‘Yes, it could be worse. You could be me,’ Betty told her sadly.
Trixie put her hand over her friend’s hand again, and this time she squeezed it.
‘You know what I mean. I had ambitions before the war, and so did you. We wanted to get on, and now look at us! Still, that’s war, and no amount of grumbling’s going to help. That’s one good thing about the sort of people we know from the old days at Chevrons: they can pull strings for us. Not like some, who get abandoned by their folks, or worse. Miss O’Brien’ll understand your situation. She’ll help us, or I’ll want to know the reason why.’
It was a very quick route from Edwina – who brimmed with sympathy for Betty’s situation – to Caro, who while being sympathetic to a degree was more practical, and quickly had Betty invited back to Chevrons where, following a telephone call, Trixie’s dad had promised she would be loaned a cottage.
‘All the evacuees have gone back, said they can’t stand the quiet and they’re missing their friends,’ he told Trixie. ‘Betty can have one of their cottages.’
‘But what if they come back, Father?’
‘I tell you, sure as eggs is eggs those evacuees will not be back. They’d rather be down the Underground playing cards than in the good clean air here. Just can’t stand the quiet.’
Trixie didn’t say what was up with Betty, only that she was just ‘a little unwell’. She was too discreet to explain. Besides, she thought the truth would upset her father, a very conservative gentleman. To say exactly what was wrong with Betty might put him off having her at Chevrons, where it had to be faced, he now ruled the roost. When, a little later, he did ask her to elaborate, Trixie hinted that Betty was having a nervous breakdown because of the war generally, and her husband of only a few months had gone missing in the Far East.
‘Nervous breakdown my foot,’ Smith had said, putting down the telephone and turning round to address the dogs, who were sitting by a meagre fire in the hall. ‘Nervous breakdown nothing doing; much more to do with like daughter, like mother – or like mother, like daughter, whichever way round you’d have it. Young Betty’s in the straw, mark my words. That’s what her coming back to Chevrons is all about. But that is what happens in war. It’s not just the dead, it’s the living that gets in a muddle during a war, and if that isn’t true, then my name’s not Raymond Smith.’
But Smith hadn’t voiced his suspicions to Mr Garland, for the same reasons that Trixie had not said anything to him. Mr Garland was a gentleman, and Smith did not want to shock him. He merely informed him that Betty Thomas ‘needed a rest’ and would be coming back to Chevrons to stay in one of the cottages for a while.
‘Nice to see Betty again,’ Anthony had said absently, and then he returned to his books, which nowadays he never seemed to leave, not even at mealtimes.
It broke Smith’s heart to see Mr Garland, of all people, sitting alone with a book propped up against the water decanter, reading, reading, reading as if his life depended on it. In the old days, when Mrs Garland had been alive, the dining room had always been a place of great gaiety, with the two of them laughing and talking the hind legs off several donkeys, but now, the little dining room in the wing was as quiet as the village library, with only the occasional sound of a page being turned, or a book being shut, preparatory to Mr Garland leaving the room.
Now the girls had finally arrived, Smith hoped Chevrons would become a little livelier.
‘Ahem,’ Smith, alternating between the roles of chauffeur, butler, and even boot boy, had become quite practised at coughing to get attention.
Mr Garland turned slowly, as if he had a permanently stiff neck, which doubtless he did as a result of sitting still and reading for such long hours. Seeing Smith, he picked up one of the small terriers he had adopted and put him on his knee. It had become a habit, as if he wished to guard himself from everyone and everything that was not in a book.
‘My Beatrice –’ Smith had been strictly instructed by Trixie to revert to her baptismal name – ‘my Beatrice wishes to know what you would like for supper, since she’s intent on taking over in the kitchen this evening.’
Anthony gave a wan, sad smile.
‘How kind, how very kind,’ he said. ‘Well, what is there in the kitchen, do you think, Smith?’
His old friend and servant frowned. What there was in the kitchen was chicken, and some lamb shanks, not much more. Gone were the days when the game larder was so stuffed with contents that they had to give away pheasants to the parson, or whoever would take them. Gone were the days when Cook would put a vast leg of lamb on the old spit and he and the others who used to help him could smell it cooking from across the stable yard.
‘The daughter was thinking of making an old-fashioned chicken pie, in the old manner. She has found the receipt and is intent on making it.’
‘Let her be intent on making it, by all means …’
Anthony replaced the terrier on the floor and returned to his book.
But it seemed that Smith was not done with him yet.
‘Beatrice, the daughter that is – well, not just her, all of us – we were all wondering if you would like to join us in the kitchen? They had it as a thought that it might be nice for you to come below stairs, just for a change, huggermugger; but they will quite understand if you don’t wish to do anything of the sort, and I said as much … that I thought you would not want to do anything of the sort, that it might indeed be seen as the thin end of the wedge, and that, Mr Garland.’
Anthony frowned. He was too intelligent not to be aware that he was lonely; too sensitive not to realise that Smith was coping with two young women who were brimming with suggestions with which he probably did not agree. And yet? And yet.
