‘I’m sending the boys back,’ said Linda, ‘back to the country. Back where it’s safe.’
David promptly burst into tears; Daniel said, ‘Will my rabbit still be there?’
‘Course it will,’ said Linda. ‘David, don’t cry. You can’t stay here, you don’t want any more nights like that, do you?’
‘It was all right,’ said David staunchly.
‘I liked it,’ said Daniel.
‘Well, you’re not staying and that’s all there is to it,’ said Linda. ‘I’m going to see the lady at the council tomorrow.’
The lady at the council was disdainful. ‘We advised you against bringing them back,’ she said. ‘Now everyone wants their children safe again and there aren’t the billets for them.’
‘Why not?’ said Linda. ‘Why the bleeding hell not, if everyone brought their kids back? You’ve got to help.’
‘There is no need for that kind of language, Mrs Lucas. We are doing our best, I do assure you.’
‘Sorry,’ said Linda. She was very upset; along with the rest of London she was stunned, reeling with shock. The night following the first raid, a second had followed, 200 bombers pounding the East End relentlessly. The death toll was unimaginable already. ‘I’ve got to get them away,’ she said, and was horrified to find herself beginning to cry. ‘I’ve got to.’
‘Well now, where were your children, Mrs Lucas?’
‘Yorkshire,’ said Linda, ‘village called Patley.’
‘It’s really most unlikely we can place them where they were. You cannot expect people to just take them back as if nothing had happened. It was very difficult for them, you know, when the children were removed. After all their kindness. Now I’ll see what I can do, let you know, but I’m not promising anything.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ said Linda, and then smiled as sweetly as she could. ‘Sorry about earlier. Bad weekend, you know?’ She needed to keep the old hag on her side. ‘Thank you. Thank you ever so much.’
The image of being a Wren, Clarissa thought, as she filled her pail with hot soapy water in the dim grey dawn, had not been too much like this. She had seen herself on the deck of a destroyer, looking wonderfully chic in her navy and white, standing next to a dashing captain who would turn to her and say, ‘Well done, First Officer Compton Brown, you’ve just helped win a great battle.’
Here she was, a Pro-Wren, in the most hideous overalls, they hadn’t even got their uniforms yet, in some hideous building in North London, sleeping in a hugely uncomfortable bunk in what they called a cabin in their ridiculous way, in charge of the 4 a.m. shift. And the 4 a.m. shift was not engaged in spotting enemy warships or reading radar screens or even learning Morse code so that she could take down complex and vital signals from other ships; her particular task was scrubbing down the stairs each day. And getting all the other forty-seven girls up. That was her major duty, more irksome than anything else she had to do. The barking old harridan who had briefed them all at the end of their first two days had told Clarissa she looked like someone who could get other people organized; Clarissa had been quite pleased then, had even modestly agreed. Now, as she stood by the bunks of the soundest sleepers, first telling them, then shaking them and ordering them to get up, on the receiving end of a great deal of foul language, she would have given anything to be an organizee. Most of the girls were quite nice; a few were poison. Girls from working-class homes who saw it as their duty to give her and the others like her a hard time.
‘Oh excuse me!’ one May Potter had said to her (Clarissa remembered her vaguely from the interview day, sitting with a friend and whispering – the friend it seemed had not been accepted), her voice heavy with sarcasm as she had asked politely if Clarissa had finished with the rather scummy water she had left in the washbasin they were sharing the first evening, ‘So sorry, madam, I expect your maid runs the water for you at home.’
‘No, actually,’ said Clarissa with her sweet smile. ‘No, I do that. And I turn down my own bed. Well, on her night off anyway.’
She had meant it as a joke; it had misfired. From then on a small faction, led by May, nicknamed her Duchess, imitated her accent, her habit of waving her hands around when she talked, the meticulous cleanse-tone-and-nourish skin-care routine recommended by Miss Arden that she refused to abandon, even on the nights when lights out caught her unfinished and she had to do it in the dark.
‘Oh may deah’ would come a voice through the darkness, ‘Ay cannot seem to faind my naight craim. Could you ask may maid to have a look for it’ – followed by fits of giggles.
Clarissa, who had never known unkindness in her life, whose blithe disposition had carved a carefree way for her, even at school, was at first surprised then shocked and hurt by this. There were several other middle-class girls from good families in the cabin, but they were less excessive in their behaviour, and did not attract the same attention. And observing Clarissa’s growing unpopularity, they tended to avoid her, lest they attracted some of it to them selves. She pretended she didn’t care, told herself it wasn’t for long, but it hurt a lot.
Never mind, she told herself as she started work on the top step, looking dismally down the twenty-four to the bottom, it was only for six weeks. She could stick it; she was going to stick it. If Jack could risk his life every single day, several times a day, she could cope with a bit of ragging,
‘You,’ the chief officer had said to the girls as they sat in the reception hall at Mill Hill the night they arrived, ‘are very special and fortunate young women. The WRNS is the finest, the best women’s service. It is a great privilege to serve them. You should be aware of that. It is an honour and a fine tradition you will always carry with you now, long after this war is over; once a Wren always a Wren.’
