Authors: Lily Baxter
She put the cases down and turned slowly to stare at the wreckage of the detached suburban villa that had been her home since she started kindergarten. Before that she had only vague memories of living in married quarters abroad, but this was where she had spent her formative years and it felt as though part of her life had been destroyed by a single act of violence. She lifted her hand to dash a smut from the tip of her nose and saw that her white gloves were blackened and torn. Maman had always insisted that young ladies wore gloves when they went out, and now hers were ruined. It was such a little thing compared to the loss of their home, but it seemed like the end of the world. Tears flowed down her cheeks and she slumped down on one of the suitcases, burying her face in her hands.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder and Miranda looked up to see Miss Sharkey’s anxious face. ‘Your mother rang me, dear. She wants you to come to my house and wait for her.’
Miranda stared at her blankly. ‘It’s all gone, Miss Sharkey. Everything we had is gone.’
Miss Sharkey helped her to her feet. ‘Not everything, Miranda. You are still alive and well and your mother is on her way home. When it comes down to it, my dear, things are just material objects that can be replaced. With people it’s a different matter altogether.’
Miranda sniffed and wiped her hand across her eyes. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘I am. Now come with me and we’ll put the kettle on and have a nice cup of tea.’
‘Thank you, Miss Sharkey.’ Miranda had to stifle the desire to laugh hysterically. Why did people think that a cup of tea would put everything right? She picked up her cases and followed Miss Sharkey to her house three doors along the road.
‘Thank you. A cup of tea would be lovely.’ Jeanne Beddoes smiled and waited until their neighbour had left the sitting room. ‘Even after all these years I can’t quite get used to the English and their love of tea.’ She sat down on the sofa next to Miranda and patted her hand. ‘Are you all right, chérie?’
‘I am now, Maman. I’m afraid I let myself down a bit earlier and cried like a baby.’
‘You are still my baby, chérie. Even if you are nineteen and almost a woman, you will always be my little girl.’
Something in her mother’s tone made Miranda suddenly alert. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. What is it?’
Jeanne reached for her handbag and took out a silver case. She opened it and selected a cigarette. ‘Your father gave me this for my twenty-first birthday,’ she said with a wistful look in her dark eyes. ‘You were just a baby then, not quite a year old.’
‘Maman, if there’s something you have to tell me, please do it before Miss Sharkey comes back with yet another tray of tea.’
Jeanne fished in her bag for a lighter and lit her cigarette. ‘It had to be today,’ she mused softly. ‘The wretched German had to drop his bomb on our house at a time when I had something important to tell you.’
‘Just say it, Maman. Don’t keep me in suspense.’
Jeanne stared down at the smouldering tip of her cigarette, avoiding her daughter’s gaze. ‘I have to go away, chérie. Because I am French I’ve been selected for a training course. It’s top secret so I can’t tell you any more.’
‘But you’re just a secretary. Surely you can’t need more training to do your job.’
‘This will be more than just being a secretary, Miranda. My boss is heavily involved in starting up
a
top secret organisation, and I’m going to be one of the first operatives. That’s all I can tell you.’
Miranda stared at her in amazement. ‘They want you because you speak French?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You’re going to be a spy?’
Jeanne laid her finger on her lips. ‘You must never tell anyone, and you mustn’t discuss it with your grandparents. You never know who might be listening.’
‘What are you saying, Maman?’
‘After you rang me today and told me about the house I telephoned Grandpa Beddoes.’ Jeanne rose to her feet, and taking a last drag on her cigarette, tossed it out of the open window onto a crazy paving path. She turned slowly to face her daughter. ‘My course starts tomorrow, and now that the house is gone I’m afraid you’ll have to go and stay with your grandparents in Dorset.’
‘Leave London? But it’s still term time. I haven’t taken my shorthand exam yet and I’ve been working so hard, even though I hate it.’
‘I’m sorry, Miranda. Thanks to the Luftwaffe we have no choice. At least I know you’ll be safe and well looked after with Granny and Grandpa. It’s what your papa would want.’ Her voice broke and her eyes were suddenly bright with tears. ‘I am doing this for him and for you, chérie. I don’t want to leave you but we must all do what we can to end this terrible war, and bring our loved ones home.’
Miranda rose to her feet. ‘I tried to get into your room, Maman. I wanted to salvage something for you but this was all I could save.’ She put her hand in her pocket and took out the photograph of her father. ‘He looks so handsome in his uniform.’
