Goodnight Sweetheart

by Charlotte Bingham

  At that Caro dropped her eyes to the all-too-familiar Persian rug on which she was standing. It was a stab to the heart to hear her father talking about her in that, albeit lightly, despising way. More than that, she couldn’t believe that her mother, of all people, would have talked about her to her father in quite the way he had just described. In her mind she tried desperately to conjure up her mother’s voice, tried to remember how low-toned and gentle it had always seemed. She knew that Meriel couldn’t have used that tone of voice about her. Her mother had always been so kind, so gentle, never demanding, always at pains to set a good example, making you want to be like her.

  Caro waited a few seconds before saying, in a valiant tone, ‘Mamma used to say my sewing was quite good. I know I don’t sew as well as she did, but then who does … who did? And I never had a chance to cook, living here at Chevrons – why would I? No one else cooked, not me, not Ka— not Trixie, not even Mamma.’

  ‘You were always hopeless domestically,’ her father carried on as if Caro had not spoken, and as if he were speaking to a forty-year-old spinster on whom he had quite given up. ‘Hopeless.’

  ‘In that case, Papa, perhaps it is just as well that I will be driving through the war, and not cooking.’

  Her father looked at his watch. ‘What time do you intend leaving?’ he asked, his manner becoming even more formal, as if Caro was his house guest, not his only remaining daughter.

  ‘I, er … I, er, I don’t know,’ she stammered. ‘I could leave whenever you wish. As a matter of fact I was actually going to make you a steak and kidney pie before I left, something like that.’

  ‘Oh, very well, but let me know when you are leaving, and I’ll come and say goodbye.’

  Anthony reached forward and picked up yet another of his large leather-covered accounts books, which Caro knew of old was his way of dismissing her.

  She walked smartly from the room, and was about to close the door when he called her back. Caro turned and as she did she could not suppress the hope in her heart that now he was about to be less censorious towards her, that he would have some words of comfort, or even tenderness.

  ‘By the way, I have paid the tailor’s bill for that uniform of yours. I hope there are not too many more like that coming my way?’

  ‘No, no, of course not, no. And I will pay you back, out of my wages, really I will.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  She slipped back out of the room and, having closed the door, she leaned against it, her eyes half closed. In some ways it had been a much worse interview than even she could have imagined; in other ways it had been better than she could have hoped. She did not now have to stay behind at Chevrons as the main prop to her father’s grief, to help him through his lonely days. She could go and join her generation, go and be one of the young, not a stay-at-home spinster daughter waiting around for her father to ring a bell for his evening drink, or facing some mound of ironing before wiping the noses of the evacuees. She could go back to London and her driving. That was really a great escape, if ever there was one.

  ‘Miss Caro?’ Smith beckoned from a doorway. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Smith.’ She followed him downstairs to the kitchen.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you, Miss Caro, but I overheard Mr Anthony talking to you.’ As Caro looked vaguely shocked, Smith went on hurriedly, ‘As a matter of fact I made it my business to overhear him today, for the best reasons, I hope you will agree when I explain. You see, I’ve known Mr Anthony all my life – well, most of it, at any rate – and the truth of it is he so unlike his normal self at the moment, and knowing that this was so, I was really anxious for you. He doesn’t mean anything that he’s saying or doing at the moment.’ He stopped, sighing. ‘It’s difficult to explain, Miss Caro, but I’ve seen it all before. Grief, well, it often takes men like that, more than women. I know because I was like that when I lost my Polly, so early on too, only a year into our marriage. I loved her so much, I never did get over it, never have. But to begin with, that was how it took me, Miss Caro: it made me angry. And that’s how it takes so many of us men, God help us, when we lose our loved ones. And, of course, Miss Katherine having been taken the way she was, lured away by that David Astley and his views, Mr Anthony has turned in on himself and out on everyone else. In time he will change back, but it will take time, Miss Caro. Can’t expect it not to.’

