Blitz

by Claire Rayner

  The house was already full of people – not all of whom Robin knew – and she and Chick went upstairs to the drawing room, leaving their coats and ear-muffs and gloves and scarves downstairs with a sulky Queenie, who was obviously feeling highly put upon and letting everyone know it, both of them unusually quiet.

  The house looked to Robin much more grand than it usually did; Mildred had somehow managed to find someone to collect masses of holly to tie to the wide sweep of the balustrade and its rich green and red glowed against the well-polished mahogany, leading them up to the first-floor hall where a large and surprisingly well-trimmed Christmas tree stood glittering with tinsel and coloured glass balls and a large shining star on the topmost branch.

  Chick stopped suddenly and stared at it and then said abruptly in a tight voice, ‘Oh, Robin, I do wish I was at home!’ And Robin, taking no offence at all but understanding completely, took her arm and led her into the drawing room, determined to put her own ill temper aside and make the best of the evening for poor old Chick’s sake. She didn’t often give way to homesickness, and sometimes it must be misery for her.

  Across the roomful of people a tall man in the elegance of Air Force blue saw the two girls coming in and let a slow smile move across his face. One was small and rather thin and had dark curly hair which she wore in a long bob, and the other was much taller, just as dark and curly but altogether more voluptuously built, find he watched her as the two girls moved across the room towards the corner where the old lady sat in her high-backed chair. And as the smaller of the two girls bent to kiss the old lady’s cheek, he moved strategically across the room, making his way around the edges of the groups of talking people in an offhand sort of drifting way that made it seem as though he was doing nothing more than ambling gently with no purpose.

  But he undoubtedly had one and it served him well; as he reached the corner where the old lady sat surveying her party, the smaller of the two girls moved away, her attention drawn by the extraordinary old bat in crimson who had now arrived in the room, leaving the tall one talking to the occupant of the high-backed chair; and the man in Air Force blue moved in closer.

  ‘ – glad that you could come,’ the old lady was saying. ‘I much dislike the thought of dear Robin travelling alone in London during these difficult times. One never knows what mightn’t happen – and you too of course are better off with a companion. Now go and – ’

  ‘Hi, Aunt Mildred,’ the man in blue said. ‘I thought I’d just come and talk to you again, you know and – but I hope I’m not interrupting?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Chick said and looked at him consideringly. Tall. A definite plus, tall, for Chick, who had been complaining ever since her arrival of the shortage of men in London – ‘meaning they’re all like shrimps!’ she would say to anyone who would listen. ‘I can eat soup off most of their heads, and I know too many bald patches a great deal too intimately for my taste, believe me.’ There were all too few men around she could, as she would say, look up to. This one was a good three inches above her, which made him six foot two. And there was more. He had an agreeable face and a charming smile and he was looking at her with warm approval. Chick stopped looking at him consideringly and instead beamed on him cheerfully and said again, ‘Not at all!’ but this time with a whole new emphasis on the words.

  ‘This is my nephew Daniel Amberley from Johannesburg,’ Mildred said and looked sharply up at him. ‘Daniel, allow me to introduce my granddaughter’s friend, Miss Chester.’

  Chick put out one hand very directly. ‘Hi!’ she said.

  He laughed then. ‘Another colonial, like me? This has to be my lucky night.’

  ‘Canadian,’ Chick said. ‘Glad you spotted it. I get sick to death of being called an American.’

  ‘And I get just as sick as being thought to be Australian,’ he said. ‘Will you excuse us, Aunt Mildred? This girl looks like she needs a drink.’

  ‘That’s what parties are for, I imagine,’ Mildred said drily and watched them go, a slight crease between her brows. Chick, noticing it, felt a moment of chill and then forgot it. Old ladies – they had a tendency to look disapproving if you just breathed in. No need to fret over her. And she let herself be taken over to a long table at the far side where a punch bowl and glasses stood looking remarkably festive.

  Robin was standing by the table, a punch cup in her hand, talking to the tall and slightly stooping figure of Sam Landow, and she turned as Chick came up to her and smiled.

  ‘Feeling better?’ she asked and Chick beamed at her.

