The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

by Jennifer Ryan

  Then the all clear sounded, a single siren call that somehow sounds comforting and friendly, even though it’s the same awful air raid siren but only played once. The Colonel looked at Mrs. Tilling, who stood up and brushed down her brown woolen skirt, turning to me, as if he weren’t even there, and saying, “Well, Kitty, I hope it’s not too late for you to be running home? You can always stay in the back room if you’d like?”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Tilling, but Mama will worry about me.”

  As she led the way back upstairs, I turned back to the large Colonel, still finishing his letter, and bid him good night.

  “And good night to you,” he said lightly, looking up and smiling. “Thank you for coming.”

  I said good night to Mrs. Tilling and hurried outside and up the road to the square. The moon lit the graveyard with a sinister glow, centuries of villagers buried beneath the ground, all those people rotting away until their gravestones are the only traces left of them—the marks of their death.

  I ran faster, faster, until I was halfway up our drive, the mass of Peasepotter Wood on my left, when an ear-piercing gunshot exploded from the wood. I shuddered to a halt with fear, and within a minute another frighteningly loud shot sounded. Daddy has taken me hunting a few times, but the sound was not like that. It was louder, crisper, a dead bolt through the clear night sky.

  I listened for further shots, trying to calm my breath, slow my galloping heartbeat, but nothing. After a few minutes of silence, I crept farther down the lane. As I turned the bend, I sensed something ahead of me, a movement in the shadows. I froze, glaring through the traces of light to see the hunched form of Proggett making his way through the thicket in the wood.

  After a few minutes of silence, I crept on, then made a dash for the house and eased the side door open. I half expected everything to be in disarray, to be different.

  But it wasn’t. Everything was strangely normal.

  There were two fresh bread rolls under a glass dome on the table, so I pocketed them and headed for my bedroom. Mama met me on the stairs. Her eyes had that stare, like a frightened mouse unable to run. Daddy must be on the warpath again.

  “Where have you been? Did you hear the sirens?” she whispered.

  “I was at Mrs. Tilling’s house,” I said, trying to go past her.

  “Did you see Venetia?” Her voice was like cracked ice.

  “No, why?”

  She seemed to look through me for a moment, then pulled herself together. “I wanted to ask her something, that’s all.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, of course.” She smiled nervously. “Time for bed. Good night.”

  I tramped up to my room, drew my curtains, and crawled into bed. I wondered what happened to Venetia to make Mama so scared. I suppose there’s always some drama or other with Venetia.

  It’s probably nothing.

  Thursday, 1st August, 1940

  Tonight the Brigadier was very angry with Venetia. He came home late and shouted at her. He said she is pregnant. That means she will have a baby. Mr. Slater’s baby. It is bad. The Brigadier took her into his office and shouted bad things. Then he hit her. She screamed and ran outside into the night.

  “I’ll kill him,” the Brigadier shouted. He went to get his gun.

  I was scared. I ran out after her. But she was gone.

  So I hid in my room. Then I heard Kitty coming up the stairs. And then the sound of a plane got louder and louder, low in the sky. I pulled up my blanket, scared.

  IVY HOUSE,

  CHILBURY,

  KENT.

  Friday, 2nd August, 1940

  Dear Angela,

  I am wholly exhausted, in every possible way. No doubt you already know that Chilbury was bombed last night. I was there when it happened—watching our world explode in front of me—but let me start at the beginning.

  I’d had a tremendous fight with my father—he found out that I’m pregnant and was threatening to kill Alastair. I ran out into the night, desperate to warn Alastair, desperate to tell him about the baby, our baby. Then I heard a gunshot in the woods, and then another, and thought that Daddy had found him and shot him dead. Terrified, I started sprinting down the lane to the village. I had to make sure he was all right. Whatever it took, I had to get to Alastair’s house as soon as I could.

