Into the Darkest Day: An emotional and totally gripping WW2 historical novel

by Kate Hewitt

  “Look, why don’t you come with me?” Simon asked, and Abby turned to him.

  “Come with you?” she repeated blankly. “Where?”

  “To the Bryants, the family in Genoa City. I’m interviewing them on Saturday. You’re a local, you could be a help. And it might be interesting…”

  Abby had no idea how she could help Simon conduct an interview, and while the family’s life story could be interesting, it had no relevance to her. And yet, all the same, she found herself nodding. Smiling, even, because he’d asked, and she knew she wanted to see him again.

  “All right,” she said as her smile widened. “I could go with you.”

  Chapter Five

  January 1944

  The Berkeley Hotel was a grand edifice on the corner of Berkeley Street and Piccadilly, its golden stone façade making it one of the most elegant buildings Lily had ever been in. The sound of a swing orchestra spilled out from its open doors as Tom took Sophie’s arm and headed inside, with Lily and Matthew behind.

  Lily had been anxious all week for this evening, fretting about what to wear, what to say, how to be. As she’d suspected, Sophie and Tom had paired off the moment they’d all left the house. By the time they were halfway down Holmside Road, Sophie had her arm in Tom’s, while Lily and Matthew trailed silently behind, both of them struggling to find anything to say. At least Lily was. Perhaps Matthew simply didn’t care.

  They couldn’t talk much on the Tube, with the press of people and the noisy rattling of the car, but as soon as they emerged from the station, London’s nightlife hidden and seething beneath a veil of blackout darkness, Tom was all jaunty assuredness.

  “The Berkeley is the place to be,” he informed them all as they came into the foyer and a girl in a black dress took their coats with a simpering smile.

  Bereft of her coat, Lily felt her dress’s plainness acutely. Sophie had magicked up a dancing frock from the paltry depths of the wardrobe—or, more accurately, from one of the girls at the War Office. It was a shimmering, silvery thing that bared her shoulders and floated as she moved. A bit dated, but lovely.

  Lily, on the other hand, was in a far more sensible dress she’d worn every year of the war at Christmas. It was dark green taffeta, its modest skirt and square neckline as appropriate for church as a dance hall. Its only concession to the occasion was a bow knot at the neck.

  Tom whistled appreciatively as Sophie did a little twirl in her silver dress, tossing her head back and laughing. She was radiant, sparkling like a star, while Lily felt as drab as a sparrow; she was wearing less makeup than the coat-check girl.

  She glanced at Matthew, who had his hands in his trouser pockets and was looking completely disinterested in anything going on.

  And so much was—women in beautiful dresses, men in uniform, everyone chatting and laughing and tossing back drinks like something out of a radio play. Lily had never seen so many Americans, of all different types and ranks, a sea of army green and khaki brown and navy blue, everyone looking as if they were born to be there, the women coquettish, the men swaggering.

  “We’re only a hop, skip, and a jump from General Eisenhower’s headquarters,” Tom explained as he put his arm around Sophie and they headed into the ballroom, where a full orchestra was playing a lively tune and the dance floor was packed. “This really is the place to be.”

  It certainly seemed like it. Lily’s eyes nearly popped at the sight of so many elegantly clad women and dapper men jitterbugging on the dance floor, a far cry from the shabbier dance halls nearer to home that she and Sophie had gone to, where the press of bodies lent a smell of boiled wool and stale sweat to the air, and the only drink on offer was watery beer or weak lemonade.

  Tom found them a table on the edge of the dance floor, and they all crowded onto the velvet banquette while he went in search of drinks.

  Sophie gazed around the crowded room with greedy delight, even as she already began to adopt an air of worldly self-assurance, resting her elbow on the back of her seat, her chin tilted at a haughty angle, as if she had been to a thousand places like this before, when Lily knew very well that she hadn’t.

  “Champagne?” Sophie exclaimed when Tom came back, triumphantly brandishing a bottle. “You darling. I haven’t had so much as a sip of champagne in years. How ever did you manage it?”

  Tom rubbed two fingers together as he gave Sophie a brazen wink. “If you know the right people, all it takes is a little lettuce.”

  Sophie wrinkled her nose. “Lettuce?”

