by Lesley Eames
‘Do you know, I’m shattered but feel oddly… satisfied,’ Celia said, when they finally closed for the day.
‘Perhaps that’s because you’ve done something useful with your time,’ Lily suggested.
‘You’re right. I feel ashamed of the sort of life I used to lead.’
‘The important thing is that you’ve changed.’
‘You’re like Artie, Lily. Generous.’
Celia helped to make supper too and ate her meal hungrily. ‘I’ve never had so much appetite,’ she said.
‘You’ve never worked so hard. Eat as much as you want,’ Lily urged. ‘You’ve earned it.’
The compliment won her a grateful smile.
Celia came the next day too. ‘Don’t feel you have to spend all of your time here,’ Lily told her.
‘I enjoy it. I like feeling useful.’
‘You’re very useful,’ Lily told her. ‘Quite a treasure, in fact.’
Celia laughed. ‘I’ll never have your knack of juggling six tasks while chatting to customers but I hope I’m good enough.’
Even after Phyllis returned from honeymoon Celia continued to help in either the tea room or the bakery shop. It freed Frankie to learn more of Mr Bax’s baking skills. Lily, Phyllis and Mr Bax all agreed that Celia should be paid a wage and the first time she received her weekly pay packet she couldn’t have been more pleased.
‘Thank you so much for letting me work here, Lily,’ Celia said, then smiled at what appeared to be a passing thought.
‘What is it?’ Lily asked.
‘I was thinking about how I used to be afraid of you.’
‘Afraid of me?’ Lily was stunned.
‘Perhaps fear isn’t the right word. Awe might be better. Yes, I used to be in awe of you. Not that I understood what I was feeling then. It actually puzzled me. I thought I should have the upper hand because my family had money and status, but you always seemed so brave and capable. And Artie thought the world of you. I suppose I was a little jealous.’
‘Artie thinks the world of you too.’
‘I know. I only hope I’m growing worthy of him.’
‘You are,’ Lily assured her.
October came and brought cause for celebration. Based in a small yard not far from the tea shop, Tomkins & Melling, Building Contractors, was hard at work on its first small project and had another in the pipeline. Artie had also proposed to Celia and been accepted joyfully. Lily had another ring to admire, this one a sapphire to match Celia’s blue eyes.
‘You can’t get married before me,’ Elsie protested to Celia.
Pierre was hoping Luke would be home for his wedding to Elsie and as the month wore on it began to look more and more possible. The talk in the tea shop and out on the street was of the war and this time it really did appear as though the end might be in sight.
Some customers heard the talk with ravaged faces because their loved ones had already fallen. Others heard it with expressions of desperate hope that peace would come before their loved ones suffered a similar fate. Lily felt that desperate hope for Luke. Whether he cared for her or not, she wanted fervently for him to survive.
Early in November they all thrilled to the news that the German ally, Austria-Hungary, was out of the war. Rumours circulated that Germany itself would soon seek peace.
Then one day a customer rushed up the stairs into the tea room to shout that an armistice had been signed. After four devastating years the bloody war was over, he said, and promptly burst into tears.
Some people rushed out to buy newspapers as though they’d believe it only when they read it in print. Others raced home to their families or joined crowds gathering in the street to cheer and sing and dance. Still others simply stared as though too numb to take it in.
Lily headed for the serving room where she sat down heavily. It had been several days since she’d last heard from Luke and the fighting had apparently continued to the last moment. It would be too cruel if he’d fallen in the last hours of the war.
‘You’ve heard?’ Mr Bax had come upstairs with Phyllis.
‘It’s wonderful news,’ Lily said.
Pierre and Elsie ran up too. ‘Our Luke is coming home!’ Pierre raised his arms to heaven but of course Luke would only be coming home if he’d survived.
Three days passed before Elsie raced into the tea room with more news. ‘He’s alive!’ she announced. ‘Luke is alive.’
Thank God! Lily felt dizzy with relief. ‘I’m so glad,’ she said, but had Luke written only to Pierre or was there a letter to Lily caught up in the postal service somewhere between here and France? Post from the front had never been reliable.
