‘I keep saying it because it’s true.’ His eyes were on hers, dark, thoughtful eyes. ‘I couldn’t have got through yesterday without you.’
‘I tell you what,’ said Grace, breaking the slightly embarrassed silence, ‘you ought to write something.’
‘What sort of something?’
‘A letter. Saying you’ve appointed me their guardian until the end of the war or something like that.’
‘Why?’
‘Well – I don’t know. Strange things happen. Officialdom, you know. The authorities might come along, say they had to be taken into care. I don’t know. It’s unlikely, but I’d feel safer—’
‘Oh,’ he said uncertainly, ‘well, if you really think so—’
‘I do. If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Well fine, then.’
‘I’ll get you some paper.’
She was surprised, and hated herself for it, at how literate his letter was. To whom it may concern, it said, I appoint Mrs Grace Bennett legal guardian of my two sons, David and Daniel Lucas, for the duration of the war. Signed Benjamin Lucas (Sgt, RE)
‘I’ll put it away safely,’ she said, ‘in my desk.’
‘What does your husband do,’ he asked, ‘in peacetime?’
‘He’s a solicitor. What about you?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘nothing very grand. Just a clerk in an insurance office. But I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted that a lot.’
‘What happened?’
‘Had to leave school,’ he said simply, ‘when my dad died.’
‘Oh,’ said Grace. She felt rather ashamed of herself suddenly.
‘But I’ve been going to night school, studying, taking exams. I might’ve got there in the end, if the war hadn’t come.’
‘Maybe you still will,’ she said, infinitely impressed by his courage.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not now. Too late.’
‘It’s never too late,’ said Grace firmly.
They all went to the station to see Ben off; it didn’t seem possible to send the boys to school. They sat in the car in silence, all of them, all the way. When they got to the station, Daniel clung to Ben, crying. David refused to even get out of the car.
‘Well,’ said Grace as the train came in, ‘I hope everything is – all right. As all right as it can be. Will you be back before you go abroad?’
‘I don’t know. If I can. But I don’t think so, I really don’t. Thank you again.’
‘Well,’ she said, holding out her hand, ‘goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ he said, taking it, taking her hand, and suddenly, unbidden, a great sadness rose in her at his going; it had, in spite of everything, been a strangely sweet interlude. The tears filled in her eyes, spilled over.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘how stupid of me. I just—’
‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘it seems to be my turn. Don’t cry, Mrs Bennett, please don’t cry—’
‘Please call me Grace,’ said Grace, smiling through her tears, and he said, ‘All right, then – Grace. Grace, don’t cry. And don’t say you’re sorry, either.’ And then quite suddenly he put his arms round her, held her closely, gently, and she stood there in the sunlight, feeling for the first time for as long as she could remember safe, cared for, loved.
And as she stood with Daniel, holding him against her as he cried, waving to Ben Lucas as the train carried him away, she felt she had at last what everyone else talked about, a properly happy memory to sustain her through the loneliness and the fear.
‘Well, I think it’s most extraordinary,’ said Muriel. ‘Most extraordinary.’
‘Why?’ asked Grace,
‘That they should be foisted on you. There must be someone else who could take them in, some home—’
‘There probably is,’ said Grace wearily, ‘but they haven’t been foisted on me, and I don’t want someone else to take them.’
‘Well, I think it’s very high-handed of you. And suppose Charles came home, then what would you do?’
‘I hope very much that Charles would approve,’ said Grace, ‘of my caring for two very unhappy little boys who don’t have anyone else in the world.’
‘Yes, well, I’m afraid I find that rather hard to believe,’ said Muriel. ‘You know perfectly well how opposed to their being here he is. I think—’
‘Oh Mother, for heaven’s sake!’ said Florence, ‘Leave the girl alone. I think it’s terrific what she’s doing. Really good of her.’
‘But Florence, in Charles’s house.’
‘It’s not Charles’s house at the moment,’ said Grace, hearing her voice rise dangerously, ‘it’s mine. I have to live in it and run it all on my own, it’s my house. Please stop this, Muriel.’
