by Ruby Jackson
‘You want to marry me?’
‘Well, I quite like Lady Alice, but there’s a picture on her desk … happen she’s spoken for.’
Grace had begun to laugh but stopped as she took in what he was saying. ‘Oh, I do hope so. She works so hard and, as far as we can see, she never has any fun.’
‘Could we get back to Grace and Sam? I want to marry you, Grace. I love you very much, but, sweetheart, we’re still in the middle of a world war. I want to ask you to wait until this insanity is over but …’ He reached into his pocket and took out a small box. ‘I’m selfish enough to want the world to know that I’m the luckiest man in the whole world. Will you marry me, Grace, wear my ring?’ He held out the box, which he had opened, and Grace saw a small ring with a lovely blue stone in it. ‘I tried to match your lovely eyes, but emeralds were too green. This sapphire came closest.’
Still she said nothing and he looked at her in dismay. ‘Don’t you love me enough, Grace?’
‘Oh, Sam, with all my heart, and I’d be proud to be your wife and to wear this beautiful ring, but I’m not, I’ve been, I met—’
He reached out and put his fingers on her lips. ‘Ssh, my little love. Grace, do you love me? Do you want to be my wife?’
Eyes bright with unshed tears, she nodded, and he took her hand and slipped the little ring onto the fourth finger of her left hand.
‘What’s past is past, Grace. I’m looking to the future, a future that I want to share with you. It won’t be easy. We’ll be separated again, but only by land and sea, and one day, when the war is over, next year maybe, we’ll be married – perhaps by Mr Tiverton – and then we’ll never be separated.’
He put his arms around her. ‘I bet if I kiss you, those girls will come rushing in to say our tea’s ready. I’m willing to risk it, if you are.’
Feeling that she might explode with happiness, Grace nodded, and he bent his head, his eyes looking into hers, and kissed her, a kiss that seemed to pull her heart straight out of her body. It was his now. So simple. It had always been his.
Read on for an exclusive extract of On A Wing And A Prayer, coming in spring 2014
Spring 1942
‘It’s still so strange not to see Daisy sound asleep when I wake up early, Dad. The house is so quiet; when will it feel normal?’
Fred looked up from the front page of the Sunday paper, ‘When it is normal, pet, and your mum and me is hoping that’ll be soon. You’re an absolute Godsend, our Rose, kept your mum sane, you have.’ He went back to the lead article.
Rose stood quietly for a moment. Was this the time to say something, to say that she had been thinking for rather a long time that she needed a change, a chance to do something different? Could she say, ‘Remember in February when I had a bad head cold and didn’t go to church? Remember I caught Mr Churchill on the wireless, heard the whole thing for once instead of catching just a bit? I thought then – I’ve got to do something more, like Daisy and the others. When this war ends I’d like to have done something besides factory work? She looked over at her father relaxing in his armchair, his waistcoat for once unbuttoned, and decided not to disturb his one morning of relative peace and quiet.
She folded up the section of the Sunday paper she had been reading and almost slapped it down on the little table between them, inadvertently causing her unsuspecting father to jump. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to do that. I’m off for a run, nothing but doom and gloom in the Post this morning.’
‘Don’t forget Miss Partridge is taking her Sunday dinner with us - suppose we’ll have to call it lunch since it is Miss Partridge – so don’t be late.’
Rose promised and, after changing her “going to church clothes” for something suitable for running, she hurried out. Effortlessly, she jogged out of the town, past houses where heavily- laden and sweetly scented lilac trees leaned over garden walls, tantalising passers-by with their perfume, past Dartford Grammar school where she pretended not to see the enormous reserve water supply tank that had been installed as one of the many preparations for war. Would an enemy aircraft bomb it and flood the many lovely gardens in this part of the town? She hoped not.
Rose changed direction as she decided to run through Central Park, a favourite meeting place for local residents, especially on Sundays when families strolled among the flowerbeds.
Out of the park she ran, farther and farther into the countryside, still carpeted with flowers. She wondered idly if she had ever seen such stretches of golden buttercups; they were everywhere. Who could not feel happy just by seeing them? Fruit trees too, showed off their mantles of pink or white blossom as they swayed in the gentle breeze. Who could believe that this glorious garden could possibly be a small part of a huge battlefield?
