Kate, fresh from her match with Eugene, tried not to look too surprised. Poor old Folkestone asking her out for a drink – what a thing!
‘I was going out to the village with some friends, actually, Major,’ she explained, looking round her as if for help. ‘We’re all going for a drink at the Masons Arms, as a matter of fact, so why don’t you come and join us? If you want to come out for a drink.’
‘I was actually thinking of you and me going out for a drink, Kate,’ he replied. ‘There’s another extremely nice pub in the next village, in Finton. I happen to know they still have plenty of supplies there. Plenty of good beer. And plenty of gin.’
He smiled at her, hoping that a plentiful supply of gin would do the trick, but since Kate hardly ever drank alcohol in any amount the suggestion fell on unreceptive ground.
‘I really have made an arrangement with Marjorie and some of the other girls from the section. Thanks all the same. Perhaps another time?’
‘Understood,’ Major Folkestone replied, brushing down the ends of his neat moustache with thumb and forefinger. ‘Understood. Try again next week, shall we say? Jolly good. Really, jolly good. I – um – quite understand. Must get on, however.’
He nodded at her and marched off over-smartly, as if to take a parade, instead of which he found himself returning to his section to stare at the walls and wonder what it was about him that failed to attract not just a pretty girl but any girl.
Kate looked after him and pulled a glum face, feeling suddenly sorry for the forlorn young man inside the crisply pressed uniform, because when all was said and done, although everyone in Section H thought of Anthony Folkestone as being about a hundred, he was probably only all of thirty years old.
‘Oh, dear,’ Kate murmured out loud, and then turned away feeling miserable as she realised that she had been less than tactful.
Poor old Major Folkestone. But he had after all caught her at a quite inopportune moment, fresh from her victory against the elusive Eugene Hackett. She started to run down the corridor towards the exit, towards the courtyard and the cottage she still shared with Marjorie and Billy. If she’d had the energy, which she certainly didn’t, she would have done as she had seen Billy so often do, and turned a cartwheel at the memory of her tennis match. She had after all beaten Eugene Hackett. She had exacted her revenge. What could be better than that?
Nothing it seemed could destroy her good mood until Lily bounced up to her in the pub and embraced her.
‘Kate, dear Kate – I wanted you to be the first to know. Robert and I are going to be married.’
Kate stared from Lily to Marjorie, and from them to the rest of Section H who had all been standing around enjoying themselves until that moment.
Wartime marriages were ten a penny, of course. People were marrying after knowing each other a matter of days, perhaps hours for all Kate knew, but for Robert to fall for Lily of all people, and then propose. It didn’t seem possible.
‘Does Robert know about this?’ Kate joked to Lily, earning herself a huge laugh from the rest of the section, only for her eyes to catch Marjorie’s and see in them a look of matching hurt despair.
The happy-go-lucky atmosphere in Section H was bound to change the moment one of them became engaged, but as soon as Lily announced her engagement to Robert Maddox it changed so quickly it was breathtaking.
It was inevitable of course that the longer the war went on, the longer they were all cloistered up in the great house together, the more the place would finally remind Lily of her boarding school, where the girls spent the whole time either hanging pathetically on to the barred windows to ogle the day boys at the neighbouring state school or writing overheated love letters to themselves in carefully disguised handwriting, which deceived no one at all.
It was that, perhaps more than anything, that had made her accept Robert’s proposal, that and the fact that she feared being left at Eden Park, stuck among all the other women of varying ages, all of whom were longing for romance of some sort or another. So when Robert Maddox proposed marriage to her, even though they barely knew each other and even though Lily knew she felt nothing deeper for him than a marvellously intense physical passion, she was only too happy to agree, since she, more than any of her colleagues, wanted to be free from the constraints of Eden Park, from the intensity of the atmosphere, from the inevitable routine of the work.
