‘Are you very scared?’ she found the courage to ask him. They both knew the risks a fighter pilot took. Him better than her, presumably. He must have given what he was about to do some considerable thought. She had nothing but admiration for his valour.
It was a while before he replied. ‘Some people say the risk doesn’t change, every time you go up. That the roulette wheel has no memory.’
‘That can’t be right, surely?’ She wrinkled her nose, trying to work out the logic, trying to remember probability from school. ‘You must increase your chances—’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ He cut her off abruptly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, panicking she’d upset him as he looked away into the shadows, his expression dark. ‘Let’s talk about something else. Tell me something.’ She paused. ‘Tell me your name! I don’t even know your name.’
He seemed to be giving the matter some thought. Maybe he didn’t want her to know who he was? Maybe he did this to girls all the time? Maybe she wasn’t special? Maybe he made everyone he kissed feel the same?
‘Harry,’ he said. ‘Harry Swann. And you?’
‘Jilly.’ She didn’t give her last name – Wilson sounded so plain next to Swann.
‘Jilly. Jilly and Harry.’ He hooked his arms round her neck and pulled her to him. ‘It sounds perfect, wouldn’t you say?’ he murmured, kissing her again.
Jilly and Harry … The words sang in her head from that moment onwards. Like a nursery rhyme.
And now here she was the following evening, approaching the entrance to Hedgemead Park, the great oaks in a cluster like a crowd of girls gathering in the playground. As she plunged deeper in among the trees the darkness enveloped her and for a moment she doubted the wisdom of the rendezvous they had planned the night before. They had wanted total secrecy. No chance of being observed. The opportunity to be just themselves, uninhibited by the curious glances of friends or onlookers who might make assumptions.
She didn’t think for a second about what her parents might say. They weren’t particularly disapproving or strict, but they did love her, and if they knew what she was doing they would worry that she might get hurt. Harry Swann was going the next day, to an airfield in Devon, to learn how to fly a plane. Everyone knew what that meant. Every day brought rushed engagements and hasty marriages. The war conflated life. Everything happened more quickly and had a sense of urgency that was contagious. She felt it now as she rushed through the park, searching for him in the tenebrous ink. This was their last chance to be together for who knew how long. He would get leave, of course, but not straight away. Their future was as uncertain as it could be.
There he was, waiting in the bandstand. She imagined the ghosts of musical notes drifting around him, untethered crochets and quavers, searching for an audience. She smiled at herself. Love was making her quite fanciful.
Love. How could you call what you felt for someone you had only just met ‘love’? But she didn’t know what else to call it, that hot, overwhelming certainty that someone held the key to your future. When she thought of Harry Swann something molten rushed through her, urgent and sweet and unstoppable. And it wasn’t unrequited. That was what was so intoxicating, the sense of being complicit: the way their gazes had locked that evening as they explored each other, looking for clues, little crumbs of information to turn into memories. The depth of a freckle, the length of a lash, the curl of a hair. They didn’t have long to commit each other to memory, after all.
Sunday. The very next day. Never had she felt such dread. She imagined being inside a giant grandfather clock, holding on to the pendulum to stop the hands moving round. She had never felt less in control of her destiny. Even war didn’t fill her with this sense of panic. Though of course the whole situation was the fault of the war.
Everything was the fault of the war.
‘Jilly.’ She could sense rather than see his smile as he reached out for her and she moved into his arms at the top of the bandstand steps.
Harry Swann. A hero’s name, she thought. In less than forty weeks, he could be a pilot, flying off into battle …
The cloth of his sports jacket was rough, rougher than the suit he had worn the night before. She slid her arms underneath and felt the solid warmth of him beneath his flannel shirt, breathed in his smell, so familiar already. It made her slightly unsteady on her feet, that scent of cedar and tobacco and leather. The smell of a man, not a boy.
