Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1

by Bingham, Charlotte

  ‘Bonne nuit, mademoiselle,’ the young Frenchman called out to her, smiling.

  Marjorie paused and turned as she went up the stairs, and as she did so she found herself looking down into a pair of beautiful dark eyes, for now that he had removed his beret, and was standing in the simply furnished living room of the cottage, it became quite clear that the young Frenchman was as good-looking as anyone could wish, well over six feet tall with thick dark hair and large dark eyes. He towered over her aunt, his stature making her look frail and suddenly, strangely old.

  ‘Say bonne nuit, Marjorie dear,’ Hester called up, gently prompting Marjorie.

  ‘Bonne nuit, monsieur. Goodnight.’

  Marjorie was promptly rewarded with a charming smile from the Frenchman, while his companion lit a pipe and nodded at nothing in particular. With a shy smile at the foreigner, Marjorie finally disappeared upstairs, closely followed by a reluctant Billy. It was the first time she had really noticed a man, and since the Frenchman was handsome, and young – and his visit so mysterious, since Marjorie reckoned that her aunt must always have known of their coming, but had said nothing – Billy was two hands of whist up on her before Marjorie finally came back to earth. But as she lay in bed that night the memory of the handsome dark-eyed young man stayed with her, as if he himself was determined to haunt her.

  The next morning no reference was made by Aunt Hester to her visitors, and since it was, all too soon, the last day of their holiday they said nothing, only hurried through breakfast so that they could have more time on the beach, returning to the cottage at lunchtime to help with the packing up, before starting the long journey home.

  ‘It’s been – well, I don’t know, just like a dream,’ Marjorie said after she had finished sweeping the kitchen and hall free of sand. ‘Billy and I are trying to think of how to say thank you—’

  ‘If you can’t think,’ Aunt Hester said, tongue firmly in cheek, ‘I shouldn’t bother.’

  ‘It’s been the best time of our lives. Billy thinks so, too,’ she added quickly, nudging Billy.

  ‘Couldn’t agree more, dear. Now don’t forget your piece of seaweed, or we’ll be sunk when we want to prognosticate the weather when we get back.’

  ‘Progwhaticake?’ Billy wondered, stumbling by with a bulging suitcase.

  ‘Forecast, Billy. Prognosticate means to tell in advance. And you don’t need all those sea shells, surely?’

  ‘I don’t need ’em, Aunt H,’ Billy replied. ‘But I’d still like to take ’em.’

  ‘Shan’t be able to sleep with the sound of all that sea in your ears,’ Aunt Hester murmured. ‘Go on – run along and put the cases in the car, while I lock up.’

  Marjorie and her aunt went round the little cottage one last time to make sure that everything was in order and that they hadn’t left anything behind.

  ‘Some of our neighbours,’ Aunt Hester told her as they were doing the final lock-up. ‘They thought I was off my hinges – particularly Number 30. Taking us all away for a seaside holiday just when war’s about to break out – but that’s the whole point really. It’s because there’s going to be a war that I brought us all away. We’ll always have this memory to share, you and Billy and me – I wanted us all to be able to remember this time, being happy the way people should be happy, without a care in the world. Since there’s nothing much we can do about what’s coming, I don’t see the harm. For once we’ve been happy and carefree. Nice word, that. I’ve always liked that word – carefree. Because really so little of life is ever carefree, so when you get a bit, grab it. That’s what I say.’

  She gave one last look round the cottage sitting room before ushering Marjorie outside. She then locked the front door behind them, blew the place a kiss, and taking her niece’s arm walked off to the car.

  * * *

  By the time Billy had returned to school it seemed there was nothing else to talk about other than the preparations that had to be made for the forthcoming conflict. It actually seemed to be affecting Billy rather more than either Marjorie or Aunt Hester, probably because they found themselves so preoccupied with the business of shrouding lamps and making blackout blinds and curtains, while Billy sat silently at the table under the front window toying with his homework, pencil stuck in mouth, always wondering, trying to think how war might be. The word seemed to be echoing through his head. War, war, war.

