War Girls

by Adele Geras

  ‘Why?’ There are other words, but they will not come.

  ‘I can’t tell her,’ he mutters. ‘I’ve tried. I can’t.’ He looks at me. ‘I shall write to her. It’s a cowardly thing to do, but I cannot bear to face her, not yet. Not now … Sarah?’

  ‘Yes?’ I force myself to look up.

  ‘Sarah, do you know’ – his voice fades, disappears – ‘my feelings? For you?’

  My heart is choking me, beating in my throat. I nod.

  Philip goes on: ‘I … I don’t know how to say it.’ He looks over my head, cannot meet my eyes. He speaks, his voice rough with emotion. ‘I’ve thought and thought about it, and I don’t know how to say it.’

  He draws me closer. I can feel the buttons of his jacket through my dress. I am going to faint. I am dissolving in the heat, turning into water. His arms are around me, enfolding me. His mouth is pressing down on my head, moving in my hair. Blindly, like a plant in search of light, I turn my face up, and his lips are there, on my lips, and my senses and my heart and my body, every part of me, all my love, everything is drawn into the sweetness of his mouth.

  Later, we stand together, dazed, quivering. I can feel his kiss still, pouring through me.

  ‘Philip, Philip.’ I bury my head in his jacket. ‘I love you. I’ve always loved you.’ Half hoping he will not hear me.

  He lifts my face in his fingers. ‘And I love you, Sarah. Sarah, I love you. I don’t know how I’ve never said it before. How did I make such a mistake?’

  I laugh. Everything is golden now. What has happened … what will happen … Enid … the rest of the world … nothing is important.

  ‘I’m only a child,’ I say, smiling, teasing.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he says. ‘Not any longer. Not a child.’ He kisses me again, softly. His fingers are on my hair, on my neck, touching and touching me. I have imagined it a thousand times and it was not like this. Wildly, I think of us growing here in this hothouse for ever, like two plants twined into one another, stems interlocked, leaves brushing … I move away from him.

  ‘We must go back,’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’ He takes my hat from the ground and puts it on my head.

  ‘You must promise me,’ he says, ‘never to wear mourning.’

  ‘Mourning?’ What has mourning to do with such happiness?

  ‘If I die …’

  ‘You won’t die, Philip.’ I am myself again now. ‘You said you wouldn’t. I love you too much. You’ll come back and we’ll live happily ever after, love one another for ever, just like a prince and princess in a fairy tale.’

  He laughs. ‘Yes, yes, we will. We will be happy.’

  Walking back together to Enid’s bench, we make plans. He will write to me. He will send the letters to my friend Emily. I shall tell her everything. He will write to Enid. Not at once but quite soon. We can see Enid now. She is waving at us. We wave back.

  ‘Remember that I love you,’ Philip whispers when we are nearly, oh, nearly there. I cannot answer. Enid is too close. I sit on the bench beside her, dizzy with loving him.

  ‘You’ve been away for ages,’ she says. ‘I was quite worried.’

  Philip’s voice, answering her, is light, full of laughter. ‘There’s such a lot to look at. A splendid place. You really should have come.’

  I am amazed at him. I dare not open my mouth. Here, in the fresh air, I cannot look at her. The dreadfulness of what I am doing to her … what I am going to do to her, makes me feel ill. Will she forgive us? Will we have to elope? Emigrate? There will be time enough to worry when she finds out; when Philip tells her. Now, I cannot help my happiness curling through me like a vine. We set off again along the gravel path. I have to stop myself from skipping. I remember, briefly, the skeleton I saw reflected in the glass, and I laugh out loud at my childish fear. It was only a trick of the light, just as Philip had said. A trick of the light.

  There are stone urns near the Temperate House and carved stone flowers set about their bases. A lady is sitting on a bench in the sunshine under a black silk parasol. The light makes jagged pools of colour in the inky taffeta of her skirts, and her hat is massed with ostrich feathers as black as plumes in a funeral procession. She turns to look at us as we go by and I see that her face is old: small pink lips lost in a network of wrinkles; eyes still blue, still young under a pale, lined brow. Black gloves cover her hands, and I imagine them veined and stiff under the fabric. She smiles at me and I feel a sudden shock, a tremor of fear.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she says, and I know she’s talking to me.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I answer. Enid and Philip walk on, but it would be rude for me to ignore her.

