‘When I was in Italy, I – I met a girl.’
‘What?’ Cassie’s eyes snapped open and she stared at him. ‘W-what do you mean, you met a girl?’
‘While I was with partisans, there was this Italian girl, Sofia. She was a partisan as well, and she was a very brave and very clever woman. She and I – ’
‘You’re telling me you slept with this Sofia?’
Cassie willed him to say no, of course he hadn’t slept with whatsername – to say he’d been attracted, and they’d had a smooch. She thought she could forgive a smooch or two.
‘Yes, I did,’ said Robert. ‘It was just the once and I was drunk on schnapps. I didn’t know if I should tell you. But I think it’s better to be honest about this sort of thing.’
‘Yes, your mother told me you were honest.’ As Cassie’s world began to crumble, icicles of misery started stabbing at her heart. She couldn’t bear to look at Robert, so she turned to stare out of the window at the black night sky. ‘But in my opinion, honesty is sometimes over-rated.’
‘You’d prefer it if I lied to you?’
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t sleep with other women while you’re engaged to me!’ Cassie spun back round and glared at him. ‘I could have slept with other men!’ she cried.
‘Yes, Cass, I know,’ said Robert calmly. ‘Did you, then?’
‘No, I bloody didn’t, because I’m not a tart!’ Cassie couldn’t understand how Robert could be so relaxed, so cool, so unconcerned. It was as if he’d just confessed to nicking biscuits from a tin, not hurting her in the most awful way. ‘But I – ’
‘But what?’
‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but since we’re being honest – I could have slept with Stephen.’
That made him wince, as if she’d just thrown acid in his face. ‘He wanted me, you know,’ she said, with vengeful satisfaction. ‘Your brother wanted me!’
‘So did you?’
Robert’s voice now had an edge to it, and part of Cassie thought, don’t take this any further, don’t deliberately taunt him. Talk about this whole thing sensibly.
But her other self was much too angry to back down.
‘Did you, Cassie?’ he repeated calmly, dangerously. ‘Did you actually go to bed with Steve?’
‘No, I didn’t, actually,’ Cassie spat, deliberately taking off his accent. ‘But I liked him well enough to sleep with him. Actually, I wish I had, because if Steve and I had done the deed, he’d probably still be alive today.’
‘Stop it, Cassie.’ Robert’s voice became a growl, a warning, angry rumble.
But Cassie didn’t care. She dug the knife in, twisted it again. She was so upset, so angry that she couldn’t help it. ‘I loved your brother, Rob,’ she said. ‘Stephen was so good, so kind to me. When I first arrived in Melbury, he made me feel so welcome. But you were really horrid – surly, rude and mean. I’ll always remember what you said that night.’
‘What night?’
‘The first night I was there.’
‘What did I say?’
‘You said, “I reckon she’s a slum kid, she looks pasty-faced and feeble. I bet you she’ll be useless, and bone idle, too.”’
‘You’re imagining things.’
‘I’m not, those were your very words!’ Cassie glared at him. ‘That’s what you still think – isn’t it, Mr Denham? I’m a slum kid, but you’re Mr British Army Officer, kindly condescending to the lower bloody ranks.’
‘You know that isn’t true.’
‘I don’t know anything.’ Cassie kept her furious blue glare on Robert’s face. ‘Your mum thinks you’re a hero,’ she continued angrily. ‘Going off to fight in foreign parts, joining the Italian partisans and blowing up bloody bridges – all that stuff.
‘But Stephen was the hero. He didn’t have your luck, your nerve, your charm, but he stuck at it, trying to do his best. So let me tell you, Robert Denham, Steve was worth a dozen or more of you!’
‘I know,’ said Robert. ‘I loved Stephen, Cass. I really did. I’m missing him like crazy. Somehow, it seems part of me is dead.’
‘I don’t believe you, Robert. You’re too selfish to consider anyone but yourself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Robert said.
‘What do you mean, you’re sorry?’
‘I’m sorry for betraying you, for hurting you, and I hope you’ll forgive me.’
