by Mary Nichols
A servant brought him tea and shaving water at eight o’clock next morning and he dressed and went down to breakfast, determined to put Lucy Storey out of his mind.
Bernard Hodgkins had been instructed by his mother to look after his siblings and not let anyone separate them and on that Saturday afternoon, the second day of September 1939, he stood in the church hall at Nayton ready to defy the world. Twelve years old he was, and big for his age, and he was not going to be bulldozed into parting with Raymond or Cissie nor, if he could help it, his cousin Martin.
It had been a strange sort of day up to now. The week before, their mother had been dashing about trying to put together the clothes and toiletries that the evacuation people seemed to think were necessary. It had meant pawning their dad’s overcoat and the counterpane off Mum’s bed. Everything was second-hand but it was clean and mended and put into cardboard suitcases, also second-hand. At eight o’clock they had each been handed a case, a packet of sandwiches and their gas masks and taken to the school where, along with the rest of their schoolmates, they had a label pinned onto them and were herded onto buses and then a train. It was then Cissie had started to cry and she had been crying off and on ever since; her face was all swollen, her nose snotty and her eyes red.
All round him were other children from the same school, some were crying, some simply bewildered, some playing up, running up and down shouting and generally showing off. One by one they were inspected and carried off until Bernard began to wonder if they were going to be left behind. That was all right, he told himself, because then they could go back home.
The lady who had been there to greet them all and who had told them her name was Mrs Hutchins came towards the little group accompanied by a tubby woman in a black hat with a silk rose on the front and another lady who was dressed like a film star. She smiled at Bernard. ‘What is your name, young man?’ She even sounded like a film star, with a lilting accent that entranced him.
‘I’m Bernie Hodgkins, missus. This here’s my sister, Cissie, she’s five and she’s going to start school next term. That’s my brother, Ray. He’s ten.’ He pointed at them one by one. ‘And Martin’s our cousin. He lives next door and he’s ten, same as Ray. I’m twelve. Ma said we weren’t to be split up. I’m to look after the others.’
‘You address Lady de Lacey as “my lady”,’ the fat one said severely.
‘It doesn’t matter, Mrs Baxter,’ the lovely lady said. Then to Bernard. ‘Would you like to come home with me?’
‘Only if the others come too.’ It was said firmly enough to brook no argument.
The lady smiled. ‘Of course. All four of you.’
‘My lady …’ the fat one protested.
‘We can’t separate them, Mrs Baxter, and we’ve plenty of room. I’ll ask Annie if she’ll take them under her wing. I’m sure she won’t mind. Come along children, out to the car.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you, my lady,’ Mrs Hutchins said and then to the children, ‘You don’t know what lucky children you are to be taken to such a lovely home. Mind and behave yourselves at the Manor. I shall soon learn about it if you don’t.’
The children picked up their cases and trailed out behind the lovely lady and the fat one, leaving Mrs Hutchins to dash off to look after someone else. The boys cheered up at once when they saw how they were going to travel to their new home. They were going in a huge car with a uniformed chauffeur. Cissie had stopped crying but continued to sniff. Mrs Baxter gave a deep sigh and fished a handkerchief from her pocket. ‘Here, wipe your nose and dry your eyes. There’s nothing for you to cry about.’
‘I expect you are missing your mama, aren’t you, Cissie?’ Lady de Lacey said as they squeezed in and moved off, and when the child nodded, added, ‘Is Cissie your real name or does it stand for something else?’
‘It’s Cecily, mi–’ Bernard hesitated.
‘My lady,’ Mrs Baxter finished for him.
‘That’s a very pretty name,’ Lady de Lacey said, smiling at Cissie. ‘I think I shall call you Cecily.’
It was only a couple of miles to Nayton Manor and they were soon stopping in front of a huge building with countless windows and ivy growing all over it. They tumbled out onto the gravel and stared up at it. ‘It’s a school,’ Raymond said.
‘No, it’s not a school,’ Mrs Baxter told him. ‘It is Lord and Lady de Lacey’s home and yours too, for the time being.’
They went inside, staring about them in awe. It was not what Bernard had expected at all. According to everyone he had spoken to when the subject of evacuation had been brought up, country people lived in hovels surrounded by pigs and mud. He hadn’t seen a pig, nor a single speck of dirt. And this palace was certainly not a hovel.
A young woman in a plain grey dress with a white collar and cuffs arrived to conduct them to their rooms. ‘I’m Annie,’ she said, leading the way down a corridor and up two flights of stairs. ‘You use the backstairs,’ she told them as they were shown two large bedrooms. ‘You don’t go anywhere near the front of the house unless you’re sent for. And you’ll eat in the servants’ hall.’
It was all very bewildering and Cissie began to cry again. Annie, whose heart was as soft as her voice was stern, scooped her up and sat on one of the beds with her on her lap. ‘Don’t cry, sweetheart. You’ll have a lovely time here. Lady de Lacey is a nice lady and your mum and dad can come and see you whenever they want.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Cissie asked, looking a shade more cheerful.
