Goodnight Sweetheart

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘The coat and skirt suit you wonderfully well,’ he stated. ‘Really, you look good enough to eat,’ he finished, joking.

  Caro gave him a sudden oddly grown-up look.

  ‘I can’t wear clothes as well as Katherine did, or does – I say, isn’t it difficult to know how to refer to someone who has just vanished? – but there you are, everyone thinks the suit looks quite nice. But of course Katherine took the green silk paisley scarf that she used to wear with it, which is a bit of a pity, because that really finished it off.’

  Once again Walter found that he was immensely relieved that Katherine had taken the green silk paisley scarf that had somehow seemed electrifying with the yellow linen.

  ‘It suits you, anyway.’

  Caro nodded. The whole subject of the suit was becoming just a little dull.

  ‘I gather you want to repaint my hair?’ she prompted Walter, indicating the mural.

  ‘Yes, yes, I do. I’ve missed putting some of the lights in it. At the moment the colour looks too flat. There are quite a few reddish tinges.’ He gestured to her chignon. ‘You’ll have to undo all that, I’m afraid.’

  In silence, watched by Walter, Caro undid her long, shining brown hair, shaking it out and then combing it through with a small hair comb.

  ‘I’ll sit to you here, if you like?’ She sat down.

  Walter climbed up the stepladders, palette in one hand, brushes in another, and started to look from Caro’s once more familiar brown hair to the wall and back again, and then again, and again, and again.

  With the advent of his concentration, conversation ceased.

  ‘My little helper is not in a very chatty mood now that London beckons.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not,’ Caro agreed.

  ‘Quite an adventure.’

  ‘So everyone keeps saying. I have been to London before. But only on a visit, not to live. I shall be with Robyn Harding, probably at her aunt’s flat in Mayfair, after which we won’t know, until we have been kitted out with our uniforms and all that. Then we shall probably be sent all over the place.’

  ‘It will be exciting.’

  ‘I think it will.’

  Walter narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the head of brown hair that he was painting, adding a few more of the lightly titian tones that gave some much-needed movement to it.

  ‘You’ve grown up, haven’t you, these last weeks?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you if – well, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I dare say.’

  Caro stared ahead of her, thinking of her father’s carefully concealed distress when he handed the Angel over to her.

  ‘Do you think that Katherine will ever come back to us, to Chevrons, Walter?’

  ‘I hardly know.’

  ‘You do, Walter, you do – I know you know.’

  ‘She might.’

  ‘But you doubt it?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, I do rather doubt it.’

  There was another long silence.

  ‘I could honestly murder her, you know?’ Caro finally confessed after a long, long pause. ‘For what she and David have done to the parents, I could willingly murder her.’

  ‘It’s understandable.’

  ‘At least the war coming will take their minds off her, off everything.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine war does rather have that effect.’

  ‘I wonder if David and she have married.’

  ‘Probably, I would think.’

  ‘She always told me she would never marry.’

  ‘In that case, probably not.’

  ‘They must have left the country or someone would surely have spotted them by now?’

  ‘Yes, they probably have.’

  ‘Actually, it’s David Astley I could really murder, filling her mind with his twisted ideas.’

  Walter smiled ruefully. ‘You would be surprised at just how many people in this country share what you call Mr Astley’s “twisted ideas”, Caro. I certainly am.’

  They chatted on in a desultory fashion until, all of a sudden, Caro stood up.

  ‘I expect that’s enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact I expect it is,’ Walter agreed, surprised. ‘Yes, I think it is. Obviously for you it is quite enough. Were you bored, or just stiff, or both?’

  Caro looked at her watch, and then quickly twisted her long hair back into a chignon at the nape of her neck, taking the pins out of her jacket as she did.

  ‘Must go, meeting Robyn at the flat at six o’clock, and since I don’t drive nearly as fast as she does, I have to give myself an extra hour or two!’ She laughed suddenly. ‘Pity the poor men who are going to be driven by me, Walter.’ She leaned forward and kissed him quickly on the cheek. ‘It’s been such fun helping you.’

  She turned away, but Walter caught at her hand.

  ‘No, no, don’t go—’

  Caro looked down at his hand. He had long fingers with square-tipped nails.