They barely spoke. They both knew any words would be almost meaningless. What they had each done that day, since they had met the night before, was irrelevant. Talking about the future was pointless, for no one knew what it held. They were living for the moment, this very moment, not yesterday, nor tomorrow.
His mouth found her mouth. Her fingers twisted in his hair. His lips were on her neck. She felt the button on her skirt undo and the rough tweed slither down her legs; the softer wool of her jumper rode upwards, leaving her milky paleness exposed. But he soon warmed her, leaving her breathless, speechless, barely able to stand. And she explored him too, peeling away the layers, with no reticence, no inhibition.
Soon all that was left was skin on skin, their discarded clothes flung to one side.
There were no warning voices in Jilly’s head. No stern parent or forbidding teacher or shocked friend telling her to stop. Not even her own conscience, which was usually quite vocal. Jilly wasn’t a reckless girl by nature, but the pull she felt towards Harry was stronger than her moral compass.
This was the first and last chance they had. She wanted to get as close to him as she could. She knew it was madness, but the need was overpowering. He paused for a moment, uncertain.
‘Are you sure?’ he murmured, the whispered words making her quiver inside.
She couldn’t speak. Instead, she urged him on with her body. It was a primal response, but her answer was quite clear.
She felt the roughness of the wooden floor beneath her and the warmth of him above her and the hardness of him inside her and she could hear the roaring of her blood. It was momentous, more than anything she could ever have imagined. And somehow her body knew what to do, when to yield, when to take control, how to dictate the rhythm. She felt sinuous and confident, pulling him deeper inside her until she felt a triumphant explosion and they laughed and cried, the tears on their cheeks mingling as they kissed each other.
‘Oh!’ was all Jilly could say, softly.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered in reply. ‘I don’t ever want to let you go.’
‘Then don’t,’ she whispered back. ‘Hold me for ever. Let’s stay here for ever.’
He was still inside her. He began to move again and she felt him grow hard, and the tingling warmth that still hadn’t subsided spread through her veins and she cried out with the wonder of it.
‘Shhhh,’ he laughed, kissing her. ‘You’ll wake the whole of Bath.’
She laughed too, kissing him back. ‘I don’t care,’ she breathed, locking her legs round him to stop him moving away, and the sensations charging through her body seemed to make the whole bandstand shake and the pounding of her blood roared in her ears.
Suddenly he stopped, alert to something she wasn’t. The bandstand was still shaking, and her ears were still roaring, but there was another noise. A very real one.
‘Shit. They’re bombing us.’ He rolled off her, and suddenly everything was clarified. The roaring wasn’t her blood. It was the bombers – she was used to them flying overhead every night, on their way to Bristol. Only this time they weren’t heading for the port. ‘They’re bombing us! The bastards.’
Jilly sat up. She could see the flares falling from the sky, dozens of them twirling in the moonlight, deadly silver ballerinas. And then the awful sound of dead hit after dead hit all around them – north, south, east, west – as the sirens began.
‘They can’t be bombing Bath!’ It must be a mistake. A bungled mission. Bath wasn’t strategically important or heavily populated. Never for a
moment did they think they would be a target.
‘They bloody are,’ said Harry, leaning his hands on the bandstand rail and peering out at the sky. His naked body was like a silver ghost in the moonlight. He bent down to grab his clothes.
‘My parents. I need to get to my parents.’ Jilly began pulling on her skirt and tugging her jumper back over her head. She pushed her feet into her shoes, not doing up the laces. He reached out for her as she made for the steps of the bandstand, pulling her back.
‘You’ve got to stay here. They won’t go for open spaces. They’ll go for buildings. It’s not safe to leave the park.’
He was holding on to her from behind, his arms pinning hers. She twisted round, pulling at his hands, prising at his fingers. Only moments ago, she had wanted to stay in his arms for eternity.
‘Let me go,’ she protested.
‘No. It’s far too dangerous.’
She realised he was much stronger than she was. She stopped struggling for a moment.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.’