‘Do you, now?’
If he’d begged and pleaded, if he’d cried and grovelled, she would have pitied him – and despised him just a little, too?
Yes, perhaps she would.
But this cool assurance – this patrician arrogance – this British-army-officer routine, this he-hoped-she-would-forgive-him stuff, as if he’d broken something small and valueless by accident, not stabbed her through the heart – it made her want to hurt him, make him bleed.
‘It’s over, Rob,’ she said.
‘What?’ Robert stared, astonished. ‘You’re not even trying to understand!’
‘Oh, I understand all right!’ Cassie glared at him. ‘We were engaged. You went to fight in Italy. You had a bit on the side with some Italian tart. You think I shouldn’t mind.’
She yanked the silver bracelet off her wrist and threw it back at him.
‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ he asked.
‘I don’t care what you do with it!’ she shrieked. ‘Lose it, flog it, stick it up your arse, it’s all the same to me!’
Then she burst into tears. ‘Get out of this house,’ she sobbed. ‘Go now, and don’t come back!’
Robert stared at her and she could see that he was angry now, and for just one moment she was seriously scared.
She shrank against the pillows, ready to defend herself.
But he got out of bed, picked up his clothes and walked into the bathroom. He dressed and left without another word.
Cassie burrowed underneath the bedclothes, welcoming the darkness. She already knew she was a fool, to throw a good man’s love away.
But she also knew she couldn’t live with Robert Denham, with a man who could forget that she had feelings, too.
She’d only be her stupid mother, all over again.
Robert strode off down the street, which was still full of people, even though it was so late.
He could feel his heart was hammering and his pulse was racing, and knew he’d never come so close to losing it, even in the heat of battle, even when he’d seen his men cut down, and he’d wanted more than anything to kill the bastards who had killed his men.
As Cass had shrieked at him, a naked, howling banshee, he had felt such rage, such fury mixed with grief and guilt and shame, that he didn’t know how he had managed to control himself.
As he strode along the pavement, he became aware of people glancing at him nervously. Whenever anybody came towards him, he glared at them so fiercely that they moved out of his way.
He didn’t know what to do or where to go, but finally he decided he would find an all-night club, and drink himself into a stupor.
So that was what he did.
Cassie didn’t know what to do. She had no driving duties. The capital was full of servicewomen who were surplus to requirements, and on extended leave. They were having a high old time with Yanks, Australians and Canadians, who all seemed to carry bulging wallets stuffed with money, which they were more than happy to spend on British girls.
Some ATS had gone to Paris or Berlin, and the new occupying Allied army was apparently very short of drivers. So Cassie could have gone across the Channel. She could have had her photograph taken as she stood there grinning with other servicewomen by the Eiffel Tower, or walking in the ruins of Berlin.
But she decided not to volunteer. So now she had more leave than she could ever have wanted, and she spent it wandering around the city streets all on her own.
A few days after Cassie had seen Robert, Frances came to London to try to buy some new civilian clothes for when she was demobbed. She was look
ing forward to hearing all the thrilling details of their grand reunion.
‘But not all the details, obviously,’ she added grinning, when she and Cassie met at Euston station.
But then she looked at Cassie’s face, saw the deep circles underneath her eyes, and realised Cassie hadn’t slept for days. ‘Cass, what’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘It’s all off, Frances,’ Cassie said abruptly. ‘Me and Rob, it’s over.’
‘Cassie, no!’ cried Frances. ‘Why?’
‘He had it off with some Italian tart.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Frances sighed and shook her sleek, dark head. ‘Cassie,’ she said kindly, ‘I’m sure that lots and lots of men who have been overseas, they must have – ’
‘Yes, you’re probably right, but that don’t mean – ’
‘Cassie, sweetheart, please don’t be so hasty. I know you must be angry and upset. But have you heard what Robert has to say? Have you let him explain?’
