by Rachel Hore
Lucy handed it back to Beatrice. ‘I see what you mean. I suppose she was still very young. She told me once about being presented. She made it sound as though it was one of the greatest experiences of her life.’
‘You’re a kind girl and you’re right, I’m not entirely fair to her,’ Beatrice said, replacing the pack of letters in the box. ‘Our lives had to go on in the usual way, after all, and those debutantes all felt that it was their turn, their moment. It was what they’d been bred up for. It’s all too easy to be disapproving, looking back. My parents took a great interest in the political situation. Many people weren’t so well informed. But as the year waxed on there was such an odd atmosphere – on the wireless or when you talked to people. It was as if we knew we were walking towards disaster but could do nothing about it.’
‘I read somewhere that that sort of situation can make people eager to grab life and live for the moment,’ Lucy said.
‘I suppose that’s it. The danger imparted an urgency to everything. And so the debutantes danced and flirted, and I, who was only able to read what Angie wrote about it, I missed it all.’
July 1939
For two months now there had been no letter from Rafe, just a postcard of Nelson’s Column that arrived at school at the end of June with a Hope all well, having a splendid time, will write soon scrawled on the back which falsely raised her expectations. She wrote back to him immediately, a long gossipy letter about her school life, and looked every day after that for a reply, but there was nothing and she was cast down. Then term ended and her father came to fetch her.
Home was dull. Her parents were pleased to see her, of course, but they’d got used to being without her. Delphine was using Beatrice’s bedroom as a storeroom. There was a strange winter coat mothballed in the wardrobe, and a stack of Parisian fashion magazines – her mother’s private weakness – under the chest-of-drawers. Bea found one or two acquaintances to play tennis with, and exercised the horses for old Harry, but with the Wincantons away, St Florian’s felt empty.
The letter from Angie landed on the mat at home a week later. She picked it up with a feeling of foreboding, hearing the postman’s mournful whistle and the squeak of the garden gate.
‘I’m taking Jinx out,’ she called to her mother. On a whim, she set off, not for the beach, but up past the tennis club, where a path led alongside a field of ripening grain. By the tennis courts was a bench where she sat and took out the letter. The place had a deserted feel about it. Behind her, Mr Varcoe, the groundsman, was re-liming the lines on the grass courts.
The envelope smelt of scent and stiff elegance, and opened easily. She read it twice, which was necessary, for the sentences rambled about in Angie’s careless manner.
Darling Bea,
Thank you for yours of last week. It’s funny to think of you being back in Cornwall. How are Cloud and Nutmeg and Jezebel? I do miss them, but I’d rather be here. You wouldn’t believe what a marvellous time I’m having. Last night Katie Halpern’s dance was in a gorgeous garden near Hyde Park with strings and strings of gold and silver lanterns and a band on a platform like a boat in the middle of a tiny artificial lake. The night before, we sat through a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regent’s Park, and of course I wished I’d listened a bit more when Miss Simpkins made us read it, but, heyho, it seemed difficult and boring then, not magical and funny. I must tell you, I often see Rafe and his brother at parties. They both look terribly dashing in their officers’ uniforms. Gerald’s already a Captain, and a lot of the girls are mad for him, but the talk is of him getting engaged to Katie. Rafe is awfully sweet to me and we often speak of you. Mummy’s asked for Carlyon to be ready at the beginning of August so I’ll look forward to seeing you for a few days then.
Beatrice sat for a long moment, lost in thought. Gradually she became aware of the normal sounds of summer around her. Birds singing, Mr Varcoe’s pottering, someone sawing wood a couple of gardens away. Jinx lay panting, waiting patiently for his walk. There was nothing to suggest that life was any different from five minutes ago and she couldn’t say exactly how, but it was. Something had shifted. The thought of walking back home to her parents and continuing with the routines of her life seemed completely impossible.
Jinx gave a little bark to remind her he was there.
‘Yes, all right,’ she told him. She made herself stand up.
