The Waiting Hours

by Ellie Dean

  Peggy could barely imagine the agony she must have gone through at the loss of Seamus and Joseph, and suspected the anguish over her remaining son’s safety tormented her every time he returned to his RNR posting in the London docks. Of course she was lonely now Frank had been called up, but despite all Peggy’s best efforts to persuade her to move in with her at Beach View, Pauline had resisted. Tonight must have been very bad for her to have come all this way across the headland to seek shelter at Beach View.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said, handing Pauline the tea and sitting opposite her. She regarded her closely and noted with concern that her shabby clothes hung off her, and her nails had been bitten to the quick. Everyone had lost weight because of this war, but Pauline looked half-starved, and distressingly unkempt. ‘I do worry about you, Pauline,’ she murmured. ‘Are you sure you’re taking care of yourself and eating properly?’

  Pauline squared her shoulders and sipped the hot tea. ‘No one’s eating properly these days,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘I’m fine, really, so there’s no need to be worried about me.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of rabbit stew left over from tea if you’d like it,’ Peggy said hopefully.

  ‘Thanks, Peg, but I ate before I came out.’

  ‘Well, it’s lovely to see you,’ said Peggy, disappointed that she couldn’t do anything practical to help. ‘But something must have happened to bring you out on such a raw night. Do you want to talk about it, love?’

  Pauline encircled the cup with both hands as if afraid her trembling fingers might drop it. ‘Brendon came down today on a twelve-hour pass, and now he’s gone back to London the house seemed emptier than ever.’ The cup rattled in its saucer as she placed it on the floor. ‘It would have been all right if Frank was home,’ she added wistfully, ‘but the sound of the sea echoed through the house bringing back all the memories of my boys, and I had to get out.’

  Peggy reached across and took her hand, painfully aware that whatever she said couldn’t relieve Pauline’s awful grief. ‘Frank will be back very soon,’ she murmured, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘The army will chuck him out on his next birthday and then you’ll have him home for Christmas and getting under your feet again.’

  Pauline nodded and blinked back the ready tears. ‘I’m sorry, Peggy,’ she stuttered. ‘I realise I’m being selfish coming here with my moans and groans. You have Jim and the rest of the family to worry about, without me going on. But with Mother gadding about in Bournemouth and Carol stuck all the way down in Devon, you and Ron are really the only family I have.’

  She dredged up a smile as she returned the pressure of Peggy’s hand. ‘And I’m so grateful for that, Peggy. I don’t know how I’d have got through these past months without you both.’

  ‘It’s what families are for, and you know you’re always welcome here,’ Peggy murmured. She patted her cheek, then sat back and decided to try and lighten the conversation. ‘Talking of family, I haven’t heard from your mother Dolly in a while. What’s she up to now?’

  Pauline managed a weak smile. ‘Goodness only knows,’ she admitted. ‘Her letters are full of gossip about her friends and the endless parties and card evenings they seem to have, but she did say she’d joined the WI – which actually came as quite a shock.’ Her smile slowly became an impish grin. ‘I mean, can you imagine my mother consorting with all those crusty old fuddy-duddies?’

  ‘Goodness me, no,’ breathed Peggy. The thought of the glamorous Dolly Cardew doing anything so mundane made her giggle. ‘I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall when she waltzed into that first meeting, looking like a film star with her sharp suit, high heels and fur. I bet she’s caused a real stir.’

  Pauline chuckled. ‘I expect she did. She wouldn’t be Mother otherwise.’ She finished the cup of tea and offered Peggy a cigarette from her packet of Park Drive. Once they were alight, she leaned back in the chair and Queenie took immediate advantage of her lap and jumped up to curl there contentedly.

  Pauline stroked the soft black fur. ‘There are times when I wish she was like other mothers, but that would have made life very dull. I do miss her, though. She brings colour and life with her, and in these dark days, that has to be a rare talent, don’t you think?’

