‘Anyone could have known,’ I said to Helen, ‘if they had bothered to read Hitler’s awful book or really listen to what the man was saying and take note of what he was doing. And Cedric was his apologist. What Cedric did before the war was unforgivable.’
‘What his followers did was questionable,’ admitted Helen, ‘but he did nothing except expound on his views of what Britain needed to do in order to be great again. Yes, Cedric admired Hitler. Well, so did many in our set. But only Cedric was willing to stand in front of crowds and tell them what he thought. I think it was brave of him to do so. And you supported him too, as I recall.’
‘I should have realised what it actually meant, and I hate that I didn’t.’
Helen ignored me, continuing to pull her comb through the shining sweep of her hair. When she had finished she shrugged on the chinchilla.
‘At least speak to Cedric,’ she said. ‘He adores you. Let him explain. You owe him that. Why not come over to our place for coffee one evening and meet him there, on neutral ground? When are you next on duty?’
‘I’m on duty all week.’
‘What about Saturday evening? Roly and I will be out until around midnight, so you and Cedric can talk in peace. Say nine?’
Helen was right. I did need to meet Cedric.
‘Very well,’ I said.
When I arrived at the offices of the JCPB in Bloomsbury House two days later, Lore jumped up from behind her desk and gave me a hug. I was becoming used to the exuberance of the German and Austrian women I met, but I found it hard to accept uncomplicated physical affection. I stood still and let her hug me, then gave a shaky laugh.
‘What’s that for?’
‘For Leonhard Weitz,’ she said, smiling. ‘Elise Levy is beside herself with joy. He came home on Sunday afternoon, ran up to her and whispered in German that the parrot knew Simon’s name.’ She laughed. ‘And also that, according to the parrot, Simon is King of England.’
‘He talked? Leo talked?’
‘Leonhard talked. He has a rusty little voice, she tells me, but he is using it.’ She gave me a narrow look. ‘He has learned an interesting expression, also. One that will not be repeated in polite company.’
I laughed. ‘Then please don’t,’ I said, and added lightly, ‘Who knows where parrots pick up such things? Oh, how marvellous that Leo is talking.’
‘I think you will have a visitor again soon. It was love at first sight with that parrot.’
‘The parrot seemed to like Leo, too. Of course he can visit the bird whenever he likes. I’ll write to her and suggest next Sunday afternoon. He can come every Sunday. It’s my day off.’
Lore was in a chatty mood that morning and hovered near my desk. Although it made it almost impossible for me to work, I found myself encouraging her to talk about the Levy family.
‘Elise is like a new woman now she has the boy to care for,’ she told me. ‘After she was injured in the air raid and David died, it was as if she had no joy in life. Leonhard cannot be a replacement for David, of course, but Elise told me that having the boy in the house gives her a reason to get up each morning.’
‘He’s a nice little boy,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised that he was sent back from two foster-homes and was considered to be a troublemaker at the hostel.’
‘I think it is being in a real family again that has made the difference. Elise is like a mother to him, and she tells me that he has even won over Jonathan, who plays chess with him. He has become particularly close to Simon and follows him around like a puppy when he is in the house. Simon puts up with it good-naturedly, although he is so busy with his duties at the hospital and in the Blitz that he is not home often.’ She gave me a self-satisfied smile. ‘But still Simon manages to take my Miriam out dancing and to restaurants when she has leave in London.’
‘How nice of him.’ I began to shuffle the papers on my desk. ‘I really do need to get on with—’
‘I think they would make an excellent match, although I suspect that Elise would like a girl of higher social status for her youngest.’
I put the papers down. ‘The oldest son, Saul, he’s married, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. It was a good marriage, to a Rothschild connection. His wife has evacuated to a house in the country, far from the bombing. Elise was hoping for a grandchild before Saul was posted away, but it was not to be.’ She gave a decided nod. ‘Miriam would not be a bad match for Simon, and Elise and Jonathan would accept it, if Simon was in love with her. Our family is respectable. And, of course, Miriam is Jewish.’
