The Penny Bangle

by Margaret James

  ‘Rob would not have met the girl he loved. Steve had his own demons, which were nothing to do with you.’ Rose put her arms round Cassie and hugged her like a mother. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’

  But Cassie did.

  She knew everybody thought her nerves were shot to bits. Her CO called her in to have a pep-talk, to offer her a transfer, to tell her she could have compassionate leave.

  But she didn’t want it and, the day after the funeral, she went straight back to London, driving all around a city that was being traumatised by rockets coming over night and day.

  She didn’t know quite why, but a few days later she realised she didn’t feel afraid. She’d used up all her tears, all her compassion, and all her sympathy. Blazing buildings, bombs, explosions, scenes of carnage, screams of people burning, wounded, dying – she could deal with all of it.

  She wasn’t bothered if the war was lost or won, or just dragged on and on for ever. She couldn’t bring herself to care about it any more.

  Sofia had been careless.

  On a raid with Robert and Marcello and two of the other men, she had tripped and fallen as they ran away from an explosion, and she’d hurt her arm. When they arrived back at their hideout, Robert realised she had broken it.

  He managed to set it straight again between two wooden splints, then bind it up with rags. But it was soon obvious Sofia would be no use to anybody for several weeks or more.

  Marcello was disgusted, ranting in Italian about it being bad luck to have a woman in a banda. He should have sent her home when she and Robert first arrived, he grumbled, and she needn’t think she could just lie there, and have the others waiting on her hand and foot. If she didn’t work, she didn’t eat, and –

  ‘Shut up, Marcello,’ Robert said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you to shut up.’

  There was a sudden silence. Robert realised everyone was looking straight at him, and also realised he had gone too far. But he couldn’t start to back down now, even though he knew the various members of the group could all turn on him, if they pleased.

  He wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t even an Italian. They didn’t owe him anything, and he’d just insulted a man they all respected. He waited to feel steel against his throat.

  But, after a few moments, when he’d realised they weren’t going to kill him, or at any rate not yet, he met Marcello’s stare. ‘I’ll take her home,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t.’ Marcello glared at him. ‘You’re useful, and I need you here with me.’

  ‘What about Sofia?’

  ‘What about Sofia, Roberto?’ Marcello was grinning monkey-like at him. ‘What about your whore? If this one dies, Roberto, you can always get another one. Listen, when she came here, she knew about the risks. She knew she wasn’t wanted, but she stayed. She hung around like a stray dog. I don’t care if she dies like one.’

  ‘I’ll take her home,’ repeated Robert, scowling at Marcello and wishing he didn’t already feel the knife going in his back.

  Then, to his astonishment, one of the other men spoke up. ‘Let them go,’ he said. ‘Let Roberto take the woman home, and then come back to us. You will come back, Roberto, won’t you?’

  The others all joined in – take her home, they said, let the woman go back to her family.

  ‘You’re crazy!’ cried Marcello. ‘You’re crazy, all of you!’ But he knew he was beaten and backed down. ‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘You can take your puttana, but you’ll have no arms, no ammunition, and only one day’s food. When you’ve delivered the woman, you come back. If you don’t, we’ll hunt you down and kill you.’

  Robert nodded, but didn’t promise anything.

  It was the worst of journeys, for the snow was melting and the rivers were all rushing torrents which they somehow had to get across. They were anxious to avoid the Germans, but they still had to steal some food from them.

  Always hungry, always tired, Sofia’s strength was failing, and Robert found he was hoping he was dreaming, that this was all a nightmare from which he would wake up. He didn’t know how he was going to carry on.

  But, somehow, they made it.

  As they approached the villa – six or maybe seven days later, Robert had lost count – they saw it was a ruin. He wasn’t sure quite what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t to see such final, absolute destruction.

  The pigeon loft where he had once been hidden was just a blackened shell. The roof tiles lay in broken orange shards upon the paving far below. The villa’s walls were pockmarked, burnt and holed by high explosive. The grand, impressive entrance portico was blasted into splintered marble bits.