Elsie gave her one of those all-seeing looks but thankfully kept her thoughts to herself.
Lily received a letter from Luke the following morning. He wrote that he was well and thankful that the war was over though mindful of the poor souls who’d lost their lives or would suffer from their injuries for the rest of their days. He was looking forward to coming home and seeing his friends but had no information yet about when this might be.
He made no mention of wanting to see Lily in particular. Not that there was necessarily any significance in that. A face-to-face conversation on his return would be much more appropriate if he had tender feelings for her.
If.
More news filtered through. Fordyce and some of Artie’s other friends from Camfordleigh had survived. Customers also reported the survival of sons, brothers, husbands and nephews, though in the cruellest of blows the son of one customer had been killed on the very last day of fighting.
The peace was followed quickly by more good news. Another law had been passed allowing women to stand for Parliament.
‘We’ll see you there one day, Phyll,’ Elsie predicted. ‘You and Michael both.’
Luke wrote to say he was delighted by the news but he still had no idea when he’d be returning. There were rumours that men were being selected for return based on their occupation and usefulness at home. Luke wrote wryly that a man who made chocolate probably wasn’t at the top of this list.
A week later Lily had a visitor. But it wasn’t Luke. It was a woman.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Older than Lily by a handful of years, the woman was strikingly attractive, a vision of fair beauty dressed exquisitely in pale blue silk.
‘Miss Tomkins?’ Her voice was accented. French?
‘Yes.’
‘I am Hélène Moreau. You have heard my name before, perhaps?’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t.’
‘I am the friend of Luke Goddard.’ Miss Moreau announced the connection as though expecting Lily to be much impressed.
Instead Lily felt wary. The friend of Luke or a friend? It was hard to know if the visitor’s words had been selected deliberately or resulted simply from awkwardness with the English language. ‘I’m a friend of Luke’s too,’ Lily said, to test Hélène’s response.
The visitor’s smile left Lily in no doubt that Hélène believed the friendships involved very different degrees of intimacy. Lily’s heart began to rattle against her ribs.
‘Luke has been my friend – and the friend of my family – in Switzerland for many years,’ Hélène continued. ‘His absence has been hard to bear. J’ai été misérable sans lui. But still he is not returned?’
‘Not yet.’
Hélène’s lovely mouth made a moue of disappointment. ‘I must bear the separation longer. But now I will drink your English tea.’
Lily showed her to a table, conscious of the swish of Hélène’s silk dress as she walked. ‘Would you like cake as well?’
‘Gateau? Non.’ Hélène shuddered. ‘Tea only, s'il vous plaît.’
Lily went to fetch it, preparing a tray with trembling fingers. She took a deep breath then returned to Hélène’s table. ‘Luke must have mentioned me if you know my name,’ Lily suggested.
‘The little English girl who serves tea in a café,’ Hélène said, as though quoting
him. ‘Yes. He is fond of this café. To him it is… Oh, what is the word? Amusing? Yes, that is it.’
Lily winced.
‘Luke and I have such hopes, but this war…’ Hélène shook her head, pouring tea but adding no milk or sugar. ‘Luke is a man of principle. Until he was certain he would return whole in his body and his mind, he would not… not…’ She looked up at Lily. ‘I know not the word.’
‘Commit?’ Lily said, and Hélène nodded.
He’d told Lily much the same thing. Had he got the idea for letting Lily down gently from having already used the argument to explain his feelings to his true love, Hélène? Or had he merely seized on a convenient way of disentangling himself from every woman who’d shown an interest in him? Either way, it was clear that he had no special feelings for Lily.
‘Excuse me.’ Forcing a smile, Lily retreated to the serving room to blink back tears. She’d never been sure of Luke’s love. Not for a single moment. But to know he felt nothing more than friendship for her was crushing.
