‘I’ll talk to Ian, if you like. He might have some good suggestions for what you could do.’
‘Daddy, do stop talking to me as if you’re trying to humour me,’ she grumbled. ‘It’s so patronizing. I’ll find myself a job.’
‘When can I do something to help the war?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Even Mummy’s doing war work; can’t I be a Fire Watcher, like Daddy?’
‘You’re only fourteen,’ Rosie pointed out. ‘I hope the war will be over by the time you’re old enough to join in.’
* * *
Louise had invited Shane back to supper, after their day at Kew. As it was Sunday, and his day off, Dudley had left some cold cuts and a bowl of salad for them, in the dining room.
‘I’d forgotten Juliet was on duty and won’t be back tonight,’ Louise remarked, as they helped themselves to the supper, while Bella looked up at her, hopeful of being fed some scraps.
Shane laughed. ‘I suppose it is more peaceful without her; she’s a live wire, but good fun.’
‘She’s marvellous, isn’t she? I just wish she had a really nice boyfriend. Do you suppose it’s because she’s so beautiful? And that attracts the wrong sort of man?’
Shane considered this for a moment. ‘I think she’s probably just been unlucky. She’ll find the right person, one day.’
‘As I have,’ Louise said, in a small shy voice.
Shane’s thin face broke into his quirky grin. ‘I’m glad you think so,’ he rejoined, ‘because I’ve definitely found the right person.’
‘Have you?’ She looked at him, and something clutched at her insides, a half-forgotten yearning that reminded her of being with Jack.
‘Absolutely.’ He reached across the formal table, and planted a kiss on her mouth. ‘I love you, Miss Louise Granville.’
Louise giggled, turning pink. ‘Me, too.’
‘You love yourself, too?’ he teased. ‘Well, that’s a good start, anyway. Do you think, in time, you could get around to loving me?’
‘I could try!’ she retorted playfully.
He thumped his chest with his fist. ‘Try?’ he repeated. ‘That’s not good enough, Miss Granville. You’ve got to do better than try.’
‘Perhaps I’ll try very hard.’ Her blue eyes were sparking with fun.
‘Very, very hard?’
Louise nodded silently. ‘Perhaps.’
Suddenly the mood changed from flippant to serious. Shane had stopped grinning and his eyes drilled hers, almost with anguish.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too,’ she whispered, hardly able to breath.
He rose suddenly, and came round to where she was sitting.
‘I don’t think I can bear this much longer. Louise, will you marry me?’
She looked up at him, shocked. ‘Marry you? But you barely know me.’
‘I know that I’ve found what I’ve been looking for, all my life,’ he said softly. ‘If there wasn’t a war I’d say we should wait. But there is a war and none of us knows if we’ll even be alive this time tomorrow. Let’s try and grab all the happiness we can, before it’s too late.’
Louise’s head was in a spin. It was true; people were marrying after the briefest of courtships these days. But could she really…? It was the most exciting thought, and he was right; they could be killed at any time. She also knew she loved him, in a way she’d never loved Jack.
‘Yes, I will,’ she said slowly, her face filled with wonder.
Shane dropped down on to his haunches in front of her, so their faces were level. ‘You’re quite sure?’ he urged. ‘I’m only an impoverished doctor, while you’re…’
She silenced him by placing the palm of her hand across his mouth. ‘I love you, and I always will,’ she whispered, ‘because you’re my friend, as well.’ Overcome by emotion, she bowed her head and leaned forward, so their foreheads were touching.
* * *
‘Are you all right?’ she heard Daniel ask in his deep rumbling voice. He was looking anxiously into her face.
Dazed, Juliet wondered for a moment if she was suffering from delusions brought on by exhaustion. Was it really Daniel standing before her, in grey flannel slacks, and an open neck shirt, looking at her with a concerned expression?
‘I’m fine,’ she said, raising her chin. ‘It’s my job; we’re all in it together.’
His dark eyes never left hers. ‘You’re very brave, Juliet.’ Then he glanced over at what had been the entrance to the chapel. ‘It must be hell, in there.’
