She stopped by a small stone building, not at all sure which folly it was until a sharp gust of wind swept the rain away, allowing her to identify what they all called the Picnic House, since the little temple-like building was obviously designed for alfresco meals, having a covered terrace at the front with a room within behind a pair of elegant French doors, allowing guests to eat inside if the elements became inclement.
Half frozen and thoroughly soaked, Kate tried the doors and happily found them to be unlocked. She let herself in, shutting the doors behind her, and taking off her coat shook as much rain as she could from it. But there was no chance of getting it dry, so heavy had been the downpour. The rain had even penetrated her tightly buttoned up collar, soaking the neck of her polo-necked sweater as well as the ends of its sleeves. Thoroughly soaked and really rather miserable, she was about to throw her wet coat on again and make a dash back to the main house, now that she had her bearings, when she noticed that the fine iron fireplace in the middle of the back wall was stacked with dry firewood, as was the practice in all the follies around the estate, just in case anyone like herself should get caught out by a sudden and vicious change in the weather.
The only problem was that being a non-smoker she had nothing with which to light the fire. Hoping against hope that some other refugee might by chance have left some on the fireplace she hurried to look, to her amazement finding a half-open box of Swan Vestas on the mantel. Unfortunately they were too damp to light. She was just about to give up when a hand appeared from behind her bearing a well-lit match with which to light the paper under the firewood.
Kate turned at once, somehow knowing who it was before she even saw his face.
‘You’re a bit of a Red Indian, aren’t you? Stalking up on a girl like that?’
‘Irish man wears boots made from moss,’ Eugene replied, widening his eyes at her. ‘Pitter-patter, pitter-patter— hallo my darling Katie.’
She was in his arms before she knew, just putting up her hands to his chest in time to prevent him from kissing her – until she got a few things straight.
‘Does your horse wear shoes made from moss too?’ she wondered. ‘I didn’t hear a sound. Not even the doors being opened.’
‘I wouldn’t take the boy out on a day like this. He hates the rain, you know. Hates what it does to his mane. He’s a bit of a dandy, is the boy.’
‘So you were just out for a stroll, were you? Picked a good day.’
‘Like yourself. You obviously don’t mind what the rain does to your mane.’
‘I most certainly do. But I wouldn’t be seen dead in one of those awful rain hats.’
‘You look like the most gorgeous drowned rat I’ve ever seen.’
‘Thank you very much. And you look like some great Irish retriever that’s just splashed out of a river.’
Eugene held her all the tighter.
‘God, but I missed you,’ he sighed finally. ‘I thought about you all the time.’
‘Liar.’
‘Of course. But a nice lie all the same. The truth is I did think about you whenever possible. When the light turned dark, you were always on my mind.’
‘I thought you hated me for beating you at tennis.’
‘That’s what I wanted you to think. I have this thing, you see – not to mix work and pleasure. Particularly not to mix work with love.’
She shivered.
‘You’re cold,’ he said quietly. ‘Let me get that fire going properly.’
‘That wasn’t why I shivered.’
‘Then let me get the fire going really properly. Did you know these doors have shutters? On the inside?’
Taking his heavy Aran sweater off and wrapping it round Kate’s shoulders, Eugene got to work on the fire.
‘First we dry our coats out thoroughly,’ he said, sitting cross-legged on the floor and holding his heavy overcoat up to dry. ‘Likewise, princess.’ He nodded to her. ‘Get to your work.’
Kate held her coat up in front of the dancing, cheek-reddening flames. In no time at all both garments began to steam.
‘Then what?’ she asked.
‘Then when they are utterly and completely as well as quite, quite dry,’ Eugene replied, ‘we dry the rest of our damp clothes. I don’t know about you but that rain penetrated practically everywhere.’
‘Right down my neck.’
‘Right down mine too.’
‘But this fire’s too hot to stand in front of and dry out.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Eugene said carefully. ‘Any suggestions?’
