A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  ‘I felt sorry for you with Dally.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I wanted to say something.’

  ‘You’d have got into trouble yourself.’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But it was so . . . unnecessary.’

  ‘I’ll survive,’ she said. ‘Do let’s talk about something else. Where is it you live?’

  ‘I stop with my aunt, out at Micklehurst,’ he told her, naming a village a couple of miles away. ‘Coventry’s home, though.’

  ‘Coventry. Where did you learn to ride then?’

  ‘My mother’s father owned a farm near Micklehurst and my sister and I often stayed with him and rode his horses.’

  Slowly, she unwound his story. His father was a canon at Coventry Cathedral. Stuart had intended to go to Cambridge to study law, but then war came and he’d joined the Army instead. Three months into training and he’d been stood down with suspected tuberculosis. So here he was, ‘in limbo’ as he put it, neither discharged from the Army nor able to take an active part.

  ‘Several months’ bedrest, then they decided working here would be best for me. Healthy country living. Can’t say it’s what I signed up for. Not when the country’s in such a hole. You know, you’re the best thing that’s happened here so far.’

  He was nice, Beatrice thought, and she enjoyed the attention, but when they reached Lavender Cottage and Stuart asked, ‘I say, you wouldn’t come out with me sometime?’ she felt a dragging reluctance. ‘There’s a dance at our village hall next Saturday.’ He looked so pleading that in the end she said yes.

  She and Miss Warrender listened to the news after dinner that evening. It was all about the planes battling high in the skies for Britain’s very soul. Ed might be in one of them, but she hoped he wasn’t. Always at the back of her mind she wondered if Rafe was all right. Nobody had heard anything more, according to Angelina’s last letter, in which she had also told Beatrice that she was thinking of joining the Wrens.

  Miss Warrender was sewing some shapeless garment out of a piece of summer curtain. ‘He seems a pleasant young man,’ was her comment on Stuart, when Beatrice told her about the dance, ‘but I must insist on your returning by eleven. Your parents would be anxious.’

  Beatrice knew Miss Warrender was merely doing her duty, but she was already beginning to feel restless here in the back of beyond. It had suited her needs to come nearly two months ago, but now she was starting to ask herself where it was all leading.

  She did go dancing with Stuart. Miss Warrender helped her shorten one of her long dresses and lent her a bicycle, a monster of a machine with a squeaky back wheel that announced her presence as she passed through woods and farmlands to meet him. The hall was packed with people from miles around, all drinking and dancing, laughing and falling in love. ‘No one would think there was a war on,’ Stuart said to a perspiring young sailor who commented on the crush. ‘It’s because there’s a war on, mate,’ the other called back. ‘We’ll show them!’ He punched the air. Them, of course, meaning the Germans, now daily expected to swarm up England’s white cliffs with knives between their teeth.

  August was nearly gone and the lanes were strewn with dusty straw from harvesting. Sunny the grey pony, Pip and Wilfred the draught horses, had departed several weeks before. It twisted her heart to say goodbye. Beatrice had accompanied their trailer to the station and urged them up a ramp into a goods carriage. ‘Liverpool, they’re going,’ the guard had told her, as he fastened the doors. She turned away with a sigh. The docks then, and abroad to who knows where.

  Sarah, too, had gone. In the middle of August, Captain Browning told her that a man calling himself her husband had come enquiring for her; at this news, her sallow skin had paled. The next day she didn’t show up for work. Tessa was sent to her lodgings to find out where she was, only to be told that she’d fled in the night, a month’s rent owing.

  Two other women arrived at the depot, local women Tessa was at ease with and who took Sergeant Dally in their capable stride. Beatrice, however, was still given the more difficult horses to deal with.

  ‘Take it as a compliment,’ Stuart advised. ‘Dally thinks Bert’s ready to move on.’

  And, indeed, the scarred charger would now wait quietly for the wagon to be attached, and pull it smartly round the field. It was all down to her patient coaxing, but she didn’t think Dally was impressed.

  Matters were growing tense between her and Stuart, too. She kept him at a distance and hated seeing the desperation in his eyes when she finally had to say, ‘I’m too young for anything serious,’ and turn her face away when he tried to kiss her. She liked him, but it was Rafe who filled her thoughts.

