News came at the end of the week that the local weather in France had held the invasion over from its originally planned date of 31 May, and the next week was agony for all of them. The shipping movement had eased now, with most of the base’s complement already away, ready to provide whatever back-up they were scheduled to offer in the cold waters of the English Channel. Lexie stared at the horizon as the days limped away in a vain attempt to imagine what was going on there, aching for news, sometimes almost crying with the anxiety and the sickening tension of hope deferred.
And then, late in the afternoon of 6 June the news came and spread round the base with the speed and crackle of a newly lit fire. It had been Normandy, no it hadn’t, yes, it was, they were in, it was all on its way, a beachhead had been established, it hadn’t been established, the British were alone, no they weren’t, there were Canadians and Americans too, they were six miles from the coast, they were still on the beaches — and then at last as real news began to filter through and the reality hit them the camp settled to a strange stillness.
She sat in the NAAFI canteen, clutching a cup of thick black Bovril in both hands, and watched the few men who were free to come there sitting in silent groups, worrying and hoping for the news to keep on coming, to be good, to be a real promise of the end of the war. The five years they’d already been through seemed to hang over them all as it never had before; they were tired, everyone was tired and emotional and yet controlled. She gazed into the inky depths of her Bovril and wanted, again, to cry. It had to work, this invasion, this second front. It had to.
She saw nothing of Max as the days crept by, and she was both aggrieved and grateful for that. One part of her wanted to be with him very much indeed, She had to work hard at preventing herself from going over to the big operations room where he spent all his time now. I’ve done without him all these years, she would tell herself furiously as she went striding about the base, in aimless search of exercise. I’ve never needed him or any other man all this time. I’m free, I’m independent — I don’t want him.
But the ever-present little voice would laugh at her, would jeer and sneer. Oh, don’t you? Then why are you getting yourself into such a state? If you don’t need him, why do you see his face all the time, why can’t you get him out of your mind? You’re no better than any one of those stupid girls you used to sneer at, no better. You’ve got the same itch in you they had. You’re just another candidate for the farmyard, just another stupid female — just a besotted —
I’m not, she would protest passionately, staring at the road beneath her feet as she walked. I’m not. I’m a dancer, I have a career. I’m not interested in just being domestic — and the little voice would jeer back, liar. You’re a liar, and not a very good one at that. Liar.
So she was grateful that she could not see him. If she had been with him, she told herself as the days tightened into a fortnight, hobbled on to become a month, if I had, God knows what would happen. I’d stop thinking for me, I’d start thinking for him as well and that would be dreadful.
Dreadful? whispered the little voice. Why dreadful? Would it be dreadful for Molly? What about her? Isn’t it time she knew she had two parents? Two real parents? When are you going to face it, Lexie? You’ve been a fool. You should never have let it happen and now you’ve got to do something about it.
For the first time she had good cause to be glad that she had so long to think. As the long hours dragged past she found it all shaping in her mind. She would find Molly as soon as she got home to England and be candid with her. It would be painful and difficult, but she would tell her and beg her forgiveness. Then she would tell her of her father. That was what she would do, she promised herself as the days got hotter and the scent of flowers and herbs thickened until it filled every corner of the base. That will make her forgive me. Won’t it?
The one person she tried not to think about was Barbara. How she would feel about Molly being told that the person she had always regarded as her mother was no more than a cousin didn’t bear thinking about.
When the news came that there was a berth on a ship, that she would be on her way home to England within twenty-four hours, her first thought was to find Max, bid him goodbye, make a plan to see him again as soon as he too returned to London — which surely couldn’t be long now? The success of the invasion had filled them all with the certainty that the war was at last counting out its last days. Soon all of them would be going home, starting real life again. But he was off the base, and no one could — or would — tell her where he was. ‘Official business’ was the most the senior officer in command would say, and she had to accept that. She wrote a short note to tell him she was on her way home and that she’d be living at the old address with Bessie. ‘Perhaps,’ she wrote rather stiffly, ‘you’ll call on us when you get home leave. Yours sincerely —’
The journey home seemed infinitely longer than the weeks she had spent in Cyprus, for now she was going back her impatience grew and spread through her till it was like a physical thing, an itch she couldn’t scratch. As the elderly frigate went lurching and rolling through the Med and then bucketed across the Bay of Biscay she fretted and fumed and became so bad-tempered that even good-natured Dave avoided her.
