The Bannister Girls

by Jean Saunders

  Those who continued to exist in the daily mire could hardly be better off than those who died, according to the more hard-hitting news reports. The conditions of the trenches were said to be filthy and lice-ridden, the trenches awash with mud and effluent. The winter had been especially cold and wet, the spring a long time coming in the Allied lines.

  ‘It grows more terrifying every day.’ Clemence threw down the newspaper she was reading, as if the very touch of it tainted her. ‘Why doesn’t the government do something? What are the other friendly nations doing about it?’

  The answer came in May, when Italy entered the war, to set up their own meagre line of defence on the French/Italian border against the Germans. In England at the same time, Lloyd George organised a Ministry of Munitions.

  Munitions workers were to be better paid and exempt from call-up if conscription became necessary, as seemed increasingly likely, and a little daylight was thought to be seen in the haphazard running of the country’s affairs.

  ‘At the rate soldiers are being killed at the Front, they’ll be sending old men soon,’ Ellen muttered. ‘I wish I was a man. I’d follow in Hobbs’ footsteps!’

  ‘I’m very thankful that you’re not,’ Clemence said sharply. ‘You’d go and get yourself killed at the very first opportunity, thinking you could win the war single-handed!’

  ‘Thank-you, Mother! I shall take that as a compliment, however you meant it.’ Ellen grinned. ‘Hide that newspaper before Rose and Angel come back from the village. Rose takes a morbid interest in reading the casualty columns since Hobbs enlisted. She prays for him every night. Did you know?’

  ‘Gracious me!’ Clemence stared at her daughter. ‘You mean that your friend Rose prays for the chauffeur?’

  Her affrontery was almost comical. Ellen would dearly have loved to encourage it, but then her mother would probably take Rose gently aside, and tell her that such an association just wasn’t suitable, and Ellen couldn’t risk the thought of her friend being so embarrassed.

  ‘There’s nothing of l’amour about it, Mama,’ she said airily. ‘Rose has merely added Hobbs to her list of prayers for dead and prospectively dead heroes. Ronnie first, Hobbs second, that’s all. Quaint, isn’t it?’

  ‘Really, Ellen, you can be very objectionable at times,’ Clemence went hot at such outrageous talk.

  ‘Why? Because I’m not afraid to talk of death? Isn’t it time it stopped being such a forbidden subject, Mother, when all about us are dropping like flies?’

  Clemence rose stiffly to her feet.

  ‘I won’t stay in the same room with you while you’re behaving like this, Ellen. You shame me with your so-called clever talk. Accompany me and my ladies to the railway station at Temple Meads one afternoon to give the poor wounded boys tea and comfort, and see some of them who come home from the Front with limbs missing and eyes blinded, and then see how glibly you dare to talk of death.’

  She swept out of the room, and Ellen bit her lip. God knew why she had to take things out on her mother, who was definitely doing her bit, despite her own refined upbringing, but Ellen felt so abominably frustrated down here. She and Rose were out of sorts with one another, and even their interest in women’s rights had inevitably waned, since Mrs Pankhurst had patriotically stopped her rigid campaigning while the war lasted. But without the shared interest, both Ellen and Rose realised uneasily that they had absolutely nothing in common.

  Buried in the country and with all such activities curtailed, there were no great rallies, no heroic speeches to listen to, no sacrifices to be made. It was all so deadly dull. The others didn’t seem to find it so stifling as Ellen did, she thought irritably.

  Louise had become involved in some sort of charity work in nearby Bristol, and drove herself in and out of the city with a determined nearer-to-God expression every afternoon.

  Angel had wheedled their father into teaching her to drive, and was crashing about in the Sunbeam all over the place. Either with their mother, who held on to the seat as if it was going to be her last excursion on earth, or taking the willing Rose to explore the country which she had never seen before. Ellen felt very much adrift.

  The only way she could rid herself of the annoyance she constantly felt was to bait her mother, which was a frustration in itself, because she always felt so God-damned awful about it afterwards.

