‘The Bolshie Brigadier—’ she sketched a laughing salute, ‘yes, sir!’
They surveyed each other for a long, smiling, somehow satisfying moment. He cocked his head in coolly and humorously impertinent enquiry. ‘You wouldn’t be free this evening, by any chance, would you, Sally Smith van Damme?’
‘As a matter of fact, Brigadier – I do think I might be able to manage that.’
‘Caviare and champagne at the Amiens Ritz, happen – a box at the opera? Or rissoles and plonk at the local? Whichever you like – sky’s the limit when you’re out with Eddie Browne, lass.’
She grinned, ‘Rissoles sound good.’
‘Right-oh. I’ll pick you up at your billet at eight.’ He saluted her breezily, turned and swung jauntily away – without she noticed, laughing to herself, knowing the small cheeky gesture to be deliberate, having to ask where her billet was.
* * *
‘You’d like him. He really is a character. He’s got the cheek of a barrowload of monkeys, but you have to laugh at him. And underneath – well –’ Sally found herself frowning a little thoughtfully, as she watched Hannah’s deft and practised fingers neatly rolling freshly washed bandages, ‘I get the feeling he’s really a very intelligent man. Almost entirely self-taught – he left school at twelve to go into the mills – he knows an enormous lot about an enormous number of things. Well,’ she added with a grin, ‘he can convince you that he does – do you want a hand with that?’
‘I wouldn’t say no.’
Sally washed her hands, joined Hannah at the table, reached for a length of bandage. ‘He’s convinced that after the war there’s going to be a change in British politics. He says the Labour Party – sooner or later – will form a government.’
‘I’ye heard Ralph say the same thing. I must say it sounds like a bit of happy wishful thinking to me.’
‘Perhaps. But he’s a hard-headed lad – not like Ralph at all.’ Her eyes upon her task, Sally did not see the shadow that flickered upon Hannah’s face at mention of Ralph’s name; though he had escaped official punishment for his escapade, his few and sketchy letters hinted at ongoing recrimination from ‘Tom Brown’s chums’ who had obviously not so easily been fooled by his excuses and explanations. ‘Eddie honestly seems to believe that it has to happen,’ Sally was saying. ‘He’s going to stand for Parliament, no less – at least that’s what he says.’
‘Is he indeed?’ Hannah lifted her head to look at Sally, suddenly quizzical. ‘Sounds as if this young man’s made quite an impression?’
‘What? Oh, no! Nothing like that.’ Sally shook a casual head, not altogether convincingly Hannah thought, ‘He’s just a friend, that’s all. Good fun.’ Her eyes flicked to Hannah’s and away, but not before what she had seen in them had set her giggling. ‘Just a friend, Hannah! That’s all!’
‘Well – we’ll see.’ Hannah grinned back, took up the bandage again. ‘You’ve seen Ben?’
Sally’s quick fingers faltered a little, then resumed the smooth motion of folding and rolling. ‘I – no – I haven’t got round to it actually.’
‘But Sally!’ Hannah was astonished. ‘For heaven’s sake! You know he’s just at the base hospital! – Goodness, you must have been there this morning to pick up the supplies you brought us?’
‘Well – yes, I was – but I don’t have that much time – and I wanted to see you. I’ve got this arrangement with Sergeant Brice at the depot that anything to come out here I’m the first driver on the list. I couldn’t spend too much time hanging around.’
‘Well, maybe not – but you will pop in to see him, won’t you? He’ll be hurt if you don’t.’
As I’ve been hurt that he hasn’t come to find me – she did not put the quick and unexpected thought into words. ‘I’ll look him up soon.’
‘I wish you would. You know Ben – all work and no play – ah, but I’ve just remembered; you’re coming to Matron’s At Home on Sunday, aren’t you? With your colonel?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Ben will be here, he’s promised faithfully. So you can get together then.’
‘Always provided she can fight her way past mournful Mercy.’ The amused voice came from the open doorway. ‘Hello there, Sal. How’s tricks?’ Fiona ambled elegantly into the room, turned up her nose at the pile of bandages. ‘Ugh! Before the war – there was a before the war, wasn’t there? It isn’t a figment of my imagination? – before the war this is the kind of thing the tweeniest of the upstairs maids would do.’ She feigned a long, bored yawn, ‘What is Fiona MacAdam of the Stirlingshire MacAdams doing here, can you tell me?’ She reached for a bandage and began to roll, slanted a glance at Sally, ‘Well?’
