Authors: Philippa Carr
“In the afternoon, dear.”
“So all this time …”
“Now, you get some rest.”
“But I must know.”
“You’re all right. You’ve been lucky.” I could see she was not prepared to give me any more information.
I felt tired and dazed, unable to remember in detail what had actually happened.
I must have slept and when I awoke it was to see my parents at my bedside. My mother was watching me anxiously.
“Oh, she’s come round,” I heard her say. “Violetta … darling … it’s all right. We’re here, your father and I and Dorabella. We came as soon as we heard.”
“It was a bomb,” I said.
She sat there, holding my hand; my father was on the other side of the bed. I saw Dorabella and the concern in all their faces.
I felt too tired to think, but I was certainly comforted to know they were there.
The next day I felt a great deal better. My mother said I had been in shock. Apparently the bomb had demolished a house nearby and what we had felt was the force of the explosion. It had damaged the block of flats considerably; the roof had fallen in and the windows were all shattered. We were lucky not to have been nearer to the bombed house. Two people had been killed and a number injured.
I was told I could leave the hospital the next day.
Fortunately, I was able to see Richard before I went. Although he had suffered more than I had, I was relieved to see that he was not seriously hurt.
His face was grazed and he had lost a certain amount of blood through a wound in his leg, but nothing was broken and the doctors said that in a week or so he could leave the hospital, though the leg would undoubtedly need further attention.
My mother said that when he was well enough he must come down to Caddington. She was taking me off at once.
It was wonderful to be at home. I was greeted rapturously by Tristan and by Nanny Crabtree with a mixture of tenderness towards me and fury against “that Hitler.” She declared that if she could get her hands on him she would know what to do. There were tears in her eyes as she surveyed me.
“I never did hold with that going off to work in ministries. Well, you’re home now. We’ll soon have you fattened up.”
Nanny’s cure for all things was “fattening up.”
They were lazy days. After my ordeal I needed a rest. I did have one or two dreams in which I would be back in the flat, when I heard the crunch of the bombs and felt myself slipping down into darkness. I suppose the memory of that sort of experience stays with one forever.
I thought a great deal about Richard’s revelation. It was difficult to imagine his making a disastrous marriage. I should have thought he would have considered such a step very carefully before he undertook it. He had always seemed to me to be so prosaic, and practical in the extreme.
I supposed she had been very attractive. Lady Anne! He might have liked the title. Beautiful … seductive … poor Richard, he seemed to be unlucky in love. It occurred to me that one could never really know people. They so often stepped out of character and did the unexpected.
And now he was married to her. He must have been contemplating divorce seriously as he had suggested marrying me. I felt sorry for him. He had obviously not wanted it known that he had married unsuccessfully. Richard was the sort of man who would hate to be thought unsuccessful in any way. So he had kept that marriage a secret,
He must have thought he owed it to me to make his confession. He had to explain why he had not asked me to marry him. Those visits to the flat, I supposed, had been a little unconventional and he wanted me to know that he still cared for me. He was really hinting that, when he was free and I was sure that Jowan was not coming back, marriage between us might be possible.
It all seemed very sensible, put like that. Yes, sensible was the word I had always applied to Richard.
Dorabella was back at Caddington for the weekend. She was glad that I was home for a while. We had a pleasant weekend and when she went back I knew that my parents were uneasy. They did not like one of their precious daughters going into danger, and what had happened to me had enhanced their fears. One could be in danger, of course, anywhere in the country, but the capital was particularly vulnerable.
Dorabella was ready to face any danger to continue to live her exciting life; she took great pleasure in hinting that her fascinating husband was a man of great importance who guarded the nation’s secrets.
Richard was released from hospital and had a week’s leave before rejoining his regiment; he spent half of it with us, the other half with his family in London.
Then, finally, the tide of events turned. I remember that June day well. It was the sixth—a day never to be forgotten. There was expectancy in the air, and most people must have been aware that great events were pending. We all gathered round the wireless for news and listened eagerly.
And there it was.
“Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported from the air, began landing Allied armies on the northern coast of France …”
We all looked at each other, emotional, tense. The necessary invasion of the Continent had begun.
People could talk of nothing else. At the end of his leave Richard joined his regiment, though he was not considered fit yet to go abroad, and the following week I went back to London to resume my work in the Ministry.
There was an air of euphoria everywhere. People talked constantly about the landings. It was the beginning of the end, they said. We were coming out of the darkness which had enveloped us for the last five years and soon everything would be normal again.
This mood persisted, although the Prime Minister warned us against too much optimism. We had made an excellent start, but there was a great deal to be done. We eagerly waited for any news we could get. Several of the Channel ports were now in Allied hands. Nothing could convince us that the news was not good and we were on the road to victory.
Although I had been glad to be home for a period when I might recover, I was looking forward to seeing the girls again.
Mary Grace had kept me informed and it seemed that nothing had changed except that Marian was like a different person and was quite merry. It amazed me that her life could have been so overshadowed by such a trivial matter; but, of course, what are trivialities depends on their importance to the people concerned with them.
I was due to return to London on a Sunday evening and it was on the preceding Friday that we heard the news of a new weapon which was being used against us. It was called “Hitler’s Secret Weapon” by the Germans; we called it his last desperate throw.
On the night of the fifteenth there had appeared for the first time over Britain a pilotless aircraft—a kind of flying bomb—which crossed the Channel and, when the engine stopped, exploded. This did little harm, we were told, and would in no way halt the progress of the war. They were officially called Flying Bombs, but the people soon had a name for them. In those early days, they became known as Buzz Bombs because one could distinctly hear them as they approached. If the engine was very loud, it meant that the thing was overhead and if it stopped suddenly, one was in danger because it was about to fall. We soon became familiar with them. This was a new hazard, but the mood stayed euphoric and we were all sure that victory was in sight.