There had been a lot more in that vein; none of it seemed, Clarissa thought, wearily squeezing out her cloth, to have a great deal to do with washing stairs. The only thing she really enjoyed was learning to march and salute; that at least seemed to have some connection with the life of her imagination. She supposed she was luckier than some; several of the girls were almost ill with homesickness, having never left home and their mothers before. The sound of muffled crying in the cabin at night was not unusual.
At least, at least Jack was safe – for now. He had come through the Battle of Britain, her hero, one of the Few, to whom, as Mr Churchill had so wonderfully said, so much was owed by so many. He had been awarded the DSO and was now briefly in a comparatively peaceful backwater, a C Squadron, providing a back-up and training resource for pilots from other commands.
They had had what seemed now an unbelievably rapturous forty-eight hours together, when they had scarcely left the great double bed in their house in Campden Hill except to fetch food or more champagne from the kitchen (the six cases Clifford had given them as a wedding present were becoming rapidly depleted), and then had parted, he for Catterick in Yorkshire, she for her new life in Mill Hill. Some of the experiences they had shared during those two days and nights were so profound, so intense in their pleasure that the mere memory of them could still stir Clarissa, disturb her physically.
Which was just as well, she thought, as she clearly wasn’t going to get any more sex for a very long time.
‘Oh ay’m so sorry!’ It was her tormentor, May Potter; she had managed to slip and kick the bucket from the top to the bottom of the stairs. ‘So sorry. Ay wish ay could help clear it up, but ay have to make the breakfast.’
Beastly girl. How on earth had she got into the WRNS anyway, Clarissa wondered, with their interminable emphasis on choosing only quality young woman, only the best? She looked at May wearily over her cloth and then smiled sweetly at her. She had had enough. ‘Just fuck off will you,’ she said, ‘PDQ. All right?’
May looked at her, startled, and for the first time an expression of faint respect came into her pale blue eyes.
‘Pardon me I’m sure,’ was all she said, but Clarissa knew she had won something. Not a war, not even a b
attle, but a skirmish. She smiled cheerfully at the petty officer who was ordering her to get on down and clear up the mess. She had enjoyed that little inter lude more than anything else since she had arrived in the place.
Florence had had to tell Muriel something of her problems in the end; she needed a refuge, at least until Robert was safely overseas. She had managed to keep her pregnancy to herself – she was still very thin, and the slightly burgeoning stomach only showed when she was naked, which Muriel was certainly not going to witness. She merely told her mother she and Robert had been having problems, that he had threatened her, and she wanted to keep out of his way until he had left the country. Muriel told her she was not a fool, that she was tired of being taken for one, and asked exactly what kind of problems; Florence told her with extreme reluctance that she had been having a relationship with someone else, but that Robert didn’t know and it had nothing to do with his alarming behaviour. Muriel, icily disapproving, was nevertheless persuaded to tell him that Florence had been in Cornwall with her; he clearly didn’t believe her, but there was very little he could do about it. He was being posted to Gibraltar, leaving in ten days; there was no more leave due to him. Florence spoke to him, said how desperately sorry she was to have missed him, that she was now at the Priory staying with her mother.
Robert appeared to accept this, told her he loved her, gave her an address to write to, said he would write often, and would look forward to seeing her on his next leave. Slightly unnerved by his lack of aggression, Florence said meekly that of course she would write, and when she knew he was at least four days out at sea, left Wiltshire for London.
She felt possessed of a deathly weariness; due not only to her pregnancy, but to the relief from the immediate strain and terror, and to her grief at her separation from Giles. His ship was due to sail in a week; he had put in for leave, but married officers were being given priority. There was little hope of her seeing him for many months: if ever again, she thought in her lowest moments.
She felt not only unhappy, but as if she could not remember what happiness was like.
Three days after Charles sailed, Grace received a letter.
My dearest Grace,
This is just to tell you that I love you. Please take care of yourself, and of course Mother. She is far more vulnerable than she appears. For this reason I would reiterate that I do not wish you to have any contact with my father whatsoever.
I am aware that life must be lonely for you, and I do sympathize. However, I am more happy than I can tell you that you are not intending to join any of the services. It makes me feel very much better when I am in danger to know that you are not.
Take care of yourself, and be waiting for me when I come home to you.
Charles
This did not have quite the effect on Grace that he might have hoped for; the complacency, the lack of imagination, the high-handedness were all, in her still raw disappointment over her pregnancy, her distress over Florence and Robert, more than she could endure. ‘That settles it,’ she said aloud, tears of rage rather than misery welling in her eyes, blurring the lines of his letter. ‘Land Army here I come. And I’m going to take in some evacuees.’
Chapter 12
Winter 1940
‘Pregnant!’ said Muriel. ‘But I don’t understand.’
‘There isn’t a lot to understand, Mother,’ said Florence. She was trying to keep calm.
‘I thought you and Robert were—’
‘Yes, well, these things still happen.’
‘Well, as long as the child is Robert’s. I would not wish—’
‘Of course it’s Robert’s,’ said Florence wearily. ‘Anyway, I think I should come and stay here with you, now that he’s gone. If that’s all right,’ she added.
