Song of the Skylark

by Erica James

  Mrs Dallimore laughed. ‘How very diplomatic of you, my dear. Well, if you won’t give me any snippets of gossip of that nature, tell me what’s going on in your own life. Stopped moping over that married man yet?’

  Lizzie smiled. ‘Getting there.’

  ‘Good, I’m very pleased to hear that. Somebody once told me that the cure for infatuation is simply to get to know the person better. Which you now have. How’s Jed? Taken you out for another drink yet?’

  ‘As a matter of fact he has, he—’ Lizzie did a double take. ‘Hang on, how did you know that Jed had asked me out for a drink previously?’

  ‘Because I suggested it to him.’

  ‘You didn’t!’ Her exclamation coming out as a high-pitched squeak, Lizzie’s mouth stayed open in a circle of disbelief.

  ‘What an absurd thing to say, of course I did. What else am I supposed to do here but meddle in other people’s lives? Did you have a pleasant time together?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  Mrs Dallimore chuckled happily. ‘He’s a nice chap; I like him. And there’s more to him than meets the eye, wouldn’t you say?’

  Lizzie smiled. ‘What a wily old thing you are, Mrs Dallimore! If you eat some more fruit, I’ll tell you some more.’ The deal struck, Lizzie explained about Jed putting in a word for her at Skylark Radio and her going to the studio tomorrow to meet one of the station’s presenters.

  ‘Part of me wants you to get the job,’ said Mrs Dallimore when Lizzie finished, ‘but selfishly, I shall miss not having you around.’

  ‘I probably won’t be offered the job, given my run of bad luck, but if I do, I could still come and visit you,’ Lizzie said, ‘if you’d like me to.’

  ‘Oh, I expect you’ll be much too busy to do that.’

  Lizzie took the now empty dish from Mrs Dallimore. ‘I shall make time,’ she said firmly, meaning it. ‘After all, I might want to do some meddling of my own regarding you and Mr Sheridan.’

  Wiping her mouth with a paper napkin, Mrs Dallimore’s eyes twinkled. ‘Playing me at my own game? Well, I deserve that, I suppose. But as pleasant a man as Mr Sheridan is, I’m prepared to let somebody else snap him up.’

  ‘A case of him not being a patch on your husband, is that how it is?’ asked Lizzie. ‘Was Mr Dallimore the one true love of your life?’

  The old lady paused a beat, and, as if giving the question careful deliberation, she turned her gaze reflectively towards the open French doors. ‘We were very happy,’ she said faintly, ‘but for so short a time.’

  ‘How short?’

  ‘Two years, which was longer than a lot of marriages lasted, given the war. William died, not in the air, as I dreaded, but during an air raid one night. The airfield was targeted, and since it was so close to the village, the village was also hit. My grandmother and I were at a WVS meeting in the village hall when suddenly it seemed as though the whole world had exploded. To all intents and purposes it had; Shillingbury had become my world and I lost not just my husband that night, but my grandmother and my friend Molly. It was a terrible, terrible night …’

  In a hushed voice, not wanting to appear crass, Lizzie said, ‘I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for you.’

  Mrs Dallimore slowly turned away from the French doors, her gaze now back on Lizzie. ‘No, you probably can’t. Unless you lived through those times, you have no idea. And I don’t mean to be patronising when I say that.’

  ‘I know you don’t. How did you carry on?’

  ‘There was no alternative. Besides, it was what one had to do; one had to keep going. Would you like to hear what happened next?’

  ‘Only if it won’t tire you out. I don’t want you ending up back in the medical wing again.’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself with that – it’s my resolute intention to stay away from there for as long as possible.’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Autumn and winter 1943, Shillingbury, Suffolk

  They say that for everything you lose, you gain something new, but it was hard to believe this was true the night the bombs rained down on Shillingbury, the night when Clarissa lost so much.