Muriel looked at her rather uncertainly. ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I do hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘I think I do,’ said Grace.
Muriel swept out of the room; Florence looked at Grace and smiled briefly. ‘Try not to mind her,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ said Grace, ‘for supporting me.’
‘That’s all right. How are the little boys? Pretty cut up, I expect.’
‘Pretty cut up,’ said Grace.
That was an understatement. Daniel’s grief was wild, noisy, predictable, although easing slightly now with the resilience of his four years; he cried a lot, had nightmares, was rarely seen without his thumb in his mouth. David was impossible: silent, morose, hostile.
The first night Grace had heard him crying she had gone in, tentatively put her hand on his shoulder; he had shaken it off, shouting at her furiously. ‘Leave me alone!’ he said. ‘Don’t try to be her. Just don’t, do you hear? You’re not her, don’t try to be.’
She had left him, thinking in a few days it would ease, that he would come back to her for comfort, but it was three weeks now and he was still stony-faced, uncommunicative, wouldn’t even have his piano lessons.
Ben had not come back, had not been able to; by the time he had organized and attended the funeral, his troopship was due to leave. He phoned late the evening before they embarked, clearly upset, to tell her; Grace was sympathetic, cheerful, said the boys were fine, that they were coping, that he was not to worry about them. She thought it was probably a good thing he hadn’t come back, so wretched were they still.
‘I’ll write, of course,’ he said, ‘to them. And to you, if that’d be all right.’
‘It certainly would,’ said Grace, ‘and we’ll all write to you.’
‘OK, then. Well, goodbye – Grace.’ He brought the word out with obvious difficulty; she smiled into the phone.
‘Goodbye, Ben. Take care of yourself.’ And then heard herself say, to her immense surprise, ‘God bless.’
It wasn’t at all the sort of thing she said normally. It just seemed appropriate.
Florence stood in the hall holding Imogen, her teeth chattering with fear. Any time now, any moment almost, there would be a scrunch of tyres on gravel and Robert would be out there, and she would have to open the door, go out and greet him, carrying the child he surely, surely could not believe to be his. She had never been so frightened; not even on the day when she had hidden at the bottom of Clarissa’s steps.
She didn’t have the beginning of an idea what she was going to do. Every time she tried to think about it, to plan some kind of action, her mind seemed to close down, into a dark, determined blank. She would have given all she had to be able to have talked to Giles, to ask him for – what? What, for God’s sake, she thought, help, advice, support? Promises? Did she even know what he felt any more, what he thought they should do, what might happen to them? She had had one letter from him, two months after Imogen’s birth, a letter so redolent of love, so heavy with tenderness, with delight at the news of his daughter that she had felt she could continue for years on the strength of it, but the exhilaration and the courage it had given her had ebbed quite away now, to be replaced by this desperate quailing terror in the face of Robert’s return. S
he had no idea whether Giles was still alive even; there was certainly no basis for making any kind of shared decisions or plans.
She changed her mind daily, almost hourly: at times resolved to tell Robert everything, to ask for a divorce, at others to stay with him, endure it, to take on trust his professions of love, of remorse for what he described as their difficulties, to try to forgive. Clarissa had said she must leave him, that it was the only way, had actually offered to be with her when she talked to Robert, but Florence had said no, she must face it alone, it was her marriage, her life, her chaos.
‘Well, darling, nothing is quite that simple. And a hand to hold might help. Anyway, I’ll come if you want me to, if you change your mind. I should be able to get away.’
It was Imogen she feared for most; would Robert, if he knew that Imogen was not his child, vent his rage, his passion on her? Would he hit her, rather than Florence, strike at her little golden head, bruise her, kick her as she lay broken and crying at his feet? It seemed unimaginable that she should stay with him, expose her child to the risk of him; but as he drew nearer to her, in time and distance, and her fear grew, she shrank increasingly from any confrontation, any kind of revelation, and found herself, almost against her own volition, ready as always to lie, to submit to him, to placate.