  ‘Amazingly better. It was just a moment’s lapse, believe me. Here, let me be really cute – I’ve never had to introduce relations to each other before. Robin, were you ever wrong. This is no stuffed shirt. This is your cousin Daniel Amberley from South Africa, and Daniel, this is your cousin Robin Bradman. There! That’s really an all time first for me!’

  ‘Oh!’ Robin said and stared at the tall man unashamedly and then, reddening slightly, remembered her manners. ‘May I introduce Dr Sam Landow? Dr Landow, my cousin Daniel.’

  ‘In the RAF?’ Landow said as he shook hands. ‘A South African?’

  ‘Oh,’ Daniel said easily and reached for a glass of punch being offered by the maid behind the table to give it to Chick and then take one for himself, ‘they’re very open-minded, you know. They’ll even take some of us raw colonials. These are hard times, after all.’

  He laughed and looked down at Chick who laughed too and then moved a fraction closer to him. Robin was startled. It was as though they had suddenly become opponents against herself and Sam Landow, a pair of invaders united against the residents, and she had never felt that with Chick before. And she had opened her mouth to make some sort of joke about England being grateful for all the help she could get these days when Chick moved away from him and whirled around as on the other side of the room someone started to play a gramophone.

  ‘Oh, lovely,’ she said. ‘Music! I thought there’d be just chat and eating and so forth – I love that song –’ And she began to sing along to it. ‘ – It’s a hap-hap-happy day, toodle-oodle-oodle-ay, you can’t go wrong if you sing this song, it’s a hap-hap-happy day – ’

  At once Daniel took her punch glass from her hand and set it down on the table. ‘More than music!’ he said and grinned at her, a great white glimmering grin, Robin thought, altogether overwhelming, as she watched him pull Chick into the middle of the room and begin to dance an energetic quickstep with her.

  One or two people, the older ones, looked first a little startled, for no one else had made any effort to dance, and then moved good-naturedly aside to let the young pair have room. And almost at once other people began to dance and before the record was half over, there were five couples gyrating in the middle of the floor, even though it was carpeted, watched benignly by the people round the edges.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Sam Landow said in Robin’s ear, as she stood there with one foot tapping in the music’s rhythm. ‘I wish I could dance. I’m sure you’d love to, but I have to tell you that dancing with me would be like walking a very crotchetty and bronchitic bulldog.’

  She stood there and smiled at him, a little disappointed, for indeed the sight of the others dancing so vigorously was inviting, and said as kindly as she could, ‘Oh, it’s all right! I know it’s a silly thing you do when you’re young – it really doesn’t matter – ’

  He looked at her with an expression of comical dismay. ‘Heavens! How old do you think I am, then?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, all compunction. ‘Have I put my foot in it? I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Of course not! I just wondered whether you saw me as some sort of old bock who – ’

  ‘I only ever heard Auntie Jessie use that word!’ she said. ‘I’m not sure what a bock is but – ’

  ‘Someone old and pretty hidebound,’ he said. ‘And believe me I’m not. I suppose I’m old in your eyes – no, don’t tell me what you think I am, I couldn’t bear it if you came ou
t with something on the high side. For your information, I’m thirty-two. Is that past dancing, do you think?’

  She smiled at him. ‘Of course not! I mean I don’t think it is. It’s just that I thought perhaps you’d stopped liking dancing – ’

  ‘I never could do it,’ he said and looked down at her with his face now showing just pleasant amusement. ‘How old are you, Robin?’

  ‘Twenty-one,’ she said. ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I feel about sixteen sometimes.’ And she turned to look at the dancers again.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, still looking at her. ‘Ridiculous.’

  ‘Chick’s older than me, but sometimes she behaves much younger,’ Robin said then, unaware of his scrutiny. ‘She’s great fun, isn’t she?’

  ‘Great fun,’ he agreed. ‘Now, listen, Robin. I have no right to monopolize you. You want to dance and I can’t, so let me take you across the room to where there are people who I dare say can dance. Who is that young man there? I don’t recognize the uniform – it’s Army, clearly, but – ’

  Robin looked and then lifted her chin in a spurt of recognition. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen newsreels. Australian army. That must be my other cousin from distant parts.’

