by Erica James
They were a good crowd he was learning to fly with, and Charlie was the best of the bunch. Like Kit, he’d come over specially from England to gain his pilot’s licence. It was actually Charlie’s cousin Dickie, who had been at Oxford with Kit, who was responsible for Kit being here.
Quite by chance, Kit had run into Dickie in London, and over a drink he had explained how frustrated he was at being stuck as a reservist, even though the Royal Air Force was urgently in need of pilots. ‘The trouble is,’ Dickie had said – he was now a journalist, so had his finger on the pulse – ‘there aren’t enough instructors on hand, or sufficient equipment available to teach the numbers required.’ He had then gone on to explain about his cousin, who was hell-bent on speeding up the process of receiving his call-up papers. ‘I could ask him to get in touch with you if you like,’ he had said. ‘Canada isn’t the only place you can go, South Africa is another option.’
Kit had leapt at the idea, and within weeks, it was all arranged; he’d handed in his notice at the bank, shut up his flat and was crossing the Atlantic.
From the quiet street outside came the sound of a car horn. Gathering up his things, and the letter for Evelyn, Kit shot downstairs before Charlie beeped again and disturbed the peace of the neighbourhood. ‘A quiet and respectable neighbourhood,’ as the woman next door often liked to point out to Kit when their paths crossed.
‘See you this evening, Mrs Medwin,’ he called out to his landlady, pulling on his thick overcoat in the hallway. ‘Anything I can pick up from the grocery store for you on my way home?’
Mrs Medwin appeared in the doorway of what she called the front parlour, a duster in hand. She was a widow, a motherly sort of woman with the faint trace of a Scottish accent – she was originally from Edinburgh but had emigrated when she married a Canadian. Kit was always happy to help her when he could. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m going there myself later.’
‘Are you sure there isn’t anything heavy I can bring back for you? It’s no trouble.’
She smiled. ‘I’m very sure, thank you. Say hello to Charlie from me, and tell him he’s more than welcome to join us on Christmas Day. I know his landlady of old and she’ll be too mean to give him a decent Christmas lunch.’
‘He won’t need asking twice,’ Kit said with a laugh.
Then, hearing the car horn being pipped again, he opened the front door. The dry icy air hit him like a physical blow, but he stepped outside with a happy smile on his face. It might be freezing cold, but the sky was clear, which meant it would be a perfect day for flying.
Chapter Forty-One
‘I hope you’re not rushing off, darling.’
Already out of bed and pulling on his trousers, Arthur looked at Pamela standing in the doorway of the bedroom. Back from the bathroom, she was wearing the scarlet robe with fur trim she had asked him to buy her for Christmas, letting it gape at the front to reveal the fullness of her naked body. It was the first time she had asked him to buy her anything, and he hoped it would be the last. He’d felt such an idiot in the shop paying for the robe, convinced that the woman serving him knew that it wasn’t a gift for his wife.
The thought of Irene wearing anything so gaudy was laughable. Such things were not for the Irenes of this world; they were for the Pamelas of Wembley, uncultured women who lacked style and taste. But then it wasn’t Pamela’s style or taste that he visited her for; it was for sexual pleasure and nothing else.
‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ he said. ‘I have to go. I’m expected at my in-laws’ for dinner.’
She pouted, which she was much too old to get away with, and leant against the door frame, her hands behind her back, her breasts thrust forward in the manner of a vampish film starlet posing for the camera, a role she liked to play. He felt as he always did at this stage in the proceedings: impatient to be on his way. He pushed his feet into his shoes, began tying the laces.
‘Can’t you stay for a drink?’ she said, her voice low and purring. It was her seductive voice, the one she used while leading him upstairs to the bedroom at the back of the house overlooking the small garden, where there was now an Anderson shelter. They never used her own room at the front; that was out of bounds, even to him. A woman needed her own private sanctuary, she claimed.
‘Just one drink,’ she pressed, her voice even lower and more sensual. ‘To celebrate Christmas.’
What she didn’t understand was that those seductive tricks of hers had no effect on him once the act had been completed, once he’d got what he came for. He was tired, too, too tired to play games at any rate.
‘I can’t,’ he said tersely, his patience wearing thin. It wasn’t like Pamela to drag things out, or to be obtuse. She knew his moods, knew how to respond and to make him feel better. It was one of the things he’d valued in her, the fact that their arrangement was all about him and his needs, for which he paid her handsomely. And just as she had never allowed him into her private sanctuary, he didn’t speak about his family or his work; their lives ran on entirely separate lines.
Recently, however, he had broken that rule and had talked about his family, as well as venting his frustration that all he did at work was spend his days shuffling paper. It seemed to him that if the war was going to be won with an army of civil servants running up and down corridors with files in their hands, then Whitehall had it sewn up.
