Forbidden Places

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said, staring out at the golden day, ‘and I want to be with you. So desperately. But – oh God, it’s so difficult, all of it. Especially now, with all this talk of war. I mean – oh God, I can’t even say it.’

  ‘I think I know what you mean,’ he said, very serious. ‘You don’t have to say it. And don’t think it’s wicked to think that.’

  ‘Giles, of course it’s wicked, but I still can’t help it.’

  She paused, lay back on the pillows looking at him very soberly, reached out and stroked his cheek. ‘You must, you must give me time, Giles. I need time to think, to plan it all. Time and peace.’

  ‘Peace,’ he said, deliberately misunderstanding, ‘is going to be a forgotten luxury soon.’

  ‘I’d like to have Florence and Robert down to stay,’ said Charles. ‘How would you feel about that, darling?’

  ‘Oh – well, that would be nice,’ said Grace carefully. ‘But I thought Florence said Robert was still terribly busy.’

  ‘We can ask them at least,’ said Charles. I’m still worried about Florence. Although she did seem very happy and jolly at our wedding.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grace. ‘Yes she did. Well, yes of course I’ll ask them. Just give me a couple more weeks—’

  ‘What on earth for?’ said Charles. ‘The house looks lovely, you’ve got plenty of help, I don’t see any reason for putting it off. Perhaps I’ll ask them.’ He sounded irritable.

  ‘No, no, it’s all right, I’ll do it. It’s just that I feel it must be rather dull for them here. They lead such a terrifically busy life in London, and—’

  ‘Oh, don’t be absurd,’ he said, ‘we can give them a very jolly time. Plenty of tennis, and a dinner party on the Saturday. We could ask the Frasers, we owe them hospitality. It’s important not to let that happen, Grace. Mother always keeps a book, not only of who came when and who they sat next to, but who she owes hospitality to.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grace, trying to sound calm, ‘yes I know, she told me.’

  ‘Right, well, let’s do that. They’d all get on very well, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes – I’m sure they will,’ said Grace. ‘I’ll organize it. Don’t worry, Charles. It’ll be fun.’ And then, taking advantage of the moment, of knowing she had pleased him, ‘Charles, do you think if I learnt to drive properly we could afford for me to have a car? I’d really like that, and I could come and meet you in Shaftesbury sometimes, we never seem to go to the pictures any more, or even out to the Bear, anything like that—’

  ‘Well, we’ve got our own home now,’ he said, sounding genuinely surprised. ‘What are you saying, Grace?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ she said firmly, ‘just that it would be nice to be able to get around a bit more easily.’

  ‘I don’t see why you need to,’ he said, ‘to be honest. The tradesmen all deliver, you have plenty to do here, and we go out a fair bit. I hope you’re not complaining of boredom—’

  ‘No, of course I’m not,’ said Grace, trying to keep the irritability out of her voice, ‘but that’s just it, I can only go out, out of the village that is, with you. Or on my bike of course. But I can hardly pedal all the way to Shaftesbury.’

  ‘I really don’t see why you should want to,’ said Charles. ‘Get out of the village, I mean.’

  ‘I want to because sometimes I feel a bit lonely,’ said Grace, ‘I haven’t got many friends in the Thorpes, Charles. I – well, I even miss my job at times.’

  ‘I have to say,’ said Charles, and there was a slight flush on his face suddenly, ‘that seems a little insulting: that you should not find taking care of our home, and of me for that matter, sufficiently amusing for you.’

  ‘Charles, don’t be silly,’ said Grace. ‘Of course I find it amusing, as you put it. I love looking after you. But it is lonely for me, sometimes. You must see that.’

  ‘I don’t really, no,’ said Charles, ‘and all the more reason, if indeed it was, for you to be keen to have people to stay.’

  ‘Yes of course, you’re right,’ said Grace, not wishing to antagonize him any more. ‘I’m sorry, Charles, I didn’t mean to upset you. But’ – she hung onto her self-esteem with an effort – ‘I’d still like to learn to drive. Think if there was an emergency or something –’

  ‘Well, all right,’ he said; he was always surprisingly easily soothed by an apology. ‘I could give you some more lessons, I suppose. Then we can see about a car after that. They’re a big expense, you know.’