  The lady continues. ‘What’s your name, child?’

  ‘Sarah Romney.’

  ‘Look at me carefully, Sarah. Can you believe I was just like you? Oh, I used to run through the gardens here with ribbons flying from my hat … It all passes.’

  I smile. What can I say in answer to that? ‘I must catch up with my sister,’ I murmur. ‘Goodbye.’

  Enid is saying, ‘Forty years out of date, at least. Do you think she realizes how out of place she looks?’

  ‘Poor old thing,’ says Philip. ‘all alone in the world.’ He begins to whistle the tune of ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières’. ‘How would you like it?’

  ‘I do not think,’ says Enid, ‘that mourning dress should be so showy … Ostrich feathers indeed! Mutton dressed as lamb.’

  I look back at the old woman. I feel pity for her, but she does not hold my attention. I start to run across the grass as fast as I can. They are chasing me; yes, even Enid, dignity forgotten, is running and running. Philip puts his hand on my waist and twirls me round. I glance fearfully at Enid, but she is smiling at us like an indulgent mother.

  We walk home in the dusk. I must leave him alone with Enid at the gate. He kisses me goodbye on the cheek, like a brother, and I go indoors quickly. I am burning in the places where he touched me.

  Sarah sat up. Slowly, like a sleepwalker, she gathered the torn, bruised straw and the scraps of ribbon from the bed and the floor and put them in the hatbox. When there is time, she thought, I shall burn them in the kitchen fire. She struggled into the blue dress and looked at herself in the mirror. What she saw was the face of a stranger who resembled her: mouth pulled out of shape, skin white, hair without colour. She fastened, carefully, the buttons on her cuffs. Her skin, all the soft surfaces of her body, felt raw, scraped, wounded. I am wounded all over, she thought, and went slowly downstairs. She put the telegram in her pocket and left the house.

  Enid comes out from behind the counter. She says: ‘What’s the matter, Sarah? Are you ill? You look so white. Why are you wearing that thin dress?’

  Mother is talking to Mrs Feathers. It is absorbing talk. I do not think they have seen me. I say nothing. I give the envelope to Enid. She tears it open; a ragged fumbling of her hands, not like her at all.

  ‘It’s Philip,’ she says. ‘Philip is dead.’

  I watch, mesmerized, as she falls in a liquid movement to the ground. Mother appears, loosens her waistband, brings out smelling salts. She is weeping noisily.

  Mrs Feathers says: ‘I’ll put the kettle on for a cup of tea. Plenty of sugar, that’s the thing for shock.’

  I envy my mother every tear she is shedding. I want to cry and cannot. The iron grip tightens round my heart.

  1919, May

  ‘I think James will come to call this afternoon.’ Enid’s fingers made pleats in the lilac skirt she was wearing.

  Sarah said, ‘Do you like him?’

  Enid considered the question. The sisters were walking in Kew Gardens. Enid wanted to look at the camellias. ‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘he is a fine man.’

  Sarah thought of James’s solid body and long teeth, his black hair and the small brush of his moustache. Over the months, scars had slowly covered the sore places in her mind but sometimes, especially at Kew, the pain took her breath away. She should not, she knew,
walk there so often, yet she did. She should have avoided the Temperate House, but she went there at every opportunity and stood beside the streaming panes with her eyes closed, willing herself to capture something. Her feelings when she had stood with Philip in the same spot had been so overpowering, had filled her with such sharp pleasure, that she always hoped that their ghosts – hers and Philip’s – must still be lingering among the leaves.

  Now, she looked at Enid. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that James will suit you very well.’

  ‘He hasn’t proposed to me yet,’ Enid said placidly. ‘Although I don’t think it will be too long …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Philip,’ Sarah said (and the word felt strange in her mouth, an unfamiliar taste, like forgotten fruit), ‘Philip would be pleased you are happy.’

  ‘Do you think so, really?’ Enid looked relieved. ‘Of course I was heartbroken, heartbroken at his death. You remember? I fainted there and then on the floor of the shop. I shall never forget it.’