Rose began to run towards the river, revelling in the feeling of absolute freedom, her long legs enjoying their ability to stretch themselves. She stopped, not because she was tired or stiff but because she wanted to stand still and breathe in the clear air.
How absolutely beautiful it was. Everything was perfect the blue sky was decorated with the remains of white vapour trails showing where aircraft had passed. In the fields below and around her, green shoots were poking up through the soil and, some distance away, untethered horses were grazing. Rose smiled and pretended that there was no war; there had never been a war and all was well with the world. She decided to run as far as Ellingham Ponds, those man-made little ponds that had been created when gravel and sand quarrying had stopped just before war had broken out. Horses had drunk from them, migrating birds or local wildfowl had nested there. The ponds were hardly objects of beauty now as each and every one was camouflaged with wire netting on a floating wooden frame so that German airmen, sent to destroy the nearby Vickers Munitions works, could not use reflections on the water as an aid to navigation.
She came to a halt remembering that Miss Partridge was coming to Sunday dinner.
‘Heavens, being late will certainly spoil a perfect Sunday,’ said Rose with a smile as she began to trot slowly back along the way that she had come, ‘and I do want to see Miss Partridge and just listen to her speak.’
She reached the rather rough road that wound its way across the area and was about to quicken her pace when she heard the sound of a speeding motorbike. It sounded as if it was on this country pathway.
‘What an odd place to ride a motorbike,’ decided Rose as she jumped off the pathway and onto the wide grass verge.
Rose’s older brothers had taught her and her twin sister Daisy to drive before she left school at the age of fifteen and she was accustomed to delivering groceries in the family van. But their parents had never allowed either of their daughters to ride a motorcycle.
‘They’re too heavy for girls,’ Sam, the eldest had decided. ‘If you can’t lift it, you shouldn’t be riding it.’
Nothing the girls had said had persuaded him to change his mind.
The roar of the engine grew louder and closer. Rose moved even further off the road noting, with growing concern, both the poor surface of the road and the accelerating speed of the bike. Before she could think another thought or move a muscle, the bike was there and then …was gone.
‘Wow. Fantastic, what a speed, lucky…’ began Rose just as she heard a screech of brakes, followed by a thud. Rose listened but there was nothing but a terrifying silence.
For a fraction of a moment, she felt rooted to the spot, but the adrenalin lifted her out of the almost trance-like state and Rose Petrie, former junior sports champion, began to run.
She was around the corner in no time at all. The motorbike was lying on its side across the pathway. Her stomach tightened in horror as she saw the driver pinned underneath. Rose knelt down beside the machine and looked tentatively at the unconscious man. How young he was, and how very, very still. His eyes were closed and there was severe grazing on his face; blood was seeping from a wound in his forehead and mingling horribly with the dirt and gravel on his face.
Rose had no i
dea if he was alive or dead. She remembered her brother, if you can’t lift it you can’t ride it, and wondered if it would even be wise to try to lift the machine off his body. Should she try somehow to clean his poor face? Water? In the films she had seen with her sister and their friends, the wounded hero was always given a sip of water. If she ran back to one of the ponds perhaps she could manage to wet a cloth, but she had no cloth. She looked again at the motor cycle which was possibly crushing something important while she dithered. Rose seemed to remember that any implement sticking into the body of an injured person should not be removed until qualified medical personnel were on hand, but what was she supposed to do with a machine that might well be crushing this man to death?
‘Thank God,’ Rose began as she had felt a faint pulse in the neck. Could he hear her if she spoke? Would hearing a human voice help him? ‘I’m going to try to move your bike,’ she said as calmly as she could. Oh, God, what if I drop it back onto him? ‘I’m really very strong,’ she continued; hoping against hope that her low voice was reaching him, perhaps giving him some comfort. ‘I work in a munitions factory and lift heavy machinery every day.’