She had of course been vague about Imogen’s birth, the time of her conception, had stressed that she had been overdue. He must certainly never know – or not for the moment – that the baby had been premature. They might, for the time being at least, continue in the fiction that she was his. But then if Florence was to leave him anyway, what was the point in such a thing, would it not be better to confess, to confront him, as Clarissa had counselled, let truth cut deep, making a clean wound, rather than for lies to fester, gangrenously, dangerously away? And so it went on, her mind ranging round and round her dilemmas, like an animal in a deadly trap, unable to escape, unable to find any kind of solution. She could hardly sleep, falling into a late, fevered nightmare and waking in the early dawn, her mind snapping instantly open to horror; she was beginning to honestly believe she was going mad.
And there it was, the noise on the gravel, and now she was going to be sick; the bile rose in her throat, she ran down the passage to the kitchen, thrusting Imogen into Cook’s arms, knelt on the floor of the lavatory, vomiting again and again, and when it was over she heard his voice, calling her from the hall, Muriel saying, ‘She was here, Robert, a moment ago.’
She went out, smiling weakly, wearily at him. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘excitement too much for me. How are you, Robert?’
‘I’m all right,’ he said, ‘fine,’ and he did look fine, leaner, fitter, brown, handsome even, his pale eyes unreadable as always, and he bent to kiss her and she had to fight against shrinking away from him, force herself to proffer her cheek, to take the hand he held out.
‘You look lovely,’ he said, ‘but tired. And thin. Very thin, Florence.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s hard work, Robert, looking after a baby.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the baby, that’s who I’ve come to see. Where is she, where is my daughter?’
‘Oh,’ said Florence, ‘yes, Imogen, she’s in the kitchen with Cook.’
‘Cook’s taken her into the garden,’ said Muriel sniffily, ‘she was crying. As usual,’ she added. ‘She’s not a good baby, I’m afraid, Robert.’
‘No, but she’s beautiful,’ said Florence, even in this hour of crisis resistant to any criticism of her beloved, ‘and advanced for her age.’
‘Of course,’ said Robert, smiling, his eyes still blank.
‘She can sit up,’ said Florence. On safer ground now, she launched into her favourite conversation. ‘And she’s started to creep around, not crawling, but on her bottom. And she says Mum Mum, and she laughs, really laughs, when you tickle her. She looks exactly as I did at that age. Blonde, believe it or not. Of course most babies are blonde and blue-eyed, but then all babies have blue eyes, and—’
‘Florence,’ he said quite gently now, ‘Florence, can I see her?’
‘Oh, well – yes. Yes, of course. Sorry. Come out to the garden.’
She led him out, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. Cook had set Imogen down on the ground, and she was struggling to reach a patch of daisies that were just out of reach, grunting with the effort. The silence in the garden grew, screamed; Florence could hear a bird singing, hear the ever-present chug of a tractor, but it all seemed far away, she could only see, think, about Imogen, sitting there, so vulnerable, so infinitely dear. In spite of everything she felt terrified, felt he might suddenly reach out, hit her, hurt her. He didn’t move, just stood there, staring at the baby, his face absolutely unreadable, his mouth taut, tense. It was agony; she couldn’t stand it, she would tell him, tell him first before he began, tell him and then pick up Imogen and run. And ‘Robert,’ she said, ‘Robert, I—’
‘Be quiet,’ he said, but very gently, and then he said, smiling at her now, gazing at her in a kind of wonderment, ‘She is beautiful, Florence, really beautiful. But I really don’t think she looks in the least like you. I tell you who she does look like, though.’ He paused, sighed, then said, ‘It’s hard to believe now, when I’m such a hideous burnt-out old wreck, but she looks exactly, and I do mean exactly, like me. When I was a baby. It really is quite eerie how like me she looks.’
‘Mrs Bennett, dear, I’ve got a message for you.’
‘Yes, Mrs Boscombe?’
‘Could you ring a Regent’s Park number, dear, not the usual one, a Mrs Turner Andrews, on 432. Said it was important. I said I didn’t know when you’d be back, that you were out on your rounds, people seem to think we’ve all nothing to do down here in the country.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Boscombe. Could you get me the number, please?’
