A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘The usual kind of story. The train packed up for twenty minutes just before Paddington, then when I finally got on a bus it couldn’t get past Bayswater because of a bomb.’

  She clung to him, suddenly desperate not to let him go. ‘It’s all right,’ he soothed. ‘It’s all right, darling girl. I’m here now.’

  Without letting go of her hand, he pulled out a chair and sat down, then, when a waiter came, set about ordering. As usual, when the food came he ate hungrily, while she hardly noticed what she was eating. Instead she tried to imprint the sight of him on her memory, his broad shoulders, his handsome pointed face, the light glinting off his dark hair, still damp from outside. There was always that air of stillness about him, an aloneness, as though he didn’t register being in a crowd. She was so glad to see him, but could not shake off that feeling of apprehension.

  ‘How are your parents?’

  ‘They’re very well, thank you,’ he told her. ‘And horribly brave about me going away. When I said goodbye I could see my mother had been crying, but I knew she wouldn’t want me to mention it.’ He stared at his food, unseeing for a moment, then said, ‘They’ve two little urchins to stay, sent down from Liverpool. My mother looks tired, though, and she’s worried enough about Clive . . .’

  ‘He’s your eldest brother? The pilot?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I suppose the urchins must take her mind off things.’

  ‘Oh yes. They’re bright lads. Common, of course, and one can’t understand a word they say. They get up to tremendous mischief. My father had to whip them for throwing eggs in the barn.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t suppose they’d ever seen hens before.’ He pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette. There was something on his mind, she sensed.

  ‘When do you go?’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘We embark at Portsmouth tomorrow sixteen hundred. I don’t suppose you’d be able . . .’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘Tonight is all we have,’ she said, and again he felt for her hand. She was annoyed to feel tears prickle and looked away, blinking furiously. ‘Where are you going? I don’t suppose you can say.’

  ‘The rumour is it’s desert khaki, that’s all I know. Should be a deal warmer than here!’ She didn’t smile at his joke and he added weakly, ‘Cheer up!’

  They were both silent for a moment, and she found herself once more scanning the dancers below. It was getting very busy now, and the air swirled with smoke and heat and heady music. She remembered the man she’d glimpsed earlier, the man with the bright gold hair who looked like Rafe, but she couldn’t see him now.

  She glanced up to see Guy was studying her, an awkward expression on his face. He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a small packet, which he opened to reveal a delicate ring with a stone that shimmered sapphire blue.

  ‘Oh, Guy,’ she said, staring at it. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘It’s only paste, I’m afraid. I’ll get you something better when I can.’

  ‘I don’t mind, really I don’t.’ She turned the box so that light from the chandeliers flashed off the stone, and experienced a rush of love and relief.

  ‘You know what I’m saying, my darling, don’t you?’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘We can’t know what will happen, but I’d like to think that you’re here, waiting for me. We’ve known each other such a short time, I understand that, but I . . . I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.’

  She stared at the ring, and looked into his dear, kind face. She could be happy with Guy, she saw that. It was as though a light poured down into her mind, illuminating pictures of their future together. After the war. A house surrounded by fields, children as mischievous as the evacuee urchins. Was that to be hers? Here, in the heat and urgency of this moment, the scent of desire was spiced with the fear of death. There was no chance for reflection, no time for careful thought. There would be waiting enough when he was away, time to consider.

  ‘Oh yes, Guy,’ she breathed and allowed him to push the ring onto her finger, where it sat quite snug.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘You’ve made me so happy.’ And, not minding where he was, he pulled her suddenly into a passionate kiss. A group of soldiers on the next table clapped and whistled, until they pulled apart laughing.

  ‘My dear girl. I suppose I ought to speak to your father,’ he said. ‘I wish I’d met your parents. What do you think he’ll say?’

  ‘Let me write to him and tell him all about you,’ she replied, smiling gently. ‘Then we can visit them together, when you’re home.’ At least Guy’s family background was one her father would recognize. And her mother? Well, maybe once she’d had grand hopes of their connections with the Wincantons, but lately Delphine was so focused on her husband and her worry about her family in France, Beatrice imagined she’d forgotten such petty concerns long ago.