  At first I tried to ignore the sound of a distant plane, but it grew louder as I reached the road to the square. It was low in the sky, a throaty roar, spluttering as it wavered in and out of the clouds. I kept on running, trying to escape this whole situation, this war, everything.

  As the road opened out into the square, the plane suddenly became deafening, coming in right behind me, low, hounding me down.

  I heard shouts from across the square—it must have been someone calling the Vicar to sound the siren as a moment later the slow wail swelled up, clashing with the roar of the plane that had become so thunderous that I felt my eardrums might explode.

  But it was too late. It was all too late. The shadow came over me and I looked up to see a Nazi plane looming right above me, the noise overpowering, the dark gray presence making me cower with fright. It soared over me like the grim reaper and, as I glanced up to its extended black underbelly, I saw the bomb-release doors opening, and one by one the deadly load spilled into the night sky, straight toward Church Row.

  I found myself racing to reach Alastair’s cottage before the bombs did, desperate to warn him. The plane zoomed overhead, banking to turn back, not even waiting to witness the impending devastation.

  I saw a sudden flash of bright white up ahead of me as the explosion of the first bomb ripped into the night, followed by the second, and then another as the noise of the blasts echoed into the night. Fragments of homes, furniture, people hit the air and tumbled down to earth. And the fires, soaring above the destruction: great blue-gold surges of flame gathering momentum into the smoke- and debris-filled sky.

  I was knocked to the ground by the force of the explosion, and shards of glass cut my face and arms. I got up and ran to the blaze. It seemed to be centered on Alastair’s cottage, although most of Church Row was wrecked, valleys of bombshell among surviving walls swathed with the colossal flames. Blood was dripping from one of my arms where it had been slashed, but I just ran and ran. Had there been enough time for anyone to get out before the bomb struck? Had anyone survived? Had Alastair survived? And Hattie? What about Hattie?

  I screamed out, “Alastair, Alastair!” but nothing came back. Just the immense sound of the fire, every so often an almighty explosion as the flames found something volatile.

  The fire was scorching as I came closer, and I could see the outline of Alastair’s cottage and Hattie’s next door.

  I stood for a second and watched the fire come alive, every memory and ounce of Alastair being swept up into the universe. I began crying, still shouting out his name, not bothering to cover my face, beseeching God to make Alastair walk unharmed out of the fire.

  That’s when I heard the cries. I stopped with horror as I listened to the high-pitched screams of a baby. Rose. Hattie’s baby. I looked toward her cottage. It was more intact than Alastair’s, the second story still in place but about to collapse into the blaze.

  I looked behind me. There was no one there.

  “Someone, please help,” I yelled into the square, but no voice came back.

  The baby screamed again. My stomach convulsed. I trod carefully over to the house and kicked the front door, which landed in an explosive heap at my feet, fires raging inside the skeletal building. I leaped back and shouted again.

  “Help, please!”

  There was so much smoke and dust in the air, I had to back away to get a good deep breath, and even there it was so hot and airless, almost impossible to breathe. Then I braced my arms in front of my forehead and plunged into the house. Knowing that the staircase was beside the door, I ran up and found the baby in a cot in the small bedroom, blue flames licking the far wall and a de
nse black smoke smothering the air. I picked her up in her blanket and darted back out the door. The heat was unbearable, and I felt the stairs melting away beneath my feet as I plummeted down, holding my breath and praying that I would get out before the whole place collapsed.

  As I came to the bottom, the last stair gave way and I tumbled forward onto the floor by the door, shielding the baby from the weight of my body with my elbows, blood gushing from my arm onto the blanket and over my dress. I hauled myself up and stumbled through the doorway and over the debris, unable to see the ground in front of me because of the baby clasped to my chest. I finally came out far enough that the air was cool and clear of soot and smoke and I stopped to catch my breath, turning just in time to see the house explode into a million splinters.

  Clasping hold of the baby, I watched the fire and eruptions, blood dripping from several wounds, my shoulders curved in over the tiny baby, clinging to her as if she were the last hope in the world. Suddenly, a hulk of a man came toward me, and I prepared for a new terror, but he stopped in surprise. “Venetia!”

