Songs of Spring

by Amy Myers

  ‘Poor Billy,’ Caroline said soberly. ‘I can imagine he ended up feeling like a Chinese noodle himself.’

  ‘On the contrary. He was upset and annoyed on Phoebe’s account, but as for himself, he told me that he might look a skinny runt, but he had a back as broad as the fat lady at the circus.’

  Caroline tried to laugh, but failed dismally. ‘What a beginning for a marriage. And what’s Phoebe going to do? She can’t go on working. And what about Father? And—’

  ‘Cara.’ Yves put his arm round her and pulled her to him. ‘You once took a decision that raised even more questions over the future. Let us sort ours out, leave Billy and Phoebe to their own.’

  ‘But Phoebe’s so young.’

  ‘Not any longer. War is a predator of youth.’

  Georgette? Brocade? Surely for a wedding even in a registry office one need not adhere too closely to the austerity of war, but on the other hand a formal white wedding gown for Phoebe and bridesmaid’s dress for herself would look out of place, not to mention inappropriate, even if white and cream had started coming back into fashion after a year or two in abeyance at the beginning of the war. Phoebe had telephoned to say she didn’t care what she wore and she’d leave it to Caroline to buy a dress for her. The wedding had been arranged for Wednesday I7th, and Caroline had promptly panicked at this responsibility. She had telephoned Isabel, the family’s fashion consultant – or rather, she used to be. Isabel turned up trumps and insisted on coming up to superintend the purchase herself. ‘After all,’ Isabel had pointed out, ‘you have no dress sense at all, so it’s the least I can do for Phoebe.’ With only two days to go before the day, there was no time for failure, and Caroline had taken leave so that the clock would not hound her.

  It was not to be. Just as Caroline was about to leave to meet Isabel at Victoria, the telephone rang. It was Isabel.

  ‘I won’t be coming on the shopping trip. I’m sorry, Caroline.’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with the baby, is it?’ Caroline was alarmed at Isabel’s strained voice.

  A pause, then a muffled: ‘No. It’s Robert.’

  ‘Oh, Isabel.’ Tragedy struck out of the blue. You knew the odds were on its coming sooner or later, but nevertheless the shock of the telegram’s arrival was undiminished. How could Isabel be so unlucky? Why now, just as she had found happiness again with Robert, and was carrying his baby? ‘Is he—?’ Caroline couldn’t frame the word.

  ‘No. He’s missing, and you know what that means. The balloon was apparently shot down over enemy lines. He was carrying one of these parachute things, but the Germans shoot at them anyway.’

  Till recently, George had told her, the Royal Flying Corps (now a new service called the Royal Air Force) had refused to provide parachutes for they were thought bad for morale. In fact, George said, the numbers of deaths on the Western Front had meant the opposite was true. But parachutes or not, that didn’t mean Robert was safe, for apart from the danger of enemy planes shooting at him, often these parachutes failed to work.

  ‘I’ll come down,’ Caroline said immediately, and unthinkingly.

  ‘Don’t,’ Isabel replied. ‘It would be hard on you, and what can you do? Besides, unless you want to change your mind about Yves and the Rectory, where would you go? I know you’re thinking of me and that’s enough. Besides, I don’t know Robert’s dead for sure,’ she added brightly and unconvincingly. ‘And there’s lots of work to do, now that Lord Beaverbrook has formally launched the first fleet of ten cine-motor cars with his blessing. East Grinstead Council has asked my advice on the best films to show. Imagine, fifteen hundred to two thousand people can watch at once. It’s a great—’ Isabel’s voice wobbled, then gave way, and she burst into tears. How useless telephones were when you wanted to be with someone, Caroline fumed, not at the end of a wire miles away.

  Hearing about Robert cast a pall over the whole day. How Caroline remembered the dreary days of waiting and waiting for news from the war front. She had to force herself to don hat and coat, and make her way to Oxford Street. Perhaps it was as well she was on her own, she told herself unconvincingly, because to Isabel shopping began and ended in Bond Street, even though they still lived on Robert’s salary and the pittance William Swinford-Browne paid her to run the cinema.