  ‘You must write to me every week,’ Guy said. ‘I want to know exactly what you’re doing, so I can picture you. Oh, and I must have a photograph. It’s only fair since I’ve given you one of me.’

  ‘I brought one with me,’ she said, and searched in her bag. It was the portrait they’d taken of her when she joined up; she didn’t like it much. ‘The others I have are of before the war and I look like a child.’

  ‘You certainly don’t now,’ he said, smiling meaningfully.

  ‘Did you tell your parents about me?’ she asked.

  This question wasn’t answered because it was then they were interrupted. ‘Beatrice, there you are!’ It was Judy making her way between the tables with her usual talent for disturbance, dragging Dougie by the hand. ‘Hello, Guy, darling. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

  ‘I hope we’re not intruding,’ Dougie said, seeing their faces, ‘but you did say you might be here, Guy, and we took that as an invitation. Heavens, it’s crowded tonight.’ He addressed the soldiers on the next table. ‘Are you chaps needing all those chairs?’

  Whilst he sorted out seats, eagle-eyed Judy saw the ring and pounced with a gasp of delight. ‘Dougie, look, he’s only gone and done it!’

  Dougie swung round. ‘Guy, my dear boy, congratulations. And Beatrice, how wonderful. It couldn’t happen to a nicer pair,’ he cried, pumping Guy’s hand and kissing Beatrice. Judy sent him off to find the manager and in due course he returned with a dusty bottle of champagne and a clutch of glasses.

  Everyone was staring. The group of soldiers behind broke into a cats’ chorus of ‘For they are jolly good fellows,’ which clashed badly with ‘Oh Johnny’, being struck up by the band below and Judy, her eyes gleaming with fun and bubbly, giggled and wept by turns. Meanwhile Beatrice and Guy sat quietly smiling, embarrassed at the fuss, holding hands under the table.

  Had she ever felt so happy? A picture came to Beatrice’s mind. That hot summer’s day in the front porch at home, the morning before Sturton’s tragedy, when she’d felt so rapturous. This, too, was happiness, yes it was, but a different kind – more steady, grown-up, she supposed.

  The soldiers returned to their beers and Judy and Dougie started an amiable squabble about money Judy had apparently lent him earlier to pay for supper. After a while they got up to dance. Guy excused himself and Beatrice sat alone in her bubble of happiness. She watched Judy and Dougie descend the stairs and join the dancers, wishing they could share the same happiness. It was too crowded for them to move about much, but that didn’t cramp Judy’s style. Beatrice laughed to see the fiery little red-clad figure spinning Dougie about, Dougie having to apologize to everyone they bumped into, their friendly smiles winning immediate forgiveness.

  Then she saw again the man with the fair hair. The bubble of contentment burst. She knew him now, for certain. But it couldn’t be him, it absolutely couldn’t be; he was missing somewhere in France. He was dancing with a blonde woman in a Wrens uniform, a woman who looked horribly familiar. As she stared, waiting to be certain, the woman threw back her head in l
aughter.

  Beatrice rose to her feet and mouthed, ‘Angie!’ It was Angelina, and she was dancing with . . .

  ‘Rafe . . .’ she whispered.

  Then came a great crashing sound, and her world exploded in a roar of pain and terror.

  Chapter 17

  The blast from the bomb had blown her completely across the gallery to the wall against which she sat, surrounded by a tangle of furniture, rubble and glinting glass. She was fighting to breathe; then, with a great whoop her lungs filled with air – not air as she knew it, fresh and life-giving – instead hot and seering and noxious. She hurt all over, but seemed to be in one piece. Looking up, she saw a great hole in the roof, and beyond, the night sky, coruscating with light. She moved her left hand to push herself up, but felt a sharp pain as something pierced it, and snatched it back. Somehow she struggled to her feet and glass cracked under her feet as she started to work her way through the chaos towards the one surviving staircase.

  She passed the edge of the gallery with its twisted railing and looked down. Where the dance-floor had been was now a pile of rubble. Already dark figures with torches moved through the devastation, searching and calling over the screaming. Now she started to remember.

  ‘Guy.’ Her lips formed his name. Which way had he gone?