  ‘Take your hairy hand off mine, Mr Beresford,’ she joked.

  ‘No, no, no, I will not,’ he insisted, pulling at her hand, while at the same time persistently drawing her back to the mural. ‘You can’t go until you have told me what you think, you haven’t told me what you think.’ He nodded up to the wall. ‘After all, you’ve been here all along.’ He put a hand on her shoulder, the way he had the first evening they had met, leaning on her in a brotherly fashion. ‘You’ve been part of the mural all this time, what do you think?’

  ‘It’s good,’ Caro stated, staring up at the painting. ‘I think you’ve captured the parents really well, and the twins – they’re really good too. I mean, Jag is so much a Garland, and Francis so much like our mother.’

  She looked across at Walter, who was also standing staring at his work, half critical, and half admiring.

  ‘The twins have gone to join Papa’s regiment.’

  ‘Yes, they said they were going. They couldn’t wait, they told me, just couldn’t wait.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Jag and Francis all over. They’ve been aching to climb into uniforms these last two years, but the parents – well, it’s understandable – they kept hoping it wouldn’t be necessary, that they would stay around the place, and take over eventually, you know how it is. Farming has been in the doldrums for so long now. Very little help around, because everyone has drifted to towns, for which they can’t be blamed, of course. Still, everything will change now, Papa says. It will all turn about because of shipping being targeted, and so on; no food coming in. We will have to work even harder on places like this. No one knows what will happen to farming, except perhaps that people will suddenly realise that it is more important than they thought.’

  Caro sighed suddenly, for even though she would be in London, far away from home, she knew she would miss the thought of her brothers not being around at Chevrons, driving their father mad, and always having to be chased up by Smith for not doing something or another, only to be forgiven instantly, because if the twins couldn’t talk themselves out of everything and anything, no one could.

  Still, no point in worrying about them. They would probably just carry on through the war the way they had carried on at Chevrons all the time they were growing up.

  She moved closer to the mural, staring up at it appreciatively.

  ‘You’ve got Betty and Trixie to perfection. Katherine too, she’s brilliant. Except,’ she leaned forward, frowning, ‘except why is she balancing a ladybird on her finger?’

  ‘I put that in because apparently that’s what Astley calls her.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because, Miss Caro Garland, Miss Katherine Garland told me. He calls her his ladybird.’

  ‘So you painted it in, something that horrid Astley man called her, you painted it in?’

  ‘Yes, but not for him, for her. She asked me to.’

  ‘And did she like it?’

  There was a small moment as Walter gazed up at Katherine on the wall, Katherine in her beau
tiful blue dress, her lovely face looking oddly haunted, as if she knew that she was about to bring disgrace on herself and her lover.

  ‘Yes, yes, as a matter of fact she did like it, she liked it quite a lot, but she wouldn’t ask Astley in to see it, which was odd. I think she thought it might make him jealous if he saw that I knew about his nickname for her.’

  ‘Yes, Astley would be jell-jell; that is Astley all over,’ Caro agreed in a flat voice. ‘I’m afraid we don’t talk about him any more around here, he is so persona absolutely non grata. The parents think he’s taken her abroad, he knows the Continent like the back of his hand, and of course he has so many contacts there now, seeing that he is such a Nazi.’ She paused, then changed the subject.

  ‘So, what have you done for me? Have you painted anything special in for me, after all the help I’ve been to you?’ she demanded, mock crossly.

  Walter put out his arms and shook her shoulders in brotherly affection.

  ‘Ha! I thought you would never ask! Look, Caro, you haven’t looked closely at yourself yet!’

  Caro leaned forward frowning; she had been in such a confused state, what with all the packing, and Betty wanting to leave, as well as everything else, it was only now she noticed that Walter had newly painted in, around her neck, a gold chain with a lucky charm on it – some sort of animal. He took his hand off her shoulder and, turning to one of his many wooden painter’s boxes, he took out a small leather box, and handed it to her.

  ‘To remember me by.’

  Caro opened the box and when she saw the gold animal she smiled and smiled.

  ‘How did you know that was one of my nicknames? It’s what the family always used to call me because of my thick fringe of hair, out of which they said I was always peering.’

