‘Is Celeste here?’ she asks.
‘Not yet, darlings, not yet, but she has absolutely prrromised to come later.’ The woman rolls her ‘r’s. ‘At least,’ she continues, ‘I suppose it’s her bed she’ll come back to.’ Then she shrieks with laughter at her own joke. Bea, to her relief, sees Edward recoil. They make their excuses and back away into the dark calm of the streets.
Even though they walk, they arrive early and the band hasn’t started yet. They watch the other guests drift in fragments of familiar groups, more women than men, most of the latter either in uniform or clearly scarred. More than one is missing a limb. The tables are as usual covered in white lilies that could be a little less wreath-like; the talk is, however, upbeat. Well, it always is, for nobody can say the words they actually think. That is, if they can’t stop themselves thinking.
‘What ho. Why, if it isn’t Beatrice, Clemmie’s younger sister.’ The voice comes from over her shoulder and she turns. The skin on the right half of the man’s face looks as though it has been stewed and his nose is at an angle. She does not recognise him, something else she can’t say.
‘Hullo,’ she says.
He holds out a hand.
‘It’s Flipper Braithwaite. D’you remember? Down at Gowden and, well, about the place.’
He’s half the size he was. His remaining cheek is still as red, though, this time as if it has been burnt and then frozen that way.
‘Of course I remember you, Flipper. It’s good to see you.’ This she means, for it is good to see any of them; you can hardly think a man an oaf any more.
‘So how’s your sister?’ He pulls out a silver case, takes out a cigarette and offers Bea one. She shakes her head, for it will keep her there for as long as she takes to smoke it, and replies, ‘Oh, Clemmie’s fine. Turned one wing of Gowden into a Land Army base, and another into a hospital, sheets flapping from the windows. Spends a good deal of her time keeping the almost recovered patients and the girls apart.’
‘And Tom?’ Flipper taps his cigarette on the case.
‘Still going strong. How long are you here for?’
He looks down, and now rat-a-tats the cigarette on the box.
‘Been here the usual couple of weeks.’ As he moves the cigarette to his mouth, his hand is wobbling. ‘Back at the crack of dawn.’ He pulls, equally shakily, a lighter out of a pocket, lights the cigarette and takes a deep draw before exhaling and looking back up. ‘Of course it’ll be good to get back to the action. Now the Boche is on its rear foot, and with Americans on their way, it’ll be hard to get a look-in soon. Better make the most of it.’ He smiles at her, and Bea feels herself soften. She wonders how much it hurts his face to smile.
‘So, how’s your horse?’ he continues.
Bea laughs. She hadn’t thought of him as droll before, there’s hardly a horse left in the country. ‘Replaced by one of the donkeys not yet whisked away to France,’ she replies. Head tilted, he laughs at her joke. Bea feels a surge of confidence. ‘Come on,’ she says, nodding towards the ballroom, ‘the band’s going. Let’s have a turn before you flee.’ Maybe Clemmie was right all those years ago, Bea thinks, Tom’s friends weren’t so terrible. Although maybe it’s not that, it’s just that they are not so terrible now. Even so, she’s not sure she could ever bring herself to kiss what remains of Flipper’s face.
On the way back, and flushed from turkey-trotting, Bea passes Edward. He isn’t dancing. Nor is he flirting with the throngs of women. Instead he appears locked in conversation with a young officer in a corner of the room. A couple of girls hover nearby hopefully, which is not surprising for Edward’s friend is the spit of one of those muscular statues in the museum back at home. As, perhaps – and of course Bea would think this, and a little proudly – is Edward, even as the ghost he has become. However, it doesn’t look as if there’s going to be any gentle butting-in for the girls. The two men are fixed on each other, in some shared world of warfare, no doubt. Well, dammit, she’s going in, she’s his sister and he can’t spend his leave talking about being back there. Bea strides over and takes her brother by the arm.
‘I could ask politely but instead I think I’ll just insist you dance with me.’
The conversation stops suddenly. Bea turns to Edward’s friend. His eyes look at her, hard. Go away, he seems to be saying, you are not wanted here. Bea looks straight back at him. How dare you, she thinks. It is Edward who breaks the silence.