Then at last the morning came when she left her berth in the cramped quarters deep in the ship and came up on to the wet deck to see land on each side as they slid slowly up the Bristol Channel. It was a cold blustery morning. She pulled her coat up to her ears against the rain and leaned on the dripping rail, staring out at the dull greyness passing her in the faint mist, and for the first time realized how lucky she had been. All that time in North Africa, working in gunfire and bombs, culminating in the long journey just behind her through a Mediterranean infested with German shipping during which they had seen and heard nothing remotely dangerous, and here she was, whole and unhurt. Suddenly she was deeply and passionately grateful.
I’m here, she thought jubilantly. I’m home, and it’s all right — it’s nearly over and I’m all right. She wanted to thank someone and didn’t know who. Religion had never played any real part in her life, but standing on the deck of a shabby frigate as it made its slow way up the Bristol Channel on that wet June morning in her forty-third year she felt a need to be grateful, and in a muddled way put some sort of prayer together, aiming it she didn’t know where, feeling it necessary to do so none the less. Then, sharply and unexpectedly, she felt a stab of acute guilt. All those years when I thought only of me, she told the passing green smudge of the bank. All those years when I just danced and pushed and wanted and danced some more, and now I’m safe. And Molly and Barbara and the way I’ve treated them — I’ve no right to be so lucky.
Her self-critical mood lasted well into the day, saw her all through the noise and confusion of their landing at Bristol, through the tedium of the port authorities’ red tape, right on to the train to London. The parting with Dave Calleff had been surprisingly emotional. He was on his way north to Leeds, where he had friends, he said vaguely, who’d help him get a nice little place in a nice little show somewhere, sure to want an old trouper like him. She had hugged him and seen him on his way, her eyes hot with regret for the parting, and then had made her way to her own train to sit for the long hours it took to amble through the drenched fields and dripping trees to London.
Larry left her, too, choosing to stay in Bristol for a while. ‘I’ve had enough travel to last me a bloody month of Sundays,’ he told her before disappearing into the crowds at the station. ‘I’m off to find a pub somewhere and I’ll not come out till Christmas. ’Bye ducks. Keep your powder dry.’ And now she sat in a corner seat staring out of the grimy windows at the rain, past the strips of peeling anti-splinter paper that were criss-crossed over them, and tried to see how it would be when she got there. Bessie — where would Bessie be? At home? At Alex Lazar’s office? I’ll phone as soon as we get to Paddington. She laughed aloud because the word sounded so commonplace, so blessedly ordinary afte
r the place names that had been so much a part of her life for so long. Tobruk and Cairo, Tripoli and Sidi Barrani and Limassol and Apollo’s Temple.
London felt odd, decidedly odd. She stood in the middle of the eddying crowds on the concourse of Paddington Station, smelling the reek of oil and soot, listening to the steam hissing and grumbling behind her and stared round, bemused and lost. I’m home, she thought, I’m home. But no one seems to care, no one seems to have noticed.
And why should they? she asked herself as sturdily as she could, humping her kitbag on to her shoulder as she looked round for a vacant telephone booth. Why should they? It’s only me — I may have been away on a battlefield for all this time, but they’ve not had a marvellous time either, looking at them. For the people who moved past her were tired people; faces looked grey and pinched and tight with irritation, and the voices she heard weren’t the familiar old jovial ones that had been so much a part of her London before she left. People were bad-tempered, snapping at each other, pushing past rudely when once they’d have lifted their hats and stood aside, and she frowned sharply as someone shoved past her and sent her rocking on her heels without a word of apology.
