by Jenny Holmes
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’d never guess that she’s recently had a bad row with her father over staying with the ATA.’ Douglas preferred not to go into too many details, though he’d heard them from Hilary. ‘I admire her for standing up to the old man. She has integrity, whatever else people say.’ The whisky warmed him as it slid down his gullet. ‘Which is more than can be said for our friend over there.’
Jean picked out Teddy from the group. He was casually dressed in an open-necked shirt and cravat, with a tweed jacket, brown trousers and brogues. ‘Has he been up to his old tricks again?’
‘No; I put a permanent stop to that. You remember I hinted that there was something more serious?’ Their renewed intimacy prompted Douglas to take Jean into his confidence. ‘Hilary has an official file on his desk dated August this year. It has Teddy’s name on the front. The form inside had the look of a court martial document, though I can’t be sure.’
‘Good Lord! Can an RAF pilot be court martialled for stealing petrol?’ Jean took a guess at what the file might contain.
‘No, that would bring a simple reprimand from his squadron leader, unless he put someone else in danger or harmed someone by it. That’s a possibility, I suppose.’
They sat in silence, gazing across at Teddy who entertained the others with a tall story. He had one hand around Agnes’s shoulder but was paying more attention to gorgeous, vivacious Angela, while Horace and Fred stayed quietly in the background. There was much smiling and laughter as Teddy rounded off the tale and more drinks were ordered.
When Teddy noticed that Jean and Douglas were staring at him, he broke away and sauntered across with his glass. ‘Now then, you two – mind if I join you?’ he queried jauntily.
‘Come again?’ Douglas failed to catch what Teddy said.
Teddy grinned and took a swig from his glass. ‘Never mind; I can see that three’s a crowd.’ With a wink at Jean he wandered on through the door and into the hall.
‘Did you see that?’ Jean was incensed. ‘Teddy Simpson just winked at me. What a cheek!’
‘Ignore him,’ Douglas said. Jean when angry was quite something. He was fascinated by the colour rising in her cheeks and the flash of fire in her grey eyes. ‘Let’s talk about something more pleasant. ‘What do you say we make a night of it tomorrow after we’ve visited Gordon in the hospital?’
Teddy continued to smile as he went up two flights of stairs to his attic room. High time to pay Bobbie a little visit, he thought.
After Saturday night he’d deliberately played things cool and the tactic seemed to have paid off. People’s memories were mercifully short, so that Bobbie’s appearance half-naked at the edge of Burton Wood was already almost forgotten. There’d been a temporary setback for Teddy when Cameron had investigated the mystery of who had lit the log fire in the grooms’ quarters, but that fuss had also soon died away. Then a major reprieve had come about on Monday after Bobbie’s close encounter with the Focke. The head wound that she’d sustained had kept her in her room ever since.
Teddy whistled as he rummaged in his bottom drawer and found a slim square packet wrapped in cellophane. He tucked it in his jacket pocket, checked his reflection in his shaving mirror, adjusted a stray lock of hair then descended the stairs.
‘Knock-knock!’ He stood outside Bobbie’s room and tapped on the door. Without waiting for an answer, he went in. ‘How’s the patient?’ he asked cheerily.
Sitting in a cane chair by the window, Bobbie gasped. She was dressed in pink silk pyjamas and sat curled up with her feet tucked under her and a book on her lap. Her wavy hair was tied back by a white ribbon to keep it clear of the large dressing on her forehead.
‘I’ve brought you a present to cheer you up.’ As Teddy strolled across the room, he pulled out the cellophane packet and placed it on her open book. ‘A pair of stockings,’ he explained. ‘I guessed your shoe size at four and a half; I hope that’s near enough.’
Bobbie stared at the shiny wrapping. With a shaking hand she whisked the slim packet on to the floor. ‘Get out,’ she hissed.
‘Don’t be like that.’ Teddy stooped to pick it up. ‘I came to find out how you were, that’s all.’
‘I said, get out!’ He leaned over her, close enough for her to smell the whisky on his breath; the same smell as when he’d kissed her and pressed her down on to the mattress. ‘Get out or else I’ll call for help.’