  Grace was surprised by his last remark; shortage of money usually seemed the last thing on his mind. Maybe it was the war. Everything was the war these days.

  She sometimes felt, and crushed the thought as quickly as she could, that Charles was changing slowly but very steadily into someone she didn’t entirely like. He had never been oversensitive, but he had been at least caring; now he treated her increasingly with a rather more distant affection. Echoed, she thought, in bed. He had done enough, his behaviour seemed to say, in marrying her; had given her a home, status, financial security, and she should know she was fortunate, and very little more effort was required on his part. If he felt tired, or bad-tempered, he made only the most perfunctory attempt to disguise the fact; if he wanted to be on his own, sit in his study after dinner, play a round of golf on a Saturday morning, tennis in a men’s four, he would do so with only the briefest nod in the direction of considering her feelings or arrangements. If he had to go to London on business he simply announced it; if he had a business dinner he did the same, often telling her only the night before. In fact, Grace thought, as she took one of her many solitary walks in the woods one afternoon, an evening ahead of her with only the wireless for company, he behaved a great deal of the time as he behaved in bed: thoughtlessly, complacently, and – Grace struggled to find the right word – tactlessly.

  On the other hand, he was still very charming most of the time, generous – she had a much more than adequate housekeeping allowance, a separate one for her clothes – he told her frequently how proud of her he was and how much he loved her, praised what she had done with the house and the garden, and in public at any rate was very fond of telling people he was the luckiest man in Wiltshire, if not in England.

  Florence and Robert refused the invitation. ‘Robert is terribly busy, I told you I thought he was,’ said Grace, hugely relieved to have been spared the strain of knowing that Florence was having at least a romance if not a full-blown affair, while pretending for a whole weekend of close proximity to her and indeed Robert that she had no idea.

  ‘We could have Clarissa and Jack,’ she said tentatively, surprising herself with her courage, anxious to show Charles she wasn’t really trying to avoid her duties as a source of entertainment and hospitality to his friends, but to her surprise Charles said rather shortly that he didn’t think it was a very good idea.

  ‘Why ever not, Charles? I thought you liked them both.’

  ‘I do, but I don’t really want them to stay,’ he said. ‘They’re such townies, I don’t feel we could amuse them very satisfactorily.’

  As this was the reverse of what he had said about Robert and Florence’s visit, Grace was baffled, but as she didn’t want them to come either, she left it, thankfully, at that.

  As the lovely summer wore on, everyone became increasingly and openly resigned to the inevitability of war. In July the Poles began to mobilize; if the Germans crossed their border, then that was it; Chamberlain had said so. Various official preparations were now being made. Early in August, the Home Office had a trial blackout, which was something of a disappointment to the large crowds gathered in Piccadilly to watch it; not quite all the lights went out and the timing of the whole thing was far from precise, but it was felt to be an important landmark.

  Other plans went into action: there were full-scale rehearsals for the evacuation of children, and in the middle of August 150 French bombers made a practice raid on the capital. Clarissa, who had been in the Ope
n Air Theatre in Regent’s Park with Jack watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reported that it was ‘horridly interrupted’ by the searchlights and the noise of the aircraft.

  Women everywhere were urged to stockpile food; Grace, who had wanted some chickens for ages and had been discouraged by Charles (‘stupid messy things’), used this as an excuse to get a few. Three or four times the usual number of couples were going to registry offices to be married; police leave was cancelled and so were driving tests (‘No point you learning now, darling,’ said Charles), and the embryonic television service was taken off the air because, they were told, the signals coming from Alexander Palace would make things easier for Germany.

  And on 24 August the military reservists were called up; the next day Britain signed a formal treaty of alliance with Poland.

  Grace was sewing one darkening evening, looking at Charles as he sat peacefully reading the paper, envisaging what lay ahead of them both, and felt very frightened.

  It was on Monday, 4 September that it happened.