  ‘It certainly is,’ agreed Peggy, who’d always loved and admired Dolly as one of her closest confidantes – but she also knew that if Dolly was to appear in Cliffehaven she would soon drive them all demented with her restless energy and determination to always look on the bright side of things and turn everything into a lark.

  She reached for the letters stacked on the kitchen table. ‘I got a card from Carol today,’ she said, hoping to keep Pauline cheerful. ‘She seems to be coping, although I don’t think she has much time to herself with all the hours she has to do at that farm.’

  Pauline took the postcard and read the message. ‘I was surprised she joined the Land Army,’ she said. ‘Carol always dressed nicely and seemed very happy working in that town office. I can’t imagine her in dungarees and wellingtons, and up to her armpits in dung and mud.’ She frowned, clearly unable to picture her young sister trudging around at Coombe Farm.

  She handed the card back and stroked the cat. ‘Still, war and loss does strange things to all of us,’ she said on a sigh. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t find more to do for the war effort. Brendon suggested I join the Women’s Voluntary Service.’

  ‘Only if you can put up with Doris and her horrible snooty friends,’ said Peggy acidly. ‘My sister will drive you potty in five minutes, and before you know it, you’ll get all the rotten jobs and be expected to be at her beck and call at all hours – and that’s no exaggeration, Pauline, it’s a heartfelt warning from years of bitter personal experience.’

  ‘I know she’s a tartar and that you don’t get on, but it’s water off a duck’s back with me,’ Pauline said. ‘I simply ignore her when she gets on her high horse. But I must do something more than the odd night on fire watch or helping out occasionally with the Red Cross.’

  Peggy thought this was a splendid idea, for Pauline had far too much time on her hands, which wasn’t a good thing when grieving. ‘Well, there are comfort boxes to be packed for the troops abroad, postcards to write with Christmas greetings, and people to help with finding a new billet or things to replace what they’ve lost during the raids. I’ll take you to the Town Hall tomorrow and introduce you to May Buller. She’s an absolute whizz when it comes to organising anything, and I suspect she’ll welcome you with open arms.’

  Pauline nodded, her caressing hand making Queenie purr and stretch luxuriously. ‘Yes, I’d like that. What with Carol doing her bit in Devon and Mother causing mayhem amongst the ladies of Bournemouth’s WI, it’s time I pulled myself together and mucked in.’

  3

  London

  Dolly Cardew was enjoying her war, for like the last one, she’d again found something that enthralled and excited her, kept her on her toes and at the very heart of the action. Dolly had always had a thirst for adventure, drawn by the hint of danger in a man or a situation that caused her blood to sing and made her feel alive.

  She didn’t really understand this need, but justified it by citing a solitary childhood with staid parents who were bewildered not only by her rejection of the mundane routine of their lives, but by her driving ambition to break free and experience things beyond the stultifying boundaries of their middle-class world. The rigours of a boarding school where the slightest sign of a rebellious nature or imagination was frowned upon and swiftly quashed had sealed her fate, and so here she was at sixty-one, footloose and fancy-free, but having to live with deeply held regrets for the hurt she’d caused through her waywardness. For she’d left home at sixteen for the bright lights of London and had to pay the price for that rebellion – as had her daughters and parents – and the wisdom of age had made her realise how thoughtless she’d been.

  Pulling the fur wrap more firmly around her neck against the bitter wind knifing
across the isolated landing strip, Dolly watched the girl she’d been mentoring stride through the twilight towards the small plane which would parachute her into enemy territory. Aline wasn’t her real name, and although she was regarded as one of the best and most experienced of the SOE agents, she was still very young. Yet her grip on the handle of the small cardboard suitcase was firm, her shoulders beneath the parachute pack were squared, and her head was held high.

  They had said their farewells earlier, but Dolly waited as she always did on these occasions for the moment when the girl would turn before boarding the plane – they all did it, either to wave and show they weren’t afraid, or to look back one last time on their old lives before having to face the dangers of their new one.

  Aline stopped, glanced over her shoulder and gave Dolly a brief nod of acknowledgement before clambering onto the wing and settling into the rear cockpit.

