A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  Worse, the trip had brought home to her quite how penniless she’d become. Apart from Michael Wincanton’s gift, her only income was the ten-shilling cheque her mother sent her every week or so, and although her ration card came in useful for the household, she couldn’t afford to pay for much – and just suppose one of them became ill? How would she pay for a doctor? She couldn’t keep on expecting Gerald and Angie to cover the extras. But it wasn’t just that; it was the growing sense of restlessness she felt.

  The road started to slope steeply upwards. She glanced at Angie. She looked tired, so she wrested one of the handles of Angie’s shopping bag from her to share the load, though she already carried one of her own. It was odd. If there hadn’t been a war, Angie wouldn’t have been shopping for food but for dresses, and in a car. She didn’t feel sorry for the Angies of this world, exactly, but she did acknowledge the adjustments the girl had made, largely uncomplainingly. And she saw how Angie was coming to rely on her. Surely this wasn’t good for either of them. She couldn’t, she felt, go on forever living here with Angie, being her poor companion.

  She’d been thinking quite a lot about what she should do. She still wanted desperately to be useful in this war, not to sit back and let others win it for them. After all, Guy had given up his life, and Rafe was goodness knows where, risking his. Maybe if she was doing something more active to help she wouldn’t fret so much.

  ‘Can we sit down for a moment?’ Angie said. They’d reached the top of the ridge, where a tranquil view of fields and trees and little houses stretched away into distant mist.

  ‘Is that your place over there?’ Beatrice said, pointing to a tiny house about a mile away.

  ‘Yes, and that’s Nanny hanging out washing! Everything looks so ordinary, doesn’t it?’ Angie said, but even as she spoke, far away, half a dozen flashes of silver shot into the sky: planes trailing plumes of black smoke. The plumes merged together into a single poisonous cloud that floated in the still air.

  ‘Nothing’s ordinary any more,’ Bea said bitterly. ‘A cloud hangs over us all. Aren’t you aware of it? Look.’ She pointed far ahead. ‘The sea starts there somewhere, and then it’s just a few miles to France. So close, Angie, so close. We can’t wrap ourselves in our life here and pretend it’s not happening, that we don’t have to do anything about it.’

  ‘I know,’ Angie snapped. ‘I didn’t mean I wanted to shut myself away. It’s just we’ve got different ways of managing things, you and I. Gerald needs me here, and Hetty does and soon the baby will. There have to be some people doing the ordinary things, Bea, or what kind of world will there be when it’s all over?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I feel I can’t go on being here, doing nothing, that’s all. Angie, I don’t know what you’re going to think, but I want to go back to London. Dinah’s room is still free, I wrote to ask.’

  Angie looked puzzled, then angry. ‘Bea, it’s not just you now. How will you cope with a little baby? Someone has to look after him if you’re working.’

  ‘I’ll find someone. People manage, you know – lots do.’

  Angie stared at her for some seconds before speaking. ‘You’re different from how you used to be. Harder somehow.’

  Beatrice felt hurt by this. Eventually she said, ‘I’m not, you know. I’m the same as I’ve always been, but I’m surer of myself now.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t take Baby away. I’ll miss him and I know Nanny will, too.’

  ‘That’s sweet and I know you will. But you’re having your own child, Angie, and you’ll both be busy enough. And when you have him, you’ll love him so much you’ll want to do anything for him, even fight for him.’

  ‘You’re sounding quite fierce, Bea. But there are other ways of fighting, quieter ways. You may not think much of me – no, don’t say it – but I can be strong too. I’m just different from you.’

  Beatrice was quite surprised by this. Angie rarely revealed this more serious side of herself.

  Chapter 23

  London, April 1942

  The bus journey home was one of the times Beatrice felt happiest. If she left the office at five, she was usually safely on the bus at five past for the sleepy stop-start journey from Trafalgar Square to Camden High Street. It was partly the anticipation of seeing her baby that made her happy, but sitting on the bus was also one of her few opportunities to be quiet and think. In the mornings she struggled with the guilt and misery of leaving him, never mind the anxiety that she’d be late for work. Something always held her up now she had a young child to get ready, too.