‘Not really,’ Kate said, refusing to catch the look he was giving her.
‘We could always peel off the old togs now, couldn’t we,’ Eugene suggested, as if the thought had just occurred to him. ‘And hold them up to toast.’
‘And then?’
‘Optional really. I had this idea we could spread the coats out on the floor—’
‘On the floor? Why?’
‘Katie – it’s a marble floor. Marble is not the warmest of surfaces, Katie.’
‘Depends what you want to use it as a surface for.’
‘It might be fine for chopping meat, and for dicing the old vegetables.’ Eugene sighed. ‘But not for other things. I thought what we might do is lay the lovely warm dry coats out as a kind of – a kind of bed if you like.’
‘Sounds cosy—’
‘Roll the toasted sweaters up as lovely warm pillows, you see—’
‘And then?’
‘Then we could hug each other until we got warm and dry. Really hug I mean. We could hug and hug and hug.’
‘A very new way of getting dry.’
Eugene padded barefoot over to the doors and closed the tall, ancient shutters, dropping the iron latch across to lock them from inside.
The weather outside had further worsened, blowing a gale now that thrashed a furious rain against the Georgian glasses in the shuttered windows. The fire, still blazing, billowed as a fierce gust fanned down the flue, making the flames dance higher and the old burning timbers crackle even louder. Kate wrapped her slender arms around her tingling flesh, pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them, staring into the blaze to try to read her future.
Eugene was beside her, half behind her, one arm round her waist.
‘My. Silk. We shall have to turn you into a parachute.’
‘Only if it’s you I can drop to safety.’
‘Turn to me, and kiss me, and I shall show you stars shaped as you have never seen them.’
Outside the temple the rain grew harder. Inside, the flames in the fireplace grew stronger, as for a while two people were able to turn to each other, and away from war.
In one way Poppy realised she was reluctant to say goodbye to all of Diona de Donnet. Not to her personality – most certainly not. She was only too glad to shake herself free of the haughty, disdainful racist with her unpalatable political views and her overweening snobbery. But her feminine side hated saying goodbye to the exquisite clothes and beautiful accessories she had so enjoyed wearing during her masquerade. Yet she found when she had finally, packed them away in the white and gold tissue paper and carefully labelled boxes Section H had supplied for their storage, that not all of Diona went into storage.
So well trained had she been in that brief but intense period of her education, that the poise and the grace with which she had been imbued remained long after the haute couture had been carefully folded up and packed away. Poppy was no longer the socially awkward and timid bespectacled bookworm.
‘Everything changes you,’ Kate confided to her, on one of their lunchtime walks around the park. ‘But nothing surely more than war? I keep wondering if we’re going to win, and then I think what does it matter – better to die, as Robert did, doing something that you believe in, or in his case saving a life, than to live in a grey and loveless world. Besides, I think Robert would always have died young, war or no war. He believed in living every minute, not minding about his own
life, because he loved life itself so much. That was Robert.’
Poppy, who had only just begun to know Kate and the rest of H Section, was quietened by this, sensing as she did that part of Kate would always be in mourning for her beloved brother, that she would always miss him.
‘How are your parents?’
‘Leading separate lives. It’s their way of coping. Everyone has to find their way, and they’ve found theirs.’
Kate looked away. There was no point in saying more.
Nowadays poor Billy found himself hopelessly in love not with one but with two beautiful women and refusing to find a life of his own, hanging around both Kate and Poppy, not to mention Marjorie, doing his once loved but now discarded pet act.
‘I know this is hard for you, Billy,’ Marjorie kept telling him. ‘But you know – you do have to have a life of your own.’
‘That’s right, Billy.’ Mrs Alderman backed her up. ‘Hanging round older women isn’t healthy, really it’s not.’
Marjorie looked across at her, grateful for her intervention.
‘Girls,’ Billy had sniffed. ‘They make me sick.’
‘So get some friends of your own, Billy. It doesn’t mean we all won’t go on being friends, but you’re growing up, and you need friends of your own.’
