The Diamond Waterfall (83 page)

Once the dream was almost happy, because she found her. It wasn't the mother she remembered, but
Sylvia,
from the photograph. She was so beautiful. The air raid, everything, had been a mistake. They even laughed about it. Sylvia was dressed in white and at her neck and throat and almost down to her waist she sparkled with diamonds. They were reflected in the glass at the sides of the dance floor. She was waltzing with a tall man, and looked wonderfully, wonderfully happy. She shone even more than the diamonds. Willow could see only the man's back as he danced by. But she knew, in the dream, that the man was her father.
Sometimes now she would think, Mummy, Gerry …
to lose people, I only have to love them.

She'd thought for so many months afterward about Gerry. She felt certain it had truly been love. It would have lasted—even though separated they would have grown closer to each other. She imagined herself writing to him every day, watching anxiously for the mail. Getting to know him better and better through
his
letters. They had already so much in common.

Now over two years had passed, and the terrible thing was
she couldn't remember what he looked like.
Isabelle's face, yes. The major's … as if it were yesterday. But Gerry was just a face among dozens of others, a sort of amalgam of all the good-looking young men who'd flirted with her, escorted her since 1939.

Here in Yorkshire, in Harrogate, she was busy building a
new
life. She had made friends at work (even if one of them was a mischief-making hard-faced girl called Olga, who wore a turban and slacks and too much lipstick, and smoked all the Lucky Strikes she could get from the Americans at the camp). She went out dancing with the RAF, the Free French, the Poles, the Czechs. The days, the evenings, weren't long enough.

Her day went something like this: two very loud alarm clocks ten minutes apart, then Mrs. Parr banging on the door. A quick wash in the chill bathroom—as many as four days a week the bath would be full of Mrs. Parr's washing, cold soaking. Requests for a bath were greeted by “What's wrong with a good
stand-up
wash? At least you know you're clean.” She couldn't trust Willow either, she said, not to go over the line, painted in bold red paint, showing the limit for patriotic bath water. “My last billetee, I could see by the ring she left. Never bothered scouring, didn't Miss Mason.” Miss Mason had been so terrible that Willow thought she must be better just by comparison.

The ministry had taken over a hotel, the Harrogate Hydro. After breakfast there was the walk—no, the
run
—up there to sign on by nine. At ten past, a red line went in the book and latecomers had their pay docked. She couldn't afford that. She had to live on her pay and a very small allowance. Even if she'd had the coupons to spare, she couldn't have bought half the clothes she wanted. Teddy, who'd arranged all her finances, kept her on a strict rein. The money Grandma had left her was all tied up.

She hadn't seen anything of Teddy for a long time. Teddy, once a second mother to her, who'd become a
friend.
She wrote to her every fortnight. Teddy's letters, not too frequent, were mostly concern about Willow, that she was coping all right.

A few months ago Teddy had joined FANY—First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. The uniform was smart and suited her. They wore silk stockings. Willow supposed she was still driving, but officers now, not ambulances. It seemed somehow less useful work.

In a way, if anyone could be said to have taken special care of her, it had been Jay, at least until he'd gone to fight in North Africa. For a while after they'd met in the raid, she had been so upset that only he had really been able to help. Teddy had been too close, too much part of it all.

The day after the raid he had telephoned the flat on his way back south again, to see if both of them, she and Teddy, were all right. She wrote him quite a long letter of thanks the next day. She remembered she'd never thanked him properly for all he had done when she'd run away to Cambridge. (Yet it was
his
fault, wasn't it, that they'd lost touch?)

Now it was twice he'd saved her. She had told him in the letter that she felt worse now than on the night of the bombing. Much, much worse. “But I don't want to worry Teddy with it.”

He telephoned her when he was passing through London about ten days later. He'd already answered her letter.

“How is it?” he asked. “Did it get better at all?”

“It comes and goes,” she said.

“And right now?”

“Bad,” she said, beginning to cry. She felt so
weak.

