The Penny Bangle

by Margaret James

  ‘How’s she getting on with whatsisname?’

  ‘I think they’re hoping to get married, that’s if he can get divorced.’

  ‘But he’s far too old for her, you know – and he’s a cripple, too.’ Stephen lit another cigarette. ‘I should have nabbed her, when I had the chance. I might drop her a line.’

  ‘Steve, she’s very happy with her Simon.’ Cassie thought, don’t interfere, don’t start making up to Frances, don’t encourage her to think you love her after all, get her to break off her affair with Simon, change your mind again, and break her heart.

  ‘Simon,’ Stephen said sarcastically, and then he pulled a face. ‘I think our Frances could do better than a geriatric cripple, Cass – don’t you?’

  ‘Leave Fran alone, Steve. Promise me?’ Cassie looked at Stephen earnestly. ‘What about your girl from Shropshire, how’s that working out?’

  ‘She keeps nagging on at me to go to bloody Ludlow to meet her bloody parents.’ Stephen scowled. ‘Daddy’s master of the local hunt and lives for field sports, which I hate – they’re pointless and they’re boring and they’re cruel – while Mummy does the flowers in church, and good works on the side. I don’t think they’ll be my sort of people.’

  ‘Steve, you never know.’

  The train was late, and everything was in total darkness by the time they finally shunted into Paddington. Stephen said to Cassie he’d walk her home to Chelsea, and they could have a drink along the way. He knew a decent pub in Fulham Road.

  ‘It’s a long way,’ Cassie told him, ‘for you to come to Chelsea, and then walk back to Berkeley Street.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Stephen, as he picked up Cassie’s kitbag. ‘I don’t have anything else to do.’

  As they started stumbling through the blackout, he took Cassie’s hand. Occasional flurries of sleet were making all the pavements slippery, so she was glad of someone to hold on to in the darkness.

  She had enjoyed the past few days in Stephen’s company. They’d gone for walks across the winter fields, they’d helped the land girls on the farm, they’d sat together in the snug old pub in Charton, and they’d walked back down the lanes to Melbury in moonlight under dark blue velvet skies. She’d thought, if I had had a brother, I’d have wanted him to be like Steve.

  But maybe he would be her brother yet?

  Stephen’s hand felt comfortable in hers – it was strong and warm, and also solid and reassuring. Perhaps, she thought, if Robert doesn’t come back, if Stephen wants to see me?

  I do like him, very much. But could I love him, too? Maybe one day I could. He and Rob, they’re almost the same person. They look so very similar, and they sound the same.

  Stephen’s good, he’s kind, he’s very thoughtful, and I know he likes me. More than likes me. I could probably help him whenever he gets moody, when he’s missing Robert and he’s sad. So perhaps, after the war is over –

  She gave his hand a friendly squeeze, and when a taxi passed them in the darkness, its headlights yellow slits, she could see a smile on his face. ‘All right, Cass?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ she said. ‘But how are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m okay,’ said Stephen, and he shrugged. ‘I’m sorry I was going on just now. I get like that sometimes.’

  ‘I think we all do, don’t we?’ Cassie smiled herself, relieved to hear him sounding like his normal self again.

  ‘I’m looking forward to that beer,’ he added.

  ‘So am I.’

  The quiet of the night was suddenly shattered by a huge explosion, the roar of engines and a sonic boom that echoed round the empty, silent streets.

  ‘That’s a V2,’ said Cassie fearfully. ‘It must have come down somewhere very close.’

  ‘Yes.’ Stephen grasped her hand more tightly. ‘Come on, let’s go and see.’

  ‘See what?’ asked Cassie.

  ‘What’s going on, of course.’

  ‘Stephen, I don’t want – ’

  But her hand was firmly clasped in Stephen’s, and he began to pull her through the streets.

  The rocket had hit a house at the south end of Sussex Place, and it was on fire. But the firemen must have come along within a couple of minutes of the explosion, and several ARP men were also on the scene.

  ‘Stand back, sir,’ said a fireman, as Stephen dragged Cassie across the road towards the blazing house, then stood there, mesmerised.