  Not the declaration of war, that had been the day before, not Chamberlain’s reedy voice on the wireless, saying ‘We are now at war with Germany’, not the announcement in church as Grace and Charles sat with Clifford and Muriel in their pew and the verger hurried down the aisle with a piece of paper and the vicar mounted the pulpit and said, ‘My friends, we are now at war with Germany. I think we should return to our homes. God bless us all.’ Not the agonizing lunch, as plans were made, dangers cited, probabilities mooted – Charles would be called up, Robert would be called up, London evacuated, thousands of children were already being taken out on every train, Florence must come to stay with them; not the report on the nine o’clock news that there had already been an air-raid warning in the capital (as the result of a stray French bomber coming over) and that people had gone into shelters and done what they were supposed to with admirable efficiency; not the knock on the door of the Mill House in the evening by Mr Larkin, the local ARP warden, to check on their blackout arrangements; not the voice of Clarissa, shakily cheerful, saying that Jack was off to join up in the morning, and had decided on the RAF; not even Charles deciding that he would join the Royal Fusiliers, his father’s old regiment; and not even Charles making love to Grace that night with a tenderness and a strange sadness that she found rather moving and almost, she thought afterwards, arousing. For Grace the war seemed to begin in earnest with Muriel, phoning the following evening, her voice raw with pain, to say that Clifford had had a heart attack, that he was in St Thomas’s Hospital and that he was not expected to live.

  ‘I’ll come up with you,’ said Charles, ‘I’ll drive you. Do you want to go tonight? It’ll be very difficult in the blackout but—’

  ‘Yes, yes I do,’ said Muriel. ‘Of course I do. We can stay at the flat. Although it will be so dangerous up there, of course, maybe it won’t be possible. We have to get him out of London, Charles, if – well, if we possibly can. At the first opportunity. Florence agrees. She’s been to the hospital already, but they wouldn’t let her see him.’

  ‘Yes of course we must,’ said Charles.

  They had gone over to the Priory immediately; by the time they got there, Muriel was apparently calm, but very pale, and her hands, tearing compulsively at her handkerchief, were shaking. Grace, embracing her briefly, was shocked at the tension in her thin body.

  ‘Where was he?’ asked Charles. ‘When he had the heart attack. In the office?’

  ‘No,’ said Muriel. ‘No. In the flat in Baker Street.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘No,’ said Muriel, ‘no, apparently there was someone with him. Who called the ambulance.’

  ‘Well, who? Someone from the London office?’

  ‘I don’t know if she was from the London office or not,’ said Muriel irritably. ‘I’m not familiar with all the staff names.’

  ‘Well, what was the name? Of this person who called the ambulance.’

  ‘Saunders,’ said Muriel. ‘Mrs’ – the word came out with distinct difficulty – ‘Mrs Mary Saunders.’

  ‘Oh, not staff. I expect she was a client,’ said Charles easily.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I expect so,’ said Muriel.

  ‘Look, I think we should go. Grace, will you stay—’

  ‘I want to come,’ said Grace.

  ‘Grace, of course you can’t come. It will be terribly dangerous up there, you don’t seem to realize, bombing will start any minute, gas attacks as well. Mother, you mustn’t forget your gas mask. No, Grace, I want you to stay here. And besides, what good would it do?’

  ‘It will do a lot of good,’ said Grace. ‘To me anyway. Possibly to Muriel, I don’t know. If you’re all going to be bombed or gassed, then I think I’d rather be with you, and anyway, I want to – well, I want to see Clifford.’

  ‘Say goodbye to Clifford’ she had been going to say: she loved him so much, her kind, gentle, perceptive father-in-law, who had been so kind to her, done so much to help. She couldn’t stay safely in the country, let him go without seeing him once more.

  ‘Grace, I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question,’ said Charles. ‘I want you to stay safely here. Keep an eye on things.’

  ‘What things?’ said Grace. ‘And I’ve told you I don’t want to stay safely here. If you won’t take me in the car, Charles, I shall follow in the train. So you might as well.’