‘What is there to explain?’ demanded Cassie hotly. ‘He was engaged to me – he had it off with an Italian woman – end of story. Just because you’re going with a married man, who doesn’t care about his wedding vows! Just because you’ve stolen some other woman’s man – ’
‘Cassie, that’s unkind of you.’ Frances flushed bright red. ‘I only meant – ’
‘I’m sorry, that was spiteful.’ Cassie bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to take it out on Frances. ‘But could we talk about something else?’ she asked.
Frances brightened up again at once. ‘We’ve got a plan,’ she said as they walked across the Euston Road. ‘Simon and Ewan, Daisy and I, we’ve met up now and then, and we – ’
‘When did you and Daisy get so pally?’
Then Cassie thought, so this is how it happens. This is how my world comes tumbling down in a great cloud of dust, how I lose Daisy, Frances, Ewan, Rose – how I lose everything.
‘We’re not exactly pally, Cass,’ said Frances, going pink. ‘But we know each other, obviously. Our families live in the same place, and we meet occasionally at parties, weddings, funerals and things.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Cassie. ‘Silly me.’
‘So Daisy wrote to Mrs Denham, asking if she thought I might be interested in her plans for Charton Minster. So then Mrs Denham wrote to me. We’ve been discussing what we could organise for those poor children. We were thinking – ’
Frances chattered on and on, explaining. But Cassie didn’t hear a single word that Frances said, and didn’t want to hear. What was Rose’s house to Cassie now? She would never see it again. She would have nothing more to do with Daisy, who would probably think she was an idiot to let her brother go.
They walked together round the shops with Cassie in a daze, locked deep inside her hopeless misery.
‘What do you think of this one?’ Frances asked, holding up an orange rayon nightdress edged with mean and tawdry bits of coffee-coloured lace.
‘It’s lovely,’ Cassie said.
‘Or is this one prettier?’ Frances picked up another rayon nightdress, this time in a violent shade of bluish-purplish-red. ‘A bit too scarlet woman, do you think?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Cassie, who couldn’t have cared less. ‘If it’s for your wedding night, you won’t be in it long in any case.’
‘I’m sorry, Cassie, I’m being very tactless.’ Frances looked at Cassie, her brown eyes soft and kind. ‘Let’s try to find some cardigans instead. Then we’ll go and have something to eat, and I must catch my train.’
‘All right’ said Cassie. ‘You can have my coupons, if you like? I don’t want anything.’
‘Try to eat and sleep, and look after yourself,’ said Frances, when she went to catch her train to Chester. ‘As for you and Robert – will you think about it, Cass?’
‘What’s there to think about?’
‘You could write to Rob? You could arrange to meet and talk to him?’
‘Fran, I can’t,’ said Cassie wretchedly.
‘Oh, Cass, why not?’
‘I’m not going to marry a man who’ll wipe his feet on me.’
Chapter Nineteen
‘Mum, there’s nothing wrong,’ insisted Robert.
‘You can’t fool me,’ said Rose. ‘You’re fretting about something, aren’t you? When is Cassie coming down to Dorset?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Robert, picking up the Farming Times and looking at advertisements for ploughs. ‘She’s very busy at the moment. There are lots of colonels, brigadiers and generals in London, and she has to drive them all around. Well, not all of them, of course. Mum, stop going on at me.’
‘I hope you two haven’t had an argument?’
‘We need to get the guttering fixed,’ said Robert. ‘I’ll go and see Jack Hobson in the morning and ask if he can do it. If he can’t, I’ll do the job myself. What are you going to do about the land girls? Do they want to stay on here?’
‘Shirley says she might, but Tess is getting married,’ Rose replied, and then – to Robert’s great relief – his mother started talking about milk yields, the unreliability of the egg man, and the shocking price of cattle feed.
Frances wrote to Cassie, to tell her that the plans for Charton Minster were all going ahead, and everyone in Charton was getting very excited.
‘The villagers are very pleased,’ wrote Frances. ‘It will mean more business for the shops, and instead of being afraid delinquents might escape to rob and murder them as they sleep in their beds, there will be just ordinary children staying at the Minster.