  Cassie looked at Stephen anxiously. She saw his eyes were glazed, that he looked feverish and excited, and that his lips were white. She thought he might be going to have a fit.

  She remembered what he’d said the first day she had met him, how his eyes had sparkled when he’d described his own house burning down.

  She shuddered, and she held his hand more tightly, as if restraining him.

  ‘Do you know if anyone’s inside?’ she asked the fireman.

  ‘We think so,’ he replied. ‘Or, at any rate, there are people living in the attics, and we don’t know what’s become of them. But we’re dealing with it. Please, sir – can you move? You’re in the way.’ The fireman put one hand on Stephen’s sleeve, to push him back.

  But, as he did so, Stephen pulled his hand from Cassie’s grasp and ducked under the fireman’s arm. She didn’t realise what was happening until she saw him running towards the burning house.

  ‘Steve!’ she shouted, horrified.

  She would have followed him. She would have dragged him back by bodily force. But two ARP men held her arms, and hacking at their shins had no effect.

  ‘Steve, come back!’ she shrieked, and fought the ARP men, but to no avail.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what happened next, could never afterwards sort out the whole sequence of events in her own mind. As she gazed in terror, Stephen disappeared inside the house.

  Cassie shrieked again, willing him to hear her voice and turn round, come back out.

  Then, as the firemen’s hoses sprayed the building, the water making rainbows against the orange flames, one wall of the stricken house swayed gently. Then it sort of crumpled, and then came crashing down. Cassie stared and stared, unable to do anything but gaze in terror at the wicked flames.

  ‘Go and see to that one,’ she heard a man’s voice say, and then a WVS woman turned up out of nowhere, and she wrapped Cassie in a heavy blanket.

  ‘It’s all right, my duck,’ she soothed. ‘You’ve had a nasty shock. I know it isn’t very nice, when you’re on your way back home, and you turn a corner, and there’s a house on fire. But don’t you worry, the men are dealing with it, and everyone’s all right.’

  ‘Everyone?’ said Cassie, hope leaping in her heart.

  ‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘the firemen got the family out. But some ARP men were telling us a couple of minutes ago that they saw some lunatic go running into the house. They saw him go right up the stairs, they told us, making for the attics. They don’t know where he came from, or what he was trying to do. They haven’t found him yet.’

  ‘He isn’t mad, he’s epileptic!’ Cassie wailed.

  ‘Why, do you know him?’

  ‘Yes, he’s my – he’s my – ’

  But what could she say, that Stephen was her brother, lover, friend? All those, yet maybe none of them – how could she know? She settled for he’s my friend.

  ‘Try not to worry, love,’ the WVS woman said. ‘They’ll get him out, you’ll see. But, in the meantime, we ought to get you home.’

  The woman led Cassie to a small green van parked a little way along the street, where other WVS women were making tea and sandwiches for the firemen. ‘Do you live round here?’ the woman asked, as Cassie shook and trembled, and as she tried in vain to hold a mug of scalding tea, which slopped all down her coat.

  ‘N-no,’ she stammered. ‘But a f-friend of mine lives in Park Lane.’ Cassie gave the woman Daisy’s number, and then she sat down on the kerb and closed her eyes.

  But she could still see wicked, dancing flame
s, see the black shape of Stephen running into them, as if he were running into a loved one’s arms. She knew she’d always see them, even if she lived to be a hundred.

  Daisy came for Cassie in a taxi and took her to the apartment in Park Lane.

  ‘Sit down, Cass,’ she said, as they both stumbled – shell-shocked, frightened, disbelieving – into Daisy’s sitting room. ‘I’ll go and make us something hot. Then, when you’re ready, you can explain what happened.’

  ‘We were walking back from Paddington,’ said Cassie wretchedly. ‘We’d been to see your mum for a few days. We’d had a lovely time.’ She sipped the coffee which Daisy had laced liberally with brandy. ‘Steve was in a funny mood – he was up one moment, down the next. I said I’d go and have a beer with him. I thought I might be able to cheer him up a bit.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘We were just chatting about anything and nothing. I thought he sounded almost back to normal. We heard this big explosion. Then suddenly he was pulling me along. He said we had to go and see the fire.’