‘Well how’s tricks? Or well what is Fiona MacAdam doing rolling bandages with the likes of me?’ Sally asked, grinning. Between these two, oddly, had blossomed an immediate rapport from the first moment of their meeting. They teased each other constantly and with inventive and merciless humour, poking derisive fun each at the other’s background and accent – Sally making no more effort to disguise the flat vowels and idiosyncratic turns of phrase which for all Ralph’s years of patient coaching would always declare her less than exalted background, than did Fiona the affected drawl of privilege. Indeed it amused Hannah to note that in each other’s company each would deliberately exaggerate her own speech mannerisms, Sally all but burlesquing the chirpy Cockney, Fiona striking attitudes of grandeur that would suddenly have them both helpless with laughter. Poor Mercy, of course, was hopelessly confused by it all. Thought of Mercy reminded her of Fiona’s opening comment, and she interrupted before the double act could wind itself up too far.
‘What do you mean about Sally fighting her way past Mercy?’
Fiona bestowed upon her a patient, languid look. ‘For Pete’s sake, Hannah – you must have noticed? The maddening Mercy has conceived a passion for your rapidly becoming famous brother that – for the mewling Mercy – is quite uncontrollable. By which I mean she moons over him from a distance and blushes like an adolescent or runs a mile if he actually addresses her. But – who knows? – if another female should approach him?’ She waved her bandage dramatically. ‘The ghastly girl might emerge in her true colours.’
‘Mad Mercy?’ Sally suggested straight faced.
‘Malicious Mercy—’ Fiona wound a bandage around her hands in the fashion of a garrotte and graphically mimed a strangling.
‘Merciless Mercy!’ Sally had begun to giggle.
‘Stop it, you two!’ Hannah could not entirely hide her own laughter.
Fiona drew a finger across her own throat. ‘Mutilating Mercy! Ouch!’ She turned an injured look on Hannah, ‘What did you do that for?’
Hannah withdrew the foot with which she had trodden in no gentle manner on the other girl’s toe and smiled brightly towards the doorway. ‘Hello, Mercy? Were you looking for me?’
Fiona turned a sharply droll look on Sally. ‘Well she certainly wouldn’t have been looking for me!’
Mercy stood in the doorway, her pink and white face uncertain and suspicious at the same time. ‘I – wondered if you needed any help with the bandages?’
‘We do have rather a lot of hands already, actually.’
‘Oh no you don’t.’ Fiona, with an angelic smile dropped her bandage and held her hands at shoulder height, ‘You just lost a pair. I only came in to say hello to Sal.’ She turned to Sally, ‘Hello, Sal,’ she said brightly, then, ‘there, now I’m going. Oh – you are coming on Sunday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Pray to whichever God you pray to that the weather holds. Matron is determined to have music and the darling boys are determined to pander to her determination. We’ve got the band of the Irish Guards coming – and if I know anything they’ll play come hell or high water. Just the thought of listening to all that oompapa in a confined space really makes me quite faint. So if the weather’s bad make sure you have your sal volatile handy, won’t you? ’Bye—’
Sally grinned at her departing back. ‘What a lad she is.’
Mercy pursed her lips, not sure quite how to take that.
Sally, relenting, winked at her. ‘Figs to Fiona?’ she offered, a gingerly humorous apology; and was rewarded more by Hannah’s quick grin and by Fiona’s own muffled laughter as she walked away than by Mercy’s uncertain smile.
II
Fortunately for Fiona’s nerves the weather held for Matron’s Sunday afternoon At Home, which was held, as planned, in the garden of the big old house which served as a Mess for the hospital staff. The garden, surrounding three sides of the house, had been more than a little neglected during nearly two years of wartime use, but was perhaps rather the more beautiful for that. The lawns were shaded by picturesquely overgrown shrubs and trees, the roses that had scrambled riotously up the high brick walls enclosing the garden were a blaze of colour. As Sally rolled the car to a halt outside the wrought-iron gates, the instantly recognizable strains of Gilbert and Sullivan lifted on the warm summer air. Her passenger leaned forward eagerly, smiling broadly, ‘Ah, that’s Caroline all right; no tea party’s complete without The Mikado! You’ll be all right parking the car, my dear?’
