The Granville Affaire

by Una-Mary Parker

  * * *

  ‘Darling! How lovely to see you.’ Liza greeted Juliet when she arrived in time for lunch. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Bloody awful,’ Juliet replied succinctly, throwing down her overnight case onto the hall floor. Then she strode over to the stairs and went up to her room.

  ‘Oh, dear…!’ Liza looked after her. ‘I wonder what’s wrong?’

  ‘I think we’d better leave her alone, for the moment,’ said Lady Anne, who had been standing in the doorway of her sitting room, ready to greet Juliet, too. ‘She may have had to go out with the ambulance last night.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lady Anne tried not to look as infuriated as she felt. ‘Because there was a very bad air-raid,’ she said severely. ‘Tons of bombs were dropped on London. All the docks were on fire, and…’

  ‘Oh, my God! When did you hear about this? I must telephone Henry to see if he’s all right.’

  ‘If you’d listened to the eight o’clock news on the wireless, you’d have heard about it, too. And they’re expecting another raid tonight.’

  ‘Oh!’ Looking rather lost, Liza tottered off, feeling as if she were moving at a different speed to everyone else. Everyone else seemed to be busy, knowing what they were doing, and au fait with what was happening. Even Amanda and Charlotte were busy looking after the hens, ducks and rabbits, collecting eggs, cleaning out the huts and watering the vegetable patch, when they came back from school in the afternoon. Louise was helping in the soup kitchen every weekend, serving lunch in the village hall to the evacuees and going from house to house collecting old pots and pans and metal scrap to be sent off and melted down to make armaments in the munition factories.

  Then there was Rosie, cycling over to that convalescent home with suspicious regularity; surely she couldn’t have become enamoured of one of the patients? And Lady Anne, a one-woman knitting factory; and now Juliet…!

  ‘Henry, are you all right?’ Liza clutched the receiver, her voice quivering, her eyes brimming with a mixture of fear and vexation.

  ‘I’m fine, darling. You don’t sound too good, though?’

  She tried hard to control her emotions. ‘I’m all right. It’s just that… that everything’s happening so fast. Everyone is doing something, they all seem to be a part of the war… and I’m feeling left behind. And I don’t know what to do.’ She was sobbing now, overcome with sadness at losing the life she’d so enjoyed. She knew she was being selfish; it didn’t take her mother-in-law’s attitude to tell her she was being useless, but she felt as helpless as if she’d found herself in a strange foreign country.

  ‘Don’t get upset, dearest,’ Henry told her sympathetically. ‘You don’t actually have to do anything.’

  ‘But everybody else is doing something, even the children. The way Juliet just spoke to me made me feel…’

  ‘… You’ve seen Juliet?’ he cut in, sharply.

  ‘She came back here a few minutes ago.’ Liza could hear Henry give a deep sigh of relief.

  Then he spoke. ‘Thank God for that. I’ve been trying to get hold of her to see if she’s all right. I think she was on duty last night.’ He’d been torturing himself with the thought that something might have happened to her, because there’d been no answer to the phone in Park Lane.

  ‘I should have known she’d go to Hartley,’ he continued. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s gone to her room in a huff.’

  ‘Tell her to telephone me later, will you, dearest?’

  ‘Of course,’ Liza replied sulkily. She didn’t doubt that Juliet would want to talk to her father. Those two had always been close, she thought resentfully.

  ‘I think I’ll come up to London, again, Henry.’

  ‘Don’t, darling. Now the bombing’s started, we’re expecting it to be continuous. I like to think of you, safe in the country.’

  ‘You mean you’re having more fun without me? You and Ian, in your bachelor pad?’ she retorted angrily.

  ‘Now you’re being extremely silly, Liza. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve got meetings all day. I’ll see you on Friday evening, dearest.’

  * * *

  Henry turned out to be right. In those first three nights of the blitz, the docks were virtually demolished, parts of central London destroyed and twelve thousand people killed.

  For the next sixty-eight consecutive nights, there were heavy air raids, but Londoners carried on, day after day, with phlegmatic stubbornness, refusing to give in, as they continued to carry on as best they could.

