Summer House

by Nichols, Mary

  There were other things in the case; a white crocheted shawl, so fine and soft, it made her sigh and hold it to her cheek. It smelt faintly of mothballs. Had her mother made it? In one corner, embroidered white on white, were the initials HB. Not AD or LD, but HB. It must have been a gift from Lady Barstairs, but why put her own initials on it? And then she remembered her saying she had lost a baby, so she must have handed the shawl on to Mum. Perhaps she could not bear to keep anything that reminded her of her loss. There was also a nightdress intricately smocked, knitted bootees, a matinée jacket and a little bonnet, all beautifully made, all wrapped carefully in tissue. Mum had been busy making clothes for Laura’s baby and she had said nothing of having these things tucked away. She wrapped them all up again while the tears streamed down her cheeks.

  If there was a reluctance to take that final step, it faded when the bombers returned. Buckingham Palace was bombed, as was St Bart’s hospital and a cinema in Leicester Square. The Café de Paris, advertised as the safest restaurant in town because it was in a basement twenty feet below ground, was crowded with elegant women in evening dress and officers in uniform when it was hit by two bombs, one of which exploded in front of the band. The second, though it failed to explode, crashed through the entire building onto the crowded dance floor. The scene was one of devastation, according to the papers, who were making the most of the story, with officers carrying out their dead and injured girlfriends and ladies tearing up their expensive frocks for bandages. That same week another dance hall in the East End was hit, with far more casualties, but the frocks were not expensive and the uniforms not officers’ and so it merited only a passing mention. Her mother would have had something sharp to say about that…

  Thinking about her mother set Laura crying again. She had shed gallons of tears in the last few weeks, but now it was time to stiffen her spine and get on with her life, for the baby’s sake if not her own. She finished sorting her mother’s clothes, most of which she gave to the WVS to help families who had been bombed out, arranged for a dealer to take the furniture and household equipment she did not want and for a van to transport the rest to Beckbridge: a three-piece suite in moquette, a set of bedroom furniture, a display cabinet and a bookcase, whose books went too, packed in boxes. There was the cot she had bought for the baby and the second-hand pram, and all the little clothes her mother had so painstakingly made, wrapped in tissue and packed, along with her own clothes, in two large suitcases. When the van had gone, all she had left to do was to take the keys to the landlord and catch a train. But the Luftwaffe had other ideas.

  The siren went about teatime, just as she was leaving. She hesitated and then decided to go to the shelter and wait for the all-clear. Picking up her handbag, gas mask and the little attaché case, she went down the garden just as the drone of bombers began. She sat down, while the noisy raid went on all round her, remembering all the other nights she and her mother had spent there, buoying each other up, drinking tea from a Thermos, eating sandwiches. Mum had never shown she was afraid, but she must have been. It was here she had confessed about the baby and it was on a particularly bad night she had learnt about her mother’s childhood and her first years at work before she met Dad. And the last war, which had taken his health. Poor Mum, what a hard life she’d had.

  Her musing stopped abruptly when she felt a sudden contraction. It was only the beginning, but she knew without a shadow of doubt that it was the start of her labour. Her little one was not going to wait until they arrived in Beckbridge. Should she risk going out to find help, or sit it out for a while in the hope the all-clear would go? The ambulances and the hospitals would all be busy with bomb casualties. She felt desperately lonely. It was all very well to tell Lady Barstairs she would be all right, all very well to pretend not to mind when neighbours cut her, all very well to be independent, but just at that moment she would have given anything for a friend. She longed for Bob, for the comfort of his arms, to share this time with him, to rejoice at the birth of a child with him – but Bob was gone. Mum was gone too. Outside the din was magnified as it reverberated on the metal of the shelter and shock waves from the explosions, one after another, shook the ground. Whatever was happening outside, it was worse than anything that had gone before. She was gripped by another contraction. Was she to have her baby here, all alone? Would either survive? She lay down on the camp bed and decided it didn’t matter. If she died she would be with those she loved. But what if the baby was born strong and healthy and she let herself die…?

  She got up, gathered up her things and went out. Searchlights swept the sky, ack-ack guns blazed though she didn’t think they had hit any of the swarms of bombers that filled the night sky. There were fires everywhere and through the smoke and haze she could see parachute mines drifting down. They were silent until they hit the ground, but other bombs had a banshee scream as they hurtled downwards. They had been told the Germans put fins on them to make as much noise as possible and terrify those on the receiving end. As if they were not terrified enough! Her contractions were coming more frequently now. Clutching her handbag and her mother’s case, she walked down the road, intending to go to the Edgware General Hospital, which was the nearest.

  ‘Laura?’

  The sound of her name startled her. She looked up to see a figure in a squadron leader’s uniform coming towards her. Bob. ‘Oh, Bob.’ She stumbled forward into his arms.