  Charles looked at her; he was clearly very angry. She was almost frightened. ‘Grace,’ he said and his voice was very heavy, ‘Grace, I repeat—’

  And then Muriel spoke. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Charles,’ she said, ‘if she wants to come let her. She might be able to do something useful.’

  Seeing Charles’s furious face quite made up for any hurt induced in Grace by Muriel’s words. In any case, she was getting used to her mother-in-law’s terminal tactlessness.

  They reached London just after two; it had taken an endless time in the total darkness, without even a glimmer from their own headlights, with only the white-painted kerbs, once they reached the city, to guide them. The roads were practically deserted, apart from a great many army lorries; the whole experience seemed to Grace to be straight out of a nightmare. They had half expected to find barbed wire surrounding the approaches to London, to hear heavy bombing, but apart from the darkness it might have been any night in the last twenty years: exceptionally quiet and peaceful. They came into London through Clapham, Vauxhall, Lambeth; the palace, shrouded in darkness, looked smaller, less imposing.

  As they reached St Thomas’s, an ARP warden stopped them at the gate, flashed a torch briefly into the car.

  ‘My father’s here,’ said Charles, ‘he’s very ill. Which way should we go?’

  ‘That way, sir. Leave your car over there.’

  ‘Right. Seems pretty quiet.’

  ‘Oh it is, sir. Don’t know how long for, of course. Cunning blighters, the Germans. Just waiting, biding their time. Hope your father’s all right, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Charles.

  Grace got out thankfully; she had been sitting in the back the whole way, feeling terribly sick for the last couple of hours.

  The Thames looked black, threatening in the darkness; she shivered, breathing in its murky smell, hoping she wasn’t going to be sick, or pass out.

  Muriel was standing looking up at the hospital with a strange expression on her face: it wasn’t just grief or weariness, Grace thought, watching her, it was fear.

  Clifford was in a small room on the first floor. They were taken up by a porter, greeted at the top of the stairs by a nurse.

  ‘He’s along here,’ she said. ‘Please follow me.’

  ‘How – how is he?’ said Muriel.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. You must see Sister. And the doctor of course.’

  It was a long corridor; the silence as they walked was excruciating. Afraid of what was at the end of it, Clifford dying, dead even, of what might happen any moment, a sudden bomb at
tack, poison gas, Grace felt she might scream.

  ‘You’re very brave,’ she said to the nurse suddenly, realizing she was about the same age as herself. ‘Aren’t you frightened?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, smiling, ‘we’ve no time to be frightened.’

  ‘Ah, Mrs Bennett.’ The ward sister came towards them. ‘You must be exhausted after your long journey. How brave of you to come into the bomb-torn capital.’ Her voice was amusedly ironic; she smiled at them briefly. Grace liked her.

  ‘It seems very quiet,’ said Charles. ‘We were expecting – well, I don’t know what.’

  ‘Yes, everyone’s expecting I don’t know what. I personally think a great deal of hysteria is going on. However, Mrs Bennett, you will be pleased to hear your husband is – stable. Very ill, but stable.’

  ‘I see,’ said Muriel, and only a twitch at the sides of her mouth revealed any emotion at all.

  ‘Now, I cannot give you any kind of prognosis, of course,’ said the sister, ‘You must speak to the doctor in the morning, but I can tell you that he is no worse than when he was brought in, possibly a little better. That at least is something.’

  Muriel nodded mutely. Two tears trickled out of her eyes, rolled unchecked down her cheek. Grace, amazed, took her hand suddenly, squeezed it; there was no response.

  ‘May I see him?’ Muriel said.

  ‘For a moment, yes. You must be prepared, though, for him not to recognize you. Need I say that you must on no account worry him, try to arouse him.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Muriel. Sister ushered her gently into the room.

  Later they sat in Sister’s office; she had made them a cup of tea. Muriel seemed perfectly calm.

  ‘Er – I believe a Mrs Saunders called the ambulance,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. That is correct. She has phoned a couple of times since.’

  ‘Do we have a number for her?’ asked Muriel. ‘Or an address? So that we can thank her.’

  ‘Er – it seems not,’ said Sister, ‘nor an address. I’m sorry.’