He’d made a stupid mistake in October when, in a moment of boredom, he’d asked Irene if her father might fix him up with something more useful to do at the War Office. He’d assumed he might be found a senior position of some standing, but – and maybe it was deliberate on his father-in-law’s part – as far as he could see, he was doing nothing more significant than overseeing a chaotic typing pool of women. ‘Temporary billeting,’ he’d been told by an effeminate man in a tweed suit who reeked of cologne. ‘Soon have your talents put to greater use, old chap. We’re all finding our way now that we’re actually at war. I recommend you bunk down as best you can meantime and bear in mind that we’re cogs in a colossal machine; we all have our part to play.’ Such was the man’s cheerfully demeaning manner towards him, Arthur had wanted to drive a fist through his girlish face.
While it was true that Arthur had no appetite for enlisting and putting himself in physical danger – being blind in one eye conveniently ruled him out of active service – he still wanted to do something constructive towards the war effort. Was it too much to expect a role that came with some prestige and respect?
To make matters worse, Kit was in Canada learning to fly, and would probably contrive to make out he was some kind of bloody war hero before he even donned a service uniform!
‘But I have something for you,’ Pamela said, breaking into Arthur’s thoughts. ‘A gift. After all, you gave me this lovely present, so it’s only fair I should give you something in return.’ She flung wide the front panels of the robe, exposing the whole of her fleshy contours, which only minutes ago had been his for the taking. Now Arthur felt faintly revolted by her sagging breasts, swelling stomach and spreading hips. In the stark light of post-coital satisfaction, when his head rather than sexual need guided him, Pamela’s age was all too obvious. No amount of powder, lipstick or rouge could disguise the lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. And a satin robe could only conceal so much when it came to a forty-year-old woman.
He stood up and began tucking his shirt in. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘What have you got for me?’ He might as well play along and please her. She need never know that the minute he left here, he’d chuck whatever it was she had bought him straight in the nearest bin.
As he put on his jacket, he watched her go over to the chest of drawers in front of the window and take out a large envelope. A Christmas card, he thought, taking it from her. Hardly much of a present. He was almost disappointed. He ripped open the envelope and put his hand inside, then froze when he saw what it was.
‘What’s this?’ he demanded, staring at two black-and-white photographs, one showing him entering Pamela’s house, the other showing him leaving, and with Pamela’s hand on his shoulder as she planted a kiss on his cheek. He remembered when she’d done that the last time he’d visited, he’d warned her never to do it again, that they had to be more circumspect or somebody might see. Somebody clearly had.
She tied the satin robe around her with the belt and smiled. ‘I think it’s called an insurance policy, darling.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mean blackmail?’
‘You can call it whatever you want,’ she said. ‘We’re both intelligent enough to know what the situation is.’ She picked up the packet of Player’s Weights from the nightstand next to the bed and lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply, then removed a loose bit of tobacco from her lip with the long red nail of her little finger before blowing a curling ribbon of smoke into the air. All the while Arthur stared at her.
‘Why?’ he said eventually, hardly able to get the word out.
‘Why not, ducky?’ she replied with a nonchalance that incensed him.
‘But … but after all these years, I thought our arrangement … I thought you cared about …’ He stopped himself short, horrified at what he’d almost blurted out.
Pamela’s eyes narrowed like those of a cat and she pounced. ‘What?’ she said, her tone mocking. ‘You thought I cared about you? Oh, of course I cared about you coming here and using my body for your greedy selfish pleasure as and when the mood took you. But you know, I also care about your poor dear wife and how upset she would be to know what you get up to when you’re not with her. How you like to tie me to the bed and take out all your nasty, sadistic frustration on me. And I’m sure your colleagues at the War Office, including your father-in-law, would love to know what you get up to in your private time.’
Arthur looked at her with loathing, seeing her for what she really was: a cheap whore. A fat ugly whore who would stop at nothing. Would he never learn that all women were devious bitches, not to be trusted? ‘How much?’ he said. ‘How much to buy your silence?’
‘That’s more like it, ducky. Well then, shall we call it a nice round figure of say, one thousand pounds?’
His jaw dropped. ‘You can’t be serious. I don’t have that kind of money to give away.’
‘Yes you do. Your father’s left you a small fortune. You told me the inheritance would put an end to all your financial worries. And a thousand pounds will help buy me a sweet little cottage that I can turn into a tea shop. That way I won’t have to sell my body to foul men like you.’
‘I haven’t received my inheritance yet,’ he said quietly, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. ‘It’s still tied up with the process of probate.’ Which was true. Not that the truth mattered right now.
‘You can borrow against it,’ Pamela said. ‘Don’t take me for a fool, Arthur, I know how these things work.’
‘Don’t you just?’ he muttered through clenched teeth. His anger, which had been partially masked by shock, he realised, was now coursing through him with a fiery heat, making him want to show this woman that she’d made a big mistake in trapping him. How dare she think she could have a share of his inheritance!
After making an elaborate show of flicking the ash from her cigarette into the glass ashtray on the nightstand, she inhaled again, looking for all the world as though she were enjoying herself. As though she had it all worked out.
‘I’ll make it easy for you,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a cheque, but if you do anything underhand and the money doesn’t clear because you’ve put a stop to it, copies of those photographs will appear on your wife’s breakfast table. I can just picture the look on her sweet little face. I’ll fetch you a pen, shall I?’