I was given a vociferous welcome by them all when I returned to the Ministry. Everyone came to congratulate me on my lucky escape. Billy Bunter referred to me as “our heroine,” which was too much praise, I thought, for having done nothing heroic.
Marian thought my return should be celebrated, so of course we went to the Café Royal to drink our sherries.
It was strange to see Marian almost jolly, her dark secret revealed to be of no great importance. For as long as the war lasted, she need no longer conceal the dreadful truth that she was sixty-two years of age. Apart from that, little had changed.
Then, as I was leaving the office one day, a young woman-approached me.
“You are Miss Violetta Denver, I believe,” she said.
I admitted that I was, and she went on: “I am Anne Tarragon-Lee. I wonder if I might have a word with you?”
I felt shocked. Richard’s wife! I could not understand why she wanted to talk to me.
“What do you want to say?” I asked.
She looked round. “We can’t talk here. Let’s go and sit somewhere. Could we have a drink or a coffee somewhere?”
Bewildered still, I looked round. The only place was the teashop where we had our lunches.
I said: “We could go in there.”
She wrinkled her nose slightly and said: “There seems no alternative.”
She was very elegant. Her suit was of a pale gray fine material; her toque, shaped with smooth gray feathers, came down on one side to her eyebrows and accentuated the fineness of her large gray eyes. She was tall and slender and her features were finely chiseled, as though cut out of stone. There was something very cool and unruffled about her.
We sat and ordered cups of coffee.
“I expect you are wondering why I am here,” she said.
“Yes, I am. I have no idea why you should want to see me.”
“You know who I am. I can see that. I suppose Richard has talked to you of me.”
“He did mention you,” I said.
“And he has told you all, I suppose?”
“I do not think so. Really, he has told me very little. He mentioned you only just before we were caught in an air raid.”
“Yes, I know about that raid. You were in a flat together when it happened, weren’t you? It must have been a great shock.”
“Naturally, that sort of thing is.”
“And how is Richard?”
“Do you not know? He is out of hospital and has rejoined his regiment.”
“But I believe he has not gone overseas.”
“It may well be some time before he is well enough for that.”
“Our marriage was a mistake,” she said, looking rueful. “We didn’t fit. It’s strange how one thinks one does and quickly discovers one is wrong.”
“It happens to many people.”
“You know Richard well?”
“He is a friend of my family. I knew him some years ago.”
“He had this flat…”
“Yes, it belonged to a friend who lent it to him. He found it useful for his leaves, although his family has a house in Kensington.”
She smiled a little slyly. “I know. The mother and the sister are there. The flat must have been very convenient for you.”
She was an enigma. It seemed odd that I should be sitting here, drinking coffee as though we were old acquaintances.
She was looking beyond me into the distance, almost speculatively. She was a strange woman, and I could not understand what this meeting was about, but I sensed there was something important behind it. Surely it was not idle curiosity to inspect one of Richard’s friends?
“I think he will be all right,” I said. “He is not really badly hurt.”
“No.” She put down her cup and said: “It has been most interesting meeting you.”
“How did you know … who I was?”
“Well, I heard about the bombing, of course, and that you were there with him when it happened. He had mentioned your family to me once or twice. So … I thought I’d come and see you. I wanted to know how badly hurt he was.”
“As his wife, I should have thought you would have been told,” I said.
“Oh … I haven’t seen him for some time. We were not together for long, you know. I took my maiden name. It was like that.”
“I see. I don’t think you need worry about him. He’ll be quite fit again soon, I am sure.”
“Thank you for giving me your time.”
She stood up. Several eyes were upon her. Elegant creatures such as she was were not seen in the teashop every day.
We came out into the street.
“Goodbye,” she said in that cold way of hers.
I was still a little bewildered. I could not understand why she had contrived this meeting, yet I was sure it was not without some purpose.
Richard did not go overseas immediately but was posted down to the coast before I could tell him that his wife had been to see me.
I could not tell Dorabella or my parents that I had met Richard’s wife because I did not know whether he wished his marriage to remain a secret, and I felt it was not for me to divulge it.
I tried to put the thought of that meeting from my mind. It was not easy. There was something about Lady Anne which repelled me, something a little sinister. But still, I laughed at myself. I was building up some drama.
Life slipped back to normal. There were the same jokes, the same lunches at the teashop, but now, whenever I entered the place, I thought of that cool slender figure in gray.
We had the additional menace of the Flying Bombs which were coming over in large numbers. Many of them were disabled at the coast, which was not much use, as the damaged objects just went on their way, dropped, and the bombs exploded anyway, so they were as lethal as the sound ones.
They were just an added trial. People said their unmistakable “hum-hum” as they went along meant “you, you,” because, if you heard the noise, you were in danger and the thing might be intended for you.
But the cheerful mood held. The Flying Bombs could not affect the people’s morale while there were successes on the Continent. But the tragedy was to continue.
I remember the day well. Indeed, it was one which I shall never forget. June had passed and it was a sultry July afternoon. We sat at our tables working, now and then gossiping in quiet voices, for while Billy Bunter knew it was impossible to stop the whispers he did not want our voices to become too audible.
Florette was very happy that afternoon. A week before she had met a young man who was “in the business”; he was a conjurer and had appeared in Blackpool for a few weeks—not exactly top of the bill, but at least halfway down. He was working on munitions because he was not quite fit for the army; but he had great hopes for the future.
So she had found a soulmate with whom she could share her dreams and learn a great deal about theatrical rules.
Peggy was looking forward to Florette’s future as such as she could never have for herself, and, with a guilt-free Marian and Mary Grace her usual steady self, fitting in with everyone’s mood, that began as a very happy afternoon.