She nodded, breathing heavily with the exertion, leaning against him until he finally relaxed his grip. She stood still for a moment, watching from the corner of her eye until he bent down to put on a shoe. Then she made a run for it.
‘Jilly!’ He was still half-naked. He stood at the top of the bandstand steps, anguished. He grabbed at the rest of his clothes. ‘Wait!’
She darted into the undergrowth. She knew the park like the back of her hand – she’d been playing here since she was tiny. He would have no hope of following her through the twisted trunks of the trees. She wove her way among them, back to the streets she had come from. She heard him shouting after her but she ignored him. No one was going to stop her. She lost a shoe but she didn’t pause. Instead she kicked off the other. It was easier to run with none than one. And all the lights were illuminating the night sky, while the bombers were screaming above her, filling her head with a terrible noise. She’d read about bomb attacks. They all had. Listening to descriptions on the wireless or reading accounts in the papers didn’t even begin to match the reality.
As she reached the main road, she could see people running for shelter, each face a rictus of panic, women holding babies tightly to them, men with toddlers under each arm. Her lungs burned with the effort of running, her feet were scraped raw on the tarmac, so for one moment she stopped and looked back down the hill. In the distance, the sky was crimson with flame. More flares were falling, spinning silver. The noise was hellish. The pounding of her heart, the moans of the sirens, the buzzing of the planes—
Suddenly she saw one swooping low, coming towards her. She heard cries of warning. Surely it wasn’t going to land on the road? There was a gunman staring straight at her, illuminated by the searchlights. He was aiming to shoot her down. Couldn’t he see she was just a girl? A frightened, desperate girl? She threw herself into a doorway as the bullets strafed past her.
She crouched down in terror, too terrified to cry. An ambulance hurtled past, siren clanging as it headed down the hill. She breathed to calm herself, then emerged, cautious, trembling.
She carried on up the hill. She smelled burning, the air thick with charred soot. Her beautiful city, she thought. They couldn’t destroy it. Surely it was sacrilege, to decimate centuries of history? She turned a corner and saw a row of houses, one in the middle knocked out like a skittle. It had spilled its guts out onto the pavement and was now a pile of bricks and splintered wood and rubble and dust. She had no way of knowing if the people who lived there were underneath. She wondered if she should stop and help, then thought of her parents. She could see a fire engine turn the corner and felt relief. There was nothing much she could have done in the face of such destruction.
Further, further, up the hill she ran, her chest tight with exertion. Again she stopped for breath and looked back down into the city, at plumes of black smoke, cherry-red flames and the moon looking down in astonishment.
At last she reached the end of her road. Lark Hill. A dozen houses, as familiar to her as her own fingers and thumbs. She couldn’t see past the first three for the smoke. The terrible sound of bombs dropping was beginning to subside as the planes disappeared, though there was still shouting and sirens and the roar of nearby flames. Bedlam, thought Jilly. This is what Bedlam sounds like.
‘Jilly!’ Her neighbour Mr Archer stepped into her path. He was the air-raid warden for Lark Hill. She’d known him all her life. His wife used to take Jilly for walks in her pram when her mother was working. She would pretend to let go when they walked down Lansdown Hill to the park: Jilly remembered squealing with horrified delight, sitting up like a princess in her Silver Cross.
‘I need to get home.’
‘I’m sorry, love.’ He grabbed her by the arms and pulled her back.
‘My parents.’ She writhed in his grip, sobbing, but like Harry he wouldn’t let her go. This time she had no strength left to fight him or outwit him. ‘My parents …’
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ said Mr Archer.
In that moment, she knew.
2
September 2017
Willow had asked for nachos for her farewell supper.
Laura was pathologically incapable of doing what most normal people would have done: plonked a saucepan of chilli on the table with a packet of tortilla chips and got everyone to help themselves.
