A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  They’d talked in his native language as she drove. He was from the Ardennes, she discovered; his family’s village had been one of the first to be overtaken by the German forces as they pushed their way into France and he’d only just managed to escape.

  When they stopped in traffic, she fumbled in her pocket for the tiny strip of paper, and passed it to him, saying, ‘Excuse me, but may I ask what you think of this letter.’ She told him how she’d got it.

  The officer found his spectacles and frowned as he worked out the tiny writing. ‘You say this is from your cousin?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Beatrice replied.

  ‘Well, I am most sorry about the news it contains. Your grandfather was killed.’

  ‘For stockpiling food, concealing it from the authorities. But my cousin says it was a misunderstanding.’

  The officer’s bloodhound eyes met hers in the driving mirror. He looked sadder than ever as he passed back the letter. ‘I am indeed sorry, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘But this kind of story is why I am here. This struggle belongs to us all. There is no mercy in Nazi justice, no room for doubt. This is why those who resist are in such danger.’

  ‘But would they have no pity? He was a very old man. Old and ill.’

  The officer leaned back, uttering an oath. ‘This is why we resist,’ he said fiercely. ‘For all the grandfathers. Please convey my condolences to your mother. Tell her to thank God she has you bravely doing your part here.’

  ‘A little, pathetic part,’ she said angrily.

  ‘Add up all the little parts . . .’ he made a broad gesture with his hands ‘. . . and we will win this war. Always remember that. Do your best and believe.’

  Remember . . . Beatrice had remembered. She’d kept that little letter and had it still, at the age of eighty-eight. For years, memories were all that she’d had, and some of those she wished she could forget.

  Her gaze fell on the small pile of laundry that Lucy had rescued from the line and folded. She was a lovely girl, Lucy; Beatrice was becoming very fond of her. She was surprised at her shrewdness, too. She’d thought that in telling Lucy her story it was she, Beatrice, who was enlightening Lucy. Instead, some of the things Lucy said made Beatrice think. That business about looking at events from Angie’s point of view. She’d never really thought about it before, didn’t want to. She’d always thought her own version the only one.

  She stood, scooped up the pile of washing and slowly made her way with it upstairs.

  Lucy walked down the steps to the harbour, where she sat in the window of a quiet café and ordered hot chocolate. She sprinkled some bits of marshmallow on top and watched them settle into the foam. She was thinking about everything that Beatrice had just told her, and realizing that she hadn’t properly considered before what her grandparents’ generation had endured in the war. She thought of Beatrice being alone, frightened and pregnant. A feeling of disquiet was stirring in her about the way the story was unfolding.

  She looked up to see Anthony striding past, his holdall hefted on his shoulder. Forgetting her thoughts, she knocked eagerly on the glass. When he saw her, he ducked through the low doorway of the café.

  ‘Hello. You again!’ he said.

  ‘Were you coming or going?’ Lucy said, pushing away her cup.

  ‘Going. I thought I could get out on the water for a couple of hours. Like to join me?’

  The sea was choppier than last time, and there was a biting wind out on the bay. But it made her feel exhilarated, alive. This time she was better at swinging the sail round at his instruction; she thought they worked well as a team. They went right out into the open sea where, looking back, she could see quite a length of the coastline.

  ‘There, that’s Carlyon!’ she cried, pointing to the shell of the manor house on the crest of the hill, and he turned the tiller so they could keep it in view.

  Even now, it had a kind of dignity, like the ruins of a church or rather, with its high chimneys, a small palace. Now she saw it from this angle, lonely, abandoned, its charred messiness softened by misty distance, she felt a strong connection to it. And sorrow that it was a piece of her history that had been taken from her before she even knew about it.

  ‘How did it happen?’ Anthony called. ‘The fire, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  When they returned to the harbour, it was she, this time, who stepped up onto the small jetty with the mooring rope. She helped him tidy up, though her hands and face were frozen. The warmth had gone from the day, but a golden light played on the water.