  Steve held her a minute, until she realised her mistake. She looked up and smiled weakly. ‘Silly me. It was the uniform, I suppose. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Going home for a couple of days. Thought I’d see how you were.’

  ‘Having a baby.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘No, I mean now. Right now.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Steve, walk with me to the hospital, will you?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you get a taxi or something?’

  She managed a laugh. ‘Can you see one?’

  He looked about him. ‘No, but—’

  ‘Then let’s walk. It will help a bit.’

  He was confused and afraid. He knew nothing about having babies. Was she likely to have it there, in the street? Taking her case from her, he took her arm to help her along. ‘Where’s your mother? Surely she—’

  ‘Mum is dead, Steve.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. Was it a bomb?’

  ‘No, she died of cancer.’

  ‘Oh, you poor dear. I’m sorry. Does that mean you’re all alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ She stopped and clutched his arm and hung there for a moment before carrying on. ‘It’s all right,’ she reassured him. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘What about relatives? Surely there’s someone.’

  ‘A friend. She doesn’t live in London. I was going to stay with her for the confinement but the baby has other ideas.’

  ‘What about Bob’s parents?’

  ‘They don’t want to know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault.’

  ‘Maybe not, but Bob asked me to look after you. I haven’t made a very good job of it, have I?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. You turned up just now, right on time. Bob sent you.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He grimaced in the lurid light of dozens of fires. He had been going home on a forty-eight hour pass and that meant crossing London. He hadn’t bargained for the air raid. He couldn’t get anywhere near the station and it was then he had decided to take the Underground to Burnt Oak.

  She had to stop again and he stood waiting until she was ready to go on. ‘Shall I carry you?’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. I must weigh a ton. Besides, we’re nearly there.’ They emerged from Bacon Lane onto the Broadway. There were fire engines and ambulances racing by, bells clanging, intent on reaching the scene of a large fire. They waited until it was safe to cross and made their way into the hospital.

  ‘I’m in labour,’ she told the receptionist. ‘Can you h
elp?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m a nurse. And yes, I’m sure.’

  She was whisked away in a wheelchair and Steve was left standing, wondering what to do.

  ‘Are you the father?’ a nurse asked him.

  ‘No, just a friend.’

  ‘We’ll look after her now. You can call tomorrow and see how she is, if you like. I should get going if I were you. Find a shelter.’ She turned away and hurried up the corridor after her patient.

  Steve left and found a taxi to take him to Liverpool Street Station, only to find the last train had gone. He went down into the Underground, where thousands of people had bedded down for the night. Now that lavatories and washing facilities had been installed for them, the air was marginally sweeter. He made his way to the surface the next morning to discover more devastation and wondered how much longer the people of the beleaguered city could endure it. He tried telephoning the hospital but he couldn’t get through, so he took a taxi there.

  ‘She’s not here,’ he was told. ‘They took her by ambulance to another hospital, away from the danger zone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘If you are not a relative and not the father, I can’t tell you.’

  He regretted denying he was the child’s father. ‘Is she all right? Has she had the baby?’

  ‘She hadn’t when she left here.’ The receptionist was obviously not going to tell him anything. It made him angry, but being angry only made her dig in her toes. ‘Look, Squadron Leader, if I were you, I’d go back to where you came from and no doubt she will contact you if she wants to. If not…’ She shrugged.

  Defeated, he turned on his heel, went back to Liverpool Street and caught a train for Attlesham.

  It was good to be home and he just had time to unwind, have a good dinner, catch up on the local news, take the girls to the pub and have a good night’s sleep before he had to leave again. His transfer to bombers had come through and he was reporting to a new posting at Scampton in Lincolnshire.

  Robert Thomas Rawton Drummond was born in the early hours of the morning of Sunday, 16th of March in a hospital near Epping. The journey out of London had been a nightmare and would not ordinarily have been attempted, but they needed all the London beds they had for casualties. As soon as they arrived Laura was rushed to the delivery room and it was not until some time later – after her baby had been put into her arms and she spent some time examining his fingers and toes, admiring his blue eyes and quiff of dark hair and given him his first feed – that she thought about Steve.

  ‘The air force officer who brought me,’ she asked the ward sister. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about an air force officer. Is he the baby’s father?’

  ‘No, just a friend. He helped me to the hospital. There was a heavy raid on.’

  ‘Then I expect he went to a shelter, or back to his base or something.’ The words were spoken curtly and she supposed they had noticed the lack of a wedding ring. ‘You can always write to him.’

  She supposed she could, except the only address she had was the one Bob had given her. Steve might not be based there now; people moved about a lot in wartime. She had no idea of his home address. She decided to write anyway; the letter might be forwarded. ‘May I make a telephone call. I was supposed to be going to stay with a friend for the confinement. I must let her know where I am.’

