Sisters at War

by Milly Adams

  She shook off her wellington boots, which leaked, but a bit of rain never hurt anyone, and besides, there were no new ones available. She’d left her sensible lace-ups in the hallway. If she returned to Haven Farm the puppies would be kept outside, so at least her shoes wouldn’t be chewed. She closed the back door, but flashed a look at the tool-shed. Was there room in the cellar for one man, or two? Those harbouring escaped prisoners, and possibly their families, suffered deportation to God knows where. There was talk of appalling concentration camps.

  Hannah entered the kitchen. ‘A bit windy out there,’ she said to Mrs Amos, who was talking to Sister Maria. ‘The tool-shed door closed on its own. Might be an idea to sort that out in case someone thinks to have a look.’

  Sister Maria waved her goodbye, and headed outside.

  Mrs Amos hesitated in her preparation of salad for lunch, but then continued with the finishing touches, saying, ‘Strange gusts we get sometimes. Sister Maria was just saying she needs to talk to you, in about ten minutes, I would think. She’d like your room for some of the mothers. As we’ve said, all this isolation is upping the birth rate. Just put the potatoes for baking into the oven for me, there’s a pet.’

  Hannah checked the clock: it was midday. She put the potatoes in the oven and checked the clock again, just as Mrs Amos was doing. It was five minutes past twelve. Mrs Amos nodded towards the plates on the dresser. ‘Just pile them on the trays for me. Mavis is busy stock-taking in the back pantry. You don’t mind, do you?’

  At ten minutes past twelve, Mrs Amos nodded. ‘Up you go then, or she’ll wonder where you are.’

  Upstairs, she tapped on Sister Maria’s door. ‘Enter,’ Sister Maria called, panting. She must have rushed in from the garden and up the back stairs.

  Hannah opened the door and entered. Behind Sister Maria was a crucifix, and on the side wall a print of Holman Hunt’s Light of the World. She found it comforting. Sister Maria, her wimple as gleaming as ever, indicated the chair on the other side of her desk. ‘Hannah, sit down.’

  Sister Maria explained that as her aunt would by now have talked to her about living at Haven Farm, she did hope Hannah would consider such a move. She would be provided with curfew exemption certificates in order to continue to work at the nursing home. Hannah nodded. ‘A shed door swings shut, my aunt talks of a discussion with you about me moving to Haven Farm, and here we are, in your study, having very much the same conversation. Do you ever feel manipulated?’ she asked.

  ‘Always. I call it doing God’s work for him. We have enjoyed your presence here, dearest Hannah, but I have come to believe, very recently, that it is best for you to live elsewhere. You are a mother and should not be too closely associated with us.’

  There was a silence. She must indeed leave and it was for her own good, or at least the good of her child. She looked again at the Light of the World and then at Sister Maria, and was humbled. ‘I understand, and though I don’t pray, tonight I will, for the safety of you all.’

  At 3.22, Sarah gave birth to a healthy son, and at five o’clock Mrs Myers was delivered of a daughter. Staff and mother each had an egg.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  September 1942

  Combe Lodge

  Bryony met April and Cissie at the British Restaurant at St Luke in Exeter. The train journey had been trouble-free though there had not been a seat. As she hugged April, she knew that it would have been difficult to sit still even had there been. There was a table available and the food was good.

  ‘So, my girl, no doubts about marrying my son tomorrow?’ April sat back, patting her mouth with the serviette.

  Cissie looked with alarm from one to the other. ‘Oh, Bee, no, you can’t have.’

  Bryony laughed. ‘Cissie, don’t worry. I’ve never been so excited in the whole of my life.’

  They walked around Exeter, waiting for the bus. The city smelt of brick dust and sulphur, courtesy of the May blitz they had endured, and many of the houses looked like broken teeth, replicas of areas of London. Well, she thought, like so many cities around the world. How could one madman and his followers cause so much misery and disaster?

  Cissie was skipping along ahead of them, but dropped back to hold Bryony’s hand. ‘The Luftwaffe bombers go one way over Combe Lodge, and our bombers go the other. Do you really fly the Wellingtons to the bases, Bee, or the maintenance units, anyway?’

  ‘Yes, I really do. It’s not a problem, but looking back the tail seems miles away.’