  ‘Come back to my place for some tea, if you like,’ he said when they’d finished.

  The house was one of a terrace of white-painted houses huddled halfway up the hill, not far below Beatrice’s, overlooking the bay. The glass of the porch was rimed with salt, its shelves arrayed with leggy spider plants and dusty geraniums.

  Inside was tiny, a hallway with two small rooms on one side, a kitchen at the back, stairs up to two bedrooms and a little bathroom. Coming out of the bathroom Lucy glanced through the open door of the back bedroom. Anthony’s duvet was straight and smoothed, his nightclothes neatly folded on the pillow. She smiled, remembering how, in contrast, her bed at home always looked like a mare’s nest.

  Downstairs, he’d already laid his sailing kit over plastic chairs to dry under the small back verandah. He handed her a huge mug of toffee-coloured tea and she sipped it quickly, though it scalded her, glad to feel the heat course through her limbs.

  When they went to sit in the living room he seemed too large for the space and the tiny old armchairs. Perhaps he was used to cramped quarters. She stole a look around. A laptop, several books and DVDs, a couple of magazines were stacked on the coffee-table, though there was plenty of space on the bookshelves. The place gave the impression that he was bivouacking, that at a moment’s notice he might have to sweep everything into one of his big holdalls and rush away. The way he sat, too – on the edge of the chair, knees apart, leaning forward – suggested restlessness, but she liked the steady manner in which he studied her.

  ‘Whose place is this?’ she asked.

  ‘It belongs to the parents of a friend,’ he told her. He explained that they were kindly letting him stay there rent free. ‘And I can use the boat, too.’

  ‘Where’s home for you?’ was her next question. Did she imagine the shadow that crossed his face?

  ‘Near Hereford, I suppose. Do you know that part of the world?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘The countryside’s lush green hills, idyllic, really. My mum’s parents were farmers and I spent a lot of time with them when I was a kid. Dad retired from the Army a few years back and they bought a place nearby.’

  ‘Nowhere to call your own then?’

  ‘No. I don’t know where I’d go, though I suppose I’ll have to decide sometime. How about you?’

  ‘Oh, I bought a flat in North London a few years ago. The edge of Camden. I fell in love with round there, you know, the canal, the boats, the markets.’

  He smiled, briefly, then the smile seemed to cut off and a faraway look came into his eyes. Puzzled, she stood, putting her empty mug down on the table, feeling she ought to go. But he looked up at her and suddenly he seemed himself again, warm and friendly.

  ‘Are you doing anything later?’ he said. ‘I haven’t got much in the fridge or I’d offer to cook, but maybe we could have something out. If you feel we’ve had enough of the Mermaid, there’s a pub near the headland that does food – posh fish and chips, steak and kidney pies. What d’you say?’

  ‘It sounds tempting,’ she said. She longed to, but wondered whether she should. Their lives were so different. There was no reason they’d meet again. Yet she trusted him . . . felt as though she’d always known him. And she sensed that he accepted her for what she was, without even knowing her. How did that happen between people? You recognized something in each other. What if she were mistaken?

  He was waiting for h
er answer and she knew what she wanted to say. ‘Yes. I’d like that.’

  The pub turned out to be very olde worlde, with brass telescopes and fishing nets decorating the walls. It was still quiet, being early, and Anthony was sitting at the bar talking to the barman and didn’t see her arrive. He wore a soft jacket, cream shirt and dark jeans and she realized again how attractive he was, the cropped hair suiting his handsome tanned features. He saw her and greeted her with a smile that lit his eyes.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What’ll you have to drink?’ He pulled out a stool for her.

  Whilst the landlord fetched her lager, Anthony passed her a menu. They both decided on the same thing – fish and chips. Lucy, despite his insistence on paying, pushed a ten-pound note into his breast pocket. They took their drinks and sat down at right angles to one another at a small table in the window where they could both view the sea. She’d brought her camera with her, and placed it on the floor under the table.

