‘Thank God for that,’ Nicholas said. ‘Now what will happen?’
‘Now,’ Anthony sighed, ‘we will pay Miss Goodison off and return the keys to our reverent neighbour and go back to school.’
Rosie was quite prepared to be told that her stint as a housekeeper was over. After all, she’d known all along that it was only for the summer, but she was surprised by Anthony’s kindness when he handed over her last wages.
‘It has occurred to me,’ he said rather stiffly, ‘that you might require another job, Miss Goodison. That being so I have made some enquiries on your behalf and I can tell you that the RAC Club in Pall Mall is looking for staff. Waitresses I believe. Should you be interested, I have written their address for you on this card and this (handing her an envelope) is a reference in case you need one. You will see I have addressed it to whom it may concern so that it will be suitable on other occasions.’
She took the card and the envelope and thanked him with real gratitude and when he and Nicholas had climbed into their car to be chauffeured away to school, she took the reference out of the envelope and read it to see what he’d said. It was short and quite flattering.
‘To whom it may concern,
‘Rosemary Goodison has worked for me and my brother in Binderton for quite some time and would have continued to do so, had it not been for the present war with Germany, in which I am called to serve. I thoroughly recommend her to any future employer. Her work is thorough, conscientious and reliable.
‘Yours truly,
‘Anthony Eden Esq’
Well fancy that, she thought, smiling at her description, and here’s me thinking he barely noticed me. Then she looked at the address of the club and discovered that it was in London, and that gave her pause. But only for a few seconds. She stuck her chin in the air, squared her shoulders and made up her mind. London might be the capital and a very big city but it ’ud be an adventure to work there. She’d soon find her way round.
The next morning, having given the cottage a thorough good clean, she packed her belongings in her battered old bag and went round to say goodbye to her mother. She found her sitting at the kitchen table with a stricken expression on her face and a letter in her hand.
‘He’s gone to France,’ she said to Rosie. ‘This come this morning.’
‘That makes two of us,’ Rosie said cheerfully. ‘I’m off to London. I come to say goodbye.’
‘And just when I thought you were both settled down so nicely,’ her mother sighed, looking at the letter. ‘It’s a weary world.’
‘Yes,’ Rosie agreed. ‘But it’s the only one we’ve got. Cheer up. I’ll write to you as soon as I get there an’ I’ll be home again soon. Now I must go, or I shall miss the train.’
‘Look after yourself,’ Maggie said, managing a smile.
‘You know me,’ Rosie said and bent to kiss her. She looked worn this morning. Worn and swollen about the belly. Not another baby, she thought, poor old thing. Hasn’t she had enough? But there wasn’t time for any more talk and certainly not for that sort of question. London was waiting.
It seemed a very long journey from Chichester to London, but she’d found herself a corner seat by the window and watched the countryside as they passed. Arundel, looking romantic, the snaking curves of the river, fields and fields and fields, here a horse and cart plodding along a narrow road, there a solitary ancient house crouched among the trees, and at last she was travelling past long rows of houses and across a wide river full of boats and barges that had to be the Thames and she knew she’d arrived in the capital.
Even though she’d prepared herself to be in a big city, she hadn’t imagined it would be quite so overwhelming. The station was an enormous vault full of trains, steam and noise and hundreds of people rushing about so quickly, it made her head spin to look at them, and when she’d found her way out of it, she was in another huge place, a cobbled roadway full of buses, some horse-drawn, some motor-driven, standing in line one behind the other or pulling away so crammed with passengers that the horses were sweating and straining under their weight. There were crowds of people here too, rushing and pushing, and none of them were looking at one another. As far as she could see, there was only one person not on the move and that was a boy in a cloth cap who was standing on the edge of the pavement selling newspapers and calling his wares, ‘Star, News, Stannard!’ People were dropping coins into his palm and snatching a paper as they passed, as if he was some sort of machine. It was very odd.
But gawping at crowds wasn’t going to find this Pall Mall place. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin and set out on her search.
It was extremely difficult even though she asked the way at every street corner. The first lady she stopped told her to follow ‘that road over there until you come to Buckingham Palace where the king lives’. And added vaguely, ‘Then you just go on from there.’ The second directed her to Green Park, which was a most complicated place with so many paths to follow that she was confused and stood still under the trees for a long time trying to get her bearings until an elegant couple strolled past her and she dared to ask them for directions. This time she was in luck. The gentleman took a notebook out of his pocket with a little pencil attached to it tore out a page and drew her a map, with all the streets labelled and arrows to point her in the right direction. And with the map clutched in her hand, she found the RAC Club.
It was a very grand building, made of stone and with huge curved windows that shone in the sunshine and a flag flying above the front door. She had arrived.
Chapter 6
Tommy Goodison didn’t think much of France. He didn’t say anything about it to Ma because he thought it might upset her. He’d written to her twice since he arrived and tried to keep his letters cheerful, telling her everything was ticketty-boo and he couldn’t wait to get stuck into the enemy and that sort of thing. But really it was boring out there in the wilds and they were sleeping in tents, which was all very well when the sun shone but foul when it rained and there was mud underfoot. He and Charlie told one another they’d be glad when the train came, and they could get on with the war. They’d been hanging around waiting for the blessed thing for eight days and there was no sign of it coming.