  The horror of the bombing raid made them all realise how lucky they had been, because until that night they had escaped what London and many other cities around the country had endured on a regular basis. Now the war had come directly to them. And claimed some of their own.

  Lavinia died shortly after Clarissa and two others managed to drag her from the burning inferno of what had been the village hall and where they’d been attending a WVS meeting. The scene was one of utter chaos: of men and women screaming as they frantically searched for loved ones amidst the wreckage, while others did their best to put out the fires that had taken hold. Thatched cottages were ablaze in an instant, turning the sky into a flaming cauldron. At Jimmy’s command, a human chain was formed from the water pump, but the buckets of water thrown at the flames made little impact. Then suddenly, as if it were an act of God, it began to rain, and when the first fat drops turned to a dramatic downpour, a loud cheer went up. By the time the ambulances and fire engines arrived, the worst was over. Half a dozen houses had been lost, including Mrs Cook’s cottage, and the dead were laid out on the village green – Lavinia, Molly, Vera Hubbard, Joan Bidwell, the elderly Finch sisters and Virginia Charlbury. It was a miracle anyone had survived from inside the hall, so people started to say.

  Soaked to the skin, her teeth chattering with shock and cold, Clarissa was taken home where she had to break the awful news to Charles. The next morning, and still in a daze, she received the news that the airfield had been hit by several bombs at the same time as the village hall had, and William was one of five airmen who’d died. His end, so she was assured, had been mercifully quick. Inconsolable, Clarissa sobbed her heart out for what felt like an eternity. She was convinced the profound pain of her grief would be too much for her to bear. Poor William. One minute so full of life and the next no more.

  His parents, who’d already lost one son when the Spitfire he’d been flying had been shot down over the English Channel, wanted William to be buried in Kent in their parish church. Numb with grief, Clarissa went along with their wishes. It was only later that she realised her mistake – having William’s grave to tend to in Shillingbury would have given her somewhere to visit when she wanted to feel close to him.

  But that regret was soon assuaged when Dr Rutherford diagnosed that the acute tiredness and sickness she was experiencing had little to do with mourning, but was morning sickness: she was pregnant. The news had the effect of lifting her spirits: she might not have William, but she had his child, a child who would give her the strength and courage to carry on.

  It was a courage that was put to the test a month later when Clarissa went in search of Charles to tell him lunch was ready. Since his wife’s death, Charles was a much altered man. Never loquacious before, now he was even more taciturn and withdrawn, and spent nearly all his time alone, either in the greenhouse or in the drawing room listening to the daily news broadcasts. Thomas and Walter took to listening to the news on the wireless also, wanting to understand fully what was going on. They had been so very fond of William, and of Lavinia, too, who had become something of a grandmother figure to them. The shock of what had happened understandably prompted them to speak about their parents more, asking Clarissa question after question about them, desperately needing reassurance that their mother and father were still alive, that they would see them again, and soon. All Clarissa could do was tell the boys that they had to live in hope; it was all any of them could do.

  With no sign of Charles in the house, Clarissa went out to the garden. She found him in the greenhouse, slumped in his wheelchair, his left hand hanging limply at his side. At first she thought he’d fallen asleep, but when he didn’t stir at the sound of her voice, or her hand on his shoulder, she feared the worst
and felt for his pulse. Unable to find it, but knowing from the stillness of his body that it would serve no purpose other than to confirm what she already knew, she went to call Dr Rutherford. The cause of death, so the doctor wrote on the death certificate, was a massive stroke, but Clarissa felt the real truth was that with Lavinia gone the fight had gone out of Charles; he’d lost the will to live.

  Immediately after the funeral service, and back at the house where those who’d been at the church had gathered for a drink, Henry Willet took Clarissa discreetly to one side and said there were certain things he needed to discuss with her.

  ‘Will it take long?’ she asked tiredly.

  ‘No more than half an hour,’ he said, ‘I just thought it would be better to do it today, rather than drag you to my office. But if you feel—’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘let’s do it when the other guests have left.’