Jeanne’s lips trembled and she clutched the frame, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘My brave girl. Thank you for this, but I can’t take it with me.’ She kissed the photo and handed it back to Miranda. ‘Keep it safe for me, chérie. One day we will all be together again, but not yet.’
‘Oh, Maman.’ Miranda wrapped her arms around her mother. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without you.’
‘You will do superbly well, ma chère.’
They held each other, their tears mingling, but they moved apart as Miss Sharkey barged into the room carrying a tea tray.
Jeanne looked round, painting a smile on her face. ‘How kind of you, Edith. I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble.’
Miss Sharkey beamed at her as she put the tray on a table near the window. ‘You are more than welcome, Jeanne. And if you would both like to stay tonight I’ll air the beds in the spare rooms. I so seldom have visitors that it will be quite a treat to have company.’ She glanced at the wall above the cluttered chiffonier, where the faded image of a young man gazed solemnly from a gilded frame, his peaked cap clutched in his hands and a swagger stick tucked beneath his arm. ‘Things would have
been
so different if Lionel had not been killed at Passchendaele. And now we are at war again. It’s so sad.’ She sat down and began pouring tea into dainty bone china cups. ‘What will you do now?’
Jeanne shot a warning glance at Miranda. ‘Well, I have to go on a training course, and Miranda will be going to spend the summer with her grandparents in Dorset.’
Miranda said nothing. She adored her grandparents but the last thing she wanted was to leave London and spend the rest of the war in the country. If Maman could do something brave for the war effort, perhaps she could too. One thing was certain: she would not be content to laze around on the beach all day. There must be something she could do for King and country.
As she stepped off the train Miranda realised that the war had spread its deadly tentacles even further than she had imagined. Despite the fact that her mother had been convinced that Weymouth was a much safer haven than London, the neat row of guest houses abutting the station were sandbagged and their windows taped as a precaution against flying glass. Childhood memories of long hot summers, golden sands, waves gently lapping on the shore, Punch and Judy shows and ice cream stands were receding rapidly as her fellow passengers rushed past her heading for the barrier with their tickets
clutched
in their hands, and their gas mask cases hitched over their shoulders.
The train had been packed with men and women in uniform and the smell of cigarette smoke clung to Miranda’s clothes and hair. She had been reading a copy of
The Times
that someone had left on the seat when they got off the train in Bournemouth, and suddenly the war in Europe seemed too close for comfort. The news that German troops had moved through France to occupy the Channel Islands, and that their army was just a hop, skip and a jump away from England, had made the threat of invasion frighteningly real.
She glanced up and down the platform but there was no porter to help her with her heavy suitcases, and when she finally reached the station concourse it was crowded with white-faced women trying to cope with tired, fractious children. For a wild moment Miranda thought that the Germans must have landed on the local beaches and the town was being evacuated, but from snatches of overheard conversation she realised that these were some of the evacuees from the Channel Islands. The reality of what war could do to people had become even more apparent, and she realised how lucky she was to be going to her grandparents’ home where she was assured of a warm welcome.
She made her way outside but there was no sign of her grandfather’s car, and there were no taxis waiting on the rank. She put her cases on the ground,
wondering
if Granny and Grandpa had forgotten that she was due to arrive today. Maybe they had mistaken the time of her arrival, which was a distinct possibility as Granny was notoriously absent-minded, and they might turn up at any moment full of apologies. She decided to wait for a while before going in search of a telephone box. She pulled her straw hat down a little further over her eyes to shield them from the bright sunlight and made an effort to be patient.
The crowds dispersed and still there was no sign of the ancient Bentley that Grandpa George loved almost as much as his wife. Granny had never bothered to take driving lessons and, even if she had been so inclined, Miranda doubted if Grandpa would have allowed her to get behind the wheel of his precious car. She waited a while longer but she was beginning to fret. If Uncle Jack had been at home he would have come for her in his black and yellow roadster, Chloe, but he had broken with family army tradition and joined the RAF. She had not given it much thought until now, but the house would seem terribly dull without him, and Jack would not have left her standing here alone and abandoned like a lost parcel. With their home in ruins and her parents off fighting the war in their different ways, Miranda realised that she was just as much a refugee as the unfortunate Channel Islanders.
She wiped her eyes, overwhelmed by a sudden
and
unexpected wave of homesickness. She sniffed and opened her handbag searching for her hanky, but with a sigh of resignation she realised that hers were buried in the ruins of number twenty-seven Linden Avenue. This was ridiculous; she would be twenty at Christmas. She was legally old enough to be married, even if she was still considered to be a minor in law, and yet here she was snivelling like a baby.