  “Money,” Tom answered with a laugh as he poured them all fizzing glasses. “Don’t you watch any American movies?”

  Sophie’s eyes danced as she took a sip of her champagne. “You’re going to have to teach me all the American slang,” she said. “I’m sure it will become the rage here once you boys have won the war for us.”

  “Sophie,” Lily interjected, stung by the remark, and Sophie shrugged one bare shoulder.

  “What? Everyone knows it’s true.”

  Lily pressed her lips together. Not the boys who gave their lives for this war, she thought but couldn’t work up the nerve to say it with Tom and Matthew there. She thought of the letters she wrote, day after day, dozen after dozen. Dear So-and-so, It is my painful duty to inform you that your son, Sergeant X, has been reported Missing believed Killed as the result of operations… Those faceless men had certainly done their part in winning this awful war. She reached for her glass of champagne but found she couldn’t take a sip.

  “Oh Lily, don’t be such a bore,” Sophie exclaimed. “You’re not, really. I know you’re thinking of all those poor boys, but I didn’t mean them. You know I didn’t.”

  “What poor boys?” Matthew asked.

  “Oh, Lily’s job. It’s wretched, worse than mine.”

  “It isn’t—”

  Sophie leaned over the table, lowering her voice to a melodramatic hush. “She writes letters to the families who have sons who have been killed in action. Sons or husbands or brothers. Every day, all day. Can you even imagine? Nothing but death. At least I get to type up lists of ammunition and battle plans and permissions for leave.” She let out a rather sharp laugh and tossed back her champagne.

  “It isn’t wretched,” Lily stated with dignity, and she caught Matthew’s eye. He didn’t smile, but somehow she felt as if he had.

  “Let’s dance.” Sophie had finished her champagne and Tom sprang up from his seat to take her hand.

  Lily watched them head to the dance floor in a blur of silver and army green, and the silence that fell on the table felt like a raincloud, or perhaps a thunderclap. Lily sneaked a glance at Matthew and saw him staring at the blur of motion on the dance floor, his face expressionless, one hand resting flat on the table. Any sense of a smile had vanished completely. The evening, she feared, was going to be interminable.

  “Do you dance much?” she asked, simply to break the heavy silence, only to realize it might sound as if she were fishing for an invitation from him. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Nor do I.” Matthew glanced at her, his lips twitching in what could almost be called a smile. “I’m what Lieutenant Reese would call a dead hoofer.”

  The wry glimmer in his dark eyes made Lily’s heart give a strange squeeze. “A dead hoofer?”

  “Two left feet.”

  “Ah. Well, I suppose that’s what I am, as well. I try, but I really can’t manage it. If you asked me to dance, I’m sure you’d regret it, or at least your feet would.”

  “Ah, well.” Matthew gave a nod, his eyes still glinting with wry humor. “There are more important things in life than dancing.”

  “I’m not sure everyone out there would agree.” She cocked her head towards the dance floor. “But I don’t mind not being able to, honestly.” Even though she realized she would have liked him to have asked.

  He smiled then, the tiniest thing, but it felt like a spark had leapt across the table from him to her, as if she’d caught it in her bare
hands. “I know you don’t,” he said.

  The warmth in his voice surprised and thrilled her, and, discomfited, Lily reached for her champagne, simply to have something to do with her hands. The bubbles tickled her nose and made her cough.

  “I haven’t had champagne in years,” she said as she put the glass back down. “I forgot how funny it is.”

  He looked at her with a strangely penetrating gaze, his eyes so very dark, the irises nearly the same color as the pupils. “Has it been very hard here?” he asked. “During the war?”

  “Not as hard as some have it, I’m sure.” Lily was always conscious that she shouldn’t complain, not when others had lost homes, or lives. “We haven’t been bombed out, and we haven’t lost anyone close to us yet. Mother says we’re very fortunate, really.” She sounded like such a child, she thought with a wince. How was it that her sister could seem so effortlessly sophisticated, and meanwhile she sounded as if she were about six? “What about you? I don’t suppose the war has affected you much yet, in New York.”

  “No,” he agreed after a brief, heightened pause. “Not in New York.”

