The Secret Years

by Barbara Hannay

  ‘Mine’s George. George Lenton.’

  ‘George?’ His eyebrows rose and his smile tilted with obvious amusement. ‘I’ve never met a girl called George before.’

  ‘Well, now you have.’ Her father’s private nickname for her had been widely adopted during last year’s debutante season. Shortening girls’ names to their masculine form had been quite the rage, and somehow George had stuck.

  Looking back on that giddy time twelve months ago, she found it hard to believe that she’d ever been so carefree and careless. So many times at the height of the season, she’d come home from a party or a dance in the early hours of the morning, blithely stepping out of her clothes and leaving them to lie on the floor as she crawled into bed. It would have been hours later that she was woken by Hettie, who had picked up the evening clothes and taken them away to launder or mend before delivering breakfast on a tray.

  The arrival of war had brought that lifestyle crashing to a halt. In a matter of weeks, everything had changed.

  Now, Georgina led the way out of the Underground and up the broad stone steps. Outside, it was already dark, especially dark now that black curtains were drawn across everyone’s windows and the headlights of vehicles were covered with hoods so they showed only the dimmest beam.

  High above, the stars were shining, though, and the half-moon shone silver-white. Unfortunately, a cloudless sky with a bright moon was exactly what the German bombers wanted. There’d be an air raid tonight for sure.

  ‘Have you arranged somewhere to stay?’ she asked Harry Kemp.

  ‘I was planning to look around for a hotel.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’ll have much luck around here. The hotels are all jolly crowded. Many people have moved into them after their houses were bombed.’

  ‘That’s an expensive option.’

  Georgina shrugged. Most residents of Belgravia had pots of money.

  ‘I can always swag down in the Underground,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to do that. You won’t get a wink of sleep. You’d better come with me, but we should probably hurry. The sirens will be starting soon.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘My place is just around the corner.’

  Again, Harry looked momentarily surprised, but he seemed to quickly recover. Georgina, on the other hand, was more than a little shocked by the temerity of her invitation. Despite the endless parties of last year’s debutante season, her behaviour had been heavily supervised. All the debutantes’ mothers had seen to that – watching from the benches with eagle eyes to make sure their darling daughters weren’t dancing too close or for too long with the same young man.

  Since Georgina had joined the army, she’d met a very different class of girl – girls who scorned any airs and graces and who drank and smoked as avidly as the men. These girls were also fun in a down-to-earth way that she rather liked, even though many of them considered their night out wasted if they didn’t pick up a chap for a bit of slap and tickle.

  Georgina had been rather stunned by their loose behaviour and now she wondered what Harry Kemp must think of her. What would he expect?

  She might have worried about this, but as they turned the corner into Wilton Street, the sirens began to wail. At any moment they’d hear the grinding engines of the first German planes, the whistle of falling bombs, followed by shuddering explosions. There was no time to analyse her rashness.

  ‘Do you have a shelter to go to?’ Harry asked, keeping step with her.

  She shook her head. ‘I tried, but I couldn’t bear it down there with all the old men coughing and snoring and babies crying. I decided I’d rather take a gamble on staying in our basement.’ At this, Georgina paused, realising how presumptuous she’d been, coaxing him away from the safety of the Underground. ‘Perhaps you’d rather not risk our basement though.’

  Harry grinned. ‘If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.’

  ‘Right.’ She was sure she shouldn’t feel so pleased. ‘Here we are.’

  Grabbing the keys from her pocket, she mounted three steps and thrust a key into the brass door-lock.

  Inside, she dropped the keys onto the hallstand along with her hat. She caught her reflection in the mirror and thought how unattractive she looked – tired, with her make-up all worn off and her hair cut into a short bob. She ran her fingers through her honey brown hair, wishing it was still shoulder length and wavy. The army had demanded she put it in a bun, so she’d decided to have it cut short instead. It was easy to look after, but this evening, she would have liked to look more feminine. She wished she could put on some pretty lipstick and perhaps a little perfume.

  Taking a deep, steadying breath, she turned to face Harry Kemp.