  Robert was so tired today that he understood why many people just gave up, why they lay down and died. If the Germans were still here, he thought he might as well surrender and hope they’d spare Sofia, even if they shot him there and then.

  ‘Get your hands up!’ cried a voice.

  Robert was so exhausted, so light-headed from starvation and fatigue that he didn’t know if he was hearing English, German or Italian, but he raised his hands.

  A dozen men in dirty British battledress encircled him, and he saw from their shoulder flashes they were from the Yorkshire Regiment. As Sofia sank down helpless on the weed-choked gravel, he called out his name and rank and regiment, and he almost laughed to see their faces.

  But actual laughter was beyond him.

  There were a couple of rooms which must have been inhabitable still, for Robert could see faces at the broken windows. After he’d told his captors that the lady was the owner of the villa, a sergeant agreed to let Sofia go and lie down in one, and helped her limp away.

  Robert was taken, still at gunpoint, to the men’s CO, interrogated for an hour, and finally he managed to convince the captain he was not a German spy.

  ‘What’s happened to the family?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s only one old man here,’ said the captain. ‘Oh, and some old witch in black who shuffles round and round the place, wringing her hands and mumbling to herself.’

  ‘I know who you mean,’ said Robert. ‘She and the other lady saved my life. I hope she’s being treated well.’

  ‘She’s only some old peasant woman,’ the CO said abruptly. ‘She looks about a hundred, she’s just skin and bone, she isn’t going to last into the spring.’

  Robert decided that the grey-haired woman was going to last for rather longer than the CO thought. She had Sofia home again, to nurse her back to health. So she could not die yet.

  A few days later, he was pleased to see Sofia was looking slightly better. The weather was warming up a little, and one afternoon she let him take her out on to the loggia, where the air was mild and pleasant, and where the weak, late winter sun could kiss her pale, thin face.

  ‘You’re going with the army,’ she began, before he had a chance to explain he’d come to say goodbye.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sofia, I promise I won’t forget you.’

  ‘No?’ Sofia shrugged. ‘You promised you would go back to Marcello.’

  ‘I didn’t promise Marcello anything. In any case, Marcello’s war is over, and yours is over, too.’ Robert took Sofia’s hand. ‘You did so well,’ he said. ‘You were so brave, so daring.’

  ‘But I failed the most important test.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I failed to make you love me.’ Sofia turned her head aside and wouldn’t look at him. ‘So now, go with the army,’ she told Robert, as she pulled her hand away. ‘Go back to your pretty blonde fiancée, and tell her she’s a very lucky woman.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cassie got sick of waiting, hoping, praying. She grew tired of being in the army, tired of all the drill and marching, tired of living with a noisy crowd of other women, tired of never being alone.

  She spent a quiet weekend with her granny, and realised how much she loved poor Lily – mad, grief-stricken Lily, who longed to be united with her daughter, whose gnar
led, arthritic fingers took all day and half the night to polish up the shrine.

  Lily’s idea of paradise was doubtless something like the three of them – Lily, Cassie and her mother – sitting round the kitchen table with a couple of tins of heavenly Brasso, polishing little statues of the Virgin, while a celestial choir made up of cherubim and seraphim sang the songs of Gracie Fields, Anne Shelton, Vera Lynn.

  Cassie had never thought she would miss smoky, smog-stained Smethwick quite so much. But these days she wanted more than anything to be at home again, to see the people she’d known all her life, to hear their voices, to walk down the familiar streets once more – not that many of these streets remained.

  The spring came very slowly. January and February of 1945 were cold and dark and sleety. But then the days grew longer, March dragged into April, and April finally seeped into May.

  Cassie hardly noticed when the official declaration came, when it was on the wireless that the war in Europe was actually won. She hardly saw the people in the streets, rejoicing, getting drunk and being happy.

  Then she had a telephone call from Rose.

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ cried Rose. ‘Cassie, my dear – you won’t believe it. I can hardly take it in myself. But I’ve had a letter from Rob’s commanding officer, and Robert didn’t die, and now he’s back in England! He’s been fighting with the partisans in Italy, he’s been in the mountains blowing up bridges, and mining railway lines, to stop the Germans – amazing stuff like that.