Teddy ignored her, perching on the low window sill and stretching out his legs. He tossed the nylons on to Bobbie’s dressing table then, folding his arms, he leaned back against the cold window pane. ‘Everyone’s downstairs in the bar. No one will hear you.’
Bobbie leapt up and ran frantically for the door, only to find that Teddy had beaten her to it.
He gripped the door knob. ‘Calm down, Bobbie. I thought you’d be pleased to see me.’
She groaned, tried to prise his fingers from the knob then gave up and retreated to the window. ‘What do you want?’
‘I told you: to see how you are and to give you a present. What could possibly be wrong with that?’
‘I don’t want you here. Please leave.’ She stared at him with a mixture of fury and fear.
‘Bobbie,’ he crooned, still standing between her and the door but advancing slowly towards her, ‘whatever is the matter? What is it that I’m supposed to have done wrong?’
‘Don’t come any nearer,’ she warned.
Teddy stopped in the middle of the worn Axminster rug, taking his time to gaze around the room at Bobbie’s hairbrush on the dressing table, next to a gold powder compact and a tube of lipstick. ‘This is the after-effect of Monday’s near miss,’ he surmised. ‘Believe me; shock can do this to a person. It’s made you jumpy for no reason.’
‘Believe you!’ Bobbie echoed. Her whole body was shaking with anger now; how dare Teddy come in without being invited? How dare he look at her things and judge her?
‘Yes,’ he insisted in a low voice. ‘Just hear me out.’
She backed away until she reached the window. ‘No; why should I?’
‘Listen to me,’ he pleaded. ‘About Saturday night; I gather you may have got the wrong end of the stick.’
Bobbie groaned again then put her hands over her ears.
‘We were having such a good time at the Spa Ballroom, remember? Come on now; you can’t deny it.’
Bobbie let her hands drop to her side. Palm trees and a piano, a crush of twirling bodies, Teddy’s hand on her back as they waltzed. Smiling, laughing.
‘There; you see. And after the first few dances, we bumped into Jean and Douglas, which threw a dampener on things for a while but at least we wangled a lift home out of it.’
Drinks at the bar, a band playing. A ride home on the back seat of Douglas’s Ford – Bobbie had no trouble remembering this. Still she kept herself pressed against the window, watching Teddy warily.
‘Douglas drives like an old-age pensioner, so we didn’t reach home until after midnight. We both breathed a sigh of relief when we said goodnight and watched him and Jean disappear into the house.’
A dark night with thick cloud covering the moon. The cobbled stable yard. Tottering in high heels up stone steps. Where? Why?
‘It was late but neither of us was ready to turn in.’ Teddy took two cautious steps forward. ‘We went for a walk. You were cold.’
A black sky. Tottering and shaking. A silver flask with a drink that burned her throat. Flames flickering. Teddy’s voice, his face, with eyes that didn’t reflect what his voice was telling her. ‘No.’ Bobbie warned him not to come any closer.
‘Right you are. I promise I won’t lay a finger on you. I only want to find out why you’re so on edge.’
‘I don’t … I didn’t …’ Particles of memory collapsed like soot falling down a chimney, blackening everything in the hearth below.
‘You were cold so I lit a fire,’ Teddy reminded her. ‘You never gave me any sign that you weren’t willing.’ H
e went carefully, studying her reaction, watching her eyelids flicker, hearing her broken intake of breath. ‘If you had, I would have stopped straight away.’
Bobbie shook her head. ‘I don’t …’ Remember.
‘I would never hurt you; you know that?’
Slowly she nodded.
‘I took care of you, Bobbie. It’s obviously a bit of a blur to you at the moment but afterwards I made sure you got safely back to your room and so on.’
A black layer of guilt covered events that could never be washed away. No memory of her room but of trees, wind and wandering barefoot until dawn.
‘You believe me, don’t you?’ Teddy waited and when Bobbie didn’t reply, he decided to take a calculated risk. ‘Ask Douglas if you can’t recall the exact details. He was here when we came back to the house; he definitely saw me take you up to your room.’
‘Douglas saw us?’ She closed her eyes and slumped forward, wilting under the burden of fresh shame.
‘Don’t worry; Douglas is unshockable. He’s seen it all before.’
‘Go away – please!’ Bobbie breathed. She felt for the chair and sank down.