‘Dante’s Inferno has nothing on this,’ she heard herself say, her voice hard and harsh, her pale eyes narrowed as she looked defiantly into his, as if challenging him.
‘I didn’t know you were still a VAD.’
‘There’s still a war on, isn’t there?’ she shot back, stung by the surprise in his voice. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘When I heard what had happened, I came along to see if there was anything I could do to help.’
She nodded briefly, her bloodied hands smoothing her crumpled and filthy apron. In that moment she felt vastly superior to him, as he stood, immaculate in mufti, whilst all around them doctors, nurses, wardens and the rescue services toiled away, reduced now to collecting body parts.
‘I must go,’ she said briskly. ‘I’ve got to get cleaned up. We’re on stand-by until tomorrow morning, in case of further incidents.’
Then she walked away, her head held high as she climbed into the ambulance with Dr Gearing and the others. She even managed not to look back, as they drove towards the Mall, on their way back to Kingston House.
Only then did she start shivering and crying; weeping for the victims of the slaughter she’d witnessed, weeping from tiredness and horror, and weeping most of all because of her own confrontational manner every time she saw Daniel.
Why did she do it? What possessed her to ruin any chance they might have had of even being friends? Some demon inside her always had to keep twisting the knife as soon as she saw him. Punishing him for the hurt and pain she’d suffered from his rejection of her… Or was she really punishing herself for ever letting him go, in the first place?
* * *
‘I don’t believe it!’ Rosie sounded quite put out. ‘Louise getting married?’
‘She is nineteen,’ Liza protested. ‘That’s a normal age for a girl to get married, surely?’
‘I suppose so, but it makes me feel so old, to have my little sister getting married.’
Henry laughed. ‘That’s what I felt when you made me a grandfather. Shane Hunter is a great chap. He’s clever, and now he’s decided to specialize in paediatrics, he could go far. Medicine is a fine profession, and one that Louise understands, as a result of her experience at St Stephen’s.’
Rosie said nothing. Privately, she was sure her mother had welcomed Shane into the family because she was relieved that Louise had found a husband at all. Not everyone would be willing to marry a girl who’d had an illegitimate baby. Especially not the young men they’d met when she and Juliet had Come Out. One was expected to be a virgin. Rosie groaned at that memory, and the hell of her honeymoon with Charles.
At least, thanks to Freddie, she was now a woman of some experience. Perhaps rather more experience than Salton realized, she reflected with a secret smile, but no matter. They were having a wonderful love life; though she did rather wish he’d set a date for their marriage.
‘I think it’s marvellous,’ Juliet enthused, when Louise told her the news. ‘You deserve some happiness, after all you’ve been through, darling, but I’m going to miss you terribly when you move in with Shane.’
‘I’ll miss you, but we’ll still be in London, and Juliet…?’
‘Mm-hm?’
‘Thank you so much for everything. You’ve saved my life, you know. Looking after me when… you know,’ her voice caught, ‘… and letting me live here with you, and giving me Bella…’
‘Frankly, I don’t know what I would have done without you,’
Juliet replied bluntly, averted her face to hide the anguish in her eyes. In the past week she seemed to have lost even more weight, and her cheek bones, carefully rouged, stood out so her face looked almost skeletal.
Sleep had eluded her since last Sunday. Flashbacks of the unbelievable horror of that morning blazed across her tired mind, and they were always accompanied by images of Daniel taking hold of her arm. Looking down at her. Talking to her.
Then attacks of pure panic would sweep through her, so that she could hardly breath, didn’t dare move, waited for death to strike her too.
* * *
Louise and Shane’s wedding was to take place at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, with a small reception afterwards at the Hyde Park Hotel.
‘We must do the best we can for her, as we did for Rosie and Juliet,’ Liza pointed out, and Henry agreed. The hotel promised to provide sandwiches, biscuits, and the wedding cake, for a hundred guests. Henry, who’d moved the contents of his wine cellar down to Hartley at the beginning of the war, brought up several cases of his best champagne.