But there was work to be done and not for anything would Lily let Hélène see her distress. It was mortifying to think of her reporting it to Luke with a sympathetic but amused shake of her elegant head. ‘That poor little girl must have imagined… So sweet but so sad.’
Lily blew her nose and returned to the tea room to show some new arrivals to a table. Discipline had ever been her friend and it helped her now though her heart felt ready to burst and she was desperate to be alone.
Hélène didn’t stay long. Lily had just fetched a tray of tea for her new customers when she saw her visitor rise to her feet. ‘My bill?’ Hélène asked.
Lily wanted to tell her no payment was required but feared it might be taken as a sign of how upset she was. ‘Of course,’ she said, taking Hélène’s money and bidding her goodbye with what she hoped was breezy indifference.
Clearing the table, Lily saw that Hélène had barely touched her cup. Clearly, English-style tea served by a little English girl in a quaint English tea room wasn’t to her taste.
Doubtless Hélène had gone next door to see Pierre after she’d left the tea room. Perhaps she’d also identified herself downstairs in the bakery shop where Celia was helping Phyllis. Not wanting to be thought strange by keeping quiet about Hélène’s visit, Lily mentioned it to them but received only blank looks in response. ‘We were too busy to notice people going up to the tea room,’ Phyllis explained, and Celia added, ‘I was too terrified of giving the wrong change.’
Lily was even more surprised when Elsie gave her an equally blank look on her return from the chocolate shop. ‘Pierre didn’t have any visitors today.’
‘She was a family friend of Luke’s. I assumed she was a friend of Pierre’s too but perhaps not.’ Lily shrugged to suggest she hadn’t been particularly interested.
‘What did she want?’
‘To say hello to Luke, if he’d been here.’
‘She came all the way from Switzerland to say hello?’
‘I imagine she was in London for other reasons. I didn’t have much chance to talk to her.’
Lily hid her face by turning away to wash dishes. Elsie was floating on a cloud of happiness these days but hadn’t lost her ability to look deep inside a person and see things that person preferred to keep locked away.
Lily yawned several times during the evening to give herself an excuse for going to her room early. She sat on her bed for a while then got under the covers and gave herself up to misery.
She was exhausted the following morning and a headache sat just above her eyes. Yet, despite the heartache, she was glad of Hélène’s visit. If Lily’s hopes had to be crushed, it was better for her to suffer sooner rather than later because she’d start to heal all the sooner. And this way she could pretend romance had never entered her thoughts and spare both Luke and herself from embarrassment.
Not that there was any sign of Luke returning soon. December was passing rapidly but he was still in France and rumours suggested it could be many months before all of Britain’s soldiers, sailors and airmen came home. So much for the promise of early discharge Lily had seen on recruiting posters at the beginning of the war.
She mentioned Hélène’s visit in a letter to Luke but he said nothing about her in his reply. It didn’t matter. The important thing was that he knew now that Lily was under no illusions about him.
She threw her energies into decorating the tea room with holly, fir cones and baubles, placing slices of dried oranges and cinnamon sticks into the foliage to scent the air with Christmas smells. She made new menus too, painting sprigs of holly at the tops.
Elsie and Frankie helped Mr Bax to haul sacks of holly and other greenery from home so they could decorate both shops. ‘We’ve done our bit. We’ll leave the artistic stuff to you three,’ Elsie said, nodding at Lily, Phyllis and Celia.
It was sad to know that Hilda and Marion wouldn’t be sharing Christmas with them this year. Luke would be absent too but everyone else would be here even if Phyllis, Michael and Frankie could only come during the evening.
‘I never realised how much fun Christmas could be,’ Celia said. ‘We used to go to Selfridges and Fortnum and Mason for our shopping because it seemed important to buy gifts that would impress people with their cost. I see now that real joy lies in being inventive with very little money and giving people presents they’ll really like.’
Lily smiled. Freed from the narrow snobbery of her parents, Celia had become as important to Lily as Elsie and Phyllis.
