by Sam Angus
Slowly Lyla rose and walked to the window. She looked down to knot garden searching for the damson, remembering how she’d made Solomon turn Father’s letters – letters written from harsh and lonely places – into plans to send out into the garden.
Lyla started – if Father were alive and well, there’d be something from him today. Suddenly she turned from the window and ran. In her nightdress she raced down to the hall and grabbed at the in tray. Empty. The post had not yet come perhaps. She ran to the window and saw Mabel Rawle on the drive and ran out towards her, flinching and hopping over the gravel in her bare feet. Breathless and panting, she asked Mabel if there were one for her, and Mabel huffed and heaved and sorted through her bag . . . but no, there was nothing for Lyla Spence.
Lyla turned and walked slowly back to the house. She paused before the door, then suddenly, at a desperate thought, turned away to make her way instead to the walled garden. Lyla picked her way across the garden to the old damson and looked up into its branches, remembering how white those fighter planes, unwanted blossoms, had looked amidst its leaves.
She fingered the bark of the tree thoughtfully, and then suddenly took hold of a branch and swung herself up. She climbed higher up and then crawled along the branch, reaching and searching as she went for any tiny scrap that she might hold. There was nothing.
Nothing, not even a scrap that she might keep. Father had written week after week, year after year, to the daughter who’d turned so fiercely away from him, and now where was he? Had his life ended in a lonely German jail, ignored by the daughter he loved. Tears began to fall among the branches of the old damson.
As she wept, something landed on her shoulder. She started and batted at it to brush the bug away. But then another landed – she clutched at it. A paper letter plane. Another fell and then another and soon paper letter planes – in pinks and purples and all the colours of the rainbow were falling all about her. Caught in the branches of the damson and scattered in the grass all around were Spitfires and Hurricanes and Lancaster Bombers.
She looked up at the stone walls of Furlongs and saw the windows of all the dormitories were open and letter planes were flying out from them all, and that Violet had put her head out to eat her breakfast clematis with a coloured paper chain hung about her neck, and that an appliquéd banner was being strung from statue to statue of the pediment.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LYLA!
Lyla picked up a paper plane, unfolded it and read:
Lyla, we love you because you’re fierce.
And another:
Lyla, we love you because you’re funny.
More and more letter planes were falling, and the elderly damson transformed with glorious multicolour paper blossom. Lyla took one more:
Lyla, we love you because you like your letters to be sent into trees.
She opened another and another. Every member of staff, every Garden Hill girl, even Solomon and Cedric, all of them had sent her a paper plane.
Lyla, we love you because you’re brave.
Lyla stayed in the branches of the old damson clutching the planes as they fell and reading them but thinking of all the other letters, the letters from Father, that she’d never read.
74
PREPARING FOR VICTORY
Just as Ada’s interest in parabolas and probability and Pink Dandelions had each, at some point, flagged, so the work with the Red Cross parcels had faded away. Ada had suddenly decided, too, that board games were no longer required by prisoners. She is tired, the girls said to one another. It is too much for her.
And yet, one day, some fitful, steely energy returned to Great Aunt Ada.
‘We must prepare, prepare for Victory,’ she announced. ‘We must salvage something from this war. We must make flags. We must sew them in readiness for the day that will surely come. We will do sewing classes. I intend to instruct these classes myself, for it is high time I learned to sew and – you never know – I might find it comes in useful in the future.’
The girls watched Aunt Ada advance across the hall, holding in her arms a bolt of navy cloth. Solomon, always now two steps behind her, bore one bolt of red and another of white cloth. Ada’s large, once confident stride had grown short and uncertain, her voice tremulous and reedy. Lyla saw then that Ada had grown old in gulps – not smoothly, but as if rushing towards the end. Her startling white hair stood upright in sparse tufts and she’d begun to resemble more closely now the effect of one of her own explosions. Cedric Tawny’s handling of the shears as he set about her hair might have become a little inaccurate for he too had aged, but he’d say, by way of explanation, She has no patience, she will not sit still.
