle.
‘I’ve never seen you wear a hat before.’
‘I never wear a hat,’ he agreed. ‘Unless it is quite necessary. I am not suited to hats. Men who wear spectacles look shady in hats.’ He removed his glasses, and put them in his pocket. ‘But I wouldn’t want to be seen coming in and out of this apartment block without some kind of thin disguise, would I?’ He checked himself in the hall mirror, and satisfied by what he saw he carefully and quietly opened the front door. ‘George is fine, by the way,’ he added in a low voice. ‘Eating up and being a thoroughly good boy in every way.’ He turned at the door and nodded briefly at Poppy. ‘He sends you a big wag,’ he added. ‘And says take care of yourself.’
Poppy shut the door, went back into her living room and stood staring at herself in the looking glass above the fireplace. She took a long hard look at Poppy Beaumont, said goodbye to her, and set her countenance for a future as Diona de Donnet.
It was Sunday and Marjorie and Kate did their best not to be seen to rush in an unseemly fashion out of church, yet both of them could hardly contain their excitement, Marjorie at the joy of getting not just a day pass, but an invitation to spend the day with Kate’s family, and Kate at the thought of seeing Robert, also home on leave from the Navy.
Marjorie was also looking forward to meeting Robert, her best friend’s handsome brother, with whom she had managed to convince herself she might fall deeply in love. Not that it took much imagination, for the photograph on the table beside Kate’s bed showed a tall, handsome, fair-haired young man standing between his sister and mother, tanned and healthy, every inch the hero.
Billy was Marjorie’s only problem. Both of them had wanted to take Billy as well, but Major Folkestone, acting as always now in loco parentis for the boy, had refused Billy a pass since it had been brought to his attention that having skipped so much school Billy was falling seriously behind in his work.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Billy grumbled as he arrived back at the cottage long after Kate and Marjorie. ‘I’m going to ’ave a simply smashin’ time here on me tod, doin’ all me arithmetic and geography ‘omework.’
‘If you hadn’t played hookey so much,’ Marjorie reminded him as she checked the contents of her handbag, ‘you could have come too. And do stop dropping your aitches, will you?’
‘Certainly, miss,’ Billy replied, sticking his nose in the air. ‘Hi shall nevaire drop haynother haitch has long has High lives.’
‘You’ll be fine, Billy,’ Kate assured him, kissing him chastely on the cheek. ‘You’d be awfully bored with us. There’d be nothing for you to do except sit around and listen to a lot of boring small talk.’
‘Kate’s right,’ Marjorie assured him, brushing the lipstick mark off his cheek. ‘You’d be bored rigid. At least here, once you’ve caught up on your homework – which you’re going to have to do, right?’
‘Right,’ Billy groaned.
‘Or else your friend Major F won’t allow you anywhere. No more plane spotting, no more decoding—’
‘Yeah, yeah – I get the idea,’ Billy protested, wriggling his way out of Marjorie’s grasp. ’Any rate, Mr ‘Ackett asked me to call on ‘im after I done me ‘omework.’
‘Mr Hackett, Billy. Stop pretending to be such a little oik.’
‘Yeah. Well that’s what I am, remember? A pesky little oik ’oo’s not good enough to be asked to someone’s ’ome case ‘e drops ‘is bloomin’ aitches all over the shop.’
Marjorie eyed him, uncertain whether or not he was too old for her to clip across the back of his cheeky head.
‘Oi!’ Billy protested. ‘Leave off, Marge! I want to live to see another day!’
Marjorie laughed, finally ruffling his hair, straightening his tie and pulling out a chair at the table for him to sit and do his work. Billy wrinkled his nose in distaste, but sat himself down nevertheless.
‘Yeah,’ he sniffed. ‘Go on – off you go and enjoy yourselves.’
‘We shall, William,’ Kate assured him. ‘We most surely shall.’
Kate and Marjorie had changed into what they considered to be their best – neat wool coats, hats with dashing angles to them, and thin silk stockings that Kate’s mother had sent them as a present, some days before.
Found these at the back of a drawer, her hastily written note had said. They belonged to my mother, would you believe? That’s why they’re not a modern colour, but they are silk!
They were a funny colour – a kind of greyish pink – but so much better than thick lisle, or, worse, bare legs, and both girls pulled them on delightedly before beginning the long train journey back to Kate’s home.
As it turned out, from the first, the whole day was tinged with that particular shading that in retrospect makes every colour of the sky, every pattern of a leaf, every chance moment seem magical.
Kate walked up the garden path to the familiar front door feeling much as she had as a schoolgirl, half expecting to be delving into the front of her blouse to find a key on a string. Of course the house looked smaller, as it would do after Eden Park, but it also looked more welcoming, a gingerbread of a house, and that was all before her mother opened the front door to her, and pulled both her and Marjorie indoors, laughing and talking and calling to Robert to come quickly.
‘Where’s Dad?’ Kate asked, cautiously, after she had introduced Marjorie to her mother, and Robert to Marjorie.
Helen’s eyes slid sideways as they always did when she was put on the spot.