  He wasn’t looking at her, however. He was staring about him at the house and frowning deeply.

  ‘Is something the matter, Harry?’

  ‘This house,’ he said, waving to encompass the entrance hall’s black-and-white art deco floor tiles, the chandeliers overhead and the enormous gilt-framed mirror above the mantelpiece and then, incongruously, the stirrup pump and bucket standing ready to put out a fire. ‘I expected a little flat. But this is palatial. Did you really say this is your place?’

  ‘Well, it belongs to my family, to my father, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said quietly, with a slow smile that was now only slightly bewildered. ‘But honestly, George, I don’t want to impose on your family.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, there’s no one else here. My parents are down in Cornwall, and they’ll be staying there for the duration. My sister’s in some little cottage in God knows where. Her husband’s in the RAF and she has to keep following him from pillar to post. Come on,’ she said, beckoning. ‘This house is a bit of a rabbit warren, so we’ve closed off all the other floors. For one thing, it saved making endless blackout curtains. These days I spend most of my time below stairs, mainly in the kitchen.’

  Before worried second thoughts about bringing Harry into the house could take hold, she hurried on with a running commentary. ‘There aren’t any servants down here now, of course. Our men have all joined up and the women are doing war work, so there’s only James. He was our footman, and he couldn’t join the military because of his weak chest, so he has a little room at the back of the house and he keeps an eye on the place for us, but most of the time he’s being terribly important and busy as an air raid warden.’

  As Georgina said this, a menacing drone of aeroplanes sounded overhead. She shot a glance to Harry and found him watching her with obvious concern.

  ‘They take a bit of getting used to,’ she said.

  He nodded but made no comment, then gave a little shrug and she realised that his concern was for her and not for himself. She found this incredibly comforting.

  They reached the kitchen with its long scrubbed table where the servants used to dine. Against one long wall stood a huge dresser crowded with crockery and on the opposite wall, shining rows of copper pots and pans hung above the cooking range.

  ‘This is quite amazing,’ Harry said. ‘Your father’s not a duke, or a lord or something, is he?’

  ‘No, just a minor baronet,’ Georgina said lightly. Then quickly, to cover any nervousness, she tried to sound efficient and businesslike. ‘Now, if you’d like to come with me and collect a little more coal from the scullery, I’ll get the things I need to make our supper.’

  Harry smiled again and she wondered if he’d caught the note of pride in her voice and had guessed that cooking was a newly acquired skill for her.

  Self-consciously, she added as they reached the scullery, ‘I have plenty of eggs.’

  ‘Fresh eggs?’

  ‘Yes. They’re from our place in Cornwall. Mummy sent fresh supplies up to London last week, so I have hens’ eggs, milk and butter straight from the farm and blackberry jam. Proper jam, not the thin miserable stuff the shops sell these days. I’m rather spoiled, actually.’

  To her
relief, she felt quite comfortable with Harry in the kitchen. As a new wave of German planes thundered overhead, he set to lighting the stove while she broke eggs into a bowl to make an omelette.

  ‘So whereabouts in Australia do you live?’ she asked him as she beat the eggs and a little milk with a fork.

  ‘We have a cattle station called Kalkadoon. It’s in north Queens­land in the outback.’

  Georgina liked the sound of a cattle station and she gave a nod of approval. ‘I love the countryside. I’ve always preferred it to the city, although I’m afraid I don’t know one end of Australia from the other. I do have an aunt and uncle living in New Guinea, though. They’re on the island of New Britain.’

  ‘Well, north Queensland’s closer to New Guinea than to Sydney.’

  ‘Is it really?’

  Harry was smiling and Georgina found herself smiling back. In fact she wanted to grin she felt so ridiculously happy.

  ‘When the war started, Aunt Cora was very keen for me to go out there to stay with them.’ The memory brought another smile. ‘It would have been safer, of course, and I was very tempted. Who wouldn’t want to escape this horrible war and go to a tropical island instead?’

  Harry looked amused. ‘Coconuts and palm trees and sunny skies.’

