I hurried back down the cellar stairs, calling to the others.
“It could only be a matter of time before all the rest comes crashing down on our heads,” I said. “We need to get out while we can.”
Ignoring Mrs. Beaufort’s panic, which had been growing since she woke up and was now almost at full pitch, I joined Violet and Mrs. Creeley, who were proving themselves more practical by each taking a side of Gloria and shaking her into wakefulness.
“What is it?” Her voice was drowsy, and she pressed a hand to her forehead, wincing.
It was Mrs. Creeley who answered her.
“Anna’s gone up and found the house half gone,” she said, with a dry calm in her voice. A stranger would never have thought that the house she had lived in for most of her life had just been destroyed. “We need to get out before it falls down on top of us.”
While Mrs. Creeley was giving this brief explanation, the rest of us had been hurriedly bundling up the most important things from The Drop Zone to take out with us in case what remained of the house did indeed collapse and leave us with no hope of retrieving anything.
Gloria scrambled to her feet and joined us, groaning a little and holding her head as she rose, but alluding in no other way to the dreadful headache we all knew she was having.
In just a few more minutes we all stood at the top of the steps with our bundles, looking about for the clearest path through the rubble. There was some stooping involved, and stepping over and sliding between what was left of the kitchen counter and the fallen, smashed hulk of what had once been the china cabinet, but with no greater obstacles than these we did at last reach the open air of the street, sort of.
Debris was everywhere. A house nearby had suffered a direct hit, and there seemed to be nothing of it left except for a little pile of splinters, like the shavings left over from a giant’s whittling. On the street, lying amid the rubble, bits of people’s lives were scattered, like rose petals strewn over new-made graves. I saw a pocket comb, a bit of blue ribbon, a green umbrella, a broken-framed photograph of a girl with a pony, a letter ending “love, Jim”. The tears came to my eyes, but did not fall. I could feel them hovering on the brink, but there were more important things to think of than tears just then, and I swallowed them as I joined the others in laying down our bundles in a pile and beginning the search for other survivors.
Most of the houses were in the same condition as Mrs. Creeley’s and had not been hit directly, only shaken and smashed sideways, like the houses in a gingerbread village which the hungry dog has knocked over with his wagging tail on his way to devour the one he desires.
With a sort of fevered energy we turned our attention to the houses which had received direct hits, calling out from time to time as we pulled away rubbish looking for a cellar entrance or an area which had somehow escaped demolition. It was not long before more professional rescuers arrived in the form of a group of officers. Perry accompanied them in his official capacity of civil servant, though his air of cool authority broke down for a moment or two into a relieved grin when he saw us alive and unhurt.
The officers spread out and searched the wreckage much more systematically than we had done, while we stood back to make way for them. For a long time we stood there, watching but not seeing. The first spasmodic energy of our escape from the musty cellar had dissipated and now I felt empty. Only my skin and bones stood there in the street. My soul was elsewhere, detached, observing the scene but not a part of it.
It was Perry’s voice which brought soul back to body, inquiring if we were all whole and well. He was standing by my shoulder, and Violet was on his other side. Together we stood like a house of cards, leaning against each other in our fragility, only thus making a standing structure. I felt safer with them both there. My courage of the morning had ebbed and I was afraid again, afraid with a childish fear that was an echo of what I had felt when, at the age of six, I had asked a man in a white coat where my mother was and had known from his silent look at my grandmother that my parents were dead.
Perry was speaking again, telling us to go to his London flat and wait for him there. He would join us later when his work was done for the day. We could get cleaned up and rested there and the next day he would go with us to Ashford.
“Parts of the house are still standing,” said Mrs. Creeley. “I don’t want to just walk away while there’s still a chance that we might be able to salvage something.” Her words were steady and calm, with a return of their usual biting quality, but I could see that she was tottering a little on her legs, and her hands were shaky as she patted her hair into a slightly less wild mess.
“I’ll make a point of going in with a few officers to see if we can retrieve anything before we leave the area,” he said calmly “Don’t worry. Just go with the rest and I’ll be there this evening with whatever we find.”
“Imagine a bunch of men going through an old woman’s odds and ends. It’s hardly decent. You’d probably throw away the best of it and keep things I don’t care two straws about.”
I groaned inwardly. She was just being difficult for the sake of being difficult, like she always did on her peevish days, but it could keep us there for the rest of the day sorting through bits of partially demolished lampshades.
But Perry was used to her, and used to dealing with her foibles. Compromise was sometimes necessary, as was firmness, and this time he employed both.
“I will keep one or two of the girls here to help me decide, if that will give you ease,” he said, “but you are going to my flat this minute with the others to rest yourself.”
“Very well, you may have Violet and Anna if they can be useful,” she said with the air of someone conferring a great favour by offering the loan of a cart horse. “Gloria would be no help. She doesn’t know my things, and besides” with a return of the old veiled amusement I remembered from my first meeting with her, “she had a hard night last night.”