‘I don’t need a wedding dress,’ Louise assured her mother. ‘I mean it would be hypocritical for me to wear white, wouldn’t it, and it would be silly to use up our clothing coupons for a dress I’ll only wear once.’
‘White stands for purity, darling, not necessarily virginity,’ Liza said staunchly. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’
It was decided it would be bad luck to borrow the exquisite dresses Norman Hartnell had made for Rosie and Juliet, and Liza’s own wedding dress was too small for Louise, and a very unbecoming 1914 style.
‘I have something to show you,’ Lady Anne announced mysteriously, when they were all at Hartley the following weekend. She led the way to her bedroom, a still sprightly, upright woman, who reminded people more and more of Queen Mary.
‘There!’ she said, with a sweep of her hand. ‘What do you think?’
Hanging on the outside of her wardrobe was an exquisite white lace wedding dress, with long sleeves, frilled at the wrist, and a full skirt flowing into a train.
‘Granny…!’ Louise gasped. ‘It’s exquisite. Look at the little bands of pleated organza between the layers of lace! And all those tiny silk buttons down the back!’
‘Paquin made it for me in Paris, when I married your grandfather in 1882.’ She turned to Liza. ‘What do you think, my dear? With one of the family tiaras, and a plain tulle veil…?’
Liza was as entranced as her daughter. ‘Mama, it’s beautiful. Quite beautiful, isn’t it, Louise?’
But Louise had flung her arms around her grandmother, almost knocking her over. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ she said, beside herself with delight. ‘With all the coupons in the world, I’d never be able to get a dress like that.’
Lady Anne beamed. ‘I’m glad you’re pleased, darling.’ They took the dress back to London with them that night, hanging it in Louise’s bedroom, so Shane wouldn’t see it before the big day.
‘You’re all set now,’ said Juliet. ‘Happy?’
‘Happier than I ever thought I could possibly be,’ Louise replied dreamily. ‘The past is behind me now, and I’ve got such a wonderful future with Shane to look forward to.’
‘Quite right, darling. Never look back… unless you want to be turned into a block of salt like Lot’s wife!’ Juliet quipped.
* * *
Two days later, Louise, having just arrived home after a night on the children’s ward, was still in the hall when the front door bell rang.
‘It’s OK, Dudley. I’ll answer it,’ she called out, striding across the black and white marble floor and opening the heavy door.
‘’Ullo, Louise.’ Jack was standing on the front door steps, his expression eager. ‘I ’ad to come and see you. Ain’t you goin’ to ask me in?’
Then his smile faded as he saw the look of shock on her face.
Seven
He’d grown into a man compared to when she’d last seen him. Taller, bigger, brawnier and with a roughness about him that surprised her. He sat stiffly and awkwardly in Juliet’s stylish Art Deco drawing room, and she noticed his black boots seemed enormous.
This was not the Jack she’d known. That Jack had been a gentle boy with a bloom on his cheeks and an honest gaze, who’d liked to listen to her reading Rupert Brooke’s poems. She’d even thought, at one time, that he resembled the great writer, with his sensitive mouth and beautiful features.
Where had that boy she’d loved so much gone? This was a thickened, coarsened version. Stubble bristled through his skin. The large splayed hands resting on the knees of his shiny grey suit were the hands of a labourer, not a poet.
The thought My family was right… It wouldn’t have worked flashed unwillingly through her mind.
‘So, what are you doing these days, Jack?’ she asked, wishing Juliet was at home to help her conduct this embarrassing visit.
He looked astonished. ‘Didn’t your sister tell you we’d met?’
This caught her unawares. ‘No? Which sister?’ She wondered if he’d been back to Shere and had seen Amanda.
‘The one wot’s a Duchess. That’s ’ow I knew where you lived. I looked ’er up in the telephone directory.’
‘Juliet?’
‘Didn’t she tell you? I’m a fireman, see. We saw each other at one of them bomb incidents. She wos in ’er nurse’s uniform, an’ all. Told me you’d ’ad a son, too.’
It was all happening too fast. Louise felt bewildered. Why had Juliet never mentioned any of this?