  They passed St Luke’s School, minus its windows and roof, and all the houses opposite were gone. They toiled to the bus stop. ‘I hope the weather holds until tomorrow,’ April muttered. ‘It’s hot for all this tramping around, but we need it like this for the bridesmaids’ dresses.’

  Bryony laughed. ‘Forget about the bride, then?’

  April put her arm around her and pulled her to her side. ‘My dear, anyone who goes from an open cockpit Tiger Moth trainer to a Wellington in one easy movement can cope with a bit of changeable weather, but we mere mortals fuss about such things.’

  All three of them were laughing, though Cissie looked back at the school. ‘I suppose they don’t have to go any more? You should have heard Miss Evans fuss when I asked if I could come to meet you today, instead of going to school.’

  ‘It’s her job to fuss, just like it’s ours,’ April muttered, sharing a glance with Bryony. Bryony said, ‘I expect she’ll have forgotten about it by tomorrow, when she sees her pupils walking down the aisle behind the prettiest bride in the country.’

  ‘Oh, you show-off, Bee. I’ll tell Adam on you, and then he won’t want to marry you, so there. And besides, Sylvia will be a bride too, and she’s pretty. But not as pretty as you.’

  Cissie was skipping ahead. The two women watched her. ‘Just where is my intended right this minute?’ Bryony asked April.

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’ April shook her head. ‘I gather Barry Maudsley has produced some of his infamous scrumpy so they’ve trooped off . . . Well, run off, I should perhaps say. I think Jean Maudsley is putting on some sort of lunch to sop up the worst of it, but the Maudsleys are so thrilled at the double wedding. They love Sylvia and it’s quite right that they do. It’s just such a shame that Adam’s mother doesn’t feel the same about her daughter-in-law.’

  The women roared with laughter again. Cissie skipped back to them. ‘But April, you are Bee’s mother-in-law.’

  April ruffled her hair. ‘Exactly.’

  They walked on, arriving at the bus stop just as Dan hove into sight. The talk on the bus was all about the bombing of Torquay, and the buses set on fire by bombs in Bristol, and then what about those E-boats seen off Seaton? April told Bryony, ‘Eric’s Home Guard were alerted but the permission to fire didn’t come through from London until they’d gone. He was so upset. I think he wants notches on his gun.’

  Dan called, ‘Four of the big bombers came over yesterday but our boys took one down. Don’t want them going over when old Bert’s whacking out the wedding march on the organ, eh, Bee? That’d let the air out of his buffers, that it would.’

  The bus almost rocked itself off the road with the laughter. People did laugh more these days, Bee thought, looking around. Perhaps they were grabbing at the chance. April had fallen silent. ‘I don’t want you up in those planes with all this going on. You’re not armed, they could shoot you down.’

  ‘But they haven’t.’ Bryony pointed to a windsock blowing almost horizontally over to the east. ‘I flew into there on Thursday. John Folkes was there, on secondment. He said to remind you, Cissie, that he’s bringing the shell that you can hold to your ear and hear the sea. He’ll make sure to give it to you at the wedding.’

  Cissie was sitting across the aisle, and her face lit up. She told Mrs Smith, whose leeks, piled high in her basket, were stinking out the bus. ‘It’s a conch shell, but Bee can never remember the name. Pilot Officer Folkes told me it was given to him by a dancer on a tropical island wear
ing a grass skirt.’

  Mrs Smith laughed. ‘I’m sure she was.’ She winked at Bryony. ‘Sounds like my old dad and his fishing stories. To hear him tell them, you couldn’t have squeezed the fish in through the back door.’

  They trundled on, and at last drew up at the gates to Combe Lodge. ‘Thanks, Dan,’ Bryony said. ‘You could have dropped us back at the bus stop.’

  ‘I’ll back up then, shall I, lass?’

  April tapped the top of his cap. ‘See you and Myrtle at the church tomorrow.’

  Bryony said the same to everyone on the bus. ‘See you at the church tomorrow and then for eats at Combe Lodge afterwards. Don’t be late, because I won’t be. I’ve been waiting long enough to get a combined leave.’

  She hadn’t seen Adam since they had met up at Hamble six weeks ago and for tonight he was staying with Eric, while Sylvia was at the Lodge.

