‘No,’ said Ben suddenly, ‘no, I’ve made up my mind. They’re staying here. This is where they belong. With us. I want you to go and see the woman at the town hall, tell her they’re not going back.’
‘All right,’ said Linda, ‘if that’s what you really want. You’re the boss.’
Ben’s eyes met hers across the room. ‘If you say so,’ he said, grinning.
‘Of course you are. Don’t be daft. But if the bombs start dropping on us, don’t blame me.’
‘I promise I won’t,’ said Ben. He went over to her, took her in his arms and kissed her; there was a moment’s hesitation, then she pressed herself slowly, sweetly against him, her hips moving very, very gently.
‘Oh Linda,’ he said, ‘oh Linda, I’m going to miss you, I’m going to miss you so much,’ His hands moved down her back, began to work on her small neat bottom.
‘Not now, Ben,’ she said, laughing, pushing his hand rather feebly away, ‘not now. It’s three in the afternoon.’
‘So? There’s not a law about it, is there, saying it can only be done in the hours of darkness? Come on, Linda, I’ve got to go back to camp tomorrow. You wouldn’t deny a soldier what could be his last chance of a happy memory, would you?’
‘You’re a clever bugger, Ben Lucas,’ said Linda, ‘and no, I s’pose I wouldn’t. Come to think of it, I could do with a few happy memories myself. It’s not much fun living here just with your mum.’
An hour later, several happy memories safely secured, she eased herself up in the bed and reached for her cigarettes. She always wanted one afterwards; it was supposed to be only men that did. She looked down at Ben; he was asleep, a sweet smile on his face. God, she loved him. Her dad had said he was too good for her, and she often thought he was right; he was so clever, so patient, so – well, so good. Maybe, she thought, sitting back, blowing out a cloud of smoke, maybe after the war it might still be possible for him to achieve his ambition to be a teacher. He still wanted it so much, and if the boys were at school she could go back to work and keep them for a few years. He’d passed all those exams through night school, before they were married, after all. It would be worth it, worth the struggle to see him happy. Although why anyone could want to go back to school, having finally escaped from it, she really could not imagine. Linda had hated every minute of every day at school.
God, she was going to miss him; and she was going to miss the sex as much as anything. One of the very best things about Ben was how good he was in bed. Bloody brilliant; he somehow carried her along with him, had brought her to sensations, pleasures she’d never even dreamt of. Every single time. He just knew what she wanted and did it for her; and if he didn’t know he asked, asked and listened. It was lovely that, made her feel so important and special. Which made her feel sexy. It was all part of the same thing really, he said: he loved her, and he wanted to show it, in every way he knew.
And the other awful thing about Ben being away was having to live more or less alone with his mother. They might get on all right these days, but it still wasn’t exactly fun. One of the reasons she’d not minded quite so much being without the boys was that she’d been able to get out of the house a bit more. Still, she’d much rather have them with her. And if she did what she really wanted, took a factory job, at least Nan would look after them. She’d argue of course, but she’d have to; Linda intended to tell her it was her war effort if there was any real resistance.
Ben stirred, smiled up at her sleepily; she bent and kissed him quickly, then got up and dressed and went to tell the boys they hadn’t got to go back to the country: David threw himself into her arms and hugged and kissed her; Daniel promptly burst into tears. ‘What about me rabbit?’ he said.
‘Kids!’ said Linda in disgust.
Grace had just come in from walking Charlotte when she heard the phone ringing: on and on insistently. As she reached it, it stopped; she picked it up anyway, spoke to Mrs Boscombe.
‘Was that a local call, Mrs Boscombe?’
‘Yes, dear, from Mr Bennett. He’s not at home though, dear, he’s at the office, in Shaftesbury. I’m sure he shouldn’t be working, but there you are. Shall I get you the number?’
‘Oh – yes please,’ said Grace.
‘Right then. And how’s the major?’