  And then one evening when she returned to Miss Warrender’s there was a letter waiting from Angelina. For some reason she felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Not Rafe, she prayed, please not Rafe. She took it out into the garden and sat on a seat under an apple tree. Moony came and gently butted her knees.

  It wasn’t Rafe, but Ed. We’ve had the most dreadful news, Angie had written. Mummy thinks you might not have heard. He’s been killed. His plane was shot down two weeks ago. Naturally we’re all distraught.

  For a moment she could take in no more. Closing her eyes, she allowed her mind to fill with images of Ed, as a glorious boy running into the sea, handsome and poised at the Christmas party, his head thrown back laughing. A golden lad. The delight of his parents, the firstborn, sacrificed for King and Country. She started to cry and it was a while before she could return to the letter.

  His commander wrote to Daddy, a lovely letter. It seems he’d been flying back to base after a difficult but successful mission. It was a stray enemy plane that got a lucky strike. Lucky for them, that is. His co-pilot managed to bail out, but Ed went down.

  ‘Are you all right out there?’ Miss Warrender called from the kitchen door. When she saw Beatrice’s face she came instantly to find out what was the matter. ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said when Beatrice told her, and comforted her with tea and brandy.

  Later Beatrice told her, ‘I must go to London. I can’t stay here. You’ve been so kind, but there’s got to be something more I can do.’

  Miss Warrender regarded her with a wistful expression. ‘I wish you would stay, dear, but I’m not surprised you’re restless – a bright young girl like you.’

  ‘I’ve learned so much here, Miss Warrender.’ Looking back now over the last eight weeks, Beatrice could see how the experience had restored her, made her grow up. She’d done something on her own initiative far away from family and friends, and that was good – but she’d never be happy working for someone like Sergeant Dally, and everywhere she went she seemed to feel Stuart’s pleading eyes on her. She knew he was good and kind, but she still thought first of Rafe.

  ‘Can you drive?’ Miss Warrender asked suddenly.

  ‘Um, yes,’ Beatrice replied. She remembered the previous summer at Carlyon, the young man who had taken her out in his sleek green motor car. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ Miss Warrender said. ‘It’s only a suggestion, but I could write to my old friend Gamwell, if you like. I’m sure the FANY would be pleased to have a girl of your quality.’

  Chapter 15

  St Florian, 2011

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but what was the . . . er . . . fanny?’ Lucy asked, thinking the word sounded a little embarrassing.

  ‘Is not was,’ Beatrice replied proudly. ‘The FANY Corps still exist, you know. We were considered the classiest of the women’s uniformed services. FANY stands for First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, but no one ever called us that. They were originally set up in 1907 as a first-aid link between front-line troops and the field hospitals, and were very active in the First World War. Young women of independent spirit like Catherine Warrender, who wanted to “do something to help”, might become FANYs and often found themselves in France or Belgium working in conditions of extreme danger.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard of them before,’ Luc
y said. ‘Is it part of the Army?’

  ‘It was for a while during the last war. The organization has always had a fierce sense of its own identity, which for me was part of its appeal. The traditional armed forces were suspicious of us. They thought we were a bunch of mavericks, because we didn’t have defined duties. It was considered rather shocking, too, that we were allowed to carry firearms, which the other women’s services weren’t – most unladylike, you see. And the organization was quite selective. They didn’t take just anyone.’

  ‘But you got accepted.’

  ‘I did, thanks to Miss Warrender and my Headmistress’s smashing references. The FANY was under the umbrella of the ATS by then, the Auxiliary Territorial Service – the more properly established women’s branch of the Army – but FANYs still held onto their distinctive identity and leadership and we were jolly proud of that, I can tell you. You never knew what you might end up doing as a FANY – driving VIPs about or being sent to Egypt to help with Intelligence, which is what happened to my friend Mary. We were very flexible.’

  ‘What did you end up doing?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a moment. But before I started, an extraordinary piece of news came through. I had letters from both Angie and my mother about it. Rafe had been tracked down in an Oflag – an officers’ prisoner-of-war camp – in Bavaria. Everybody felt extraordinarily relieved that he was alive and, according to Red Cross reports, in good health, but we knew conditions must be dreadful.’