‘I must see this through,’ Aunt Ada muttered, plonking down the bolt of navy cloth. ‘Must see the whole thing through.’
The girls grinned, for she spoke as if she were entirely responsible for marshalling Britain to Victory.
75
NEW YORK
‘Lyla Spence,’ announced Trumpet.
Lyla froze.
‘Lyla Spence!’ called Trumpet again.
Lyla rose to take her letter and the hall grew silent, for all knew that a letter for Lyla was a thing of note.
Mother’s writing on the envelope.
The last time she’d seen Mother’s handwriting had been so long ago.
Lyla turned the thing over and over again in her hands. The postmark was New York, the letter dated three weeks ago. Lyla stared at Mop’s handwriting on the envelope, still familiar now. She heard the bell ring, heard girls rushing for the classrooms, and still she stared at the envelope.
Cat stood hesitantly at Lyla’s side. ‘Would you like me to stay with you?’
‘It has come too late,’ answered Lyla, and put the thing away, fearing it might detonate her and split her all to pieces.
Later, however, unable to cast it away, she read it alone in her room:
Dear Lyla,
I dock at Liverpool on the 2nd May. Please meet me off the SS America.
I shall make a better grandmother, one day, than I did a mother, and shall be able to give all the love and time that should have been for you to your children.
I will look for you on the dock.
Love,
Mop
76
A NEW COAT AND HAT
Lyla went to find her aunt and, hearing Cat’s voice from the Smoking Room, she paused outside it, startled that Cat should be in there. She peered in and saw, side by side at the fire, Ada and Cat – Ada’s hand in Cat’s. Lyla hesitated, feeling an unaccountable resentment that they should both be sitting there, together, in a new alliance, which didn’t seem to include herself.
‘Your father might be able to help, perhaps, take that to him,’ Great Aunt Ada said as she passed something to Cat.
Cat saw Lyla and she rose quickly, pocketing the paper. She went to the door and, as she passed Lyla, smiled, but Lyla raised her brows as if to ask, And what were you discussing with my aunt? But then Ada extended a hand in welcome to Lyla, and Lyla – remembering the letter from Mop and how she was coming home – said, ‘I am going to Liverpool.’
Aunt Ada saw the letter in Lyla’s hand and, after a while, said with a warmth that had somehow also so much sorrow in it, ‘Of course you are.’
‘Will you ask the train to stop?’
‘I shall call an entire train especially for you.’
‘And will you come with me to Ladywood to help me choose a new coat and hat?’ asked Lyla, smiling, because of course there was no knowing what sort of garments her Great Aunt Ada might select if one was to judge by the way she chose to dress herself.
‘Of course, dear. Does Florence require you to be in a new coat and hat?’
Ada might be frail, but she could still be sharp.
‘I’d like to look nice,’ Lyla answered shyly.
Ada took a deep breath, then looked up and said breezily, ‘Of course you would . . . Speck says you’ve an allowance, d’you know?’
‘Speck?’
‘Solicitor. Wills and bills and so forth. For myself and for Lovell. Yes, yes, Lovell made provision for you at some point or other. See Speck – he’s been taking care of it all.’
‘Father did?’ asked Lyla.
Ada nodded. ‘Of course.’
In Evanses, Ada was at her most majestic.
‘Bring me all the best hats and all the best coats,’ she told the assembled staff, sweeping her arms across the shop floor. ‘The best of everything. She’s going to Liverpool, d’you know, and she must look her best. She’s sixteen now,’ Aunt Ada told the salesgirl. ‘She came to me when she was just eleven or thereabouts. What were you, child . . . ?’
Lyla emerged from the changing room and walked slowly towards her aunt, displaying a fashionable, grown-up sort of coat.