  ‘But why would he want to see a fire?’ demanded Daisy, frowning. ‘He’s been here in London since 1942, and he must have seen a thousand fires. Why go and look at this one?’

  ‘I think he found fires interesting, exciting.’ Cassie didn’t want to talk to Daisy about what Stephen said when they’d first met, about how it would feel to walk in fire. It would have made him sound insane, as if he should have been locked up. ‘But anyway, we got there, and this house was burning, and a fireman tried to push us back, but Steve ducked underneath his arm.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He ran into the house.’

  ‘But why?’ demanded Daisy as Cassie started sobbing. ‘I don’t blame you, love,’ she said quickly, as she came to sit down next to Cassie, as she put her arm around her shoulders and as she held her tight. ‘Please, Cassie darling, don’t break your heart like this! But I need to ask you why – ’

  ‘Daisy, I don’t know!’ insisted Cassie.

  But she did. She knew exactly why. It had been preying on his mind, the fact that he was not a hero. Steve had been determined that he would be a hero, or die in the attempt.

  She blamed herself. She had asked that fireman if there was anyone inside the house, and Steve had heard the man reply. ‘Do you know if anyone’s inside?’ she’d asked. Six little words, and they’d condemned him, had sentenced him to death.

  She wept and wept for him, more than she’d wept for Robert. She thought the tears would never, ever stop. Steve, she thought, you idiot, you fool! What are we going to tell your mother?

  It was such a pointless waste of life.

  Robert and Sofia were a team.

  Marcello and the others understood it, and let them plan and organise some missions of their own. Marcello was always very pleased to see them coming home with anything they’d stolen from the Germans – guns and hand grenades, supplies they’d filched from German general stores, and on one occasion a whole crate of schnapps.

  Robert made sure he and Sofia got their share of schnapps, decanting it into their water bottles and taking it along with him when he and Sofia went off on private raids.

  One day, after a raid on a supply store, they lost their way coming back home and were benighted on the mountain. Freezing cold and hungry, they could not see anything to guide them on an overcast and starless night.

  ‘We passed a shepherd’s hut a while ago,’ Sofia said, pulling her tattered coat around her body, and hugging herself as she tried to keep warm. ‘I think we should go back to it. Otherwise, Marcello and the others are going to find us frozen on the mountain when they come to look for us tomorrow – and that’s if we’re lucky, if the Germans haven’t found us first.’

  Robert agreed Sofia was right, so they turned back the way they’d come, hoping they were keeping to the track, which was difficult in the pitch dark. They’d know they’d missed it when they ended up in the ravine a dizzying drop below.

  The hut was damp and freezing, but at least it gave them some shelter from the wind. Robert lit a match and saw there was some rubbish in a corner – several cardboard boxes with German lettering all over them, empty packets, paper wrappings, even musty straw.

  He wondered if they dared to start a fire?

  He lit another match, and with his other hand he began to push the boxes into a small pile. The fire would last ten minutes at the very most, he realised. But for those ten minutes they would have warmth and light.

  ‘No!’ Sofia cried, when she understood what he was doing.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded crossly.

  ‘You never know who might be watching.’

  ‘You think there’s a platoon of German soldiers lurking in the pine trees? Anyway, if any soldiers come, they’ll see we’re harmless peasants. We’ll tell them we’re returning from a wedding feast or something, and we’ve lost our way.’

  ‘Roberto, don’t be stupid,’ said Sofia scornfully. ‘Look at what we’re carrying – guns and ammunition we’ve stolen from the Germans, a sack of flour you pinched from that cook’s hut, some tins of sauerkraut, packs of pumpernickel bread. These came from an Italian wedding breakfast? I’ll let you explain!

  ‘As for pretending to be peasants – you see this coat I’m wearing? I know it’s dirty, torn and ragged now, but it came from the smartest shop in Florence – no peasant ever had a coat like this. You stink of high explosive. Your hands are covered with burns and cuts from laying charges and detonating them.’

  ‘So we sit here and freeze to death?’ asked Robert, who was now annoyed with her for talking to him in the bossy, patronising way she often did, especially when she thought – or in this case, knew – that she was right.