  At least it was still light now when she reached Camden. It was only a short walk from the High Street to the side road of Victorian workers’ cottages where Mrs Popham lived, but she didn’t like it much in the blackout. When she’d first moved back to London, in February, it compounded her misery that they always left home and returned there in darkness.

  Mrs Popham’s was a convenient ten-minute walk from Dinah’s flat in Primrose Hill. Mrs Popham, though gentle with young children, was otherwise a prickly sort. For a start, she disapproved strongly of working mothers, which was perverse considering that she gained her income from them. And she had odd rules, one of which was that the children in her care (there were three) should each arrive with clean bottles and bowls each day, because she didn’t want the bother of washing up. The children, she insisted, must be picked up by 6 p.m. and the bills be paid in cash in advance. Beatrice didn’t think that the woman would actually cast the babies out on the street if their mothers failed to meet any of these orders, but she decided it was best not to risk it.

  So far, by a miracle, she had always made it there by six, but she dreaded the day when something unexpected made her late. The aforementioned bills were the hardest bit, and she’d had to take a loan from Dinah until she finished her typing course to pay for the first two weeks’ childcare. Dinah seemed delighted to have her back, and was awfully sweet about the baby, who endeared himself to all in the house by sleeping most nights through after his busy days with Mrs Popham. His cot, though, only just fitted into Beatrice’s bedroom.

  The job itself Beatrice found boring. She’d applied for clerical work in the War Office thinking that in some small way she’d be contributing to the war effort, but all she did all day was sit in a room full of other women, copying out orders for uniforms. This wasn’t in itself unimportant work – after all, service people needed to be clothed – but the mundane nature of the job didn’t engage her. What was more, it was difficult to form friendships with the other girls, who were mostly footloose and fancy free. To them, as to Mrs Popham, she was ‘Mrs Marlow’, a widow with a baby, living life in the shadows, and they left her out of their social plans.

  At lunchtime, now the weather was warmer, she’d take her meagre sandwich and sit on the same low wall in St James’s Park to eat it. It was here, on one warm spring day, when clouds were chasing across the sky and wild daffodils nodded under the trees, that she noticed a young officer sitting on the steps by a statue of some long-dead General, and realized with a skip of her heart that she knew him.

  ‘Rafe?’ she said, standing up, her sandwich falling forgotten to the ground. ‘Rafe!’

  Finally he looked up. ‘Beatrice?’ he said wonderingly, leaping to his feet. He came at once and grasped her hands. ‘How extraordinary.’

  They stared delightedly at each other for a moment.

  Rafe said, ‘I didn’t know you were in London. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I might ask the same of you. Nobody’s heard from you for months. Where have you been?’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. It hasn’t been possible to write and I never know how long I’m going to be anywhere.’

  This jumbled explanation disappointed her. She was angry and yet she told herself she was wrong to feel that way. He couldn’t help it, the secrecy, but she hated it all the same. It was as though he was distancing himself from her. Like some awful game of chess in which the other side was an enigm
a, and always a move ahead.

  ‘I really am sorry,’ he said again, and it was his turn to look anguished.

  ‘It’s only . . . we worry about you so much. Gerald and Angie, they’re always asking if I’ve heard.’

  ‘Are they?’ He looked and sounded miserable.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How’s the little one?’ he asked with more enthusiasm. ‘I say, this is silly. Do you have a moment? Shall we walk?’

  ‘I must be back at work in twenty minutes.’

  ‘You’re not a FANY any more, I see,’ he said, glancing at her ordinary suit as he took her arm.

  ‘No, clerical. The job’s dreary but it keeps us going, just.’ Michael’s gift and the money her mother was still mailing her were helping her pay the bills. ‘And, since you ask, he’s the best and brightest baby in the world.’

  ‘He must be quite big. Is he walking?’