‘I don’t know about tomorrow, but soon. Your big brother can write to them and tell them you have arrived safely. You can all write. I’ll find pencils and paper for you. But I expect you are hungry, so I’ll take you down for something to eat first.’ She put Cissie from her lap and stood up. ‘Come along, all of you.’
Bernard, scoffing sausages and mash in a huge room with a big table, could not believe living in the country would be like this. My, he was going to have such a lot to tell Ma when he wrote and she’d have to come and see for herself. All the same, he’d rather be at home.
After the milk train had gone through on Sunday morning a relief was sent from the railway company to undertake the duties of porter and ticket collector at Nayton Halt for the rest of the day and Lucy and her father were free to do as they wished. They were, like the servants at the Manor, encouraged to go to church, but after that, their time was their own. Bert Storey considered it his day off and would no more have thought of going to worship than growing wings and flying, but he did not stop Lucy from going, once she had done the chores. She was still expected to clean the house, cook his dinner, and sponge and press his uniform ready for Monday.
Her head still full of Jack de Lacey, she hurried through her work, put a stew in the oven to simmer gently, then changed into her best blue silk to go to church, a dress she had altered from one of her mother’s. When she slipped it over her head and felt the soft material against her skin and the way the bodice nipped her waist in and the skirt draped itself over her hips, she was almost overcome with grief. Mama had been a good needlewoman and always dressed well. She could almost have been taken for a lady. In Lucy’s eyes she had been one. She had been so gentle, so refined, so ready to listen to childish woes, losing her had been a blow she would never get over, made more difficult to bear because of the behaviour of her father.
He hated Lucy; it was as if he blamed her for his wife’s disappearance and was determined to punish her. She was expected to work all her waking hours and she was allowed no friends of her own age. ‘Heads full of nonsense,’ he would say. ‘Fripperies and enjoyin’ theirselves is all they think of.’ It was always his reply when she asked for time off or money to buy a little bit of ribbon to decorate a hat.
Today he looked her up and down and scowled. The girl was becoming more and more like his wife and that worried him. Full of fancies, Maggie had been, too refined for her own good, teaching the child to ape her betters as well as filling her head with reading and w
riting and a whole load of romantic nonsense. How was he ever going to get her off his hands when she acted like she was one of those from the big house? What man who called himself a man would take her for a wife when she would show him up every time she opened her mouth? ‘Where do you think you’re off to looking like that?’ he demanded.
‘To church, Father.’
‘If you think to tempt a fellow-me-lad with that finery, you’re going to the wrong place. You’ll not find a husband there.’
‘I would not expect to, Father. I go to worship. Why don’t you come too?’ She knew perfectly well he would not; she was in no danger of having his company.
‘I’ve got better things to do with my time. I’ll see you at dinner.’ He stomped off down the platform and up the lane towards the Nayton Arms, leaving her to perch a little pillbox hat on her hair and make her own way to church, glad the day was sunny because she only had one coat and it was old and worn and she did not want to cover her fine dress with it.
At the church gate she stepped aside to let Lord and Lady de Lacey, Amy, Jack and the evacuees pass. ‘Good morning, My Lord, My Lady,’ she said, but it was Jack she was most aware of. They nodded in acknowledgement and passed on towards the church porch and she fell in behind them.
Jack dropped back to speak to her. ‘What did your father say?’ His voice was low, almost conspiratorial.
‘Nothing. He wasn’t there. Frank Lambert had closed the gates for me.’
‘So your father doesn’t know?’
‘That we went for a walk? No, he doesn’t.’
‘Good. I need to speak to you. There is something I want to ask you. Can you wait for me after church?’
Her heart began to pound and her breath fluttered in her throat, so that she had to swallow hard before she could answer and when she did speak it came out in a strangled squeak. ‘Where?’
‘In the woods by the gate we went through to see the badgers.’ And then he was hurrying after the rest of his party and she followed more slowly and took her place at the back of the church.
It was as everyone gathered in the churchyard after the service that they learnt there had been no answer to the Allies’ ultimatum to Germany to withdraw its troops from Poland and the country was at war. Everyone stood about discussing the implications, many remembering the Great War and all the young men who had been killed. There was a memorial in the churchyard with the names of local men on it, most of them known to the older members of the congregation.
Even the evacuees caught the sombre mood, although as far as they were concerned it was not destined to last. Bernard was anxious to explore the area and Edmund, whom he had met earlier that morning in the stable yard, had promised to show him round. The two boys were an unlikely pair, but both were self-assured in their own way, and ready for adventure.
‘It can’t happen again,’ someone said. ‘That last one was supposed to be the war to end all wars.’
‘Well, that’s not true now, is it?’ someone else put in.
‘God help us.’
The tension Lucy was feeling had nothing to do with the war, but everything to do with Jack de Lacey. She knew she was playing with fire. Frank Lambert, hateful though he was, had been right about that; men of his sort only wanted one thing from girls like her, lowly working girls with rough hands and hand-me-down finery. She ought not to go. But she knew she would.
Jack caught her up just as she reached the gate in the wall of the estate which, if she passed through it, would take her into the wood. ‘Come,’ he said, opening the gate and standing aside to allow her to pass. ‘I will escort you home.’
