‘Do I know him?’
She paused for a moment before answering, wanting to keep her secret to herself, until it was official. ‘Maybe,’ she hedged, flirtatiously.
‘I bet it’s another Duke, or at least a Marquess,’ he teased.
‘Sez you! Come on, let’s eat. I’m starving.’
Wine was ordered and dinner was served. Juliet danced with every man in the party, as if she could never stop dancing. She felt restless, feverish in her quest for distraction, almost over-excited now, as the drink went to her head. When she’d been like this as a child, Nanny had warned, ‘This will end in tears.’
Back at the table after dancing a tango with Glen Fraser, she saw Colin telling Archie something. Archie looked across at her.
‘Did you hear that, Juliet?’ he half-shouted, above the loud music.
She leaned towards him, her cigarette in its long holder, held in the air. ‘What?’
‘Colin said he heard two days ago that Edward Courtney had been killed in action.’
* * *
‘I’m all right, Dads. Really I am,’ she protested, pale and dry-eyed, as she lay in her silver bed.
Juliet had fainted when she’d heard about Edward, and although she’d come round after a few minutes, Archie and Colin had brought her home, woken up Dudley and demanded he telephone the doctor.
The next morning Archie had phoned Henry to tell him what had happened.
‘Darling, I really think you should take some sick-leave,’ Henry begged, sitting by her bed. ‘The job you’re doing is a killer, and then to hear your boyfriend had been killed…’
‘I just wish this bloody war would stop,’ she burst out, passionately. ‘So many people killed. All I can think about, dream about, talk about is war, war, war. When is it going to end, Dads?’ She was crying now. ‘I don’t think I can bear it for much longer. And now I’ve lost Eddie; I was going to be so happy with him.’ She scrabbled under her pillow for a handkerchief. ‘This will never do. I must pull myself together. I should have gone on duty this morning, but I promised I’d go on tonight. Laura’s ill, so they’re one nurse short as it is.’
She blew her nose, pushed back her hair, and started getting out of bed.
‘You cannot go on duty like this,’ Henry implored her. ‘You’ll have a nervous breakdown. I’ll ring your Commandant and explain. You need peace and quiet, and a complete rest, Juliet.’
She reached for her blue satin negligée, her expression determined. ‘Dads, I’ve got to carry on. Carrying on is the one thing I’m good at. There will be people tonight who will be crying out for help, because they’re in pain, terrified, and may have lost a loved one. I’m not in pain, and I’m no longer frightened of anything. And loss is something I’ve learned to get used to,’ she added fiercely.
* * *
‘You know that boy Miss Louise used to know? Well, he’s done a bunk,’ Mrs Dobbs remarked, as she prepared Lady Anne’s breakfast tray one morning.
‘Done a bunk?’ Rosie stirred the children’s porridge without looking up.
‘Run away from his Aunty’s house in the village. Couldn’t stand the gossip, no doubt,’ she added darkly.
Rosie ignored this. She knew people would suspect the worst, when Louise had left Hartley so suddenly.
‘He hasn’t gone back to his home in London, either,’ Mrs Dobbs continued, undaunted.
‘It’s no business of ours,’ Rosie spooned the porridge into two bowls decorated with pictures of Peter Rabbit.
Later that day, Rosie told her grandmother what had happened. ‘You don’t think he’s found out where Louise is and gone to see her, do you?’
‘No one but us knows where Louise is,’ Lady Anne pointed out. ‘Maybe he managed to join the Army by saying he’s seventeen. Quite a few chaps have done that.’
‘Poor Louise.’
‘Have you heard from her recently?’
‘Yes. Oh, Granny, she’s so unhappy. Mummy’s aunt is really religious, and makes her go to chapel twice on Sundays, and she has to read the Bible, and repent for her sins! It all sounds too Dickensian for words. She lives in a cold cramped cottage, and she makes Louise work quite hard.’ Rosie shuddered at the thought of what her sister must be suffering.
Lady Anne looked grave. ‘Is it really as bad as that?’