  ‘Oh, Rafe, he’s only five months, of course he’s not. Don’t you know anything about babies? I wish I had a photograph to show you. You must meet him.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Rafe said, and Beatrice burst into peals of laughter, for he glanced behind him as though expecting the baby to pop out from behind the statue. ‘He’s with a child-minder, of course. You don’t imagine he comes to work with me, do you? She’s awfully good with him,’ she added, with the guilt she always felt when admitting this.

  ‘And what about the work? Is it terribly secret?’

  ‘Oh no, I’m just making myself useful at the lower levels. Typing, filling in forms, that sort of thing. I have to tear up anything I’ve done twice before I get it right. I don’t know why they keep me on really. A shortage of people, I suppose.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m sure you underestimate yourself. You always did.’

  ‘Did I?’ She was surprised at this new view of herself.

  ‘God, I’ve gone and offended you now.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. It’s a sort of compliment.’ They smiled at one another more easily now. ‘Oh, it is good to see you, Rafe. You look so much better, you know.’ It was the first time she’d met him since the summer, when she’d been pregnant and grieving, and Rafe himself so low. Now he’d put on some weight and it suited him. His face was fuller, too, and his colour healthy. She felt a rush of affection. He was so dear and familiar, but . . . she realized he’d cleverly said nothing about himself, had adroitly turned the conversation back to her. I know so little about him, she thought, suddenly hurt. They had once been so close.

  ‘Where are you living?’ He was regarding her tenderly now.

  ‘With Dinah again, I told you. Did you get that letter?’

  He shook his head. ‘I think some of my mail must have gone astray. I’ve already endured a severe ticking-off from my mother for not answering letters she swears she sent me. It hasn’t been easy.’

  ‘What hasn’t been easy?’

  ‘Where I’ve been. What I’ve been doing.’

  ‘I want to know more. Rafe, I must go back now. Are you in London for a bit? Do you have time to come and meet the baby?’

  ‘I most certainly do,’ he said, and this time he smiled like the old Rafe.

  He came to the flat the following evening, bringing a mass of fragrant narcissi and a child’s picture book.

  ‘Where did you find flowers? And – oh, look, darling!’

  The baby stared, large-eyed, from his mother’s arms, and buried his face in her bosom when she tried to hand him to the stranger.

  ‘You’re a very handsome little chap,’ Rafe said, taking him awkwardly. The child promptly reached back to Beatrice with a passionate cry. ‘But I think he wants his mother.’

  ‘He’s a tired boy, aren’t you, sweetie?’ she crooned, taking him again.

  In the drawing room she settled herself in a chair and gave her son a bottle of milk. On the table was a tray with a whisky bottle, a water jug and two glasses. A clothes horse full of little sheets, nappies and baby suits was drying by the electric fire. ‘Help yourself to a drink, Rafe. I must put him to bed.’ When the baby had finished she bore him away, tucked him into his cot and sang to him until he succumbed to sleep.

  When she returned, Rafe had removed his jacket and was drinking whisky and frowning over the evening paper. It was as though he lived there, she thought. She badly wanted to reach out and stroke his hair.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ he asked, tapping a blurred photograph of a plane with Japanese markings.

  ‘Oh, don’t, Rafe – there’s never any good news.’ She diluted her drink, still not really liking the stuff.

  ‘It sometimes seems like that,’ he said, folding the paper and putting it away. ‘But we don’t have to talk about it. He is bonny, your boy.’

  She brightened. ‘He is, isn’t he? And thank you for his book. He’ll love looking at the animals. I mean to take him to the zoo.’

  ‘I’d no idea what to get for a baby. There’s nothing in the shops.’

  ‘My mother makes him stuffed toys and finger puppets. And Mrs Elphinstone downstairs brought up some rattles her son played with when he was a baby. She’s so anxious about her own boy. Thinks he’s in Africa but she hasn’t heard for months. Oh, I’m talking about the war again.’

  ‘So let’s change the subject again. How are your parents?’ he asked, sipping his whisky.