Supper in the kitchen, with the old fire crackling, and the old ranges beaming brightly with the brisk rubbing they received from the maids in the morning. Supper in the kitchen, with eggs from under the hen being washed, and pastry being rolled, and the endless murmuring conversations of the servants as they moved around him, and he a small boy, not bothering to listen, but leaning forward, head cupped in his hands, watching everything, enjoying the privilege of that most splendid of treats – supper in the kitchen.
‘I think that would be a perfectly splendid idea. Supper in the kitchen, all huggermugger and cosily warm. Can I bring the dogs?’ he finished, the look in his eyes as anxious as when he was a small boy, and Smith and he used to come in from fishing and he would ask the same question of Cook.
‘Oh yes, Mr Anthony, bring the dogs. We will be serving at seven thirty.’
‘In that case I will bring my whisky and soda down at seven. Haven’t been asked to the kitchen for I don’t know how long,’ he went on nostalgically, and he stood up and left the little dining room, closely followed by the terriers.
Smith stared after him, and then back to the table, because Mr Anthony had left his book at his place.
He went across and shut the book, placing it carefully on the occasional table. If Mr Anthony had forgotten to take his book with him, things were indeed beginning to look up.
In the kitchen Betty sat watching Trixie roll out a very special pastry.
‘Butter pastry. There are some things which you forget that you have missed,’ Betty sighed. ‘I don’t know when I last even thought about butter pastry.’
‘Can’t get margarine on a farm!’
‘The new cows in the barn, sheep and the chickens, not to mention the game, are still providing a modest standard of living for everyone at Chevrons, it seems, which is comforting to know,’ Betty added drily.
From the moment they had returned to the old house, even with convalescing soldiers in the main rooms, it had seemed to both girls that they were back in the midst of life, not as in London, forever in the midst of death.
‘Supper is going to taste like heaven,’ Trixie said happily.
Robyn regarded herself in the mirror. For the first time for days she was going out, and not driving someone else who w
as going out. She knew she would enjoy it more than she could say.
She looked at her watch. Bill was late. She lit a cigarette. The list of friends whom they had lost was growing. Perhaps for this reason just waiting for someone was now a sort of martyrdom, because your imagination started to play havoc. Hurry up, Bill. Don’t be too long. Make sure you do arrive. Don’t you be posted missing too …
God knows, and only He did, she had waited long enough for Eddie. Made supper for them both, in the flat, and then she had waited and waited, and waited some more. Drunk some gin, drunk some more gin, before subsiding into the sofa and falling sound asleep, only to be woken by the siren, blast it!
She mustn’t do that now. She must not drink too much gin, she must not get tight and fall asleep, just mustn’t. She hadn’t forgiven herself for falling asleep waiting for Eddie, not that he would have known, but it had created a fierce kind of guilt that lasted for days and days. Eddie not arriving, she asleep, it shouldn’t be something that would make you feel guilty, but the truth was that it had, particularly because he hadn’t come back, because he had been shot down and taken prisoner, because they had thought they were in love, because … well, because if he had come back she might have married him.
She looked at the clock. Still no Bill. Her eyes strayed to the gin bottle. Must keep away from that. She started to walk up and down, once again trying not to think about how many friends they had lost. Only last week three of the bomb disposal boys who occupied the basement flat had been blown up trying to dismantle a bomb in the East End. They were easily recognised, were the bomb disposal boys, Edwina always said. They had a bright-eyed look to them, strangely bright, as if they were anticipating their end long before it came.
‘How do they do it? Or rather, why do they do it?’ Robyn had asked Caro once or twice, but Caro had had no answer.
Every now and then they had news from Chevrons that Jag and Francis were still alive, although quite how, none of them liked to think, for Italy was not exactly the home of good news for the British Army.
Still when, and if, Bill turned up, he would undoubtedly argue how lucky he was, particularly since he had been grounded, shoe-horned into a desk job, which was driving him crackers.
‘Losing an eye is no reason not to go on driving a plane, Group Captain Bader was driving one with no legs, for God’s sake!’
That he was in love with Robyn was now quite clear to both of them, and since poor Eddie had been shot down over France, and been taken prisoner, Bill, with the youthful ruthlessness that war seemed to bring about, immediately saw that his chances with the tall, long-legged Miss Harding had been greatly increased.
All alone in the London flat, as she so often was, Robyn was finding her thoughts turning to Bill, who was there, rather than poor Eddie, who was not there. Eddie seemed to be more and more unreal, a prisoner of war, a recipient of letters and food parcels, not real the way that Bill was real. However often Robyn could read and reread Eddie’s letters, nevertheless he was not a shoulder upon which she could lean, or a chest against which she could place her head. Never mind that Bill was not as handsome as Eddie, at least she could drink with him, joke with him, dance with him.
‘Oh, there you are. For God’s sake, I thought you would never arrive!’
As soon as she saw Bill standing outside the front door, Robyn threw her cigarettes and lighter into her gas mask case, and ran down the flat stairs to go to dinner, and then to dance, dance, dance the night away, because that’s what they all did nowadays. They danced not as if their lives depended on it, but as if their world would end any minute.
