Robert nodded to him, not really knowing what to say next. Who was it they were meant to be showing? Oh yes, of course. The enemy. He returned to his table.
Lily looked at him, swaying gently above her.
‘I should try sitting down, before you spill any more,’ she told him with a wry smile. ‘I like my gin in a glass, Lieutenant.’
Robert sat down and lay back against the pub bench with his eyes closed for a few seconds.
‘What do you want to do, Bob?’ Lily wondered. ‘How long have you got? Leave, that is.’
‘What do I want to do, Lily? First things first,’ Robert replied, offering her a Senior Service cigarette. ‘What I want to do is sit here with you and tell you what a beautiful girl you are. That’s the first thing I want to do. In fact I don’t mind sitting here just telling you that for the rest of the night, do you know that?’
Robert stopped. Everything was so easy just thinking about it; it always was so easy as long as it remained in your head – but soon as you came to say it you were a boy again. The tongue-tied schoolboy handing a flower to the girl with all the freckles and the pigtail who had smiled at you in assembly that morning. And you found that all those words you had so carefully practised saying to her in front of your looking glass stuck to your tongue, just as they were sticking to his tongue at that moment.
‘Oh, Lord,’ he sighed quietly, raising his eyebrows. ‘I sound a complete idiot.’
‘You sound nothing of the sort,’ Lily said, putting her hand on his. ‘And as for holding my hand, there’s nothing I’d like more. Well…’ She paused. ‘On the other hand, thinking about it – there might be.’
‘I’ve only got until midnight. I have to drive back tonight. I’m on duty first thing in the morning. They thought I – they thought I – I should have twenty-four hours’ leave, but we can’t leave the things, the bombs, littering the streets. Can you imagine? People have to get on with their lives, but you can’t hide from these darned things, all lying unexploded in the street. Just can’t.’
He could feel the warmth of Lily’s body through her skirt on the back of the hand she was holding. All he wanted to do was fall against her and hold her to him. He wasn’t going to let the side down. Fanshaw, good old Fanshaw, wouldn’t have wanted that.
It’s just a job, Bob, he’d have said. Others have got worse jobs, others not so bad. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just a job. Just something that has to be done.
‘There’s a war on, that’s the point, Lily,’ Robert continued, even more slowly. ‘When I was driving down, at one point I could see them up in the sky. Right above me. I could see a dogfight going on right above me while I was driving along. I’d nearly gone off the road, and when I pulled over I heard the planes. When I looked up there were these two Spitfires taking on four or five Messerschmitts. Just two of them. They shot down two Jerries while I was looking – one of them crashed in flames about a couple of miles from where I was parked. Then the others hightailed out of it – I mean they were running for home – and our boys went after them – two after three and before I lost sight of them they’d got another. They’re bringing in pilots with less than ten hours’ training, you know. They’re getting bomber pilots to fly fighters to fill the gap – that’s how tough it is up there. So I can’t just sit around feeling sorry for myself. Just because – just because. I can’t do that.’ Robert shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘They have rooms here.’ She squeezed his hand now in both of hers, moving her hands up so they now pressed his against her stomach. ‘You could spend a few hours here, leave at dawn, that way it won’t take you much time to drive back.’
Robert frowned at her.
‘Lily.’
‘Robert?’
He was going to tell her then. He was just about to say it, but once more the words stuck – not just to his tongue, but all round his mouth – to his cheeks, the roof of his mouth, his lips, everywhere. He was speechless. All he could do was smile.
Marjorie saw Lily the following lunchtime. She was just leaving the canteen as Kate and Marjorie were coming into it. Lily failed to see them, wandering out calling back happily to some friend.
‘I wonder what she’s got to smile about?’ Marjorie said, watching her go.
‘I think she was probably born with a smile was our Lily,’ Kate replied. ‘A smile for the doctor who delivered her. She always seems so carefree. So happy-go-lucky. Some people are like that.’
Marjorie nodded.
‘And not only that,’ she said, sounding sadder than she wanted to. ‘She is very, very pretty.’