  Caro nodded. She actually felt so done over by her father, she could have swigged everything in his cellar, but now that Smith had explained it the way he had, it was different.

  ‘Thank you so much for telling me that, Smith.’

  Caro shook Smith’s hand, and then on impulse she leaned forward and kissed him quickly on the cheek. Smith coloured slightly.

  ‘I don’t think you should stay here at Chevrons now, Miss Caro, if you don’t mind me saying? And if it is any comfort to you, I think you are quite right to want to go back to London. Staying here is the last thing that you should do. You have your life to lead, same as my Trixie has her life to lead, same as Betty, same as all of you. You’re young, you have a war to fight, and you must go and fight it the best you may, as you will, I know. And God bless you!’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now off you go.’

  ‘No, no, I can’t go yet, Smith. I promised I’d make my father a steak and kidney pie.’

  Smith sighed again, shook his head wearily, and then he started to laugh.

  ‘God bless you, Miss Caro, but I’d rather eat my own shoes than serve up something you’ve cooked. I can make steak and kidney pie until the cows come home for milking, and back again into the pastures too. How do you think an old widower like me has managed all these years? Steak and kidney pie, my foot! By the time you’ve finished making it anyway, we’d all be dead of hunger, and the kitchen would look like a bomb had dropped on it. Steak and kidney pie! What an idea. Now, off you go.’

  ‘I must say goodbye to my father.’

  Smith put out a fatherly hand and pressed Caro’s arm. ‘No, no, you go, Miss Caro. No more words, really. I’ve filled the Fraser Nash with petrol, so off you go and good luck to you. I will cope with your father. You just leave him to me.’ He glanced up at the old wooden clock. ‘Believe me, he’ll have fallen asleep by now. That’s how grief takes you. You fall asleep at the oddest times, and then when it comes to going to sleep at night, you can’t. Normally, at this time, Mr Anthony would have been out and about the place, but that’s all changed. Now he’ll sleep until I take him in his cocktail at six, and by that time he won’t have remembered what you said, or what he said, or who made the blessed steak and kidney pie, or anything else. He’ll listen to Alvar Liddell, or Bruce Belfridge – he likes him – on the news, then I’ll take him round for his night-time tour of the cottages where he’ll talk to the evacuees, see what’s needed and that, and by the time we get back, it’ll be the news again, and so to bed, where he’ll keep his light on until dawn. So, no, don’t you worry about a thing, not any more. Smith’s here, Smith’s in charge. You do same as the others – they’ve all gone, so now it’s your turn to go.’

  Caro stepped away from him, and saluted.

  ‘Thank you, Smith,’ she said. ‘You’re one of the best.’

  Smith nodded approvingly at Caro’s salute, which she was holding for him.

  ‘Well done, Miss Caro, you’re officer material alright!’

  Betty looked up at the man behind the desk.

  ‘You don’t want me?’

  ‘It’s not that we don’t want you, Miss Thomas, it’s just that at the moment we have no room for you. Your speeds are excellent, in fact you are everything that we should want, but it is very difficult at the moment. Everyone is pressing us for this kind of work, and there are just not enough jobs to go round.’

  The man, sober-suited, kind of eye, was to Betty almost frighteningly pale of face, bloodless, pallid, most especially when compared to the men at Chevrons, with their bronzed summer faces ending in white necks where their shirts be
gan.

  ‘Now where personnel is badly needed, where we need to concentrate our efforts most especially, Miss Thomas, is in the factories. There, if I may suggest it, you will find a welcome on the mat indeed.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard that. My friend and I keep being told that.’

  ‘Well then, why not go too, and see if you like it?’

  Betty stared at the gentleman. He had quite obviously not spent the last year practising and practising his shorthand, pounding on the old Vicarage typewriter, sending off postal tests. If he had, he would not be dismissing her so easily.