Sally smothered a grin; always he asked, and always she said the same thing. ‘Yes, sir. I’m sure I can manage.’ The colonel had never got around to learning to drive.
‘Good, good. I’ll see you later then. Come and be introduced to Caroline. Splendid woman in my opinion. Splendid.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She moved the big car into a side street, considered and then decided against having a peaceful cigarette before joining Hannah and the others. When she reached the ornate cast-iron gates the garden was already busy. A small band, resplendent and sweating in brilliant scarlet tunics and bearskins, instruments and buttons shining like gold, was stationed beneath a spreading tree playing a Chopin waltz with the verve and military precision due to a Sousa march. Tables and chairs had been spread beneath the trees and upon the small terrace; each table had its white tablecloth, its plates, cups and saucers, its gleaming cutlery and a small bunch of flowers. Over and around the sound of music rang talk and laughter. Sally stood for a long moment watching. Had it not been for the uniforms, and for the intermittent sound of gunfire in the distance this might have been the very picture of a village fête held in the garden of a country vicarage in the heart of England. To be sure the young men outnumbered the women by four or five to one, and many of them – recovering, walking wounded from Officers’ Ward – walked with sticks or carried an arm in a sling, but yet the atmosphere of innocent pleasantries and genteel laughter was so incongruous that for an unnerving moment she thought she might laugh aloud. Or cry.
‘Sally!’ Hannah hurried to her. ‘There you are – you’re late.’
‘The road up by Bresle was shelled last night. We had to come the long way round.’ She allowed Hannah to usher her to a table beneath a deep-shading chestnut tree, where sat Fiona and several young men in uniform, all of whom leapt to their feet as Hannah and Sally approached.
‘So – the fearless chauffeuse has arrived at last.’ Fiona raised a cheery hand, then turned a guileless smile upon her companions. ‘I’m sorry, chaps, I really can’t remember who’s who. This is Sally van Damme – perhaps you’d be so kind as to introduce yourselves?’
Sally found her hand taken and shaken, eyes blue, brown and shades between smiled into hers, fair heads and brown were bared as the young men removed their headgear and murmured their introductions.
‘Captain Mellors, Suffolks – how do you do?’
‘Lieutenant Reece – Third Middlesex – very pleased to meet you.’
‘Derby. Lieutenant Derby. Royal Engineers. Hello.’
She smiled and murmured her own replies, allowed herself to be manoeuvred into a chair between Lieutenant Reece and a red-headed young man in tartan-trimmed kilt and khaki who introduced himself as Rory MacAllister of the Seaforth Highlanders. She accepted cake, ‘From Harrods, d’you know – what a wonder!’ and tea, ‘Darjeeling, no less! Good old Lady Bennet,’ and politely involved herself with her own affairs whilst one of her escorts topped up his brew with a snifter of whisky from a dented flask. She agreed that it was a marvellous day, that it must at this moment be truly wonderful in the English countryside, that surely, soon, the expected Big Push must come – and watched the figure who stood in the frame of the big cast-iron gate looking about him, a half-smile on his straight mouth, the shock of hair, the wide shoulders, square jaw and high, broad cheekbones unmistakable even at this distance. She glanced at Hannah, who was deep in conversation with the lieutenant from the Royal Engineers and obviously had not yet noticed her brother’s arrival. The band had very sensibly returned to the safety of Gilbert and Sullivan and a selection from HMS Pinafore. Ben’s eyes roamed the gathering for a moment, then settled upon their table. A fraction of a second before she knew he would find them, Sally turned to the Highlander. ‘Have you been in France long, Captain MacAllister?’
Moments later she heard Hannah’s cry of welcome. ‘Ben! Here you are at last!’ and looked up to see Ben Patten, who she had last seen standing on the docks at Zeebrugge watching her sail home, smiling and hugging his sister, greeting the others about the table with affable courtesy, grinning a friendly hello at Fiona and finally reaching two big hands to her, a smiling warmth in his eyes as he said, ‘Sally?’ She took the strong hands, allowed him to draw her to her feet, felt the brush of his lips on her cheek. ‘Hello, Ben.’
He did not for the moment release her hands. Conversation around them had lifted again. ‘How are you?’