‘You’re right, Marge. But till I do, can I hang around with you lot?’
But it was Billy who spotted the bracelet.
The three girls were getting ready to go out for a drink one evening in the local, Kate with Eugene, Poppy with Scott, and poor Marjorie, since there was no one else, with Major Folkestone. Poppy had come across to the cottage to pick up Marjorie and Kate, all dressed up and ready to leave, but since Kate wasn’t quite happy with what she had chosen to wear and Marjorie with the way she had done her hair, inevitably Billy was left to entertain Poppy while they set about doing a last-minute change.
‘Fancy a game of cards, Pop?’ he asked her, producing a pack out of his pocket, Eugene having managed among other things to turn Billy into a proper card sharp. ‘Fancy a game of Brag?’
‘You know I don’t have a clue how to play cards, Billy.’ Poppy laughed. ‘Not to your level, that is, and particularly not Brag. Last time I played you, I lost nearly two shillings.’
‘Pontoon for matches?’
‘Very well.’
Poppy dealt, but as she did so she realised that Billy’s attention was not on the cards she was giving him, but on the bracelet she was wearing round her wrist.
‘Where did you get that, Pop?’ he asked. ‘Where, Pop? Someone give it you, did they?’
‘As a matter of fact they did, Billy,’ Poppy replied.
‘Marge!’ Billy called up to her. ‘Marge, come and look at this! You won’t Christmas Eve it! Pop’s wearing a bracelet just like that one what we gave Aunt Hester!’
Marjorie came downstairs, feeling happier with her restyled hair.
‘What is it now, Billy?’
‘Look, in’t that just like the bracelet what we gave Aunt Hester that time?’
Marjorie stared down at the bracelet which Poppy was now holding out for her inspection.
‘It’s very like it, Billy.’
There was a short silence during which Billy, obviously thinking that some sort of explanation was needed, turned back to Poppy.
‘See, our Aunt Hester, she had this bracelet that Marge and I gave her for Christmas, and you know she really liked it. Well, it was more from Marge than me actually, but anyway, she died while she was out practising for the war in the forest, and we never did find that bracelet that Marge and I gave her, and we never did find who done her in neither. But it was our first Christmas, see?’ He looked across at Marjorie. ‘Our first Christmas together, wasn’t it, Marge?’
Marjorie nodded. ‘Yes, Billy, quite right, it was our first Christmas.’
Billy’s eyes clouded for a while, and he still did not look inclined to pick up his cards.
‘Come on, muggins,’ Poppy finally chivvied him. ‘If you don’t hurry up I’ll be taking more than my two shillings back off you.’
Marjorie went to the mirror to check her hair one more time. Her new hairstyle was more flattering, she thought, more feminine, caught up into her neck in a soft figure of eight. As she checked it she found herself remembering that first Christmas, Aunt Hester bringing Billy from the school as a present for her, Mr Arnold and Mavis. It all seemed like a century ago, but now it was Christmas again it seemed to her that she could stretch out her hand and touch it, and by doing so it gave her heart. After all, if Billy and she could come through together, anything could happen, and still might. They could even win the war.
Given the worsening situation with the all night raids continuing on London and now even extending to other cities, not to mention the intensifying of the U-boat attacks on merchant convoys, and despite the ever increasing shortages of food and other vital commodities, the Nosy Parkers had done wonders in decorating the great hall where their Christmas party was to be thrown, festooning it with yards and yards of home-made paper decorations that the more artistic girls had fashioned into highly colourful chains, bells and streamers as well as making huge wreaths from braids of holly and ivy garnered from the parkland. An enormous yule log had been cut and was finally creeping into life in the vast ancient stone fireplace, while in one corner a rostrum had been constructed for a band that had been formed by a quintet of in-house musicians, two soldiers supplying the rhythm section of bass and drums, the drum set having been begged and borrowed from the local brass band and the double bass from a classical orchestral musician whose daughter was one of the Nosy Parkers.