  It proved an easier task than she’d feared, even though she marched the length of Oxford Street before she found something she thought would please Phoebe in Marshall and Snelgrove – an empire-line, lilac satin and georgette calf-length gown, and, by coincidence, an exact colour-matching hat. Caroline wondered how Mrs Hazel was faring nowadays. Once the village dressmaker would automatically have made all such dresses; now Ashden’s social life no longer demanded new frocks even if the materials had been available.

  For herself, Caroline chose a pale blue brocade and lace gown, also calf-length, but her satisfaction was less without Isabel to share it. Ellen, Yves and Luke would have to be her audience. It was only on the bus she remembered she needed a hat. There would have to be yet another expedition.

  She decided she would go to the office for the luxury of walking home with Yves, and to see what had been happening today, and was disappointed not to find him there.

  ‘Where’s Yves? He said he’d be here.’

  ‘Gone.’ Luke was looking harassed. ‘You’ve missed a whole lot of signals from GHQ.’

  ‘Gone where?’ she asked blankly.

  ‘To Queen Anne’s Gate to pack, and he leaves at six. The balloon’s about to go up on the Belgian Front. We’ve been driven off the Passchendaele Ridge, the Germans have bagged Merville and Bailleul, and good old Foch wants King Albert to release two of his precious divisions to the British. You can see him agreeing to that, can’t you?’

  ‘Then why is Yves going now?’

  ‘Because having started fighting on the Lys, they won’t stop. It’s going to intensify and Yves has to be there. The Belgian army will be under pressure,’ Luke explained patiently. ‘What’s wrong, Caroline?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she muttered. How could she say, he’ll miss Wednesday’s wedding, and he’s a witness.

  Luke looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Seen the new bedroom farce at the Apollo, Be Careful, Baby?’

  ‘No,’ she retorted through gritted teeth. By the time she had reached home, she had forgotten Luke’s warning in a swell of self-pity, made worse by Isabel’s bad news. The one bright spot on her horizon had been Phoebe’s wedding, and now Yves would not be at her side. She rushed up the stairs, threw her shopping boxes on the sofa, and went to find Yves. It was stupid, she knew, but she could not help herself – or keep the slight whine out of her voice, as she said, ‘Luke tells me you’re going to Belgium.’

  ‘Cara, I have to.’ He came across immediately to embrace her.

  ‘Is there no hope you’ll be here for the wedding?’

  ‘Almost none,’ he replied gently. ‘The King has signalled for me to join him, and even had he not, I would believe my place to be at his side. This could be a long campaign.’

  ‘What about my side?’ The words were out before she could hold them back.

  Yves did not reply, turning his back on her to complete his packing.

  ‘Say something,’ she shouted at his stiff back.

  He swung round. ‘Caroline, just like the newest conscript I have to go.’

  ‘But you will return?’ She began to panic.

  He misunderstood. ‘I have told you, there is little chance.’

  Desperately she sought reassurance. ‘But sometime you will?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He stared at her blankly.

  ‘You won’t decide your place is already at your wife’s side?’ she blurted out. ‘You promised me,’ she added childishly, when he said nothing. ‘To the end of the war.’

  ‘I did, but now I doubt if it was wise. Perhaps your father knew best.’

  ‘No,’ she cried in anguish. ‘I chose. You chose.’

  Yves made a visible effort to speak calmly. �
�Cara, this is not the time, nor the place for us to quarrel or to discuss this. I will return when I can and that is all I can say.’

  She watched him finishing his packing, wanting to put matters right, to admit she’d been in the wrong, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t even believe that she was. She wanted to yell at him: if you feel so lukewarm, don’t bother to come back. Go back to her. She managed to restrain herself, but no other words replaced them. He departed without saying anything more, after one kiss on her unresponsive mouth, and even that he hesitated before bestowing on her. His lips were as cold as ice.

  When he had gone, she found herself numb with terror, unable even to cry, and in the following days she threw herself into work, seizing on GHQ situation reports as avidly as if by doing so she was helping Yves. How could she be so sensible where other people’s relationships were concerned and so silly over her own?