For the first two days he was actually quite glad to be able to do nothing but drill and fatigues. It had been a rough crossing and he’d been as sick as a dog all the way over and had needed time to get over it. But by the third day he was ready for action and got the fidgets having to stay where he was.
‘If this is what war’s like I don’t think much of it,’ he said to Charlie, as they tucked into their bully-beef, ‘stuck out here, hangin’ around wi’ nothin’ to do ’cept drill all on an’ on. I thought it was gonna be exciting, firing guns and everything.’
‘Per’aps that ol’ train’ll come tomorrow,’ Charlie said. ‘You never know. Here’s our corp coming. Ask him. He might know what’s holdin’ it up.’
‘Search me,’ the corporal said, taking his first mouthful. ‘Blamed thing’s broken down I shouldn’t wonder. Or the Bosch have blown up the line. It’s the sort a’ thing they do. We’ll soon have it running again. Don’t you worry.’
As he seemed in an affable mood Charlie asked him where they were going.
‘Wipers,’ the corporal said. ‘Over Belgium way. There’s a fine ol’ scrap goin’ on up there. Can’t let the beggars take Wipers, you see, on account of, if they do, they’ll take Calais an’ Dunkirk an’ Boulogne an’ all. What we got ter keep open being that’s the way our supplies come in an’ you can’t live without supplies.’
‘Wipers,’ Tommy said, considering it. ‘They got some rum sort a’ names round here.’ He felt easier knowing where they were going, especially if it was going to be a fine ol’ scrap. That would be something to tell Ma. I wonder how they are, he thought, ol’ Ma an’ Rosie. He didn’t exactly miss them, that wouldn’t be manly, but he thought of them a lot, especially at night, when he couldn’t get to sleep
and tossed and turned and rolled from side to side, holding his rabbit’s foot for luck. There was too much to think about, that was the trouble. If he was honest, he didn’t really know how he’d manage if it came to hand-to-hand fighting and he had to stick a bayonet into another man’s guts. He’d seen plenty of animals killed but that was for food. This would be different. It ’ud be him or me, I suppose, he thought, but that was no comfort. Our Rosie ’ud know the answer, he thought. And he yearned to see her and talk to her.
Rosie was enjoying her new life at the RAC Club. She was working long hours, but it was in the most luxurious place she’d ever seen. To wait at table in a sumptuous restaurant was a regular daily wonder, with soft carpets under her feet, the most elaborately patterned ceiling above her head, snow-white cloths on every table with silver cutlery at every place setting and patterned glasses polished and gleaming and enormous chandeliers above the tables fairly burning with electric light.
It was a rich man’s club. There was no doubt about that. They arrived in enormous cars and dined in splendid clothes and smoked cigars and drank port or champagne, neither of which she’d even heard of until she came there. But what was most impressive about them was that they actually looked at her when she was taking their order and thanked her when she brought it to their table. At first, she thought they were smiling at all the waitresses but after a few days she realised that they weren’t looking at ‘a waitress’ they were looking at her and they were looking with admiration. It was a revelation. It meant she was worth looking at, even pretty, and that was something that hadn’t occurred to her. It was wonderful to feel admired. Or it was until the artists arrived. Then she wasn’t quite so sure about it.
They appeared one smoky October evening when the London parks prickled with bonfires and approaching trams glowed ruby red through a smokescreen of autumn dusk. Their arrival caused a palpable stir in the quiet restaurant room. They seemed to know everybody there and were greeted and waved at as they walked towards their seats, moving slowly as if they were royalty and waving their cigars at their friends. They had full dark beards and magnificent heads of hair and were dressed in the showiest clothes, velvet jackets and soft white shirts and huge cravats, one purple and the other scarlet, held in place with jewelled pins, and they didn’t sit at their chosen table, they took possession of it. Rosie couldn’t wait to take their order. She walked towards the table, notebook in hand, and the younger of the two looked straight at her and smiled. His admiration was so open and bold it made her blush.
‘It’s Helen of Troy, bigod,’ he said, holding out his hand to her, ‘or I’m a Dutchman. And where did they find you, you delectable creature?’
She was shocked because waitresses didn’t shake hands with the guests and there was an awkward pause before she managed to stammer, ‘I’ve come to take your order, sir.’
That made him worse. ‘Have you indeed?’ he said, making eyes at her. ‘What shall we order her to do, Augustus? D’you think she would dance on the table for us? Or pose au naturel?’
‘For pity’s sake, Gerry,’ the older one said. ‘You’re embarrassing her. They won’t allow you to go to France if you carry on like this.’
‘Don’t you believe it, old fruit,’ Gerry said, grinning at him. ‘They’ll let us both go, beards and all. And I’ll tell you why. They’ll do it because they want this show of theirs recorded. They want accuracy, which they will certainly get from me and they might even get from you too, now and then, if the mood takes you.’
Augustus grimaced at his teasing and turned to Rosie, smiling at her kindly. ‘You must forgive my friend,’ he said to her. ‘He’s a little under the weather. Do you have the Dover sole tonight?’