There was no answer from the telephone in Alex Lazar’s office, and as she stood in the stuffy little telephone box listening to the burr of the ringing she felt suddenly old and tired and very, very lonely, and tears stung her eyelids. I’m home and no one knows and no one cares, she thought, as she recradled the phone and pressed button B to get her money back. I’m home and who gives a damn? With a savage little gesture she scooped the two pennies out of the machine and went to spend them on a cup of tea at the buffet while she waited until Bessie was likely to have reached Hackney.
She bought a paper, too, and that was when she discovered why everyone looked so strained and grey, why London, far from being full of relief and excitement because the invasion was going so well, was more tense than it had been even at the height of the blitz.
Doodlebugs they were calling them, though their real label was V1 rockets. With a gradually deepening sense of dismay, Lexie read of the effects of Hitler’s last despairing attempt to win this war, of the way the things came overhead roaring ominously and then, even more ominously, fell suddenly silent, making people stare fearfully upwards as they prayed that this time the thing would fall on someone else, not on them.
That was the worst part of it all, said the article she was reading. In the first blitz we all worried about each other as well as ourselves, the reporter wrote. This time we put our own skins in front of someone else’s. Not British at all, he scolded. Not British at all. We must be as brave and caring as we were in 1941, he went on. Soon Monty and his chaps will break through to the Pas de Calais and get rid of the wretched things’ launching pads. Soon he’ll be as pushy as he ever was in the Desert Rats campaign — just hold on, London — the journalist became rhetorical and bombastic — hold on and be your old courageous self! We’ll get through this last convulsion. Relief will come soon.
She dropped the paper in the salvage bin and went to try the phone again. Home, she told herself as she joined the queue that was waiting for the kiosk. I’m home and I’m not sure why I was so eager to get here. She grimaced at herself and shifted her heavy kitbag from one shoulder to the other. There you go again, being ungrateful. This morning you were praying to say thank you, and now you’re moaning. Will you ever know what you want, Alexandra Asher? Will you ever get yourself sorted out?
36
‘I can’t believe it,’ Bessie said again. ‘I just can’t believe it! I kept thinking, hoping, I’ll get a telegram, a message maybe, but I never thought you’d just arrive this way. It’s marvellous. Oh, Lexie, it is marvellous, isn’t it?’ She stood there on the doorstep staring at her, and Lexie laughed and gently pushed her backwards.
‘It’d be even more marvellous if you let me come in,’ she said. ‘It’s cold here on the doorstep. I don’t think it’s ever going to stop raining.’
Bessie was at once thrown into a fever of apologies and fuss as she ushered Lexie into the house and hurried her up the stairs, chattering breathlessly all the time of how amazed she was to see Lexie and that was why she’d kept her standing there on the step, until Lexie was at last detached from her coat and kitbag and settled into the biggest armchair and Bessie was bustling about in her kitchen making tea and shouting through the open door.
‘I tried and tried to get news of you, but even Mr Lazar couldn’t tell me any more than you were on Cyprus and all right, and no one knew when you’d get away, what with the invasion and all.’
She appeared in the doorway and waved the teapot at Lexie, her face red with excitement. ‘And what do you think about that, then? It’s nearly all over, now, should be over by Christmas, that’s what they’re all saying. Mr Lazar reckons it’ll be a bit longer than that, but he says it’s all over bar the shouting.’ She disappeared again as the sound of the kettle’s whistle began and the smell of toasting bread came creeping out of the kitchen. Lexie leaned back in the chair and took a deep sigh of relief.