Teddy judged that he’d done enough for the time being. ‘I can see you’re tired,’ he sympathized. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘No. Please just go.’
He smiled and nodded. ‘I’ll leave your stockings there on the dressing table.’
Bobbie didn’t reply. She closed her eyes and felt she would be sick. Opening them again at the click of the closing door, she gulped in air, forced back tears and then leaned sideways to press her burning cheek against the smooth, black window pane. In all her life she had never felt so alone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘It’s a poor show, Angela.’ Hilary spoke his mind on the Friday evening as they walked home together through Burton Wood. (Later, as he sat by the library fire quietly nursing a brandy and reflecting on their conversation, he saw that he’d gone about things the wrong way.) ‘Lionel says in his last letter to me that you’ve broken off with him without waiting to hear his opinion on the row between you and your father.’
Angela whisked a hazel wand through some bushes to the side of the path. ‘It’s true; I’ve released him from our engagement,’ she confirmed.
‘Without hearing what the poor chap has to say,’ Hilary repeated. ‘That was rather heartless of you.’
Angela’s heart jumped and skipped. ‘Oh, you know me,’ she quipped, ‘I’m like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz: the girl who has no heart.’
Hilary ignored the flippant remark. ‘Lionel is a thoroughly decent fellow. There’s no doubt in my mind that he would have stood by you.’ He wished that Angela would throw the stick away. The sound of it whistling through the air and rattling through the bushes irritated him.
‘That wasn’t the point. The truth is that Lionel would have been made a pariah in our set if he’d married beneath him. You know that as well as I do.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Hilary insisted, taking her hand and pulling her to a halt. ‘Times are changing. People no longer care who marries whom.’
‘Lionel’s parents would care; my father would make sure of that.’ Angela hid her anger behind a loud sigh. ‘I know you mean well, Hilary, and you care a great deal about Lionel. But you must trust me in this; how would we have managed if Lionel’s family had followed suit?’
‘You mean, if they’d disowned him too?’ Hilary silently questioned this version of events. He thought Angela exaggerated as usual.
She tugged free then walked ahead. ‘At least now you acknowledge what Pa has done – cast me off and so forth.’
‘I know; he wrote to me to tell me as much.’ Hilary had received a short letter from Joseph Browne that had condemned Angela for disobedience and had blackened her character, using words such as hot-headed, undisciplined and unfit to serve.
Hilary had been sickened by it and had written a brief reply explaining that he could bring no influence to bear on Angela’s decision to remain with the ATA and that in fact she was one of his best officers and could in no way be criticized over her ability as a pilot. He was sorry that Mr Browne held such a low opinion of his daughter and hoped that time would improve the situation – Yours most sincerely, et cetera.
‘So now you see what I’m up against.’ Angela slowed down then walked in step with Hilary. ‘People say that Pa and I are too alike: both stubborn as mules and unable to see the other’s point of view. That used to infuriate me but now I suspect there may be something in it.’
‘No.’ Hilary sprang loyally to her defence. ‘You lack his ruthless streak. You mostly think well of people and have a kind heart. That’s why your break with Lionel has surprised me.’
Angela stopped at the edge of the woods. ‘You think I was cruel?’ The word brought tears to her eyes.
‘Yes, you’ve left the poor chap heartbroken.’
She nodded. ‘For a while, yes. And I’m desperately sorry for that. But, Hilary, you don’t know everything that went on between Lionel and me.’
Hilary stared down at the sodden leaves underfoot. It was perfectly true: he’d dedicated himself one hundred per cent to his career at the expense of any meaningful relationship with a member of the fairer sex. ‘Go ahead – enlighten me.’
‘For a start, I suspect that Lionel only loved me for the way I look and not for the way I think and act. I would soon have proved a disappointment to him as a wife and – God forbid – as a mother. Worst of all, I suspect that I said yes on an impulse because I didn’t want to hurt him.’
‘I see.’ Hilary raised his gaze and looked across the grounds at the bomb-damaged Grange.
‘What would you have done in my place?’ she murmured as they both stared straight ahead.