‘I don’t exactly know, Kate, and nor does Robert, do you, dear?’
Robert shook his head, his bright fair hair flopping down into his eyes immediately making him look much younger, less the serious naval officer, more the boy in Kate’s photograph.
In the absence of her husband, Helen’s cooking seemed to take on a new lease of life, and she managed to produce a lunch of such splendour that for a while afterwards conversation steadied down to a less animated intensity as all the young people smiled happily, reluctantly refusing third helpings of apple pie and custard.
‘It’s not that we don’t have good food where we are,’ Kate told her mother, taking care not to mention Eden Park. ‘It’s just that we really never have much time to eat, not like now.’
‘More, dear?’
‘Mother!’ Robert looked across at his mother affectionately. ‘You want to kill us with kindness, don’t you?’
Helen smiled round the table. She did really rather want to, but she knew that Robert would hate it if she became sentimental in front of Kate and her friend, so she said nothing, keeping her feelings under, as they all must.
* * *
Finally, on Helen’s orders as she cleared up, Robert, Kate and Marjorie went out for a walk after lunch, along the towpath by the river and across the fields beyond, which like fields everywhere in the country were already being intensively farmed for the quicker production of foodstuffs. But at that moment as the three of them walked deeper into the countryside they pushed all thoughts of hardship away from them, and concentrated on wartime jokes. Old chestnuts were aired and groaned at, new ones laughed at while everyone tried to memorise the good ones in order to repeat them when they went back to the war.
Kate cut a stick, and as they walked on she started to cut off the heads of the nettles that they passed.
‘Killed you, Nazi, killed you, Naz
i, and you, and you.’
She seemed to take great satisfaction from this activity until Robert interrupted her massacre.
‘Forgot to tell you what I’ve just been telling Mum. I’ve volunteered for a shore job – so no going to sea for a while, which is good since I have only to see a rowing boat to feel queasy.’
‘I say, that is good news.’ Kate smiled, taking his arm, and then she stopped, her heart sinking. ‘At least I think that’s good news. Except if I heard you right and you said you volunteered, perhaps that isn’t such good news?’
‘It is as it happens, and I’ve got a promotion because of it.’
‘Gracious, isn’t that a bit quick? I mean. That is quick.’
‘This is war, my dear sister.’ Robert laughed. ‘They discovered my tinkering genius.’
‘Robert’s always been a terrific engineer,’ Kate explained to Marjorie, dropping back behind him. ‘Ever since he was a boy. Could fix, build, invent anything. Drove Dad mad.’
‘Not quite anything, Kate. I haven’t engineered a cure for the common cold as yet.’
Marjorie laughed. She took Kate’s hazel stick from her and began deadheading some nettles herself.
‘Hitler, done you. Goering, done you! Who else?’
‘That awful Speer man, got to do him.’
Robert glanced back at them, amused. They were like two delighted schoolgirls concentrating on their self-appointed task. He walked ahead of them for a while, thinking over his new promotion. He knew exactly why he had been hauled in: first of all because he was the kind of fool that always volunteered for the most dangerous tasks, second of all because he was, as Kate had said, always and ever fascinated by taking things to pieces, and third because there was a hurry on. Or, to put it more succinctly, even more of a hurry on.
It seemed the Germans had developed a noncontact mine. Apparently it was triggered by the ship’s magnetic field, which made the mines all but impossible to sweep in the conventional manner. The enemy was terrified that the British might get hold of one, so they had kitted them all out with self-destruct devices in case they failed to go off. Word had come, via an intercept from Eden Park, that they were now thinking of using them as bombs as well.
Bombs were not funny at the best of times, but it beggared the imagination to think of mines being dropped from the sky, perhaps by parachute. To say that they could do a great deal of damage was to say the least, and the long and the short of it was that Robert was now part of the Admiralty countermeasures department – based on board a ship, but ready to be called on to cope with the new devices at any time. The task, as he well knew, was not just dangerous, it was lethal, and the chances of his surviving were pretty slim. All of which, quite naturally, he was intent on not telling his mother or his sister, and since he never told his father anything he would certainly not be passing on to him this particular piece of information.
He had thought about it all a great deal, and somehow, by projecting himself into the future, he had comforted himself by reflecting that, despite being only twenty-one, he really did not think he would enjoy life after the war. It would be so different. The English, he was convinced, would never quite recover from what they were now being put through, and that being so he might find himself unable to fit in with the brand new world, whatever it might be. At least, that was what he told himself, while at the same time appreciating that crouching in some crater trying to defuse some sort of bomb was not going to be the same as being one of many on a warship.
Perhaps Kate had guessed something of the new dangers that he now faced, because she suddenly ran up behind Robert and took hold of his arm.
‘My brother is completely cuckoo, as you’ve probably gathered,’ she said to Marjorie.
‘A fine thing to say to a newly promoted naval officer.’
They were nearing the house again, and Robert decided it was time to change the subject.
‘Now for part two of my surprises,’ he informed them, using a lofty voice as if he was an announcer on the radio.