  ‘We snuggle up for warmth, we eat some pumpernickel bread and drink your schnapps.’

  ‘I must admit I had forgotten about the schnapps.’ Robert found his water bottle, shook it. ‘It’s nearly full,’ he said.

  They huddled close together, eating bread and drinking schnapps and feeling a delicious warmth flow into them. ‘What do you think, Sofia?’ asked Robert, as he drank again. ‘What’s this stuff made of – apples, pears or plums?’

  ‘None of them,’ Sofia said, and giggled naughtily. ‘This is the best stuff, made of cherries. It was intended for a colonel’s table.’

  ‘But it ended up here in our hut.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sofia, and now she snuggled closer, slipping one cold hand inside his shirt. ‘Roberto, you’re so warm inside your clothes,’ she whispered, running her long fingers up and down his chest. ‘But me, I’m cold, I’m freezing – feel how cold I am.’ She took his hand, pulled it inside her coat and laid it on her beating heart.

  Robert could smell Sofia now and, even though she hadn’t had a wash for several days, the female muskiness of her was more intoxicating than the most expensive scent.

  He could feel the schnapps firing his blood, demanding action, telling him that here was a young woman, a lovely, willing woman, and she wanted him. He kissed her on the mouth, tasting the schnapps, tasting Sofia, and suddenly he wanted, needed more – he knew that he could never have enough.

  ‘I always get my man,’ Sofia told him, as they lay together under both their coats upon the musty straw, in a warm, tangled heap of arms and legs.

  ‘You’re a determined woman,’ Robert said, and offered her the last of what was in his bottle.

  She drank and let some dribble down her chin, raising her pale face to his, inviting him to lick it off and laughing when he did. ‘As Marcello says, you’re a black witch,’ he told Sofia. ‘You’re a sorceress, you’re an enchantress. You’ve put a spell on me.’

  But in the morning, when the cold, grey dawn came creeping like a ghost on to the mountain, and Robert woke with a thick head and mother of all hangovers, he found the spell was broken.

  Sofia lay beside him, fast asleep, her dark hair matted and her face begrimed, apart from where the runnels of sticky schnapps had w
ashed away a little of the dirt.

  He wished he could turn back the clock. Why had he done this stupid, stupid thing? He liked Sofia, he admired Sofia, she had saved his life. She was the bravest, strongest woman he had ever known. But she was not the one he loved.

  Sofia stirred and then opened her eyes. ‘I know,’ she said, as she looked at his face.

  ‘What do mean, you know?’

  ‘You Englishmen, you’re good at feeling guilty. You wish we hadn’t done those things we did last night. So I suppose you hate me now?’

  ‘I’ll never hate you,’ Robert said. ‘Come on,’ he added, pulling on his clothes, then picking up the various bags and sacks they’d dumped when they’d decided they would spend the night in this damp hut. ‘We must be getting back. Marcello and the others will think we’ve run away.’

  Rose left the farm and went to London to identify the body.

  She was absolutely adamant that Daisy mustn’t do it. But afterwards she looked so ill and shocked that Daisy said to Cassie she wished she had insisted, wished she’d told her mother she was a big girl now, and could do this for Steve.

  Cassie was afraid that even though she’d privately convinced herself she was to blame for Stephen’s death, Rose might say in public that Cassie was a wicked, grasping harlot who had come into her family and caused them all great pain.

  But Rose was kind to Cassie. ‘Steve always felt that he was second best,’ she said, as she and Cassie sat quietly in the cottage the evening after Stephen’s funeral, when the other mourners had all gone away. He was buried with his father now, in the local churchyard, underneath an ancient, dripping yew. ‘He hero-worshipped Robert,’ Rose continued. ‘He adored him, literally. When Robert joined the army in 1939, Stephen followed suit – went into the same regiment, applied for a commission, was determined to do everything that Rob could do. But it really bothered him, that Rob was always bigger, brighter, braver – better at everything.’

  ‘I’m so s-sorry, Rose.’ Since Stephen’s death, Cassie found she couldn’t stop crying, found that she was bursting into tears on buses, in the street, while driving officers around, while working in the motor pool. ‘I expect you wish I’d never met them. If I’d never come to Melbury – ’