‘Th-that’s right,’ she stammered. ‘Rupert, except that he’s now called Tostig.’
A look of deep sadness settled on Jack’s face like an imprint of grief. ‘I wished I’d seen him. ’oo did he look like?’
‘He had your blond hair… but he didn’t look like anyone, particularly,’ she said lamely. She was finding this painful. Any mention of Rupert still hurt deeply. Even if she and Shane had a dozen children, there would always be Rupert; the empty space in her life.
Jack was watching her closely. ‘So wot about us? That’s why I came to see you. I’m bringing ’ome a steady wage now. Got meself a room over a shop in Peckham. I suppose we can’t get Rupert back now, but ’ow about us. Lou? I still loves you, you know.’
‘Oh, Jack…’ She was crying openly know. Crying for the love they’d lost, and the child they’d lost, along with their innocence. They’d been children themselves back then, as they’d lain in the long grass in a secluded field in the summer of their youth.
‘I love you too, Jack, but not in the same way,’ she said, dabbing her eyes. ‘We had something special, but that was over four years ago and we’ve both grown up since then.’
Louise couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in Jack’s face. Fleetingly, it made him look like a young boy again, the corners of his mouth drooping, a sudden bright sheen in his blue eyes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said diffidently, averting her gaze. ‘I wish it had all been different. And I wish we’d been able to keep Rupert.’
Jack stayed silent, unable to speak.
What had Juliet told him? Desperate to soften his fall from hope to reality, she continued: ‘We were too young, Jack. It would have been different if we’d been older, but we’ve both changed.’ She kept staring out of the window at the red buses going up and down Park Lane, so as to avoid having to look at him.
‘So, that’s that, then,’ he said at last, in a flat voice.
She nodded, her mouth a tight line of suppressed anguish. ‘At least we know that Rupert is well and happy, and being looked after by a couple who adore him.’
‘Yup. And you’ve got someone else, too, ’aven’t you?’ he added grimly.
Louise looked at him, startled. ‘Yes. How did you know?’
He pointed one of his strong fingers to her left hand. ‘I just seen you got a ring.’
She turned crimson. ‘Oh, yes. He’s a doctor. We met at the hospital where I work.’
‘
A doctor?’ he asked, surprised. ‘I thought wiv a family like yours, you’d want to marry a toff, like your sisters.’
‘We can marry who we like, Jack,’ she replied, knowing it was a lie, and yet at the same time true.
He raised his thick eyebrows. ‘So you ain’t turnin’ me down, ’cos I ain’t good enough?’
‘Of course not!’ she exclaimed, distressed. ‘That doesn’t come into it. Like I said, we were too young. First love and all that, you know?’ she said, wanting to do anything to lessen his hurt.
‘Right then.’ He rose, and stood awkwardly. ‘I’d better be off, then. Got to meet some chaps for a game of snooker.’
Louise stood up, not believing him, and walked with unhurried feet to the door, as if she was reluctant to let him leave.
‘Thank you for coming to see me, Jack.’ God, she sounded like her mother bidding an acquaintance good-bye. ‘Take care of yourself, won’t you? Will you stay in the Fire Brigade after the war?’
She didn’t even hear his answer. He looked crushed, as he ambled in his big boots down the black stair carpet, clattering on the marble floor when they reached the hall.
‘Ta-ta, then,’ he said, without looking at her.
‘Good-bye.’
A moment later he was gone, running down the front steps, and turning right to head for Marble Arch.
‘Oh, my God,’ she murmured, closing the door and leaning against the wall for support. She closed her eyes. ‘That was terrible,’ she muttered aloud. It was as if a ghost from the past had come to claim her, bringing back bitter-sweet memories of that summer, when she’d been a romantic young girl, her head filled with poetry about love.
The front door swung open at that moment, and Juliet stepped into the hall.
‘Hello! What on earth are you doing standing there? Are you all right?’
Louise opened her eyes, and peeled herself away from the wall. ‘Jack came to see me. Why didn’t you tell me you’d seen him?’
The Granville Affaire Page 27