  They sat in the drawing room or, more precisely, she sat while Henry paced the floor in front of the fire burning in the grate, his well-manicured hands clasped behind his back. No longer did he resemble the awkward country lawyer she had first encountered in the Primrose Tea Rooms. Dressed today in an elegant dark suit with a black tie, his hair oiled and smoothed into place, he would not have looked out of place in a smart city law firm.

  ‘As I’m sure you’re aware,’ he began, ‘Charles and Lavinia had no real money to speak of; things did not go well for them after the Depression. I mean no disrespect when I say that Charles’s judgement was less than sound when it came to investments, and so—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know all that,’ Clarissa interrupted him, wishing he would get to the point. Henry had turned into a pompous and monumental bore. Pedantry might be considered an asset for a lawyer, but Clarissa had no time for it. Her grandfather had often made the same observation, especially so after Henry had been declared unfit for active service. But a pedant was a safe pair of hands, Charles had maintained, saying there was nobody he would trust more to handle his affairs.

  Henry was, Clarissa strongly suspected, a deeply unfulfilled man – a man who, still unmarried, continued to live with his mother. William had met Henry once and had not taken to him. ‘The man strikes me as having a cushy war and doing rather well out of it,’ he’d said. In Clarissa’s opinion William had been a shrewd judge of character.

  It had been after she was married, and at her American lawyer’s insistence, that Clarissa had made a will. Henry had drawn it up, but without ever knowing the exact extent of her wealth. Again at her lawyer’s insistence, the bulk of the money inherited from Grandma Ethel, along with a wide variety of investments, was to remain in America until the war was over. For now a generous monthly allowance was transferred by wire.

  Soon after her wedding to William, Effie had written to congratulate Clarissa, declaring herself to be the most jealous girl in all the world. ‘Why can’t a handsome pilot fall in love with me?’ she’d written. Her comment was a nod towards Ellis, who was then based in Newport Beach, California carrying out submarine patrol missions. A letter from Ellis arrived several weeks later, accusing Clarissa of wantonly breaking the hearts of the only two men who were remotely worthy of her affections – he and Artie. Artie had also sent her a brief letter of congratulation, and more recently a heartbreakingly compassionate note of condolence after she’d written to say that William had been killed. Artie was now in Italy reporting on the advancement of the Allied troops – with the US so heavily involved in the war since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, his skill as a reporter was in even greater demand. Rarely in his letters did he refer to what he was witnessing; instead he enquired after Clarissa and Thomas and Walter. The boys also wrote to Artie, or Uncle Artie as they now called him.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Henry said, coming to a stop in front of the fireplace, his hands still clasped behind his back, ‘after everything you’ve endured, this must be dreadfully wearisome for you, but I wanted to set the scene, so to speak.’

  Lord! How much had she missed while her mind had wandered? Clarissa rapidly corralled her wits. ‘For which I thank you,’ she said, ‘but it’s been a long day, most of which I’ve spent on my feet, and I’d really like to get this over with so I can rest.’

  ‘Of course.’ Henry’s gaze flickered hesitantly from her face to her swelling abdomen. She had the feeling he found the sight of her in this condition vaguely unpalatable. ‘Perhaps I could request Mrs Cook make you a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she’s not too busy to do that for you.’

  There was something horribly proprietorial about the way he was standing there on the hearthrug, and also in the manner he referred to Mrs Cook, whose devotion to Clarissa was matched only by Clarissa’s devotion to her. With the poor woman’s cottage rendered uninhabitable after the night of the bombing, she had been living here at The Grange ever since. There had been times when, distraught with grief, Mrs Cook had been the only person to whom she could turn.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Clarissa replied, ‘Mrs Cook’s done quite enough for the day. If she has any sense she’ll be sitting down having a well-earned cup of tea herself. So, to the point, Henry. Which is presumably the contents of my grandfather’s will.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘And given that I have absolutely no expectations, please don’t feel you have to sugar-coat anything for me.’