“I can't get to see you, not this week. But listen, Willow … write me. Whenever it comes on bad, write me. Exactly how you feel, right that moment. It'll be safe with me.”

“You'll destroy them?” she'd asked anxiously. For some reason she imagined letters left lying around, as she had seen letters from Stingo strewn about in Michael's room.

“Sure I will. Sure.”

And so she had begun the habit then of writing to him. Sometimes he wrote back a quick scrawl, sometimes long pages of advice. He seemed rather to like it when she told him she hadn't taken the advice. “That's right, I've made you
think.
” She took to putting near the end, when she'd said what was worrying her, large or small, “What does Jay say?” She liked the sound of it. She signed herself “Willow the Wisp” because of a teasing remark he'd made. Often he would mention girls' names. For a while it was Laura, the one she'd met in the raid. But usually a name would appear in two or three letters, then disappear.

Now she was more than thrilled by the news—she was relieved. A victory in North Africa! She had only gradually realized how much she'd counted on Jay's coming through safely. Family: she had not so much of it that she could afford to lose any more.

Her sisters, the little ones (she still thought of them as that, absurdly. Lucy must be nearly sixteen by now.) sent letters and photos. One day she would go and see them again, they would come and see
her.

Her fellow billetee arrived two days later. Her name was Diana Howe. She was much smaller than Willow and had naturally curly black hair, which she wore very short. She told Willow, “I'm frightfully easy to get on with. Except I giggle a lot.”

They discovered there were only two weeks between their birthdays. Diana had two older sisters, both in the WRNS, and a brother in the Navy. Her family lived near Ilkley so she hoped to see them quite often. “They're wonderful,” she told Willow, “I've been so lucky. I've
always
been happy. When I see what families some people have …”

About the second week, when they were eating chips sitting on the end of Diana's bed (she'd been given the larger, better room), Willow told her about her mother, and the trial and the whole terrible time. “He wasn't my real father, of course,” she said. “But my little sisters—he was
their
father.”

As she talked, she felt an unease stirring, a disease almost—the sudden need to know something more about her own father. Then it was gone again.

Diana listened wide-eyed. She was quiet for several minutes afterward. Then: “How absolutely
terrible,
” she said. “I don't know how you managed. I never thought of things like that happening to anyone I
know.”
Her chips grew cold and greasy in their newspaper.

Willow said, “We'd better wrap those up in something—I'll open the window and get the smell out. She's sure to notice.”

It was good to have an ally against Mrs. Parr. Not that Diana was really worried by her. Altogether she was much bolder than Willow. Very bold, really. One evening when Mrs. Parr had gone out for a church meeting, Diana said she wanted to play the piano.

“I expect it's got moth
and
mouses' nests,” she said. Willow had never dared to open it.

“It's ghastly,” she told Willow later. “Half the keys don't work, and the pedals … one's gummed up and the other gone loose. There
might
be mouse dirt.”

Not long after Diana's arrival, there was trouble over food. Mrs. Parr decided that if a meal wasn't eaten and properly appreciated, they would have to do without most of the next. Two mornings later they didn't eat the Spam provided for breakfast, and that evening found only bread and beets and lettuce, with vinegar. “I'd bologna planned to have alongside, but as you don't like meat, I've not bothered. I know when something's not wanted.”

“I suppose we could complain to somebody,” Willow said. “I'm sure we're meant to be properly fed. She's got our ration books. She
gets
all the stuff.”

“Honestly,” Diana said, “people like that, doesn't it make you want to spit?”

Michael was flying Liberators, protecting Atlantic convoys from U-boats. Jilly was expecting a baby, and Michael wrote to Willow that he was sending Jilly to Harrogate for a rest, and for Willow to look after her. She had always liked Jilly, and the ten days they spent together that May was for her a great happiness. More
family.
Jilly stayed at a small hotel in Harlow Moor Road, and Willow walked over to see her each day after work. The baby was due at the beginning of September. She let Willow feel it kick.