‘Of course it’s all right. I’ve been urging you to move down here for months. Quite apart from anything else it would be very nice for me to have some company. I don’t think anyone quite realizes how lonely I have been. If they do, they haven’t taken much trouble to show it, or do anything about it.’
Florence felt genuine remorse; she found her mother hard to get on with, to live with, quailed indeed at what lay ahead, but she was very fond of her, and in her more clearsighted (and depressed) moments recognized that she was not unlike Muriel. She shared her mother’s considerable capacity for hard work, her rather bleak perceptiveness, her tactless, taut manner, and what everyone mistook for unfriendliness and was actually an acute shyness. Florence envied Charles and her father their ease of manner more than anything in the world. One of the things that had first made her fall in love with Giles was his saying, ‘I don’t know why you’re so afraid of being yourself.’ It summed her up so exactly, revealed such an understanding of her inability to relax, to accept herself for what she was, to believe that anyone might want to be with her, to hear what she had to say.
It was those very shortcomings and insecurities that had led her to accept Robert Grieg’s proposal of marriage, when she had known she didn’t love him, combined with the fact that someone was going to rescue her from the wretched state of spinsterhood at the advanced age of twenty-eight.
Had she not been pregnant, she might have stayed in London, stayed in the house; but the twin fears of Robert still, somehow, managing to turn up, from Gibraltar and of the German bombers seeking her out, demolishing her and Giles’s child, drove her to the admittedly irksome sanctuary of Wiltshire. It would be boring there, achingly, numbingly boring; her mother had told her repeat edly about petrol rationing, food shortages, the lack of distraction. The thought of the long days, empty of any kind of congenial com panionship and occupation, frightened Florence almost as much as the threat of Robert and the Germans. But in – what? – less than four months now she would have her baby. And for that baby, and for Giles, she could endure anything.
‘Look,’ said Muriel, ‘if you’re going to come, the sooner the better. Let me know some train times and I’ll meet you in Salisbury.’
‘I need a few days to lock up the house,’ said Florence. ‘I’ll come on Monday, if that’s all right.’
‘I suppose so. I’ll get your room ready. I don’t quite know where we’re going to put a baby,’ she added, as if the Priory was a small bungalow rather than an eight-bedroomed house, and a baby some kind of large beast in need of stabling. ‘And of course Nanny has long retired, you’ll have to manage on your own.’
Florence said she thought that would be just about all right and put the phone down.
Without being quite sure why, Florence packed up as much as she could. Packing cases were as unimaginable a luxury as cream and fresh fruit, but she dragged all the empty suitcases up from the cellar and filled them with the silver, with books, with pictures, with china. When the war was over, she felt, she would like to come back to neatness and order, take repossession, in the event of the house not being bombed: increasingly unlikely these days, as the Germans bombarded the capital with relentless efficiency. It seemed to be disappearing under a mountain of rubble and flames, not just the East End and the docks, but large areas of the West End now as well, Berkeley Square, Bruton Street, a stretch of Oxford Street; Madame Tussauds, the Tower of London, even Buckingham Palace had all been hit. The wail of fire engines, the crash as unsafe walls were demolished, were as familiar a sound as the air-raid sirens. And yet in between the chaos and the raids, people continued to function in the most extraordinary calm, almost casual way, picking their way through rubble, broken pavements, gazing into what shop windows were left, chatting, gossiping. It was a remarkable display of sangfroid. Florence envied them from the bottom of her heart. She would have given anything to have a job to go to, a purpose in life, a distraction. Well, she was about to have one, she thought, patting her swelling stomach tenderly; and she had to do all she could to safeguard its arrival.
She pushed and pulled the cases into the kitchen, where they were at least not visible from the street, swathed the furniture in dustsheets, checked the bla
ckout, pulled the curtains, pausing often, caught up in memories, surprised at how many of them were happy: the good days with Robert when he had said he was sorry, he loved her, would never hurt her again, the parties they had given, the friends who had come, the lovely London evenings, when they had sat in the window of the drawing room drinking Martinis and reading, her first pregnancy, before Giles, when she had felt herself so happy. And then the hideous ones, the beatings, the fear, the day he knocked her downstairs – what had triggered that? An overlong phone call to a friend, some flowers left in a vase too long, one drink too many? She really could not remember now. And then the feverish, rapturous start of her love affair, the shaky joyous terror of the coded phone calls, the first nervy meetings, the long, stolen afternoons of love. All over, all gone, wrapped up, shrouded like her house.
On her last evening, feeling a most painful mixture of regret and relief, she settled in the basement kitchen, as safe as she could be from air raids – it was amazing how one adjusted to the constant danger, adopted an attitude of fatalism, almost carelessness. Everyone said if you survived three you stopped worrying, and it was true. She made herself a sandwich, poured herself a large whisky – she had found a store of the stuff in the cellar – and settled down to read. She tried not to listen to the news if she was on her own; it frightened her. The booming tones of Mr Churchill telling her this was her finest hour made her dismally aware that it was not.
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