  It was Walter’s turn to smile. ‘I told you, I am a painter, I need to know everything,’ he said, beginning to climb the ladders once more. ‘It was some time before I could find a real-looking Mr Mole, complete with paintbrush for whitewash. Actually a friend made it for me.’

  For a second Caro felt a rush of disappointment that he had not attempted to clasp it around her neck, but then she rallied and, taking the gold chain, she did up the clasp herself and then patted the small gold animal in the same affectionate way that she would pat Dickie. Then she left the room to go for a long walk around the lake, because, she said, she needed ‘to think’.

  When she returned Walter was packing up his paints, a mulish expression on his face.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ Caro asked in a vague voice, because she had just made a firm resolution not to think about him any more, except in a very casual ‘oh, yes, I wonder how he is doing’ kind of way.

  ‘As a matter of fact, there is. Your father has just paid me a visit.’ Walter breathed in. ‘He has asked – no, demanded – on behalf of the family, that I paint your sister out of the mural.’

  ‘Oh – no.’

  ‘Yes, quite – oh no. That is just what I said.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I explained that if he wanted something painted out, he could do it himself, that she was as much part of my mural as everyone else. That if anyone else in the painting suddenly decided to murder someone, or die, would he ask me to paint them out too?’

  ‘He is rather cross with Katherine, and I mean to say, you can’t really blame him, can you?’

  ‘Whatever his feelings, only a philistine would ask an artist to do such a thing.’

  ‘Well, that is true. Quite apart from everything else, you are too close to your painting. It would be like kicking yourself in the ankle, or standing on your own foot.’

  ‘Exactly so. Could you step aside now, and let me pack up my paints?’

  Caro did not want Walter to leave. In fact every bit of her longed to say, ‘Please don’t go. Stay and finish the painting.’

  ‘I will stop anyone defacing your work, Walter, I promise. I will ask Smith to speak to my father, and my mother too, before I leave for London. Smith and Mamma will step in for you.’

  But Walter wasn’t listening. He was too busy throwing brushes and paints into boxes, snapping the ladders shut, and generally indicating that a rapid exit was about to take place.

  Caro left the room. She didn’t want to see him drive off. Actually, since he had looked less than impressed by her volunteering to muster people to defend his work, she really felt she wasn’t very interested in what happened to the mural.

  Chapter Four

  The hushed silence that had fallen over the assembled company was as if thick snow had fallen, so that even the sound of the heaviest of footsteps would be muffled, but since it was August the silence was due to something quite other.

  Robyn stepped away from the dressing mirror as Mr Porter too stepped back, and they both turned to Caro, who shook her head.

  ‘That is too horrible for words,’ she said, determinedly tongue in cheek. ‘Really Mr Porter, you could have done better than that, really you could.’

  ‘You’re next, Caro, so I should be very, very careful what you say in front of Mr Porter, lest he inadvertently pushes one of his pins into you rather than the suiting.’

  ‘You look very much like your father in that uniform, Miss Harding, I am here to tell you, very much a Harding.’

  ‘I’m not sure that this uniform would be quite what my father would order, Mr Porter.’

  Robyn turned back to the mirror. She could not help admiring how she looked in the FANY uniform, which was very, very smart, enviably smart, but hardly surprising with so many special effects – blue and pink lanyards (FANY colours, as Mr Porter had explained) worn to the left, and the cap with its cocking-a-snook strap. Tall and slender as she was, with honey-coloured hair that she wore in a neat twist at the nape of her neck, Robyn knew she looked just as she should.

  ‘Your turn,’ she ordered Caro.

  When Mr Porter drew back the curtain to reveal Caro, small, neat and brown-haired in her uniform, the tailor was fascinated to see that the whole effect of the uniform he had tailored for Miss Garland was altogether different from Miss Harding’s. If Miss Harding was a commanding lady, needing only a Britannia-style hat and sword, Miss Garland was a slender impish Cleopatra, who might be expected to be brought in to tease some military Caesar into happy submission.

  ‘We’ll stay as we are, Mr Porter, if you don’t mind, and pick up the next lot, say, in a fortnight’s time?’

  Mr Porter paused by his desk.