There was no response and so Rose stood up, took a deep breath – why she did not know – bent down, grasped the body of the bike firmly, and, having assessed in which direction to move, began to lift. The trapped rider groaned. He’s alive, he’s alive. I can do this. In another moment she had the bike on the grass verge. She wanted to fall down beside it as every muscle in her well-toned body seemed to be complaining but instead she looked for something with which to wipe the blood from his face.
‘Why did I change?’ She was wearing only a shirt and her shorts. Then she heard it, a voice, faint but a voice.
‘Help me.’
Immediately she was back on her knees beside him. ‘I’m going for help,’ she said, ‘I wish I could stay with you but there’s no one else here.’ She was pulling her shirt out of her shorts. Desperately she tried to tear off the bottom but the material resisted.
Rose looked around and, at last, her eyes lit up as she saw a large shard of glass from the broken headlamp. She picked it up and feverishly sawed at the shirt. At last there was a tear, which allowed her to rip it apart.Praying that it was clean, she folded it and gently wiped the blood from his face. ‘I wish I could do more for you but I’ll get help …’
The whisper was so faint that she had almost to put her ear to his damaged face. ‘Dispatch. Pocket. Urgent Take.’
Again Rose looked round, hoping desperately that someone – anyone - was within hailing distance. They were completely alone.
She felt a touch on her hand. ‘Please.’
‘Of course, I’ll do what I can.’ With a hand now marked by his blood she tried the pocket of his leather jacket. Nothing. ‘It’s a dispatch. An inside pocket. Do you have … ?’
His eyes blinked as if answering her. Rose reached inside his jacket hoping that she was doing no damage to his poor body. There was a pocket and inside was a fairly thick envelope. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘I’ll run for help and then deliv …’ She had no time to finish the word.
The eyelids fluttered again and the voice was fainter than before. ‘Urgent. Please.’
‘I’ll do it. Trust me and I’ll get you some help. Trust me. I’ll deliver your letter and I’ll get you some help.’ As she spoke the last words Rose was already running. She had not run competitively since she was a schoolgirl but she was fit and well. She tried to forget the injured, possibly dying dispatch rider, and the message that seemed to be burning a hole through her shirt. She had read the word on the front. SILVERTIDE. She knew the name, only because she had occasionally delivered extremely expensive packets of Oolong tea to the kitchen door of the great house. It was at least three miles away and she had a single mode of transport – her long legs.
Rose kept going and, as she ran, she remembered the words of her coach from those long ago school days. “Long and longer strides for the first twenty paces; then accelerate until you think you can’t go any faster. Relax facial muscles.” She almost flew, her long stride eating up the uneven ground. She tried not to think of the letter she was carrying or the dispatch rider who had insisted that he be left, possibly to die, in order that the dispatch, for which he obviously felt responsible, might reach its destination. She couldn’t stop thinking, of course. The young man was in the military and was obviously about the same age as her brother, Phil.
‘Twenty-three is too young to die,’ said Rose fiercely, even as she remembered the loss of her brother, Ron, who had been even younger when he had given his life for his country.
“Empty your head, girl, empty your head”, came the order from the long-ago voice and obediently Rose forced herself to concentrate on nothing but finishing the race.
She ran as she had never run before. She could hardly see as tears, of which she was unaware, coursed down her cheeks.
Run, Rose, don’t remember that you are unlikely to meet anyone who can help him. Run faster, faster. He’ll die lying there.
Rose ran on, oblivious of her screaming muscles, her labouring breath. Heel, outside of foot, rock off with the toes, over and over again; push with your elbows. For a moment she was in a bubble created as long-ago advice pulled itself up from her subconscious and helped her think only of technique and not of injured dispatch riders or important messages.
Ahead stood the gates of Silvertide Estate. With her last ounce of energy she reached them, clung to the bars to prevent her body sliding, exhausted, to the ground on the wrong side, and pressed the bell.
‘Don’t fuss, Mum, it was no more than a cross-country run.’
Rose had had a refreshing bath and was now sitting in the scrupulously tidy front room, not the kitchen – so seriously had her parents taken her story of the afternoon’s events. Of course she had been much too late for Sunday dinner and was now pressingly aware of growing hunger.
‘Quite an adventure, our Rose, but your mam and me think you’re making light of it.’