With Celia helping in the tea room and bakery shop, there was more time for Christmas shopping. They’d all contributed to a parcel for Luke and sent it off to him in France, Lily giving a book – a Sherlock Holmes mystery – that she hoped he might find entertaining. Now she shopped for her other gifts.
Busy saving for their marriage, Artie and Celia had little money for new clothes so Lily bought a shirt for Artie and a blouse for Celia. Neither was expensive – and nowhere near as luxurious as Celia had enjoyed in the past – but Lily knew they’d be welcome all the same.
Shopping gave Lily time alone to think about the future. She couldn’t delay the sale of the Hastings house indefinitely and wondered if she should appoint New Year as the deadline for reaching a decision. It would introduce some certainty into her life. Making plans of one sort or another might also help her to stop brooding. Lily was tired of feeling as though her heart were trailing along the floor behind her. Self-pity was awful and Gran would be ashamed if Lily gave into it.
On Christmas Eve they set up the tea room for the morrow, laying the table, hanging paper chains across the ceiling and decorating the tree Frankie had carried in for them. Down in the bakery kitchen, a freshly-plucked turkey waited on a plate in the pantry alongside baskets of potatoes, carrots, parsnips and greens. A pudding and cake too. And bottles of sherry, wine and beer.
‘I think we’re ready,’ Elsie announced, adding her clumsily wrapped gifts to the pile under the tree. ‘Pierre is making supper soon if you’d all like to come round and share it?’
‘I’ll join you later,’ Lily said. ‘I’d like a breath of fresh air first.’
She sat alone for a moment then put on her coat and went for a walk, needing quietness and solitude to give her the strength to make a good show of enjoying the festivities.
Lights were showing in windows now the threat from Zeppelins and Gothas had passed. Walking beside rows of houses, Lily caught the cosy gleam of gold from fires and Christmas tree candles while some windows framed scenes of families gathered together happily.
People passed her in the street. Purposeful people bearing shopping or hastening home to loved ones. All wished her a Merry Christmas and Lily wished them a Merry Christmas in return. She saw a group of carol singers, paused to listen to ‘Silent Night’ then walked on again.
Reaching Highbury Fields, she stepped in to sit on a frosty bench. Resisting the temptation to sigh, Lily counted her blessings instead. She was lucky. A
fter all these years she was reunited with Artie at last. No longer were they snatching mere moments together. They were sharing their lives fully.
She had the best friends anyone could wish for too. A job she loved, and even the prospect of money once the Tibbs sisters’ house was sold. She was grateful for all of it, yet the sigh escaped anyway.
‘Is there room on there for me?’
Lily’s head whipped round. ‘Luke!’
‘I saw you come in,’ he said, sitting beside her and dumping his pack on the ground.
He hadn’t shaved again and his jaw was dark with stubble. But when he smiled his teeth looked white and the light from a nearby streetlamp caught the familiar gleam in his eyes. Lily’s heart skittered like a frightened sparrow’s as she was torn between launching herself at his chest and running away because she was unprepared for this meeting and terrified of exposing how she felt.
For a moment she simply stared at Luke’s beloved face. When she spoke her voice emerged huskily as if it hadn’t been used in a while. ‘This is unexpected.’
‘I didn’t know I was being discharged until yesterday. Luckily, I managed to get on a boat.’
‘Just in time for Christmas.’
‘Mmm.’ His eyes were soft. So very soft.
Lily swallowed hard, cast around inside her head for something to say and finally sought escape in humour. ‘I’m afraid the turkey might not stretch to include you as we didn’t know you were coming. You might have to settle for a sandwich for your Christmas lunch.’
‘Even a sandwich will be an improvement on army rations. Food isn’t the only reason I’m glad to be back, though.’
Lily needed to swallow again. ‘It must be wonderful to have all that fear behind you. To know you can wash and bathe, and wear your own clothes. To choose how to spend your time… ’
‘I’m more excited at the thought of being with the people I care about.’
Was he thinking especially of Hélène? Was she waiting for him somewhere in London? Lily shied away from the answers.
‘Did you receive the gifts we sent?’ she asked instead.