Charles’s second promotion had already received a great deal of publicity locally, largely via Mrs Boscombe herself.
‘He’s fine, thank you. He’s coming home—’
‘Yes, dear, I know, next weekend, isn’t it? Before he’s off to France? And I hear Mr Grieg’s off soon too. Captain Grieg, I should say.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Grace. She sometimes thought Adolf Hitler could do a lot worse than get a direct line to Mrs Boscombe. She seemed to have in her possession the most detailed knowledge of the movements of half the British Army.
‘Clifford? It’s Grace.’
‘Ah, Grace, yes.’ He sounded awkward, ruffled. ‘Just a moment, my dear, let me close the door.’
There was a pause, then he said, ‘Look, there’s been a bit of an upset at home. My – well, my client, Mrs Saunders, phoned me there, and Muriel was – well, she was pretty angry. So I’m going off to London for a few days. Stay at the flat. I just wanted to warn you, that’s all.’
‘Oh Clifford,’ said Grace. So she’d been right. Obviously Mary Saunders was very much more than a client. ‘I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?’
‘’Fraid not,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, my darling, it’ll all calm down in time, I’m sure. Perhaps you could give Muriel a ring in a day or two – see how she is.’
‘Of course I will,’ said Grace, quailing slightly at the task.
‘Well, I’ll say au revoir. If you do come up to London, then of course you must come and see me.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Grace again. ‘You’ll be at Baker Street, will you?’
‘I will indeed. And thank you again for your sympathy. Much appreciated. Don’t deserve it, I’m afraid.’ Grace thought he did. She felt very depressed as she put the phone down. She would miss him badly.
Life, she reflected, as she tried to concentrate on a letter from the vicar asking for volunteers with church cleaning, was a very quiet, dull affair these days. Sometimes she felt she must have slept for twenty years rather like Rip Van Winkle and woken in her middle age.
‘He’s going!’ said Florence. ‘He’s finally going. On Saturday. I can’t believe it. Will you take me out to dinner? Somewhere glorious, like the Ritz. And buy me absolutely masses of champagne.’
‘No,’ said Giles, ‘I won’t.’
‘Beast.’
‘Not at all. I’m going to take you to bed and make love to you over and over again, and we can have masses of champagne there. One bottle per orgasm, I thought. Doesn’t that sound better?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Florence.
‘You look rotten,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘So thin. Thin and pale. And how on earth did you get that bruise on your shoulder?’
‘I told you. I slipped in the bath. Drunk again—’
‘You’re a careless old thing, aren’t you? Don’t you think you drink just a tiny bit too much?’
‘Possibly,’ said Florence vaguely. ‘If you were me, you’d drink a bit too much.’
‘I do anyway. Well, now I shall be able to take care of you.’
‘Until you get called up,’ said Florence soberly. ‘Christ, I don’t know what’s worse, no war and Robert being at home, or a war and both of you gone.’
Chapter 9
Spring–Early Summer 1940
Charles sat staring at Grace across the drawing room at the Mill House and his face was stonily shocked; he was home for his last leave before going to France.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he said, ‘I don’t and I can’t believe it.’
‘You don’t have to,’ said Grace, ‘but he’s gone.’
‘He’s left my mother?’
‘Well
he’s left. For now anyway. Yes, that’s right.’
‘If he’s left he’s left,’ said Charles. ‘I’m quite sure my mother won’t tolerate his return. She certainly shouldn’t. And it’s over this Saunders woman, you say?’
‘Sort of. Yes. Well, obviously, Charles, he was having some kind of an – an affair with her. And your mother’s found out. I mean I always thought it seemed possible—’
‘Why?’ he said. He looked terribly angry. ‘Why did you think that?’
‘Well, ever since it was her he was with when he had the heart attack. I just never believed she was a client. It seemed—’ she hesitated then brought the word out bravely – ‘ridiculous.’
‘Oh I see,’ said Charles. ‘You felt yourself able to make that judgment, did you? I have to say I’m very shocked at you, Grace. Very shocked.’