  ‘Are we going to be bombed do you think, Marjorie?’ he asked one night as Marjorie sorted out the matches she had been splitting in half into boxes. ‘The nearest shelter’s miles away – and if there’s a sudden air raid, we mightn’t make it.’

  ‘Why should they bomb Castle Gardens, Billy?’ Marjorie laughed, trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘They’re hardly going to waste their precious bombs on our bit of town.’

  ‘What about gas? Everyone at school says they’re going to attack us with gas.’

  ‘Which is why we’ve been doing our gas mask practice, dopey. Long as you’re carrying your gas mask you won’t die, will you now?’

  Billy pushed his homework to one side and began tapping the table with his pencil.

  ‘Wish I was old enough to join up.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Billy. You’ll wish your life away if you’re not careful.’

  ‘I don’t want to just sit here doing nothing. I want to kill Hitler.’

  ‘Never mind killing Hitler, first you must learn to knit,’ Marjorie joked. ‘Like Aunt Hester and me. Help us knit mufflers and socks for the soldiers, and then you can kill Hitler with your knitting needles, poke his eyes out with them, that’s what you can do.’

  ‘How old do you actually have to be?’ Billy wondered, ignoring Marjorie’s tease. ‘I’m sure if they really want soldiers, if they really need them, they might take me, don’t you think?’

  ‘No I don’t, Billy. And I don’t want to – and I wish you’d stop thinking like that, too. All right?’

  ‘I could learn to shoot.’

  ‘You haven’t got a gun, muggins.’

  ‘I could join the rifle club.’

  ‘You’re too young.’

  ‘No I’m not. George Perry goes shooting there. With his dad. He’s the same age as what I am.’

  ‘That you are – that I am.’

  Marjorie looked at him and sighed inwardly, remembering the pale-faced, first weeping then almost silent young boy she had befriended, whereas now all she could see was a boy determined to learn to kill. Seeing the look in his eyes and realising the change that was coming over him, Marjorie felt a momentary despair. Despite their parents’ abandonment, the rough treatment they’d had at the boarding school – despite everything that had happened to them, in some strange way, she realised, they had actually remained innocent, until the war clouds started to gather, blocking out the blue skies they’d only just begun to enjoy.

  Marjorie sat down opposite Billy at the table, turning his homework round to her and pretending to study it. She couldn’t stand the thought of Billy with a gun, or in a uniform, but she knew that one day she had to stand it. It was just how it was.

  Oddly enough, the following day when she turned out to help fill sandbags she found the atmosphere in the street was one of considerable gaiety, as if people were relieved to be out of their houses and doing something positive rather than just sitting inside wondering when all hell was going to break loose.

  ‘You still going to them anti-gas lectures?’ Mrs Watling from Number 31 asked, as they found themselves standing next to each other in the queue for sacks. ‘’Cos if you are, I wouldn’t mind coming with you.’

  Marjorie turned and stared at her in barely disguised indignation.

  ‘When we asked you last month if you were interested in coming, Mrs Watling, you called Aunt Hester and me warmongers, if you care to remember.’

  Mrs Watling blushed, and turned away for a second.

  ‘Yes – well I dare say I did,’ she excused herself. ‘But then I dare say I was wrong, too, see?’
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  ‘It’s six thirty at the school, if you want to know. If you knock on our door we can all go along together.’

  ‘Just don’t tell Mr Watling, mind. He still thinks it’s a lot of fuss about nothing. That it don’t affect us – says it’s no business of ours what Hitler does. That foreigners are nothing but trouble and they’re nothing to do with us no how, no way.’

  ‘Mr Watling won’t think it’s nonsense when he has to go to work wearing his gas mask, Mrs Watling,’ Marjorie retorted. ‘And the whole town’s on fire, and there’s Nazis delivering censored letters, and putting him in prison, he won’t think it’s nonsense then.’

  ‘Mr Watling doesn’t think much of gas masks neither.’

  ‘He’s going to have to. Aunt Hester says they’ll soon be compulsory, by law – and no one will be allowed to go anywhere without one.’

  ‘That so? No doubt I’ll hear all about it tonight when we go to this ’ere class.’

