Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (40 page)

When he at last reached her on the public telephone, she seemed to know at once what was wanted because she merely said, ‘I've got an evening pass. See you in the Three Horseshoes.'

In the event he was there long before she arrived, waiting with growing impatience for over an hour, whiling away the time by drinking more doubles, so that when the door of the bar swung open and Lily finally walked in in her best green coat and with her fair hair swinging loose, Robert was only able to rise painfully slowly to his feet.

‘I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to this, Lily,' he mumbled. ‘The thought of this – of seeing you again – it's been keeping me going.'

Lily stared up at him. He looked awful. He had grey lines of fatigue under eyes that mirrored the crushing despair the day's tragedy had brought upon his spirit. She took his hand, kissed his cheek and pushed him gently back down into his seat.

‘I'm so glad you came down, Robert,' she said gaily. ‘But I'm not sure that you should have, really I'm not.' She looked at him. ‘Not seeing that you're seven sheets to the wind, and about fifteen drinks ahead of me!'

‘Nonsense, Lily,' Robert tried to say as coherently as possible while realising that his speech lacked the clarity that might be considered normal. ‘This is what matters. This is all that matters, finally.
Me, here, with you. Now let me get you a drink. What is it to be? Gin and something? If they've got any gin, that is.'

‘Funnily enough they've always got lots of booze.' Lily smiled. ‘Something to do with this place being Eden Park's watering hole we reckon. I'll have a gin and orange, please.'

While he stood at the bar waiting to be served, for the first time since it had happened Robert's mind became filled with the terrible devastation he had witnessed that morning. He closed his eyes as the whole bar seemed to rock and reverberate around him, but all he could see was bright flame and brilliant lightning. The reflected brilliance was such that he became certain that his head must be exploding. He gripped the bar with both hands and slowly opened his eyes, half expecting to find himself standing among ruins like those he had seen earlier, hearing screaming such as he had heard earlier, observing despair such as he had witnessed earlier. But all was normal. There was no dust, no destruction, nothing but people talking and laughing, the gentle light of an old English inn, the rows of bottles behind the bar all painted into his vision with a warmth that had nothing to do with flames and lightning, so that eventually he found himself staring into a pair of concerned eyes belonging to the kindly landlord.

‘You all right, sir?' he asked, setting the drinks down in front of him. ‘You gone quite white, so you have. Quite white. Like you've seen someone walk across your grave, if you don't mind me saying so, sir.'

‘It's nothing.' Robert tried to smile, waiting for
the trembling in his hands to quieten before he picked up the drinks. ‘It's nothing. Nothing at all. Just a bit tired, that's all.'

‘Just come ashore, have you?' the landlord went on, noting Robert's naval uniform, while he wiped the bar dry with his tea towel. ‘Seen a bit of action, have you?'

‘That's the ticket,' Robert said, picking up the drinks and grinning suddenly and fatuously while swaying slightly. ‘I joined the Navy to see the world. And what did I see?'

‘You saw the sea,' the landlord filled in for him tonelessly. ‘Glad to see a naval uniform in my pub, I tell you. I was in the Navy, but I was wounded out, I'm sorry to say, sir. Oh yes, wounded out of the Senior Service. That was not a good day. Still. We can still show 'em, can't we, sir?'

Robert nodded to him, not really knowing what to say next. Who was it they were meant to be showing? Oh yes, of course. The enemy. He returned to his table.

Lily looked at him, swaying gently above her.

‘I should try sitting down, before you spill any more,' she told him with a wry smile. ‘I like my gin in a glass, Lieutenant.'

Robert sat down and lay back against the pub bench with his eyes closed for a few seconds.

‘What do you want to do, Bob?' Lily wondered. ‘How long have you got? Leave, that is.'

‘What do I want to do, Lily? First things first,' Robert replied, offering her a Senior Service cigarette. ‘What I want to do is sit here with you and tell you what a beautiful girl you are. That's the first thing I want to do. In fact I don't mind
sitting here just telling you that for the rest of the night, do you know that?'