  The next day dawned clear and warm. Bryony rose early and slipped out to the garden. She gathered up the spade from the shed, and her gloves. Catherine and Anne had given them a ceanothus and two brooms for a wedding present, and she wanted to plant them before their roots dried out.

  As she dug in the herbaceous bed the breeze was fresh, the earth friable, the clink of stone on spade satisfying. With each spadeful she felt the sense of needing to rush fade, and the need to be alert diminish. After all, America was in now, Russia had not been defeated, so Germany was stretched, and she might even live to see the end of it.

  She tested the broom in the hole. Yes, that would be just right. She slit the sack from the roots, spread them, and then refilled the hole, tamping it down. She moved to the other side and began to dig the second hole. Joyce would be down in time for the wedding, having had a night at the clubs in London, though she had said it wouldn’t be the same without Bee. Did they go because they needed to live every second, was this what everyone everywhere was doing, just squashing in as much as they could because there might not be any more time? What were they doing in Jersey?

  She blanked the thought because she did not know how she felt, but somehow the image of Hannah with her soldier was embedded in her consciousness.

  Bryony and Sylvia arrived at the church at eleven, on the dot. The same torn parachute had been used for both their dresses, though Sylvia’s was full with long sleeves whilst Myrtle, Dan’s wife, had created a long, fitted dress with a rear train for Bryony, with short sleeves. The bouquets were from the garden, and comprised the last of the roses with myrtle, for constancy. They had given a bouquet to Myrtle, too. Eddie drove, having polished his MG until it shone.

  He no longer used his cane, ‘Which is as well, girls, as I will have you on each of my arms, and I don’t want to be falling flat on my face, again.’

  Bryony leaned forward in the back seat. ‘Quite. Just how many glasses of scrumpy did you have?’

  He started to shake his head, and then thought better of it. ‘Please, do not mention the word scrumpy in the presence of anyone who was at Barry’s yesterday. It would amount to unendurable cruelty.’

  The girls laughed. Sylvia suggested, ‘Just drink water for the rest of the day. That is what Eric will be doing if he wants the marriage to succeed beyond this evening.’ They were approaching the church as the women laughed again. He held up his hand. ‘No, not so loud, if you don’t mind, girls.’

  They did mind, and laughed again. He drew up at the lychgate, the white ribbons on the front of the car shimmering in the breeze.

  Eddie walked the two girls up the path. Cissie and Betty met them in the porch, with Sol and Frankie, all four in new clothes, because they had grown. For a moment, as she looked at these children, Bryony found her lips trembling. She loved them all, but Cissie especially, and they must go on growing, go on living. The organ was playing the wedding march. April kissed both Sylvia and Bryony. ‘Beautiful, quite beautiful, my dears.’ She slipped into the church. Bryony looked over her shoulder at the children. Cissie and Betty led the boys. Cissie’s steady grey eyes met Bryony’s. ‘I love you so much, Bee. Wendy did too, you know. That’s why she wanted me to stay with you.’

  Eddie squeezed Bryony’s arm and whispered, ‘We are blessed with these children. Cissie reminds me of you, dearest Bee. Now come along, or Bert and his infernal machine will run out of puff halfway down the aisle, and we’ll have to hum.’

  He released both girls, leaned forward and eased open the double doors. They squeaked. He stood, arms akimbo. The girls captured him. He said, ‘All right, troops, on the count of three.’ Bryony glanced back. Betty and Cissie nodded. The boys were kicking one another. Cissie slapped them. ‘One, two, three.’

  They were off.

  The church was full. Mr Torrence and his wife, who had become regular visitors, were sitting with Catherine and Anne, whose husbands were now in North Africa, and otherwise occupied. Their babies, or rather toddlers, were clambering along the pew. Stubby Baines was sitting alongside Dan and Myrtle. The usual bus passengers were scattered around. Joyce, and others of the ATA girls, were there in their uniforms, alongside their landlady, Suzy Windsor, and Pearl from Hatfield. Mick plus a few others of the High Ground crew who could be spared had raced to arrive on time. Clearly they weren’t used to scrumpy, from the sweat and paleness of their skin, but Bryony doubted they would stick to water. They weren’t trawlermen for nothing.