‘So the Levys would never accept a non-Jewish girl for Simon?’
She frowned. ‘If he fell in love with a girl who was not Jewish and wished to marry her they would not be happy, but they would not cast him aside. They would find it hard to accept, though. I do not think that Simon would do it to them.’
‘Lore…’ I hesitated, unsure if I should ask, but it had been worrying me. ‘Does it bother you to work with me? Because of who I am. Cedric Ashwin’s wife.’
Lore considered this for a long few seconds. ‘To be honest, I was not happy when Elise told me you were coming to work here. It was an odd choice for you, to work for a Jewish charity. And then I thought that you must wish to atone for what your husband had done before the war. So I said I would accept you cheerfully.’
I felt the heat in my cheeks. ‘That was one of the reasons.’
‘Then, when you arrived, you were very stiff and seemed proud. I told Elise that I couldn’t work with you after all, but she asked me not to judge you too soon.’
My cheeks were now flaming.
‘After a week or so I realised that the pride and stiffness was your English manner, not your personality. I know now that you are a kind woman who cares deeply about our poor children.’ Lore gave a soft laugh. ‘Your sense of humour is so very English, though. You make jokes that do not seem to be jokes and it is only after I have thought about them that I laugh, sometimes long after you have left.’ She smiled. ‘Miriam says Simon is the same and it drives her mad.’
She bent down to put an arm around my shoulder and she kissed my cheek. ‘I like you, Celia Ashwin. No, it does not bother me who your husband is. You do not share his beliefs and you cannot be held responsible for the actions of Cedric Ashwin.’
I desperately hoped Lore was right, especially as Cedric Ashwin now was back in my life. I was soon to discover that life is seldom so simple.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At eight-thirty the following Saturday evening I stepped out from St Andrew’s Court into a squally gust of wind and rain and ran across the road to the taxi I had ordered. I wiped my face with my handkerchief and gave the address of Helen and Roly’s villa in St John’s Wood.
‘It’s as black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat tonight,’ said the cabbie as he set off along Gray’s Inn Road. ‘You’d never believe there’s a moon floating somewhere up above them clouds.’
‘I just hope the weather keeps the raiders away,’ I replied.
‘Well, it seems to me that, if they’ve not come over yet, they won’t come at all tonight. Thank Gawd for the English weather, I say.’
He turned into the Euston Road. The thin shuttered headlights lit just enough of the road ahead to allow him to avoid the major potholes, but the roads were so pitted that the journey was a juddering one, splashing through puddles. He drove part of the way on the footpath. And as we headed west along the dark streets, twisting and turning through detour after detour, I tried to think of nothing and let the sweep of the windscreen wipers lull me into a sort of peace. I hoped to prepare myself for what I knew would be a difficult meeting with Cedric.
‘Queer stuff, these German high explosives,’ said the cabbie after a while. ‘See that building there? It’s wrecked from top to bottom. Just an empty shell, it is. And yet the house next door hasn’t a scratch.’
‘Mmm.’
‘You go down the shelters?’ he asked.
‘Not usually.’
‘You really should, miss. My missus goes off to the Piccadilly Tube Station each evening. When I’m not driving I go too. Quite good company down there. All very merry and bright, bar the squalling babies and those what snore in their sleep. Last week a silly blighter fell out of his bunk when he had a bad dream. Laugh? We all laughed fit to bust ourselves. He came down wallop.’
‘Was he hurt?’
‘Only his pride.’
‘So you drive even during a raid?’
‘Unless the raiders are directly overhead, I’m out there on the streets. What’s the good of getting scared? If you’re for it, you’re for it, and that’s all there is to it! No use worrying, is it?’
As we headed further westward and then north the extent of the bomb damage decreased. Houses were down, as J.B. Priestly had said in his wireless broadcast, ‘like gaps amidst teeth’, but it was nothing like the devastation of the West End or the City or the Docks. We were getting nearer to St John’s Wood and Cedric. My heart began to thump, which annoyed me.