‘I …’
He smiled, sensing her hesitation. ‘It is a short cut, you know, and cool in the trees.’ She gave up even pretending to be reluctant and stepped from her world into his. He shut the gate behind them, then took her hand and tucked it into his arm. His hand, she noticed, was cool and firm. ‘There, now we may be private.’
‘Mr de Lacey!’
‘Jack,’ he corrected her. He turned and looked at her. She looked nothing like the girl in the railway company uniform who operated the crossing gate; she was hauntingly attractive in a dress the colour of an unclouded sky, which would not have been too commonplace for his younger sister. When he had seen her at the lychgate, all his good intentions had flown away on the wind and the words had come from him without conscious thought. ‘You are looking very fetching today, Lucy. I am enchanted.’
‘Thank you, kind sir.’
‘So, you were not in trouble over coming out the other evening?’
‘No, but if Frank had not opened the gates for the train, there could have been a dreadful accident and I feel so guilty over it. I should never have let you persuade me …’
‘Oh, so it was my fault.’
‘No, I never meant that …’
‘You could have said no.’ His voice was soft.
‘I know.’
‘But you didn’t. You didn’t say no today either.’
‘I am not working today.’
He laughed suddenly. ‘So it is only your sense of duty that holds you back.’
‘Yes. No. Oh, you confuse me. I don’t know why I went with you the other night, I don’t know why I am here now, talking to you …’
‘Oh, I am sure you do. Could it be that you like my company, just a little bit?’
She did not answer and he laughed again. ‘Don’t look so sorrowful about it. I enjoy your company too.’
‘I must go home, I have to cook my father’s dinner.’
‘Oh, it’s ages before the pub shuts and I want to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘I should like to paint you.’
‘Paint me?’
‘Yes. Paint a portrait. I can’t stop thinking about the way your hair curls into your neck, the way you lift your chin, the way you stand, so proud and yet so soft, your expressive eyes. What colour are they?’ He turned to take her face in his hands to study them. ‘Grey sometimes, blue at others. Putting your likeness on canvas is the only way to cure my obsession.’
‘Oh.’ He wanted a cure, did he? He wanted to banish her from his mind. He knew, as she did in the very core of her, that what was happening between them was not real. But, oh, how she wanted it to go on. On and on and never stop. ‘Is that what you wanted to ask me?’
‘Yes. Will you sit for me?’
She pulled herself together. ‘You are being foolish. You know it isn’t possible and if Pa knew I was talking to you now, he would keep me in the house and never let me out again.’
‘Why? Aren’t I good enough to talk to a stationmaster’s daughter?’
‘You are a gentleman from the big house, rich and important, and you are only making fun of me.’
She had touched a raw nerve. Just how much of a gentleman was he? If his mother had not married Lord de Lacey, he could not claim to be anything more than she was. He had known poverty, when every penny counted, when his mother was dressed far more poorly than this girl who walked beside him now, and though it was so long ago it was only a distant memory, he didn’t want to experience it again. But that was not to say he could not enjoy himself now and again with someone who made no demands on him, who looked up to him. He turned, picked up her hand and kissed the back of it. ‘I am not making fun of you, Lucy, I am serious. I can draw and paint, you know, and you will make a splendid subject. If you are worried about it, I can ask your father’s permission.’
‘Oh no, don’t do that. He will forbid it, I know he will.’
‘Then we shall have to do it in secret.’
She knew her face was on fire. The touch of his lips on the back of her hand had set her pulses racing. She knew she was taking an enormous risk; she really did not know him at all and she also knew that gentlemen’s sons were often not gentlemanly at all. She had heard tales from servants, and Annie in particular, that had made her insides curl up. And yet he sounded so sincere and it would be wonderful to
have her portrait painted. ‘How?’ she asked.
‘Come, I’ll show you.’ And he took her hand and led her deeper into the wood.
‘Where are you taking me?’ With her other hand she picked up her skirt in a bunch so that it would not become caught in the undergrowth. She had left home dressed neatly to go to church and, if she were honest, to impress him, but she had never expected this. She had gone mad. And so had he.
‘Not far.’
They emerged into a small clearing and there before them were the ruins of a small cottage. Part of its roof had fallen in, revealing the bare timbers, its windows were broken and the door hung drunkenly on one hinge. Weeds grew up through the dirt floor and a small tree had seeded itself in the little thatch that remained on the roof.
She shuddered. ‘What is it?’
‘It once belonged to the gamekeeper, long before my time, but I used to play here as a child. It was my special place, somewhere to hide away from the world …’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Perhaps I will tell you one day. Here is where I would like to paint you, here among the ruins.’
Her heart plummeted; to her a portrait meant sitting on a chair in a clean room with a classic column beside her or a plant on a stand, with painted blue sky behind her and perhaps a distant landscape, not among spiders and cobwebs and bats. ‘It’s horrible. I wouldn’t want to come here alone. It gives me the shivers, as if there are ghosts …’
‘Oh, foolish child, there are no such things as ghosts. And you won’t have to come here alone. I will meet you on the edge of the wood and we’ll come together. I will always be with you.’ He stopped and turned towards her and smiled, lifting a tendril of hair from her cheek and tucking it behind her ear.