It was her smug expression as she turned away that was too much for Arthur. He snatched up the heavy glass ashtray and crashed it down on the side of her head. She seemed not to react at first, but just as he was about to smash it down again, she slowly dropped to the floor and lay there in a great inert pile of red satin.
‘Happy Christmas,’ he said with savage satisfaction as he stepped around her.
Chapter Forty-Two
‘Are you going to make a New Year’s resolution?’
‘I’ve thought about it,’ said Hope in answer to Edmund’s question, ‘but frankly it feels absurd to make one when heaven only knows what 1940 will bring us.’
‘I know what you mean. All that talk of war being over by Christmas was just nonsense. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Annelise’s parents, have you?’
Hope shook her head. ‘Nothing. But then I wouldn’t expect to, not now. I fear for them, I really do. If they’ve been detained and put into a camp, then … well it just doesn’t bear thinking about, not when I recall what Otto told me of his experience of being taken away in the night to be questioned. They held him in a cell for two days without food or water, then released him covered in bruises. And all for no reason other than he was Jewish!’ She suddenly realised her voice had risen above the sound of the music coming from the gramophone, and that Lady Fogg, sherry glass half raised to her mouth, was looking at her disapprovingly.
‘Sorry, Edmund,’ she said, ‘I’m making a spectacle of myself and spoiling the mood. It’s New Year’s Eve and we’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves. But really, how can we?’
‘You have no need to apologise to me,’ he said, leaning in closer, his eyes focused directly on hers. ‘I’ve heard similar stories in London. I treated a Jewish woman the other day who’d escaped here with her husband from Czechoslovakia. Both classically trained musicians, they left their home with nothing but their passports and what little savings they had. Her husband had had his fingers broken so badly while being interrogated, he can no longer play the violin the way he once did. Now he has to make do with teaching schoolchildren.’
‘The poor man,’ said Hope. ‘But what frightens me most is that this is only the beginning. There is far worse to come. For all of us.’
‘I agree. I just wish there was more I could do.’
‘Are you thinking of enlisting? I’d have thought you’d be needed as a doctor in London.’
‘That’s what I keep being told,’ he said ruefully, moving aside to let a man and a woman Hope didn’t recognise squeeze past him. Romily’s idea to throw a big New Year’s Eve party had gone down so well that just about everyone from the village had shown up. Hope had never seen Island House so full.
When Edmund had resumed his place in front of Hope, he said. ‘I keep being told that I’m in the right place ready for when the bombs do start dropping on London. There’s also the worry that at any minute great numbers of wounded soldiers from the British Expeditionary Force could arrive back from France and Belgium. So I’m stuck for the time being as a reservist.’
‘Your mother would have a fit of apoplexy if you enlisted.’
He smiled. ‘But at least I’d be out of range of her cries of hysteria.’
Hope smiled too. It was always on the tip of her tongue to ask Edmund what he really thought of his mother, but good manners prevented her from doing so; that and the feeling it was an unfair question. After all, nobody knew better than she did that family relationships were complex and not what they might at first appear.
As her gaze drifted around the crowded drawing room, observing all the cheerful faces, Hope spotted Edmund’s sister deep in conversation with Romily. Noticing the apparent ease between them, Hope thought how similar the two women were, not in looks, but in temperament; both were confident and capable, as well as clear-sighted and fearless. They were the kind of women Hope had secretly always wished she could be like.
‘I know exactly what you’re thinking,’ Edmund said, catching the direction of her gaze.
‘I very much doubt that,’ she said.
‘Yo
u’re wondering why Evelyn puts up with things the way she does when she could have stayed in Kent where she was happy. Yes?’
‘No, that wasn’t what I was thinking right then, though I have done many times before. Since you’ve raised the matter, why has she made such a huge sacrifice?’
‘It’s mostly because she has a strong sense of duty, but she also possesses something far stronger: a need to take on the impossible. And our mother, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is impossible.’
‘Meanwhile, you’re only too glad you were born a boy and therefore not expected to shoulder the responsibility of your mother when there is a daughter on hand to do it.’
Edmund frowned. ‘That’s a bit harsh.’
‘But wholly true,’ Hope said, softening her tone. ‘I feel sorry for Evelyn. She deserves better.’
‘She would hate your sympathy.’
‘I know,’ said Hope, draining her glass of punch. ‘Which is why I’d never show it. Have you really never heard from your father in all these years?’
Her question evidently took him by surprise, as much as it did herself. Edmund and Evelyn’s father was an enigma to her, a man who as good as never existed.
‘Where did that come from?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. It just occurred to me that perhaps because it would be different for Evelyn if your father had never left your mother. Is the subject out of bounds? If so, I apologise.’
‘Not particularly,’ he said, still frowning. ‘It’s more that I don’t give my father much thought these days.’
Hope, who had given her own father a lot of thought recently, said, ‘What would you do if he did show up out of the blue?’
‘I’d ask him why. Why he agreed to the terms my mother specified for their separation: that she would only allow a divorce if he agreed to support us financially but never saw us again. It seems cowardly on his part to have walked away without more of a fight.’
