Summer House

by Nichols, Mary

  His father, Sir Peter Rawton, was all right, but Lady Rawton had been so snooty, looking down her nose and asking probing questions, trying to catch her out. She had felt like a naughty schoolgirl and, being uncomfortable, she had behaved like one, too, blushing and stammering and dropping her serviette. When she had bent to pick it up, the crumbs had slid off the plate she had on her lap onto the thick carpet and she had made matters worse by falling to her knees to try and pick them up. ‘Please do not bother,’ Lady Rawton had said in her cut-glass voice. ‘We have servants to do that.’ If it hadn’t been for Bob, smiling sympathetically at her, she would have left there and then.

  Was the gulf so great between her background and Bob’s that it could not be bridged? It was stupid, she told herself. Class snobbery went out with the last war, or it should have done. Or was it simply a question of wealth: theirs and her lack of it? Bob had dismissed her fears as nonsense and so she tried to tell herself that was exactly what it was: nonsense. But she dreaded to think what her mother would make of them when she met them at the wedding. Mum could be very outspoken and could give as good as she got when occasion demanded. And she’d have no truck with snobbery. Laura was glad the proposed meeting of parents had not taken place; everyone had been too busy.

  She sighed and opened her book just as the all-clear sounded. It was nine-thirty. They gathered up their belongings and trooped back into the house. Everything was as it should be. People were coming from their own shelters and returning indoors or emerging from the brick shelters along the road and hurrying to wherever they had been going when caught out by the siren. There was no damage that they could see and Laura and her mother wondered aloud where the bombs had fallen. They made themselves a cup of cocoa and went to bed.

  The squadron had scrambled at four o’clock and climbed high into the sky above the cloud cover. For several consecutive days enemy bombers had come over in larger and larger numbers, determined to wipe out the country’s air defences. The weather had been far from ideal, but many had got through and dropped their bombs. It seemed to Bob that they hadn’t been at all sure of their targets, because, though many landed on the airfields and did tremendous damage to buildings and aircraft, others landed in the countryside and some on the London suburbs. It was this aspect that worried him most. Laura was in London. He couldn’t wait to make her his wife and take her away for a few days – a few days in which, apart from the more pleasurable things associated with a honeymoon, he would persuade her to get out of London.

  The cloud was thick and they couldn’t find the enemy, even though they knew they weren’t far away, and after half an hour they were recalled; the Stukas had dropped their bombs wherever they could and were on their way home. Bob was relieved. He was on standby until ten and then he could leave the base and go home to Maida Vale from where he would go to his wedding. His mother was far from enthusiastic about him marrying Laura, but he had been unshakeable. She would welcome Laura into the family or she would lose her son; it was as simple as that. He had hated doing it to her, but the idea of giving Laura up was so far out of the question he would not even think of it. She was his love, his life, his very existence and without her, he might as well give up and let Jerry shoot him down in flames. Mother had given in and agreed to attend the wedding. She had even promised to smile and try very hard to like the girl with whom he had chosen to share his life. His father, who liked Laura, had simply shrugged his shoulders as if pandering to his wife was the extent of his ambition. It was strange when you considered he was good at his job, a man of decision, a man respected by everyone at the Ministry from Lord Beaverbrook down.

  He taxied to a stop, left his Hurricane to his ground crew, who would refuel it, and strolled back to the dispersal hut with Flight Lieutenant Steve Wainright.

  ‘Not long to go now,’ Steve said, as they flung down their helmets and shrugged themselves out of their flying jackets. Bob was still doing his job, still leading the squadron, but he was on tenterhooks and Steve supposed it was wedding nerves. Bob was more than his squadron leader; he was his best friend, as close as a brother considering what they went through together day after day.

  Bob looked at his watch. It was almost nine o’clock and not yet dark. ‘Nineteen hours and I’ll be standing at the altar. God, I’m nervous. It’s worse than my first solo flight. Have you got your speech ready?’

  ‘Yes, word perfect.’

  ‘Tell me what you’re going to say.’

  ‘No fear. You can wait to hear it with everyone else. Have you written yours?’

  ‘Not exactly. I know it begins “My wife and I…” Then after everyone has had their laugh, I just have to thank everyone and sit down. You don’t think she’ll change her mind, do you?’

  Steve laughed. ‘Not a chance!’

  ‘Steve, if anything should happen to me—’

  ‘What, between now and two o’clock tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘No, afterwards. When I come back to ops. You’ll look after her, won’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘I mean it. I’m an old hand now and old hands are few and far between. The odds—’

  ‘Shut up, Bob, for God’s sake. You’re giving me the creeps.’

  ‘Will you? I don’t think she can expect much sympathy from my folks.’

  ‘You don’t have to ask, but talking of odds, they’re no different for me.’

  ‘Have you got someone?’

  ‘Not at the moment, but who knows?’

  ‘Then I’ll reciprocate. There’s a letter in my locker addressed to Laura. If anything should happen, give it to her, will you?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s no way to talk on the eve of your wedding.’