  ‘Neither shall I,’ said Sarah.

  ‘His letters in the months before his death were quite different,’ said Enid. ‘Did I ever tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘More formal. Veiled. For ever talking about an important matter which he would discuss on his next leave. Not so … devoted.’

  Sarah tried to stop herself from feeling happy at this revelation. Enid went on: ‘His last letter was particularly strange. He was going to tell me something, he said. He couldn’t bear to wait another day, but then the letter finished in a scrawl, messy and rushed. I suppose they had to go and capture some hill or wood. I shall never know what it was.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said Sarah.

  ‘But it is vexing,’ Enid said. ‘I should have liked to know.’ Part of Sarah longed to tell her, to tell her everything, but she said nothing. They walked on, in the direction of the Temperate House.

  ‘I shall sit here,’ Enid said. ‘Will you sit with me, or walk on a little further? I’m tired and the view of the camellias is best from this bench.’

  ‘I’ll walk on,’ Sarah said. ‘I shan’t be long.’

  She left Enid and found herself following the same path that they’d taken, all three of them, on that last day with Philip. She was wearing a hat very like the one she’d cut to ribbons a couple of years ago. Her mother had asked what had happened to that hat so many times that Sarah replaced it as soon as she could, taking the money from her wages. At first, she hated wearing it, but now it gave her a kind of comfort, reminding her of happier times; reminding her of Philip. She could almost hear him whistling that song, ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières’ …

  The woman sitting on the bench was thin, with grey hair pulled back into a loose bun. Sarah glanced at her as she walked by and was seized with the strongest feeling that she’d seen her somewhere. I know her, she thought. Or she reminds me of someone … Was she a customer in the shop? No, that wasn’t it. Sarah could feel the woman staring after her; feel the force of a gaze on the back of her neck. When she reached the end of the path, she looked round. I must have been imagining it, she told herself. I’m being silly. Of course she’s not looking at me. Still, there was something strange about the way the woman was dressed. Her skirt was much, much too short. Sarah could see her thin legs in pale stockings, uncovered from just below the knee, and feet in brown shoes. Her outfit was very unfeminine … That’s almost like a man’s jacket, Sarah thought. The woman wasn’t married, or at least she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Sarah always noticed such things.

  On the way back to Enid, she had to pass quite close to the woman on the bench. As she drew level, the woman spoke.

  ‘Such a lovely day, my dear,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it’s a nice day?’

  Sarah almost lost her footing. I know that voice. I know her. But who is she? Her head was spinning and she felt dizzy.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Your hat,’ the lady said. ‘I used to have a hat just like that, years ago.’

  The woman’s voice seemed to come and go: some of her words were audible and then there were times when the wind – it must have been the wind – blew them away like dead leaves before Sarah could catch them. She smiled nervously. ‘I have to go back to my sister,’ she said.

  The woman smiled, nodded and said nothing – Sarah was quite sure of that.

  When she got back to Enid, Sarah glanced back at the bench, but it was empty; the woman had gone. How had that happened? Surely she could not have disappeared entirely in the moments since she’d spoken to Sarah?

  Later, on their way home, Sarah and Enid passed by the Temperate House.

  ‘Are you going in today?’ Enid asked.

  ‘No,’ said Sarah, ‘I’ll just look in for a moment.’

  She approached the glass and stared at her reflection, with the darkness of the green behind it, and touched the ribbons that fell from the brim of her hat. Where were they? Where was her hat? She could see no sign of it, nor of the ribbons. The face she saw in the glass wasn’t hers. It was too thin. Her hair was grey, pulled back in a bun and her jacket … like a man’s, tailored.

  Sarah shook her head, moved closer to the pane, and the image changed. She was herself again. There was her own face, still young. Her blue dress, her straw hat with its ribbons. She shivered. A trick of the light, that was all it had been. Only a trick of the light.

  ‘I don’t think,’ she said to Enid as they walked out through the tall wrought-iron gates, ‘I don’t think I shall be coming to Kew for a very long time.’