‘That does help,’ Kate agreed, remembering Robert’s reaction to seeing Lily. ‘She is very pretty – well, beautiful really.’
Marjorie nodded sadly. It was true. Lily was beautiful.
‘Your bed is now ready, madame.’
The maid led the way to the bed. Poppy nodded to her.
‘I think it is as madame would like it – no?’ the maid asked anxiously.
‘It is not quite as madame likes it.’ Poppy frowned. ‘I prefer the sheet to be folded lower—’
She was going to say ‘please’ and then remembered her role. The maid did as she was told, and Poppy nodded nonchalantly.
‘Better.’
She slipped off her dressing gown so that it fell to the floor and the maid stooped to pick it up, and then began to withdraw.
‘Goodnight, madame.’
‘Goodnight.’
Poppy switched off the light, and lay gazing into the darkness. The dinner party had been fascinating, and sheltering in the swimming pool with all those Society types too. She had learned so much, but she had finally found the last few days exhausting, as if she had been required for the first time to be really tested, to be both on the alert as Poppy and a Fascist pain in the neck as Diona. She closed her eyes, suddenly wishing for her old life, whatever that had been, before the war, walking George to the Park, sitting listening to records on her gramophone. So long ago, such a quiet time, she longed for it, wished for it to come back, and in doing so fell asleep at last.
Billy seemed to have made it his duty to keep everyone informed about the depressing state of the national supplies, and gave it as his opinion that the task was impossible.
‘You in line for taking over from Lord Haw Haw’s broadcasts on the wireless, then?’ Mrs Alderman demanded as she set a plate of porridge in front of him. ‘Because if so, I can have you shipped out of here and over to Germany before you can say Hitler.’
‘We haven’t got enough ack-ack guns neither, Sergeant Briggs upstairs told me,’ Billy added informatively, as Kate and Marjorie, having been up all night typing up intercepts, collapsed on the kitchen bench beside him.
‘By ack-ack I take it you mean anti-aircraft?’ Marjorie demanded, trying to smother a yawn. ‘And you’ll get had up if you spread propaganda and rumours, you will. It’s prison for you, my boy, if that goes on.’
‘I’m only being honest,’ Billy protested.
‘You know such an awful lot, Billy,’ Kate told him. ‘I hope Jerry doesn’t capture you because you’ll have to spill all the beans.’
‘I wouldn’t tell ’em a thing, Kate. They could do what they liked. But I’d never squawk.’
‘Squeal?’
‘I’d never say a dicky’s. Not a dicky’s.’
‘I don’t think we’ve done badly so far,’ Kate announced, collecting her things together. ‘When you realise they’re chalking up the scores on the news boards in London – like cricket scores. We’re not doing badly. If what they say is true, we might even be pushing ahead.’
‘Yeah, but Sergeant Briggs upstairs, he says how long can we hold out, what with them having thousands of fighters where we’ve hardly any.’
Marjorie and Kate looked at each other but said nothing. They knew Billy’s friend Sergeant Briggs was right. Even Major Folkestone, when the battle for supremacy in the air had begun after Dunkirk, had inadvertently admitted
that the RAF had only six hundred aircraft while the general opinion was that the Luftwaffe might have thousands.
‘Yeah, but things ’aven’t worked out that bad considering,’ Billy went on, inexorably, while they all three now tucked into Mrs Alderman’s delicious food. ‘Mr Hackett was telling me—’
‘Oh yes, and since when was Mr Hackett back, may I ask?’ Kate asked in a cold voice.
‘He came back the other day.’ Marjorie turned and looked at Kate briefly, surprised by her tone, since she was normally the most easy-going of characters. Hail-fellow-well-met wasn’t in it, really, as far as Kate went.
‘Do you know – his uncle owns the place.’
‘No he does not, clever clogs, and if he tells you he does, he’s not telling you the truth,’ Kate growled. ‘At least not according to Major Folkestone. He let it slip one night when Cissie Lavington was in our office and going on about some piece of furniture that had been damaged, and he said that he had to have details because he had a duty to inform the owners of Eden Park, Lord and Lady Dunne.’