  Four

  Rosie cycled lazily back up the drive, after her afternoon visit to Piltdown Court. Juliet, off duty for twenty-four hours, looked up. Her sister’s face was glowing, her eyes sparkling.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ Rosie replied airily, as she propped her cycle up against the garden wall. Then she strolled over to where Juliet was sitting.

  Juliet eyed her disbelievingly. ‘You don’t get that look from exercising. What’s all this about you visiting wounded soldiers?’

  Rosie was so longing to tell someone, even Juliet, that she burst out, ‘Do you remember Freddie Newport? He came to our Coming-Out Ball?’

  ‘So did a hundred and fifty other young men,’ Juliet pointed out drily, stretching her arms above her head. If it wasn’t for Hartley, which she escaped to for the day as often as she could, she thought she’d go mad.

  ‘Freddie is devastatingly handsome. I danced with him that night. He sounds just like Daddy when he talks.’ A shadow fell over her face and her eye became troubled for a moment. ‘He’s lost a leg. That’s why he’s at Piltdown. He recognized me the moment I went into the ward.’ She smiled. ‘Today… today he told me he was in love with me,’ she added tremulously.

  Juliet raised her fine eyebrows mockingly. ‘You do pick them, don’t you Rosie? First Charlie and now a one-legged invalid.’

  Rosie flushed angrily. ‘That’s terribly unfair. Freddie lost his leg when a land mine blew up. He hopes to get a job in the War Office as soon as he’s got a new leg.’

  ‘And you’re in love with him?’ Juliet teased.

  ‘How can I be? I’m married!’ Rosie retorted bitterly.

  ‘Being married doesn’t stop one having feelings for other people, and I should know. I had no feelings for Cameron.’

  ‘You must have had some feelings; you and Cameron were having a baby. In spite of everything, that must have been a bond between you? I feel bonded to Charles, even though I don’t like him very much.’

  ‘She wasn’t Cameron’s baby,’ Juliet said quietly.

  ‘She wasn’t…?’ Rosie looked dumb struck. ‘Don’t tell me you were still carrying on with that married man?’

  ‘Not immediately. But when we did, we wanted a child together more than anything, and I promised him it was only his baby I’d have.’

  Rosie looked stunned. ‘What did he do when the baby died? Was he with you?’

  Juliet took a deep breath. ‘He didn’t know I was even pregnant, because we’d split up.’ The pain in Juliet’s voice, forbidding further talk, was chilling. ‘He still doesn’t know.’

  They sat in uneasy silence, each immersed in her own thoughts.

  ‘Did you tell Cameron the truth?’ Rosie asked eventually.

  ‘There was no point.’

  ‘Do Mummy and Daddy know all about it?’

  ‘No.’ Juliet looked at her sister. ‘Please don’t tell them, Rosie. I don’t want anyone to know.’ She remembered how harsh Daniel had been when they’d met in Hyde Park. His words – ‘you have no heart’ – echoed in her mind. If it was true that she had no heart, why was she sick with misery now; why was she hurting as if she’d never be happy again?

  But Rosie felt blissfully happy, yet scared. She was in love with Freddie. There was no doubting it. She’d never felt like this before and certainly not with Charles. But what could happen between them? Charles came home on leave occasionally and th
ey put on a together-act for the sake of her family and Sophia and Jonathan, but there was no longer a spark between them. Merely an endurance of what was, and what would always be.

  * * *

  Louise slipped into Hartley through the back door, hoping no one would notice she’d got home from school much later than Amanda.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Mrs Dobbs asked immediately, cup of tea in one hand, biscuit in the other, as she sat in the rocking chair by the old wood stove in the kitchen. ‘They’re all having tea.’

  ‘I’ve been checking to see if there were any more eggs,’ Louise lied, flushing guiltily. ‘Then I got talking to the rabbits and I didn’t realize how late it was.’

  She scuttled past the Mrs Dobbs, hung up her school coat in the hall cloakroom and checked her reflection in the mirror above the washhand basin. She felt different; did she look different?