  It was Colonel Mallard, looking incredibly anxious and intense.

  “Is that a baby?” he said frantically, taking the bundle from me with great urgency, because it was at that moment that I felt the ground sway beneath me, coming up to meet my weak and bloodied body as I collapsed in a heap among the debris.

  I must have passed out cold as I have no idea how I got to Mrs. Tilling’s house, or even what time it was when I finally awoke. All I knew was that I was in a strange, tiny room, on a soft, small bed. I could hardly move. My body was in colossal pain, my arm especially. I just lay there, blinking into the dark, until I made out that I was in a bed in Mrs. Tilling’s little back room. My arm had been thickly bandaged, and I was wearing an old white nightdress. Everything seemed incredibly blurry, and when I coughed I felt like I had a sack full of grit in my throat.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Mrs. Tilling asked, stroking my forehead. As I looked into her worried eyes, it all flooded back to me, and I began to cry, although not hard, as everything hurt.

  “What happened to the baby?” I asked through my sobs.

  “She’s fine. She calmed down and now she’s asleep in a drawer downstairs.”

  “A drawer?”

  “Yes, we don’t have a crib, so Colonel Mallard emptied some clothes from a drawer in his dresser, pulled it out, and set it on the kitchen table with a few blankets to make it soft. I dare say it’s a bit old-fashioned to use a drawer,” she shrugged. “But it’s the least of Rose’s problems. She has her life, which is all thanks to you.”

  “And her mother? Did Hattie—”

  She shook her head. “No, she didn’t make it,” she whispered, the pain catching in her throat like it was choking her. “Prim was killed, too.” A look of anger swept over her, before she quickly replaced it with her usual practicality. “We don’t know what will happen to baby Rose. She has no other close relatives. Victor has an aunt, his mother’s sister, in Wiltshire, so I’ll write to her.”

  The news passed over me like a saturated storm cloud waiting to pour out its contents at a later time. Hattie was gone. Prim, too. It was still only words.

  “What about Alastair?”

  She took my hand, which was also bandaged. “We don’t know what happened to him,” she said quietly. “Was he supposed to be at home last night? Was he waiting for you?”

  I looked at her, unsure what she was asking.

  “He hasn’t been found yet.” She went on slowly, choosing her words carefully. “We don’t know if he was in the house when it was struck. We thought maybe you’d know?”

  My mind was in a muddle. Had he been there? All the other places he could have been flitted through my mind. He could have been in a meeting with spies or black marketeers, or lying in Peasepotter Wood shot dead. I remembered the tall angry man he’d met, the one with clothes too short for him, Alastair handing him the passport.

  Why hadn’t I thought of it before? The tall man must have been the downed Nazi pilot the Defense Volunteers have been trying to find. It explains the short clothes, why he was trying to escape the country. I couldn’t believe it. Alastair was helping an enemy soldier. How could he do such a thing?

  And how could I love a man like that?

  My mind reeled with pain. Through this tangle of doubt and fear, I still couldn’t bear the thought that he might be dead. Might he have been in his house last night? Had I really been expecting him to be there? We’d made no arrangement to meet. The last time we’d been together was when I’d stormed off through the orchard yesterday morning, without even saying good-bye.

  We’d never said good-bye.

  I began to cry again, softly, silently, and Mrs. Tilling took my hand between hers. It was all too much. Alastair missing, Prim dead, Hattie—my dear friend—gone, leaving her baby motherless. It was all too much.

  Eventually I went back to sleep. Mrs. Tilling must have been sitting with me all night, as she was still there when I awoke again in the morning, the sound of the crying baby filling the house.

  “Who’s looking after the baby?” I asked. The crying made me nervy, although I suppose that’s its job, to get us women up and moving. It stopped abruptly, as if someone had picked Rose up.