She’d go on, that’s what she’d do. She’d walk Jinx through the fields and go home and then she’d think what to do next. She refolded the letter carefully and slotted it back in its envelope. She stared at her name, distorted by Angie’s rounded scrawl, and felt a quick shaft of anger. Quickly she tore the letter to shreds, which she thrust deep into the Brookers’ privet hedge. This badly scratched her hand, but she welcomed the pain. Only when she unclipped Jinx’s lead, by the field, did she notice the gathering beads of blood.
The Wincantons came in August as promised. Well, Oenone and her children did, but they were often busy with visitors and Beatrice felt uncomfortable about inviting herself up. Some days, though, she was asked to the house and went eagerly, trying to make herself believe that all was the same as it had always been. And it was – on the days when it was just Ed and Peter, Angie, Hetty and Bea again, and they went riding or swimming, or simply hung about the garden, squabbling about who cheated at croquet.
Angie and Deirdre, the large-boned girl who’d been tactless about Beatrice at the Christmas party, shared a birthday picnic on the beach. Beatrice indulged her new hobby, taking pictures with a camera she’d bought.
But there were times when she saw that her old relationship with the Wincantons had changed. One day she was foolish enough to call at the house without an invitation and found that a party of young people, three men and a girl, had arrived by car from London the evening before. Though Angie asked her to join them, the invitation was graceless and Beatrice quickly regretted accepting. Ed and Peter weren’t about and Angie treated her rather distantly. She found herself hanging around on the edge of the group, feeling gauche.
There was a single bright point. One of the men caught her admiring the motor car, which was dark green and sleek.
‘Is she easy to drive?’ Beatrice asked.
‘I’ll show you what to do, if you like,’ he said, opening the driver’s door. ‘Hop in and I’ll get her going.’
The moment when the car first rolled forward under her control was terrifying. She stalled immediately.
‘Left hand down,’ he cried, when they were off again. ‘Now straighten.’ They took off down the drive, and out into the lane, to the cheers of the others.
‘I say, you’re jolly good for a girl,’ one of the other men said, when they were safely back at Carlyon once more. Her spirits soared.
Still, she was glad when the visitors all left, though her hopes to have Angie to herself were quickly dashed. A few days later, it was Ed and Angie’s turn to go away to a houseparty and though Beatrice and Peter played some desultory games of tennis at the club, the atmosphere was gloomy.
Finally, near the end of August, came the longed-for letter from Rafe. She ran upstairs to read it alone.
Dear Bea,
I’m sorry I’ve been a shabby correspondent, and that we haven’t met for so long. I often think of you and St Florian. How are your honourable ps and my sainted aunt and uncle? It all seems another, faraway world. I’m billeted near Hyde Park now. It’s not what I would have chosen, a bit dull, but the life’s not too bad. I don’t see my people as much as they’d like. The old man’s home from India as well now. His regiment have found him a desk job here in London. I suppose something is going to happen sooner or later, that’s what everybody says, and then maybe things will liven up. I wish it would get on with it if it’s going to. It’s the waiting that’s bad for everybody.
Let me know if you come to London, and I’ll see if we can meet.
Yours as ever,
Rafe.
She read it several
times, repeating the Yours as ever, to herself, trying to squeeze meaning out of it.
Two weeks later, at the beginning of September, Rafe’s wish was granted. Hitler’s tanks rolled into Poland and the Allies delivered their ultimatum. Two long days passed and the world held its breath.
Sunday 3 September was a gloriously sunny day. Beatrice accompanied her mother to Mass, which Delphine had got into the habit of attending recently. They emerged as the clock on the Anglican church tower struck eleven, and were climbing the Jacob’s Ladder, when she glanced up ahead to see the alarming vision of Hugh Marlow prowling at the top, clearly agitated.
‘Hurry!’ he shouted to them. ‘For God’s sake, hurry up!’
‘What is it, Hugh?’ Delphine cried, but he didn’t reply, just stared wildly at the sky and gesticulated to them madly.
‘What’s the matter?’ Delphine panted as they reached the top.
‘Confound it, haven’t you heard? We’re at war. I’ve closed all the windows. I expect they’ll be here soon.’ He checked his watch and looked again at the horizon. Beatrice and Delphine looked, too. The sky was a deep, glorious empty blue, all the way to eternity.