‘Let’s go to the Savoy. Let’s dine and dance in the same place, and that’ll save a bit of bomb dodging, won’t it?’
Robyn nodded. The Savoy had a non-stop cabaret. Nothing seemed able to come between that music, those songs, the dancers, the band.
Cocktails and laughter, and what came after really were all that seemed to matter once they were inside those safe confines, once they were lighting their cigarettes and looking round at the other couples, waving to some, admiring others, quite able to forget everything except the moment, because outside was reality, and who needed that?
They had just been served their first course when there was the most terrific blast from a bomb dropping on the Embankment opposite the hotel, blowing in all the doors and windows.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, and just when I started my soup,’ Robyn protested as she threw herself to the floor.
Bill, who had followed her to the floor, put his arm round her, and there was the usual strange silence that always seemed to follow an explosion, a kind of amazed quiet, followed by noisy relief as they all realised the good old Savoy, famed for its iron girders was still standing, as everyone believed that it always would be. Eventually, picking themselves up from the floor, to everyone’s astonishment, they prepared to resume dining and dancing, quite as if nothing had happened.
It was, after all, just one night, like many that would follow or that had already been, when you might be killed, or the girl or the boy beside you, or the people eating opposite you, and that was why you had to keep on dancing and drinking and laughing, because to stop would be to give in to the enemy, to give in to the idea that you might not win this wretched war.
‘The Windmill’s not the only place to be able to boast that they never close!’ someone nearby shouted out, as the band scrambled back into their places, and everyone laughed.
Back to their table for a much-needed drink, Robyn murmured, ‘Light me a cigarette, Bill? Because frankly, I don’t know about you, but I could smoke one of my fingers!’
Bill lit one for each of them, after which they looked round at everyone else, and started to laugh weakly, because they were all doing the same thing, and the whole place had become a blasted fog of cigarette smoke.
A young chanteuse grabbed the microphone and started to sing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’.
For some reason for the first time in her life Robyn started really to listen to the words of the song, and as she did – as the song sang out of young love and a certain night when love and kissing was all that was on anyone’s mind – for the first time since she had climbed into uniform she had the feeling that she was going to give way.
Perhaps it was because it had been, might still be, one of Eddie’s favourite songs. He had played it over and over again, whenever possible. That was one of Eddie’s most endearing characteristics – when he loved, he loved to shreds. A song, a poem, didn’t matter how often he heard it or quoted it, if he loved something or someone, it could never be enough for him.
Bill looked across the table at Robyn. He must have sensed what she was feeling because he put a hand over hers.
‘Come on kid, back on the floor. This is one of my favourites.’
Robyn followed him and as they danced she forgot that there was anyone in the room except herself and Bill. She could see other couples dancing, other couples clinging to each other, singing and dancing, clinging and smiling, laughing, kissing, one or two, quickly, between everything else that was happening, and yet she was certain there was only herself and Bill, not just on the floor, but in the world. She frowned. Where were all the other people? She could see them, and yet they weren’t there.
‘Bill—’
He held her away from him. He was dark-haired and even featured, his eye patch actually succeeding in making him appear even more masculine.
Robyn leaned forward and murmured, ‘Let’s go back to the flat and make love?’
For once in his life Bill found he could think of nothing to say and, seeing this, Robyn at once burst out laughing.
‘What is so funny, Miss Harding?’ Bill asked eventually, knowing exactly.
When Robyn was able to speak she said, ‘It’s just your face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you silenced before!’
Bill caught her hand, and pulled her after him.
‘Come on, before some blasted bomb puts
an end to us and the evening.’
Caro turned away from Walter.
Walter put a hand to her head, stroking her long hair down over her shoulders, making his fingers into a comb as he did so, and then again, and again.
‘I will fetch you a cup of tea,’ he whispered, and he slipped from the bed.
Caro turned, but only momentarily.
‘Coffee, anything but tea, not tea.’
Walter made two cups of chicory-smelling coffee. It was all he could find. No more pure coffee left. He felt exhilarated, but knew that Lucky felt less than the same.
He took the cups back carefully on a tray, and he placed the tray on the bedside table. Caro sat up eventually and, pulling the curtain beside the bed a little open, she saw that dawn was breaking.
‘I wonder why people say dawn is “breaking”,’ she murmured, sitting back against a tier of pillows that he had just arranged for her, and holding the sheet up against her body in a gesture of latent modesty.
‘Because the advent of dawn breaks up the dark sky of night,’ her painter lover told her, as he slipped in beside her.
The bed was too narrow, but that was not why Caro moved away from him.
‘You’re not happy,’ he said, stating the obvious.
She looked at him, silent, her eyes large with veiled accusation, before she picked up the cup of coffee he was offering her and sipped at the hot sweet mixture he had made of condensed milk and strangely diluted coffee.
‘Why aren’t you happy, Lucky?’
‘Because,’ she stated in a dull voice, ‘I do not believe that you love me. I suppose that is why I am not happy.’
Goodnight Sweetheart Page 28