  She heard the screech of tyres outside. Angel was far from being a proficient driver, but according to their father she would get there in the end. Ellen hadn’t even sat beside her sister in the car yet to find out. Seconds later Rose and Angel came rushing into the room, obviously brimful of news. Ellen lifted a bored eyebrow.

  ‘All right, what’s going on now? Let me guess. We’re to be billetted with soldiers. I said it would happen. Why would they allow us to get away with it, when smaller houses than ours have to have their quota –?’

  She stopped her laconic surmising as she saw the excited look on Rose’s face. It was a while since she had seen her look so animated, even if it probably wouldn’t last very long. Ellen sat upright from her sprawling position on the sofa.

  ‘What’s happened? Tell me at once!’

  Angel’s voice shook as she answered. ‘Oh, Ellen, do you remember that nice Mr Strube with the greengrocer’s shop in the village? We always called him Mr Roly-Poly German Sausage when we were small, and Mother said we weren’t to be so rude –’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, you know all the fuss there’s been lately about Germans living in Britain when we’re at war with them. Last night Mr Strube’s shop was broken into, and everything was smashed up, and the vegetables were thrown into the street. It wasn’t discovered until morning, though I can’t think how people could have missed hearing the noise. Early this morning, when the postman was doing his rounds, he saw the mess and sent for the police, and they found poor Mr Strube.’

  ‘What do you mean, they found him?’ Ellen was struck by the little break in Angel’s voice, and by the curious fact that Rose seemed to be enjoying herself hugely.

  ‘He’s dead, Ellen!’ Angel said in a hushed voice. ‘He was beaten to death by the thugs who broke into his shop. Who would want to do that to such a nice harmless old man?’

  Rose stopped smiling as Ellen opened her mouth in astonishment at this news. And before Ellen could reply, Rose was suddenly screeching.

  ‘I’ll tell you who could do it! All those who believe in justice, and want to be rid of every rotten German who’s lived off our country for years. One of them killed my Ronnie, and I’m glad that your Mr Roly-Poly Sausage-man is dead, do you hear? I wish I’d been there to help them finish him off—’

  She stopped abruptly, her voice ending in a strangled scream as Ellen leapt up and struck her hard across the side of her cheek. The blow was so spontaneous that Rose lost her balance and fell to the ground, while Angel looked on in horror.

  Rose had given no sign of this reaction in the car, but Angel should have known. She should have guessed … apart from that one outburst on the way here, Rose had been too calm for too long. She had to crack sometime…

  Clemence walked quickly into the room, shocked to see what appeared to be an undignified scuffle between two women as Ellen dragged a sobbing Rose to her feet.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Rose blazed at her. ‘You don’t understand. You can’t possibly understand. You’re turning into a shrivelled up old maid, Ellen, and if you’d ever been capable of loving a man as I loved my Ronnie, you’d hate all Germans, however sweet and bouncy a shopkeeper might be. They’re our enemies. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘Rose is quite right,’ Clemence said crisply. ‘It’s all over the newspapers. Any one of them could be a spy, and none of us will feel safe in our beds while there are Germans living and working among us. For their own safety as well as ours, the government will have to detain them until the end of the war. They should have used their own common sense and got out as soon as war was declared. The Germans lost no time in
ridding their own country of undesirable aliens!’

  Angel stared at her mother, and for once, she and Ellen were totally of the same mind.

  ‘Mother, you can’t be serious! Prison? There are dozens of Germans, waiters and barbers and shopkeepers who have lived here for years and years. This is their home. Why should they run away like cowards?’

  ‘Because it’s not their country, and while Germany is at war with Britain, the government will have no choice but to put them away for the duration, Angel.’

  ‘I never heard of anything so idiotic,’ Ellen raged. ‘You obviously don’t know that Mr Roly-Poly Strube was beaten to a pulp last night until he was dead. What justification is there in that, Mother?’

  Clemence went white with shock, but she was too angry with Ellen to comment on the cruel murder at that moment.

  ‘Perhaps it will help to prove to you that all this independent women’s movement nonsense will get you nowhere. The government decides what’s best in the end, and it’s as perfectly clear that these foreigners must be put safely away,’ Clemence said coldly, using the moment to chip away at Ellen’s beliefs.