  ‘I think what you really mean is that I’m not quite the type you’re looking for, sir.’ Betty picked up her handbag. ‘I haven’t been to a secretarial college, and you fear I might not get on with the rest in the typing pool, who probably have.’

  ‘No, no, not at all. It is just that there are no vacancies, nothing more than that.’

  Betty nodded, while at the same time drawing a small amount of satisfaction at seeing that she had actually embarrassed him with what must, after all, be rather too near the truth.

  ‘Well, thank you for seeing me, sir. I think I will probably end up, as you have just suggested, in a factory.’

  Betty walked out into the London sunshine. She and Trixie had been in London, staying in a bed and breakfast near Paddington Station, for what seemed for ever, but was in reality rather less than a fortnight, and neither of them could get the kind of job that they wanted.

  Loath to spend any more money than was necessary, she ignored the buses and walked back to her lodgings, to be greeted by an equally morose Trixie. Trixie had been very cast down by the death of Mrs Garland.

  They sat on their thinly blanketed beds and regarded each other.

  ‘I think it’ll have to be factory work, Trixie. I don’t think we have a chance at anything else. You see, all the top-notchers, they’ve all descended on London too, and they want all the driving and secretarial jobs. It stands to reason. And a lot of women have been taking courses this last year with just that in mind; I know, I read about it in the newspaper a few days ago.’ Betty pulled a face. ‘But they do want women in the factories, all right. The factories are out of town, most of them, so I guess we’ll have to follow our noses and get work out of town, which is probably going to be safer anyway, from what everyone is saying.’

  Trixie thought of all her efforts to change and become someone who wouldn’t be doing factory work, and she really felt quite like swearing long and hard, if only she had the words.

  ‘I could say a bad word or two, you know that, Betty?’

  ‘Well, go ahead then.’

  Trixie looked mutinous. ‘Bloody bluebottle!’

  Betty was impressed. ‘Expect you feel better now.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ Trixie exhaled a little too noisily even for her taste. ‘If we don’t get something in the way of work soon we’ll be walking back home, you know that?’

  They had both been back to Chevrons for Mrs Garland’s funeral, and that had taken a large bite out of their purses. Betty had quite expected to want to stay behind in the quiet of the English countryside, but the truth was that Chevrons had already changed so much it was hardly bearable, and it was certainly not somewhere where either of them wanted to be any more – not with everyone so sad, and Mr Smith, Trixie’s father, preoccupied with all the arrangements for the evacuees from London, and so on.

  The truth was, work or no work, they had both been very glad to get back on the train and return to the Smoke; but now, it seemed, the Smoke didn’t want them.

  ‘Apparently, even the likes of Miss Caro and her friends are finding it difficult to get the positions they want, Miss Caro told me, you know – after the funeral, at the tea. It seems everyone wants to be in thick of it in wartime, all heading for London and the top jobs. Miss Caro said she was lucky to get a job at all, but since she’s got a motor car, she did. Starts next week, driving officers about, or at least that is what she is hoping.’

  Trixie picked up the evening paper, and pointed to an advertisement.

  ‘There’s this place advertising for workers in a factory in Sussex. I think we’d best telephone this number and find out whether there are any places left before we have to turn tail and head back for home, don’t you?’

  Betty watched Trixie putting on her coat, preparatory to going to the corner to use the public telephone.

  ‘Come on, cheer up, we’ll be together, won’t we? That’s not so bad, is it? You can’t blame people wanting to hold on to their jobs, war or no war, really you can’t, in the same way you can’t blame all those evacuee people coming back from the country. I mean, one minute there they are minding their own business, and the next they’re dumped in the middle of nowhere with only a cow for company. The country’s frightening to town people. I know because we had a cousin to stay once, and she lasted only a day. Heard a cow moo, and that was enough. She and her little boy jumped straight back on the train!’

  Betty gave a wan smile, but her face remained a picture of misery, so Trixie hurried off.