  Marjorie couldn’t help feeling astonished when she saw just how many people had come to the class. The first couple of lectures had been attended by only a couple of retired army officers, half a dozen dutiful housewives and a bored teenager who’d been sent along to get him out from under his mother’s feet for the evening. Aunt Hester insisted that both Marjorie and Billy went, for in her opinion there was too much ridicule about anti-gas lectures, not to mention Air Raid Precautions. Not to attend was not only short-sighted and impractical, but unpatriotic. Her stance was belittled not just by the neighbours but by people in the local shops. Now it seemed she was suddenly not alone, for the small schoolroom dedicated to these civil defence lectures was packed to the door.

  ‘If you ask me it’s this Munich business,’ a large, moon-faced woman announced loudly as she settled her ample girth on one of the school benches. ‘Ever since we let Hitler march all over those poor Czechs even my old man’s started to think we should stop sitting on the fence and stand up and fight.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ Mrs Watling agreed, leaning across Marjorie to tap the other woman on her arm. ‘We got to go to it and fight, or sure as eggs we’ll all be dead before we know it. Just wish I could get my old man to see it, that’s all, but see it he can’t – or do I mean won’t?’

  ‘Mine’s just volunteered for the Auxiliary Fire Service,’ the large woman replied. ‘He’s that serious about training he don’t even go to darts evenings at the Hero of Inkerman no more – and for my George that’s quite something, believe you me.’

  ‘Where’s your aunt, Marjorie?’ Mrs Watling leaned forward to attract Marjorie’s attention. ‘Thought she never missed a meeting?’

  ‘Aunt Hester’s out sticking up posters and distributing pamphlets for people to come to meetings of the ARP. She says it’s getting so serious we need air raid wardens more than ever. We’re going to First Aid tomorrow, Billy and me. Aunt Hester says nobody’s too young to learn about dealing with the kind of injuries that will be coming our way.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ the large woman said, folding her arms across her ample bosom. ‘That’s just what I come out to hear.’

  * * *

  ‘Mustard gas blisters on limbs,’ the uniformed lecturer who had just walked in began, without any announcement, pointing to a particularly graphic illustration he had just hung up over the blackboard. ‘That’s our kicking off point this evening – the effects of mustard gas on life and limb.’

  At this, Mrs Watling carefully withdrew a large coloured handkerchief from her handbag and held it over her mouth, breathing out loudly as she did so.

  Despite Mrs Watling’s dramatic reaction the lecturer began a detailed examination of the precise effects of gas attacks on troops in the previous world war, accompanied by increasingly bloody illustrations of severed arteries, burnt flesh and fractured bones protruding from open wounds. Billy, his eyes out on stalks, followed every word, quite obviously riveted, while Marjorie managed to pretend to take it all in while secretly reciting a poem. It was finally too much for Mrs Watling, who after five minutes of hiding her face behind her large handkerchief suddenly excused herself and was not seen for the rest of the evening.

  ‘I say.’ Billy was once more an aeroplane as they made their way slowly home in the dark. ‘That was really good, wasn’t it?’ He sighed with some satisfaction before strategically bombing an imagined Nazi division.

  ‘You quite sure you’re up to going to First Aid class with Marjorie, Billy?’ Aunt Hester enquired.

  ‘If you’d seen him at the gas mask lecture, Aunt Hester,’ Marjorie replied, ‘you wouldn’t be bothering to ask. He can’t get enough of blood and guts.’

  Billy was silent. Much as he had put on a brave face at the lecture on the fearful effects of gases on the human body, he had actually, finally, found it more than a little frightening, although he would be the last to admit it. Despite this he was determined to attend the First Aid classes, because not to would be thought wet, and that just couldn’t happen.

  ‘You don’t have to go, Billy,’ Aunt Hester said, turning the boy to her and straightening his school tie. ‘You say if you don’t want to go.’

  ‘I’m fine, Aunt H,’ Billy said as firmly as he could. ‘I got to learn to do me bit.’

  ‘Please yourself, dear. Probably best with a war, eh? Bit like swimming – best to jump in with both feet. I shan’t forget the sight of you and your ring in the briny in a hurry.’