  ‘Oh, I should pick them up before that, if I were you, Miss Harding,’ he suggested in his detached, unemotional way. ‘The war, you know. Any minute now, I hear, the war will be upon us. But then your lot, they’ve been training hard these many years, if the number of uniforms I have tailored for them is anything to go by, they’ve been busy keeping their hand in ever since – well, ever since the last war.’

  The two girls walked proudly out of Mr Porter’s Savile Row shop and strode down the street together, their civvy clothes in bags, together with their civvy shoes, and civvy attitudes too.

  ‘God, if one more person tells me that the war is about to be declared “any minute now”, I think I’ll scream,’ Caro grumbled.

  ‘Let’s go for tea, and see the effect our uniforms have on everyone. They’ll probably refuse us, if people’s attitudes to women in uniforms is anything to go by!’ Robyn said gleefully. ‘People still loathe to see a woman in a uniform, they really do. Aunt Cicely told me to be prepared to be jeered at, and have doors closed in our faces by servants and shopkeepers, and she knew not what. Such excitement, to be spurned by everyone, don’t you think?’

  Caro laughed and pulled down her cap, with its proud, distinctive strap across the front.

  ‘Actually, now I’m kitted out, Robyn,’ she confided, striding along beside her taller friend, ‘I have to tell you I feel like arresting practically everyone I pass.’

  ‘Enjoy the feeling as much as you can, Caro,’ Robyn warned. ‘This is probably going to be the best
of the before-the-war moments, believe me.’

  ‘You know something?’

  Robyn rolled her eyes. ‘I know too much.’

  ‘Your friend Bob in the Foreign Office?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And he says …’

  ‘He says nothing – nothing at all – he wouldn’t dare. No, it’s the way he looks.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Robyn looked down at Caro for a second. ‘Let’s put it this way, no one in the know is very hopeful, and of course they all loathe poor old Chamberlain. They’d like to throw him over the white cliffs of Dover, Bob says, but Bob also says that knowing men like that, he’d probably just float back to the shore because flotsam and jetsam always do.’

  ‘Oh, well, no good news there, then. I say, let’s dash in here for what might be our last chance to enjoy an ice-cream soda.’

  The staff in the fashionable store must have heard the same gossip and rumours as Mr Porter the tailor, because hardly an eye was blinked at the entrance of the two uniformed young women, who sat down and demanded two ice-cream sodas.

  ‘Delicious.’

  After her first taste Caro stared dreamily past Robyn, and for a few minutes both were silent.

  ‘We’ll probably remember this over and over again, when all the world’s on fire, won’t we, Robyn?’

  ‘What sort of people would we be, if we didn’t? Now, come on, we’ve got interviews, fingers crossed we can swing it to be sent to the same place.’

  Robyn stood up. Caro also stood up, and for a second or two she stared round the restaurant in an effort to remember every last detail of the morning. The ladies in their stylish hats; the men, some of them fresh from the City, in their morning coats of black, and black and grey striped trousers. Soon nothing would be the same, but nothing; just for that one minute though it was – and she loved it.

  ‘Come on, time to report to headquarters.’

  Caro hurried after Robyn, making sure to keep up with the tall slender figure, as she realised she had been doing so much of her young life.

  ‘I don’t know whether you know, but Aunt Cicely told me the other day that the rumour is that the new bugs, the ATS, are going to take us on, if not over, which is perfectly beastly, Aunt Cicely says,’ Robyn confided as they walked along side by side when Caro caught up with her outside the shop. ‘But she says because the Yeomanry own their own headquarters, fingers crossed that they won’t be able to kick us around as much as they would like. Even so, if it happens – which she thinks it will – the ATS are sure to be looking out to take us down a peg.’ She looked at Caro for a second, her nostrils flaring slightly, vaguely reminding her friend of a horse on a frosty morning. ‘I forget how many military medals the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry have been awarded, but Aunt Cicely told me it was a great many.’ She frowned and raised an eyebrow. ‘At any rate rather more than the entirely new Auxiliary Territorial Service has yet achieved. Fanys are Fanys, and that is all there is to it. We are a yeomanry, the ATS is not: that’s why we have lanyards, flashes on our shoulders, and straps on our caps, because we are a yeomanry.’