  ‘Heavens, do you have so many?’

  ‘I don’t really know. I gather there were all sorts of brothers my grandmother had who were far-flung, so I dare say there are – but only two have come here at the moment, as I understand it. I suppose I ought to talk to him. Oh, and there’s my mother with my aunt – I wondered where she was – ’

  The record ended and there was a little splatter of applause and Chick called, ‘Oh, more please?’ And whoever was looking after the gramophone obliged with ‘A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square’, and the dancers began to move again as Robin crossed the room to kiss her mother and Sam Landow followed her and was greeted like a long-lost relation by the ever ebullient Jessie.

  ‘Ma,’ Robin said under the cover of Jessie’s loud chatter. ‘Is that the other cousin?’

  Poppy looked and then nodded. ‘He looks rather dour, doesn’t he?’ she said. And indeed the young man in the rather ill-fitting uniform did look gloomy. He was square and solid, with dusty hair that he kept slicked down rather fiercely and a rather nondescript face. He was staring across the room at the dancers and Robin followed his line of vision and saw that it was Chick and Daniel he was watching so fixedly, and was a little amused. Good old Chick seemed to be doing rather well tonight, and she certainly looked as though she was having fun; she was laughing up at her partner as he swept her around in rather exaggerated foxtrot steps as the music wailed its familiar melody and her eyes and cheeks seemed to be competing for a shine award. It suited her, thought Robin, and smiled as she caught Chick’s eye and her friend winked at her, and she felt a sudden wave of melancholy sweep over her. Here she was at a party and no one to dance with; it really was too bad. And then, there was a little flurry at the door and three more people came in. And one of them was Hamish.

  She had no idea how much her face lit up at the sight of him, but Poppy saw it and so did Sam Landow, and they both watched her as she moved quickly across the room to greet him, though each was thinking very different thoughts.

  19

  For the next hour and a half the party was, Robin felt, the best she had ever been to. Hamish, having told her briefly that the good-hearted relief Sister McCann had let him go, firmly countermanding the egregious Meek’s instructions, had thrown himself into the proceedings with considerable energy. He turned out, a little to Robin’s surprise, to be a superb dancer, if a little given to making sudden swerves and twirls, and they danced to every record played by the indefatigable gramophone user – who, Robin discovered, was her stepfather, being as he always was, useful and agreeable.

  And when the dancing stopped because supper was announced, she and Chick and Daniel and Hamish and Dr Landow, who had been talking to the Australian cousin Harry, all sat together on the floor of the dining room, leaving the chairs to the much older guests, and ate quantities of Jessie’s good food, and laughed and joked a great deal. Or at least Chick and Daniel did, putting on a sparkling show for the rest of them.

  Daniel was obviously a man of considerable social gifts, with a fund of light-hearted chatter and good jokes that had just enough edge of malice to make them sharply witty, and Chick, who was clearly entranced by him, proved an excellent foil. Robin, leaning against the wall between Hamish and Sam Landow, watched her friend and was happy for her; she hadn’t looked so pleased with herself for a very long time.

  And Robin was also happy for herself, because the whole evening was turning out so well in so many different ways. First of all her grandmother and her Aunt Jessie hadn’t had a spat with each other. This was a remarkable thing in Robin’s experience. She had only the haziest notion of why the two of them should be so sharp with each other when they met, though she did know that it had something to do with Poppy’s childhood when both had looked after her for a while, and that therefore there was a certain rivalry between them, but Robin had frankly never really cared that much about why it happened. She had just disliked it heartily when it did, and to spend an evening with the two of them under the same roof with no flounces from Auntie Jessie and no dry sharp comments from her grandmother was a delight.

  But best of all, she had here just the members of her immediate family she wanted, her mother and stepfather, sitting between Jessie and Mildred at the table and gossiping contentedly, and no one else at all. Most especially there was no Chloe. And she sighed happily and returned her attention to Daniel who was telling a long, involved and apparently enthralling story involving a Boer farmer and a Bantu girl and the local pastor, which was holding the attention of the others like a vice.