‘Daisy and I are hoping you’ll still want to be involved. We haven’t said anything to Mrs Denham about you and Robert. But of course we’re hoping you and he will patch things up.’
Cassie put the letter in the bin. She didn’t care about the plans. She’d never set foot in Charton or in Melbury again. So why did it matter what happened to the Minster?
The other ATS girls in the Chelsea house were going out with American boys, were going to parties, going to dances, getting drunk as skunks, and generally having lots of fun.
But Cassie didn’t feel like joining in. When she was not on duty, she lay down on her bed and read her way through piles and piles of movie magazines, given to her housemates by their Yankee boyfriends.
She couldn’t go to the cinema itself because she found she couldn’t bear the newsreels nowadays. They were full of awful revelations about what had been going on in Germany and Poland, about the camps, the gas chambers, the furnaces, the piles of rotting corpses, and they made her cry.
She couldn’t decide what she should do.
She thought she had been desperate to go back home to Smethwick. But now she thought she might stay in the army. She’d probably make sergeant easily – she had the years of service and experience, so she’d be almost certain to get another stripe.
Perhaps she should apply for a commission? She liked the uniforms. Officers had smart, slip-on shoes instead of horrid lace-ups, nicely-tailored skirts and jackets, and they got to wear real nylons, too.
But all her friends were dying to be demobbed, and actually she’d had enough of drill, of marching round a barrack square, of saluting everything that moved, and of obeying orders.
She asked for some demob leave, and she got it. She went back home to Birmingham, back home to Lily, and she tried to get on with her life. She applied for jobs she didn’t get, and wondered if she’d be obliged to go back to the laundry after all.
Lily kept going on at her to find herself a man and settle down, to have some children and raise a family.
‘There’s that nice O’Sullivan boy, he’s just come back from Palestine,’ said Lily, as they ate their breakfast. ‘What about Mrs Flynn’s son, Terry?’ she demanded, as they ate their dinner. ‘You went to school with him.’
Cassie didn’t want to think about the nice O’Sullivan boy or Terry Flynn – both of whom had pulled her hair and said she was a bastard while she was at school.
She was mis
sing Rob so much it ached. She hadn’t believed that there was such a thing as actual heartache, but now she knew for certain it was all too real.
She polished up her penny bangle, rubbing off the silvering and almost rubbing through the alloy, too. She thought – I’m turning into Lily, treasuring a piece of junk which means more to me than any diamonds, pearls or gold.
She longed and longed to see him, talk to him.
She didn’t know what to say.
She started twenty letters.
She screwed them up and put them in the salvage.
She set up imaginary meetings in London and in Dorset. She would get her hair done, she decided, and wear that lovely costume which Daisy’s natural mother had sent her from America.
She’d tell him she was sorry for behaving like a hoyden.
Then Rob would smile, and he would take her in his arms, and he would say, don’t worry, it’s all right. We just had a silly little tiff, as lovers do.
But always, always, always when she’d planned the perfect speech, she’d hear herself again, yelling at Robert, telling him to stick his silver bracelet up his arse.
Then she’d feel sick with guilt and shame.
‘Daisy’s coming to see the Minster, Rob,’ said Rose, holding out the letter to her son. ‘She’s got a few days off, and says she fancies some fresh air.’
‘I thought she was in London, in that new revue?’ Robert glanced up from cleaning harness. ‘Anyway, there isn’t much to see.’
‘There’s the scaffolding going up to fix the roof,’ said Rose. ‘She’s coming to see us as well, in any case. When will Cassie be able to get down?’
Robert pretended not to hear and went on polishing a bridle which already shone.
Daisy arrived and went to see how things were getting on at Charton Minster. The access road had been a problem – half of it was on the Eastons’ land, and Rose knew better than to ask if Lady Easton would allow the Denhams to use her road.
But Daisy didn’t believe in having problems.
The day that Rose had signed the paperwork, Daisy had hired a couple of village men with spades and pickaxes and scythes to cut a path straight to the Minster from a public lane.
The Penny Bangle Page 25