  Dolly held on to her hat and clutched her fur as the small plane motored down the isolated country runway lit by tar pots then lifted into the air. ‘Godspeed, Aline,’ she murmured, the words heartfelt as always, yet tinged with envy, for had she been younger she might have been on that plane and heading for occupied France tonight.

  With a cluck of impatience she climbed back into her car as the men began extinguishing the fire pots. It was all very well to feel that way, but she was wise enough to realise that at her age she had other skills that could be put to good use in this war; skills honed over the years of travelling about the world and mixing with the right – and wrong – people, ultimately bringing her to London and the nondescript building in Baker Street which hid some of the most important secrets of a country at war.

  She drove carefully through the blackout towards the city. Despite the devastation caused by the Luftwaffe, London still hummed with energy and the determination not to be beaten. After an hour and a half she parked the car in Baker Street and sat for a moment, relieved the long journey was over.

  She regarded the stacked sandbags at the entrances to the buildings, the armed guards, and the gun emplacement at the bottom of the street where soldiers stamped their feet and rubbed their hands against the chill wind which swirled leaves and litter along the gutters. It was all far removed from the suburban tranquillity of her little house in Bournemouth where her daughters thought she’d finally settled down to enjoy peaceful old age and cause mayhem at the local WI.

  Her smile was wan as she wondered how they’d react if they could see her now. But of course they’d never learn what their mother had done during both wars, and probably wouldn’t have believed it if they had; to them she was a flibbertigibbet, a social butterfly with no real purpose in life but to look glamorous and have fun. Whereas, in reality, she’d worked secretly behind enemy lines during the first shout, using her illustrious contacts and her fluent French and German to glean vital information and pass it on to London. Now she prepared the men and women who were following in her footsteps, making sure their French was flawless and their clothes and possessions didn’t betray their identity.

  She settled back into the soft leather seat, unwound the window a fraction and lit a cigarette. There was no rush, and although chilled and stiff, she needed to relax after that hair-raising drive before she had to report in to her superior.

  Having seen brave little Aline boarding that plane tonight, her thoughts drifted to her daughters, Pauline and Carol. She adored them both, but a quirk in her nature had meant she’d had to escape the tedium of the nursery and the demands of those small beings who depended upon her for something she was unable to give for any length of time. Her parents had reluctantly stepped into the breach when it had come to caring for Pauline – but when, fifteen years later, she’d made another mistake and brought a second fatherless baby home, it had been harder to persuade them to look after her. Yet they’d provided a stable, loving upbringing for her girls, and now they were gone, she missed them terribly and wished she’d told them more often how very much she loved and admired them.

  Dolly fully acknowledged that she’d been a rotten, selfish mother who, despite the fact she truly adored her children, couldn’t resist the siren call of the great wide world beyond hearth and home. And yet her children had forgiven her, had loved her without question, accepting her infrequent appearances with an unbridled joy she didn’t deserve; and now she was miles from either of them, her heart aching for them in their grief – a grief she’d had no way of easing, and which made her own even more painful.

  The loss of her darling young grandsons, Seamus and Joseph, had been a terrible blow, and she suspected Pauline would never really get over it. There was a small comfort in the fact that at least her girl had sweet Peggy Reilly nearby to keep an eye on her and provide the stability and nurture she so needed – and that Frank would soon be demobbed and could return home to her.

  Dolly blew smoke out of the window. She’d always liked Pauline’s Frank. He was a good, solid sort of man – much like his father, Ron – the type she herself should have married if only she’d had the sense. But of course she hadn’t had anything of the sort, and had fallen for entirely the wrong sort of man – twice.

  She met her own gaze in the rear-view mirror and blinked away the memory of that ill-fated, hasty wedding she’d been forced to go through shortly after her seventeenth birthday – and the aftermath when he’d left her and baby Pauline in that squalid tenement, and she’d had no choice but to return home to her parents. She’d never seen him again, and as Pauline had shown little curiosity about him, she hadn’t bothered to find out where he was.