  ‘What had happened to him? How had he got there, I mean?’ Lucy asked.

  Here Beatrice put up her hand. ‘All in good time, dear.’

  She sat back and closed her eyes and Lucy said, ‘Are you all right?’

  The old lady’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Of course I am.’ The hands of the little carriage clock had reached three o’clock. She said, ‘I might take a short nap now, but would you be free to come back this evening? Half past six perhaps. Mrs P. said she’d leave enough for both of us for supper.’

  Today it seemed natural for Lucy to visit Carlyon, following the path up the cliff . It dipped down when it passed the beach and rose steeply again on the other side. Soon she was high above St Florian. Another path led right, inland. This must have been the route Beatrice took so often. It skirted fields, then twisted round to meet the wall, then she came to the lane and eventually to the gates of Carlyon itself.

  It struck her as odd now, that the house had been left in its tumbledown state for so many years. Perhaps Beatrice would know who owned it now, and why the house hadn’t been cleared or rebuilt. Or maybe Simon at the museum could tell her.

  This time it was different, wandering through the ruins, knowing now about her grandmother Angelina’s family; the different personalities, the things that had happened in these rooms. Here, she imagined, standing in a long narrow room, to the front, was the dining room, here the hall, where her grandmother had first met Rafe. She liked the drawing room best. She went once more to inspect the charred remains of the wooden mantelpiece, the carved design of fruit and flowers. The section where the bee must have been was there no longer, but she could imagine where it was, and the young Beatrice finding it. The Latin motto was unreadable, too. The glories of the Wincanton family, such as they had ever been, had passed.

  She walked back to the clifftop and stood for a moment looking out across the water, studying the dots that were little boats. One of them might be Anthony’s. That one, perhaps, with the blue-ish tinge. If it was, could he see her? She waved, just in case, but it was too far away to see if anyone waved back.

  She was about to walk back to St Florian and the hotel when she remembered something. Directly below must be the little beach that would be cut off by the high tide. Perhaps she could find the secret steps. When she walked further along the cliff, she found a gouge in the clifftop that seemed to be the start of a path. Stepping down into it, she could see that a path did indeed exist, set between rocks and winding down out of sight. She followed it a little way, feeling perfectly secure – until she came to a sharp bend and made the mistake of peeping over the edge. The view fell away to the beach, thirty feet below, and her stomach lurched with fear. She sat back against the cliff wall and stared at the sky to steady herself, but the puffs of cloud moving so fast overhead made her feel dizzy and she had to close her eyes.

  After a minute or so, she felt strong enough to return to the clifftop and set off back to St Florian.

  ‘I don’t know who owns Carlyon,’ Beatrice said, ‘or why no one has ever built on the site. Perhaps your Aunt Hetty would know.’ It was a cool evening and she and Lucy were sitting before the fire with glasses of pale sherry.

  ‘I haven’t seen her for years,’ Lucy said. Whether it was the effects of the sherry or the atmosphere of the room, she felt curiously cut loose from her normal life. ‘I’m not even sure where she lives.’

  ‘Not very far from here, actually. As I say, she wrote to me about Tom. The address on the letter was Saint Agnes. That’s up on the north coast.’

  ‘I’d no idea,’ Lucy said, surprised. ‘We never saw much of Hetty. Dad and she weren’t particularly close. I don’t really know a lot about her – she didn’t marry or anything, did she?’

  ‘No, I never heard that she even got close. Not the sort, perhaps. She worked as a publisher’s copy-editor for many years. Was rather good at it, I understand. She loved Cornwall. That must be why she returned here.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Not for ages. Angelina’s funeral . . . and before that? I can’t remember. Hetty sees me as the enemy, I think. I was surprised when she wrote to tell me about Tom. I wonder,’ Beatrice said, as though to herself, ‘if her intention in writing was to be cruel.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Lucy asked.

  Beatrice, sunk in thought, didn’t answer, but her ringed hand tapped on her glass. She was cast in a pensive mood for the rest of the evening, and Lucy tried not to intrude. At the same time she was touched by how pleased Beatrice seemed to be that she was there, as they ate their simple meal together. She asked Lucy about her work and about her schooldays.