Robert stopped. Everything was so easy just thinking about it; it always was so easy as long as it remained in your head – but soon as you came to say it you were a boy again. The tongue-tied schoolboy handing a flower to the girl with all the freckles and the pigtail who had smiled at you in assembly that morning. And you found that all those words you had so carefully practised saying to her in front of your looking glass stuck to your tongue, just as they were sticking to his tongue at that moment.

‘Oh, Lord,' he sighed quietly, raising his eyebrows. ‘I sound a complete idiot.'

‘You sound nothing of the sort,' Lily said, putting her hand on his. ‘And as for holding my hand, there's nothing I'd like more. Well…' She paused. ‘On the other hand, thinking about it – there might be.'

‘I've only got until midnight. I have to drive back tonight. I'm on duty first thing in the morning. They thought I – they thought I – I should have twenty-four hours' leave, but we can't leave the things, the bombs, littering the streets. Can you imagine? People have to get on with their lives, but you can't hide from these darned things, all lying unexploded in the street. Just can't.'

He could feel the warmth of Lily's body through her skirt on the back of the hand she was holding. All he wanted to do was fall against her and hold her to him. He wasn't going to let the side down. Fanshaw, good old Fanshaw, wouldn't have wanted that.

It's just a job, Bob
, he'd have said.
Others have got worse jobs, others not so bad. But it doesn't matter. It's just a job. Just something that has to be done
.

‘There's a war on, that's the point, Lily,' Robert continued, even more slowly. ‘When I was driving down, at one point I could see them up in the sky. Right above me. I could see a dogfight going on right above me while I was driving along. I'd nearly gone off the road, and when I pulled over I heard the planes. When I looked up there were these two Spitfires taking on four or five Messerschmitts. Just two of them. They shot down two Jerries while I was looking – one of them crashed in flames about a couple of miles from where I was parked. Then the others hightailed out of it – I mean they were running for home – and our boys went after them – two after three and before I lost sight of them they'd got another. They're bringing in pilots with less than ten hours' training, you know. They're getting bomber pilots to fly fighters to fill the gap – that's how tough it is up there. So I can't just sit around feeling sorry for myself. Just because – just because. I can't do that.' Robert shrugged. ‘It wouldn't be fair.'

‘They have rooms here.' She squeezed his hand now in both of hers, moving her hands up so they now pressed his against her stomach. ‘You could spend a few hours here, leave at dawn, that way it won't take you much time to drive back.'

Robert frowned at her.

‘Lily.'

‘Robert?'

He was going to tell her then. He was just about
to say it, but once more the words stuck – not just to his tongue, but all round his mouth – to his cheeks, the roof of his mouth, his lips, everywhere. He was speechless. All he could do was smile.

Marjorie saw Lily the following lunchtime. She was just leaving the canteen as Kate and Marjorie were coming into it. Lily failed to see them, wandering out calling back happily to some friend.

‘I wonder what she's got to smile about?' Marjorie said, watching her go.

‘I think she was probably born with a smile was our Lily,' Kate replied. ‘A smile for the doctor who delivered her. She always seems so carefree. So happy-go-lucky. Some people are like that.'

Marjorie nodded.

‘And not only that,' she said, sounding sadder than she wanted to. ‘She is very, very pretty.'

‘That does help,' Kate agreed, remembering Robert's reaction to seeing Lily. ‘She is very pretty – well, beautiful really.'

Marjorie nodded sadly. It was true. Lily was beautiful.

‘Your bed is now ready, madame.'

The maid led the way to the bed. Poppy nodded to her.

‘I think it is as madame would like it – no?' the maid asked anxiously.

‘It is not quite as madame likes it.' Poppy frowned. ‘I prefer the sheet to be folded lower—'

She was going to say ‘please' and then remembered her role. The maid did as she was told, and Poppy nodded nonchalantly.

‘Better.'

She slipped off her dressing gown so that it fell to the floor and the maid stooped to pick it up, and then began to withdraw.

‘Goodnight, madame.'

‘Goodnight.'