  Today was the first time Jack had spoken to her properly. He’d obviously been waiting for her outside the village smithy, knowing she walked past it every day on her way home from school. It had been an awkward, stilted exchange, but it had lit a flame in her heart, which was already full of fantasies about him.

  Jack Scovell was a boy of fifteen, the same age as Louise, who had been evacuated from his home in the East End of London, to live with his aunt, in the village. Although he was a bit older than many of the other children, he mixed with them and had his lunch at the soup kitchen every day.

  At weekends, he always wangled it so that Louise was the one who served him and took his sixpence.

  Tall for his age, he stood out from all the others because of his stunning good looks. His blond hair, bright blue eyes and pale clear skin meant Louise wasn’t the only girl in the village who looked at him twice.

  They’d eyed each other with interest at first, as she dished out a plate of watery stew and potatoes and handed it to him.

  After a while they’d said ‘Hello’, and grinned shyly, as he queued up with the other kids, but somehow always managed to land right in front of her.

  For several weeks now, Louise’s heart had started to flutter as soon as she saw him, head and shoulders above the rest. His shabby shirt and darned jacket made her feel so tenderly towards him, she felt a pang of sweet pain in her heart. But, she noticed, he was always very clean, almost polished, with his hair neatly combed and his nails cut short.

  At night she lay in bed and day-dreamed about him rescuing her from a burning building, or comforting her because one of the dogs had died. It made her dizzy to imagine him holding her hand in one of his strong ones, or putting his arm around her shoulders.

  In the back of one of her old exercise books she’d started writing poetry.

  This afternoon she’d been thinking about him – did she think about anything else, these days? – when he’d stepped from the shadow of the smithy and spoken, almost taking her breath away.

  ‘Off ’ome?’ he’d asked chattily, and she’d loved him for his cockney accent; it was so genuine, so honest. There were no false airs and graces about Jack.

  Louise had nodded, her throat jammed with such a feeling of excitement, she couldn’t speak. She knew she would replay this moment, again and again, when she was in bed tonight. And every ending to her day-dream would be different.

  ‘Where d’you live?’ Jack asked, hands in the pockets of a pair of very worn flannel trousers.

  ‘Ummm… er… Hartley Hall,’ she stammered and instantly felt ashamed. Now he’d think she was a toff and that was the last thing she wanted.

  His bright eyes widened. ‘That’s the big un, up the ’ill, ain’t it?’

  Louise nodded, her face scarlet. ‘It really belongs to my Granny,’ she said defensively. ‘We’ve been evacuated from London.’

  ‘And wot d’yer do? Up at that great place?’ He sounded interested, and surely he wouldn’t have done if he’d thought she was a snob?

  Louise listed her most menial chores with relish, ending with, ‘—and fetching wood for the stove.’

  ‘See ya, then,’ Jack said, giving her a little wave, as he strolled off.

  ‘Yes. OK.’ Clutching her school bag, Louise wished she hadn’t been in her school uniform. She also wished she’d washed her hair the previous night.

  Louise didn’t go straight home, but dawdled in the orchard, thinking about Jack, going over what he’d said and how he’d looked. She felt so elated by the encounter that she couldn’t wait until she was in bed tonight to day-dream about him again. Would he be rescuing her from… drowning? No, she was a good swimmer. Save her from the Germans when they invaded? Yes! That would be a lovely fantasy. She’d be wearing her pretty flowered summer dress… and he’d pull her away from an advancing tank… and they’d hide in the woods…

  ‘Bread and butter, darling?’ Lady Anne was offering her, as they sat in the elegant drawing room.

  ‘Oh…!’ Louise started and blushed. ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Who buttered this bread?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘Mrs Dobbs, of course,’ Liza replied, sipping a cup of precious Lapsang Souchong. God knows when they’d be able to get it again.

  Amanda peered myopically at the slice on her plate. ‘Then who scraped it all off again?’

  ‘Do you know how much butter we get each week?’ her grandmother asked, trying not to show her amusement.

  Amanda shook her head.

  ‘A piece the size of a match box, per person. Two ounces. And two ounces of cheese, lard, tea, and four ounces of bacon.’