‘It’s bad because we’ve always had such a cushy time at home, haven’t we? We’ve all been brought up in luxury, and we’ve taken it for granted. Even now, with rationing and everything, Hartley is still extremely comfortable, and we’ve basically got everything we need here. It must be dreadful for Louise. Away from all of us, as well.’
‘Perhaps she should have gone to stay somewhere else,’ Lady Anne fretted, racking her brains. From what she’d heard, though, unmarried expectant mothers could be treated like criminals, wherever they went. Sometimes, their families rejected them for ever, and never let them forget their shame. At the time, staying with Liza’s aunt had seemed the perfect solution, but now she wondered if it was.
‘I’d better talk to your mother,’ Lady Anne murmured. ‘I’d no idea things were that bad.’
It wasn’t only Louise she was worried about. Her heart also bled for Juliet, losing the young man she’d apparently planned to marry. The poor girl seemed doomed as far as men were concerned. Henry had said he feared Juliet was heading for a nervous breakdown.
* * *
The baby was the only person she had to talk to. Lying curled up on her side in the freezing bedroom under the eaves, Louise clasped her hands around her stomach, and talked to her baby, who now kicked and moved around, and even had hiccups.
‘Precious lambkin,’ she whispered, so Aunt Tegan wouldn’t hear. ‘You’re all I’ve got at the moment, aren’t you? I don’t know where your Daddy’s gone, but Rosie thinks he may have enlisted. I know he’ll be wondering about you, though. And thinking of both you and me, and wishing we could all be together. I love to picture you, curled up, asleep. I bet you look like your Daddy, with blond curls and lovely blue eyes. And I want you to be born, so we can meet, and I can see you… but I’m dreading it too…’ Here her tears started to fall, as they did every night, once she got to the part when she knew she had to warn the baby that she wouldn’t be allowed to keep him. Then she rocked herself with grief. ‘I’m going to miss you, miss you terribly,’ she murmured brokenly. ‘My precious baby…’
There were nights when she didn’t sleep at all. Aunt Tegan wasn’t unkind or anything, and she got enough to eat, but it was the unrelenting accusations of having sinned, having acted wickedly, of being irreligious, shameless, brazen and immoral… that kept Louise awake. Especially as none of these words had anything to do with the love she and Jack had shared.
* * *
‘Push! Push! Come along, Louise,’ Aunt Tegan said in her bossy it’s-time-you-went-to-church voice. ‘A few more pushes and you’re there.’
‘I c-can’t,’ Louise screamed. Sweat made her hair stick to her neck, and she wanted to die. The pains had been ripping through her young body for nearly thirty hours now, and her great-aunt was frazzled with impatience.
Small, plump, with curly grey hair, she bore an alarming resemblance to Liza and how she might look in another few years; the once pretty face deeply lined, the unintelligent blue eyes sunk into folds of loose flesh. There was something prim and waspish about her too, reminding Louise of her mother when she didn’t get what she wanted. But Tegan was a woman with rough hands, her only jewellery a crucifix on a chain round her reddened neck, and as much fashion sense as a scarecrow.
Louise was plunged into a hell of pain again, casting everything else from her mind. ‘No-o-o!’ she cried out, as the pressure increased, and she felt as if she was being split in half. ‘Oh, God, please…’
‘Come on, Louise! You’re not trying hard enough.’ Aunt Tegan forced her knees further apart. ‘Push, you lazy girl.’
Louise had never known such agony existed, but with that last ounce of
effort to push, she was rewarded by a thin wail, and a feeling of her insides dropping out.
‘At last, and thanks be to God,’ her great-aunt said triumphantly, scooping up a mewling, bright red infant. ‘You’ve had a boy.’
Louise opened her eyes, hardly able to believe it was over.
‘Is he all right?’ she asked anxiously. He looked awfully odd, with a crushed looking little face, and a slippery body.
‘He’s perfect,’ Aunt Tegan said sternly. ‘We’ll soon find a home for him.’
Louise watched as she wrapped the baby in a piece of sheeting, before cutting the cord.
‘Don’t lie back and think it’s all over,’ she warned Louise, nastily.
‘What do you mean?’ She felt so tired she wanted to sleep for a year.
‘You’ve still got to expel the afterbirth.’