  ‘The same as they always are,’ she said. ‘I took the baby down to see them in January for a few days.’ In fact, the visit had been very successful. Her father, who had recently had two stories accepted by a magazine, was in an unusually cheerful state of mind. ‘Maman’s busy with knitting groups and fund-raising. They have their routines and still argue about the usual things.’

  ‘My mother drives an ambulance,’ Rafe said, in a disbelieving tone, and Beatrice, who remembered Amanda Armstrong, languid and elegant, at Angie and Gerald’s wedding, immediately understood his amazement.

  ‘What about you? Have you been in this country all this time?’ she asked him, trying the more direct approach.

  ‘Mostly. There have been long periods of training. Scotland, the Lakes.’

  ‘And are you expecting to be going . . . away again somewhere, soon?’ She waited, dreading his answer.

  He downed the dregs of his drink and tilted the glass carefully back on the table. ‘It’s looking that way. I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything at all about it, Bea. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. They’d probably shoot me.’

  ‘Oh. I suppose that means it’s very dangerous?’

  ‘It might be. Yes.’ His expression was unreadable now and it frightened her. It was as though someone else was there, looking out from behind his eyes. How quickly they’d had to grow up. St Florian, when she visited, had hardly changed. But they had.

  ‘The horses have gone,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘What horses?’

  ‘When I was in Cornwall a year ago, Jezebel and the ponies were still at Carlyon, though troops are billetted at the house. But this time I walked up there, just to see, and the horses had gone.’ There had been no one guarding the gate, and she’d walked all the way up to the stables unchallenged. ‘The stalls had been cleaned out and were being used for storage. The soldier I spoke to there didn’t even know who Old Harry was, let alone where he might be living.’

  ‘Harry will be all right. He had family round there, didn’t he? I remember him telling me once. It’s the horses. I don’t like to think what might have happened to them.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Beatrice said, remembering the horses at the depot. ‘They have no power at all over their lives.’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t think we have much more than they do,’ Rafe said. ‘It’s a nightmare world we live in. And yet it’s horrible how used to it we’ve become. It’s normality, all of this now, what we have to do. The boredom of so much of it, the waiting around. And yet every day it seems there’s some new horror to read about.’ He indicated the newspaper. ‘Do we get immune?’

  ‘It’s how we
survive, I suppose. Accept that things happen, carry on.’

  ‘But it’s important that we’re angry, don’t you think? That we stay angry. We’re not dumb beasts. In our own way we can fight back.’

  ‘I wish I felt I was doing that.’

  ‘You are, in your way, Bea.’

  ‘Filling in forms in an office?’

  ‘Someone has to do it. And think of your son. You have to look after him.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, somewhat sadly. ‘The darling boy. It’s so dreadful that he never knew Guy.’

  ‘I think you are very brave, Bea.’ They were quiet for a moment.

  ‘I wish I could do more. It might stop me feeling frightened. If only I could do something about the future rather than waiting for others to do it for me.’

  ‘Are you frightened?’ He leant across and took her hand. ‘I do care, you know. I think of you often, what you’re doing and whether you’re all right. I meant what I said. You were awfully brave about Guy and—’

  ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Rafe. The baby’s wonderful. And it wasn’t brave of me at all. I got on and did what I knew I had to do. It’s you who’s brave. You and all those who have to go and risk your lives.’

  Being so close to him like this was a torment. For it was apparent that, even when they were together, so many things still stood between them. She could see that part of his mind was far away, on something else – the whatever it was he had to do. There was the past, too. She wondered if he knew that Angie was expecting his brother’s child? She hadn’t been brave enough to raise the subject.

  And with her own circumstances, as an unmarried mother, she dared hope for nothing. She still thought of Guy, often. How could she not when she saw him in their son all the time? But she knew, too, that her feelings for Rafe were the same as ever, although she was more wary now, tougher, and she had her baby to consider.

  It was a big thing, to take on another man’s child. Rafe knew all about that from the child’s point of view, had himself suffered from losing his father and gaining a stepfather. No, she told herself not to hope for anything from Rafe.