  As Ellen threw up her hands in despair, she turned to Rose, putting a kindly arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Let’s go and find some witch-hazel for your poor face, dear, to prevent it bruising too badly.’

  ‘Thank-you, Mrs Bannister,’ Rose sniffled. ‘But in the circumstances, I don’t think I can stay here any longer. I shall go back to London, or into lodgings –’

  ‘We’ll think about all that tomorrow when you’re rested,’ Clemence said soothingly. ‘London’s not the safest place for you, but I know someone who’s looking for a companion housekeeper, and the position might just suit you, Rose dear, with your experience in housewifery.’

  Their voices faded away as the two of them went out of the room, and while Angel wanted to die with embarrassment at her mother’s implication that Rose’s future status could be little more than a servant, Ellen exploded with anger.

  ‘If that doesn’t beat all! Rose is more of a ninny than I took her for, if she can’t see how Mother is patronising her. Experience in housewifery indeed! She was married for such a short time, Ronnie could hardly have got the knickers off her!’

  ‘Ellen!’ Angel felt the ghost of a grin tug at her mouth despite herself.

  She felt so damned responsible for Rose’s outburst. She should never have let her get so interested in the goings-on at Mr Strube’s shop, and she should have recognised that burning light in Rose’s eyes when she heard what had happened. To her surprise, she felt Ellen’s hand on her shoulder, holding her tight for a moment.

  ‘Sorry, old thing. My tongue runs away with me at times. Don’t go blaming yourself on Rose’s account. Most of the women in the movement found her odd at times. Highly-strung, not to say teetering on the edge! You couldn’t have foreseen what was coming. I mean, look at the way she carried on with old Hobbs. Probably scared him to death, if the truth was known.’

  Angel let that pass.

  ‘Still. I suppose it was stupid of me to go on so about poor Mr Strube –’

  ‘Why? We’d known him for years. Why shouldn’t we be sorry he’d been killed? It’s not every day a murder occurs in the village, is it?’

  Angel shuddered. It was murder, and someone would have to pay the price. Unless it was all hushed up, of course, and no criminal ever discovered. With her new-found wisdom, Angel wondered if it would be exactly like that.

  ‘What will they do?’ she asked Ellen.

  Ellen shrugged. ‘The police will make enquiries. No one will admit to anything. No one will have seen or heard anything. There will be no witnesses. Case unsolved. End of case.’

  ‘How wise you are about such things!’

  Ellen half-smiled. ‘I haven’t lived on the wrong side of London with some very dubious characters without learning more of life than I ever learned in the schoolroom, darling,’ she said.

  Her face suddenly drooped.

  ‘I shall miss Rose. We’ve been friends a long time. But when something’s over, it’s over.’

  Angel looked at her sister, seeing the strength and the sorrow in her face. Impulsively, she hugged her.

  ‘I don’t really know you at all, do I?’

  The brittle mask came over Ellen’s face again.

  ‘Did Rose know me? Am I really like she said? An embittered old maid?’ She pulled a crazy, cross-eyed face, which made Angel laugh against her will.

  ‘Of course not. The right partner just hasn’t come along for you yet, that’s all. When he does, you’ll know it.’

  ‘Has he come along for you?’ Ellen’s voice was so quick and soft that Angel answered before she had time to think.

  ‘Oh yes. And if I never see him again, I’ll always know how beautiful it was –’

  She blushed furiously, knowing she had betrayed herself with her breathless words, but instead of Ellen’s usual scoffing, her sister suddenly leaned over and kissed her, and her eyes were tender.

  ‘If it makes you look so starry-eyed, maybe the same sort of miracle should happen for me too,’ she said. ‘Shall I risk taking a spin in the car with you, since Mother’s taken Rose under her wing? Then you can tell me more.’

  Angel laughed, her eyes dangerously close to tears.

  ‘We’ll go for a spin, but I shan’t tell you any more. This is my bit of independence, darling!’