Olga told Willow, “That smashing flight lieutenant who has his eye on you—someone else will get him. You're never around.”

Willow didn't worry—there were plenty more where he came from. (And Poles and Czechs and Americans—though Mrs. Parr was very down on Americans. “I don't want to see any of your
gum chums,”
she said. “None of that going down Pennypot Lane after those Yankees. Gum chums indeed.”)

Michael came to fetch Jilly. He had a week's leave and they were to spend it in Ryedale.

When he and Jilly came together to the billet in Valley Mount, Diana said he was so big and fair and strong-looking he made her feel quite faint. “Isn't it just my luck he's already married?” she said. She listened goggle-eyed while Mike, sitting on the sofa with the knobbly springs, told them both about an adventure from last week which
could
have ended badly.

“Oh thank God,” Jilly said. “When he told me last night, I thought, Thank God.”

It had been his thirteenth mission, and he'd
felt
superstitious: “A really bad show. The ship had a full bomb load. We were heading out over Scotland, and had begun climbing at about fifteen hundred a minute— but got engine trouble almost at once. Visibility was pretty bad, less than two thousand, so we couldn't crash-land. I didn't dare jettison bombs, because of the towns below. So after we'd both wrestled with the controls, I gave the order to bale out—then headed her out to sea before going over the side myself—that sort of kite's a real death trap if ditched. I was just floating into the overcast when I saw her wheel into a gentle bank. Christ, I thought, Christ. But the Observer Corps heard her—and some Spitfires were sent up. Ack-Ack were alerted. And to cut a long story short, they shot her down with
some difficulty.
She ended in the drink, her wings chewed off. Christ, when I think what could have been.”

Willow, watching Jilly, saw her quiet pride in Michael as she listened, hands clasped over the bump beneath her smock. Her face was at once grave and tender. Oh, I
do
like her, she thought.

In early June there was a spell of really fine weather. One Monday evening both Diana and Willow said they wouldn't be in for a meal. Diana had a date with a Pole, Jan, whom she was crazy about: “I thought Free Frenchmen
were really exciting, even though their English isn't special, but now I've met some
Poles.
Jan just oozes charm—and I don't trust him one inch.”

Willow, who'd decided she didn't after all like Andrew, the flight lieutenant she'd been going out with on and off since the beginning of May, thought she'd just go for a walk after work. She would think quietly, then perhaps get herself something to eat.

It was sunny, with very little wind, even on the corner of James Street. She sat by herself on a bench near the War Memorial. Because of the good weather there were lots of servicemen and civilians about. She remembered her mother telling her about the day it was unveiled. And how while she was standing there Willow had begun to be born. She'd been to see the house in Hereford Road where the birth had actually taken place—Reggie's cousins no longer lived there.

Pangs of hunger. There was a cafe in Cambridge Crescent that would do. She stopped outside the Regal, which was showing Hayworth and Astaire,
You Were Never Lovelier, and
looked at the stills. Rita Hayworth lay back in Fred Astaire's arms in the middle of a dance, breasts high, hair thick and glossy. A man in army uniform on the opposite side was looking at stills of the supporting film. Something about the shape of the head was vaguely familiar.

He turned, and saw her:

“It is, isn't it?”

“Yes. It is,” she said. “And it's Christopher Hawksworth.”

“Indeed it is. Look, this is wonderful. Really. I thought just now, That must be Willow! But since your grandmother died, and since the convent came to The Towers, I'm all behind with the news. Mother can't have known or she would have mentioned it—my being stationed here.”

She had forgotten how good-looking he was. And how, the summer of 1939 while he was home on leave, she had watched for him when he would walk up to the village. How, one afternoon, she had played tennis with him.

He was saying again, “This is really good, our meeting, I'm so glad. We could so easily have missed each other.”

He asked her then, “Were you going in to the film? I can't believe anyone so lovely would be going in alone. Two splendid Czechs have been watching you ever since we spoke.”