‘But why?’ she said, genuinely baffled. ‘These things happen. I’m not stupid. Your parents are hardly an ideal couple, are they?’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘What I say. They don’t get on very well. Your mother isn’t very nice to him—’
‘Well, can you wonder?’ said Charles. ‘If this sort of thing goes on.’
Grace was silent; she didn’t want to make him angrier by saying she thought it was the other way round, that Clifford had a mistress precisely because Muriel wasn’t very nice to him.
‘Well, I’m horrified,’ said Charles, ‘by your attitude as much as anything else, Grace.’
‘Why? What’s my attitude got to do with it?’
‘You seem to be taking his side in some strange way. To be condoning his behaviour. I would never have thought that of you, I have to say.’
‘Oh Charles, really! That is so unfair. I’m a realist, that’s all. I tried to talk to you about it before and you wouldn’t.’
‘Yes, well,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure that I like that kind of realism, Grace.’ He looked at her very coldly. ‘Anyway, how is my mother? I must go over to see her immediately. Poor, poor woman. All I can say is, if he’s gone to London they’ll probably be bombed, best possible outcome in the circumstances.’
‘Charles!’ said Grace.
‘It’s true. Oh God, it’s so humiliating, apart from anything else, for the poor woman.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Grace.
She didn’t talk about it any more. She could understand that Charles should be upset at his father’s conduct; upset and shocked. What she couldn’t understand was his behaviour to her over it. It was as if she had strayed into some territory that was forbidden to her. Clearly men’s peccadilloes were one thing when kept quietly to themselves and quite another when women knew about them. It seemed to her an unpleasantly dishonest attitude.
And in fact, Grace thought, struggling to be fair, had it been her own father guilty of this thing, might she not have found that a great deal harder to accept? However much she loved Clifford, however helplessly she found herself on his side, it was easier to be tolerant, to forgive him when he was, after all, simply a dear friend to her, and not her flesh and blood.
She also wondered how Charles might feel to learn that his sister was conducting an adulterous affair, and reflected at times and with some amusement that the family into which she had so nervously married and regarded as so awe-inspiringly perfect were in fact proving to be rather the reverse.
Charles came back from the Priory white and heavy-eyed; he looked, Grace thought, as if he might have wept. And there was something else about him, too, which she could not quite understand; something dark, something haunted.
‘I love you,’ he said to her fiercely that night, turning to her in the darkness. ‘I love you very much, Grace. You and only you. Remember that, always. No matter what happens.’
‘I will remember it,’ said Grace, ‘of course I will.’
All over England, the same declarations, the same promises were being made.
The phoney war which had seemed so endless, so futile, so boring had ended and the real one had begun. Looking back, people wondered that they had ever thought there was anything to complain about, now that fear stalked every street, every house, every family; and every person’s faith was pinned, above all, on Winston Churchill, who had become Prime Minister on 10 May, the day Germany marched on Belgium and Holland. Grace sat by the wireless with Muriel, and listened as he told them he could offer them nothing but ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’, urged them to flight ‘for victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be’. She felt inspired and uplifted in spite of her fear.
She was really lonely now: savagely so. She missed Clifford terribly, Janet had left her to join the ATS, and Muriel was hardly a warming companion. Grace felt desperately sorry for her but was helpless in the face of Muriel’s cold pride to comfort her. Her mother urged her constantly to lock up the Mill House and come home, but she steadfastly refused; that was home now, she said, and it was true, she loved it most dearly, and besides, if Charles did come home on leave, they had both agreed that was where she should be.