  As if to exasperate them further, they found that the car was out of petrol and the can was empty, and they would have to send down to the village hardware shop for someone to deliver it. Since the day was fine and warm and mellow, it was back to the bicycles, rather than spend the afternoon indoors with all its difficult undercurrents.

  Better to be outside in the clean fresh air, with the country breezes wafting away the tension. The lanes were winding and empty, and they could almost forget that somewhere a war was raging, and men who were known to them were being blown to bits, or drowning in mud in the Flanders trenches.

  They dismounted after a while, and stretched out in the corner of a field, squinting up at the sun through the leafy network of young green trees. The branches sighed as the wind whispered through them, and Angel remembered another tree outside the window of a small hotel, and the memory was enough to make her give a small involuntary sigh.

  Ellen leaned up on one elbow, looking down at her sister, lovely in her lemon-coloured dress, tied low at the waist in a frivolous bow. Angel’s green eyes were closed, the crescents of her lashes caressing her cheeks. Her soft fair hair, unrestricted by the smart Mayfair salon’s torturing now, was feathered against her forehead. Angel could seem so distant at times, as if she was somewhere else, and not with the rest of them at all, but here and now, Ellen felt extraordinarily close to her.

  ‘When do you think it will all end?’ Ellen said slowly.

  ‘What? The war, you mean?’

  ‘The war. The killing. The way people are tearing one another apart.’

  ‘It can’t last long,’ Angel spoke with a desperate hope.

  ‘They said that last year. It was all going to be over by Christmas. The opposing soldiers in the trenches had that ridiculous truce. Waving at each other and wishing each other a merry Christmas, and sharing cigarettes across land that had been hastily cleared of bodies. And the next day, shooting all hell out of one another again. Can you make any sense out of that?’ Her voice was bitter and bewildered.

  ‘I can’t make any sense out of war at all.’

  Ellen looked thoughtful, a grass blade held tightly between her teeth. She lay back on the grass again, wanting to know something, having to ask the question that had been burning inside her ever since Angel’s indiscretion had been discovered, the subject since becoming a taboo one within the family. Now seemed as good a moment as any.

  ‘Angel, what’s it like to lie with a man? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I’m dying with curiosity, and it was never something
I could ask Rose. Not before Ronnie died, and certainly not after. Louise would never discuss such things, even if I cared to bring up the subject. Besides, I can’t imagine that Stanley’s the most scintillating lover. I know that you know all about it, and I really wish you’d tell me.’

  Her voice stopped abruptly, and Angel’s first feeling of acute embarrassment gave way to surprise as she caught the uncertainty in Ellen’s voice. Why, her sister really was curious, and a little afraid. It was the way Angel herself had been before she was thrust into the situation with Jacques almost before she had time to think.

  Until now, she hadn’t ever considered that she had a knowledge of which her superior and clever sister was totally ignorant, and the flippant retort to Ellen to mind her own business died on her lips. They lay side by side, not looking at one another, and Angel’s voice was soft and dreamy.

  ‘It’s like being led to the edge of a precipice and finding that the fall is a delight and not terrifying after all. It’s like floating somewhere in space. It’s like touching the stars. It’s exciting, and humbling, and being a part of someone else, and wanting him so badly that you ache for him every minute of the day. And it’s a feeling that can only happen when two people are right for one another. When you’re so much in love that the thought of sin never enters your head. It’s – it’s like being in heaven for every second that you’re together, and once you’ve found that heaven, it’s sheer misery to be apart.’

  Neither of them said anything when she finished speaking, and the words seemed to hang in the air between them. Then Angel felt Ellen’s hand give hers a squeeze.

  ‘Thank-you,’ she whispered. ‘That was the most moving thing I ever heard. I’ll respect your confidence, Angel.’

  The sound of an engine broke in on their closeness. For a moment, Angel thought it was an aircraft, and sat up quickly, gazing into the sky, her heart pounding. Jacques had seemed so near while she was talking. It was almost as though she had conjured him up … instead, it was a car on its way to the village, its occupant giving no more than a glance at the two bicycles thrown down on the grass beside the field. But Ellen’s instincts were alerted by her sister’s movement.