The Very Thought of You (4 page)

They retired to their bedroom, and Thomas brushed Elizabeth’s long hair as she sat at her dressing table. A recent ritual which soothed them both.

Later, lying in bed, Thomas sensed a subtle shift in the atmosphere of the house. Ashton had been childless for so many years, yet now the very echo of the Marble Hall seemed muffled by the children sleeping upstairs.

The change in the air sent him effortlessly to sleep.

5

The next morning, eighty-six children woke up in a strange new house.

Anna lay in her bed for a few minutes, wondering if she was allowed to get up yet. But light was streaming through a gap in the curtains, and she could not resist looking out at the view. There was a window seat – so she clambered onto it and peered out.

Here was her new world. Wide, unfenced parkland sloped gently up to the sky, ringed at the horizon by dark woods. Sheep grazed undisturbed on the grass plain, which was dotted with a few solitary trees and a single white track. It was a sight of great calm and quiet.

Another girl joined Anna.

“Lots of grass,” she said. “I’m Beth,” she added.

“Those tree guards means there’s deer. I’ve seen them in Richmond Park,” said another girl. Katy Todd, she was called. She seemed to know a lot of facts.

The door opened abruptly.

“Time to dress!”

It was the matron in her blue tunic, sending them all off to wash.

Ten minutes later a great gong rang out, and all the evacuees assembled in a long line on the first floor. Anna glanced round at the hushed faces waiting there. Two or three girls she knew from school; she would talk to them when she could. Then they were off, following the person in front, a long crocodile of children moving rapidly down to breakfast.

Anna was flustered, but felt the pleasure of her new shoes. The girl in front of her was older, with long legs. She had to hurry to keep up, as the line of children rattled down a great stone staircase. Anna was moving fast, her knees pumping up and down as she fixed her eyes on the girl in front.

A stab of pain suddenly juddered through her body as her right knee rammed into a sharp decorative leaf sticking out from the banister. She pulled away her knee, disengaging the iron from her flesh – leaving a deep gash there.

She felt sick at once, but kept running. Breathless, she limped after the girl in front, into a great crimson dining hall where huge portraits loomed down from every wall. Children were standing in rows by long tables.

Anna’s shin felt sticky and wet. She looked down and thick warm blood was sliding down it, seeping into her sock. She pulled out her handkerchief, white, embroidered with violets, her mother’s gift from Pontings.

Her knee hurt as she dabbed at it. She could see the glistening red of raw flesh in the open wound, and her handkerchief was sodden.

There was silence, as they waited for grace. An ooze of sweat ran down Anna’s temple and her upper lip was wet.
She felt sick. She tried to keep standing but dizziness was spinning her head.

“For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful.” Anna saw the grain of the wooden floor rising to meet her – like water draining fast down a plughole, the light rushed out from her.

She struck her head on the floor as she fainted, and the girl beside her called out for help. Elizabeth Ashton appeared and knelt down. She called for a napkin and, wincing, covered the wound. Crouching on the floor, she raised Anna in her arms. The other children were sitting down now, eating and watching.

Anna emerged from deep, sweet oblivion to a strange room. She saw a high white ceiling edged with intricate patterns, like cake icing. Her body was limp and damp. She looked up into the face of a stranger – a stranger with an anxious face and dark glossy hair.

Elizabeth looked down at the pale girl in her arms. She was so slight, yet her eyes, relit, shone with life. This was a clean child, a pleasure to hold.

“What’s your name?” she asked softly.

“Anna Sands.” She wanted her mother, and stifled a sob.

“We’re going to take you upstairs, Anna. How did you cut your knee?”

“I banged into the railings,” said Anna. She felt obscurely guilty about the mess of blood. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about anything. Just breathe calmly for a few moments until you’re ready to move.”

The matron, Miss Harrison, appeared with a damp cloth, and Mrs Ashton vanished with a smile. When the matron examined the wound, she realized that it would require stitches, and the village doctor was called for.