‘’Course not, Dad. Only sorry I missed Miss Partridge.’
‘She said the same about you, love, but she’d promised to do geometry or some other maths subject with George – sharp as a tack is our George.’
Delighted to have young George’s prowess become the subject of discussion, Rose congratulated her father again for taking in the orphaned youngster who had initially caused the family a great deal of bother, culminating in vandalism and an attack that had hospitalised Rose’s twin sister, Daisy.
But Fred had years of experience in dealing with daughters who did not want to be the focus of his attention. ‘Come on, Rose. Rose ran, Rose saw accident, Rose helped injured rider, Rose delivered letter. Rose came home. There has to be more to it than that.’
‘Aw, Dad,’ moaned Rose, using exactly the tone of voice she had used as a disgruntled child, ‘he was speeding on a poor surface and a pothole caught the front tyre. He and the bike went up in the air – I think, I didn’t see it – and the bike landed on top of him. He asked me to deliver his dispatch and I did. Possibly I spoke to a butler sort of person, quite grand and with a posh voice, but he said not to worry, it was in their hands. I sat in a lovely room and a maid brought me tea; they’ll have got an ambulance.’
Is he alive? Did they find him? They promised to go immediately and they said they would get him a doctor.
A long ignored memory surfaced. This was not the first time she had run for help. Had she blacked-out all memory of that day on Dartford Heath when Daisy had stayed beside two unbearably sad, dead bodies and Rose, the faster runner, almost traumatised by shock and horror, had conquered her threatening hysteria and run for help?
‘Didn’t want to warm it too quick, Rose; nothing worse than dried-up food. Eat that up and then off to bed with you or you’ll never do your shift tonight.’ Her mother had come in from the kitchen at just the right moment for Rose wanted to be left alone to think.
Sitting in an armchai
r in the front room with a plate of food in her hands took her straight back to childhood. Unwell? Unhappy? Either situation could be mended by sitting in a comfortable chair in the front room, eating a plate of Mum’s best stew. Not that this stew could measure up to the “before this dratted war” stews; far more vegetables – thank goodness carrots were not rationed – than meat, and a gravy Mum was as near as ashamed of as she had ever been. But so far the Petrie family had managed to avoid the tinned stew. “Can’t be sure what’s in it,’ muttered Flora as she arranged the tins on their grocery shop shelves.
Still Rose could remember nothing but the face of the dispatch rider and the feel of the Silvertide gates as her exhausted body collapsed against them. Maybe it would all come back tomorrow. She wondered if she would ever find out about the injured rider. She knew enough about dispatch riders to know that she would never find out what was in the so-vital letter. But it had to be really important. His face swam before her tired eyes and his voice whispered, “Urgent, please.”
I tried. I hope it was enough.
Find out how it all started for Daisy, Rose, Sally and Grace in Churchill’s Angels - available now. Read on for an exciting extract …
8 January 1940
The alarm clock woke Daisy. She groaned, as usual, bur-rowed even further under the counterpane, as usual, and then, remembering her promise, threw back her covers and jumped out of bed. It was cold, so cold that, completely forgetting her sleeping sister, she did a little war dance right there on the strip of carpet between the beds. A quick look proved once again that Rose Petrie could sleep through anything.
Daisy slipped past her bed to the window and pulled the curtain back sufficiently to let her see out. ‘Crikey.’ She could see nothing but beautiful paintings by one Mr Jack Frost on the window-pane. Daisy breathed on the glass and rubbed it with the sleeve of her nightgown until she had a peephole.
Outside lay a frozen world. The year had blasted in accompanied by snow storms that seemed determined to maintain their icy grip. The snow that had fallen over the weekend and been churned into muddy heaps by the traffic was now frozen solid. Daisy grabbed her clothes, washed her face and such parts of her neck as she thought might be seen, dressed and slipped out. She looked towards the kitchen door. No time to boil the kettle for some scalding tea. She crept down the stairs, pulled on her heavy outdoor coat and the cheery hat and now-finished scarf that her mother had knitted for Christmas, grabbed her hated gas mask – there weren’t going to be gas attacks; there was no sign of any attacks – and hurried out.