Her aunt’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Show Solomon,’ she said, flustered and too breezy. ‘Call him in – call him in. He has a good eye.’
Solomon entered and said nothing and looked nowhere until Ada prompted him.
‘Well, Solomon, what d’you think?’
Solomon gave one of his magical smile-drawing smiles and nodded gently, and everyone in Evanses was smiling.
‘Very good, very good,’ said Ada brusquely. ‘We’ll take it all, be quick about it, hat and coat and gloves and bag and so on.’
Back at Furlongs, Lyla showed Cat the new coat and hat.
‘They’re beautiful,’ said Cat, fingering the ivory collar. ‘Your mother should be so proud,’ she whispered.
Lyla hugged her friend, but Cat withdrew a little, her eyes wide and deep with concern. ‘I don’t understand why you want to go – are you really sure about this?’
After a long pause, Lyla answered as best she could, but only with a question. ‘Cat, do you think the need to be loved by a parent ever leaves one – as you get older, I mean?’
‘She doesn’t deserve you, Lyla,’ came Cat’s reply.
It was Cat who accompanied Lyla to the little station, for Ada was unwell and supposed to be with the doctor. Don’t hold with doctors, she’d said, waggling her fingers at him. Off with you.
‘Dr Dean Seldom Seen,’ Cat had whispered.
As they pulled up, Lyla saw the clock whose hands moved so slowly, and the solitary ewe that still grazed along the tracks, and she smiled. She then saw the worry in Cat’s eyes.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she told her friend, then waved and turned.
‘Lyla – wait – Solomon has something – we have something for you,’ Cat called after her.
Solomon limped towards Lyla and, bowing a little, he handed her a little rosewood box inlaid with ivory.
‘Captain Lovell gave me this. In the last war.’ He handed it over carefully. ‘I was always proud to serve him.’
‘We thought it was a good place, Lyla, to keep things in,’ said Cat.
‘Thank you,’ replied Lyla, bemused.
The train was approaching, so Lyla waved once more and turned.
77
LIVERPOOL
There were several changes of trains, and Lyla, already confused by all the complexities of train and platform changes, was dazzled by the fact of a whole world having been going on all these years outside of Furlongs.
As she drew nearer to Liverpool, the newsprint image of Mop in pearls and white fur began to haunt Lyla. She took Mop’s letter from her bag and read it once again. She read and re-read it and knew then that she was looking for something in it that was not there, for the things Mop had not asked: How was Lyla doing? How had she fared all these long years? Who had clothed her and fed her? Who’d loved her failings and mistakes? Who’d laughed with her and cried with her and held her? Who’d told her all the unfathomable things you needed to know to be a grownup?
She remembered then what Solomon had said as she’d climbed into the pony trap. ‘Captain Spence would be so proud, Miss Lyla . . . I was always proud to serve your father, miss.’
Mop had not mentioned Father.
Lyla stuck her hands in her pockets and gazed out of the window. She thought of the Mail In and Mail Out trays and how she’d put so many letters in the out tray and how there’d never ever been one from Mop. The attendant came by and Lyla fumbled in her bag for her ticket.
She glanced down at the rosewood box and smiled and thought how quaint and sweet it was of Solomon to think to give her that just before she went on a journey.
‘Are you meeting the SS America too?’ a lady in Lyla’s compartment asked.
Lyla nodded.
When she arrived at the station, Lyla hailed a cab and told the driver, ‘To the docks, please.’
After a while he asked, ‘The SS America?’
Lyla nodded.
‘Father?’
Lyla shook her head, but the driver, sucking loudly on a boiled sweet, persisted.
‘Brother home on leave?’
Lyla shook her head.
‘Wounded and coming home then, from the East?’
Lyla hesitated, then replied, ‘Father – he’s – lost . . .’
The driver watched her in the windscreen mirror and waited.
‘They don’t know what happened to him,’ whispered Lyla.