  ‘He’s at a repatriation centre in Hastings at the moment. He’ll need to be debriefed, of course, but then he can come home! Cassie, isn’t that the most tremendous thing you ever heard?’ Rose was crying, laughing, all at once. ‘Cass, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, Rose, I’m here,’ said Cassie. ‘Yes, I heard you. Yes, it’s wonderful,’ she added dully, but she couldn’t take it in.

  ‘Poor Cassie, you’re in shock.’ Rose sounded rather strange herself, thought Cassie. ‘I’ll ring again,’ Rose added, ‘when I have more news. All right?’

  ‘All right.’ Cassie forced herself to speak. ‘Look after yourself. Yes, I’ll be careful. Bye.’

  ‘Good news, I hope?’ asked Captain Bright, who’d summoned Cassie to her office to take the urgent call.

  ‘Yes, the best, ma’am,’ Cassie said, but even she could hear her voice was toneless. ‘My fiancé is alive.’

  ‘You don’t look very happy.’

  ‘I – I suppose I can’t believe it.’ Cassie stood there feeling numb, the wire from the handset to the base twisted round and round and round her fingers, cutting into them.

  ‘Why don’t you have a few hours off?’ The captain took the handset back and placed it on the phone. ‘Go home to your billet and have a sleep. You’ve had a shock, albeit a pleasant one. I’ll send someone with you, shall I?’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am, but that won’t be necessary.’ Cassie managed to cover her face before the tears came. ‘Give me a minute, ma’am,’ she added, mumbling through her fingers, ‘and then I’ll be all right.’

  After feeling frozen for a while, Cassie began to thaw. At first she wouldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it. She thought she had imagined the whole thing. What if it was all a big mistake, a huge misunderstanding? What if Rose was wrong? She couldn’t trust herself to hope, and then be disappointed.

  But then she had a card from Robert, it was postmarked Hastings, and she let herself believe.

  She wrote to him at once, a jumbled outpouring of grief, relief and happiness. She said she longed to see him.

  She was glad she hadn’t had to be the one who broke the awful news about his brother. Rose said she’d do that. ‘I’ll know what to say,’ insisted Rose, and Cassie thought, you don’t, but didn’t argue.

  Robert wrote again to say he’d soon be getting two months’ leave. He couldn’t wait to see her, he had so much to tell her, and he expected she had plenty to tell him?

  ‘I killed your brother.’ Cassie said the words out loud, to an empty bedroom, and then she hung her head.

  Cassie and Robert met at Waterloo, their own reunion one of thousands going on as each incoming train disgorged its cargo of returning servicemen.

  Some of the men looked awful – sick and yellow, old and ill. But Robert looked absolutely gorgeous, fit and sunburned, if a bit too thin. As he swept her up into his arms and kissed her once, twice, twenty times, Cassie began to cry.

  ‘Come on, Cass – no tears,’ said Robert, brushing them or kissing them away.

  ‘Sorry.’ Cassie swallowed hard.

  ‘I’d hoped you would be pleased to see me?’

  ‘Rob, of course I’m pleased!’ But as she had seen Robert coming towards her down the platform, Cassie had seen Stephen too, a grey ghost hovering behind his twin. These days, she was afraid she’d always see him. ‘It’s just that I’m – ’

  ‘You’re what?’ asked Robert gently.

  Cassie swallowed hard again. ‘I’m very, very happy.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Robert, and he took Cassie’s hand. ‘Cass, where shall we go?’

  ‘There won’t be anyone at home, they’re all on leave,’ said Cassie.

  ‘Good, let’s go to bed.’

  They went straight up to Cassie’s bedroom, where light reflected from the river made patterns on the walls, and the muslin curtains fluttered in the summer breeze.

  She was so afraid he would have changed, that going through the war in Italy might have made him cynical or cruel. There had been lots of stories going round, about returning servicemen being strangers to their wives and girlfriends, about how men’s experiences in battle had changed them for the worse, had even made them violent and spiteful.