  ‘I thought I might take some pictures later,’ she explained, ‘when it starts to get dark.’ The sun was low and the rain Beatrice had anticipated had never materialized. Rags of black cloud were dotted about the sky, but they didn’t look as if they’d amount to anything. She might get some dramatic images.

  ‘Tell me more about your work,’ he said. ‘What kind of thing do you usually like to photograph?’

  In response she reached for her camera and showed him some of the pictures she’d taken over the previous few days.

  ‘They’re good,’ he said.

  ‘I take cityscapes, too,’ she said, and told him about her exhibition about Little Venice. ‘And anything to do with water. I like the life of it. What it does with light.’

  ‘I wish I had your skill,’ Anthony said. ‘Some of the places I’ve seen in Afghanistan, I’d love to photograph them. And the people; their faces stay in the mind. How they put up with everything, Christ knows.’ He passed her camera back to her. ‘Do you have a website? I don’t have internet access here, but when I get back I’d love to see what else you’ve done.’

  ‘It’s on the card I gave you.’

  He found it in his wallet. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep it safe,’ he said, smiling at her.

  ‘How long will you be here?’ Lucy asked. ‘Did you say you had to be back somewhere on Monday?’

  ‘That’s right. What about you?’

  ‘Monday, too.’

  ‘Will you have found out all you need to? From your old lady?’

  ‘I don’t know. Possibly. I’m not sure at the moment where her story is going, what it all means.’

  ‘It’s to do with your family, right?’

  ‘Yes. To do with my father, I think.’

  Just then, a young waitress with tattoos up her arms and a diamanté stud under her lower lip arrived with two huge oval plates, each heaped with chips on top of which reclined an enormous strip of battered fish.

  ‘Wow,’ Lucy breathed, and moved her camera back onto the floor. She and Anthony fell upon the food like starved wolves and for a minute or two they were silent.

  After a while she paused and said, ‘When you go back to work on Monday, will you go abroad again? To Afghanistan, I mean?’

  He nodded. ‘Looks like it. I’ve had three months here. They think it’s enough.’

  ‘But you don’t?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you want to go back at all?’ She watched him chew his mouthful and swallow before he answered.

  ‘I’m dreading it,’ he said.

  She put down her knife and fork. ‘Did something particular happen out there? I mean . . .’ It was difficult to imagine what it was like.

  She felt put in her place when he said, ‘Lots of things,’ rather abruptly. ‘And one in particular.’

  She picked up a chip and dipped it in tomato sauce whilst she considered what to say. ‘You haven’t been here in Saint Florian all the three months, have you?’ It seemed suddenly terrible to her that she’d only just met him, right in the final week of his leave.

  ‘No,’ he said very quietly. He took a draught of his beer. ‘Just a couple of weeks.’

  A silence fell and they ate for a while, then they both spoke at once.

  ‘I wanted—’ he said, just as she asked, ‘Why—’ then added, ‘Go on.’

  ‘I needed,’ he said, ‘to be by myself, to try and sort myself out. I seriously love this place. It’s got its memories, but they’re good ones.’ He stared out through the salt-sprayed window, across the twilit sea. Far out on the horizon, a fork of lightning played. ‘I came here once or twice with Gray.’

  ‘He’s your friend? The one whose family owns the house you’re staying in?’

  He nodded slowly. She watched, anxiously, seeing that his eyes were full of pain.

  He cleared his throat. ‘He . . . Gray was killed.’

  Lucy’s breath was snagged by the little catch in his voice. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she whispered, but her words seemed too inadequate a response to the look of distress on his face. She waited, one hand turned palm up in a hesitant gesture of openness, feeling utterly out of her depth, and yet sensing that he needed her there.

  ‘Everything all right for you guys?’ The waitress appeared between them suddenly, snatched up Lucy’s empty glass. ‘This one dead? Shall I get you another?’