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Luke finally asked. ‘I may not be Yves, but there’s no need to snap my head off every two minutes.’

  She apologised and instead exploded her frustration to Ellen at lunchtime. Only to a woman could she explain with any hope of understanding what a mess she had made of the last few weeks. Or so she had fondly thought.

  Typically, Ellen dismissed her problem over Yves as of no account. She had no romantic problems of her own, having just become engaged to a soldier on Defence of London duties, and couldn’t comprehend others’ dilemmas. ‘He’ll be back,’ she informed Caroline matter-of-factly. ‘Who’s going to be the other witness, if Yves isn’t back?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that, but I suppose I could ask. Phoebe’s only got a forty-eight-hour pass, and then has to go back for another three weeks before she can leave permanently because of the baby.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Isabel?’

  ‘Surely that’s the last thing Isabel would want to do with her own husband still missing.’

  ‘You underestimate her, Caroline.’

  ‘Do I?’ Caroline considered this. Perhaps sometimes she did. ‘All right, I’ll ask her.’

  By the time Caroline had left work that evening, she was feeling almost cheerful again. When she got home, Isabel would already be installed, and Ellen fussing over her like another Mrs Dibble. She was amazed to find when she arrived that Isabel was in no need of fussing at all. She was bright-faced, happy and laughing.

  ‘Caroline,’ she shrieked, leaping up to greet her, ‘Robert’s safe.’

  ‘Isabel, that’s wonderful news. Was he injured?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s a prisoner of war in Germany, that’s why we didn’t hear at once. Isn’t it marvellous that he’s not dead?’

  ‘Yes.’ Being a prisoner of war was bad enough, but infinitely preferable to Isabel losing him altogether.

  ‘Now I shall really enjoy the wedding,’ Isabel continued, ‘and I’ll never be unhappy again. I even felt young Master or Miss Swinford-Browne inside me give a kick of pleasure on the way up to this flat. If I ever find myself getting miserable again, I’ll just remember this glorious moment.’

  ‘Come and inspect the dresses.’ Caroline dragged her into her bedroom where Isabel proceeded to tell her exactly what was wrong with her choice, though ending up with a gracious: ‘I suppose they could have been worse.’

  ‘Please, God,’ Caroline prayed that night, ‘let some of Isabel’s good fortune rub off on Phoebe and Billy. And if there’s any left over’ – though she hardly dared ask – ‘on Yves and on me.’ For the first time since Christmas, she felt that the cloud of bitterness that had blurred her faith was lifting just a little.

  The unseasonably bitter cold month of April turned up trumps, thank goodness, and produced a sunny, if still chilly, day for Phoebe’s wedding. Perversely, Caroline woke up that morning not thinking of Phoebe’s happiness or Isabel’s good news, but of Father and Mother, and how sad it was that they would be missing the wedding. Felicia had declared her intention of getting up to London by hook or by crook, even though she was now working at Ashden Manor, and with George away, that meant her parents would be at home alone.

  Caroline’s heart ached for them. Their hearts were so warm, and their standards so rigid. She decided then to put all thoughts of them out of her mind. It was Phoebe’s day, and Phoebe, as had she, had made her own decision. Caroline had to come not only to like Billy but to understand what Phoebe saw in him. At the Marylebone registry office, he looked as proud and pleased as punch – and about as handsome, his future sister-in-law thought irreverently. Even Isabel reluctantly conceded that the lilac dress suited Phoebe, although perhaps her happiness would have shone out over a dress made of dishrags. The Rectory ugly duckling had become a swan at last.

  Phoebe’s wedding day was a memorable one for other reasons. Luke had worked late into the night after the wedding, and unable to sleep with excitement, Caroline got up to make him and herself cocoa.

  He flung himself down on the sofa. ‘It’s begun,’ he told her. ‘The Germans attacked in force on the railway line from Ypres to Thourout, and overran the Belgian front line.’

  Caroline felt dizzy with shock. It was too much, coming after today’s happiness.

  ‘Yves?’ she asked stupidly.

  ‘No word yet, but the news gets better. The artillery and the reserves – those that Foch wanted to pinch – recaptured the entire lost ground and took six hundred prisoners.’