A horrible mournful wail started up somewhere below in the town. A woman began screaming – a thin, passionless sound.
‘It’s the siren. Come on.’ He hustled them back to the house where he fussed about fitting their gas masks and they sat fearfully in the sitting room waiting for the bombs to drop. Instead, some fifteen minutes later, the all clear sounded. They waited twenty minutes more. No roar of plane engines, no explosions. Nothing happened.
‘Well, that’s it, Beatrice. You won’t be going back to school.’ Her father looked white with exhaustion, but triumphant, too. At last something was happening in his quiet, sequestered life.
In fact, she did go back, but only once it was apparent that the bombs weren’t coming any time soon. The next few days were a manic whirl of preparation. The Brookers lent their gardener to dig a hole for an Anderson shelter. Cook stationed buckets of water in every room – whether against gas attack or fire even she didn’t seem sure, but Jinx made a right mess drinking from them. Mrs Marlow began to stockpile tins and bottles in the garden shed and boiled up several preserving pans of blackberry and apple for jam.
A week later, two dozen evacuees arrived off the train from London. ‘We’re not having one,’ Hugh Marlow said, banging the marmalade pot down on the breakfast-table. ‘Not with my condition. There are plenty of others who can take one better than we can.’
‘Oh, Hugh,’ was all Delphine said, spreading her napkin with a loud flap. She wouldn’t look at him, and later, took him his coffee without speaking, banging the study door behind her. In the middle of the morning she went out. When she returned, she was holding the hand of a skinny five-year-old boy with a badly repaired hare lip. At the sight of Jinx the boy gave a terrified whimper and hid behind Mrs Marlow’s skirts. ‘This is Jamie,’ she told her husband and daughter defiantly. ‘He was the only one left. Someone had to take him, Hugh, and I know my duty.’
Beatrice gazed at Jamie, his thinness, his grimy city skin, in astonishment. But what was more astonishing was that her mother had openly gone against her father for the first time in their marriage.
Hugh Marlow merely shot his wife a look of scorching resentment and without a word marched into his study and closed the door.
That night Jamie wet the bed. Every morning after that, Delphine, with the expression of a martyr, came down the stairs with a bundle for the wash, Jamie creeping after her with a tear-stained face. After a fortnight, his mother, skinny and sharp-nosed, from whom no one had heard a word the whole time, pitched up without warning to fetch him home. Hugh Marlow had managed the whole time by ignoring the child entirely.
England grew tired of waiting for Hitler’s bombs, and normal life – of a sort – resumed. Shortly after Jamie left, a letter arrived announcing that Larchmont School would reopen. Beatrice, returning by train this time to conserve petrol, was conscious of being almost the only person carrying a gas mask. This was at her father’s insistence. It was the day she turned seventeen.
Chapter 12
In December 1939, near the end of term, Beatrice received a letter with a London postmark and in a hand she recognized at once as Oenone Wincanton’s. Pushing away her toast, she tore open the envelope. As she read she felt herself fill up with happiness.
Will you come and stay with us in Queen’s Gate for a few days before Christmas? the letter ran. I think it would do Angelina good to see you, and of course we’d all love the pleasure of your company. I wrote to your mother last week and received a reply this morning agreeing to the plan. I gather your aunt might accompany you to do a little shopping. Do say you’ll come!
Letters flew back and forth and all was quickly arranged. Then she wrote to Rafe.
I’m coming to London for a few days. Is there any chance of you getting away? Do telephone me at the Wincantons’ house. I’m sure they won’t mind. She dipped the pen in the inkwell, thought a moment, then added boldly, It would be so lovely to see you, then quickly signed it, Yours truly. She sneaked out to the postbox herself rather than leaving the envelope in the tray in the hall where the other girls might see it and tease her. Would he even receive it, let alone reply? She’d not heard from him for a while.
Her trunk was packed and sent ahead to Cornwall, but she felt a little depressed about the meagre items in her small London suitcase. The one evening gown she had with her – the splendid party dress being much too showy for weekends at her grandparents’ and therefore left in Cornwall – was very ordinary for London. Suppose they dined out or went to a show, what then?