  ‘How right you are.’ He laughed in an embarrassed way. ‘I don’t reckon we’ll have to scramble again tonight, the cloud’s too low. I think I’ll risk a quick phone call.’ Laura had had a telephone installed at the beginning of the war so that she could be summoned if there was an emergency at the hospital and to let her mother know she might be late, and now Bob rang her as often as he could. Unable to use the telephone in dispersal, he disappeared at a sprint towards the mess and was back five minutes later, smiling. ‘She hasn’t changed her mind.’

  Steve laughed. ‘Is that all you wanted to ask her?’

  ‘No, but the rest is private.’ The words were hardly out of his mouth before the phone rang. He picked it up. ‘Scramble,’ he said, grabbing his flying jacket and helmet.

  Laura woke and reached across to switch on the lamp on her bedside table and peered at the alarm clock that stood beside it. Eight o’clock! How could she have slept so long, today of all days? She switched off the light and hurried to open the blackout curtains. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky. Perfect. And Bob had phoned when he landed to tell her he was safe, so all was well. She turned to look across at her wedding dress. It was not a dream. Today she was to become Mrs Rawton and tonight they would be at a little cottage in the Peak District, which Bob had rented for a week.

  Anne put her head round the door. ‘I thought I heard you get out of bed. Shall I bring your breakfast up here?’

  ‘No, I’m not hungry. To tell the truth, I feel a bit sick.’

  ‘Nerves, I expect. Come down and have a cup of tea and a bit of toast, then you can have a long soak in the bath.’

  ‘I think I’ll go for a walk first. It will clear my head. I’ve got time, haven’t I?’

  ‘All the time in the world. Everything is ready.’

  Laura washed and dressed and tried to swallow a mouthful of toast, but found she could not. The cup of tea went down and straight up again. She smiled wanly. ‘I must look awful.’

  ‘A bit pale. Perhaps a walk will do you good, put some colour into your cheeks.’

  Laura abandoned her breakfast and slipped out of the house. She walked down the street and round the corner towards Edgware Road, lined with shops and thick with traffic in spite of petrol rationing. It was a road she
had known since she was eight years old, when her father had been given promotion and was able to afford to move out of that squalid tenement in Stepney. The house in Axholme Avenue was her mother’s joy because it had a bathroom and a separate kitchen with a gas cooker, something they had never had before. She had delighted in making it a real home. It was sad that Dad had only lived a couple of years after they moved. It had been a struggle for Mum to continue to pay the rent and bring up her daughter, but Laura had wanted for nothing. And now she was going to be a wife herself, but while Bob was still in the air force, she would continue to live with her mother. She thought that was one reason why Mum had become reconciled to the inevitability of her marriage.

  Her sickness had passed, as it had passed each morning for the last week, and though her mother might say it was nerves and she might agree with her, Laura had a feeling that it was nothing to do with nerves. She had missed a period. Only by ten days, but it was enough to give her little pangs of guilt. She had been strictly brought up, the difference between right and wrong hammered home to her all through her adolescence. Her boyfriends had been vetted by her mother and later by the matron at her training hospital, where she had been closely supervised. Giving in to boyfriends was wicked, she had been told, and if they objected when she refused they were not worthy of her. Bob had not been unworthy and giving in to him had not seemed wrong at all. No one need ever know and, in any case, it might come to nothing. The life they were leading nowadays – the hard work, the constant fear, the sleepless nights – were enough to upset anyone’s regularity. It did not matter, not now. Smiling to herself at the prospect of having a child that looked like Bob, she turned for home.

  The flowers had arrived, a bouquet of white lilies, which would not have been Laura’s first choice, and a posy of carnations for her mother to pin to her dress. A tray of buttonholes had been sent to the church for the guests. ‘I wish your father were alive to see this day,’ her mother said as she helped Laura into the dress. ‘He would have been so proud to give you away.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I thought of that too. But we mustn’t be sad. Perhaps he’s looking down on us and smiling.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Anne picked up a hairbrush and Laura sat at the dressing table so that she could have her hair brushed. ‘This reminds me of when you were little,’ Anne said, taking the brush down from the crown in long smooth strokes. ‘I loved brushing your hair every night, after you had been bathed and had your nightie on ready for bed. Your dad used to sit and watch—’

  ‘And tell me fairy stories. He always added his own bits to them and made them sound a little different.’ She paused. ‘Do you still miss him?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. It never goes away, that feeling of loss. But we have to stop grieving sooner or later and get on with things. I had you—’

  ‘You won’t lose me, you know. Don’t ever think that.’

  ‘I don’t. How does the saying go? “A son is a son until he gets him a wife, but a daughter is a daughter the whole of her life”.’

  ‘You’ve never told me how you and Dad met.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’ Anne paused. There were some things she had never told Laura, was not sure she wanted her to know. Brought up in a Dr Barnardo’s orphanage, she didn’t remember her own mother, who, so she had been told, had died when she was born. No one mentioned her father. When, at thirteen, the orphanage found her a live-in job as a scullery maid in one of the posh houses in Maida Vale, in the same street as the Rawtons, she had been given her birth certificate with its stark entry, ‘base born, father unknown’. Sometimes she wondered if her mother’s name really had been Smith.