  “Colonel Mallard,” she replied. “He seems to have quite a knack.” She lifted her eyebrows as if surprised, although somehow it made sense to me.

  “Is she all right? All that smoke—”

  “She’s got a cough, but honestly, Venetia, it’s a miracle she’s alive. And you, too!” She looked at me crossly. “Did you know that the building was about to explode when you went in to get her?”

  “I didn’t think.” I started getting out of bed, somehow feeling more alert, wanting to be up, finding out what happened to Alastair. “I couldn’t bear the crying and felt, well, compelled.” As I spoke, my memory flashed back to that moment. “I was shouting for help, but no one was there, and the baby was just screaming and screaming. It was only me. I had to go.”

  “I think you should stay in bed, Venetia.” She guided me back into bed, pulling the worn counterpane up around me. “You lost a lot of blood.”

  I looked at the bandage on my arm, remembering the gash. “Is it bad?”

  “I put some stitches in it,” she said in her calm way.

  “And the baby? My baby?” I whispered.

  “It’s doing all right for now,” she said. “But you’re recovering from concussion, as well as being very battered and bruised. The baby won’t stand a chance if you keep trying to get up. Shall I get your mother to come and get you?”

  I looked up at her. “But I need to find Alastair.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Venetia,” she said in a way that made me erupt into tears, knowing what was coming. She patted my shoulder, holding me down, “If he was in that house, he wouldn’t have made it.”

  I heaved a few great sobs. “What do you mean? Are you sure?”

  “We don’t know for sure that he was there. Does he always wait for you, Venetia?”

  “Well, mostly,” I lied. Quite often he wasn’t there, leaving me to wait. I would let myself in and lie back on his sofa, leafing through his poetry, or looking over my own nude with equal measures of awe and aversion, feeling the color and tone of the room change as he stepped through the door, the grays and browns transforming into golds and bronzes. I could be late, too, with difficulties getting away from Chilbury Manor, bad weather, interfering sisters, demanding fathers, and so forth. We were both willing to wait, wait as long as necessary.

  “Well, in that case—” She wavered, unable to finish.

  After a moment’s pause, I simply blurted out what had been going through my mind. “I think my father might have shot him.”

  She stopped mopping my head for a moment, a look of anxiety covering her face. “Does your father know about the pregnancy?”

  “Yes.” I looked up at her. “Someone must have told him
last night, before he got home.”

  “Could it have been Miss Paltry? Did you tell her?”

  I gasped. “She wouldn’t have told him, knowing he’d kill me.” My mouth went dry. “Would she?”

  Mrs. Tilling grimaced. “I’m not sure, my dear.” She shook her head with wonder. “I’m really not sure.”

  She tucked me in and went to get me some hot milk to send me to sleep again. She’s worried that I’ll lose the baby, and it scares me, too, more than I can say. If Alastair is truly gone, either by the bomb or by the gunshots in the wood, then this baby is the only part of him I have left, and I know it sounds sentimental and ridiculous, but I miss him as if I were dying in some way, my insides melting into me, slowly dissolving into nothing. This baby, his baby, is my only hope, the one bright star in a body of hopelessness.

  Oh, Angie, it’s so dreadful that you’re not here with me. Poor Hattie, I still can’t believe that our lovely, warm, bright-eyed friend has gone. I don’t know what I’ll do without her. I can hear her voice in my head saying, “Venetia, you need to learn to look after yourself.” As I listen to Rose’s gurgling, I feel a closeness to her, and have decided that I owe it to Hattie, who was like an older sister to me, to be an older sister to Rose.

  Do write as soon as you can.

  Much love,

  Venetia

  Saturday, 3rd August, 1940

  What a horrific couple of days. I have a truly bad feeling about this war, that we will be overtaken, lose our country, our culture, our freedom. That we will give everything, all our fight, all our hopes and dreams, our very selves. Then the Nazis will come and there will be nothing left. We will be hollow skeletons, letting them walk all over us, leaving them to run our lives, our homes, our children—if there are any left.