‘Maybe Lord Whatsisname’s Mr Hackett’s uncle?’ Billy suggested. ‘He could be.’
‘I don’t think so, Billy. I think Mr Hackett was possibly having another of his little jokes.’
Kate turned away from him to pick up a greatly reduced newspaper and stare at the headlines. Mr Hackett might well be turning into something of an accomplished liar, if that was what he had maintained.
‘Well anyway,’ Billy continued, handing back his porridge plate to Mrs Alderman in return for a soft-boiled egg. ‘Mr Hackett, he told Sergeant Briggs that the Messerschmitt 110s can’t ’andle our Hurricanes and Spitfires ’cos they aren’t manoeuvrable enough.’ Billy expertly chopped the top off his boiled egg with a swift movement of his butter knife. ‘There goes Adolf Hitler’s head,’ he added with some satisfaction.
‘You see?’ Marjorie interrupted. ‘You can say your aitches when you have to.’
‘Sergeant Briggs says Jerry didn’t reckon on how tough our boys are,’ Billy continued. ‘And how determined. They chase their bombers right out to sea – did you know that, Kate?’
‘Not far enough, Billy,’ Kate said as they all watched Mrs Alderman taking a freshly baked loaf from the oven. ‘To judge from what they’re doing to London.’
‘Blimey!’ Billy said, half rising in his seat. Returning his egg spoon to his saucer he started up from his chair and went to the window. ‘Blimey, listen to that.’
‘Billy,’ Marjorie groaned. ‘What have I told you about saying—’
‘No! Blimey! Listen!’ Billy cried, now running to the side door and pushing it open. ‘Listen to that!’
Reluctantly they all followed him, and stood outside in the courtyard looking up at the cause of the noise, as all over Eden Park windows were being opened and people were peering up at the skies as the rumble of heavy aircraft grew louder and louder.
‘Blimey!’ Billy cried. ‘Look, everyone! Jerry!’
He didn’t need to point. Everyone could see well enough. Everyone could see that the sky above them was full of aeroplanes, hundreds and hundreds of heavy bombers and their escorting aircraft coming from due south and headed north for London.
‘Do you think this is it?’ Marjorie said to Kate, shielding her eyes with one hand against the sun for a better sight of the invaders. ‘I suppose this has to be it.’
‘I suppose it does,’ Kate agreed, shading her eyes and frowning anxiously. ‘I don’t see any of our lot.’
‘They’ll be back defending their airfields! They got to!’ Billy cried. ‘They got to! Sergeant Briggs says Jerry bombs ’em to smithers whenever they go on sorties!’
‘Well, if we’re going to stand a chance,’ Marjorie said quietly, ‘they’re going to have to chance it and go after Jerry. Or there won’t be any London left.’
‘Sergeant Briggs says—’
Mrs Alderman turned on Billy.
‘Will you hush your mouth about Sergeant Briggs, Billy Hendry. Much he knows. He only stands about the front door earwigging, that’s all he does.’
She went back to her kitchen range in high dudgeon, while Marjorie and Kate, with sinking feelings, stood staring up at the crowded skies above them.
From his office window Major Folkestone too watched the skies. Up there somewhere would be his youngest brother, all of nineteen years old, and his brother’s best friend – the Little Chaps, the family had always called them. Now the little chaps were fighting for this other Eden, this jewel set in the silver sea, this England. If he was truthful he knew that he had little hope that either of them would come through, and yet because he loved them he had so much hope for them too. Since he was a praying man, he prayed, and yet somehow too, because he was also rational, he could not help wondering who might be listening.
That weekend, as previously arranged, Poppy was due to attend the house party being thrown by the Duchess of Dunedin in one of the several houses she had scattered around the British Isles. Mercifully as far as Poppy was concerned this was not the one in Scotland or, even more mercifully, the large estate she had in Yorkshire not far distant from Poppy’s short-lived marital home of Mellerfont. The estate to which they had all apparently been invited was in Gloucestershire, but even so in these days of restricted travel it still meant a long and possibly difficult journey for Poppy, seeing as she neither had a car of her own nor indeed drove. Elizabeth Dunedin had originally arranged a lift down for Poppy, but at the last moment this fell through, leaving Poppy no choice but to travel down by train on the Friday.
‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ her hostess had reassured her in a final telephone call before she left for Paddington Station. ‘I’ve deputised a chum to travel with you. Great friend of mine – Elsie Lightwater – she’s great fun and you two will have no end of a hoot travelling by PT.’
‘PT?’ Poppy had enquired.
‘Public Transportation, duck. Quite a real experience nowadays, one hears. We’ll have great big drinkies waiting for one on arrival, never fear!’
The journey was every bit as difficult and uncomfortable as Poppy had been led to expect, the train leaving over an hour late and packed to the corridors with soldiers and airmen returning to their bases. Poppy and her travelling companion, a tall extremely elegant woman who was already fairly drunk by the time they boarded the train, were unable to find a seat anywhere and became crushed against each other and several strangers in the corridor of what should have been a First Class coach, but due to the increasingly difficult travel conditions was now an unrestricted zone.
Poppy resigned herself to a long and uncomfortable journey, but not her companion, who finally elbowed her way to the door of the nearest compartment and stood glaring at the male occupants until two of the older men felt compelled to offer her and Poppy their seats.
‘Thank you!’ Elsie Lightwater said loudly without a trace of gratitude as she quickly took her seat, indicating for Poppy to do likewise. ‘I really thought good manners had died with peace. Didn’t you?’
Poppy as Poppy would of course have been happier to remain standing in order to rest vital troops, but as Diona de Donnet she had a different role to play so sank into her vacated seat with a loud sigh and round agreement with the atrocious woman with whom she had been lumbered. Elsie Lightwater, imbued with that peculiar sense of utter insularity which denotes either the highly insecure or the furiously foolish, continued to hold a loud and totally inane conversation with Poppy at the top of her strident voice until finally and mercifully as far as everyone else was concerned – including Poppy – she suddenly fell into a stupor.
‘Blimey,’ a young soldier in one of the corner seats sighed. ‘If that’s what we’re bloody fighting for, I’m desertin’.’
The carriage exploded with suppressed laughter, leaving Poppy feeling ever more isolated.
The house party was not at all as Poppy would have imagined, for although the other guests were standard house party fare the rest of the
residents of the large, Regency house were certainly not.
‘We’re chock a block with expectant mothers from cockneyland,’ Elizabeth Dunedin explained with a laugh as she welcomed her guests into her estate manager’s exquisite little eighteenth-century house half a mile from the main house. ‘At least we ain’t got the army in as yet – we’re doing all we can to stop that little one. Far too much of value in the house to have Tommy vandalising it, so Henry’s pulling every string available to get our parturient guests removed as soon as poss, so one can move back in. As if a war’s not dreary enough, but to be without everything is too bad. Not a stick of furniture that isn’t stored, or a painting that isn’t the same.’
Given the precarious times, Poppy was amazed to find that there were half a dozen other guests staying, not to mention her loud-voiced travelling companion. The list was much as if the regulars of the Stanley had been plucked out of the bar and set down in the wartime countryside. Lord Lypton was there, predictably enough; John Basnett, a singularly tall and languid gentleman who talked, drank and smoked non-stop, together with his all but silent and vastly overweight wife, and Scott Meynell.
‘If I’d known you were here I wouldn’t have come,’ Poppy murmured to him, which made Scott quickly turn away, whether to smother a smile or to look furious she wasn’t sure.
The initial talk at dinner that night was of the victory the RAF had won against all odds over the Luftwaffe, the climax having come a few days earlier when the vast armada of German bombers that had finally taken to the air to strike what had been hoped to be the decisive blow against the capital were all but knocked out of the skies by seventeen squadrons of the Royal Air Force.
But far from there being any sense of celebration at the dining table, there was an air of unease, as the Dunedins’ house guests aired their opinions about the progress of the war.
‘Not going to please the Führer much,’ Lord Basnett scoffed. ‘Operation Sea Lion was meant to pave the way for the invasion, don’t you know.’
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 31