The pianist was an over-tall and extremely serious decoding genius from Section C, the guitarist was a jazz fiend from Section H, and the clarinettist was a small, dark-haired young Jewish refugee who had been semi-adopted by Jack Ward and given a job at Eden Park after Jack had helped organise the young man’s escape from Germany. It was this young man’s idea to form a band since the only thing that had kept him sane through this terrible period of his life was his music, playing his clarinet every evening after he had finished work, usually closeted away in one of the most distant follies in the park so that he would not get on the nerves of his colleagues.
By the time the trio of young women and one young man had made it across from their cottage to the main house, the band was in full swing and the hall was already full of people dancing. And not just boys and girls, girls and girls, since because there was still a far greater number of young women than there were men a lot of the girls danced quite happily together.
Scott spotted Poppy the moment she came into the hall, although he could hardly miss her, as she was in a bright yellow dress with her mane of still blonded hair piled high. However, he barely even managed a greeting to her, let alone to her friends, before whisking her off to dance.
‘Jeepers creepers,’ he began to sing lustily as he danced her round the floor. ‘I just love this tune! And the way you look! You are just purely ravishing! ‘
Poppy laughed. The terror of the last few weeks evaporated as couple after couple passed them, everyone suddenly in explosively carefree mood.
‘Will you teach me to dance, Marge?’ Billy asked, as Kate, Marjorie and he wandered over to a bar set out on a long trestle table to get some refreshment. ‘I really think I should learn how to dance.’
‘Knowing you, Mr Pick it up Quick,’ Marjorie replied, ‘one lesson and you’ll be treading the light fantastic as if born to it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Billy said gloomily, watching Scott and Poppy float by. ‘Looks too bloomin’ difficult to me. Think I’ll learn the drums instead.’
Taking a bottle of Mrs Alderman’s home-made pop he wandered off to the bandstand where he stood earnestly studying the soldier drummer’s great expertise.
‘Wonder how many more Christmases the war will last?’ Marjorie said, as she and Kate sat down at one of the tables that had been set around th
e dance floor, lit by a candle in a jam jar.
‘No, Marjorie,’ Kate scolded her. ‘We agreed – no talk of war. It’s the party rule.’
‘I don’t remember agreeing to that, Kate.’
‘You do now,’ Kate smiled, then raised her glass. ‘Happy Christmas. And an even better New Year.’
As they toasted each other, Major Folkestone appeared, almost unrecognisable out of uniform, immaculate in black tie, and with his hair even more carefully creamed and parted than ever.
‘If you ladies will excuse me, I wonder if I could have the pleasure of this dance?’
Marjorie nodded to Kate that it would be perfectly all right for her to go and dance, only to find Kate smiling back at her.
‘I’m sorry, Marjorie,’ Major Folkestone said. ‘I meant you. I’m sorry. I should have said. Please forgive me.’
Marjorie frowned and then stood up.
‘Yes, of course. I was day-dreaming. So sorry.’
‘If you’ll excuse us, Kate,’ the major said, before dancing away with Marjorie in strictly orthodox fashion.
The band was now playing ‘A Foggy Day In London Town’, a slow foxtrot, rather than the hectic quickstep of ‘Jeepers Creepers’.
‘I’m not too bad at the slower ones,’ Major Folkestone told Marjorie, trying to sound chatty. ‘But do for heaven’s sake, if you suffer any toe injuries, remember no radio silence.’
‘You dance very nicely, Major,’ Marjorie replied. ‘If anyone’s toes are in danger it could well be yours.’
They danced a full circuit of the floor in silence.
‘I find it tricky talking while I dance.’
‘I find it practically impossible, Major.’
‘So why don’t we just dance, Marjorie? And perhaps talk later?’
‘That would suit me really well, Major,’ Marjorie said, a vague look of cheek in her eyes. ‘That way I can keep count of the steps.’
* * *
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 40