So they left us with Perry in the midst of the rubble, and in spite of my weariness and insecurity I thought I would rather remain there with those two than go with the others to argue about who would bathe first and then fall asleep in a corner. The very nature of my mind’s weariness made physical exertion a necessity. I had to keep moving, working, or my brain would crumble in on itself.
That day was the longest I had ever experienced, but when it was over Violet and Perry and I had a quiet walk through the city to Perry’s flat, stopping for ice cream on the way in spite of the chilly twilight of early spring.
London seemed almost spectral to me as we walked through it. Even the crowded clubs, full of the indomitable population, seemed more like echoes of yesterday than real, living, vibrant sounds of today. How could such things exist in reality when only yards away smoke rose from the ruins of people’s homes and lost remnants of their lives smouldered into ashes in the dusk?
Still, in some parts of the city you could almost forget the war -- almost, but not quite. We walked slowly beside the river to London Bridge and crossed over, talking of small things -- the water, the buildings, the passers-by, but never the war -- and I thought of crossing the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Just over a year gone, yet it felt so much longer ago and farther away, like an early childhood memory painted in pale, fading colours.
We lingered for some time in the middle of the bridge, watching the river and the last scraps of sunset fading on the horizon before we continued on our way. It was a fine night, but in spite of that I shivered. We had all come to welcome stormy nights because they generally meant a break in the stream of air-raids.
The sirens were beginning as we turned into Perry’s street.
Chapter 17
The station master at Wells knew Perry from his frequent trips to and from London.
“More homeless come to join the Bertram household,” he joked, looking down over his large, rubicund nose at us with our baggage. His tone was obviously meant to be genial but I found it somewhat unpleasant and his jaws were cons
tantly in motion with the regularity of a mechanical nutcracker, as if he chewed his thoughts into paste before spitting them at people.
Perry answered him curtly. “Not homeless, Chester. Friends and relatives coming to stay for a while.”
Chester stared at us in silence for a moment, though the perambulation of his jaws continued. Then he muttered something inaudible and waved us on.
“Don’t mind Chester,” said Perry as we walked down the platform. “He’s not a bad chap, but he’s a Sedgewick. That won’t mean anything to you now, of course, but it will soon if you spend much time in Wells. Almost without exception the Sedgewick men are pessimistic and the women are melancholy.”
Mr. Bertram was waiting in the rain with the family automobile. He was fairly tall, though not so tall as his son, a robust man with salt-and-pepper hair, kind eyes, and mild manners. At first glance I thought there was not much resemblance between him and Perry, but then he looked at me and smiled and I thought that any likeness between them had its root in that smile. It spread from the lips to the eyes and created nice crinkles in their corners.
Mr. Bertram greeted his son, as well as Violet and Mrs. Creeley, with warmth and familial affection, then turned to the rest of us.
“You are all very welcome,” he said kindly, taking each of our hands in turn. “My son has told me so much about you that you already seem like part of the family. I’m sure we will all get on very well together, and I hope you will be comfortable at Ashford.”
I was last in line, and as he came up to me and took my hand his smile, if possible, seemed to grow kinder, and he said, “You must be Anna. You are just how Perry described you.”
I blushed a little at this extra attention, wondering at the same time what had been said about me, rather surprised that it was me and not Gloria who received this attention. Judging from Mr. Bertram’s manner I tried to tell myself that the description must have been favourable, but then I recalled what Violet had often said about her uncle’s passion for sick, crippled and deformed animals and gave up trying to decide.
Squished into the Bertram family automobile with our baggage we were like sardines in olive oil. Violet and Gloria and I, at the extreme rear of the vehicle, were the most tightly packed of all, practically sitting in each other’s laps with baggage under, over and between us.
The beauty of the drive more than made up for the tightness of the circumstances, however, and I gradually became lost to the discomfort, as well as to any conversation going on within the car. Several times I had to be shaken back into reality by my companions to answer questions directed at me by Mr. Bertram, though in my defence the many noises -- rain on the roof of the car, voices, bumping of baggage as we went round the corners -- were nearly as much to blame as my abstraction of mind.
Yet even surrounded by the rain-washed beauty of the encircling landscape, it was the first glimpse of Ashford that I longed for most, though there was something like fear mingled with the longing. The house and garden had taken such possession of my imagination that the images entrenched there had nearly as much hold on me as reality. What if it were not quite the same as what I imagined? If it were not quite so wonderful? If you turned left rather than right from the back door to come to the well? If the wild rabbits didn’t come onto the edge of the lawn and wriggle their noses quite as Violet had described them. Small things, yet together they made up the image of perfection I had woven about the thought of Ashford, and I worried that my own mind might perhaps betray me into disappointment.
It was early afternoon when we reached the tiny village of Nettlebridge, on the far side of which Ashford awaited our arrival, and the prevailing mood in the car was one of hunger. We had not lunched on the way, for Mr. Bertram had informed us that a substantial meal was planned to welcome us. The mood was intensified by the description our host gave us of the meal to come, adding with emphasis that his household (meaning his wife Lilly, his mother, and a girl from the village who came in to help sometimes in exchange for produce from the garden) did amazing things with food even on wartime rations.