Most of the people she and Charles had entertained early in their marriage, neighbours, friends of his from childhood and his early single life, who had invited them back when he had been at home, to dinner parties, cocktail parties, to play tennis, ignored her for the most part; she had the occasional invitation to tea, an even more occasional one to ‘family supper in the kitchen’, but it was generally excuses, protestations that she must come soon, when Charles was on leave, when they had time, ‘So busy with everything, and you must be too.’ A shorthand, she knew, for the fact that she was not really one of them, did not belong naturally and easily to their circle, was a bore over the dinner table, a near embarrassment at drinks. She was partly relieved, because she hadn’t liked many of them, had found little to say to them, but although she tried not to be, she was also very hurt. It was so blatant a piece of ostracizing, and although everyone said no one was entertaining any more she knew there was still a fair amount of it going on, albeit rather more modestly. Muriel would ask her tactlessly if she was going to such and such or so and so, and she would have to say no, she wasn’t; the worst thing that happened after that was that she would occasionally get a carefully casual invitation, clearly at Muriel’s instigation. In her darker hours she would imagine the conversation, ‘Do ask the poor thing, she’s so lonely,’ and try to force herself to hang onto her dignity and refuse, but usually she accepted because it was easier and she always thought anything would be better than another long, empty day. Only mostly it wasn’t.
It didn’t help that she was so much younger than most of Charles’s circle; the wives were mostly in their thirties with two or three children, and that alone set them in a country very remote from her own. But more than anything she knew it was because she was who she was and what she was: an outsider, an intruder into their ranks, for whom they had been prepared to make an effort for Charles’s sake, but not for her own.
Muriel, who discouraged any kind of easy relationship (for which Grace was truly grateful), issued rather stiltedly formal invitations about once a week, to join her and her friends for lunch or supper, but those again were to be avoided; she was even less friendly towards Grace these days, and Grace knew why, for she had added a suspected knowledge of, collusion even, in Clifford’s defection to her earlier, lesser crime of wifely unsuitability.
Grace had tried at first: had offered to help with charity and fund-raising events, to sit on committees, but not being able to drive was genuinely something of a drawback as the meetings were often held in other villages. For some time she had continued to go to morning service, but after a few Sundays of smiling determinedly at people in church, and walking rather hesitantly past them as they chatted outside it (although they always paused to say hallo, or good morning, or most likely to ask if she had heard from Charles), she began to shrink even from that.
And so she was left mostly to her own devices, and
was trying determinedly to make the best of it all; she had Charlotte for company, she was following most literally the instructions to dig for victory, she had the chickens to feed, she was planning to get a goat. She had bought a piano, and she spent long hours playing it; and she was still quietly resolved to take some evacuees, the only difficulty now being that there were none to take. Most of them had gone back to London.
Nevertheless the days were long, and the endlessly light evenings, the result of ‘double summertime’, made them feel longer. She would have loved to join the WRNS like Clarissa, or the WRACS, but Charles had been adamant: he wanted her at home, safe, and waiting for him. She felt she owed him obedience at least, as he risked his life for her and his country.
He was in France now, she knew not quite where; his battalion had marched briefly into Belgium, and been driven immediately back again. She woke up each morning knowing only that he was still alive, and that another day of crawling fear as well as loneliness lay ahead.
Robert was also in France: with the Royal Engineers. Giles, training on a warship in Dartmouth, had left eight weeks after him. He was in no immediate danger, but Florence had suddenly a different, a dreadful fear. Her period, always so regular that she could predict not only the day but almost the hour of its arrival, had failed her. And on the morning of 29 May, as the first wave of an armada of tiny ships, fishing boats, sailing dinghies, even pleasure cruisers, accompanied the larger ships across the Channel to Dunkirk to rescue the thousands of troops stranded on the beaches of Normandy, their escape completely cut off by the German Army, she was horribly and endlessly sick.
In the flat in Baker Street, Clifford sat alone, listening to the reports of the besieged troops on the beaches, knowing his son was probably among them, knowing that he might not hear for many days that Charles was safe, or indeed that he was not, knowing that the mother of his son must be raw with terror and misery and that they really should be, needed to be, together, and wondered, not for the first time, if he had done the right thing.
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