  ‘I’ve never met your mother,’ Beatrice said, ‘though I did see some very attractive seascapes by her in a gallery in Norfolk once, a number of years ago. Does she still paint?’

  Lucy explained about Gabriella’s work and her new life; her bewilderment concerning Tom leaving her.

  ‘I still can’t understand what went wrong,’ she said. ‘He and Mum had always been happy together, I’d thought. They’d had difficult times, but I never thought they’d split up. Mum used to get very annoyed when Dad had one of his low periods. It frightened her that he’d never explain what he felt about things, but then Mum can get a bit over-anxious at times. He definitely changed after Granny’s death, but I don’t know why.’

  ‘Maybe when I’ve finished my story you’ll understand a little more,’ Beatrice said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I need to explain it all to you properly or it won’t make sense.’

  When Lucy left, promising to visit the next day, it was nearly dark. Returning to the hotel she looked in the bar for Anthony, but he wasn’t there and she was disappointed. When she went to bed, she lay awake for a long while, her thoughts swirling in her mind. Tomorrow was Wednesday, halfway through the week she’d given herself here. She was completely caught up in Beatrice’s story, but what did she mean when she said Lucy would understand more? This quest had started with Rafe. She was beginning to suspect that it was actually all about her father, Tom.

  Chapter 16

  London, November 1940

  Beatrice placed the mug on the counter. The old man took it carefully, warming his hands on it and taking noisy sips of tea. His fingers poked through worn gloves, the nails ridged and rimed with dirt. ‘Brass monkey weather tonight,’ he remarked, as though he were passing the time of an ordinary evening. ‘Hope it freezes the balls off Jerry.’

  The air-ra
id sirens began to howl once more, great mournful beasts in a primeval landscape.

  ‘Take cover, hurry up,’ a warden was shouting. A young woman with a toddler struggling under one arm and clasping a large bundle with the other, stumbled out of the smoky night. She passed the mobile canteen, and before she vanished through the gateway that led to the shelter, Beatrice saw, with a prick of pity, that tears were pouring down her cheeks. Beatrice hoped someone inside would help her.

  ‘Well, I’ll be off, my darlin’,’ said the old man, replacing the mug on the counter. He nodded his thanks and made his way with tortuous slowness towards the shelter.

  Three blasts of a hooter split the night. Danger overhead. Next came a sinister drone of engines. Beatrice was always comforted when the anti-aircraft guns started up, though they didn’t block out the evil sound of the approaching enemy planes. ‘Let’s get out of here, Mary,’ she shouted to her companion.

  As with icy hands she worked the mechanism to lower the serving-hatch, she watched the beams of light now sweeping the sky, picking out the dismal silhouettes of broken buildings all around.

  ‘Hurry,’ Mary said, slamming a tin of biscuits into a cupboard, and they ran across the cobblestones to the massive warehouse beyond like two mice, and entered through a small door in its flank. They found themselves in what Beatrice privately called the pit of hell, but which many of its thousands of occupants probably thought of as home.

  Beatrice had been driving the canteen round the public air-raid shelters during the Blitz every third night for the previous month, since she’d finished a short period of training for the FANY. There were daytime duties, too, sometimes with the canteen, at other times driving a small ambulance taking patients to and from the First Aid Post where she was based.

  She’d taken cover in the Whitechapel warehouse, an unofficial shelter, a number of times now, but she could never get used to its hollow vastness, nor, once her eyes grew used to the gloom, the awe-inspiring sight of the thousands of people quietly waiting in its belly, listening to the crump of the bombs, the cracks and crashes of disintegrating buildings outside. In the low light she could see them now, sprawled amongst their possessions on blankets and mattresses, beneath the lines of arches that stretched in wave after wave beyond her vision. A couple of months ago, out in the Leicestershire countryside, she’d never have been able to picture something like this in her wildest imagination. Already, at eight in the evening, some were asleep. Others passed the time knitting or reading, or simply staring at nothing. A handful of the younger people were playing cards and chatting quietly, but if their games got too loud there was always some angry voice to shush them.