The driver said nothing for a while, then held out a Fox’s glacier mint through the glass partition. Lyla took it and unwrapped it as he continued to watch her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Who you meeting then? Someone special?’ he asked.
Not once had Mother written.
Yet there was the rose-and-silver dress, the beautiful dress her Mother had chosen for her.
Slowly Lyla began to shake her head from side to side.
No. Not Mother.
The dress hadn’t come from Mother. Mother had never sent a dress nor any single tiny thing.
Lyla shook her head again: no, that had been Ada’s doing of course – Ada must have dispatched Solomon to Harrods. He had a good eye. He knew about the staff in Harrods.
With that admission, other things – scraps of memory, once somehow rubbed out – came floating back across the years, rising like faint ripples to the surface of water. That last night in London? She’s always on her own, Winnie had told the policeman. No, Father had never left Mop, it was never as Mop had told her it was. There had been no Ethel in Brighton . . . Lyla writhed and covered her face as if in pain.
The driver, still watching her in his mirror, pulled over.
‘All right, love?’
‘Turn around,’ Lyla commanded. ‘Turn around and go straight back, please. Go very fast.’
Back at the station, she went straight to the ticket office.
‘A single to London, please.’
78
LISSON SQUARE
Lyla’s taxicab took her along the Marylebone Road. She saw lilac and ragwort amidst the rubble. She saw queues for fish and advertisements for Brylcreem. She saw exhaustion and defiance in the faces of the people on the streets, and she saw the newsstands saying that Victory would be soon be announced.
The cab turned into Lisson Square and Lyla saw the cart and the old mare that Southbridges, the bakers, kept behind the shop, still plodding round with her load of bread. 37 Lisson Square was just as it had always been in Lyla’s mind, only in the front garden, around the cherry tree, were rows of carrots and potatoes where the lavender used to grow.
Lyla’s hand paused on the bell. Through the bay window she saw dry stems in a silver vase, their fragile blooms long fallen. She saw a half-empty glass beside the gramophone and the scarf still on the centre table where Mop had left it that night, forgotten perhaps in the dizzy rush to leave.
The dizzy rush. The rush to another, different life; a life without a daughter.
Lyla lifted her finger from the bell and hesitated. She turned and went to the side passage and fumbled beneath the pot of winter jasmine for the spare key – and there it was, where it had always been, beneath the jasmine, which grew still as though there’d never been a war.
S
he turned the key, pushed the door and heard the rustle of papers. A pile of bills or pamphlets, perhaps, with instructions to travel at all times with a gas mask. She kicked the heap and trampled through it, dropped her bag, raced up the narrow stairs and flung open the door to Mop’s room.
The mirrored wardrobes were open, the rails empty, the scent bottles on the dressing table gone. Lyle eyed the wardrobes, wondering. Had Mop already packed her clothes away when she’d left the house that last night?
Lyla paused. If she had ever known that those wardrobes had been empty – if she had glimpsed them so that night – then that must have been a knowledge too unbearable for the child she had been. That was a knowledge that she had scrubbed out and banished from her mind.
Lyla turned abruptly, shut the door behind her and leaned against it, her chest heaving. From where she stood she could see directly into the room that had been her own, could now see the embroidered sampler on the wall, the pillow still with the imprint of a young child’s head, the indent on the mattress where she’d lain that night curled tightly up.
Lyla backed away.
Up another flight of stairs, she found Mop’s attic studio desolate, the easel, the oils, palette and brushes all gone. Mop had chosen that one part of her life, no, two parts, her painting and her clothes. She’d chosen to take those and to leave her daughter behind.
Lyla went to the drawing room and looked about. Where had she sat that night while she’d waited for Mop to return? Lyla walked slowly to the armchair by the telephone table in the window and, quivering, placed herself gingerly on it. She turned to look out on to the square. Here. Here was where she’d sat that night, tear-stained and trembling, watching for the motorcar that might bring her mother home.