  But Robert was just as she remembered him in Alexandria – loving, sexy, charming, generous, kind. Somehow, he was also more grown-up, and much more self-assured.

  He’d always been self-confident, of course. But now he had a quieter authority about him.

  When she’d met him first, he’d shouted and he’d bellowed, and it had taken all her courage to stand up to him. She remembered Frances trembling when he’d yelled at her about the bull.

  But now he didn’t seem to feel the need to raise his voice to make a point. He’d obviously been doing something which had made him think he had the right to be obeyed.

  She hoped he’d talk about it some time soon, would tell her what had happened on those Italian battlefields and in the mountains with the partisans.

  ‘You’ve got your silver bracelet on,’ he said, as he unbuttoned Cassie’s cuff.

  ‘Yes, I always wear it.’

  ‘Always?’ murmured Robert, smiling as he walked his strong, tanned fingers up her arm. ‘Non-religious jewellery, wearing of – against King’s Regulations, isn’t it?’

  ‘I stuff it up my sleeve, so nobody can see it.’ Cassie beamed back up at him. ‘I’ll always love it, Rob. While you were away, it made me feel I was close to you.’

  ‘What about your penny bangle, then?’

  ‘It’s in my sewing kit.’

  ‘I thought you’d lose it.’

  ‘I’ll never lose my penny bangle, Rob. It’s part of you, it means the world to me!’

  Afterwards, they had a doze, Cassie curled up in Robert’s arms and warm against his chest.

  It would be like this when they were married, she thought happily. If only Stephen hadn’t died, it would all have been so wonderful, so absolutely perfect. But she knew she mustn’t think of Stephen all the time. She must think of the living, not the dead.

  As it was getting dark, Robert went downstairs to make some tea and see if there was anything to eat.

  ‘Madam?’ he whispered, as he put the tray down on the night stand. ‘Tea is served, and I found some horrible-looking Bourbon biscuits, too.’

  ‘Oh, Robert Denham, you make a lovely butler!’ Cassie grinned and kissed him. ‘But next time you go downstairs,’ she added, ‘put some clothes on, or someone coming in migh
t get a shock. There’s some sugar hidden behind the packets of dried egg. I dare say you found it?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Robert. ‘But I left it for the others. You don’t need any sugar, Cassie love. You’re sweet enough.’

  Cassie didn’t have any driving duties planned next day. She didn’t have any driving duties planned all week, in fact. She was wondering now if everybody had forgotten the ATS existed, if they could all go home.

  Robert took her out to lunch at a restaurant in the Strand, and later on they walked in Regent’s Park – not that it was a park as such these days, more of a bomb site, rubbish dump for rubble from the Blitz and vegetable patch rolled into one.

  ‘It’ll be cleaned up,’ said Robert, skirting round a pile of broken masonry almost as high as him. ‘You wait and see – in a year from now, we’ll all have forgotten about the war.’

  Such wishful thinking, said Cassie to herself. But she didn’t say anything to Robert, merely reflecting that the war had changed the world forever.

  She wondered if he wanted to talk about that awful, dreadful night when Stephen died. She thought perhaps she’d wait and see.

  ‘Shall we go to the cinema this evening?’ he suggested. ‘We could see that new Gene Kelly film?’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ said Cassie, thinking – when’s it going to come? When are you going to do your grieving? When are you going to remember you once had a brother?

  But she found she couldn’t say anything.

  They went to see the film, and then they had a drink or two with a couple of American soldiers, who said they were longing to go back home to Texas.

  Then they went and called at the apartment in Park Lane, to see if Daisy was at home. She wasn’t, so they walked back slowly to the house in Chelsea, where they went to bed.

  After they’d made love, Robert put the light back on, sat up against the pillows. ‘I have something to tell you,’ he began.

  ‘Have you?’ Cassie snuggled up against him, walked her fingers up and down his chest. ‘Go on – tell me, then?’