Anna was left waiting in her dormitory. She lay on her bed, pressing the cloth against her knee, worrying about her bloodied socks because she only had three pairs. Nobody came, and she missed home. She wished she had brought her teddy with her, after all. She gazed up at the crack lines on the ceiling and felt cut off from everyone.

At last the doctor appeared with the matron, and checked her over.

“We’ll need to sew you up, my dear,” he muttered. He looked like a severe doctor from the card game
Happy Families
, all whiskers. But his eyes were crinkly-kind as he undid his black bag and made his preparations.

Anna looked away when he produced the needle, and winced with pain as the matron held her leg; she had never known such shocking sharpness. Tears seeped through her screwed-up eyes.

After the wound was dressed, the doctor smiled, showing his gummy teeth.

“Have a rest, and then you can run out and play with the others. But be careful not to bump yourself.”

Anna counted to a hundred many times, then went downstairs, warily, this time. Breakfast was long over and she joined the other children in a great panelled room called “the saloon”. Someone blew a whistle and Mrs Ashton appeared.

“We’re going to divide you into classes now, so please come up, one by one.”

Anna was put into a class with Miss Weir, who had come with a group of children from Pimlico. She was young and pale, with sandy hair. And a gentle face. There were fourteen children in her class, boys and girls. Anna had an eye for Katy from her dormitory, who seemed to know things.

Another whistle was blown, and they all followed their new teachers. Miss Weir led them to their classroom, but it
wasn’t like a normal school room. It was tall with carved ceilings and there were marks on the yellow wallpaper where furniture was missing. Some simple wooden tables and chairs had been laid out in rows, and a blackboard rested on a stand. On one wall hung a darkly varnished portrait of a man with his dog; in the distance behind him was a great house, and Anna wondered if that was Ashton House.

“The summer is over, but you can look forward to a new term now,” said their teacher as cheerily as possible, before outlining their lessons. Anna listened, but looked out of the window too, watching the sheep move slowly across the parkland. She had never seen so much grass.

“Write a few sentences about you and your family,” said Miss Weir, handing them books and pencils.

My name is Anna Sands. I am an only child. We live in Fulham and I play in Bishop’s Park, usually. My father mends antiques and my mother helps him. He has gone away to the army. My mother can play the piano.

A gong rang for lunch, once, twice. Everything now would be marked out by gongs and whistles, and handbells. Anna did not complain; she was longing to eat, after missing breakfast.

In the afternoon, all the children were assembled in the Marble Hall to meet Mr Ashton for the first time.

When she saw him from behind, Anna assumed he must be old, because he could not walk. He was sitting in a wheelchair. But when she faced him properly, she saw that he had a young face. He was handsome, even, and very polite, though his legs were oddly thin.

Mrs Ashton wheeled him round to shake hands with all the evacuees. He had a lovely smile, bright and friendly,
Anna noticed. Perhaps he was not really much older than her own father?

When they reached Anna, Mrs Ashton paused.

“And this is the girl who had stitches in her knee—”

“Ah!” he said. “So you’re the young lady who lured the doctor from his village rounds?”

“Yes, sir – sorry, sir,” mumbled Anna.

“Well, I very much hope you’re feeling better now?” he asked with gentle eyes.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and smiled. He was kind, not frightening – she could see that at once. More, she trembled with secret pleasure at being singled out by such a gentleman.

The wheels of his chair squeaked a bit on the polished stone floor as he moved on, and quite suddenly Anna felt sorry for him and his wife. She worried that Mrs Ashton might not be happy being married to a cripple – they couldn’t go dancing together, and she could imagine Mrs Ashton dancing. That must make him sad, too, she thought.

How could such a beautiful woman be married to a man who couldn’t walk?

* * *

That afternoon, the evacuees were allowed to play outside. Limping a little with her bandaged knee, Anna followed the others into the gardens on the south side of the house. There were lawns and yew walks, and woods to explore. Small, hedged gardens, and steep banks to roll down.

On every side stretched the parkland, as far as Anna could see.