  ‘Thank you, I appreciate your frankness. Which deserves equal frankness. To this end, I’m sorry to tell you things are far worse than Charles would have ever wanted you to know. He kept the worst of it from Lavinia, wanted to shield her from anything unpleasant. As you may recall, I spoke with him after Lavinia’s funeral and he requested I draw up a new will and appointed me as sole executor. In that respect, he was at least thorough.’

  And still he hasn’t got to the point, thought Clarissa irritably as the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour – it was now four o’clock.

  ‘What with increased taxation due to the war and death duties to take into account,’ Henry continued relentlessly, ‘it’s my very sad duty to inform you that while Charles has bequeathed you this house, there will be nothing left once the bank and the taxman have claimed what is owed to them. In fact, I fear you will have to sell the house to pay off in full what is owed. And therein lies a further problem, for the cost of the outstanding repairs required, repairs that Charles kept putting off, such as the leaking roof, the damp and the …’ His words trailed off. He pressed his glasses firmly to the bridge of his nose. Then: ‘Perhaps now is not the time to further distress you with regard to the poor state of the house. But there is a solution, and one I think you might find agreeable. Since I know how much you love this house and regard it as your home, you could request funds from America to resolve the situation.’

  Wondering where he’d got the idea that she loved the house, Clarissa said, ‘It’s more or less how I assumed my grandfather had left matters.’

  He nodded. ‘I so wish it could be otherwise.’

  ‘But it isn’t,’ Clarissa said firmly, ‘and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, is that we must face these things head-on and with all the grit one can muster.’

  He came and sat on the sofa next to her. ‘How brave you are, my dear, but Clarissa, I want you to know that you don’t have to face this alone. If there’s anything I can do, you only have to ask.’ He took her hand and held it between his, the palms of his hands clammy against hers. ‘You know how very much I’ve always admired you,’ he said. ‘And perhaps … well, perhaps if things had been different, if we had met long before the war broke out, before you became saddled with so much responsibility, I might have had the courage to ask you to—’

  ‘Please, Henry,’ she interrupted him, appalled and dismayed at what he was on the verge of saying. She removed her hand from his. ‘Now is not the time.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Forgive me. It’s just that I can’t stand t
o see you suffer.’

  ‘I’m not suffering,’ she said. ‘Compared to what some people are going through, I’m fortunate.’ She had told herself this so many times she almost believed it.

  ‘That’s an admirable thing to say. But what do you intend to do?’

  ‘About the house?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s become your home. Surely you can’t bear to part with it?’

  ‘Funnily enough, I can. And what is more, it’s already arranged for me to leave.’ She rose to her feet. ‘You see, a few days ago I was informed that the house is to be requisitioned and used by the airfield.’

  Henry rose to his feet also, his face a picture of alarm. ‘Have you agreed?’

  ‘Agreement doesn’t come into it. It was an order. And a quite understandable order at that. The air raid destroyed much of the sleeping quarters and the officers’ mess,’ she continued, as though he hadn’t spoken, ‘the house is needed.’

  ‘But where will you go?’

  ‘I have plans in place. Tomorrow I’m going to sign the lease for a cottage on Colonel Brook’s estate. It’s been empty for some time and is a little run-down, but fixing it will be part of the fun of moving there.’

  His brows drawn, Henry had now resumed his pacing in front of the fireplace. ‘This is all so sudden, Clarissa,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

  Annoyed by his patronising tone, and sensing he was put out that his role of caring lawyer gently leading her by the hand had been snatched from him, Clarissa forced herself to smile. ‘Never more so, Henry. Mrs Cook will be coming with me, as will Thomas and Walter, and Leon too. Sadly we’ll be losing Jimmy, but he’ll be nearby working for the Colonel and will be available to help with a few jobs for me should the need arise. Of course, the cottage will be a lot more cramped than we’re used to, but in the circumstances that really does seem neither here nor there, don’t you think?’