‘I’m sorry, old chap. Women nowadays. We only have to turn our backs for an instant and they transform into huntresses …’
‘Edward!’ She glares at him, but he is laughing.
‘Just kidding, sis. Beatrice, may I introduce my dear friend Captain Charles Finers to you? He’s been here a fortnight. Back over in a couple of days. Charles, this is my sister, Beatrice. And I’d keep a wide—’
Bea, quite deliberately, steps on Edward’s toe just as Captain Finers’ right hand reaches out for hers, taking it. His look has now softened, and he places his left on top.
‘Enchanted.’
‘We were saying,’ says Edward, ‘that even the wrong sort of chap is showing his mettle over there. Makes you feel a sight differently about those fellows.’
There’s something to this line of conversation that Bea finds sticks with her. It would be easier if she could, but she simply cannot bring herself just to nod along with it. She looks down at the floorboards.
‘Well, Bea?’
‘I don’t know what you mean by the “wrong sort of chap”. What exactly do you mean, Edward?’
‘You know exactly what I mean, Bea. Somebody you wouldn’t invite to the house. Except on their business, of course.’
‘So Mother has been filling her drawing rooms with the “wrong sort of chap”?’
‘Politics is their business, Bea.’
‘But it’s not always politics,’ she blurts out, and then wishes she could swallow the words back in, for Edward is looking at her a little confused. ‘Sometimes,’ she rushes to continue, and not as confidently as she might like, ‘it’s just a good meal.’
Edward doesn’t flag. By two, Bea’s eyes are closing and she is counting the hours until she has to be up again, uniformed and at Dartmouth House. Really, she should take a break from it while Edward is home. Sister Adams, however, might simply replace her with one of the VADs who are near lining up around the block to work there, and Bea would be out of having anything to do at all.
‘You look all done in, sis. Let’s get you home.’
‘You’re still raring.’
‘Used to it, old chap. The Hun starts up his concert performance at bedtime.’
When they are in the street, he crouches down, beckoning her behind him. ‘Want a ride on my shoulders, sis?’ She laughs, and swings her evening pouch at him.
‘Whoa, stop assaulting an officer. What’s in there?’
‘Oh, powder. You know.’
‘So we’re quite the painted lady now? I was thinking you looked rather soignée.’
‘Fine time in the evening for the compliment.’
‘Well, don’t take it then.’
The streets feel even sadder than before. As they wander on, Bea slips her arm through her brother’s and falls quiet.
‘What’s up, Sweet Bea? All well at the nursing home?’
‘Oh, yes, fine. Absolutely ripping.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself over it.’
‘Over what?’
‘Not going back. Nobody thinks you’re a lead-swinger. And look what you’re doing now. We couldn’t do it without you.’
And even though she’s a country away from the Front and just mopping floors, these words no longer bother Bea.
They reach the door. Bea takes out a key. ‘Look, wartime living. I let myself in at night.’
‘Not even a maid to do it any more? Where’ve they all gone?’
‘They’re here, Edward, just fewer of them.’
‘That’s what I mean. What’s h
appened to the ones that are missing, like that girl you liked, Grace?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, she simply vanished one day last autumn, didn’t even leave a note.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh,’ he replies, and falls silent for a moment, which strikes Bea as a little odd.
She turns the key and puts her shoulder to the door.
‘Heavy as iron,’ she murmurs. ‘I bet it would send the shells bouncing back. Always a challenge at the end of the evening.’
She walks into the hall. A light has been left on for them. As she goes ahead she realises that Edward’s footsteps aren’t following her and she turns back to him.
‘Might pop back, old girl. There’s still some life in me yet. No time to miss a minute of fun.’
He blows her a kiss, and closes the door behind him.
23
BEA IS THERE FIRST. SHE HASN’T BEEN IN THIS TEA room for two years, and never before at lunchtime. There are cracks in the window panes that have not been mended, and the tablecloths, the walls, appear more stained than she remembers. Even after her months in France, the smell steaming through the kitchen door is damper and less appetising than before. Well, hardly a soul has anything decent to cook with nowadays; not that the food was ever anything but grim here.