She could not take her eyes from his. ‘I’m fine. You?’
‘As you see.’ He was relaxed, casual, friendly. He was thinner, less bulky, and his face was leaner than she remembered. He gave his sudden, rare, boyish grin. ‘Life has its ups and downs. How’s Philippa?’
‘She’s fine. She wrote me a letter last week. Well – almost—’
He laughed. ‘And our poor little Belgian mother?’
‘Marie-Clare? She’s doing very well indeed. Louise is a lovely child, and Marie-Clare’s found a perfect niche at the Bear.’
‘Good.’
‘I hear you’re doing well?’ Stupid words. Stilted. Meaningless. Something ridiculously like anger stirred, though whether with herself or with him, and what was at its root, she could not for her life have said.
He shrugged a little. ‘There’s a lot to do.’ He had sobered a little. ‘Sally?’
She disentangled the hands he was still holding, ‘Yes?’
‘Why haven’t you come to see me?’
The inexplicable anger centred itself into a small needle flame. She smiled very brightly. ‘As you say, there’s a lot to do,’ she repeated his words crisply, then turned away, reseating herself neatly between the Third Middlesex and the Seaforths. ‘Lieutenant Reece – would you mind cutting me another slice of that wicked cake?’
She felt Ben’s suddenly sharply puzzled eyes upon her and in turning from them caught a quizzically sly and disconcertingly acute glance that brought a sudden rush of colour to her face. Fiona raised humorously knowing eyebrows and grinned openly at Sally’s discomfiture before returning to the combined adulation of half a dozen eager young men.
Sally was aware that Ben had seated himself across the table from her, amongst Fiona’s bevy of admirers. He did not glance at her again. She tried to concentrate on Lieutenant Reece’s paeons of praise for her work and for the work of the female nursing staff of the hospitals and dressing stations. ‘You can’t know how topping it is for us to talk to an English girl – to know you’re here – jolly brave I call it – too brave for words, really – everyone says it – and the nurses – well, no one can know what it’s like if you’re wounded to wake and find one of our own girls holding your hand. They’re spiffing, aren’t they?’
He paused for an answer. She summoned a smile. He looked, she thought with sudden shock, about a year older than T
oby. If that. ‘They certainly are. You’ve been wounded?’
‘Oh, once or twice. Nothing too bad, you know.’
‘You’ve been in France long?’ Suddenly she was truly looking at him – the bruised sockets of the young eyes, the odd, nervous tic that every few seconds flicked a nonexistent lick of hair from his forehead.
‘A year, actually.’ He made a small, self-deprecating gesture, ‘Left Oxford to join up. Mater was awfully miffed, you know? But she’s come round now.’ For a single, awful second he looked like a very small, uncertain boy. ‘I’m an only child, you see,’ his voice was soft, apologetic. ‘And two cousins have gone west since this little lot started. You can’t blame her for worrying.’
‘I’m sure she’s very proud of you.’ Sally’s heart, suddenly, was like lead.
He grinned, a swift, conspiratorial grin. ‘You just have to treat it like a bit of a lark, really, don’t you? I mean – otherwise—’ He stopped, looking into his teacup vaguely, as if he had forgotten what he had intended to say. ‘Well, none of them over there know what it’s like – what it’s really like – do they? When I go home—’ He lifted his eyes, shrugged wryly, ‘Well, you know?’
She nodded. ‘I know.’
‘I say, Hannah,’ Fiona’s clear, aristocratic tones could be ice-sharp and clear as a bell when she wanted, as now, to cut through the general conversation, ‘is this an ex-patient I see before me? And could he possibly be misguided enough to have come in search of his own particular ministering angel? Oh Lord,’ she rolled maliciously bright eyes, ‘how extraordinarily artistic of him!’
Sally glanced first at Hannah, and was astonished to see that, her eyes fixed upon the gate, she had lost all colour, her plain, strong face, usually so full of vivacity, drained to stillness. With the rest of the company – as the provocative Fiona had no doubt intended – Sally looked towards the gates. A tall young man, pale faced and sandy haired, his uniform a little rumpled, his cap pushed to an unmilitary angle on the back of his head, stood looking uncertainly about the busy garden. Under his arm he held a battered leather folder. As he hesitated a girl in nurse’s uniform approached him and he ducked his head to speak to her.
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