  She ruffled his hair affectionately, and then began to collect her belongings prior to going out.

  ‘Think we’ll be sent to the country, Aunt H?’ Billy wondered, trying to smooth his hair back down with both hands. ‘They said all the kids are going to be sent to the country. I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Don’t think what you want’s going to have anything to do with it, Billy.’ Aunt Hester checked her appearance in the mirror, and then searched for her car keys. ‘Anyway – won’t be until well after Christmas, if at all. We’ve all got that to look forward to, haven’t we?’

  ‘Where are you going tonight, Aunt Hester?’ Marjorie asked.

  ‘Ambulance Service. Driving in the dark in a gas mask, God help me. Just hope I don’t crash the blooming ambulance trailer, that’s all. It was a close run thing the other night.’

  She smiled at them both, then all of a sudden hugged first Marjorie and then Billy.

  ‘You’re not too big for a hug. Yet.’ She cuffed him affectionately.

  ‘Aunt Hester?’ Marjorie asked as she opened the front door. ‘Could I learn to drive an ambulance trailer? I could, couldn’t I? Be much more useful than just sitting at home.’

  ‘Yeah? And what would I do? Knit?’ asked Billy.

  ‘You could go next door. You’d be all right,’ she replied.

  ‘You’re a bit young, dear,’ Aunt Hester replied, pulling on her gloves. ‘It’s this night-time driving. It isn’t easy.’

  ‘I could learn.’

  ‘Needs must, I know, Marjorie. But let’s wait until the devil takes the wheel. I’ll think about it. I’ll ask our instructor.’ Aunt Hester added, about to leave. ‘Heaven knows you’d probably make a much better driver than me, dear. We’re in the forest tonight, for our sins.’

  Marjorie and Billy stood at the door and watched Aunt Hester drive off into the dusk, delaying the moment when they would have to shut the door and go back inside the house alone. Even though war had not yet been declared, every time she left the house it felt as if she was going off to fight.

  For some reason when she woke up in the early hours of the following morning, Marjorie knew instinctively that her aunt wasn’t home. Seeing her bed not slept in, and not finding her downstairs, she turned on the electric fire in the sitting room, and watched the dawn coming up on the quiet suburban avenue as she tried not to worry.

  She had fallen into a half sleep when the doorbell rang at last. Normally she would have hurried to the front door, imagining that Aunt Hester had lost her front door key, or left it behind, but remembering her aunt’s
warnings about not letting in strangers, and always leaving the chain across the door, Marjorie went first to the window to see who it might be. Outside the narrow suburban house there was a black Wolseley parked in the road, and a policeman on the doorstep. Marjorie at once hurried to the door.

  ‘Miss Hendry?’ the policeman enquired politely, taking off his hat. ‘Sergeant Holmes. Might I come in, please?’ As Marjorie nodded he added, ‘Thank you.’

  He walked by her into the living room, followed by Marjorie who at once turned on the light, shielding her eyes with one hand.

  ‘You all alone here, miss?’

  ‘No – Billy’s here as well. He’s asleep. Billy’s my aunt’s foster child, like a sort of brother for me, really.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’

  Marjorie pulled her dressing gown cord tighter around her. She was still standing in only her thin night things, which now seemed inappropriate beside the policeman in his heavy serge uniform.

  ‘Will you excuse me for a moment please?’ she asked, and hurried out to the hall, fetching her coat from the hat stand and putting it on over her nightgown.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked the policeman on her return. ‘Has something happened to my aunt? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘Afraid so, miss. I’m sorry to say your aunt – I’m sorry to report Mrs Hendry has met with a bad accident—’

  ‘Was it in the forest?’ Marjorie interrupted. ‘I know she was out doing ambulance practice.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that, miss,’ the policeman answered, looking surprised. ‘When would that have been?’

  ‘Last night,’ Marjorie replied. ‘She had ambulance driving practice in Bardham Forest all evening.’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, miss,’ the policeman replied. ‘That was cancelled two days ago. Anyway, your aunt was nowhere near the forest when the accident happened. She was fifteen miles away up on the London road, headed south. As if she was coming home.’