  Going Spare

  by Sally Nicholls

  Going Spare

  When I was fourteen, I was short, plump, mousy-haired and shy. When I was fourteen, I thought this was everything important there was to know about me. It would be many years before I discovered that it wasn’t.

  It didn’t help that my little sister and brother were small, curly-haired and adorable. I despised them, of course.

  The three of us lived with my parents in a tiny flat in a big house on the edge of London. I shared a room with my sister, who was messy, noisy and had a habit of bursting into loud sobs at the slightest provocation. I shared the rest of the flat with my brother, who was messier, noisier and obsessed with anything that said, ‘Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Nyyyyaaa! Boom!’

  The year was 1977. Luke Skywalker still thought Darth Vader had killed his father. The Wombles were wombling free on Wimbledon Common and ABBA were celebrating their fifth number one in two years. My sister dreamed of being a backing dancer. My brother dreamed of being an X-Wing pilot.

  Mostly, I dreamed of escaping.

  The place I usually escaped to was the top-floor flat, which belonged to a lady called Miss Frobisher. Miss Frobisher was very old – at least seventy – and rather severe-looking. Her flat was half the size of ours, but it seemed much bigger. Everything in Miss Frobisher’s flat was just so. You could put something down, and when you came back a week later it would be exactly where you’d left it. Miss Frobisher led a calm and ordered life, doing exactly as she pleased, exactly when she pleased. When I was fourteen, that was the closest I knew to heaven. I used to escape to her flat to play her piano, read her books and eat squashed-fly biscuits at her mahogany table and pretend to be making an afternoon visit like a character in a Jane Austen novel.

  My sister and brother were a little scared of Miss Frobisher. She had a way of looking down her nose at them when they were being particularly riotous, which silenced even my brother.

  ‘Why isn’t she married?’ my sister said. All the other grown-ups we knew were.

  ‘She probably didn’t have much choice,’ said my mother. ‘Lots of women didn’t after the War. There weren’t that many young men left.’

  She meant the First World War. Not the one with the Spitfires.

  ‘Really?’ I said. I was surprised. I thought I knew all about the First World War. Boys dying in muddy fields in France. ‘If I should die, thin
k only this of me’ and ‘Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori’. War memorials in market squares and the names of the dead on the walls of churches. I’d never thought about the women, except possibly the nurses, in war films, in long skirts and hats with crosses on them.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ my mother said. ‘It was terribly sad, really. Two million spare women, there were. A whole generation of maiden aunts, wasn’t it, George?’

  George was my father. He grunted.

  ‘They used to teach at my school,’ she said, and I had an odd vision of my mother, being taught by two million maiden aunts. ‘There was Miss Sullivan who taught French; terrifying woman. And Miss Phillips, who taught English. We used to put spiders in her desk drawer to make her scream.’

  Two million leftover women. I tried to imagine it. I couldn’t.

  ‘What did they all do?’ I asked my mother, but my sister was attempting to drown my brother in the kitchen sink, and her attention was wandering.

  ‘Oh,’ she said vaguely, drifting over to my sister. ‘Not a lot.’

  I went to see Miss Frobisher the next day after school. My parents had an agreement whereby I could practise my scales on her upright piano, in return for plant-watering and cat-sitting duties when she went on holiday. I despised the piano, and usually contrived to bang out several rounds of whatever I was supposed to be practising as loudly as possible, before going to drink tea and borrow books from Miss Frobisher’s bookcases.

  Miss Frobisher was small and wiry. She had short, sleek, grey hair and bright green eyes. Despite being about twice as old as my parents, she had about four times as much energy. She didn’t have my brother and sister, of course.

  As Miss Frobisher was pouring the tea, I asked her about the leftover women.

  ‘Don’t they teach you that in school?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. The First World War at school was almost entirely poets and poppies and dead archdukes. And trenches. For something calling itself a world war, most of it seemed to have happened in France. ‘Really two million leftover women?’

  ‘Well, it felt like a lot more if you were a girl of my class,’ said Miss Frobisher. Miss Frobisher was posh. ‘All of the boys I knew were officers, of course, and the thing about being an officer is that you are rather expected to lead the charge. Half the boys in my brother’s year at Balliol never came back, if you can imagine that.’