  “Of course, now that you’re here…” With an uneasy ripple of awareness, she realized how one day, perhaps even one day soon, both Matthew and Tom would be right in the action, on the front lines, fighting for their lives, as well as for victory. One day they might be the names mentioned in one of the letters she wrote. Dear So-and-so…

  Except, of course, they weren’t in the navy. It would be some other nameless girl, some American girl in a strange city somewhere, who would sit in front of a typewriter, her fingers poised over the keys. It is my painful duty to inform you…

  “Are you scared?” she blurted. “When you think about fighting?”

  “No.” The answer was so swift and stony that Lily blinked.

  “Are you scared when you’re caught in a raid?” Matthew countered, and she shrugged uncertainly.

  “Sometimes, but usually it doesn’t feel quite real. It’s almost as if I’m watching a film, or a newsreel. I wonder if that’s the only way we can survive it—by feeling as if it’s not actually happening to us.”

  Matthew was silent for a long moment, his fingers rotating the stem of his coupe of untouched champagne. “At some point,” he said finally, “you will have to accept that it is real.”

  There was no real censure to his voice, but Lily felt it all the same. Why had she sounded so… so vacuous, as if the war hadn’t really affected her, as if she wasn’t bothered at all by all the tragedy and violence around her, by the letters she wrote every day?

  Words crowded in her throat, crammed in her mouth, unspoken revelations about how she couldn’t keep from imagining the faceless men whose letters she wrote, the men who had drowned in cold, empty seas, or died in the burning carcasses of torpedoed ships. How she lay in bed awake at night and pictured their terrible last moments, wondered if, when the end finally came, they’d been scared or sad or simply accepting? Had it hurt?

  She wanted to tell Matthew how, in those sleepless moments, she felt a silent scream building in her chest, a howl of fury and fear and hopelessness, as the wooden tray on her desk filled with freshly typed letters every day, and yet there were always, always more to type.

  And each one belonged to a person—a young man who had lived and loved, who had come down with colds and maybe kissed a girl; a boy who had hugged his mother. How could that be? How could that possibly be?

  Staring at his implacable expression, dark eyebrows drawn over darker eyes, she wanted to share so much, and yet she struggled to say anything at all.

  “Yes,” she finally mumbled. “I suppose you’re right.”

  The silence stretched on again, painful this time. It was horribly apparent they had nothing to say to one another—or, at least, Sergeant Lawson had nothing to say to her, and she couldn’t even blame him. Somehow she hadn’t been able to convey anything of how she really felt—how much she felt.

  Lily reached for her champagne once more, only to put it down, afraid she might cough again and embarrass herself further.

  “So you write letters,” Matthew said after a moment. “What division?”

  “I’m a Wren. That’s the Women’s Royal Naval Service—I work in the Admiralty.”

  “And do you do as your sister said? Typing letters all day, every day, to the families of the servicemen who have been killed?”

  “Or missing in action. Yes.”

  Something flickered in Matthew’s eyes as he looked at her. “That must be terribly sad.”

  Lily thought of all she’d wanted to say earlier, and still couldn’t. “Sometimes,” she said quietly, and looked away. “But it’s not as bad for me as it is for them,” she added after a moment, struggling to form her thoughts into words. “For the men, I mean, and for the families.” She turned back to him; he looked as inscrutable as ever. “It must be horrible, to receive one of those letters. To… to know.”

  She’d imagined it many times—a woman in a housedress, or perhaps a young wife, a baby in her arms, taking the thin envelope, reading the impersonal typescript, the scant sentences. Lily tried, foolishly, she knew, to imbue each letter she wrote with some kind of warmth, a silent prayer said over the impersonal words that were always the same.

  “Of course,” she added when Matthew had not said anything, “they receive letters from the soldiers themselves. Did you know that? Every soldier writes a letter that will be sent in case he dies.”

  “Yes, I know.” His voice was toneless, his gaze somewhere off to the left. “I’ve written one myself, actually.”

  “Oh.” Childishly, tears sprang to her eyes. She was making such a dreadful ninny of herself. “Of course you did,” she whispered and then looked down at her lap.