  ‘Exactly. No planes or bombs. It would have been lovely.’ As she finished whisking the eggs, she shrugged. ‘But I couldn’t bring myself to rush off and abandon poor old England.’

  Harry nodded at this, then stood with his arms folded across his considerable chest, watching as she set a pan on the stove, poured in the eggs, and tilted the pan until they covered the base.

  ‘You’re a dab hand at this,’ he said with clear admiration.

  To Georgina’s dismay she felt her face burn with an obvious blush. ‘Omelettes are about the only thing I know. I learned how to make them when I was ten years old. Our gamekeeper’s son taught me. We cooked over an open fire using wild birds’ eggs.’

  ‘Fair dinkum?’

  ‘Fair –? Uh, excuse me?’

  Another grin lit his face. ‘Sorry. I just meant that it sounds like a lot of fun.’

  ‘It was.’

  She shouldn’t have looked at Harry again then. His eyes gleamed not just with interest, but with a deeper appreciation that sent fine tremors running through her. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she concentrated on not spoiling the omelette. Even so, a kind of singing excitement danced under her skin as she reached for a wooden spoon to gently lift and stir the egg mix, before tilting the pan so the uncooked eggs ran underneath.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any ham for a filling,’ she said. ‘There’s a little bacon, but it might be best if we save that for breakfast.’

  ‘This will be perfect.’

  ‘It will be even better with a little wine to wash it down.’

  And indeed it was. In fact it was ridiculously perfect to sit in the kitchen in Belgravia opposite the handsome Harry Kemp from Australia, sipping one of her father’s best Bordeaux clarets and sharing a simple but perfectly golden omelette.

  So very different from her life twelve months ago. Again, Georgina’s mind flashed back, this time to the Queen Charlotte’s Ball, which was supposedly one of the highlights of the season’s calendar, when she and the other debutantes, all dressed in the mandatory white gowns, had paraded down the grand staircase and into the ballroom of Grosvenor House to curtsey to a giant cake.

  Admittedly, there’d been an enormous amount of money raised for the famous Queen Charlotte’s maternity hospital, but the carry-on seemed so bloody ridiculous, even more so now, looking back.

  From outside came the sound of gunfire, soft and muffled in the distance.

  ‘Do you want to listen to the news on the wireless?’ Georgina asked.

  Harry shook his head. ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Good. It’s nice to take a break from bad news and not think about the war. Tell me more about your place in the country.’

  He gave another of his slow, incredibly charming smiles. ‘It’s nothing like the English countryside. The outback’s very remote and rugged.’

  ‘I like wild places. Is it a big property?’

  ‘It is compared with properties here.’ Harry took a sip of wine. ‘I guess Kalkadoon might be the size of one of the smaller English counties.’

  She laughed, but she was also deeply impressed. She thought briefly of her Aunt Cora and wondered if this exciting, edgy fluttering and happiness was how she had felt on the night she’d met her romantic Lord Teddy.

  ‘Do you have servants?’ It was impolite of her to ask Harry this, but she was too curious to hold back, and she wanted him to keep talking. She liked hearing the lazy mix of amusement and confidence in his voice.

  ‘We have stockmen to help with the cattle,’ he said. ‘And a cook. They’re mostly Aborigines —’ He stopped and then grimaced, looked almost embarrassed. ‘Stockmen, footmen. I guess they’re kind of the same – only different.’ Picking up his wine glass, he smiled wryly. ‘Very, very different.’

  Georgina found herself leaning forward, elbows on the table. ‘What do you love about where you live?’

  At this, Harry let out a surprised huff, then frowned as he dropped his gaze to his glass.

  ‘I only ask because I’m genuinely curious,’ Georgina added, in case he thought she was simply trying to make conversation.

  ‘And it’s a good question. You see, my home is remote and rugged and not the slightest bit pretty like England, but it has its own unusual kind of beauty.’ He looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘As for choosing things I like, there’s waking in the morning to the sound of magpies – ours are a lot more musical than the ones you have here. Or riding my horse at full pelt across plains that stretch all the way to the horizon. Just quietly walking the horse under the melaleuca trees down along the creek bank. There’re the smells, too – the eucalyptus smell of the bush, or the smell of the first summer rains hitting the dry dust.’