  ‘I’ll do it if you give me her number.’

  Laura provided it and she went off down the ward, starched and upright. A few minutes later she came back, in a much more benign mood. ‘Lady Barstairs said to tell you congratulations and you are to go to her as soon as you are fit to travel. She says she’ll fetch you by car.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘I am assured that everything is in hand for you to be looked after, so if you feel up to it, you can go the day after tomorrow. We could use your bed…’

  She was a grandmother! Helen put the phone down and found she was grinning with relief and happiness. She had a grandson! And he was coming here with his mother. She longed to shout it from the rooftops, to tell everyone, ‘I’m a granny!’ But there was no one she could tell. She did what she used to do when she was young and wanted a little secret time to herself; she made her way to the summer house. Only it wasn’t there any more. The builders had broken it up, dropped it in the bottom of the crater and filled the whole thing with earth. She went and sat on the tree stump facing the water. The wind was keen but she was well wrapped up. She wished she could tell Oliver he was a grandfather. He didn’t know he had a daughter, much less a grandson. But he might have others. He might have a wife and several children, even grandchildren. It probably wouldn’t mean half as much to him as it did to her. If he was still alive. She had no way of knowing. ‘Oh, Oliver,’ she whispered. ‘Did you mean to desert me like that?’

  She had been so alone all those years, wanting something she could not have, only half alive, existing from day to day, living in the past, and only a tiny bit of the past at that. No wonder people thought she was a bit strange. But now Laura was coming with the baby, and she would enjoy her company, get to know her. And she’d have the summer house rebuilt, just to prove there were no ghosts there now.

  She went back to the house and made her way round to the stables, which had once been home to several horses. Her father and mother both hunted and she liked to ride sometimes, galloping over the park and onto the common with Kathy. In the old coach house next to the stables stood the old Humber. Mr Ward had kept it clean and made sure it remained in working order, but there was so little petrol to be had, she hadn’t driven it for ages. She turned and went to see Kathy, who was much more friendly nowadays, as if the bomb had destroyed the rancour along with the summer house.

  ‘I need to use the car,’ she told her, after they had exchanged greetings. ‘I think it’s serviceable but I wondered if William would be kind enough to check it over for me and put a little petrol in it. I’ve got some coupons.’

  ‘I should think so. He’ll be in soon; you can ask him yourself. When do you want it?’

  ‘The day after tomorrow. I’m going to have a friend to live with me. She’s just had a baby and I have to fetch them from a hospital in Epping.’ She paused, noting Kathy’s look of surprise and realised she ought to explain. ‘She’s the daughter of an old friend who died of cancer a couple of weeks ago, and she has no other family. The girl’s husband was in the RAF; he was shot down in the sea and his body was never recovered, so what with one thing and another, she’s had a pretty awful time. I shall enjoy having her to stay and helping her get over it all.’

  ‘Oh, the poor thing. What’s her name?’

  ‘Laura Drummond.’

  ‘Should I know her?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I met her mother in London soon after Mama died and we kept in touch off and on. Then I met her again recently and one thing led to another. Laura is a nurse and when I told her about the Hall becoming a hospital and the need for someone to run it, it seemed the ideal solution for both of us.’ She realised she was gabbling, wanting to clarify her story in her own mind as well as Kathy’s, but now she stopped suddenly. Without even discussing it with Laura she had given her a husband. Perhaps she shouldn’t have done that. On the other hand, it would have been unkind to have blurted out that her new lodger was unmarried. Laura had told her a little of the unkindness of neighbours and so-called friends and she wanted her to start again in Beckbridge with a clean slate.

  ‘You don’t mind me saying that?’ she asked Laura as they left Epping behind them. She drove carefully because although the snowploughs had cleared the road, there was still snow lying on the verges. ‘Beckbridge is a close-knit community where everyone knows everyone else’s business. It’s not prying, at least most of the time it’s not, they are simply being friendly, but I didn’t want you to start off at a disadvantage.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. I always think of Bob as my husband. He always said I was his wife. I would
have been married, legally and all that, if it hadn’t been for the Luftwaffe.’ She looked down at the sleeping Robby and smiled. Wrapped warmly in a shawl, he was fast asleep in her lap. ‘I’ll wear my mother’s wedding ring. She would have liked that.’

  Helen had been shaken to the core to see the baby swathed in the shawl Laura had been wrapped in when she had been wrenched from her arms. It was like being jolted back into the past and reliving that awful time. She had felt an irresistible urge to scream and scream and wrestle the child from his mother. Her consternation must have shown because Laura had begun apologising. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put him in these clothes, but I didn’t have any others with me. I sent all my baby things on ahead with the van.’ And then she had gone on to explain how she had found them and assumed she had given them to her mother.