Aunt Julia, being a woman of discernment, solved the problem. Sitting opposite Beatrice on the train up to London, she leant forward, eyes merry in her pretty, girlish face, and said: ‘I’d like to buy you something nice to wear. A little Christmas present, if you like.’
When they reached Paddington she took Beatrice straightaway to a perfectly lovely shop in Bond Street, all hedged about with sandbags, where they had remarkably little trouble finding Beatrice a form-fitting evening gown in pale brown silk-satin and a pair of white lace gloves. Flushed with triumph, they took a bus to Harrod’s, where they were delighted to find most of the usual Christmas fare – nuts, fruits, candy – if at quite a price. Aunt Julia took some time choosing dolls for her daughters and a model steam engine for her son, whilst Beatrice, with money from her allowance, bought pretty boxes of sweets to supplement the gifts she’d made for her family in sewing lessons.
It was her first proper visit to London, apart from to change trains at Paddington, and she was overawed by the hugeness of it. The air was cold, but clear. ‘It makes such a difference to everything, now no one can afford to drive,’ Julia remarked.
A maid who wasn’t Brown opened the door of the white Regency house with black railings in Queen’s Gate, which was the Wincantons’ London home. Beatrice turned and waved down to Aunt Julia in the cab. Julia blew her a kiss and the cab pulled away.
Beatrice found herself in a big, chilly, high-ceilinged hall, greeting Jacky the dog, who looked uncertain of himself, being a country bumpkin in this elegant urban environment. To the right, a graceful staircase curved up out of sight. As she handed over her case and her coat, she was disturbed to hear raised voices. It proved only the first indication that something here was wrong.
She hugged to herself the thought of Rafe, safe, familiar. She yearned for him to be in touch. ‘Nobody’s telephoned for me, have they?’ she asked the maid.
‘No, miss, I don’t think so,’ was the reply.
Just then, a door at the back of the hall flew open and Angelina stormed out, her normally serene features distorted with anger. This turned to surprise at the sight of Beatrice, who, in turn, stared back, amazed.
‘I’d no idea you were here,’ Angelina murmured, coming forward.
‘Only just,’ Beatrice replied shyly. They p
ressed cheeks quickly. Angie smelled of face powder and expensive scent. How grown up she looks, Beatrice thought, with her scarlet lipstick and her hair waved like that. She had felt smart in her neat navy day dress and simple white clutchbag, but next to Angie she felt a plain jane.
‘When did I see you last?’ Angie was asking. ‘Simply ages ago, anyway.’
Beatrice was hurt by this vagueness. ‘August, of course. At Carlyon. I say, do you remember that picnic you and Deirdre had and how awful we all felt afterwards?’
‘Did we? What happened?’
‘Why, yes,’ Beatrice said in puzzlement. Was Angie doing this on purpose? ‘On your birthday. There was something wrong with the fishpaste sandwiches and we were all dreadfully ill.’
‘Oh, I do remember now. It seems a lifetime ago – before the war. Did you see Deirdre in Country Life? I can’t believe with her homely looks she’s the first of us debs to get engaged.’ She took Beatrice’s arm. ‘Come and see Mummy.’ Her voice lowered suddenly. ‘You won’t believe it, but she’s only just told me that you were coming. I’m simply furious with her. She says she forgot. Forgot? No, it’s quite deliberate. She won’t leave me alone.’
Beatrice followed her, feeling close to tears. Why hadn’t Mrs Wincanton told Angie she was coming? And oh, the idea plunged her into misery – was that what they’d been quarrelling about? Her coming to stay?
The odd feeling of being a pawn in some unknowable game did not leave her.
‘Beatrice!’ Mrs Wincanton was sitting at a huge dining-room table, surrounded by cardboard boxes of all sizes and in various states of disembowelment. As she rose to greet Beatrice, a large ball of string rolled from the table onto the floor near Angie. Angie stood and watched it, arms folded, expression petulant. Beatrice stepped over, picked it up and passed it to Mrs Wincanton, feeling embarrassed by Angie’s behaviour.
