‘I understand,’ Jessie said again. ‘You hear what she says, Bernie? It’s all got to be settled. New arrangements will have to be made – ’
‘Oh, yes. Just like that. It’s so easy, isn’t it?’ Bernie said savagely. ‘Little Miss Goody Two Shoes here says it’s all got to be done different, so different it’s got to be done even if no one knows how to. Between now and tonight I’ve got to find new premises, just like that? I should cocoa!’
‘It’s got to be done,’ Poppy said implacably. ‘I say again, Jessie, I’m sorry. But I’ve got enough to cope with without worrying about this as well. It’s all wrong – ’
Again Jessie looked over her shoulder at her workers and this time she snapped at them, ‘So stop staring already! Ain’t it natural enough partners have business differences? Go and get yourselves your coffee or something. Work can wait ten minutes. Go on – ’
The women went, wiping their hands on their aprons as they passed the three of them, their eyes well averted and with an air of tension across their shoulders, and Poppy knew what it
was. As soon as they were in their crowded little rest room they’d fall into such an orgy of gossip it would take over twenty minutes before they got back to work. God, I’m stupid, she thought. If I’d made Jessie and Bernie come up to my office we could have sorted this out without wasting so much working time, and we’re shorthanded too – I’m a damned fool – ’
When they’d gone her sense of anger at herself made her more pugnacious than ever. ‘Well, they’ve gone,’ she said. ‘So now I can spell it out. I will not have any truck with the black market, Jessie. I know you gave me some stock for the canteen a while back, but I’m still kicking myself over that. If we hadn’t been at the very bottom of our resources I’d never have allowed it. As it was – well, I took it as a gift. I certainly didn’t pay for any of it, so I feel less evil than I might. But I’m having no more of it. He’s got to get his stuff out of our cellars. He can come here as often as you and he likes, of course – I’ve no way of stopping that and I wouldn’t dream of attempting to do so, much as I can’t stand you, Bernie. But your stuff has to go, and no later than tonight.’
There was a silence, and then Bernie shrugged. ‘Well, it was time I was getting out anyway. I can move a bit north of here where the bombers won’t come, and maybe do better business at that. I could end up thanking you for doing me a favour, Poppy, you know that? I really could. So get yourself down out of the high trees and take it easy. You’ll blow a gasket, you go on like that. And then where’d your David be when he gets back from sea?
If
he gets back, of course –’ And he grinned at her winningly and went back to lean against the oven once more.
Jessie went white. ‘Bernie! How can you be so – ’
‘Oh it’s easy, Ma,’ he said, not taking his eyes from Poppy’s stricken face. ‘Just as it’s easy for her to be so high and mighty over a bit of business. She chooses to do it her way, and because I choose to do it mine, she’s full of judgements. I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, Madam Self-Righteous, if anything ever goes wrong because of your high-minded meddling!’
‘I’m not acting this way because I want to be self-righteous,’ Poppy said, and her lips were stiff and that made speech difficult. Under the surface her pulses were thumping with sick terror.
If
David gets back, of course,
if
David gets back, of course – ‘It’s just that I can’t stand black-market profiteers. I
won’t be associated with them. If you want to make your living that way, that’s up to you. I won’t turn you in. But I will if you go on involving me and Jessie in your rotten business. And there’s an end of it.’
‘I told you, Poppy,’ Jessie said wearily. ‘You win. All right, you win! It’ll all be taken out tonight, right Bernie? You can get the van and shift it out?’
‘If I must,’ he said.
‘You must.’ Jessie stopped pulling on her strudel dough and stared at Poppy. ‘Poppy says you must, so you must. All right now, Poppy? You feel better?’
Poppy had turned to go and was standing now by the door that led to the restaurant. Jessie was very clear to see, standing as she was right in the pool of light over her pastry table and a corner of Poppy’s mind thought – why do I care? Why not let it all ride and let Jessie be happy? Times are so lousy, isn’t it more important that people be happy than be good?
But she said nothing. She turned her head and went back to the restaurant and then on to the West End and finally that day to the canteen, and all the time she refused to think of Jessie’s stricken face as she had stood there with her big red arms covered in flour and her face so bleak and miserable, as Bernie, the beautiful and unscrupulous Bernie, stared at her over Jessie’s shoulder with malevolence in every line of his face.