  The music ended and the orchestra struck up another lively tune. Lily looked up to try to catch a glimpse of her sister; Sophie was a good dancer, but Lily didn’t think she’d ever jitterbugged as wildly as this before, heels kicking up and skirts flying. Lily couldn’t see her in the crowd of dancers, and with the silence like a heavy blanket over the table, she muttered an excuse and blindly made her way out of the ballroom to find the ladies’.

  The room was thankfully empty, and Lily spent a moment taking deep breaths as she dabbed her eyes, feeling both ridiculous and terribly sad. She’d been nervous about this evening, but everything felt so much worse than she’d expected. Why did Matthew Lawson have to be so quiet? Why did he have to make her feel so stupid? Except he wasn’t really; he’d been quite kind, in his way. She’d managed to make herself feel stupid all on her own.

  She drew a shuddering breath as the door swung open and three women sallied in, clearly in high spirits, chatting and laughing as they reached for lipsticks and started primping in front of the large gilt-edged mirror.

  Lily angled her face away from them, but not quickly enough.

  “Oh, you poor chicken!” A woman lowered her lipstick as she surveyed Lily’s bright eyes and trembling chin. “Has some dreadful Yank broken your heart?” She laughed raucously at this, taking any sympathy from her words, and Lily forced her chin up, her face heating. Was nowhere in this wretched hotel safe?

  “No one has broken my heart,” she stated firmly.

  “Just give him time,” the woman warned and, leaning towards the mirror, she puckered her lips.

  “Don’t mind her, duck,” one of her companions said with a kindlier smile. “She’s three sheets to the wind already.” She patted Lily’s shoulder. “Chin up, love. Most likely, he’s not worth it.”

  “If he’s American, he is,” the drunk woman stated. “For the cigarettes alone.” She narrowed her eyes as she outlined her lips in carmine red.

  “I don’t smoke,” Lily said, which caused another eruption of laughter.

  “Look, have a nip of this.” To her shock, the kindly woman took a silver flask from her handbag and gave it to Lily. Her numb fingers closed around it automatically. “It’ll keep your spi
rits up.”

  Lily had no intention of drinking whatever was in the flask, but then she recalled Matthew Lawson’s flat voice, his blank look, and recklessly she unscrewed the top and took a large gulp of the stuff, only to sputter and cough half of it out, causing even more laughter.

  The alcohol burned its way down her throat to her stomach, where it lit a warm fire of purpose and determination. She would not make a ninny of herself in front of Matthew Lawson, or anyone else, and she would not let him make her feel like one, either.

  “There you go, darling,” the drunk woman called out encouragingly. “Go get him.”

  Lily thrust the flask back at its owner and, with her head held high, she strode out of the ladies’, back to the ballroom.

  Chapter Six

  When Lily returned to the table, Sophie and Tom were sitting with Matthew. Sophie was, rather shockingly, on Tom’s lap, another coupe of champagne in her hand, laughing at something he’d said. If the woman in the ladies’ was three sheets to the wind, Lily thought with foreboding, then her sister was at least two.

  “Get a load of this, Lily,” she called out.

  Lily glanced at Matthew, who was staring at the table, but he lifted his head when she sat down, and the searching look he gave her made her blush and look away, because she didn’t understand it at all.

  “That’s what you say, isn’t it?” Sophie continued teasingly as she twisted around to face Tom. “Get a load of this?” She put on a horribly twangy American accent that made Tom boom with laughter.

  “Sure it is, honey.”

  Sophie reached into Tom’s jacket and plucked out a little brown booklet. She turned back to Lily, a cigarette dangling from her fingers, and not a Spanish Shawl. “All that codswallop Tom was saying at Sunday lunch?” she told her. “It’s all from this book.” She waved it in front of Lily, who gazed at it blankly. “Listen to this.” Sophie straightened, Tom’s arm snug around her waist, and said in a loud, carrying voice, “‘Don’t be a show-off. The British dislike bragging and showing off. American wages and American soldier’s pay are the highest in the world. When payday comes, it would be sound practice to learn to spend your money according to British standards.’” She tossed the book down on the table. “I hope you don’t take that bit to heart,” she told Tom as she nestled closer. “Because I’ve heard about all the wonderful things you can get from your army shops—nylons and chocolate and these lovely, lovely cigarettes.”