Poppy switched off the light, and lay gazing into the darkness. The dinner party had been fascinating, and sheltering in the swimming pool with all those Society types too. She had learned so much, but she had finally found the last few days exhausting, as if she had been required for the first time to be really tested, to be both on the alert as Poppy and a Fascist pain in the neck as Diona. She closed her eyes, suddenly wishing for her old life, whatever that had been, before the war, walking George to the Park, sitting listening to records on her gramophone. So long ago, such a quiet time, she longed for it, wished for it to come back, and in doing so fell asleep at last.

Billy seemed to have made it his duty to keep everyone informed about the depressing state of the national supplies, and gave it as his opinion that the task was impossible.

‘You in line for taking over from Lord Haw Haw's broadcasts on the wireless, then?' Mrs Alderman demanded as she set a plate of porridge in front of him. ‘Because if so, I can have you shipped out of here and over to Germany before you can say Hitler.'

‘We haven't got enough ack-ack guns neither, Sergeant Briggs upstairs told me,' Billy added informatively, as Kate and Marjorie, having been
up all night typing up intercepts, collapsed on the kitchen bench beside him.

‘By ack-ack I take it you mean anti-aircraft?' Marjorie demanded, trying to smother a yawn. ‘And you'll get had up if you spread propaganda and rumours, you will. It's prison for you, my boy, if that goes on.'

‘I'm only being honest,' Billy protested.

‘You know such an awful lot, Billy,' Kate told him. ‘I hope Jerry doesn't capture you because you'll have to spill all the beans.'

‘I wouldn't tell 'em a thing, Kate. They could do what they liked. But I'd never squawk.'

‘Squeal?'

‘I'd never say a dicky's. Not a dicky's.'

‘I don't think we've done badly so far,' Kate announced, collecting her things together. ‘When you realise they're chalking up the scores on the news boards in London – like cricket scores. We're not doing badly. If what they say is true, we might even be pushing ahead.'

‘Yeah, but Sergeant Briggs upstairs, he says how long can we hold out, what with them having thousands of fighters where we've hardly any.'

Marjorie and Kate looked at each other but said nothing. They knew Billy's friend Sergeant Briggs was right. Even Major Folkestone, when the battle for supremacy in the air had begun after Dunkirk, had inadvertently admitted that the RAF had only six hundred aircraft while the general opinion was that the Luftwaffe might have thousands.

‘Yeah, but things 'aven't worked out that bad considering,' Billy went on, inexorably, while they
all three now tucked into Mrs Alderman's delicious food. ‘Mr Hackett was telling me—'

‘Oh yes, and since when was Mr Hackett back, may I ask?' Kate asked in a cold voice.

‘He came back the other day.' Marjorie turned and looked at Kate briefly, surprised by her tone, since she was normally the most easy-going of characters. Hail-fellow-well-met wasn't in it, really, as far as Kate went.

‘Do you know – his uncle owns the place.'

‘No he does not, clever clogs, and if he tells you he does, he's not telling you the truth,' Kate growled. ‘At least not according to Major Folkestone. He let it slip one night when Cissie Lavington was in our office and going on about some piece of furniture that had been damaged, and he said that he had to have details because he had a duty to inform the owners of Eden Park, Lord and Lady Dunne.'

‘Maybe Lord Whatsisname's Mr Hackett's uncle?' Billy suggested. ‘He could be.'

‘I don't think so, Billy. I think Mr Hackett was possibly having another of his little jokes.'

Kate turned away from him to pick up a greatly reduced newspaper and stare at the headlines. Mr Hackett might well be turning into something of an accomplished liar, if that was what he had maintained.

‘Well anyway,' Billy continued, handing back his porridge plate to Mrs Alderman in return for a soft-boiled egg. ‘Mr Hackett, he told Sergeant Briggs that the Messerschmitt 110s can't 'andle our Hurricanes and Spitfires 'cos they aren't manoeuvrable enough.' Billy expertly chopped the
top off his boiled egg with a swift movement of his butter knife. ‘There goes Adolf Hitler's head,' he added with some satisfaction.

‘You see?' Marjorie interrupted. ‘You
can
say your aitches when you
have
to.'

‘Sergeant Briggs says Jerry didn't reckon on
how
tough our boys are,' Billy continued. ‘And
how
determined. They chase their bombers right out to sea – did you know that, Kate?'