‘You’ve parked your warship in the garage?’
‘How did you know, Kate?’
‘Because I did, Bobby Maddox.’
Robert opened the garage doors to gesture theatrically within. ‘Ta rah!’ he sang, pointing with both hands to the gleaming white sports car that was standing where Professor Maddox’s car was usually parked. ‘What do you think of her, then? Only got her last week.’
The two young women smiled in delight, and then sighed with admiration as Robert carefully reversed the car out of the garage for their inspection.
‘It’s an MG,’ he said. ‘Not new, of course, but hardly done any miles at all. Got her for an absolute snip from a bloke who’d just joined the Cavalry and found he’d been posted abroad. Even better news – I have scrounged enough petrol to run you girls back to your base. I’ll still have plenty left to get me back to my ship.’
They were too excited over the idea of being driven back in such sporting style to linger over their goodbyes to Helen, something for which she was only too grateful.
‘Bye, dears. Take care.’
She closed the front door and leaned against it, closing her eyes as she did so. What a stupid thing to say. Take care! As if it was possible to take care in a war.
* * *
And so they drove back to what they all laughingly referred to as ‘somewhere in England’, with the hood down and their spirits raised. They joked and sang most of the thirty-mile journey, Kate and Marjorie well wrapped up against the autumn chill, and Robert carefree and hatless with his blond hair standing all but upright in the wind. The car seemed to sing with them as Robert speeded across country until, far too soon it seemed, the entrance to Eden Park was before them, and the car was being stopped by the two new sentries posted at the outer gates. Kate and Marjorie showed their passes, but Robert was not allowed to proceed any further.
As the three of them prepared to make their farewells, they were passed by a small party of four women returning from their own day out, waving their passes at the sentries and blowing kisses behind them as they went.
Robert, who was just about to kiss his sister goodbye, stopped and watched the girls laughing and fooling about at the gates.
‘I say, Kate,’ he murmured. ‘Who’s that rather gorgeous imp in the red coat and saucy little hat?’
‘That?’ Kate said, with a laugh. ‘That, dear brother, is a girl called Lily. And if you ask me she is more than a little fast.’
‘Really?’ Robert’s eyes lit up at that. ‘Suits me. I don’t have a lot of time. Excuse me?’ he called. ‘Hang on a jiffy! Wait for me!’
He hurried up to Lily, anxious to stop her before she passed through into the security area. Marjorie, seeing Kate looking at her, immediately smiled, straightened her own somewhat windswept hat on her head and swung her handbag round raffishly.
‘Come on, Kate,’ she said. ‘Or we’ll be late for check-in.’
After a few yards they caught up with Robert, who had engaged Lily in conversation. Lily smiled at the two of them, while Robert quickly broke away to run over to them.
‘Cheerio, both,’ he said, kissing Kate and shaking Marjorie’s hand. ‘It’s been an absolutely A1 day. Made A1 plus now. See you both soon! Cheerio!’
With that he hurried back to Lily, who was waiting patiently for him, smiling the smile of a girl who knows she has caught the eye of a handsome young man.
‘I do love a naval uniform better than any other,’ Marjorie heard her say, as she and Kate started to walk up the drive.
‘Really.’ Kate sighed. ‘She ought to have a better line than that by now, don’t you think?’
Marjorie shrugged her shoulders.
‘That’s Lily,’ she said, staring ahead.
‘It certainly is,’ Kate agreed, unable to prevent her own thoughts drifting towards the horseman she had first seen cantering on the grey horse and whom she still hoped to see again, one day, with or without a tenni
s racket, although she would not admit as much to anyone, except of course herself.
The following day Kate was making her way to the tennis court to collect a cardigan she had left there when she heard the sound of tennis balls being hit at a regular fast speed. She stopped, and hid behind a tree in almost precisely the same place as Eugene had hidden to watch her.
He was practising his serve, sending the balls first to one corner of the square and then to another. Serve after serve was sent spinning down with breathtaking speed, the ball thrown high, the arm swinging the racket down towards it with an easy, athletic agility that was beautifully judged and executed. Kate stood on, watching him, until the sun went behind a cloud, and she moved fractionally between trees.
‘Come out of there, Kate Maddox, before I shoot you as a spy with my trusty weapon,’ Eugene called to her.
Kate revealed herself.
‘How did you know I was there?’
‘Because, Miss Maddox, I have the ears of a fox, and the second sense of a deer. Because I am, in other words, the great, the inestimable, the fascinating Eugene Hackett.’
He turned towards her, and as he did so it seemed that he had stopped as if he had been shot by Kate, rather than the other way round. She was wearing a white smoking suit – short jacket, with wide legged sailor-style trousers – that her mother had sent her a few weeks before with a note. Given this by Lady Daval. She thought it might suit you. She is running a second-hand clothes stall – rather good! Kate had teamed it with a floral blouse and a single strand of pearls. It was far too dressy for life at Eden Park, but Kate took the attitude that with a war on it was a girl’s duty to look as good as she could.
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 27