  ‘Thanks, yes, same again for both of us,’ Lucy said quickly. ‘Anthony, go on, I’m listening.’

  The place was filling up now and she found she had to lean forward to hear what Anthony was saying. ‘I met Gray the first day at officer school, ten years ago.’ He smiled at a memory. ‘It was in the queue for lunch after the first briefing. He came out with this blindingly awful joke. Gray often made me laugh. He was one of those guys who see the lighter side of everything. But there was more to him than that. He was the sort you’d want on your side when you’re in desperate danger, d’you know what I mean?’

  Lucy, who had never had that experience, said carefully, ‘I can try and imagine.’

  ‘We stayed best mates throughout, even though I got up the promotion ladder ahead of him. Not everyone knew what to make of his sense of humour.’

  There was another pause as the drinks arrived. They’d finished their meal so the waitress cleared their plates.

  When she’d finally left them in peace, Anthony leant in nearer, his arms folded on the table. She did not move away. ‘Maybe you don’t realize,’ he said, studying her, ‘how close soldiers have to live with one another. Sharing tiny spaces – tanks, trenches. We have to look out for one another whilst respecting privacy. I have had to learn to read all the different aspects of my men’s characters. They know me, too: what spooks me, what pisses me off . We don’t necessarily all like each other, but we have to get on, to rely on each other. Like a family, except more so; we need to trust each other in order to survive. You can’t have a row and stomp out. Are you with me?’

  She nodded, though she could think of no situation she’d ever been in where she’d had to rely on someone like that.

  ‘So as an officer, you feel incredibly responsible.’ He shook his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he said, ‘Lucy, what happened, I can’t talk about it easily, OK? In fact, I didn’t mean to start on it at all. Sorry, I bring you out on a date and I weep all over the carpet and ruin your evening.’

  ‘Is this a date?’ she said. ‘Not that I mind exactly, but I’d like to know.’

  He laughed, moved closer again and crinkled his eyes at her. ‘It could be if you want. Or we could just be having a meal together.’

  They looked into one another’s eyes and she had the strange and panicky sensation that she was falling. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

  She watched him take out a packet of tobacco and roll a cigarette, though he didn’t light it. Beatrice had described how suddenly and completely one could fall in love, but she still didn’t quite believe it. What did she think she was doing with this man? A day or tw
o more would pass and then they’d never see each other again. Was she setting herself up to get hurt or to hurt him? Tonight she’d seen more of the grief and damage he was grappling with; it made her wonder whether she lived too superficially, photographing the way that light glanced off the water, never looking deeper to see what swirled in the currents beneath.

  She emerged from the reverie to hear him say, ‘Would you like anything else to eat? No? Coffee?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks. A walk by the sea might be nice.’

  ‘Good idea. Let’s go.’

  There was still light in the sky when they got outside. To the right a footpath like a pale snake led away across the headland. They followed it a short way out to a viewpoint where they could watch the town fall into darkness, soft lights coming on, reflecting on the water, the scent of Anthony’s cigarette smoke not quite masking the salty smell of the sea. There they stood for a while, separate, motionless, lost in their own thoughts, the waves booming and crashing below.

  He laughed suddenly and she said, ‘What?’ Smiling.

  ‘I was just remembering our first sailing trip together,’ he said, and soon they were both laughing. Then he took her hand and drew her to him.

  ‘Have you thought about my question yet?’ he asked, his lips at her ear.

  She knew immediately what he meant.

  ‘It kind of might be a date,’ she replied, enjoying teasing him. She closed her eyes as he kissed her and again she felt as though she was falling. But this time she knew that he was holding her safe.

  ‘Tomorrow’s Thursday,’ he said, when they came up for air. ‘I have to drive back to London on Sunday. And then . . .’

  ‘Don’t talk about it,’ she said. ‘Let’s enjoy the time we have.’

  ‘I’m up for that,’ he said quietly. And he kissed her again.

  Chapter 20

  London, July 1941