‘Oh, God…’
‘And don’t you go taking the name of the Lord God in vain, you wicked girl.’
When she was finally tucked up, and the baby was sleeping in an old wooden rocking cradle next to her bed, Louise couldn’t help marvelling at what had happened. To think that the little boy had come from Jack and herself was the most extraordinary feeling. They’d made a child between them. But then the tears flowed, because Jack wasn’t here beside her, as any other father would have been. And already Aunt Tegan was looking forward of ‘finding a home for him’, as if he’d been a kitten or a puppy.
‘I don’t think I can bear it,’ Louise wept. She was worn out and broken-hearted. In the lonely little room in the isolated stone cottage, she cried herself to sleep.
When she awoke, Aunt Tegan was standing by the bed, and she held the squawking baby in her arms.
‘Feeding time, Louise. We’ll start him off on you. He’ll have to go on to the bottle soon enough, but it’ll give him a good start.’ She dumped the baby unceremoniously in to Louise’s arms, before stomping downstairs again.
Louise hadn’t been prepared for this. Wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but once the baby was in her arms, he nuzzled his way with determination, tiny arms flailing, rosebud mouth opening and shutting like a bird, until he latched on to her nipple with the instinct of all newborn creatures.
Louise was transported with delight and contentment. He was so sweet. So adorable, nestling close to her as if that was where he belonged. She noticed now he had soft fair hair; just like Jack. The nails on his tiny fingers were like a film of mother-of-pearl, and his skin was unbelievably soft and silky. After a few minutes he stopped sucking, opened his eyes and looked up at her.
For a strange, almost frightening moment, it seemed as if he knew her. There was recognition in his expression, and she held her breath, holding his gaze, almost expecting him to say something. Then the moment was gone. His gaze shifted and his face creased up as he started crying. Deeply shaken, she moved him so he could suck on the other side.
Was it possible he knew she was his mother? Reason told her she was being ridiculous, but she felt uneasy now, and filled with the most terrible sense of guilt. He was going to be given away to strangers, and there was nothing she could do to prevent that happening. Yet the connection she’d felt in those fleeting seconds had been strong and binding.
Louise lay awake all that night. Unable to sleep, she listened to every little grunt and sniff from the cradle, anxious not to miss a moment of being with her son. Yet, at the same time, she felt torn apart, because she knew that was what was going to happen.
For four days and four nights she watched over him, feeding him whenever he cried, and changing the rough towelling nappies Aunt Tegan had produced, along with some second-hand baby clothes she’d bought at a jumble sale.
Louise had even given the baby a name: Rupert, after Rupert Brooke. Jack would approve of that, she thought, wishing more than anything in the world that he was here to share these moments with her.
Then the blow fell with brutal suddenness on the fifth morning.
Aunt Tegan stomped into her bedroom at eight o’clock, just as Louise had finished feeding him, and put him, sleeping, back into the cradle.
‘Come along, young man,’ she said briskly, lifting up the baby. ‘Come and meet you new Mum and Da; they’ve come to fetch you.’
As she walked out of the room, she turned to a stricken looking Louise. ‘Nice couple. Got a farm. Looking for a boy who can help them when he’s older. He’ll be well looked after.’
The last Louise saw of Rupert was his tiny head, covered with a sheen of blond hair, as Aunt Tegan whisked him away.
* * *
‘God dammit, it’s inhumane,’ Juliet swore furiously down the telephone, as she talked to her mother. ‘You’ve no idea how Louise is suffering. I hardly recognized her when I met her off the train yesterday. And she’s in great pain, too. She’s flooding with milk, because that old witch made her feed the baby. I had to call the doctor. And now she’s strapped so tightly she can hardly breath.’
Juliet remembered the pricking pain of rising milk from when her own baby had died. She also remembered, only too well, the anguish of her loss, the unspeakable distress and suffering she’d felt, followed by a sense of despair so black that she didn’t think she’d ever get over it.
Yet Aunt Tegan had seen fit to put Louise on a train back to London the day after the baby had been taken away, as if she’d gone through something no more serious than having a tooth removed.