Last night had been dismal. She’d gone to one of the small hotels that clung dispiritedly to the skirts of Paddington Station to spend the night in a dingy room which smelled of damp and which offered lumpy cold beds, and had slept little. Call after call to Bessie’s flat all through the evening had failed to raise her and Lexie had been frightened for a while, wondering where she could be; hurt in one of these new doodlebug explosions perhaps? That didn’t bear thinking about. She must just be out for the evening, she told herself at eleven o’clock. I’ll call her in the morning. She had slept fitfully and uneasily until six-thirty and had then had had to get up. She couldn’t bear the grimy, miserable hotel another moment and had decided on impulse to take an early bus and go straight to Hackney instead of waiting to telephone.
The sight of Bessie on the doorstep in her dressing gown, staring at her incredulously, had more than made up for the misery of her first night back in London after so long. Now she sat with her head back against the familiar old armchair, dreamily staring up at the even more familiar pattern of cracks on the ceiling, and let herself really relax.
Bessie came hurrying in with the tea and toast and, she proudly pointed out to Lexie, a pot of real marmalade, for which she’d had to save ration points for weeks.
‘It’ll hide the taste of the margarine,’ she said cheerfully as she poured the tea. ‘It gets more like axle grease every day. People think I can get black market and all that, just because of the tea shops, but you know Alex Lazar — no hanky panky for him, specially now he’s working for the government. He’s marvellous, he really is, the way he keeps going. Seventy-six he was, the other day! You’d never think it to see him. He’s all over the place — now, tell me about you. Where’ve you been and what have you done, and what did the —’
‘Lots of time for that,’ Lexie said. ‘Bessie, how are they? Molly and Barbara? Are they well? Where are they?’
Bessie sipped her tea, throwing an anxious glance at Lexie over the rim of her cup. She seemed to be pondering a decision, and then to reach it, for she put her cup down and said firmly, ‘In Scotland. That’s where they are. They’re fine — but they’re in Scotland.’
Lexie felt her belly plunge sharply with disappointment. ‘Scotland? Ye Gods, what are they doing there? It’s the back of beyond —’
‘And the rest,’ Bessie said, and pushed the toast towards Lexie. ‘Eat, Lexie, already. You look as thin as a rail. You need your food — it’s good marmalade.’
‘What are they doing there?’
‘It’s a show. Not an ENSA one — they stopped doing that a while ago, once the managements got into action again. She’s doing ever so well, Lexie. Barbara says it’s amazing to see how they eat her up. Even the difficult audiences go mad for her. She’s really very good, Barbara says. I wish I could see her —’ And she looked wistful for a moment. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? I could never see you in your shows in
the first war, and now in this one —’ Her voice dwindled away and there was a little silence between them.
‘Yes,’ Lexie said after a moment. ‘Yes, it — Bessie, I know now. And I’m sorry.’
Bessie’s forehead creased and she looked anxiously at Lexie. ‘Know? Know what?’
‘I treated you badly. I know now just how awful I was in those years when I just didn’t — well, I dare say I could have got to London sometimes, while we were doing Babies on Parade, but somehow — I just —’
Bessie had gone very red and Lexie stared at her and suddenly saw beyond the thin lined face and the wispy grey hair tied into curling papers to the Bessie of her childhood. She’d always thought of her as a plain dull little thing. Just Bessie, dear old familiar Bessie, but not handsome as Fanny had been or richly ripe like Poppy Ganz. She’d just been old Bessie, but now Lexie saw the shape of the bones beneath the skin. She had lovely eyes, grey-flecked and wide, and the shape of her forehead was broad and pleasing above them. Impulsively Lexie leaned forward and kissed the papery cheek and hugged the narrow bones of Bessie’s twisted shoulders.
‘It’s so good to be back with you, Bessie. I really have missed you and I do love you a lot, you know. I haven’t shown it much, and I’ve treated you awfully badly, but I do love you —’
For a moment Bessie sat rigid, then her shoulders relaxed and she clung to Lexie with an urgency that left them both breathless and then as suddenly as it had come the surge of emotion passed. Lexie was leaning back in her chair again and sipping tea as Bessie, head down, fiddled with her spoon.
Family Chorus Page 38