Grace stood in the hall, realizing suddenly how tired she was; she had been out for hours, trying to establish whether Mr Tripp at the farm over near Thorpe Magna had really told Mary Mattox and Sally Watkins to get on with salting a very large pig all on their own, which seemed unlikely, or whether they had refused to help at all, which seemed even less so. The truth, she had finally discovered, lay somewhere between the two: the girls were keen but incompetent, having only just arrived from Liverpool, and had said they’d like to help, but had then found the task not unnaturally beyond them, had made a bit of a hash of it, and Jerry Tripp had lost his temper with them and told them they were a pair of useless bloody moaning minnies, whereupon they had downed tools and told him to get on with it himself. Harsh things had been said and Mary was half tearful, half angry when Grace arrived; ‘And it’s not the first time, miss, it keeps happening, we’re willing to work hard, of course we are, but not to be called names.’
It was hard to believe, thought Grace wearily, pedalling home on her bicycle, that she was in any way contributing to the war effort, or doing a great deal to defeat Hitler, but she had to keep telling herself so, or she would have given up altogether.
‘Mrs Bennett? How good of you to call. You did stress that I should.’ Mrs Turner Andrews’s voice was immensely gracious; Grace felt sure that if she was rescued from a blazing house she would feel compelled to offer the firemen sherry, enquiring first whether they liked dry or medium.
‘Yes, of course. Is there a problem with my father-in-law?’
There was, it seemed: Clifford had been drinking, a great deal, but worse than that had taken to not coming home, to sleeping in doorways, wherever he fell: ‘Last night, he was found by one of the ARP wardens outside Selfridges,’ said Mrs Turner Andrews, ‘and fond of him as I am, Mrs Bennett, I don’t think I can take that sort of responsibility.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Grace. ‘Look, leave it with me. I’ll try and think what’s best, and ring you back. And thank you so much for all that you’ve done for him.’
‘My dear, it’s a pleasure. I am so fond of him, and he still makes such a very good bridge partner.’
; Grace put the phone down, went into the kitchen. The boys were eating bread and listening to Children’s Hour.
‘Hallo,’ said Daniel.
‘Hallo,’ said Grace. ‘Hallo, David. Good day?’
‘Was all right,’ said David briefly, reluctantly.
Sometimes, in spite of her great sympathy towards him, Grace felt an overpowering desire to shake him.
She made herself a pot of tea, sat down as close to the boiler as she could, and tried to think what on earth she could do about Clifford. Finally, with great reluctance, she rang Florence. ‘We have a problem,’ she said, ‘can you talk?’
‘Um – not just now,’ said Florence and her voice was careful, tense, ‘Robert’s just arrived and – well, could I ring you back?’
‘Yes of course,’ said Grace.
‘He’s in the garden with Imogen. And Mother. Is it Daddy?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right.’ She was babbling now, clearly anxious to continue the conversation. ‘Do you know what Imogen did today, Grace? I put a toy deliberately out of her reach and she definitely managed to move herself forward, grab it. So clever, don’t you think?’
‘Goodness,’ said Grace, ‘very clever.’
She had to admit that her innate dislike of Florence extended most illogically towards Imogen. The blonde curls sprouting all over her small head, the wide, steady blue eyes, the fair skin, all reinforced the fact that whoever her father was, nobody, unless they were entirely insane, could have thought it was the dark-haired, olive-skinned man her mother was married to.
Florence didn’t ring back; Grace wasn’t surprised, she could hardly begin to imagine the kind of nightmare that must be going on at the Priory. It didn’t really matter, because she had made her decision anyway: she would take Clifford on. Somebody had to, or he was going to end up under a bus, or a pile of rubble; and clearly nobody else was going to. She had no illusions as to how difficult it would be, and she knew she would be further ostracized in the community, further estranged from Muriel, and she slightly quailed at the thought of what Charles would say about it; but Charles was so far away, and such a bad correspondent, he was beginning to seem somehow unreal to her, her marriage to him something she had read or heard about, but not properly experienced. If he didn’t approve, she told herself, he could come home and sort out his father’s affairs for himself.
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