  She knew just how Betty felt. She too hated the idea that they would have to leave London. Even with the blackout and all the rest, London was still an exciting place to be.

  Betty was still sitting looking down in the dumps when Trixie returned from her telephoning mission.

  ‘Well, that’s something, at any rate. This Mrs Ludgrove wants to see us tomorrow. So we’ll cross our fingers, shall we, Betty? Cross our fingers and hope that if we buy ourselves one-way tickets, that’s all we’ll need, eh?’

  Trixie took off her hat, and started to brush her dark curls. It came to her that if she did get to work in the munitions factory she would have to tie her hair up in a scarf, that she would need ear plugs to drown out the noise of the machinery, that pretty soon her feet would ache more than they had ever ached before, even when Mrs Grant put her to do the dusting of the Long Room pictures, not to mention the music room and the dining room. The last thing her father had wanted was for her to take factory work. They had both hoped for something better, but it seemed it was not to be.

  ‘Come on, Betty Boo Hoo!’ Trixie gave Betty’s arm a playful shake. ‘Let’s take a walk before it gets too dark. We might even see the King and Queen going by in their gold carriage; or the princesses at the window of their house. But if this is our last day in London, let’s see a few sights. We might even get a couple of admirers to buy us a drink.’

  But Betty refused to respond to this enticing notion. Instead, she put her head in her hands. She’d worked so hard with one end in sight: to get a position as a stenographer, and now it seemed all she was going to be doing was standing in a line making ammunitions, or whatever they were going to be asked to do.

  Trixie kneeled down and put her arms around her.

  ‘Look, dear, I know it’s hard for you. Frankly it’s not a bowl of cherries for me either. Neither of us wanted this, but we can’t find anything better, and that’s just a fact. It’s war, and we’ve got to go where we’re needed, so that’s what we’ll do. But once we’re in this factory, who knows that we won’t find it leads somewhere else? One door opens, and another closes is the best motto at this moment. So, pull yourself together, eh?’

  Betty nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes, and standing up.

  ‘Sorry, Trixie. I’m not as strong as you, bit of a wet blanket.’

  ‘No, not a wet blanket. You’re just a bit of an artiste, same as that man that was painting us all. You see under and over things, and round the sides, all at the same time. Now, come on. This may well be our last night in London, and we’re best to be trying to enjoy it, no matter what.’

  Caro too was having problems getting the kind of work she wanted. Instead of being ordered to start driving some dashing young officer around town, soon after she reported back to headquarters after her mother’s funeral, she was ordered to start work out of town, at a secret address, which was just what she did
not want.

  ‘But I don’t … I don’t really think I will be suited to undercover work, really I don’t,’ she’d protested to the panel of lady officers.

  ‘You’re just the type,’ came the brisk reply. ‘We don’t want conceited misses with ideas above their station.’

  ‘I find it very hard to remember secrets, and so I really wouldn’t trust me not to give them away, by mistake.’

  The smile on the officer’s face was peculiarly understanding.

  ‘You are perfect.’

  Caro saluted, and left the room in a cloud of desperation. Just as she had settled down, off again. It seemed so unfair. She had the car, she had won her freedom, and yet not the work. The only sop to her unhappiness was that Robyn had also been posted to this secret address.

  ‘Not that there is much chance of keeping a place like this secret,’ Robyn said when she showed Caro round their new quarters. ‘It is without doubt one of the most staggering houses we’re ever likely to stay in, isn’t it?’

  Caro gazed around her. Robyn was not exaggerating. The house, it seemed, was the product of one man’s dream to build an everlasting monument to his own taste.

  ‘No stone that could not have been turned into something new and strange has been left untouched by human hand,’ Robyn stated, rolling her eyes in a droll way before indicating the heavy marble columns underneath which they were standing, then waving a hand towards heavy marble fireplaces, to marble floors and marble statues. ‘I hope the noble lord who built this had shares in marble, because if he didn’t then he must have gone through an awful lot of his pocket money.’