‘What’s up with you, ducks?’
A cheerful voice at her side made Miranda look round. She found herself face to face with a skinny girl roughly the same age as herself. ‘Nothing. I’ve got something in my eye.’
The girl pulled a grubby hanky from her skirt pocket and offered it to her. ‘Hurts, don’t it?’
Not wanting to appear ungrateful, Miranda accepted it and dabbed at her cheeks. ‘Thanks.’ She glanced at the girl’s shabby clothes and battered cardboard suitcase. ‘Is anyone meeting you?’
‘I dunno. They was supposed to, but it looks like I’ve been forgotten too.’ She slapped Miranda on the shoulder. ‘I’m Rita Platt from Stepney. What’s your moniker, love?’
‘Miranda Beddoes. I’m from London too, but I’m spending the summer here with my grandparents.’
‘I’m going to live with some old fogey I hardly know and all because of bloody Hitler.’ Rita’s grey eyes filled with tears and her bottom lip quivered. ‘It was just Mum and me until she got sick. A
ruptured
appendix they said it was, but I blame the munitions factory. I reckon they poisoned her with their chemicals. Anyway, she was a goner and me nan’s doolally. They packed her off to Barley Lane loony bin, so that left me on me tod.’
‘Oh dear, how terrible. I’m so sorry.’ Miranda shuffled her feet, not knowing quite what to say. ‘Haven’t you got any other relations you could go to?’
Rita threw back her head and laughed but it was not a merry sound. ‘I got no one, ducks. That is, except this old biddy what me mum used to char for before she moved from London to this bleeding dump. I wanted to stay in our flat and keep on with me job in the chippie, but the landlord chucked me out. Said I was a minor and too young to rent on me own.’
‘So do you know where you’re going?’
‘Someone was supposed to meet me. Maybe the old girl changed her mind and don’t want the bother.’
‘Perhaps she’s been held up. My grandfather was going to pick me up and he’s not here yet.’
Rita pulled a face. ‘Well, I ain’t going to stand around here all day like a lemon. I’ll go and find a copper. They’ll have to take me in a squad car to the old besom’s house, unless of course she’s gone and snuffed it. That would be just my blooming luck.’
Miranda forgot that she had been feeling sorry
for
herself. She had met someone in a far worse plight. She laid her hand on Rita’s thin shoulder. ‘Why don’t you come home with me? Grandpa is a JP. He’s a magistrate,’ she added, seeing Rita’s blank expression. ‘He’ll know what to do. He might even know the lady who’s going to take you in. He knows just about everyone in this town.’
‘It don’t look like that would take much doing,’ Rita said, glancing round with a cynical grin. ‘Seagulls and sand, that’s all you got here. I’m going back to London as soon as I’ve got enough money saved up.’
‘Really?’ Miranda stared at her in amazement. ‘But you can’t be much older than me. How will you manage on your own?’
‘I’m nineteen, and I left school four years ago. I got fed up with them trying to cram me head with useless rubbish. I’m going to get a job as a pin-up girl with me photo plastered all over magazines. That’s what I want to do.’
Miranda gave her a speculative glance. Rita was quite pretty in an obvious sort of way, but she had a figure like an ironing board. ‘I think we ought to start walking,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘It’s only two or three miles.’
‘What? I can’t walk that far. Not with this heavy bag, I can’t.’
Miranda had not given any thought to the heaviness of her luggage and she decided that Rita had a point. Looking round in desperation, she
spotted
a familiar face. As a boy, Tommy Toop had occasionally run errands for her grandmother, although more often than not he had ended up in the magistrates’ court in front of her grandfather. He must be at least twenty now, but he still looked like a callow youth with a head that seemed too big for his body and ears that stuck out at right angles. He had always fascinated her, mainly due to the fact that she had been forbidden to have anything to do with him. The Toops were a notorious family of troublemakers. The father was a drunkard and he and his two eldest sons spent more time in prison than out of it. Poor Mrs Toop, a downtrodden little mouse of a woman, had worn her fingers to the bone working as a char by day and washing glasses in a local pub at night. Tommy, no doubt, was a chip off the old block, but he seemed to be in possession of a rickety-looking handcart and was touting for business. Time was moving on and Miranda was convinced that her grandparents had forgotten that she was arriving today; the choice was simple. She waved her hand. ‘Tommy. Tommy Toop, over here.’