‘There was nothing else we could do,’ Liza responded defensively. ‘If Louise had behaved herself, none of this would have happened. It was very good of my aunt to look after her, and find a couple who wanted a baby.’
‘Mother, you’ve no idea what you’ve done,’ Juliet retorted, feeling desperate. In the space of less than a year Louise had lost her baby, the boy she loved and the security and comforts of her own home, and she’d only just turned sixteen.
‘Can I stay here, with you, for a while?’ Louise begged, when they arrived at Juliet’s house. ‘I won’t get in your way, and I’ve got my ration book; it’s just that I don’t think I can go back to Hartley just yet.’
Juliet put her arms around her sister and hugged her. ‘Sweetie, you can stay here for ever, if you like. I’m worried about your safety though. We’re having random air raids, and at any time of the day or night.’
Louise looked at her, dry eyed and strained, as if she had no more tears to shed.
‘Honestly, I don’t care if I’m killed. My life is unbearable. What’s the point of carrying on?’
Juliet held her sister firmly by the shoulders. ‘You must never talk like that,’ she said fervently. ‘Believe me, darling, everything eventually passes. Granny once told me that God never throws at you more than you can handle, and it’s true. You’ll get over this, in time, I promise you.’
‘I might get over Jack, though I’ll never marry anyone else now. But I won’t get over Rupert being taken away. He looked at me, Juliet, as if he knew me. It was extraordinary. I even half expected him to speak!’ She paused, shaking her head. ‘The dreadful thing is I feel as if I’ve let him down.’
‘When he’s grown up he’ll understand you had no choice.’
‘I could have run away from home. Jack wanted us to get married when we were sixteen. I should never have listened to Mummy and Daddy.’
She’d started crying again. Great wrenching sobs of despair that wracked her body, and took away the bloom of youth from her face.
Juliet was supposed to be on duty at ten o’clock the next morning. Dudley was standing in the hall, as she came hurrying down the stairs in her uniform. ‘Your Grace, is there anything special you would like me to do today?’
‘There is, indeed.’ When she’d finished giving him instructions, she added, ‘Keep an eye on Miss Louise for me, will you, Dudley? She’s been ill, and she needs feeding up and rest.’
‘Certainly, Your Grace.’
The shrill penetrating wail of the air raid siren sounded just before noon. Dudley, back from running erran
ds, hurried up to Louise’s bedroom and knocked on the door.
Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear her. ‘Come in.’
He found her, dressed in a baggy skirt and sweater, sitting on the window seat, looking out.
‘Miss Louise, Her Grace told me I was to take you down to the shelter if there was a raid,’ he said in alarm.
‘I’m fine here, thank you,’ Louise replied with dull politeness.
He spoke urgently. ‘You must come away from the window.’ As he spoke there was a series of heavy explosions as a stick of bombs landed several streets away. The house trembled.
‘What was that?’ Louise craned her neck to look down Park Lane. There was hardly any traffic now, and the streets were deserted, as people vanished to shelter in nearby buildings.
‘Come along, Miss Louise. Those were bombs dropping. It’s really dangerous for you to be up here.’
‘I don’t mind.’ She looked up at the sky as they heard the menacing THRUM-THRUM-THRUM of low flying aircraft. ‘Are those German bombers?’
Dudley had a swift look. ‘Yes – and here come our Spitfires,’ he added, pointing proudly and forgetting his own fear. ‘When enemy aircraft are approaching London, the order is given to “scramble”. They can be airborne in a matter of minutes.’
By now Louise was practically hanging out of the window, looking up with horrified fascination. ‘They’re attacking the German’s plane!’ she exclaimed.
A dog-fight had started above the city, as the Spitfires, dodging and swooping, their engines screaming, attacked one of the Messerschmitts. Spitting machine-gunfire, outwitting the enemy with their speed, mobility and skill, they resembled a swarm of angry silver gnats.
Suddenly black smoke and flames started streaming from the tail of the German plane as it dived, headlong, towards the ground.
‘Blimey, they’ve got one!’ Dudley shouted, forgetting himself in the heat of the moment. ‘That’s one less Jerry!’
The Granville Affaire Page 21