  Cissie’s teacher, Miss Evans, was near the front, wearing a very odd hat. She seemed to have found some pheasant feathers and popped them in, willy-nilly, along with sprigs of honesty, some rather too high. Eddie had noticed too, but Cissie whispered, ‘We helped her make her hat, isn’t it lovely?’

  Eddie whispered back, ‘It’s the best hat I’ve ever seen, and I think your teacher is one in a million.’ His voice was quite serious. Bee nodded, because any teacher who wore a hat like that in a public place because it had been created by her class was indeed a special woman.

  Constable Gerry Heath, his wife and their neighbouring farmer, Mr Simes, sat behind Ben Rowan, a lieutenant now. He had been in charge of the queue at Dunkirk and sat alongside Mr Templer, the uncle of Stan Jones, who had remembered Ben Rowan’s telephone number. Stan had been killed in North Africa.

  Interspersed with these guests were friends of Sylvia’s from Exeter Hospital, but no family. Bryony had said last night as they chatted in the shared bedroom, ‘You’re part of the Combe Lodge lot, now, you know. Whether you like it or not.’

  Sylvia had said, ‘And Hannah?’

  ‘Ah, Hannah. I rather think she made her decision.’

  As she looked ahead she saw April in the front pew, looking at her family walking towards her. Bryony grinned. Beside Eric was his friend, Bob. At Adam’s side was Geordie; all four men were in uniform, all four had the scrumpy pallor. She and Sylvia sighed at the same time.

  ‘Bear up, girls,’ Eddie encouraged. ‘Just like your men are doing.’

  ‘Self-inflicted injuries are not clever, funny or nice,’ Bryony murmured. They were the words her Aunt Olive used to use. Did she still?

  They each took aim at their man, and stood beside him, and the best men stepped back. Adam smiled, and his heart was in his eyes. He murmured, ‘I love you, Bryony Miller.’

  The service began.

  At Combe Lodge, as the last of the guests straggled down the drive long after the sun had gone down, and the food, drink and music had disappeared, Adam stood behind her on the terrace. ‘Where did you plant the broom?’

  She told him as he kissed her neck.

  ‘And where’s the ceanothus?’

  She told him. He kissed her again, saying, ‘It all continues, darling. Whatever happens, the plants will come up, the seasons will ease one into the other, Cissie will become a young woman, and probably we will survive. If not, we’ve been here, we’ve been enclosed by Combe Lodge, we’ve loved one another. It’s enough.’

  She turned round, into his arms. ‘Do you have some alchemy whereby you can read my mind?’

  He shook his head, and s
aid against her mouth, ‘No, I just have a good memory. I remember what you say to me as we lie together talking of life and love.’

  She laughed, as did he. Above them the stars shone, the moon was bright. She remembered the woman in the train, and began to sing ‘By the light of the silvery moon’.

  Cissie called from the French windows. ‘It’s a bomber’s moon.’

  Adam gestured her over, and hauled her up, one arm still around Bryony. ‘It is indeed, but that’s war for you, and it won’t last for ever. You should remember that, young Cissie. You are loved, and you have been born at a difficult time, but you will gain from living through this. You will know what it is to survive, and you will value those lessons.’

  Cissie looked at him. ‘Stop being so serious, you sound like the vicar. Today is a happy day because now I can be your real child. Mr Torrence promised, didn’t he?’

  They walked inside, drew the blackout, and then the curtains. Only then did they switch on the light. All three sat on the sofa, Cissie in the middle. Bryony said, ‘Yes, it’s quite true. We signed the papers today, after the ceremony, little madam. It should all be fine. Just a bit of rubber-stamping to come.’

  Cissie leapt to her feet, her eyes shining. ‘April said you would, she did, you know. Wendy would be pleased, she really really would, and I expect she’s up there, looking down, feeling happy.’

  She flew from the room. Adam slipped along the sofa. ‘Quite how did we become parents to a ten-year-old?’

  Bryony shook her head. ‘The mind boggles. I think it was just a flanking movement, through the long grass.’ They held one another. It was then she shared with him that Betty’s mother, who still lived in Poplar, in the East End, because she was a valiant and brave woman, had asked if Bryony would stand as parent, in the event . . .

  She’d said when she telephoned. ‘You see, how can we ever split the girls, Bee? So, if I cop it, with ’er dad already gone west...?’