Rosie took their orders in a daze. Then she strode off to the kitchen, trying to look as if she didn’t care but itching to find out who they were.
‘They’re artists,’ the maître d’ said, curling his lip with disdain, ‘so we have to make allowances for them. I hope they’re not troubling you.’
‘Oh no,’ Rosie hastened to reassure him. ‘Nothing like that. I was just wonderin’ who they was.’
‘The older one is Augustus John,’ the maître d’ told her. ‘Quite a famous man by all accounts. I’ve not seen any of his paintings, of course, but he has a good reputation. The young one is called de Silva so I should imagine he’s foreign. Let me know if you have any problems with them.’ And he swept back to his domain.
‘You wanna watch out fer the younger one,’ one of the other young waitresses said. ‘He pinched my bum the last time he was here.’
‘If he tries that trick with me,’ Rosie told her, ‘he’ll get more than he bargains for.’
But she was intrigued by him no matter what he’d done. He was wonderfully handsome. They both were, with those dark eyes and those beautiful beards framing their faces and their lips so red and moist and that bold way of looking right at you as if they could see through you. Artists she thought. That’ll be something to write home about.
‘Look at that,’ Charlie said to Tommy. ‘That’ll be something to write home about.’
The train had arrived that morning, at last, and had taken the brigade to Wipers — which turned out to be spelt Ypres according to the sign on the station — and now they were marching through a sizeable town in a long khaki column, heading north-east towards the battlefield and singing to keep their spirits up. At that moment they were passing a long, impressive building with so many tall windows you couldn’t count them and a huge tower at one end with a spire at each corner. Their corporal said it was the cloth hall, but it wasn’t the building that had caught Charlie’s eye. Standing on the cobbles a few yards away from them was a motorised delivery van labelled ‘Waring and Gillow, Oxford Street, London’. The sight of it was so warming and reassuring that they gave it a cheer as they passed, and the driver got out and waved his cap at them.
‘There you are,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s an omen.’
Tommy said he hoped so. It was giving him the collywobbles to be so near the battlefield. Not that there was anything he could do about it except trudge on and keep singing. But he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like.
It was a huge, rather muddy plain, striped with trenches, some just a scoop out of the ground, others that looked deeper and more permanent. There was a sloping hillside immediately in front of them and away to their left a ridge of land covered in trees. ‘That’s where the Bosch are,’ their corporal said, ‘so keep your eyes skinned. Now get yourselves dug in.’
They dug in diligently along with the rest of the brigade. The line of trenches seemed to go on for miles on either side of them. ‘No sign of the Hun,’ Tommy said as he straightened his back. It was rather an anti-climax to be digging trenches.
And then everything changed so suddenly and dramatically he didn’t have time to take it in. There was a roar of artillery fire and voices yelling at them to take cover, but shells were already exploding right in front of them, showering the trench with mud and shrapnel, and when he peered through the sudden smoke, he saw that the hillside was covered in marching men, all in grey-green uniforms, all carrying rifles and all walking straight towards them. All carrying rifles! Jesus!
‘Bloody hell fire!’ Charlie said. ‘There’s hundreds of the beggars.’
The corp was bellowing orders. ‘Take aim! Fire!’ and they obeyed without thinking, aiming at the figures advancing towards them as shells screamed over their heads. ‘Fire! Fire!’ Tommy could see grey figures falling, writhing in the mud, and he knew he was killing them, but he felt no pity. There wasn’t time to feel anything. There was just an overpowering need to drive them back before they could reach the trench. ‘Fire!’ They were falling, one after the other, and yet they still came on. The noise of explosions had grown so loud it was deafening and there was so much mud being flung in the air and such clouds of thick smoke swirling around them it was almost impossible to see what was happening. Surely, they can’t keep on advancing
?
Whistles shrilled all along the line and he recognised the signal to advance and climbed out of the trenches along with everyone else and walked forward jerkily, like a mechanical toy, firing as he went and heading straight for the grey-green figures. Whatever was to happen would happen and there was nothing he could do about it. Then someone was cheering, and he looked up to see who it was and saw that the grey-green enemy were stopping, turning, running away. If this is what it’s like to be in a battle he thought, it’s wonderful. Quick, inevitable, unstoppable.
But while the thought was still in his head, there was a flash of extreme light and something struck him in the chest with such burning force that he couldn’t breathe. He was briefly aware that he was falling. Then the blackness took him.
Rosie got the letter first thing in the morning when she walked into the kitchens ready for her early morning duty. She didn’t recognise the handwriting on the envelope. It wasn’t Ma’s or Tess’s and it was disquieting to have a letter from someone else. She opened it quickly to find out who it was.
‘Dear Rosie,’ it said. ‘I am ritting for to tell you your Ma had the telegram yesterday for to tell her your Tommy has been killed wot I am very sorry to say. She say to tell you she is in a bad way or she wuld hev writ herself. Milly Enders (mrs)’
The shock of hearing such dreadful news made her tremble so violently that she had to find a stool and sit down. It couldn’t be true, she thought wildly. Not Tommy. He’s strong and full of life. It couldn’t be him. Someone must have made a mistake.
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