  ‘Then why don’t we buy a cow? We’d get pounds and pounds of butter and we could make some of it into cheese, and if we had a pig, we could have pounds of bacon,’ Amanda pointed out in critical tones. ‘People make such a fuss about rationing. If we had a cow, we could eat her, too!’ She put her head on one side, wondering how the sweets rationing of two ounces a week could be improved.

  ‘Well, don’t suggest we start trying to grow sugar cane, or you’ll give Spence a nervous breakdown,’ Lady Anne laughed.

  ‘You can have my bread and butter, if you like,’ Louise offered Amanda with her unusual generosity.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t you want it yourself, Louise?’ Liza asked.

  She gave her mother a dreamy smile. ‘No, thank you. I’m not hungry.’

  ‘I hope you’re not sickening for something. Those wretched evacuees are always coming down with some hideous disease. I wish you’d stop working in that soup kitchen.’ Liza smoothed her skirt fastidiously, as if there might be germs lurking in the tweed folds.

  Louise looked down, keeping her secret tightly to herself. Never in a million years must her mother know that she was love with Jack Scovell, because she simply wouldn’t understand.

  * * *

  Juliet picked up her bedroom telephone, dialled a number she knew by heart, and a minute later a male voice answered.

  ‘Peter? Oh, I’m so glad I caught you before you went out. Listen, I’m having some friends round for drinks tonight; can you come?’

  Peter Osborne worked at the Air Ministry and she’d met him at a dinner party on one of her nights off. He was forty, divorced and a devil-may-care type, fond of drinking, dancing and sex. As an antidote to distract Juliet from her broken heart, he fitted the bill perfectly. His cheerfulness helped to raise her spirits, his technique in bed was excellent, even though he would never be her soulmate.

  He was also game for anything.

  ‘Yup!’ he replied, without hesitation. ‘What time, sweetie?’

  ‘Six-ish?’

  ‘Okey-doke! How about dinner at the Berkeley, afterwards?’

  There was dancing at the Berkeley, and the food wasn’t bad, either. ‘Lovely, darling,’ Juliet drawled. ‘See you later.’

  She made several more calls, rounding up whoever was in London from amongst her friends. Outside, a cold bleak November day shrouded the naked trees in Hyde Park, where anti-aircraft artillery guns lay in trenches, shrouded in camouflaged netting, like sl
umbering beasts who would awaken at night, to fire on enemy aircraft overhead.

  Juliet got up, walked around her bedroom, went to the window, walked back to the bed again, and buzzed for Dudley.

  She seemed to hum with nervous energy, her body thin and taut. Her high cheekbones had become more defined, making her pale blue eyes seem larger than ever. With her blonde hair styled in soft curls, her slim neck rose from ‘salt cellars’, as her grandmother described the hollows above the collar bones, it all added to her air of fragility. She was jittery. Living on nervous energy, gin, cigarettes and less than half her food rations.

  She’d been out in the ambulance every alternate night and on the nights she’d been off-duty, she painted the town red, in order to obliterate the dreadful scenes she’d witnessed, the injured people she’d helped, and the dead people whose faces she’d covered, with their eyes still staring at her.

  Most nights, whether on duty or off, she managed only four or five hours sleep.

  Dudley tapped on her bedroom door. ‘You rang, Your Grace?’

  ‘What’s our supply of gin like, Dudley? And have we still got some Dubonnet? I’m having a dozen or so people for drinks tonight; can you rustle-up some cocktails? And a few cheese straws, perhaps?’

  Dudley, who had black-market contacts in a city now riddled with crime and looting, nodded confidently. ‘Certainly, Your Grace. What time are you expecting your guests?’

  Juliet smiled to herself. Only she, in the midst of a world war, could somehow still manage to live like a Duchess – with the help of the redoubtable Dudley.

  ‘Six o’clock,’ she replied, reaching for a cigarette, and feeling more cheerful. ‘Thank you, Dudley.’

  ‘Will you lunching at home today, Your Grace?’

  ‘No. I’m meeting friends.’

  * * *

  Quo Vadis, in the heart of Soho, was packed with people enjoying the maximum five-shilling set luncheon, as decreed by the government.