‘Funny how this area’s not copped it so badly,’ said the cabbie. ‘Someone’s looking out for them. Not fair, really. But that’s life, isn’t it?’
He pulled up outside Helen’s house. I took a deep, calming breath and prepared myself to meet Cedric.
‘Bless you, miss,’ he said, as I handed over the fare. ‘Now you take care of yourself, and you get to the shelter when the raiders come over. You’re much too pretty to be blown up, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
I smiled at him. ‘I don’t mind. Could you be here, waiting for me, in two hours?’
‘I’d be delighted. Victory at all costs,’ was his patriotic parting comment.
‘At all costs,’ I replied. How was the cabbie to know I was referring to the expected tussle with my husband?
I held my raincoat over my head and dashed for the front steps, counting each as I ran up to the portico. One, two, three, four, five. Then I was at the front door. A gust of wind whipped my face, almost as if something were flying past me, chilly and invisible. A ghostly warning, perhaps? I pulled the doorbell. Head high, walk tall.
The Irish maid showed me into the drawing room, where Cedric stood to greet me. I was so used to seeing men in uniform that it was slightly shocking that Cedric was dressed in a dinner jacket and white tie. It spoke of a time before the war, before all of the misery and destruction of the past year and a bit.
It is hard for me now to describe Cedric, but he was generally considered to be a fine-looking man, with the sort of regular features that women liked, allied to a pair of strikingly pale blue eyes. His mouth was thin-lipped but somehow sensual, and he wore a carefully cultivated pencil moustache on his upper lip, like Errol Flynn. There were other similarities to that handsome and athletic actor. Cedric was a superb boxer, as well as a crack shot with pistol and rifle. There was a catlike grace in his movements and he was very proud of his athletic prowess. In short, his moustache was trim, his nose shapely, his teeth white and perfect, his profile aristocratic.
Although his outward appearance was that of the man I’d seen taken away by police eight months previously, and imprisonment had obviously failed to dent his supreme self-confidence, I had the unsettling feeling that a smiling stranger stood before me. If so, it was a stranger who was regarding me with a look that spoke of ownership.
Once I had been awestruck by this man, but in the last eight months I had grown up. I was no longer Cedric’s child bride, grateful to him for helping me to escape from a difficult home. I had been tempered in the fires of the Blitz, and had experienced life in a city under constant attack. I had fallen in love, and I had suffered great loss. I had moved beyond him. Looking at Cedric now, I was more determined than ever to find a way to end our marriage.
I managed to dodge a hug, but Cedric took hold of my shoulders and kissed my cheek, then held me out at arm’s length to look at me with a smile. I smelled alcohol on his breath as I shrugged myself out of his grip and sat on an armchair by the fire. He regarded at me with amusement. His manner – almost light-hearted – worried me, and I decided to proceed cautiously.
‘I’d kill for a cigarette,’ I said, just for something to say.
Cedric laughed and pulled out his silver case, holding it out to me as I extracted a cigarette.
‘Would you believe that when I was on my way here from Liverpool my train was strafed?’ he said, as he lit my cigarette. He used the lighter I had given him as a present on our second wedding anniversary.
‘How ironic,’ I said dryly, and it earned me a sharp look. So his Nazi friends had strafed him. A few bullets had hit the roof of his train. Had he any idea what we’d been suffering in London?
‘I thought it was an exhilarating experience,’ he said. ‘It’s a powerful machine, the Messerschmitt. Deadly and beautiful.’
I drew on my cigarette and leaned back in my chair. The familiar gesture gave me confidence and I said, in a seemingly careless voice, ‘I prefer Spitfires. You’ve returned to a very different London from the one you left.’
‘There’s less of it,’ he said, with what appeared to be a degree of satisfaction. It infuriated me and I had to work hard at not showing it.