‘The same,’ he acknowledged after a long pause. Walls crumbled, roofs collapsed, the world turned on its head. ‘To be completely honest with you, Angela, from what you’ve just told me, I may well have done exactly what you have decided to do.’
‘Spoilsport!’ Horace called after Angela who was making an early departure from the Grange bar that same evening. He sat at the card table with Agnes and Fred. ‘We need our fourth player.’
Angela paused at the door. ‘Sorry, darling – I can’t stop yawning. It’s time for me to hit the hay.’
Truth to tell, she was bored without Bobbie. The mess had been unusually quiet all evening – no Hilary or Cameron, and no sign of Douglas, Jean or Mary either. As for Teddy: he’d pestered her to hop on the back of his blessed motorbike and ride to Highcliff with him, an invitation that she’d turned down flat. So now, at ten o’clock on what should have been a fun-filled Friday night, Angela was heading for bed.
However, as she passed Bobbie’s door, she had second thoughts. A cup of Horlicks and a chat with her best pal might be just the ticket. So she knocked and waited. There was silence from inside so Angela knocked again. Eventually the door opened.
‘Angela,’ Bobbie said in a small, flat voice. She had removed her lint dressing and the inch-long gash on her forehead stood out darkly against her pale skin. She wore pyjamas under a white candlewick dressing-gown.
‘Yes, it’s me. Were you expecting someone else; a gentleman caller, perhaps?’
‘No.’ Colour crept into Bobbie’s cheeks.
‘I’m teasing, silly. Will you come down to the kitchen with me for a mug of Horlicks?’ Expecting a yes, Angela was already on her way to collect the jar from her room when Bobbie called her back.
‘I can’t,’ she told her. ‘I’m not dressed.’
‘Who cares? Anyway, we can easily sneak down the back stairs.’ Angela sensed a deeper reason behind Bobbie’s reluctance. ‘We can skip the Horlicks if you’d rather. Let’s settle down here for a cosy chat instead.’ Slipping past Bobbie, she crossed the room and settled into the cane chair by the window. ‘Ooh, nylons!’ she exclaimed when she saw the packet on the dressing table. ‘Lucky you – I’ve used up all my clothing coupons a
nd don’t have a single pair to my name.’
‘Take them,’ Bobbie said tensely.
‘Darling, I couldn’t possibly. Don’t you need them yourself?’ Angela sprang up and fingered the smooth cellophane wrapping. ‘American Tan,’ she said with an envious sigh.
‘Take them,’ Bobbie repeated. She hadn’t been able to touch the damned things since Teddy had left them there.
‘If you’re sure? I’ll take them with me after we’ve had our chat.’ Angela sat Bobbie down in the chair she’d vacated then drew up the dressing-table stool to sit facing her. ‘I have some good news,’ she went on, leaning forward to touch Bobbie’s knee. ‘Hilary has written a letter of support to Pa, backing my decision to carry on flying. That was decent of him, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, and you deserve it,’ Bobbie told her. ‘Have you heard back from Lionel?’
‘Not yet. You know how things are – he may have written but his letter could be held up in a sorting office in Athens or Gib or Timbuctoo – anywhere at all. I’ll be lucky if it arrives before Christmas.’ Angela gave a wistful smile. ‘But then, Lionel might never write to me again, and who could blame him?’ There was a pause before she steered the conversation in a new direction. ‘So tell me, Bobbie dear, when are you going to stop hibernating and come out and have some fun with your chum?’
‘Soon,’ Bobbie promised unconvincingly.
‘On Sunday, then? I have the day off. We could brush away the cobwebs with a walk around the reservoir if you feel up to it.’
Bobbie stared down at her hands. The idea of running into Teddy made them start to shake. And worse; she would also have to face Douglas, Jean and Mary, not to mention Olive and Stan once she was well enough to return to duty. She swallowed hard and shook her head.
‘Hmm.’ Angela paused to consider her next move. ‘Darling, I’m worried about you. Are you putting things off for a reason? Is it the close shave with Jerry – has it put you into a blue funk?’
Bobbie remembered all over again the sound of wood splintering, the stomach-churning lurch of the Magister as it keeled over to starboard, the fight to bring it in to land. ‘None of it makes sense,’ she murmured. ‘Do you happen to know, did our RAF man make it home all right?’