Will Mr Campbell have changed? Everyone changes out there, including her, the Beatrice Masters who can now sit silently by a man’s bed without itching to move. But it’s not something to think about, oneself, you can’t look at yourself any more apart from in the context of the war and what you are doing for it. Maybe that’s all Bea has become, just a part of the war effort, its exhaustion and suffering and grief, and the simply going on, even when she’s in the Ritz dining room with silk flapping on her ankles. Every time she’s been there in the past month, memories of her dinners there with Edward flood her mind. Come back soon, she almost wishes out loud.
She doesn’t see him come in, and suddenly Mr Campbell is sitting opposite her. He is still black-haired, strong-jawed, but his uniform bags across his chest as though he is melting away. When she looks into his eyes expecting to find that old darkness, it is gone. Instead they are sharp and worried.
They don’t speak. They just look across the table at each other, his hands knotted on the top of it, Bea’s underneath, on her lap, and neither of them asking How are you? For the answer will certainly be a lie.
Then Bea talks.
‘It’s good to see you.’
At first he doesn’t reply, just nods. Embarrassed by the silence, Bea looks down and to the side. Then he speaks.
‘Been a long time.’ His voice hasn’t changed, and its deepness sends a familiar rumble through her.
‘Two years.’
‘Decade, could be.’
She doesn’t understand, and looks back at his face. The decade is there, lines fan out from his eyes and run in creases across his forehead. Edward and the other men she knows have not grown this much older.
‘Is it so bad what you do, so different? From the others, I mean.’
Again he is still, then pulls over a smeared menu card lying on the table and looks straight down at it. As Bea watches him, his face whitens. Then he pushes the card away.
‘Not a conversation good for the appetite.’
Their cups of tea come, and Beatrice’s is placed to her left. She can’t reach across with her good right hand, so thinking fingers, fingers, keep the wrist straight, she raises it with her left. It’s not strong enough, and the cup wobbles, tea-stained milk adding to the growing map on the tablecloth.
‘What’s wrong with your arm?’
‘It’s just for a little while,’ she says, too quickly, forcing a smile on to her face, but his eyes have sharpened further.
‘I don’t believe you. Show me.’
Bea doesn’t want to show him, but he’s staring at her, telling her with his eyes just to do it. She puts her gloved hand on the table, trying to straighten her wrist and fingers. He takes it in both of his hands and turns it over surprisingly tenderly, and Bea feels the stiffness in her melt a little.
‘You wrote that it was a small thing.’
‘Compared to’ – she hesitates – ‘compared to out there. In any case, a hand is small.’ She smiles at her wit, and glances at him for approval. Mr Campbell is looking at her almost as though he has tears in his eyes.
The park, he says when they finish, let’s go to the park. Not a museum, nor the cinema. Not back into darkness. What he wants to see is green, and up to Hyde Park Corner and to the park they go.
They walk alongside each other and she tells herself that she’s relaxed with him, even if she flushes a little each time they pass a couple with their arms locked. Out of embarrassment, Bea keeps hers pinned to her sides. Not that Mr Campbell is the type to offer his arm. But Mr Campbell today, she feels, might do anything.
As they enter the park, Bea pulls west towards Kensington but Michael is marching straight on and up towards Marble Arch, alongside Park Lane. This way, he says, better view of the houses from here, like great ships they are, floating along while everyone else is drowning. Yes, says Bea. It must seem like that.
‘Not that you live far away. That address of yours.’
‘It’s not my address.’ This at least is true. It is Celeste’s house. ‘It’s just my mother,’ she continues. ‘Such a hoo-ha about the prospect—’
‘Are there many prospects?’ he butts in. ‘Young gentlemen with an income and the possibility of a future.’
‘According to you, young gentlemen will have no future at all.’
‘Remember that, Miss Masters.’
Still she worries whether he does know where she lives and is just testing her, or whether she’ll flinch as they pass her home and he will guess. She must be a little unsteady for as they draw up alongside Number Thirty-Five, she slips on a wet leaf and for the first time in over three years, since Glebe Place, his hand is on her arm again.