Two days later, having been warned by letter that he was coming to take her out, Lily found herself sitting on the low part of the boundary wall of the park, smoking a cigarette and dreaming of what she might soon be wearing on her finger.
‘I am so shallow,’ she had told a privately appalled Kate. ‘The first thing I want to see, besides your darling brother, of course, is that ring on my finger. And I can’t say I’m not hoping for a diamond, because I am.’
The longer she sat waiting, the more determined Lily became that she would persuade Robert to buy her a beautiful ring. She tried to imagine wearing it, tilting her head from one side to the other as if she could actually see it, while holding her hand out at full stretch in front of her. She also imagined the looks on the faces of the women in her section as she showed it off to them. They would be pea green with jealousy, and justifiably so.
‘Daydreaming?’ Robert called out cheerily from the cockpit of his car, having silently freewheeled up to where Lily was perched.
‘As a matter of fact I was,’ Lily agreed, straightening her hat after he had kissed her in greeting. ‘I was dreaming of coming down the aisle on your arm and walking out under a guard of honour with their crossed swords.’
‘You’ll be lucky.’ Robert laughed. ‘The amount of weaponry we have in this country at the moment it’s more likely to be crossed broom handles. Even so, I can hardly wait. Just have to introduce you to the parents, but their reaction is a foregone conclusion, because I know they will love you as much as I do.’
Lily glanced at him as they drove off. This was the first time Robert had actually professed his real feelings for her and to her embarrassment she found herself oddly disconcerted, because much as she wanted to return the compliment, somehow she found herself unable to do so.
She put her hand on his knee instead, hoping that the intimate gesture would distract from her lack of reciprocation. Robert turned and smiled at her, and picked up her hand to kiss it quickly before returning his own to the steering wheel.
‘It’s all right,’ he assured her. ‘You don’t have to go making any soppy statements back. Just the fact that you’ve agreed to marry me’s enough. I’m the luckiest man in the world, and I know it, don’t you worry!’
All the way into Bendon she helped him change gear, Robert having placed her hand on the gear stick so that he could touch her every time he had to shift a gear. It was still warm enough to drive with the hood down, although Lily knew without asking that Robert was undoubtedly the type to drive with the hood down even in winter, always provided the sun was still shining. Not that she minded; she tied a scarf over her precious little hat so that it wouldn’t blow off, and also to protect her ears. Lily couldn’t bear getting her ears cold because, as she had explained to Robert, cold ears killed romance, instantly. They were worse than cold feet.
‘Can’t have that!’ Robert had laughed. ‘When we’re married I’d best get you some ear muffs!’
On the outskirts of Bendon they heard a siren sounding an air raid warning. Immediately scanning the skies above them and cutting the car engine, Robert and Lily listened for the tell-tale drone of incoming bombers. Shortly after they heard the dreaded sound of heavy airborne engines and at once dived out of the car and took to the nearest cover, a semi-underground water conduit running under the edge of the road. They sheltered here while they heard the thud and boom of bombs falling and exploding somewhere in their vicinity, Robert holding Lily tightly in his arms while Lily, simply to take her mind off the air raid, allowed her thoughts to stray to the all-important engagement ring.
At last
the siren sounded again, this time proclaiming the All-Clear. Robert and Lily emerged and looked towards the town of Bendon. On the far side they could see plumes of smoke and dust rising from what were obviously bombed buildings.
‘I think we ought to turn back, Bobby, don’t you?’ Lily said, dusting down her coat and dress. ‘I think it’s only sensible.’
‘No, I’ll tell you what,’ Robert replied after thinking for a moment. ‘They could be needing help – you never know. So why don’t I drive us to the outskirts and you stay in the car while I go and see what exactly’s going on?’
‘I’m sure they’ve got plenty of people to help. It is a town, after all.’
‘I know, Lily – but one never knows. They might need help. You’ll be all right, I promise. I’ll find somewhere safe for you while I just have a look to see if they need an extra pair of hands.’