Even when she went home to find Goosey sulking and the house undusted and unswept – Goosey’s usual form of reprisal when she felt she had been at all put upon – and took a sleeping pill and went to bed, desperate for the peace of sleep, she still saw Jessie’s face staring at her. And Robin’s. And she felt deeply at odds with herself and everything and everyone else that was in her world.
Robin was still seething when she got back to the hospital. How dare her mother speak so? How dare she try to interfere in her life that way? I’m twenty-one, Robin thought furiously, twenty-one and she still carries on as though I were an eleven year old. It’s too much –
Somewhere deep inside her mind a little voice whispered at her – but she’s frightened. David’s at sea in the most dangerous area, and she’s frantic, and Joshy and Lee are away and she’s got a lot to cope with – but the angry Robin refused to listen. Her mother had no right to speak to her so. Mothers were supposed to be caring and supportive and never like that. Robin was close to tears of anger and a sort of fear as she reached the last hundred yards or so that lay between her and the hospital courtyard. Things were difficult enough without her mother showing her clay feet this way –
There was a good deal of traffic along the Whitechapel Road, buses and lorries of course, but some private cars too, and she had to wait on the corner of New Road for two of them which were waiting to find a hole in the traffic and turn left, when she saw her, and all her anger, which had begun to subside, came back in a rush.
Was her entire family against her? What had she done to deserve it? And her sore eyes filled up with stinging tears, and she bent her head, hoping the little red car would speed past her without its driver noticing her.
It didn’t. As she crossed the road and began to hurry on to the hospital, the small red car which had been about to turn out into the traffic stopped, and the window was wound down.
‘Ye gods,’ Chloe said. ‘What’s happened to you then? You
look as though you’ve been in a prizefight.’
‘I was out in last night’s raid,’ Robin said, and couldn’t resist the spiteful dig that rose to her lips. ‘While you were no doubt snoring safely at home in Bryanston Square, I was looking after people in that awful raid.’
‘Oh, do tell!’ cooed Chloe. ‘The little heroine, are we? When do you get your George Cross, then?’
‘Oh, shut up, Chloe. If you can’t say something decent – ’
‘ – then don’t say anything at all. For God’s sake, you don’t have to quote Goosey at me. Where are you going now, then?’
‘To bed,’ Robin said nastily. ‘As soon as you stop gassing on in this stupid fashion and let me go.’ And the question she hadn’t meant to ask, the question she’d promised herself she wouldn’t ask, was there, spoken, and she hated herself for letting the words out. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’
Chloe smirked. As far as Robin was concerned that was the only word for the expression that flitted across her face.
‘Oh, just bringing Hamish back,’ she said with studied nonchalance. ‘He had nights off, you know, and he’s due back tonight.’
‘Really?’ Robin said, knowing perfectly well what Hamish’s off-duty was.
‘Mm. So last night he – urn – stayed over at my place. He’s madly sweet, you know. Terribly naive and inexperienced, but awfully sweet –’ And she let her lips curve into a reminiscent smile, never taking her eyes off Robin’s face.
Her meaning was unmistakable and Robin felt the pain in the middle as surely as if she had been hit by a piece of shrapnel. It’s none of your business, the secret part of her mind howled at her, none of your business. You don’t own him and anyway there’s nothing special between you. He’s just a friend, only a friend, and not a very close one at that. But she didn’t believe the small voice. She believed Chloe, who was still looking at her with that smirk on her face and Robin had to tighten her hands into fists inside her cape to stop herself hitting out at her. She’d never done that even when she’d been a child and Chloe had been hateful to her. She wasn’t going to start now, please don’t let me lose my temper now.
‘If you say so,’ she managed to say, though her lips felt stiff and unmanageable. ‘But I haven’t time to stand and chatter, I really must get to bed. See you again, no doubt.’
‘No doubt,’ Chloe said sunnily and let in her clutch. ‘Bye, darling! By the way, how’s Poppy and Co.?’
‘Fine, fine,’ Robin said, desperately needing to get away before she lost all control and the tears of fury that were rising in her throat like sharp points of shattering glass overwhelmed her, and she moved a little sideways to get round the car and escape, and Chloe watched her and then laughed.