“Sometimes Jerry helps them,” he added “and then you end up with some unusual combinations of flavours -- sage in the pudding or cinnamon on the sausages for instance -- but it’s all done with the best motives, and as often as not we’re all astonished by how good it is.”
I saw Mrs. Beaufort shudder. Violet and I smiled at each other across the baggage. She had told me of Jerry’s bold ventures into the culinary arts before.
We drove slowly through the village, turned up a little hill on the other side, rounded a corner and there was Ashford.
It was the most homelike place I had ever seen. Mr. Bertram parked the car in a small shed some distance from the main house, and we walked up to it by a footpath through an orchard of twisted apple trees. They were still leafless, but I found that I was glad of that. I wanted to see spring unfold from its beginning in this place.
The house itself -- large but not ostentatiously so, like a manor that is not quite sure it deserves the name -- was covered in masses of ivy, with diamond-paned windows glinting through at intervals. I heard Mrs. Creeley say to Mr. Bertram, “You really need to put in new windows Edward. One gets behind those things and can hardly see out.” But I knew exactly what the world would look like through their tiny panes, because Violet had told me. It would be slightly warped, softened, with the colours blending. It would be like looking into a different world, and even in its imperfection it would be perfect, because it was part of Ashford.
Mr. Bertram opened a door at the side of the house which led into the kitchen, and held it wide for us to enter. My first impression of the inside of the house was of warmth and scent. A large fire burned on a wide hearth, with a steaming pot hanging suspended over it from an ancient hook, though a modern gas stove stood nearby unused. An alluringly savoury smell came from the pot, and the fragrance of lavender reached me from several bunches which hung drying from the ceiling. The aroma of cinnamon tickled my nose, and I smiled to myself, wondering if it flavoured sausages or something more appealing. The kitchen was immense and somewhat dim. I saw electric lights, but they had not been turned on, though lit candles stood here and there on table and sideboard. I remembered hearing about how long Perry’s grandmother had held out against electricity, only giving way when Tristan enlisted and the radio reports became a necessity to control the anxiety of the household.
A figure sat in a chair by the far side of the fire, stirring the contents of the pot and reminding me of a storybook illustration of a gnome that I remembered from my childhood. In the illustration he was sitting just like that (only on a rock in a field by a tiny campfire) cooking his dinner, with the firelight shining on his face and lighting up his melancholy dark eyes and little black pointed beard. His eyes looked as though they held secrets which he didn’t know how to tell.
He jumped up when he saw us, and the sorrowful look was erased, giving place to a cheerful expression of welcome as he hurried forward to greet us and take our baggage.
“Mother and Grandmother weren’t expecting you so soon and are upstairs with the children,” he said, “but I knew you’d be early. Come in and take off your coats.” He was taking each of us by the arm in turn in a friendly, familiar way and pushing us eagerly towards the fire, but when he got to Gloria he stopped. He seemed fascinated by her (as everybody was) but also strangely afraid, and he shrunk back a little as he asked her in an awed whisper, “Are you the princess?”
She said, “No” in a voice of mixed confusion and amusement, and they stood staring at each other for a moment, until he turned away with a hurried, “I’ll tell them you’re here” and scuttled out of the room.
Mr. Bertram put a hand on Gloria’s shoulder.
“Don’t mind Jerry,” he said. “There was an accident, when he was a very small child, and he’s never been the same. But he used to love hearing fairy tales, and he’s dreamed of seeing a real princess ever since. Sometimes I think he s
ees his whole life in the context of a fairy tale now, that what he lost most in the accident was the ability to see any difference between fantasy and reality.”
Gloria nodded and smiled, but there was no time for any of us to speak before we heard the sound of returning footsteps approaching the kitchen.
The procession was led by a large English Sheepdog, so shaggy that her mild brown eyes looked out from behind a thick curtain of hair, reminding me of pictures I had seen of wild mountain men from the old American west. Two small children peered out from behind the dog, her bulk almost enough to hide their small forms from notice, and I guessed that they must be the twin refugee children from Poland whose parents had gone missing, Cyryl and Haline. A little old lady with a gentle, smiling face followed behind them leaning on a twisted walking stick. Her hair floated about her head in an ethereal cloud, giving her the appearance of a benign old fairy godmother. I found myself thinking that in this setting, with these people, it was small wonder that Jerry had invented a fairy-tale world for himself.
Last of all came Lilly Bertram, drifting into the kitchen on the tail of the procession as if she had forgotten about us completely and just happened to arrive there at the perfect time by some happy accident. She smiled at Perry in delighted surprise and crossed the room with a gliding step to put her hands on his shoulders and kiss his cheek. As she passed me I caught the scent of her perfume. It was like the memory of violets buried under damp fallen leaves, sweet yet vaguely fermented. She wore her dark hair down and it fell in thick waves to her waist, in striking contrast to her pale face and the delicate green dress she wore. I knew she was at least forty-five, but her air was one of youth. Age remembers, but she seemed to move within a circle of forgotten things, young forever.
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