Ignoring any further protests, Robert drove them quickly to the outskirts of the town. Although the side from which they were approaching hadn’t suffered any hits, there was already an outbreak of panic, people running, people shouting, police blowing whistles. Parking the car well away from any buildings, Robert searched for somewhere to shelter Lily, and found a bunker a couple of hundred yards away from the MG. Then he kissed her briefly, touched her cheek, and was gone.
On an impulse Lily ran out of the doorway after him but he was soon lost to her in the rush of people and the ever-increasing clouds of dust and smoke. Retiring to the bunker, she pulled her coat round her and sat on a bench next to a shivering and shaking young woman clutching a baby.
‘Why us?’ the young woman kept asking. ‘Why here? We haven’t done nothing. We haven’t done nothing – and there’s nothing here to bomb. So why us? Why us?’
‘It’s all right, duck,’ a moon-faced woman in WVS uniform comforted her, bringing a tray of tea round the shelter. ‘They were probably just unloading their bombs on the way home. The way they do. We just got in the line of fire, that’s all.’
‘I just hope our boys do the same to them, that’s all I hope,’ the woman replied, rocking her now bawling baby. ‘The swine. I hope we give ’em a taste of their own filthy tactics.’
Lily took the mug of tea offered to her, feeling touched and grateful for such immediate help and already more than a little shaken by the raid. It wasn’t like being at Eden Park at all. At Eden somehow it all seemed to happen in the distance, but here it was all too real. She even forgot to think about her engagement ring.
In the centre of the small town there were bodies everywhere. Two of the offloaded bombs had fallen directly on the market place as at least a dozen or so of the inhabitants were still running for cover, blowing them to pieces. Another bomb had hit the town hall where the staff and their visitors had been still trying to make their way down the crowded stairwells to shelter below ground.
‘We just weren’t prepared for it,’ one of the volunteer wardens muttered to Robert as a party was being quickly organised to search the ruins. ‘We done all our drills, but what’s drills when you get a shock raid like this? You just don’t take that into account, know what I mean?’
‘Inevitable,’ Robert agreed. ‘But no one must blame themselves. You simply can’t be prepared for this sort of thing. No one can.’
Stretcher parties materialised through the thick pall of smoke and began to remove the living and the dead from the rubble. An eerie silence had now fallen, broken only by cries and moans from the injured and the still buried survivors. Fire was now raging where the bombs had fallen, adding to the confusion and creating a thick black and suffocating smoke that hindered rescue operations even more. Standing on a pile of shattered masonry, Robert shielded his eyes as he tried to get a visual purchase on the scene of devastation, but all he could see was a fog of smoke and dust.
A wind got up as if from nowhere, created by the acute difference between the chilly temperature of the day and the fierce blaze of the blitz. However, it cleared the smoke in front of where Robert was standing, revealing a street of shops half of which were either fully on fire or smouldering. He could see people running from doorways to escape the flames and crashing masonry, and as he jumped down and ran in their direction he could hear pitiful cries for help coming from inside the buildings.
The first shop he passed was already completely gutted, as was most of the second one. But the third was still standing, although fire had broken out in the second floor window. To his disgust Robert saw two loutish-looking young men running from the shop stuffing looted goods into their pockets as they fled. He was about to go after them when he realised that it was ridiculous. Human life was infinitely more important than the rescue of property, so wrapping his scarf tightly round his mouth and nose to protect his throat and lungs from fire and shielding his eyes with one raised arm he looked into the shop to see if there was anyone left alive inside.
On the floor lay a dead body, its head crushed by a beam from the floor above which had collapsed into the shop, scattering the merchandise from broken glass cases everywhere. The flickering light of the flames was being reflected by what the cases had contained: watches and necklaces, bracelets and rings. Jewellery lay everywhere, most of it still miraculously intact. For a second, seeing it, he remembered why he had come to town. For Lily’s ring, her engagement ring, to buy her a sapphire perhaps, like his mother’s, a dark blue stone set in diamonds. His mother always took it off when she washed up, hanging it on a cup hook above the kitchen sink. He wanted Lily to have one just like it.