  His mouth tilted in a crooked smile. ‘And then there’s the sound of kookaburras laughing.’

  ‘Do they really laugh?’

  ‘Yes, they’re hilarious.’ Now he was flashing her a cheeky grin, and then he let his head drop back and began to make an astonishing kook-kook-kook sound. To Georgina’s surprise he kept going. ‘Kook-ha, kook-ha, ha, ha, ooh, ooh, ooh.’

  The sounds continued, flowing and ridiculous, and utterly contagious. Georgina began to giggle and once she started, Harry made even louder kookaburra sounds. She couldn’t stop laughing now. Soon she was doubled over, holding her stomach.

  ‘I believe you,’ she gasped, when Harry finally stopped and she caught her breath. But oh, how good it felt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like that. Surely it was years ago that she’d felt so giddy and untroubled?

  ‘I’d love to hear a kookaburra in the wild.’ There was next-to-no chance that she would, of course.

  Perhaps the same thought occurred to Harry. He took another sip of wine, then said, ‘Enough about me. Tell me how you came to join the army.’

  ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t because I wanted to look fetching.’ Georgina cast a downwards glance at her uniform. ‘Most of my girlfriends joined the navy because of the Wrens’ lovely blue uniforms. These ATS ones are so ugly. Shapeless khaki skirt, khaki blouse.’

  ‘Nowhere near ugly,’ Harry said softly and the look in his eyes might have melted her on the spot, but there was a sudden boom-boom of heavy bombs close by, followed by the crump-crump of a building being torn apart, and then the sound of breaking glass and slates falling.

  They looked at each other.

  ‘That one sounded a lot closer, didn’t it?’ Georgina said.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Harry didn’t look worried and she felt her fear calmed by the steadiness in his eyes. She poured the rest of the wine into their glasses.

  ‘I joined up because my father and grandfather were both in the army,’ she
continued more soberly. ‘If there’d been a son, he would have been in the army as well, but there’s only my sister Alice and I, and Alice was married at the start of the war, so she’s been busy with her pilot.’ She gave a shrug. ‘I knew I didn’t want to be a nurse, so I put my hand up for the army.’

  Georgina didn’t add that when war was declared – even though she’d known she should dread what might come – she’d been secretly hoping for a little excitement and possible adventure. Nor did she mention that her mother had been worried she would fall in love with a lowly sergeant and had urged Georgina’s father to pull rank, with the result that George was made a clerk to one of the officers, Captain Ian McNicoll, who’d lost his right arm in the First World War just as her Uncle Teddy had, and was subsequently posted to a Royal Army Service Corps office in Dulwich.

  It had all been quite an eye-opener for Georgina when she first arrived. The scale of the task of transporting, clothing and feeding the British Army had seemed overwhelming. As well as coordinating road and rail transport for troop movements, there were also thousands of tradesmen, carpenters, bakers, mechanics and even foresters employed as part of this effort to support the soldiers.

  Thinking about the men at her work, many of whom quite happily entertained women who were not their wives, she said, ‘I suppose I should ask if you’re married or attached, or anything.’ With his looks, Harry was bound to have had opportunities.

  He lifted a dark, amused eyebrow before he slowly shook his head. ‘No wife, no fiancée or girlfriend. There are certain social limitations to where I live. But I’m sure it must be different for you, a lovely girl living in London.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m choosy.’ Georgina willed herself not to look coy because he’d called her a lovely girl. ‘Besides, there’s not a lot of point in getting too caught up with someone at the moment, is there?’ she quickly countered. ‘Not with the war and everything.’

  ‘I don’t suppose so.’

  He sounded so calm, so at ease in his skin, she felt foolish for having raised the subject. She needed a quick change of direction. ‘Would you like pudding? I could offer you toast and jam, but not much else.’