Then his hands closed into fists. ‘Stupid fools brought it on themselves. There is no need for any of this. We should be allied with the Nazis against Russia. The Soviet Union is a far greater threat to British freedom than Hitler ever could be.’
‘I don’t recall Stalin sending bombers over the Channel.’
He frowned. ‘We declared war on Germany, remember. Hitler thinks very highly of the British. He wants peace with this country.’
‘He’s going about it in an odd sort of way, then. Peace? The way he enforced peace in France, you mean? No thank you.’
‘The German people under Hitler are contented and happy. And so will be the people of France and the other countries now under his guidance, eventually. Don’t believe the stories you hear, darling. Hitler has done a great deal of good for Europe.’
‘Really, Cedric.’ I was exasperated. ‘The man murders his own people and locks them up in concentration camps.’
‘And so does Churchill,’ he snapped. ‘He insisted that I be locked away, although I’ve never had anything but the best interests of this country in my heart.’ He looked at me, held my gaze. ‘I was trying to lead a cavalry charge into the future. I wanted to dissipate our fears and put them to flight. Churchill knew I was a rival to be feared, and he made it his business to destroy me.’
He took out a tobacco pouch and stuffed his pipe, jabbing angrily at the strands of tobacco as he walked across to the fireplace. Once there he took a wooden spill from the container on the chimneypiece, lit it and applied the flame to the bowl of the pipe, puffing until it drew and the rich scent of his tobacco filled the room. When he spoke again his voice was calmer.
‘Hitler locks up Jews and communists. Well done, I say.’
‘He’s also invaded and subjugated most of Europe. He’d do the same here.’
‘Individual freedom is overrated. The rights of citizens must always be subordinate to the needs of the state. The Third Reich is powerful and it is fearsome to its enemies, but it is kind to those who support it. And that’s why most of its citizens are jolly happy with their state of affairs.’
‘Spoken like a true fascist.’
He bowed his head, as if I’d made a good point.
There was a knock on the door. It opened and the maid entered, wheeling a trolley on which were the coffee pot, cups, saucers and a plate of pastries. I let my mind drift away from anger as I poured the coffee. I needed a cool head.
He smiled at me as he accepted his coffee, the charming smile of our early courtship. ‘Thank you, darling.’
The coffee was thick and black and very good. Once I had drunk some I felt able to mention my reason for coming.
‘Cedric … as I said in my letters, I want a divorce.’
His smile didn’t
waver, and his voice was even as he replied. ‘No you don’t. You want to punish me for my indiscretions. I was indiscreet and I’m sorry to have hurt you, but let’s hear no more of this divorce nonsense.’
I refused to despair, because I had known he would resist. My brief conversations with Helen had made that clear, as had his letters. But I decided to press the point, as an opening sally in what I suspected would be a long and drawn-out campaign.
‘I do want a divorce, Cedric.’ Perhaps, if I repeated the words enough, Cedric would really hear them.
He said, sharply, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘It’s not ridiculous.’ I had to work hard to keep my voice calm and even. ‘I’ve changed, Cedric. I’m nothing like the girl you married. Our marriage cannot continue.’
‘It can, and it will. You are my life, Celia. My world. How could I let you go? We are married. We will stay married.’
I sipped my coffee and let my gaze fall away from him, disliking the intensity he was showing. It was a worrying development.
His tone sharpened. ‘I will never agree to a divorce.’ His tone softened, became caressing. ‘I adore you, my darling, and I will not let you simply walk out of my life. But it’s more than that, you silly child. The marriage is to your benefit as well. There will be changes in this country come spring, and you will need me beside you when they come.’
‘What changes?’
He showed the ghost of a smile as he turned away from me to pick up his cup, and he took a sip before he replied in a tone of gentle amusement, ‘Nothing for you to worry about. Nothing at all to worry about. Quite the contrary. But believe me, darling, you will glad to be married to me then.’
Ambulance Girls Under Fire Page 17