  She heard a groan, felt a hand grasp her ankle. ‘Help me,’ a man said. Not Guy, but one of the soldiers who’d serenaded them earlier. She heaved at the table that pinned him down and he crawled out, then both did their best to help any others they could make out in the dim light. One woman lay still, her face gleaming pale, her eyes glassy, forever looking upwards. Beatrice had seen that look too many times, out on the streets. She closed the woman’s eyelids and passed on by.

  The gallery glowed suddenly with soft light. ‘Anyone up here?’ Two wardens had climbed the staircase and began to guide people down. ‘Slowly now as you go, miss,’ one said. ‘No need to panic now, nice and easy.’ As if in answer, the sound of hysterical sobbing started up somewhere nearby. Beatrice made her way down the stairs, her limbs shaking.

  ‘Bea, thank God.’ Guy was at the bottom, having stumbled through the mess to meet her. She fell the last couple of steps and he caught her, grasping her tightly. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’

  ‘No,’ she said, remembering the others. The vision came to her of Rafe, and Angie, her head thrown back in laughter.

  ‘Judy, Dougie,’ Guy said. They stared around.

  Bodies and debris lay everywhere, the little flames from searchers’ cigarette lighters like wake lights all around. A pale torchbeam fell across the scene and for a second Beatrice caught a glimpse of red halfway across the room. Judy’s dress. ‘Oh no, Guy,’ she gasped, and began to stagger over to it, though glass and splintered wood tore at her legs. Someone else had got there first.

  The man was stooped over Judy’s body. Beatrice saw with horror that he had Judy’s little clutch bag.

  ‘Get away from her!’ she shrieked, grabbing at the bag, but the man snatched it away and scrambled ratlike into the shadows. She bent and clawed through the rubbish to uncover Judy’s face, and as Guy’s little lighter sought it out, screamed in horror, for half Judy’s head was sheared away. She turned and pressed her face into Guy’s chest.

  ‘Beatrice,’ he said. ‘Calm down. We must get out.’

  But then they saw Dougie, the front of his jacket sodden with blood. She crouched down and felt for his pulse. It fluttered madly like a trapped moth, and even as Guy shouted to a pair of men carrying a stretcher, it stilled. ‘Dougie!’ she whispered, uselessly. The stretcher-bearers veered away.

  ‘Beatrice, come on,’ Guy ordered.

  Panic fought in her chest. Get a grip, she told herself fiercely. She’d seen scenes like this so many times in the Blitz, had cursed the German pilots and the puppet-master who pulled their strings, but never before had the bombs hurt anyone she knew; never had she felt it was personal.

  She remembered something else. Rafe and Angelina were here somewhere. She’d seen them, hadn’t she? Or had that brief moment of recognition been something she’d dreamt whilst unconscious?

  Again Guy urged her to leave.

  ‘Wait.’ Quickly she grasped at a shred of material, part of a curtain, maybe, laid it over Judy’s face and whispered goodbye. It was all she could do. She was shaking with the shock of it all, but now Guy was taking charge, pulling her away.

  As they passed near the back of the room by the staircase she’d just come down, she saw them finally in the dim light. A fair-haired man, bending over a woman lying in the rubble. He called to them.

  ‘Help me, for God’s sake!’ At that second a ray of light caught his face.

  Beatrice breathed in sharply. ‘Rafe,’ she whispered. She pulled Guy over towards them.

  It was definitely a woman he was tending. Her uniform was ripped and dusty.

  ‘Angie?’ Beatrice said, kneeling down. ‘Rafe, is she all right?’

  He twisted his head to look at her, frowning.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. It wasn’t Rafe at all.

  ‘She’s breathing all right,’ he told her. ‘Angie, Angie, darling, it’s Gerald. Can you hear me?’

  Angelina was coming to now. She raised one arm to her face and began to shake with silent sobs.

  Angie,’ Beatrice said, ‘it’s Bea. Don’t worry, dear, we’ll get you out of here.’ She was checking her for injury as she’d been trained, but all the time her mind was trying to take in the man who wasn’t Rafe, but Rafe’s half-brother Gerald. He was bigger than Rafe, broader, somehow, and though he had the same fair hair, she thought it must grow differently, not pushed up at the front like Rafe’s. Angie, fully awake now, sat up, then leant over suddenly and retched.

  ‘Oh God, Angie,’ Gerald said. ‘Here.’ He felt in his pockets for a handkerchief and wiped her mouth. ‘Come on, I’ll help you up. Let’s get you safely out.’