  She clapped her hands in delight. ‘So it’s over?’

  ‘Far from it. This is only the beginning of Armageddon.’

  Three days later came the next major attack on the Belgian Front. Once again the enemy gained ground, and once again they were driven back in a counter-attack into which, so reports said, the Belgians went singing, and ‘fought like men possessed’, so determined were they to recapture their homeland.

  And at last they heard from Yves. Just her luck – Caroline was out of the office when the precious telephone call came through. All Luke could talk about when she returned was how successful the British attack on Zeebrugge had been, and how it was now known that the Belgian army had saved the British in the Ypres salient by foiling a German plan to encircle them.

  ‘Did he mention me?’ Caroline asked hopefully, when Luke at last shut up.

  ‘He sent you his love.’

  ‘But no word of when he’ll be back?’

  ‘No.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Can’t call this place my own, nowadays,’ Margaret grumbled. ‘I feel that Food Controller breathing down my neck all the time. And to think it’s May Day too. Once upon a time the lasses would be out in the fields dabbling in the dew and hoping for a sweetheart. Now they’re dressed up in big boots and uniforms pretending to be soldiers.’

  ‘Times are changing,’ Percy remarked without originality. It was his – and most other folks’ – response to everything.

  ‘Then not for the better. I can’t keep up and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Percy replied sturdily. ‘You keep up marvellously, Daisy.’

  It was a sign of approval when Percy called her Daisy. Margaret was gratified, but not going to show it.

  ‘Maybe I do, but what good is one and eightpence a head of beef a week?’

  ‘At least you know where you are.’ They had had this conversation over and over again, and both knew what they were really grumbling about was this miserable spring weather and the renewed prospect of war going on for ever. The Germans might have been stopped before Amiens but no one kidded themselves they’d leave it at that.

  ‘And there’s Oscar,’ Percy added in his usual triumphant finale. Always Oscar. The whole of England was full of Oscars, all waiting their turn. Once you could tell the time by Farmer Sharpe’s roosters crowing so loudly they drowned out the birds. Now they could hear the birds all too clearly. Someone had told her that over in France they actually ate poor little song thrushes. How could they do it? In the midst of war, to hear the song thrush sing was a sig
n that somewhere out there was something called hope. She remembered one song thrush whose wing Fred had healed; he had made a lovely carving of it in wood. It didn’t sing of course, but then she didn’t either.

  It was gloomy in the Rectory for all Mrs Lilley tried to keep smiling, and that was hard enough when you couldn’t even go to your own daughter’s wedding. Although Mrs Lilley had said it was the principle that counted, Margaret could tell how much she wished she were there. She’d heard her telephone Miss Phoebe in London the night before the wedding, when Rector was at evensong.

  Margaret hadn’t been able to believe her ears when Mrs Isabel had told her Miss Phoebe was going to be married. It didn’t seem two shakes since she was climbing the apple trees in the orchard, and the harum-scarum attitude she took to clothes and cooking didn’t bode well for her being in charge of her own house. She couldn’t run a game of snakes and ladders. Still, everyone grew up and in wartime they did it twice as fast.

  ‘Tell you what, Daisy. Let’s go to the pictures tonight, after you’ve dished up supper. It will cheer you up.’

  ‘What’s on?’ Margaret asked cautiously. She didn’t want to find herself watching The Battle of the Ancre. The one on the Somme had been enough for her.

  ‘The Prisoner of Zenda, and one of them Pearl White adventures, The Perils of Pauline.’

  Margaret deliberated. At first she’d thought The Prisoner of Zenda was a war film, until she remembered there was a romantic book she’d read once of that name. She could do with a bit of romance. ‘All right then. Mrs Isabel would like it if we went. She was saying that only this morning. Now the wedding’s over she’s down in the dumps again.’

  As soon as Mrs Isabel had got home from the wedding two weeks ago, she had come straight into the kitchen to tell her about it. Margaret had been torn between being appalled at Mrs Isabel going to London in her condition, and secret pleasure that she was the first to hear about it, even if she couldn’t be providing the wedding breakfast as she would if it were a proper wedding.