  She had worked at the house in Maida Vale for four years, a skivvy with no life apart from the work she did, the bed she slept in, the food she ate. The other servants hardly spoke to her and when they did it was with contempt, and she realised being illegitimate was a scourge, something of which to be ashamed. She had a half day off each week and she spent it walking the streets of London, strolling in the park listening to the band, reading in the library, anything that didn’t cost her more than a penny or two. If she got back too soon, they always found something for her to do, even though she was supposed to be off-duty. So, unless the weather was exceptionally bad, she stayed out. On that particular day she had walked all along Oxford Street, Clerkenwell Road and Hackney Road, all the way to Victoria Park, where she intended to sit on a bench to rest a few minutes before returning.

  ‘I saw him playing football,’ she said, just as Laura began to wonder if she had forgotten the question. ‘It was the dockers versus the crew of the Respite. He was good, even I could see that, and when he scored a goal I clapped and shouted “Bravo!” When the players trooped off, the man who stood next to me called him over.’ She smiled a little. ‘He said, “Hey, Tom, come over and meet this little lady, she’s an admirer of yours.” I was terribly embarrassed but Tom didn’t seem to mind.’

  He had looked her up and down with his head on one side. Because she was provided with a uniform for work, she only had one frock to wear on her half day. It was grey cotton trimmed with a little white broderie anglaise round the collar and in tucks down the front to the waist. The skirt stopped just short of her ankles, revealing black button boots. Her hair was drawn into a severe bun and was topped with a little black hat with a red silk rose on the front. She was acutely aware that she looked shabby, but he must have seen something he liked in her because he smiled.

  He wasn’t very tall, only a little taller than she was, and he had fair hair and the beginnings of a fluffy pale moustache. But it was his eyes that held her. They were grey with green flecks in them and they were looking at her with an interest no one had shown in her before, except Mrs Colkirk, her employer, when she came to the orphanage to look her over before deciding to take her on. But Tom’s look was altogether more benign and she found herself smiling back. ‘He asked me if I had enjoyed the game and when I said I didn’t know anything about football, he said he’d have to educate me. It went on from there.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound much different from the way Bob and I met.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  He had gone home to change but as that was not far away, he arranged to meet her an hour later. She had nowhere to go for that hour, so she found a bench and sat down, wondering if she had dreamt that a young, handsome man had arranged to meet her, Annie Smith, orphan and bastard. He probably wouldn’t want to know her if he found out about that and it would be better to keep quiet about it. She didn’t say anything that day, nor the next time they met, or the next. It was beginning to worry her and when it was evident he was seriously courting her, she had plucked up the courage to tell him. It made not a bit of difference, he told her, he still wanted to marry her.

  Life, which had been one grey existence of endless drudgery, became a glorious golden time. It did not matter that he was a docker and subject to the whims of dockmasters whether they gave him a day’s work or not. It did not matter that his mother did not take to her; she supposed Tom must have told her why she had no relatives. It did not matter that she could not afford to buy a new dress or a new pair of shoes. Nothing mattered except that they loved each other.

  ‘How long before you knew you wanted to get married?’ Laura asked her.

  ‘A few weeks. We had to wait for a house, but when one became vacant near his mother in Prince Albert Lane, he took on the tenancy and asked me to name the day.’

  ‘And you never regretted it?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘There you are then,’ Laura said, watching in the mirror as her mother coiled her hair up on top of her head and pinned it in little swirls ready for the coronet and veil to be fastened on top. ‘What’s so different now?’

  Anne laughed. ‘Nothing, I suppose. There, how does that look?’

  ‘Lovely. Thank you, Mum. Not only for doing my hair, but for everything. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother.’ She turned in her seat to l
ook at her. ‘You’re crying! Please don’t cry.’

  Anne attempted a laugh. ‘Well, you shouldn’t say such soppy things. Now, why don’t you go and sit in the front room? It’s cool in there. You don’t need to put your headdress and shoes on until the last minute.’

  When her daughter had gone Anne went to her own room to change into her wedding outfit, but she did not immediately undress. Instead she sat on the bed and picked up the framed photograph of her husband that she kept on the bedside table. The picture had been taken in France, during a lull in the fighting, so he had told her. He was in uniform, standing in front of a cottage door, though he had explained it was not a cottage but a backcloth the photographer had rigged up. Almost everyone in the unit had had his picture taken and they were all posed in front of that fake door. It was in sepia, but she had no difficulty picturing the light brown colour of his centre-parted hair, his slightly darker moustache and the keen blue eyes.

  He had joined up right at the beginning, which he needn’t have done considering dockers were required to unload vital food and wartime supplies being brought in by the merchant navy. For once in his life he would not have been competing for every job and yet he had given it up to go and fight. She thought she might have driven him to it. He had been fed up with her mooning about, longing for a child, gazing into other people’s prams and being depressed every month when she was once more disappointed. She had suggested adoption but he would not hear of it. If they could not have their own child, he’d be damned if he’d bring up someone else’s.