Seconds later he found himself distracted by the sound of a whimpering cry.
Above him, suspended somehow in a gaping hole in the ceiling, was a child, a little girl no more than three years old, Robert thought as he stood below her staring up. She was alive because he could see her moving, and because now that she saw him below her she was holding one hand out to him to be rescued. There seemed to be nothing trapping her, no beams, or boards or masonry – she was simply lying in a hole without any support yet somehow not falling, miraculously held in place by some invisible device.
If she fell from that height on to the masonry below, at the very least she would be badly injured. Robert looked slowly and carefully about him for something on which to stand or climb.
‘It’s all right, sweetie!’ he called up to the child. ‘Just don’t move! Don’t move anything just in case! Don’t move because I don’t want to have to catch you! What I’m going to do – what I’m going to do is climb up and get you – so just – don’t – move!’
The child lay as still as could be, hardly breathing while Robert pulled what remained of one of the shop’s counters below the hole in the ceiling. But even if he stood on it he realised he was going to be a good two or three feet short, and if the child was actually trapped there would be no way he could reach her.
He found a chair upside down in a corner of the ruined room, still with all four legs intact. By standing on that he knew he could reach the child. All he needed after that was luck – the luck to find the little girl wasn’t trapped and could be freed from below. He would need that luck, as now he saw that the fire that had broken out on the floor above was creeping down into the room where the little girl lay trapped.
‘Quickly!’ he called from the shop doorway. ‘Help needed! Quickly!’
He saw two figures running towards him at once, a warden in a tin hat and a woman in a torn and burned WVS uniform. He directed the woman to stand by to take the child and run once he had her freed and the warden to hold the chair on top of the half-broken showcase while he climbed up on it.
Holding on to the round back of the shop chair with one hand, Robert slowly and carefully got his balance and stood right up to his full extent. The child’s face was opposite his own now, and as he appeared in front of her the little girl instinctively reached out for him. As soon as she did she dislodged a considerable amount of small masonry fragments and a lot of dust.
‘No, sweetie! No!’ he whispered. ‘Don�
�t move till I tell you!’
He didn’t say that he couldn’t even see her now – he just steadied himself on the rickety chair and slowly raised both his hands, hoping he could keep his balance. As the dust cleared behind the child he could see flames billowing ever nearer, and as they did so the child began to scream from the pain of being scorched. Slipping both his hands through the hole in the ceiling, Robert tried to feel if the child was trapped, and found to his vast relief that as far as he could ascertain she was simply lying stunned all but in space, just as he thought.
Taking hold of her as gently and as slowly as he could he tried to ease her to him, but as soon as he did so he felt resistance. It was not as if there was any great weight behind it, just as though something was holding the child in place. He pulled harder, and heard the faintest rending of what sounded like material, and the next thing he knew he was holding the child free in his hands above his head. He guessed what had been holding her in place and saving her from probable death was nothing more than her clothing.
Now he felt her weight. She might only be a toddler, but that amount of weight above his head was almost too much to bear. It was certainly too much for him to maintain his balance.
‘I’m going to drop you, sweetie,’ he whispered to the whimpering child. ‘Not far – I’m just going to let you fall – very gently – into the arms of this kind lady who’s just below me – you’ll be perfectly safe – but you’re just going to take a little drop – here goes.’
With a nod to the woman who was standing with upstretched hands and arms, Robert swung the child round and let her go. As he did, he began to lose his balance, so to save himself from falling on the child and injuring her he grabbed a portion of one of the floor beams sticking out of the gap in the ceiling. Fortunately it held.
‘Quickly!’ he shouted to the woman. ‘Out! Run! Go on! Quickly!’
But the woman was already gone, darting as fast as she could into the safety of the streets outside.
Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 Page 34