  Or was it? Her gaze slid along the group and came to rest on the square bulk of her cousin Harry. He showed no sign of any emotion at all. He just sat and ate – a large amount, in fact – and listened and watched them all but said little. When people had offered him a dish from which to help himself he had nodded politely and taken it with brief thanks. When anyone talked to him – mostly Sam Landow – he answered in monosyllables, and Robin found that puzzling. If he was so unwilling to make any effort to get to know the people amongst whom he found himself, why had he written to his aunt in the first place? Her grandmother had invited them, as Robin understood it, in order not just to meet them but to give them the chance to make new social contacts in a strange city. Well, Daniel was obviously using that opportunity to the point of wringing it out like a piece of tired muslin, but his cousin was doing nothing at all. And Robin felt irritated by that rather than sorry for him. She wondered why, and then realized it was because his face wasn’t entirely expressionless after all. Looking at him again she thought – he’s jealous. Jealous of Daniel, that’s what it is. And she glanced again at Daniel and saw how closely Chick had placed herself next to him and the way she looked in the tall man’s face, and understood. Poor Harry, she thought then. He’d like to be with Chick himself. And preened a little on her friend’s behalf.

  But then sharply the bubble of pleasure in which the party had wrapped her burst and all its iridescent charm vanished. She was a dull ordinary girl sitting on the floor with her back to the wall and surrounded by sticky plates, staring at the doorway in which a vision was standing.

  ‘My darlings!’ fluted the vision, which was closely draped in shimmering blue silk which swept to the floor, at which point it was edged with very soft white fur. ‘Did you think we were never coming? Well, here we are and the party can start at last! Madly sorry, but we simply had to go to the old War House. The General’s pre-Christmas do, you know – he’d have been livid if we’d missed it – ’

  A silence had fallen on the room as everyone had turned to stare at the doorway’s occupant and then David got to his feet, and Robin, in the middle of her own sense of lurching disappointment, was aware of how typical it was of him to walk into any awkwar
dness and try to smooth it out.

  ‘Well, better late than never, Chloe, my dear,’ he said. ‘And how are you?’ And he bent forward and kissed her cheek, which she proferred in what Robin regarded as the silliest filmstarish manner imaginable. ‘And your friend too – ah – Captain Stanniforth, wasn’t it? I think we met at Ley On’s one night – ’

  ‘Yes, indeed, yes, we did, sir.’ The vision’s companion stepped forwards, very dapper in a perfectly pressed dress uniform on which a good deal of red braid was scattered. ‘How de do – ’

  The room became noisier then as people at the table and around it, sitting on the floor like Robin’s group, relaxed and began to chatter again, as David took the newcomers towards the food and drink.

  ‘Well!’ Daniel said and grinned down at Chick. ‘As my old Daddy used to say, there’s nothing quite like putting all your goods in the store window, is there? Question is, are there any wares inside to match up to what’s on offer?’

  Chick, whose face had fallen at the sight of Chloe, for she really was breathtaking to look at, at once lightened. ‘You have a point there, my colonial friend! We’re a bit leery about that sort of lady where I come from too! Who is she, Robin? Do you know?’

  Robin, watching Chloe sparkling and performing for the delectation of everyone around her, and especially for her straight-backed Captain in his over-garnished uniform, looked miserable. ‘She’s my half-sister,’ she said shortly.

  There was an appalled silence and then Chick, mortified, scrambled across the space between them to put her hand on Robin’s knee.

  ‘Oh, pull my tongue out with red-hot pincers and feed it to the wolves! I’m so sorry, ducky – ’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Robin said a little wearily. ‘She has that effect on everyone. She’s a bit – well, my mother says she was rather spoiled. And you have to admit she’s marvellously good-looking.’

  ‘Not at all.’ It was Harry who spoke and everyone now stared at him in some surprise, except Sam Landow who was still looking at Chloe with his brows slightly creased. ‘She thinks she is, and so she sends out a message telling everyone that she is. So that’s what everyone else believes. It’s a common enough trick.’