‘Try not to be too hard on your friend Hamish,’ she said lightly. ‘Poor darling – didn’t know what hit him! Putty in the old hands, wasn’t it –’ And this time she did put the car into motion and went, leaving Robin standing there as it disappeared into the traffic heading west along the Whitechapel Road.
Somehow she managed to get herself into the hospital grounds and on her way to the Nurses’ Home without anyone she passed noticing how distressed she was. Chloe and Hamish – it didn’t bear thinking of; and therefore she wouldn’t think of it, she wouldn’t, no matter what. It wasn’t important, anyway; why should she worry about it? Let him do as he chose. If Hamish wanted to play at tomcats with her sister that was his affair. Nothing to do with me, Robin told herself, struggling to believe it. Nothing at all to do with me –
She turned the corner by the emergency dispensary unit that had been set up in a Nissen hut after the original one had been damaged in a raid, her head down and the tears running down her cheeks. Her eyes stung dreadfully and her face seemed to be flaming as though someone had set a match to her cheeks. She didn’t see him until she almost ran into him.
‘Robin!’ Hamish said and put out a hand to hold her shoulder. ‘What happened to ye? They told me where you were last night when I called in at the porter’s lodge – let me see – ’
She lifted her face and glared at him. ‘What do you care?’ she snapped and tried to get past him, needing to be alone in her own room where she could let out all the confused feelings that were pounding in her own aching head.
He dropped his hand and said in a clearly startled voice, ‘What did you say?’
‘I said what do you care? You were having a great time with my sister – my half-sister – while I was out in that raid. What do you care about me or what happens to me?’
He took a sharp little breath. ‘I thought we were friends,’ he said. ‘That’s why I – ’
‘So did I,’ she snapped. ‘Now I know better.’
Why am I talking this way? the little voice in her mind whispered. Why let him know how hurt you are, how angry, why make a fool of yourself? Where’s your pride, for God’s sake?
‘Now you –’ He shook his head. ‘You’ll need to explain.’
‘I saw Chloe,’ she said and had to work hard not to shout it. ‘Outside. Just brought you back, I imagine. Glad to hear it was all so – oh, leave me be. I’m going.’ And she pushed past him and went running across to the Nurses’ Home, her cape flying behind her, leaving him standing staring after her with his face as still as a piece of his native hillside.
Chick was in her room when she got to the Nurses’ Home and Robin stood at the door and said tightly, ‘What do you want?’
‘Mm?’ Chick looked up from the book she had on her lap as she sat curled up on Robin’s bed. ‘Oh, it’s your Anatomy and Physiology book. Lost mine. I’m just mugging up on the arteries that supply the kidneys ready for the test next week. I’ve done no work at all, what with all the gadding about I’ve been doing. I thought I’d try to get something into my thick head before I went to bed. There’s sure as hell no time to do any swotting on duty –’ She stretched and yawned and then, half-way through, stared at Robin and said, ‘Hey – what are you doing here anyway? I thought you said you were going home till your eyes were better?’
‘Changed my mind,’ Robin said shortly. ‘Listen, do you mind? I want to go to bed. I’m tired – ’
‘You’re more than that,’ Chick said and sat up more erectly, staring at her. ‘My child, you are in a state of – well, tell me what happened to get under your skin this way. I’ve never seen you so screwed up. And it’s not just the eyes I’m talking about either – ’
‘Oh, it’s nothing!’ Robin snapped. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all – ’
‘Oh, sure, that’s all,’ Chick mocked. ‘Come off it, ducky. This is me, the old Chick, still selling at the old stand, remember? Don’t try and tell me I’m a fool who can’t see beyond the end of her own nose, on account I won’t stand for it. Something’s got under your skin very badly and I insist you tell me – ’
‘Chick, go away!’ Robin said and stamped her foot and burst into loud and uncontrollable tears.
It took Chick almost half an hour to sort her out. She got her undressed and into the bath and then into bed, scolding her all the while, but without any real opprobrium, for all the world like a younger version of Goosey, Robin thought at one point, and then brought her a cup of cocoa from the little gas ring at the end of the corridor, together with one for herself. And then flopped down on Robin’s bed, making her push her legs to one side, and glared at her with affectionate reproval.
‘Okay, little one, spill it,’ she said and when Robin started to shake her head in refusal, lifted one imperious hand. ‘You’ll have to tell me everything as well you know, so you might as well get on with it, and then we can both get some sleep.’