  ‘My head,’ she said, as he lifted her to her feet. ‘Killing me. Bit groggy.’

  The stretcher team had arrived now, but Gerald waved them away, and something about the gesture reminded Bea of Rafe.

  Guy was there, and together the two men eased Angie onto a chair made of their arms. A warden went ahead to pick out a route.

  All dead, poor buggers,’ she heard someone say as they passed. She tried not to look at the splashes of dark liquid tracking up the steps. Halfway up, a silk handbag lay in a glistening black puddle.

  The square was a mad chaos of people and skewed vehicles, doors thrown open. What was most awful was the dark and the silence in which they worked. Along the pavement in the shadows lay a long row of bodies, some barely clothed. A man in a torn dinner jacket was being loaded into an ambulance. A very young girl in a dancing dress knelt grieving in the street whilst a warden tried to comfort her. Gerald and Guy sat Angie on an upturned crate, where she was briefly examined by a woman in a nurse’s uniform who told her there was nothing badly wrong with her, she should just go home. Gerald caught the blanket someone flung to him and wrapped it round her shoulders while Guy tried to find a taxi. There were none for ages and ages, and then they were lucky.

  As he handed Angie into the cab, Gerald said to Bea, ‘You called me Rafe in there. You’re Beatrice. Rafe used to speak of you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your friend is Captain . . .’

  ‘Hurlingham,’ said Guy. ‘Guy Hurlingham.’

  ‘This is a pretty poor show,’ Gerald said to Guy by way of greeting. ‘I’ll get Miss Wincanton home. Don’t feel you two need to come.’

  ‘No, I’d like to come,’ Beatrice insisted. ‘I must see that she’s all right.’

  ‘Bea, perhaps we should call it a night,’ Guy said. ‘You must go if you want, but I should only be in the way.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Beatrice said, sticking out her lower lip. ‘I need you with me.’

  ‘What are we doing, gents?’ the taxi driver asked.

  ‘Queen’s
Gate,’ Gerald said briskly.

  They all squashed into the taxi, Guy and Beatrice opposite Angie and Gerald. Angie looked as though she was about to be sick again but fortunately wasn’t.

  As they moved off, Gerald said to Beatrice, ‘He’s often talked of you, my poor brother. I wonder all the time how he is. We haven’t had any news for months.’

  He smiled at her, but it was a more cautious smile than Rafe’s ever were. She lifted her hand and examined her ring. How strange to see it on her finger.

  Angie recovered sufficiently to take notice. ‘Bea,’ she whispered. ‘That’s pretty. Does that mean . . . ?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bea replied.

  ‘Oh, I’m so pleased for you, darling,’ Angie said, making to lean forward to embrace Bea. Instead she sank back, clutching the side of her head. ‘I must learn not to do that,’ she said.

  Beatrice sat back and closed her eyes, then as her head swam, regretted it. Her ears still rang from the explosion and bits of her ached. She couldn’t tell what she looked like, but if the others were anything to go by, dusty and dishevelled. Not that she cared. The image of Judy lying in the rubble rushed into her head and she gasped and felt herself start to shake. Guy, beside her, put his arm round her. He must be feeling much the same. She turned her head into his shoulder and he held her tight. All of a sudden she felt warm and safe, and then came a selfish rush of thankfulness that she was alive.

  When they reached the house in Queen’s Gate, Mrs Wincanton came downstairs in her dressing-gown to answer the door, and when she saw her daughter, clothes torn to shreds, hair matted with blood, she screamed. ‘My God! What’s happened to you?’

  Angie pitched forward into her mother’s arms.

  It was Gerald who carried her up to her bedroom. Beatrice, following, helped Peggy the maid clean Angie up and get her into bed while Oenone could be heard down in the hall trying to get through to the doctor on the telephone.

  Dr Strumpshaw duly came and did various tests before declaring Angie to be slightly concussed from a nasty crack on the head, and saying that she should be watched, though he didn’t think any serious damage had been done. By this time, however, Mrs Wincanton had wound herself up into a dreadful state. The thought of losing her elder daughter as well as her son seemed to her a real possibility, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she was calmed down and made to go to bed with a sedative.