  Her thoughts turned to Carol, who was alone down in Devon. At twenty-eight, she was too young to be in mourning, but proving strong enough to cope with it all if her letters were anything to go by. There was a good deal of steel in Carol despite her fair and feminine appearance, and Dolly often wondered if she’d inherited that from her, or from the man who’d fathered her.

  At this unsettling thought, Dolly grabbed her handbag, gas-mask box and small holdall from the passenger seat and climbed out of the car. She mashed the remains of her cigarette beneath her high-heeled shoe before showing her identity card to the guard, then ran up the steps. The echoing hall smelled of paper, ink and dust, and the indefinable atmosphere of important work being done.

  Reaching her small office on the second floor, Dolly dumped her bag and shed her coat and fur. The room was warmed by a gas fire which sputtered in the cast-iron hearth, and, silently blessing whoever had lit it in readiness for her return, she held her hands out to it and checked her appearance in the mirror.

  Her face was holding up well despite the passing years, for she’d adhered strictly to the regimen of skincare she’d learned in Paris as a young woman. Her blue eyes were clear, the lashes enhanced with mascara, and her lightly powdered cheeks were attractively flushed from the cold.

  She patted her honey-coloured hair, which now owed more to the hairdresser’s skills with colourants than nature, and then touched the single strand of pearls at her neck which had become a sort of talisman. Dressed in her favourite light grey two-piece suit and cream silk blouse, she knew she looked good and could pass for a woman at least a decade younger. It had become a matter of pride to remain chic – it was what people expected of her – but they would never know that deep beneath that facade beat the heart of a woman who’d loved and lost and was condemned to a life alone because of her inability to see that the man she adored was not Mr Right, but Mr Very Wrong.

  She noted the sparkle dim in her eyes at the thought of the one man she might have settled down with, but who’d ultimately betrayed her. She turned away. He was in the past, and she refused to allow the memory of him to overshadow the present.

  She reached for the stack of letters that had been placed on her desk during her absence. She’d arranged for her private mail to be sent on from Bournemouth to the anonymous Post Office box number here in London, but because of the disruption caused to the mail deliveries by the war, and her frequ
ent stays at Bletchley, they were often out of date and out of sequence. She noted there were two from Carol, one from Pauline and another from Peggy, plus several from various acquaintances, as well as a hastily scrawled postcard from Brendon, her only surviving grandson who was with the Royal Naval Reserve and based in London’s Docklands.

  Dolly flicked the card over and smiled. Brendon was thanking her for the slap-up tea she’d treated him to at the Ritz a few weeks ago, and informing her that he’d managed to get down to Cliffehaven to visit his mother for a few hours, and had met a nice girl on the train journey back to London. He hoped he’d see her again, but with things being as unpredictable as they were at the moment, it was unlikely. He signed off with a flourish and two kisses.

  ‘Bless him,’ she murmured, thinking of the dark-haired, blue-eyed, handsome little boy who’d grown into a sturdy, striking young man. The realisation that he might soon settle down and have a family of his own dampened her spirits somewhat, for it would mean she’d become a great-grandmother. ‘Perish the thought,’ she breathed. ‘I’m certainly not ready for that.’

  ‘Bad news?’

  Dolly turned towards the elegantly dressed late-middle-aged man standing in the doorway and smiled. ‘Just contemplating my mortality, Hugh, and I can’t say I’m too enamoured by the thought of old age and decrepitude.’

  Sir Hugh Cuthbertson closed the door behind him, kissed her cheek and then carefully adjusted the knife-edged crease in his tailored trousers as he sat down in the chair by the desk. ‘You’ll never grow old, Dolly,’ he said affectionately, ‘but I do wish you’d let me know you were back. I’ve been waiting in my office for over an hour.’

  ‘Sorry, Hugh,’ she said unrepentantly. ‘But I’ve only just returned and needed to thaw out after that long drive. The heater still isn’t working in that car.’