Bands of children ran across the vast sunken lawn beyond the saloon, chasing each other up and down its banks. There
was a subtle bloom to the air, and to the weather. Coming from a city, Anna had never seen such a wide sky; it stretched out above them all like something freshly opened.

She couldn’t really fathom why she was here, or what sort of place it was. She hopped down a bank with her arms raised to the wind and her head thrown back, yelling as she went, like the others.

From his study window Thomas Ashton watched the children playing tag on the lawn below. Their freewheeling grace touched him – all that spontaneity.

A shiver of unknown emotion rippled through him. He wanted to strike the right note with these children: to encourage them, and enjoy their high spirits, as was proper for someone with an open heart. But he must not let them unsettle his hard-won balance, either.

He wheeled himself away from the window and turned on the wireless to hear the latest news.

The children, meanwhile, wandered through the grounds until supper time. They knew nothing of Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Nor did they ask any questions as they went upstairs to their dormitories.

The slow, silent power of the house was beginning to reach them already.

6

On the morning of 2nd September, Roberta Sands woke early, dressed herself and made some tea. She overfilled the pot, brewing for her absent husband, out of habit, then sat for a long time in the kitchen.

She knew that all the other evacuees’ parents would also be suffering a weekend of eerie quiet – waiting to hear about
their children, wondering when war would be declared – today, tomorrow?

All around her were the final shreds of summer. A vase of fading roses from the garden, dusty geraniums in a pot, a spattered back window which she had not cleaned since the spring.

It was a Saturday, so there was no need to hurry off to work. She wandered through the empty rooms, putting things in order. Until she found herself sitting on the stairs, gazing down at the patterned tiles on the hall floor, unable to move.

Anna had been born upstairs. It was a small Edwardian house in a grid of near-identical terraces in Fulham. The front rooms were dark, facing north onto a street narrowed by two rows of pollarded limes.

Anna had the brightest room, with a back view. They had their own small lawn, but the grass was always sparse, because it lacked sunshine. Only at the turning point of the day did the sun rise high enough to cast an unblinkered eye onto their modest enclosure. But from Anna’s window they could gaze onto other, larger gardens with cherry trees and magnolias, where the sunshine gleamed off luxuriant grass late into the afternoon.

Roberta made her way to Anna’s room and glanced at some colourful petunias on a distant lawn. Their very exuberance gave her an ache of separation.

Where was Anna’s new home?

She had never valued their family routines enough, and now they were over – yet she found the transitions to this new time oddly untraceable. Outside, the ugly corrugated roofs of the air-raid shelters looked as if they had always been there.

She went downstairs again. Her old upright piano was lying open, its ivories throwing out a pale gleam in the dark
front room. She strummed an Al Bowlly song, but it felt too feckless, so she drifted into a lullaby.

Photographs of her husband Lewis and Anna were propped on a side table. She felt watched, and strangely guilty to be at home without them, just waiting for news. So she decided to go out for a walk, perhaps along the river at Bishop’s Park.

She stepped out into a subdued city, tightening her coat belt as she went.

* * *

Later that day, Lewis sat in his bell tent near Salisbury Plain. It was raining – had been raining all day. every item of his uniform felt damp. Rain was sliding down the tarpaulin sides of his tent, and his heavy boots were caked with wet mud. Their company commander was waiting for the weather to ease off before the next drill – unlikely before supper, thank God.

He sat cross-legged with a book on his knee, writing to his wife. He closed his eyes and imagined Roberta on one of her habitual walks: a sensuous blue-eyed brunette strolling through the park. She always carried herself with a graceful swing which could make her appear slightly available.

And yet he would hate her to change anything. He sometimes let her walk a little ahead, just to admire her. If she turned to wait for him, then her eyes would flash backwards in an expectant glance; he loved that look, always would. Somehow, the rapid flicker of her moods shone right through her face – she carried her own personal weather, as subtly shifting as a sea sky.

Lewis returned to his letter. He was good at gallant endearments from a distance, but he did worry about being too dour in person. He was a diligent furniture restorer with a small family business, but no more than that. Would Roberta wake up one day and realize he was not enough for her?