Instead, by five o’clock the evening before Willow was due to go to university for the first time, a huge cauldron on the hot-pink Aga belted out a cloud of steam scented with cumin and cinnamon and chilli. On the worktop were bowls filled with grated cheese, soured cream, guacamole, jalapeños, spicy beans, finely chopped coriander and chargrilled sweetcorn salsa. Wedges of lime were waiting to be stuffed into bottles of beer – ‘cerveza’, Laura teased herself with a Spanish lisp.
She had stopped short of making margaritas because no one would want to face the next day with a hangover: it was a six-hour drive to York and it was going to be a difficult enough day without a thumping tequila headache.
She’d put a row of tiny cactuses in pots down the middle of the slate-topped island and empty milk bottles filled with bright pink, yellow and orange gerbera. A donkey piñata hung from one of the hooks in the ceiling. She’d managed to refrain from filling it with sweets. This wasn’t an actual party, after all, just a goodbye to Willow from her family and her friends, and a few neighbours, and … well, Laura didn’t know exactly who else, but by eight o’clock the joint would be jumping. That was how things rolled at Number 11.
It was Laura’s schtick to go to immense trouble, but her efforts on this occasion were doubled, masking the fact that tomorrow was the day she had been dreading more than any other in her life – and there had been a few. She stood for a moment in the quiet of the kitchen.
This kitchen was her safe place, where she felt love and gave love. There was always a sense of calm underlying the chaos. No one else knew how she did it.
‘How do you make it look so effortless? I always have a nervous breakdown when I’m entertaining. Nothing looks right, nothing tastes right, and I worry myself to death.’ Her best friend, Sadie, was eternally mystified by her entertaining skills.
‘Because I love it? Because I don’t have a career? Because I don’t look as if I’ve just walked off the pages of Vogue?’ Laura teased.
Sadie owned La, the most fashionable boutique in Bath, and always looked incredible. ‘But you’re naturally gorgeous. You don’t have to spend hours making yourself look ravishing. You just are,’ she complained.
It was true, with her eyes the colour of maple syrup and her tousled dark mane. Laura, however, thought she was overweight and unkempt, as it was all she could do to pull a comb through her hair. She wore skinny jeans, because her legs were like matchsticks, and had a selection of linen shirts and sloppy sweaters that covered her embonpoint and her tummy, about which she was unnecessarily self-conscious. She didn’t see her own beauty.
‘I’m top heavy,’ she complained. ‘Like a robin – far too big for my silly little bird legs.’
She felt distinctly unglamorous at this moment, her hair tied up on top of her head with the elastic band the postman brought the letters in, a blue and white apron wrapped round her and a wooden spoon in her hand, dishevelled and covered in tomato sauce. She was also finding it desperately hard to stop herself from seeing how Willow was getting on with her packing.
The back of the car was already loaded up with everything a new student could possibly want, mostly courtesy of Ikea to keep the cost down. But Laura had spoiled Willow with a few things. A luxury mattress topper, essential for making a strange single bed comfortable. A fleecy blanket to snuggle up in when it was cold and Willow was missing home. And some Jo Malone bath oil, because Laura believed in the power of smell to comfort you.
Willow, however, was a girl who liked to leave everything to the last minute. Even now her favourite sweatshirt was rolling around the tumble dryer because she’d only fetched it from her friend’s house this morning. Laura, who laid everything out on the spare bed a week before they went on holiday, found it nerve-racking.
Dom told her not to worry. If Willow forgot anything she could do without until she came back for the weekend.
‘I probably won’t come back till Christmas,’ Willow had pointed out. ‘York’s miles and I won’t be able to afford the train fare.’
Laura’s stomach lurched at the thought of three months without seeing her daughter, but she squashed the feeling down. Instead, she sat down at the island and picked up her Berol pen. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d written a proper letter, but she wouldn’t be able to say what she wanted to say without blubbing. As she began to write, in her best handwriting, she relished the satisfaction of forming perfect letters, the ink running smoothly across the paper, the loops and the circles and the curlicues.
Number 11 Lark Hill
Bath
My darling Willow,
A Family Recipe Page 2