He pulls her upright, and she feels the warmth of his body, and a strange light-headedness with it. When she has steadied her feet, she looks up. Mr Campbell’s face is but half a dozen inches from hers, looking down at her more tenderly than she has ever thought he could feel. It is Bea’s turn to be still, for a moment. Later she will tell herself that her head must have still been spinning from her skid, and that’s why she kissed him.
His lips don’t move and Bea jerks back, her eyes already wet with embarrassment, but he catches her again, holds her and kisses her as angrily as she should have expected.
There are voices in the drawing room when she passes. She walks in to find Clemmie, and the back of a head with short fair hair next to hers on the small green sofa.
It is Clemmie who sees her first.
‘Bea-Bea!’ she exclaims as she pulls herself up.
The man, now upright too, swivels round to face Bea. He is slightly flushed. Bea does not recognise him.
‘I didn’t think—’ continues Clemmie.
‘No,’ interrupts Bea. ‘You didn’t think. Either of you.’ And she stands there, eyes fixed on the pair of them as the man straightens himself and mumbles, ‘See you at dinner, I suppose,’ and walks out, nodding to Bea as he passes.
Clemmie has already lit a cigarette.
‘Don’t look so horrified, darling. It’s wartime. The war effort, you could say. Tom’s been away such ages. They need something, you know, not to mention we do …’ Clemmie pauses and stares back at her. ‘Oh, Bea, don’t be such a prig. You’re behaving as though you’re still a virgin.’
*
Bea lies on her bed, surrounded by green creeper and red velvet, and thinks about Clemmie’s remarks. Is Bea really being sanctimonious, do the rules change that much in wartime? Think about it, Beatrice, think how much they have already changed for you. When, before the war, would she have leant forward and kissed a man before he had tried to kiss her? She may like to think that she had it in her, but she didn�
�t do it. Yet this afternoon she had not been embarrassed by kissing Mr Campbell, well, not once he responded.
Yet, God, what has she done? Mr Campbell is a law clerk, the sort of man whom she should not even know, let alone kiss. The more enjoyable it was, thinks Bea, the more hideous her situation is. Clemmie may talk about breaking the rules but Bea will wager she hasn’t even imagined anyone going this far. She wants to say Never see him again, and that would obviously be the simplest. Or maybe it would be enough that Mr Campbell will say, as he surely will when she sees him on Thursday – and how can she not turn up now – that Monday was the most terrible mistake and they should forget it immediately. And that was what, in the very least, they would do.
Bea is pushing open the glass-panelled tea-room door at twenty past eleven in the morning, feeling nauseous even before the smell has hit her. The memory of what she did is becoming more, rather than less, embarrassing. He had wanted to kiss her, hadn’t he? After all, he did kiss her back, and it had hardly been a politely surprised kiss back. Yet that anger – she had taken it for a degree of passion, but it could have been anger at her for daring to change their friendship. And what will he say to her now? Bea is trying to think of the conversational practicalities or, rather, impossibilities of two people so divided by social station that they still address each other by their surnames, yet have kissed, and her cheeks simply grow hotter.
Mr Campbell is over there, by the window on the far side of the room. When she sees the back of his hatless head, her stomach clenches and she forces herself to take a deep breath.
She sits down opposite him, her eyes fixed on his interwoven fingers, which are whitening at the knuckles as they squeeze his palms.
‘Hullo,’ he says.
‘Hullo.’ Beatrice, you cannot have a conversation with a man’s knuckles, she tells herself. So she looks up and there they are, those chocolate eyes, fixed on her and steadier than they were two days ago.
‘It’s good to see you,’ he says, more tenderly than he has ever spoken to her, and Bea feels herself flushing.
‘Yes. Yes,’ she replies, then stops. What does she say now? Say something, anything, Bea. What conversation are people flogging to death at present? And, almost automatically, Bea finds herself asking Mr Campbell a question that has rolled off her tongue several dozen times during the past fortnight: whether he reckons that the arrival of the American troops any day now means that the war will be over soon.
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